http://j-u-i-c-e.hubpages.com/_2ld6f4u0c40jc/hub/taleof2exploits

Further reflections on the recent troubles.

Feel free to disagree.

Trash.

Its a pretty good article. Very well thought out. I doubt Beth. will do anything about it though. Defiantly NOT trash.

If you are intentionally using the crafting skills to give yourself a wide lead, that's what you get -- a wide lead.

I don't feel that the "secondary" skills really gimp the player as most have a method of hindering your opponent.

Pickpocket, for example, allows you to snatch equipped items from humanoid targets.

You can sneak around most enemies.

You can turn the undead, unsummon atronachs, etc.

Edit: Not all builds require the destruction of enemies. You can circumnavigate your enemies and level just the same.

LOL.


I don't expect anything this time around, but hopefully we can see some improvements in the next installment. They're certainly not going to ignore all of the complaints.


I agree. I think the problem is that there just isn't enough stuff like this. I think that a lot of people feel they aren't being rewarded for playing non-combatants, which is something Bethesda holds up as an option. The options are there, but they lack the polish of the combat mechanics.

I never noticed this problem because my stealth characters have always been either good at sniping or stabbing things. Usually both. When I did notice the problem was when my friend was playing Fallout 3. He kept insisting it was a hard game. I tried playing his character and find his charisma-focused build made fights crazy hard. My character was all intelligence and perception, which makes the game far easier.

New Vegas worked around this nicely. You can play it with a very charisma/speech-focused character and talk your way out of all kinds of really nasty situations. I managed to talk my way out of a hive of hostile Nightkin. Win! I've since told him to try out NV, but he hasn't done it yet. Where they did fail was in differentiating lockpick vs science. Anything you could hack you could always pick. The only differences were in dialogue options most of the time.

The article makes good points about this. Game design, especially regarding dungeons, has to be more complex if you want to satisfy totally different builds. Either that or you have to accept that some builds won't see some content.

I agree. New Vegas did do that better a lot of the time. I think the devs were so focused on making Skyrim epic that they neglected certain elements of gameplay.

I don't really disagree but I'm not sure that really address the serious problems. The article basically says crafting is too easy and if it was harder then it would be fine... no it wouldn't. There is no challenge that once overcome should make every other challenge trivial and meaningless. That's bad design and needs more than a little more "challenge". Nearly every balance problem stems from these crafting skills with probably the sole exception being ridiculously powerful summons from the conjuration tree. Mage's magicka costs and gimped in-combat regen practically forces us to go 100% cost reduction and the difference between wearing "standard" mage gear that the game provides and using 100% cost reduction is with the former you have a worthless pile of trash that would likely have to fall back and rely on the OP summons from conjuration and with the latter you'd have a completely OP character that can chain stagger anything in the game while still dealing good damage.

My thoughts on non-combat skills.

Lockpicking is awful because it's unneeded. You can argue that lockpicking can get you certain items but you don't need to invest in lockpicking to do that. You can have 15 skill in lockpicking and pick a master lock with little to no difficulty. Hell the skeleton key basically invalidates the entire skill. Speech is just upside down. The skills to boost gold on merchants should come before price increases. If I can sell stuff for 50% more that's great! Except I don't actually make any more money because the damn merchant couldn't afford the original item let alone the 50% better prices one. Pickpocketing is much like lockpicking... there is nothing preventing someone with 15 skill from doing the same thing as 100 skill.

Article rises valid reason but does not offer workable solutions, Bethedas isn't going to change all their dungeons to make pickpocket or picklock more viable.

1. To take or slow crafting down, the best way is actually increase material cost and reduce resell value so it is not self sustaining and force players to actually exit the town to mine ores instead of buying from shops and wait for restock. Another way is to make shops respawn gold every day, to reward adventuring looting or stealing and respawn crafting materials slower like only weekly which makes waiting for materials less attractive.

2. The way to reduce the impact of non-combat skills on enemy scaling is simply to make combat skills level you more than non-combat skills. For example getting from 40 to 41 one handed can bring you to 20% of a level while the same for pickpocket only gives you 10%.

3. While it is not possible for Bethesda to change the perks in the main game. They can possible add combat perks and applications to non-combat skills. Examples:

Speech perk, Increases the number of companions you can have at any one time by one.
Speech perk, all companions you have are x% stronger.
Speech perk, all opponents are twice as likely to flee from combat when health is low

Pickpocket perk, chance to disarm opponent on staggering them.
Pickpocket perk, chance to puck arrows out of the air
Pickpocket perk, able to open the pick pocket dialog in combat if opponent is staggering, paralyzed, calmed or falls on ground. Allowed to make one single pick pocket attempt.

Picklock perk, able to disable automatons if you can sneak up on them
Picklock perk, doors that you close in combat is automatically locked
Picklock perk, rearm traps to do twice the damage and trigger only on hostile targets
Picklock perk, rebuilt destroyed or disabled automatons (less material cost) to follow you permanently. (similar to undead thall)

A solution I have is to give the alternate routes out of non main quest dungeons expert or master locks instead of barring them from the other side.

Also make locks only pickable by people who are within 1 skill rank from the lock. So novice and apprentice locks can be picked by everyone, adept picked by people with 25%, expert picked by people with 50%, and master picked by people with 75%. If you don't have that level you can't even attempt to pick the lock.

Lockpicking and pickpocket should probably be merged into a single skill though.

Thank you. This is all good stuff. I confess I'm limited to my own experience with the game and what I remember from reading on the forums when I write these articles. I agree that a single skill tree shouldn't trivialize the others. This is where people who have the stat numbers can assist by breaking down the relative strengths and weaknesses of various skills/perks. Obviously most of the skill trees could use some tweaking.


The same could be said for other perks, though. It's not that hard to swing a sword one more time to kill a bandit than it is to break an extra lock pick or two. It's not an even trade: there's no risk in picking a lock; but it's not entirely black and white either. What if I find combat easy but find lockpicking frustrating? It's hard to quantify these sorts of things. The same goes for pickpocketing: yes, anybody can pick a pocket; the game's designed to support that. But if you have perks in picking pockets you're less likely to pay fines or go to prison, which can be a hassle. The skill mechanics aren't perfect obviously, but I give the devs points for trying to balance a system this dynamic. I agree with your observation about Speech, too. I'd never thought of that, since I haven't used it very much, but that makes sense.


Is that more realistic, though? It's obvious that finished objects are worth a lot more than ingots, so crafting, say, a suit of iron plate should result in earning the player a large profit over the cost of materials. I'd be in favor of introducing a chance of failure based on the player's skill in which the materials are used up but the quality of the finished product is very low or the materials destroyed outright. The chance of failure could be scaled to the difficulty of working the material as well, so steel, for example, is much harder to work successfully than iron. This resolves the issue of supply and demand by tweaking the odds of success and failure rather than intervening in the market. Not that the economics couldn't be improved in some way as well, of course.


I hear this a lot but I'm not convinced it's the best way to solve the problem. For starters, it assumes that non-combat skills are worth half as much as combat skills. They may be, as they stand, but all this does is push the series further in the direction of combat and away from other activities. I would rather bring up the value of non-combat skills by making them more useful. Besides, I'd rather level up as a thief and break into the lair of a dangerous enemy that I can't beat, disarm his traps, pick his Master locks and sneak out without being seen than do the same thing in a lair where I could just kill the owner instead. If my enemies are downgraded by my skill and perk selections so that they are the same difficulty for me, as a master thief, as they are for an equally leveled warrior, what's the advantage of being a warrior? Of course, it doesn't have to be 1:1, but it's surprisingly similar to Oblivion-esque leveling only now it's being applied to my skills and perk selections instead of my level. It's a lot more exciting to me, as a thief, if my enemies aren't being gimped by being scaled to my choices. The satisfaction I get by outwitting him may be just as great as the satisfaction a warrior gets by defeating him. The gamplay has to be there to support it, of course, which is my issue.


These are excellent perks. I'd love to have them as options in my game. I'd still like to see them add more non-combat stuff, though.


There need to be more ways to circumvent combat, period. Either by unlocking a side passage, or by fast-talking someone into not attacking you.

You can solve the problem of people with no lockpicking perks and a 15 skill 'easily picking master locks with only a single lockpick' by including a chance that you're going to break off your lockpick in the lock and make it unpickable. Base the chance on the player's skill and add a perk later in the tree that lets you avoid this. That way players would have to level up lockpicking to avoid fumbling themselves out of treasure. This solves the problem of requiring a minimum level since bad lockpickers trying to pick hard locks will break the lock. If the chance is high enough, most of them will avoid picking the lock all together until they have a higher level.

Also, the traps should go off if you fail to pick the lock. Again, based on your skill and perks.

I thought about 'merging lockpicking and pickpocket', which has been mentioned a lot on the forums but I don't like it. If anything gets merged, it should be sneak and pickpocket, not lockpicking and pickpocket. Those skills are much more closely related. I'd love it if the game tried to simulate real-world pickpocketing, though. Most pickpockets don't sneak up behind you in the dead of night, under cover of darkness. They bump into you at the airport and do it in front of a hundred people in broad daylight. You should be able to pickpocket without sneaking and do it any time, no matter who's around. Just scale the chance to the number of witnesses, etc. Also: where is my ability to disguise myself in a faction uniform and use a Speech test to walk into an enemy fortress?

Characters with trained pickpocket and locpicking have access to unlimited health and magicka pots. Unless they spent all they stats on stamina and magicka (and get 1 shotted as the result) there's no way they can loose a fight. Whoever wrote that never played a stealth char.

edit: fixed some typos ><

I think it's more a case of no one player having had time to try every build. Thanks for the input, though. That's great to know.

I wrote it, btw, just so there's no confusion.

I always see people wishing for the new Vegas way for lock picking. What everyone fails to realize is this won't work for skyrim. The only way to increase lockpicking skill is to use it. How can you use it if most locks are not pickable. See what I mean? In fallout you got skill points to raise a skill.

Good job. +1

I'm all for non-linear dungeons, and actually building the game so that you can actually use Speech as an alternative to combat.

I have a major gripe about perks in general, however...

The unique portion of TES leveling always was supposed to be that you gained skill through use. As in, you just use skills instead of having experience points. You don't have character points that you assign arbitrarily to make yourself better in a skill you almost never use while the skills you use all the time are left unupgraded. You don't have "Character Build" nonsense for powergamers to devise "the best build", you just play the game, and your skills get better.

Perks, (or at least, the way that perks are given out one per level) however, are a massive step backwards in this regard. Now, you have to gain levels to gain perk points to upgrade your skills, and the upgrades are so massive that the skills are basically useless without them. (Like +100% armor protection. Then Custom Fit and the like for more. So if you don't spend skill points in your armor, it is less than half as effective, regardless of your skill level.)

Now, right as soon as the game comes out, one of the first mods (well, technically a third-party program) I see is a "perk planner", because you have to plan out in advance how you are going to play the game so that you spend all your perk points perfectly.

The way that skills have to grow is also annoying. I actually liked the fact that in Oblivion, I could sit in the mage's guild basemant and just practice casting healing spells over and over until I learned to get better at it - that just makes sense. Why do I only learn how to cast a spell better when someone is swinging a mace at my head? Shouldn't the quiet and concentration actually HELP the learning process? I liked the mods that let me practice my blade skill with a sparring partner or just a training dummy. It makes more sense to learn how to block with a shield with a sparring match with a member of the Companions than to just sit down with some healing spell and a shield while letting a snarling wolf gnaw on my shield.

Why can't we have perk growth through the use of skills? We could still have branching paths for each set of perks, just make them based upon skill use, not level, that's all.

Overall, a good write up.

The issue, IMO, with the crafter's dilemma is that the game scales enemies based solely on the character's level, and not based on the characters power level. This, IMO, is where the system breaks. You cannot have a character that focuses on Speech and Crafting, because enemies will be impossible for you to kill. Yet, you can game the system to make characters that can one shot nearly anything. It would be better if the game chose which enemies you faced based on your character's average offense and defense, while also looking at which perks you have taken. You still want level caps on certain enemies (mostly the beasts), and you still want higher level enemies (dragons, princes, bosses, etc), but the average enemy should be within a few levels of your character's power level, and equipped appropriately.

This would allow a character with only a few combat perks to still enjoy the game (though certain enemies would still want to be avoided), while at the same time keep the game challenging for the min/maxers.

The other issue is with the Perks which seem to be all over the place. Overall, they don't seem to be very balanced or well thought out. It's also odd that I can level up blacksmithing and then turn around and spend that perk in destruction magic. I like the idea behind the perks, but I don't think they were well thought out. Take for example Archery. The basic damage I do with a bow should be based on my overall skill in Archery, and not based on me spending 5 points in the base perk. Perks like zooming in, slowing time, finding/retrieving more arrows and stagger are great, as they modify what I can do with my bow.

One of my biggest disappointments is in the Speech tree. After having various speech options in FO3, I would have expected to see more things like that, and not just a barter tree for thieves. Someone else said it and I think they hit it spot on, they tried to make Skyrim as epic as possible, and forgot to focus on some of the not-so-epic things.

The smithing thing isn't really correct. Smithing by itself won't make you unstoppable. Abusing the system with a cycle of enchanting, alchemy AND smithing will.

My overpowered Daedric Mace is still weaksauce at 107 damage +10 Frost damage. I'd have to try really hard and create armor with + Smithing on everything, have the Soul Gems for it, have +Smithing potions, then craft something overpowered and use +Damage stuff after.

It is an exploit, but it's NOT an easy one to do.

Yes you can. You just have to USE those skills. Don't just repeat stuff some dimwit wrote. Try it out for yourself. It's pretty easy really.

Perhaps, but still lockpicking is too specific to use a whole skill point on

Perhaps they could change the name back to security, and have the skill and perks not only help pick locks, but also build and set traps. There could be pure damage traps, snare traps (like bear traps but that actually stop the enemy), disorienting traps, and devices that don't actually damage the enemy and go off on a timer or command that distract enemies and make them investigate the area. They could also move the "don't set off pressure plates" perk from sneak to security.

I'm not repeating, that I am aware of, just looking at the perks and how they may or may now allow one to go up against high level bosses and the such. However, you do make a point, as I have not personally tried this as of yet, and I would be more than willing to try it. I won't start this character up tonight, as I am having fun with my non-combat thief (just sneak, pickpocket, and speech), even though I cannot complete most quests (due to having to kill a target).

Aren't perks tied to skill use already? In order to unlock a perk, you have to have a high enough level in the skill, which means you have to be using it, so you do have to use a skill to get the perks. There is a strong relation between them, it's just not an absolute one. I kind of like the perks. They increase the range of things I can do in the game in a relatively simple and straightforward way. If anything, they just need to flesh them out a bit and balance them better. And there is a certain logic to the skill use/perk dichotomy: I may have used a certain skill as much as the next guy, but if he has invested in learning a new technique (perk) he may have an edge on me even though we have similar experience. "Let me show you a technique that my father taught me..." Skill level equates to number of times you swing a sword, perks equate to neat things you can do with a sword that you can only do if you've used a sword a lot. They are not necessarily the same thing, though they are obviously related.


I agree that some of the perks are less well-thought out and balanced than others but see my comment above to Wraith Magus about the difference between skill use and perks. I agree that certain things, like the amount of damage you do being based on a perk is a little odd. They should restrict perks to things that could be considered specialized tricks. Instead of a perk that increases your damage, how about a high level perk that allows you to ignore armor, or halve AR for certain armors (eg. heavy or light)? Maybe you've learned where the weak spots are. Or one that allows you to blind your opponent if you hit him in the head?

There definitely need to be more speech tests.


I know I said this on another thread. Maybe it was me? It's probably been said a hundred times.


That's why I use crafting instead of smithing, but I guess it isn't obvious that I mean enchantment and alchemy as well most of the time. That's my fault.


+1 Totally agree.

Exactly. Each tree has 5 (or more) perks that could have been tied to the skill level, and replaced with unique perks to expand that skill's capabilities and/or focus on specializations. Again, looking at Archery, remove Overdrawn and add in Pin Down (chance to immobilize/slow a target), Power Shot (2/2) (successful power shots knockback/down), Barbed Shots (targets bleed for x seconds damage), Piercing Shots (ignores % armor).

+1 Those are excellent. I especially like the Pin Down perk. Nail those bloody buggers to the wall.

Unfortunately, no, it is not true that perks are related to skill use.

You have certain skill level requirements, yes, but that does not mean that you actually get perks when you use your skill.

In fact, it is impossible to get all the perks (or even all the good perks) to one skill just by using that one skill. You don't level up enough. So what do you have to do?

Train in other skills.

Want to become a master of one-hand combat? Well, once you get to rank 100 in one-handed combat, you need more levels to get more perk points, and to get more levels, you need more skill ranks, and you can't get more skill ranks in one-handed, so you have to train in some other skill. A useless skill, or at least, a skill that will never get perks, because you need to steal all the perk points from that skill's growth to feed the perks of one-handed.

So maybe you take up two-handed combat, or maybe you just gain ranks in something like illusion, but you never spend perk points in that, you spend them all in one-handed. So then you achieve what you wanted - you have one skill with every perk point, and then you have the skill you wasted your time grinding, which is still useless, because it has no perks, and perks are mandatory for making your skills actually useful.

In other words, because of perk points, I have to choose which skills I want to be useful skills, and devote all my perk points to those, but then I have to pick up and train skills which I will purposefully make useless except for the purpose of gaining me more perk points, which I must nevertheless train, even though I obviously don't want to play using those skills, just in order to attain the perk points I wanted for the skills I do use.

It is a completely backwards and unintuitive system that I am forced to train in other skills to become better in the skills that I actually use and want to improve.

...

Or, you know, we could just go back to the original idea of the gain-skill-through-use system, and just let us use the skills we want until we get better at them.