This. it would be nice to be able to customize even more than how much health an enemy has.

I think it would be better to have a lot more options for difficulty than just easy, medium and hard.

That way everyone can customize the difficulty the way they want. Then there won't be a need for a "hardcoe"-mode because all those options could be with the difficulty options.

I never bothered with difficulty anyway, since all it did was make the game incredibly unrealistic.

Sliders, but expanded, as pretty much stated above.

I'd go for something that combines both. 6 normal options, Very Easy through Very Hard, plus a Custom option that enables sliders for things like global health, enemy health bonuses/penalties, something similar for damage, some other settings for things like how merchant gold is handled, something like hardcoe mode in NV, etc.

Fixed difficulty levels allow for a better comparison and discussion,. But make it more than three as tastes are very different -look at Civ 5. I think seven difficulty levels would be a nice distribution, with the last ones only intended for really experienced gamers who know the game by heart already. But please have them all selectable right from the start.

And so did the elves, orcs, monsters, magic, and gods. Complaining about realism in a video game that has freaking wizards in it is one of the most asinine things I've ever heard.

Back on topic, I don't see any reason to remove the difficulty slider. Everything you could accomplish with a set easy/normal/hard difficulty level you can do by moving the difficulty slider to the appropriate area, without the added benefit of being able to fine-tune your choice. I enjoy a slightly higher difficulty when I play so I move the slider over a tiny bit, whereas my wife (if she were to play a TES game) would probably slide it over to make the game much easier.

No slider.

Me too, not that I use it. But the option to.

I'm undecided. Since I never used the difficulty slider, I wouldn't really mind not having it (don't care if it's there or not).

I dunno, having a hard mode would make me compelled to play it (you know, cus there's always stuff you get for it), but if it's too hard that would just be too frustrating I guess.

The difficulty slider does nothing but give more hp and damage power to the AI. This is all. I say get rid of all difficulty adjustments in the traditional sense and replace them with something new. What I suggest is "easy, normal, realistic." Easy would keep all the enemies that would kick your butt out until you level up and can handle them. This would be recommended to only people who don't like to worry about fighting and just want to enjoy the story. Normal would add in tougher enemies, but keep out the super bad guys until you'd leveled up higher (maybe keep everything no more than 10 or 15 levels ahead of you). Realistic would censor no enemies. All are in from the time you start at level one. If you go try to fight a dragon right out of the gate, you die. Plain and simple. This is the system I'd recommend. Adding health and damage power is old fashioned.

I play games to relax and uncover a good story, not for challenge or constant dying and reloading - I'm never very good at the combat aspect of games. Not being able to play the game on the easiest settings and just enjoy the story would kind of ruin the series for me...

Voted against slider. I feel that a easy/normal/hard would be better because for the people that like a challenge know that deep down when they are struggling to kill this hard boss or w/e that there is always a easy way out. and it takes away from immersion imo. and for the people that just want to see the story can select easy and 1 shot their way to glory. It would also be cool to have like a couple rare wepons that could only be gotten through playing it on harder difficulties.

I'm not against a difficulty slider, but the difficulty slider should not change enemy health, but affect spawn rates, and enemy AI instead.

I like how it was done in 'http://thenamelessmod.com/' for Deus Ex. It had 4 sliders:

1. Damage to Player health
2. Damage to Enemy health
3. Loot quantity
4. Enemy quantity


1+2 combined is basically what we have now, only when the one goes up the other goes down.

It's like creating your own hardcoe mode, somewhat. Are you swimming in gold? Think loot should be more scarce? Lower the loot quantity slider. Think there should be more enemies? Move the enemy quantity slider up. Do you think both the player and the enemy should take more damage, for shorter but more intense battles? Turn both sliders up.

Exactly, enemies with ridiculously high health does make it harder, but not in a fun way.

The difficulty sliders in Oblivion were kinda boring. All it did was making the fighting even more tedious and even more repetive (more block, hit, block, hit, block, hit) if you made it higher. If you made it lower then the game was too easy. But just having it "easy, normal, hard" would be even more boring. Instead we should try to improve upon the old difficulty slider.

I don't like the slider, because it adds an easy way out (or the feeling there is an easy way out) for everything. Even though I never used it except for turning it up in some cases in Morrowind, I really prefer to see it gone. I wouldn't be too bothered if they keep it in though, and just settle for "I don't like it, so I don't use it".

keep it the same as fallout 3.

I'd prefer expansion of some sort.
Higher health rarely makes battles harder, it just make them annoying.

I voted to keep the difficulty slider. That way people can play the game on a difficulty that suits them.

I'd actually like multiple sliders to allow for "player tailoring". Minigame difficulty, enemy health, damage received, etc should all be adjustable to allow the player to create the most comfortable experience for them. Sure you could just make the game ridiculously easy, but it's a Single Player game, if someone wants to go that route why shouldn't they? Personally I prefer more tactical, quick, decisive battles, so I'd crank up register damage, but lower enemy health to compensate. That would be very fun for me.

Oblivion is still doable on very hard at level 50.... it is just rather painful spending a few minutes on each and every opponent, and do not get me started on how long fights with multiple enemies took as a melee oriented class. Alchemy, conjuration, illusion do not scale like the other abilities and actually stay pretty much the same in effectiveness on highest difficulty. A couple poisons can kill anything, a conjured daedra does not suffer from hp/damage reduction of the player, making enemies attack each other is the same as conjuration. Pretty much making the slider kind of pointless.

I like the slider, there are certain sweet spots i like to play on so i voted keep it. I feel like it is easier to measure out the difficulty that you want with the slider.

Difficulty slider should stay-but the hardest shouldn't be THAT hard and and the easiest wouldn't be THAT easy.