To start off I got Skyrim on release day and continue to play it two years later, I love the game.

However the entire time I've played Skyrim, it felt like the journey to find the depth or strategy within the game was completely fruitless, I kept thinking "OK if I just get a few more perks in certain skills the games strategy and tactics will begin to reveal themselves" but they never did. For example on my current playthrough I'm using a spellsword, that has no perks in Alchemy but I enjoy collecting ingrediants and making potions, this usually results in there being no need to use them on expert but on master I'm usually one or two shotted and don't get a chance to use them. Its this sort of imbalance and over reliance on RPG numbers based gameplay that negatively affects what is clearly supposed to be an action RPG.

This is a problem, I don't feel like I have to use my resources at hand to succeed in Skyrim, but then if I up the difficulty to master you usually die too fast to even try to. Can anybody relate to this? I'm not using any exploits by the way. In Fallout 3 just on normal and in power armor a Deathclaw was a tough fight that could require four or five stimpacks, it just feels like a much more balanced game difficulty wise to me.

Perhaps this feeling is from having played Dark Souls just as long as I've played Skyrim (hundreds of hours) which leads me into my next topic, but I'm beginning to feel first person mellee combat has hit a wall, it is nowhere near as satisfying as third person combat and also nowhere near as capable of having the same level of strategy and control, Dark Souls proves this, Devil May Cry, Dragons Dogma and Ninja Gaiden etc. Dishonored has made some ground but first person melee combat is in need of major innovation. I wonder would the depth I was looking for have been somewhat alleviated if Skyrim had some kind of basic parry system even, I'm not sure, but I know Bethesda needs to take a look at games like Chivalry and Dishonored and come up with their own improvements and seriously look at trying to push first person melee combat forward, because the mindless pressing of melee button in Skyrim was a poor choice and will most likely age the game badly in years to come.

Has anyone found a difficulty level or balance to the game where they feel they are challenged and need to use their resources without being one or two shotted?

I sort of agree with what you say. The way difficulty was designed is somewhat simplistic: enemies are either damage sponges with ridiculous NPC-only extra-damage perks or just cannon fodder. Most NPCs make no use of armor rating, instead relying on an inflated hitpoint stat, and weaknesses-to-element or whatever aren't usually big enough to bother taking advantage of (except for trolls, always burn the trolls). Melee combat is also on the simple side, and consists mostly of left-clicking, with the occasional right click to block. I feel that it's this very simplified approach to combat and difficulty that takes away potential depth from a game.

I wouldn't say that there was an over-reliance on RPG-numbers. Rather, there isn't enough of it to give the variety and flavor that a RPG/sandbox game should have. Compared to other 1st person combat games, I do agree that Skyrim would have benefited from more animations and executable actions. The little variety in combat animations that currently exist are in the directional power attacks and these are usually not worth pulling off.

I find the danger of being one or two shotted greatly improves combat. It forces me to plan ahead and concentrate. It's why I play on master. Isn't this also what Dark Souls is about?

I agree on the second part. I play mostly 3^rd person.

edit. Btw. In the beginning, I used to play Skyrim 1^st person. Then I played Dark Souls, and when I came back to Skyrim I switched to 3^rd person and never looked back. Also my situational awareness and dodging abilities improved from nothing to demi-god. ; )

I wouldn't even mind damage sponges if they did a challenging level of damage to you other than one or two shots and I have difficulty finding this balance. Yeah I agree weakness to element should have been better implemented.

Its interesting that you think there wasn't enough RPG numbers, I think Skyrim should have either had a VATS style turn based system or a life like real time skill based system with sword use, as it is, its just a weird hybrid that satisfies neither concept.

Thats interesting, can you tell me what you do to prepare? Well I've never been one shotted on Dark Souls even in New Game plus 3, Dark Souls difficulty comes from healing item management and an ability to dodge and punish missed enemy attacks.

Glad you enjoy third person in Skyrim

Never one-shotted in Dark Souls? c'mon, that can't be true...

In Dark Souls, the difficulty comes mostly from not knowing your enemies. Once you know where they are, their moves, resistancies and weaknesses, they become easy, even trivial.

Preparing in Skyrim means more or less the same: scout ahead, make a plan how to proceed, knowing about their resistancies and weaknesses, and what type of attack they are probably going to use etc. Try and retry until it works.

If you do a level 1 playthrough enemies can one shot you but even then bosses can't kill you in one shot as their attacks are percentage based. But clearly the game was designed for you to level up so no I haven't been one shotted, what has one shotted you? Their are environmental hazards which I guess you could consider a one shot, but what enemies one shot you?

OK heres an example of what would happen on master for me, I see a two handed warrior, I see him winding up a power attack, I use unrelenting force to stagger him, I dual wield frostbite to try drain his stamina, it doesn't do it fast enough, unrelenting force hasn't recharged, I take a swing with my sword, does nothing, he hits me, dead. On console saving and loading take far too long to retry over and over, even if there was a quicksave option I would try but there isn't.

I'm interested if trying to go full health and health enchantments or fortify potions give a satisfying combination of challenge and survivablitity and if anyone has any thoughts on that?

Or perhaps I've been neglecting damage stamina potions?

You won't find any depth here or in the future unless Bethesda brings back enemy variety and effects. You don't need anything in this game. You don't need armor, you don't need skills, you don't need a good weapon, you don't need stamina, you don't need to level up...you don't need anything. All you need in this game is minor healing potions and you are in god mode. That's it. That's why there's no depth in the combat. When you can just stop time and chug an infinite amount of minor healing potions, you will always win. It's cheap, it's lame and it's sometimes boring unless you severely limit yourself in which case you forget about those limits when you are about to die because you don't want to reload and do all that progress (even if it is 5 minutes) again.

Yeah I see what you're saying. At higher levels you surely run out of them though right? What makes them infinite?

I do believe that there can be some depth found in Skyrim at times, say I'll go up against a Bandit chief, I'll buff my character with frost cloak, have flames on my off hand and sword in the other, I'll make sure I'm hitting him while hes on fire for extra damage, I'll take some damage switch to fast healing, he'll outpace my healing, so I switch to a good potion that turns the battle and lets me finish him off. I consider this a good fight, I just can't consistently find fights like this, they're either way too easy below master or way too hard on master, its strange.

They are not infinite. I was referring to the fact that you can drink an infinite amount of them if you want. That's why I mention minor healing potions and not Ultimate healing potions. You just pause the game and drink 10 or 20 until the red bar is full again. You don't run out of them because the game will consistently shower you with a high amount of potions.

As for the enemies it just the leveling of the game. Single named enemies will not level up with your character. The few that will level up with you will do more damage, such as the bandit chiefs. If you see fancy surname to the enemy it means those are leveled enemies and will do more damage. Take bandits as example; If you see the enemy named "bandit" it will be a low level enemy, you will likely stand there and take all their abuse and then sneeze on them and they're dead. Bandit chiefs however level up with you, so if you're fighting "bandits" and then see a bandit chief you will often be caught up in the moment slicing through the lower level ones and won't expect a bandit chief to hit you hard, and that's when you get one shoted by a kill cam and then you say "bull [censored]! ". The same goes for all enemies, single name, easy. When names get complicated and fancy, they do more damage. You have to be aware of that because often they get mixed and that's where the one shotting happens.

Ah just a misunderstanding, for all I knew you meant you bought a thousand minor healing potions lol

Regarding the rest, you are absolutely right, just before I saw your message I was doing some research on the level scaling in the game and how enemy names are so important. What you described often happens to me and leads me to think every enemy will one shot me instead of realising it was a "boss" type enemy. I think I'm going to retry master difficulty really focusing on enemy names. Thanks for the helpful reply

This is what bugged a number of people about Morrowind. It was all in the numbers, and the weapon animations were just that, animations, they had no impact, pardon the pun, on combat in the game. I liked it as I could see the battles getting easier as I leveled up, not because I was getting better at the mouse. If they want to make this game a true RPG, then let the character stats determine outcome, not how the player swings the sword. But, that won't sell, because people want to see a hit no matter what the skill is.

I can't speak a lot on Morrowind but I think Bethesda's attempt to try to merge numbers and the sense of impact, didn't work in Skyrim, for me at least, combat in Skyrim doesn't feel like an RPG to me, but it also doesn't fulfill the expectation of believable skill based sword fighting in the absence of strong RPG mechanics. I think if they went pure RPG it could sell based on Bethesda's name alone at this point. All I know is unless they come up with something seriously innovative I don't think an attempt to merge RPG and action mechanics in the first person view will benefit the Elder Scrolls VI, they need to clarify what the Elder Scrolls is at this point for me.