Balancing - Difficulty Settings

Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 4:57 pm

Hello everyone, I would like to discuss some of my thoughts on keeping an overall balanced gameplay experience, from beginning to end.

As many of us know, Adept is the starting difficulty that shares x1 output damage (OUT DMG) and x1 input damage (IN DMG). I seek to keep the game as balanced as possible, I do not like being handicapped as that is what the higher difficulties do to the player. However I have found something that starts to shake the boundaries of balanced gameplay.

In the one-handed skill tree, it is necessary to invest in the first perk which increases one-handed damage (1/5; 25%). This now enables the player to place perks in anything above the tree (and even increase the damage of one-handed weapons). This now automatically increases the OUT DMG to 1.25 which now handicaps the enemy on Adept and reasons the player to increase the difficulty to Expert to balance it. However one must consider the next level of difficulty, expert which shares a x1.5 OUT DMG and .75 IN DMG. This therefore handicaps the player dramatically, having to find a way to reduce damage by a whole 50% from both physical and magical damage.

This becomes problematic for me and has really slowed me down from leveling combative skills. Does anyone else have similar problems with balancing? If so, please share your thoughts.

Thanks.

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Kelsey Hall
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:50 pm

Err... when you increase in level, the enemies you face will have more hit points, and do more damage. That's what counteracts the fact that you can select perks to increase your damage (or at least, it's supposed to).

One of the biggest problems with the difficulty slider, in my view, is that you can't independently change the damage you deal and the damage you take. I like the challenge of Master, where I can easily die; but it svcks that I have to hit the enemy twenty times to kill them. I want combat to be deadly.

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Queen of Spades
 
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Post » Wed Nov 13, 2013 1:02 am

It's a problem for me.I have a rule when my character reaches lvl 40 I switch to expert,level 60 to master.But it's weird how I was killing everything and all of a sudden it's a problem.

So now i only go to expert because it doesn't mess with my RP, my character suppose to be a bad-ass.

Especially with my latest battle-mage.She became Arch-Mage and I changed her load out to fit her title,less armor (Tribunal robes mod) and only ebony gauntlets and boots.

So she can take more damage and die from Overloadrs and dragons,which is fair i guess.

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Steven Nicholson
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:31 pm

Actually the hit points stay the same for the enemies across the board, it is the handicap that makes it seem like the enemy has more health, since YOU the PLAYER are dealing less damage to the enemy.

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Kirsty Wood
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:30 pm

Sorry, maybe my first post wasn't clear. The way the game works is that as your character increases in level, you encounter higher level enemies. These enemies will have more hit points, and do more damage, than their lower level counterparts. Bandits are a good example of this: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Bandit

The point is that while you may take perks that increase the amount of damage your character does, you will be encountering enemies that can handle greater amounts of damage (since they have more hit points).

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Charlie Sarson
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:13 pm

Play a lower difficulty and never level up health (avoiding powerful armours too ideally). Eventually it seems to reach a point where you're only very slightly harder to kill than your enemies, which I think is justified since you're the dragonborn and supposed to be a badass. The game is still very dangerous, but you're also dropping people very fast, and I think it should be that way. If you smash someone's face in with a warhammer they should die, immediately, if they don't you're rping a wimp.

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{Richies Mommy}
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 7:33 pm

what i want is dynamic settings to be auto applied to the enemies like a cheat spell or something i dont like how the higher difficulty settings nerfs down the player damage and increases the enemies damage what i want is player to do 1 damage irrespective of difficulty chosen and enemy to do 1.5 damage without nerfing the player damage below 1.

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Kelvin
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 4:43 pm

So it reverses the usual difficulty trajectory of the game? That is, normally the game is: starts off a little challenging, then becomes quite easy. But, with what you're suggesting, it sounds like it would start out quite easy, but become progressively more difficult.

I'll have to give this a go.

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Sammykins
 
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Post » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:06 am

Yeah I'd say it starts easy and gets harder, but you also at the same time feel yourself getting better (your weapons are getting better, your skill with 1h or 2h is getting better, and you're accruing performance enhancing perks), so in some ways it gets easier but taking damage gets harder and harder (aka you die easier and easier) which I think is ideal.

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*Chloe*
 
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