Hello

I have always wondered if Skyrim would have been much better if player will level up by killing mobs and completing quests and not by raising his skills, in another words player will get XP points for each mob killed and for each quest completed.

The reason is that leveling is very easy in this game especially when crafting potions, weapons, enchanting or using any spell like detect life or soul trap etc..... So player can level up in town instead of killing mobs by crafting or by even using a non harmful spell on nps in town.

The other thing is that there are no leveled zone or areas, player can start questing anywhere he wants and that's not good, player can explore the whole world of skyrim at level 1 !! ??? its like playing world of warcraft and start questing in the outlands at level 1 and then come back questing near orgrimar at level 70.

I would like your opinions guys please, vote for agree or don't agree !

Thx

Gus.

No, the current system is good.

Skyrim actually has level ranges for locations and enemies: try to defeat a Dwemer centurion or fight your way out of the Sightless Pit on level 1. It may or may not be too subtle, it's subjective, but the system is there.

I preferred Oblivion's system of increase in level was determined by increase in your major skills to Skyrim's level increase being linked to an increase in any skill. But I very much prefer the Elder Scrolls system of having level increase tied to the increase of the skills that you use as opposed to getting EXP points for killing or completing quests. Being able to increase your Persuade skill because you killed 3 bandits and fetched a waterskin for a lumberjack in some village just feels too artificial to me. So my vote is disagree with OP.

On the first point, I prefer Skyrim's method of leveling. I didn't initially know if I would, but I've found that I really like skill-based leveling.

The second point is just factually incorrect. There are many locations with set minimum levels that are much higher, and even some that otherwise level with the player have bosses that start higher.

Yes, a player can start questing anywhere he wants - as it should be. But going straight from Riverwood to Shimmermist or Shearpoint is gonna hurt. The game gives you the freedom to go a lot of places whenever you want, to experience them as you choose, but it also gives you some locations and bosses that can kick your butt if you aren't prepared. And I would NOT want it any other way.

So you prefer gaining 5 levels in town by crafting iron dagger all day long or health potions ?

I think it's important for the OP to remember that this is a role playing game and not strictly a fighting game; that's why there are non combat skills as well as combat skills. You level up your non combat skills doing non combat tasks, just as you level up your combat skills in combat. That makes this system far more flexible than just XPs per kill or per quest completion. The player can choose how they play and level up their character. If you want to play pure combat, then combat will be the majority of your action in the game, and will provide the majority of your levelling. If you want to play a more balanced/ mixed character or roleplay heavily, you are not penalized by not being able to level up while focusing on non combat tasks.

I never craft things I don't need, so no, I've never increased levels by deliberately grinding something. If people want to do it that way, I have no problem with it, I find it boring, and it leaves you with a character who has no defense and no weapon skills. My levels increase naturally while playing because the skills that I need and use are increasing while I play the game. The goal of the game for me is to experience the world, it is not about gaining levels.

Well that's my point LostScout, crafting should be like a profession, you need to level up your skills in alchemy, smithing or enchanting by crafting things in order to advance and make better potions or weapons I totally agree with that, but you don't level up by doing this.

The way the system is designed you improve your ability to craft potions or weapons by investing perk points in the associated skill tree, in addition to just increasing the skill value, and perk points are granted through levelling, so it absolutely makes sense that you level up from these tasks.

It would be cool to get very small experience point rewards for exploring and discovering locations that are never marked on the map, 'Easter Eggs'. Some of those are pretty obscure, you really have to go out of your way to find them. It's too bad there isn't a reward for it. I don't think this is a big deal, just saying...

Whoa disagree big time with your complaints, I think you're complaining about a couple of the things that make skyrim better than other games and trying to bring it down. They need to make killing mobs, killing in general, LESS necessary than it currently is so RPing non-violent characters is a viable option. Being able to lvl up without killing is great and just needs expanding on and fleshing out.
Also all of us love skyrim I think mostly due to the freedom. I could not reconcile trying to limit it in any way.

The lvling system does need tweaking though. Some require such excessive grinding while others just float up out of control whether you want them to or not. Sneaking for example, you could just go crouch in one spot and leave the game running, go for a drive or whatever, come back and you'll be 100 at sneaking. Also just playing the game normally will have you at 100 sneaking by level 30 or so. Meanwhile to get 100 smithing you really have to go out of your way to collect or buy the materials and sit there smashing out products like a 10 year old factory worker in bangladesh. Just smithing often in a natural unforced way will practically never get you there.

Don't agree

The system is fine as it is.

The world mobs are tied into your character's level, as you level up (not skill level) more higher level mobs appear in-game the lower level mobs will also be present although in less numbers I think the reason for that is that there's more variations of mobs and if you want to use a low level skill there are still mobs you can use it effectively on.

Edit: It doesn't matter if someone wants to do instances and quests and explore at level 1, it's their choice, their choice won't effect anyone else, it's not an MMO.

Thats ths beauty of it though, you have to choose what you fill that valuable leveling space with. Just smithing and you'll be level 50 with hardly any skills for fighting, try and spread yourself too thin and be high level and only mediocre at everything. It forces you to give your character an identity with strengths and weaknesses. If it was your way everyone would be compelled to grind away at all the skills that don't level you up, get them all max and then go out and adventure and level up, just to get the optimal launching pad. But no, all skills cost you, getting good at something comes at a price of the world around you bettering itself too. And this is the way it should be, every skill gained is a sacrifice of sorts.

I like it as it is.

I shall address one point in your post:

While it is true that a player can level up in town using crafting skills, there is a cost attached to that - namely the player will not be leveling combat skills to perk those combat skills (which is central to the game) which affects the character's ability to survive. The approach of leveling up on crafting skills will hurt a beginning character more than help them. They would be able to raise health, magicka or stamina, but be limited in what combat skill perks they could purchase with the perk points. As the player then enters combat situations, they may find their characters hard pressed to survive.

The system is balanced in this fashion.

I totally appreciate your votes, and I do respect your opinions.

how about mobs matching your level ? I am sure you guys are aware that mobs have a max level cap, so bandits for example have a level cap of level 25 regardless of the difficulty level and others have max level cap of 5 and so on.

so after you reach level 50 or more you will be fighting mobs much lower level than you.

Do you guys also agree with it ?

Skyrim's system is actually much more intelligent than any other system in other RPGs. Instead of gaining XP to increase skills, you now have to increase skills by using them to gain XP. Yes, there's a XP-based system underneath but as said it works differently compared to other systems. This leads to natural specialization where no predefined are necessary.

After my characters reach about level 42 they only gain levels at a crawl, because my primary skills have reached as high as they are going to go. You can't really get to level 50 without changing which skills you use. You are then deliberately changing your playstyle to keep leveling, or I suppose you could use legendary to reset your skills to an artificially low level. You are still encountering tough opponents because you are meeting other things than bandits and wolves. I wish wolves and low level bandits would just run away when they see you coming. I rarely re-visit caves or ruins which I've already explored so no, I don't fight "mobs" which are much lower level than me. If any part of the game becomes uninteresting to me I start a new character with a different skillset. I've never had a character go higher than leve 56 before I retired them and started a new character. To me, the best part of a game is when you are low level because you are collecting raw materials to make things you want and struggling to earn enough money to buy a plot of land to start building a house or 3. I can't imagine sticking to one character long enough to reach level 76 or whatever, so leveled enemies not keeping up with me is not a problem. I don't want to see any more levelled zones than they already have. If you hike to the north coast at level 5 and enounter a Snow Bear he will hurt you. If you engage a Dragon Priest at a low level he will fireball spam you to death before you can get close enough to hit him. This is enough zone levelling for me.

Well, that's how the games with XP work, too. Once you've gotten to high level, the low level critters that you started on are weak and easy to kill. Oblivion was the game with the brute-force scaling where the monsters were always your level - it was terrible. (Heck, there are a number of people here who want there to be no scaling at all.)

As for XP systems.... I like the TES games as they are. It's a nice bit of variety when most other fantasy RPGs use the standard XP system. (Of course, if you want to try it a different way, someone made a "gain XP by killing monsters" mod for Oblivion. it's not quite balanced right - I find it much more effective to gain XP & levels by finding Nirnroot.... monsters give crap XP for the effort they take to kill. Of course, that's because it's a mod - not nearly enough time & people to playtest & balance it.)

I agree with it. Your character is supposed to be developing and improving as a warrior (or mage or assassin or whatever), so it makes sense that enemies which were a challenge early on no longer are when he is a master legendary dragonborn renowned through the land as the ultimate badass. It's just weird if coincidentally everything else is getting better and better at the exact same rate.

If anything I'd actually perhaps like to see the enemies not leveling at all. At low levels you have to just hunt deer and wolves and maybe take on the odd small band of bandits as you build and develop your skills, if you make the mistake of attacking legionaires, or god forbid a dragon, too early you're simply screwed. I think that could potentially be good, but I guess it is nice to be able to choose the order in which you do things, for your character's stories sake. One character of mine immediately from the start started taking on forsworn, 100% that's all they were doing, raiding forsworn camps and then selling the loot and then going back into the mountains to find more. Later on the game opened up and they branched out, but it was interesting to give them that story, that "first stage of their career", to make them a distinct character that hated the forsworn and honed their skills erradicating them. It could limit the freedom of making different characters if they HAVE to start as a hunter. However I think it would be fair and reasonable if you started as a teenager, visibly and noticably, and then grew and developed into an advlt as the game progressed. Then you wouldn't feel like a wuss for having to avoid dangerous foes, you'd just be a kid.

At lower levels there used to be many more harder mobs especially those that randomly spawn along the roads for instance, it was altered I guess because some people found it too difficult to go anywhere by foot.

You can make the game harder or easier by setting the difficulty level to what suits you. Also with some basic knowledge of how the mod tool works you can make it as hard or easy as you want.

Also remember that you don't have to give your character perks and you don't have to use the best weapons and armor, you don't even need to use enchants and upgrade weapons and armor or use potions.

What I'm saying in essence is everything is available to make the game as hard or as easy as you like.

Edit: Of course the mod tool only applies to PC users.

Well truth be told I don't like it hard. Especially not in the way the difficulty level raises (gimping you and reinforcing foes), I usually like to RP a character that is a badass. A specimen of orc (usually, sometimes redguard) that can beat the hell out of most anyone, I want to, from the start, be that guy. So for me the game is pretty much ok as is.

I do also value realism though, so I'd take the hit to my character's ego to have it so all the enemies in game are set at whatever level is appropriate. I could definitely live with that and adapt to it. Like I said, would be all the easier to swallow if you started as a teenager though. I could handle my teenage orc getting punked, but if he's a grown barbarian man it would leave a sour taste in my mouth to see him get dominated by another man, one I might not recover from. I've started again many times due to losing respect for my character for struggling with an enemy I deemed not worthy of a struggle.

Difficulty level is not the best way, on legendary I remember it took about 30 arrows to kill one mob which is unrealistic especially as it was a human. I normally play on a difficult level but I suspect the best way is to start at a lower difficulty and raise it each time the mobs become too easy. At least that way you would not feel that your character was ineffective.

Problem is a lot of us would all want different things and you can't please everyone. Pity non PC users can't use the mod tool.

When I originally started playing Skyrim I made loads of characters because like you somewhere along it's development I lost the connection with the character, immersion was broken mainly due to linear quest lines and the way things in this game are linked. Didn't help with villagers coming out in force to punch a dragon.

After a lot of trial and error I've discovered my favourite way to play is on low difficulty, even novice, and never ever level up health and don't wear armour, certainly not good armour, nothing above guard armour.

As you level up those measly 100 health points start getting taken down pretty fast pretty easily, so risk and challenge is there to a degree, especially in crowded rooms of powerful enemies, but importantly you still feel appropriately badass. When you hit someone with a warhammer or arrow, they stay hit, in fact they die, from one hit, as they should. I mean assuming your character isn't a wimp. I certainly know that if I myself IRL bashed someone on the head with a big warhammer, they would die. I hope my skyrim character is at least as powerful and capable as me. On higher difficulties I find it just completely immersion breaking to bash someone's head in repeatedly and see them suffer no ill affects, or to turn their head into a pin-cushion of arrows and see them functioning well. No. My game is geared now so that enemies take one hit, and I take about 3, maybe 4, before dieing. It's perfect IMO.

LOL

It Seems to me all you guys like to play the game the easy way !

I totally agree with Zaraco Legendary Difficulty is none sense where you do a lot less damage, I don't know how much damage you do less its like you do 5 times less and mobs do 5 times more damage and I don't agree that making the game difficulty that way where u need to fire 30 arrows in order to kill a mob. I always played the game since it came out Master difficulty where I think its very good.