Ok so I am not sure about you guys but the only thing that ruined oblivion for me was how easy the game could become by simply sliding the difficulty meter down(other than the excessive lagging due to all the dlc). I would like to know how you guys would prefer your first play through the mythical land of skyrim, as for me I will have it at least 3/5 the way up(with LOTS of saves of course).

Also I would like to discuss how people say that the only reward by heightening the difficulty is combat I would like to challenge that. The higher you raise the meter the more magic/weapon hits it takes to bring your opponent down which levels your skills up more per opponent.

If you make the skills gaining more experience from combat because the difficulty is higher, then you will level up quickly and becoming more powerful and it will defeat the purpose of making the game more difficult in the first place

That would not defeat the purpose you silly goose! it would just allow you to keep bringing the difficulty meter up until it cannot rise anymore and by that time you will be ready to start a new character and begin the process once more.

I believe the slider has been removed?

I usually start games on maximum difficulty. I found that after years of this practice that most games are horribly boring at 'normal' or lower settings. It was somewhat painful at first, but like every form of exercise it became easier with time.

Game difficulty needs to effect every aspect gameplay that involves skills. So speech, stealth, etc... need to be more challenging on harder difficulty settings!

EDIT: Oblivion's hardest difficulty was [censored]. Breaking several weapons while killing something at low skill is fine... but not when it takes 100000000 hits to kill something.

I couldn't agree with you more sir. I couldn't stand playing ANY game on normal or lower. I beat mass effect 2 on insanity and it was the best gaming experience I had ever had. I am looking forward to my skyrim experience. I have never been so hyped up for a game in my life.

EDIT: and the hardest difficulty on oblivion was almost impossible until I learned how to dupe my rings on. Lol. I had like 500 rings on at once. Hahaha



So it's going to be like the fallout set-up? I would much prefer that. Any proof?

I kind of enjoy feeling all powerful in a game like this, so the difficulty needs to be high enough so I don't fall asleep, but not so hard that I constantly have to worry about saving. Even normal on Oblivion got kind of frustrating at the beginning, until I started using my starting conjuration skeleton as a training dummy. Then I finally caught up enough to the scaling to stay competitive, but then I ended up breaking the game with enchanted weapons. Really hard balance to keep.

I did the whole practice dummy trick a lot. Especially with the daedra once I could summon them.

yes the difficulty slider has been removed and is replaced with the general difficulty settings(easy, normal etc..)

It's been stated by Pete, through twitter I think that(ask dragonborn1 aka twitter master) diffuculty is like fallout 3. Slider is gone!! Also in the leaked manual it might have said it too. I did read myself in the manual that diffuculty only makes combat harder. So most likely an increase to baddies attack strength and perhaps higher health? I doubt the enemy fights any better though. Rewards and xp stay the same regardless of diffuculty.

I usually go normal, but I'm might play on the hardest difficulty this time, depends on how the companions are handled, I don't want my Spouse in game getting killed alot xD

However most games in high difficulties just give the enemies more health, So I might just stay in normal instead of stabbing someone for 3 hours to kill them

I intent to start at normal and increase the difficulty every 25 levels so I will hit the hardest difficulty at exactly 50.

As for the oblivion difficulty, it was bullsht. The only way to kill people within a reasonable amount of time was magic weakness stacking or summons. God help you if they have reflect damage or reflect magic.

I plan on playing at the default setting. I find that in most game higher difficulty only really results in higher enemy hp which I find annoying then tactiaclly challenging. It just turns everything into a very absorbent damage sponge.

For me the default difficulty will be the hardest one like it was in MW and OB and I never lowered them if I couldn't beat something because otherwise I would have felt like I cheated and that's also why I never use console commands either.

Same. I won't touch the settings and just start playing the game. If it seems too easy that's when I'll make the switch.