Here is a legitimate issue I have here.

First of all, factor in this:

- You sell a lot of junk/loot, Speechcraft goes up by a couple of levels.
- You decide to steal a lot, meaning pickpocketing and lockpicking, goes up a couple of levels.

And so forth. What I am trying to get here is that leveling up those skills [ I am intentionally leaving out Smithing/Enchancting/Alchemy. ] still counts to your general level, which dictates in the end, the enemies you will be facing. It's with a heavy heart I admit I am not so keen selling my phat l00tz anymore to vendors because it increases my level rather fast and thus, gimping me in the near future.

I mark these as 'non-combat' skills because they will not in ANY way, provide you with superior means to besting your enemies. All I can think of is lockpicking where you might be able to by-pass a major stronghold filled with enemies.

Can BH provide some kind of background scaling whereby it DOES factor to your general level but the world only scales on the 'essential' warrior/mage/thief skills and the adjacent skill provides alternative ways e.g. Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy.

Or am I overreacting to this issue? Let me know!

Bump. Ended on the 2nd page way too fast.

You forget that noncombat skills give you better gear and spells and sometimes allow you to circumvent combat/make it significantly easier.

+1

the lower the skill the smaller xp it gives toward your next level... so unless you decided to sell 10000lbs of loot your speech craft at most will make u level up 1 time.

I don't believe so. Maybe I misunderstood question though.

I dont get this complaint at all. So you gain like 1/10th of your level through non-essential skills you didnt want. So what.. You can live with the battles becoming 10% harder. If not then just adjust the difficulty.

Personally i read every book i find, levelling up skills that i never ever use. I use smithing with raw materials i find and increase smithing for very little benefit just because it feels like my character wouldnt wanna waste resources (smithing material) i find. I am looking for a speech trainer because i feel that it is an important skill for my character - NOT because it would give me some advantage but because my character is good with words in my mind and i want it to be reflected ingame. If i do become a great speaker i think it should reflect my level, and in fact i think it would be good if cooking became a skill too. I think everything you do should be reflected in your level, and if people think the game becomes too hard then - well just play on an easier difficulty for gods sake. There is no one forcing you to play on a specific difficulty.

You are not overreacting at all imo.

Non-combat skills should scale differently or not scale at all BUT:

For example to make blacksmithing not scalable with levels you shouldn't at the same time be able to level it with "iron daggers" or "leather bracers" all the way to 100. It should obviously be much harder.

As for the skills of speech/pickpocketing/locksmithing it would be ok to contribute to levels like they do now ONLY if they provided you with a benefit that made them useful.

Skill anolysis:

-lockpicking skill is useless when you can easily spend 5-10 picks to unlock a master lock at novice levels. It should obviously be impossible to do that.

-pickpocketing offers you a lot money and if you level it enough certain weapons/armor - Money should play a bigger role in the game. If merchant items did not scale with your level and you could buy something better or something special it would actually be worth it. Atm i'm sitting there with 30k gold, 3 houses etc and i don't find any point in having so much money - thus no point in leveling it up. Also you can find the same things that merchants sell you, in dungeons so it kinda beats the purpose of stealing and then buying from merchants.

-Speaking as it rarely counts or appears in important game choices should appear much more often and like pickpocketing, if money were worth it, ONLY then should it scale with levels.

-Enchanting - gimps your character until you get stacking enchants. When you do get these and enchant everything it's just imbalanced. It's like the game wants you to level it to max right away/in one go.

-Blacksmithing - same with enchanting it actually gimps you until you get it to the highest levels, make daedric armor/weps and improve your gear enough for levels taken by it to be worth it. Like enchanting the game pushes you to level it in one go to reap a benefit - which svcks.

-Alchemy - Imo it should just scale less. Potions are obviously powerful but the funny thing is that if you don't level it at all and get potions from dungeons/loot you won't need the potions alchemy gives you in the first place.
If alchemy should be scaled, it should give a lot extra benefits from potions too when you drink them, or reduce their "cooldown" if there was one in the game. Ah yes there should be a cooldown on potions.

-Sneaking - You are not able to sneak in many situations and the levels it gives you make these situations harder while making the sneak-friendly situation easier. This seems fair but it would be good if it scaled less so that it gave you more benefit. People who lvled sneaking and backstabed an enemy at a dungeon and got all excited that he one hit him with his stacking enchants etc should refrain from having an opinion in this.


Again those that stack the buffs on enchanting/blacksmithing when they level them to 100 and say "omg omg these skills are kewl omg OP" should refrain from having an opinion, thanks.

Maybe a better solution would be to simply get rid of level scaling?

Either remove level scaling or leave things as they are.

i got to level 19 mostly on pickpocket, sneak is hard to level at first but then there is a threshhold around 45 where it suddenly becomes easier and easier to level faster and faster and once you throw in perks it actually becomes a powerful combat skill, lockpick levels SLOWLY, and speech...speech you would almost have to be grinding to level much at all, svck it up. The other noncombat skills all figure heavily into combat indirectly.

The svck it up refers to the fact that pickpocket is basically the only skill that does make the game hard (unless you hunt down some godly gear to lift off some people) but that difficulty is still manageable.

Removing level scaling would only benefit people that like to grind.

No

I really don't think they should. Between enchanting and the non-combat oriented magic skills, I'm level 38 with only 42 hours in.

Actually instead of all the anolysis i made... THIS yes

The game though would have to be tuned carefully in order to get rid of it so that certain aspects remain intact. Like hand-picking enemy levels, still allow people to explore and keep the game challenging. I seriously doubt bethesda would bother to do something like that.