That would be nice but then the devs would have to work harder when they dont have to.

Make deep game that sales good VS make something like oblivion.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

Well Nehrim had the system you speak of.

Who said the end result of every character is to become a god? I didn't say that, and yet you quoted me. It wouldn't really even necessarily be godlike. I'm not talking about things that make you invincible or things that allow you to kill everything in an instant. I'm talking about things as I mentioned before like levitation, ridiculous jump spells, fortifying your speed to the point that you run ridiculously fast. Using the different spells that allow you to do things that we can't really do and incorporate that into your play style. In Morrowind I can fast travel to anywhere I want by just jumping there with a couple spells. It just feels cool. I don't see why you would need to gimp your character to avoid that since you'd have to WANT to do that in the first place.

As far as fearing certain enemies and not always beign able to win in combat, I fully support that. It adds a certain intensity to the game to know that you're not always going to win, and that something might be too powerful for you to beat even through reloading a save file and trying different methods, that sometimes you're just not strong enough and you have to find another way to get where you're going or come back later. It's possible that my idea of god-like powers isn't the same as what everyone else is thinking, I suppose, but these different abilities were sorely lacking in Oblivion, and I'd like to see them return.



It's not a fact, actually. You may want to either, a.) reread what you posted or b.) look up the definition of a fact. Morrowind is my favorite game. Not my favorite TES game, my favorite game, period. And I didn't like how easy Morrowind got. I enjoyed the different powers that could make you feel powerful and making spells and enchantments that were very powerful, but I didn't like that once you got to that point everything might as well curl up in the fetal position when you're around. As already stated, I don't like in Oblivion how long it takes things to die, not how hard it is to kill them. If you haven't run into that problem I'll assume you always play a combat-oriented class that specializes in weapons and armor and that those are your primary skills to level up. Or perhaps you do perfect leveling where you make sure your 3 attributes always receive +5. That's not how I play. Oblivion was severely lacking in magic, but it still had some fun stuff to use in Illusion, and Conjuration's a fun one. Sure I still use a weapon and wear armor, but when you have skills that aren't combat related leveling you up, level scaling pretty quickly bends you over and makes you its [censored]. Again, not that it's hard to kill things, especially with how bad the AI is in Oblivion, but it starts to take a really long time to kill some of the stronger opponents. That isn't how it should be. If an opponent is stronger than you, it doesn't have to be expressed through being a bag of HP. gamesas should actually put effort into the AI and make enemies beat you in other ways, but the combat in Oblivion was [censored]. And it actually was more tedious than Morrowind, and you yourself described exactly why. Combat in Morrowind starts off with you swinging at an opponent for a few years until you hit them. Kind of [censored]? Yeah. But as you level up that ability you start to hit much much closer to 100% of the time, and combat becomes much smoother. In Oblivion, it's the opposite. You svck with a sword, yet you kill things in a few swings. As you level up and everything gets stronger, it reverts to Morrowind-style "swing at it for a few years until it finally dies". And I shouldn't have to exclusively level combat skills to avoid that, just like you don't want to gimp your character (still don't know where you're coming up with this stuff) to avoid being able to do cool stuff.

Dude.NO.no.You want Oblivion II?

Uh...no, i don't. Lets say for the sake of argument that the entire game is unleveled and that the max PC lvl is 100. In that case there should be lvl150 NPCs for me to fight. You understand now? The PC should never be stronger than the strongest NPC. Leveling is not inherently bad it just wasn't done well in Oblivion.

Sleign, if I can summon hundreds of undead AT ONCE, then if I was a Master of Destruction (and not conjuration), I could definitely destroy a village.

My power-player sense is tingling.

^ This would suit me perfectly!

I want to get to a point where I can beat things that were difficult before, and don't want them to dissappear because of level scaling. But I also want to face a challenge. Thus, have a level cap and have some enemies at or even above it. They can easily destroy you at low levels, and can still destroy you at high levels if you'e not careful. The game is always a challenge, because at high levels you go looking for DIFFERENT challenges.

Also agree with some guy on the first page that emphasized the importance of CONSISTENCY in the way the world is presented... I believe this touches on level scaling (a world revolving around your character's level is not particularly consistent), but has a much, much wider scope.

Why on earth not? Why /can't/ *you*, a dragonborn, become stronger than anyone given time? If I want to become the most powerful [mage|warrior] in the plane, who are you to stop me?
On the other hand, once I'm at that point, and no one man, woman, or child can touch me - bring on the groups of powerful enemies!

Dude, what?
Make up your mind.


Geeeez, if the gods of TES lore were NPCs in Skyrim, I bet there would be enough players wanting to crush those as well. Not just having a chance of beating them - no-no-no - outright crushing them with the blink of an eye. Anything else wouldn't be worthy of the mighty dragonborn, right?
Being the dragonborn does in no way imply you have the right to be some sort of godlike being.

And who are you to spoil other people's game? You seem to forget that that possibility would affect us all, and I shouldn't be micromanaging my character to not to become a god.

You are a Dovahkiin. You are the chosen one. Of course you must be powerful, but damn, it should be a sensible power.

A good level scaling (not like in Oblivion, where it was extreme) would be the best, at least for me.

Two problems in Oblivion, fist is as you say, all enemies are very close to your level, a higher spread here would both give you weaker and stronger enemies, at level 20 you should have a small chance to run into level 30 enemies. Daggerfall was better here.
Second problem is general from Morrowind to Fallout 3, as you get more health each time you level up and even more as your endurance increase, this make you virtual un-killable and enemy damage does not follow, as your damage also reach it’s top with daeric weapons and 25 damage enchantments while the bosses continue to get more health fights last forever at high level.

alot of the realism ideas on this forums kind of svck like some people ideas in the Carrying Capacity tread. i want to play a video game no play real life on a game and do stuff i cant in real life.

this most of the stuff TES is optional.

While reading this thread I started thinking about MMA (mostly UFC, because even though I don't watch a lot of mixed martial arts I tend to watch it when it pops on TV from time to time).

So in that vein - let's look at some of the guys at the top of their game. When they first started training I suppose it's debateable whether or not they could have even won a one on one bar fight. But as they trained, they got better. And better. And better. Eventually there existed only a handful of people in the world who could provide a challenge in a "fair" fight. It's why these guys make so much money - because (while not demi-gods) they are next to unstoppable.

So if I'm a character in a TES game - at first bandits pose a problem for me as I haven't trained much. But does anyone really think it's realistic for bandits to *always* pose a problem as you get stronger? In much the same way as the MMA guys get better with training and work their way up the ladder, so too should our character develop.

And putting an artificial cap on character development? Well...no. I don't like that idea. These games are open-ended for a reason. Eventually we should be able to take on any enemy in the game (although no one said that powerful enemies can't gang up on you...).

To be honest, as much as I hate World of Warcraft, I like their idea of zones. Near cities the "zones" should be easier with lower level enemies. Higher level enemies the farther you get. However - because I'd love to see a dynamic world, these zones should be static - there's a chance for a high level enemy (or enemies) to wander into lower zones - you know, just to keep things interesting.

But I don't want bandits leveling with me - that's just ridiculous. As some poster above stated - you have bandits wearing daedric armor and swinging glass weapons - how does that even work?

Definitely have enemies that are always a challenge no matter how powerful you get...but these should be few and far between in remote locations. Your character, as you progress and get more powerful (at higher levels), should be able to destroy most enemies in-game. Otherwise what's the point of leveling up at all?

If you intentionally made a non-combat character in MW, then you could stand there for a minute or two of ineffectually swinging a weapon around like an idiot without hitting, but if you managed to accidentally connect, you'd do serious damage with that big chunk of hurtling metal. If, on the other hand, you took a weapon skill as a MAJOR, and USED that type of weapon, you'd hit about 1/4 to 1/2 the time right off the boat. With a few hours of play, your skills would improve to the point of hitting more often than not. After about Level 5-8, it should rarely be an issue. Failure in MW was a bit too brutal at the start, but that made it more rewarding when you became powerful. Having success just handed to you from the start made the next game fell pointless, in my opinion. Something in the middle might have been better.

In OB, you could automatically use a weapon with unerring accuracy with no skill or training, but when you hit something with that slashing blade or massive hammer, it somehow barely scratched the target because of your lack of skill. Worse, killing certain enemies at high levels became a chore. Sure, you could kill a goblin in the starting dungeon with just a jab or two from a cheezy iron dagger, but by Level 30, the same goblin took nearly forever to die, even while beating on it with a high-power weapon taken from some "poor" Marauder or Bandit with Daedric or Glass equipment.

Scaling was only one of several "realism" points that OB backpedalled on. The realtive "nerfing" of skills in general meant that your ability as a player determined how easily you could open a lock, or convince an NPC of something. No matter how untrained and inept the character, any ham-fisted barbarian brute could pick a "Hard" lock with only 5 skill, if the player's dexterity and reactions were good, where the most nimble and intelligent thief with 75 Skill in Lockpicking would still fumble and break picks if the player wasn't very good at it. Failure was poorly implemented; in fact it wasn't implemented at all: at 24 skill, you weren't even allowed to attempt a task, but at 25 skill, you couldn't possibly fail at it. That's realistic, right?

Not that MW got it right, but it was a good first approximation. Rather than fix the mistakes and tweak the rest, the developers went to the opposite extreme, with the result that the game was just as broken, if not more so, but in a totally different way. At least MW felt somewhat more "realistic" in the RESULTS of its game mechanics, although OB's combat and game world "looked" more real, but often worked in a counter-intuitive manner. Please, Bethesda, a few less "that's just stupid" moments in the next game.

Sensible goes both ways. If my character is limited by "sensible", then the NPCs had damn well be limited so as well. I'm the special one, not the other way around - there's no justification for the PC having a lower level cap than NPCs.
I don't mean that it should be EASY to become powerful, and really it shouldn't be a straight grind from level 1 to level X, but to force "real-world realistic" limitations on somebody defeats the point of a game designed around freedom.

@Yun; My mind is made up. You'll notice that nothing I said actually disagreed with anything I'd said previously. The world of TES has a very high power ceiling, and as we always play a character involved in great things, either a chosen one or not, somewhere near that ceiling has to be attainable for it to make sense. The "Why can't the guards take out an oblivion gate" argument is very valid, a small team of guards can kill most characters, and yet even large numbers of them still need you to close the gate. If you were able to become significantly stronger than them this would make perfect sense. TES is a fantasy world of heroes and heroines, where legend is something you make, incredibly powerful characters are not unrealistic..

thats the problem........time. unless your one of those people who constantly ignore doing the main quest you can go from zero to hero in only months according to the ingame calendar. what is stopping you is simple logic. how do you become more powerful than the mightiest warrior who has been honing his skill for years and even decades. how do you get to master more spells than the most powerful wizards in the mages guild who have been casting spells since before you were born. how on earth does that make any sense.

there needs to be a few npcs and monsters who will always be several levels above you even when you max out your levels. there has to be something in the game that causes even the most extravagantly equipped and most powerful character you can get to go "oh [censored]" and think twice about engaging them.

As I understand it, Fallout 3's system did work the same way. Meaning, once you entered an area, that area then became 'scaled' to your level (whatever that happened to be during your first visit).

Very well said :foodndrink:

I've always looked at this as the potential for greatness which came along with being the dragonborn of the neverarine reincarnate, etc. Though I don't particularly like that game mechanic.

It's really kind of a conundrum when you think about it.

Tamriel is a harsh place and most people just irk out a living. Powerful characters are usually considered to be well experienced and well trained over many years. The player however, gains power very very quickly, as is necessary for a game to move forward and for the player to feel like they're improving and progressing in the world. However, how do you continue to challenge the player without making the rest of the world unrealistically powerful or otherwise making the player so powerful that the rest of the world can't even be compared?

Personally, I would rather the players skills level more slowly and improvement be much more gradual. I feel that equipment is a little too important (at least in Morrowind) as stats jump up rather quickly when you upgrade to the better gear and it can make a huge difference. I think that Skyrim will take a large step forward in that combat is much more based on performance. The consequence of this might be that once you're good at fighting and you figure out the quirks of it, you may never feel challenged when starting a new character. I really hope that the combat isn't too predictable or the AI too easy to take advantage of - that would truly be disappointing.

Personally, I would prefer a game where the player, in terms of strength, is no stronger than any other person in the world and they are constantly the underdog of fights. That if we tried to fight in a Morrowind (hack away until someone dies) manner, we would certainly lose and that the difference must be made up in performance, sensibility, and prudence.

It's just one thing that bugs me. In Morrowind you never actually become a God, but you end up killing some throughout the MQ and Tribunal. Then you go to bloodmoon and it takes me so long to kill a bear or a wolf that might shortsword breaks after two or three fights.