I'm just curious on what the rest of you have done with the difficulty sliders in previous Elder Scrolls games and how you plan to set them in Skyrim. Personally, I've never made any alterations whilst playing Morrowind or Oblivion. For some reason I feel odd tampering with the difficulty, plus I don't enjoy seeing poorly armored enemies taking unreasonable amounts of damage before death - not that I've ever found the Elder Scrolls series to be particularly challenging anyway.

How difficult do you expect Skyrim to be sitting on the middle mark, or in general? I'm hoping we get a nice challenge throughout whilst maintaining reaslism. In saying that, we'll have to forgive the occasional arrow through the skull mid fight.

I almost always play games on a harder setting. Normal settings tend to be for people that can't handle losing once in awhile.

I mostly agree, and thinking about it now I may decide to turn it up for Skyrim if I find the normal setting to be way too easy. Though a lack of extreme challenge hasn't stopped me from enjoying the previous games.

Any news on how difficulty will be handled yet? Because if its like Oblivion's harder just means longer, Fallout was an improvement but still had the same. If harder = less shots to both die and kill I will definitely be playing on Hardest settings day one

I start on default and adjust if it feels like it needs it. Generally TES games don't have particularly great combat, and upping the difficulty didn't really make the game more challenging or fun in Oblivion especially - just tedious.

I'm the kind of person who always plays on the hardest difficulty, because it seems kind of stupid to take pride in anything when you've basically gimped the competition out of their full potential.

The one exception to that would be Gears of War 3, and even then, only on Co-Op, because While I have faith in my ability, I'm not going to restart a checkpoint 180 times because someone else isn't paying attention.

I usually play it the first time on the normal setting, playing the game the way it was intended. I'll then have two other characters, one I will play with difficulty maxed for an uber challenge. The other I'll set difficulty to minimum and just use it for roleplaying.

Really? Gears 3 is insanely easy on hard with the AI teammate's ability to revive you.

I'll be up for it as long as it's not just a matter of everyone coming with a fatter health bar, which is how I hear it was handled in Oblivion.

I mostly play stealth based characters, so my biggest concern is having enemies feel nothing after my critical strikes, not dying, and ruining aspects of the gameplay. Do you think this a valid worry?

My thinking is to play on a "harder" mode, probably not fully cranked.

I turn the difficulty down untill 1 arrow in the head rightfully kills any human target

I generally keep it on default. Why? Because i forget theres a difficulty slider hahahaha

Always play new games on Normal, i will go back and play on hardcoe though

i allways play all games in the hardest mode possible ... makes it more rewarding when i finaly achieve the rewards.

Harder than default, because I want a challenge. Normal difficulty in mass market games of today is cake walk to me.

In TES games I roleplay instead of powerplay though so I don't have to increase the difficulty very much.


Increasing difficulty likely just gives the enemies more health, which I don't like. I can't wait for mods that instead increase the amount of enemies and give them more clever AI.

after playing OB for several dozen hrs, i realised i needed to kick up the difficulty just a few notches, it basically made enemy hp go up not much else maybe they caused more damage meh

Usually medium/normal. But this time i'm gonna play it harder, if it isn't to my liking though i will have no qualms about moving it back to normal

I usually play making it much easier than the normal setting. I would probably change this if I had more time to spend with the game. I want to see as much of the game as possible but unfortunetly I have other responsibilities that are more important. So the harder I make the game the longer I make the quests. The longer the quests the fewer amount of content I get to discover.

TES is never really about losing or winning for me. It's experiencing a whole new world. Whether I kill a bandit on my 1st try or the 4th try, the bandit will still be dead and I have just wasted 2 hours that could be spent finding new caves, talking with different folks, or creating new weapons.

I know many will look down on me for this style of game play but with over 300 hours of content, I NEED TO EXPERIENCE IT ALL. I am an impatient person by nature. some say it's the journey....and not the end....that makes life more rewarding. I believe this mantra to be complete [censored]. I want the end. I want to finale. Which is why I love these games so much. There is an end everywhere around the corner. Finish the Mage guild, complete the fighters guild, own the DP, become the grand champion.

I don't care how I made it, just that I did all of this for a game that cost only $60. If I made the game harder, I would never be able to experience all this content, because I would still be stuck at level 11 trying to fight a mud crab that in real life, I'd of already killed it while still sparing it's legs for a nice dinner of crab legs over some drawn butter.

Now that the turrible leveling system from Oblivion is gone, I believe that I will play on the harder settings. I had to turn down the difficulty in Oblivion after level 30...

I will play it on default I think.

I never changed the difficulty on Oblivion but it wasn't exactly easy so that should be good enough.

I for one don't really want a challenge. Life is all the challenge I need. Why fail at something in BOTH worlds? I want to be unstoppable!

I won't fool around with the difficulty until I really have to. I only lowered the diff in OB so I could get through the stupid quests faster like the cowardly Thieves Guild, or the pathetic band of satanists the Dark Brotherhood. Achievements...only for the achievements.

Default. Play the game as it was meant to be played.

I've always played rpgs on the default setting, just a personal preference :shrug:

I play at the normal difficulty setting which is just fine for me unless it starts getting so hard I keep dying and getting frustrated or so easy everything goes down in one go.

I'll probably play it on default settings for the first playthrough maybe abit higher if i think its too easy, and then put it on the hardest setting on the second playthrough, i did that with oblivion.