Personally, for all its faults, I found the combat in DA2 to be a lot more challenging on Nightmare (kiting and enemies dropping out of the sky, notwithstanding) compared to DA:O.

The reason is because in DA:O, "Nightmare mode" was a joke because you could simply spam incredibly cheap healing potions to get through anything. I found in DA2 I had to plan every battle a lot more strategically. I really struggled to get through almost every battle on Nightmare.

Some things I think were very interesting - gradually increasing enemy immunities (Nightmare almost every enemy is immune to something), enemy A.I. for the rogues was really tough to beat. they stealth, steal your potions and backstab you.

Obviously, as mentioned, there were a lot of other problems with DA2.

However, in Skyrim, what if certain enemies could stealth and backstab the player? In Oblivion I only remember a couple of enemies using chameleon, and they were pretty hard to beat. However they could be detected visually by a shimmering effect. If enemies can't detect an invisible player, why should we be able to see this shimmering effect?

If the player can stealth and backstab, shouldn't there be enemies that can do the same? If an NPC is sneaking and the PC doesn't notice them, shouldn't they appear invisible to the player?

And if we can use the Slow Time shout, Bullet Time Bow perk, etc, doesn't it seem that there should be enemies that can use these abilities as well?

Also, some enemies could be made a lot tougher if they use healing potions and healing spells frequently. I encountered this a lot after installing FCOM, made the game a hell of a lot harder.

If an enemy knows a spell they should use it when appropriate whatever the difficulty. edit: same for sneaky types trying to backstab
You could give them more/better spells, potions, poisons maybe
Got to be careful with gear though
If sneak kills are reasonably effective it could make higher difficulties very profitable for sneaky characters

The trouble with invisible enemies, is it overpowers a simple detect life spell. If such enemies are numerous, it becomes a 'must have', and I am generally against that sort of thing. At least the chameleon shimmer allows a chance for a warrior to be on more equal terms than a mage or a mixed class, as long as you are alert.

I can understand, and that makes sense.

However, if the player can use invisibility doesn't it seem to overpower the mage character vs. NPCs?

• If there is a chance that the player's invisibility doesn't work, there should be a similar chance that the NPC invisibility doesn't work, based on NPC skill level or something similar.
  
  
• Maybe the shimmering effect only appears when the NPC invisibility fails the check.
  
  
• Also, detect life might have a chance to fail based on the appropriate magic skill level of the player or the NPC he's attempting to detect.
  
  
• And there could certainly be magic items that provide detect life for warriors to look forward to. Also, maybe armor provides a lot more protection than robes, or perhaps there is some cool perk pure warriors or pure thief characters might benefit from only if they refrain from using any magic.
  
  
• Or maybe the shimmering effect is visible on all difficulty settings except the "Hardest" or "Very Hard"?

Essentially with this shimmering effect, I felt that enemies were never truly invisible to me, unless they were really far away and running in the forest at night or similar conditions.

Hmm. DA:O (PC), I ended up just dropping the diff from Normal to Easy. Because the stupid NPCs constantly used up my potions so I barely had any, half the combats were cheap luckfests (open the door - BLAM, two AoE kills your party. Repeat ten times until you can actually get an action off on the mage across the room; or the sidequest that drops you into 15-18 enemies including elite casters, plus NPCs who run in and aggro everything so you get swamped). It helped that I had a non-optimal party with basically no AoE (played a rogue, and picked party members partially by personality - default party for most of the game was rogue, Leliana, Wynne, Shale).

Well, and the combat just got tedious.... the handful of games that I just throw the diff down to nothing are usually ones where I really want to see where the story ends up, but can't stand the actual game mechanics. Can't even force myself to play DA:O again, even though there are so many other story & character paths to try, because I'll have to do all those annoying fights again. Bleh.

(the only "big" games I can recall dropping down the last few years are DA:O and Half Life 2 - starting at the annoying prison level where you had to defend the cross hallway with those awful turrets. But I also don't up the diff either - I tend to play games on Normal)
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anyway, back to the main topic..

re: AI should be the same at all diffs.... that's interesting. I would think, with a really decent AI system, that altering just the AI at Easy/Normal/Hard would let you not bother adjusting damage and HP. On hard, the enemies are coordinating better, flanking, supporting each other, really pushing you. On Normal, a bit less. On Easy, they're a bit dumb. That seems like a much better "difficulty" system than tweaking HP & damage - it adds actual difficulty to higher levels, rather than just bludgeoning you over the head with numbers. Things on Hard would actually be harder, not just the same but with bigger stats.

The problem is that having a slider that only affects damage is incredibly lazy design. Harder difficulties should mean a harsher world. Instead of artificially toughened foes, more foes should spawn, or higher-level ones. The economy should be more punishing. Goods and services should be more expensive, and loot should net you less cash. Alchemy and food ingredients should be scarcer, and most of all, more dragons should jump on you at once.

No more sliders, damn it.

I completely agree regarding making the difficulty settings more meaningful; however, isn't the only difference between a slider vs. "Very Hard," "Hard," "Normal," "Easy," "Very Easy" simply that there are more points on the scale with a slider?

If there are 5 different levels of difficulty, there could just as easily be 20 different levels, right?

Edit: I figured out my point... How challenging something is in an RPG shouldn't be determined by a difficulty slider, it should be determined by how you are able to play it and how you play it. Sure I can choose to be the sneaky thief and sneak past everything, but should I make a mistake, I should have a chance to get myself out of it without having to pause, click options, gameplay, and scroll the difficulty down.

2nd Edit: And I'm not talking about just one screw up. I'm talking about doing something over and over and over and still not being able to do it to your wit's end so then you cheat yourself out of a thrilling experience by lowering the difficulty. I'll admit I've been guilty of it from time to time.

I think it would serve the accuracy of your poll better to add a few more median options. I.E. dying many times at low levels (or at least having to run away very frequently) but dying rarely at higher levels AND being able to blow away multiple lesser foes, while never being able to kill "Multiple Dragons" etc.

I think a few median answers would serve your poll well.

I think that is the intended definition of "Challenging" in the poll answers above


maybe it requires more clarification.

never played on NM mode to be honest but ill take your word for it. Regardless, I think we can agree that DA did SOMETHING right compared to the how game difficulty was handled in Oblivion..

Yes the rogues were tough to beat. In fact, I recall a couple "minor" battles with a few enemy rogues that were much more difficult than any of the boss battles.

The A.I. for the important boss battles was more poorly designed in DA2.

Absolutely, it would be nice to play through for a while and then bump up the difficulty after mastering the game and have a real, palpable difference instead of just more enemy health and dealing less damage.

Harder shouldn't raise any health, just turn the enemy into a bad ass. Making them great with their weapons and maybe upgrading there equipment slightly.

Very easy: You run up and stab a bandit in the face.
Easy: You run up and block and attack then stab the bandit in the chest.
Normal: Bandit sees you and performs a sprinting attack and knocks you back, you recover and get your attack blocked, then you knock him of balance and finish him.
Hard: There is a long fight and you barely kill him by clipping his shoulder with your sword.
Very hard: Every non lesser enemy (scamp, rat, etc.) is a born fighter.

That is a great description of a way to make the difficulty settings work for all of us, I think.

I hope the higher settings really do "turn the enemy into a badass"

Do you think it would cause problems if it's easier to find better quality weapons (magical, etc.) on enemies if you increase the difficulty setting?

But why bother? Better to have five well-established and tweaked difficulty settings that make noticeable and tangible differences in the world than 20 that are barely distinguishable from one another, apart from the two exremes.

You make an excellent point -

If it comes down to a choice between fewer, more in-depth difficulty settings vs. a greater number of superficial settings limited to enemy health and player damage, of course, I would go with fewer settings.

Enemy health and player damage should not be affected at all by the difficulty setting. The world itself should become more difficult, not a single aspect of the combat.

Don't know if anyone has said this yet, but I felt like on Oblivion that on high difficulties it just became insanely difficult to kill anything. It seemed like they had an outrageously high number of HP.

BootySweat you obviously put work in your OP/Poll. I dont think that I can actually answer the question they way you would like. Sorry.

All I can say is that for me. Optimal would be as hard as I can make the game and still enjoy myself. I wish I could define how this would work in practice but I cant. I guess that as many choice for difficulty as possible would be ideal. Good question though.

You don't have to die from something that is challenging.

Fungus Stalk

Alocasia Fruit

Blackberry

Void Essence

Master Alchemy skill and equipment.

Edit: here's what it actually does; Fortify Endurance (42pt, 135s) + Fortify Health (79pt, 255s) + Restore Fatigue (25pt, 79s) + Restore Health (12pt, 39s) + Restore Magicka (22pt, 72s)

Edit2: Without the 'elixir' I can cast Swale Burdens Curse of Jinxing (debuff and weakness curse) about four times. I can cast Twisted Totem (kind of like the Heart Attack spell with some added intrigue) once and Agaceph Zombie Voodoo (a command and buff curse) once. With the elixir, I can cast back to back without even worrying about Magicka, which is OPed, but thats why I have the difficulty so high, I can literally get one hitted if I dont watch out.

Personally, I'm all in favor of anything that enhances the "immersive" or "survival" gameplay features.

However, I can also see why the Skyrim devs might feel a need to compartmentalize combat difficulty and isolate it from other kinds of features. There were many people who liked the increased combat difficulty from New Vegas hardcoe mode, for example, due to stimpaks healing over time, etc, but hated the survival functions.

I agree that five settings should be plenty, but just wanted to point out that all BGS really has to do is balance 3 settings: very easy, normal, very hard. After those are set, you could have an anolog slider that just follows a curve. This depends on what difficulty actually does, of course, but I'm not expecting anything besides some stat tweaks. Anything is an improvement over the old slider, so they can get relatively big results from a little effort.

There shouldn't be a meter, but a few tested-out difficulty levels. One easy that's only requires some effort. One medium, for some challenge here and there. One hard, that makes you stay alert but still keeps the real challenge for the most powerful beasties. And then a very hard, that requires rest after nearly every fight and constant saving.

One for each taste.