Agreed - it should be attainable - but with much difficulty. As it would be realistically.

Seeing how easy Fallout 3 and New Vegas are, i'm not expecting much from Skyrim either. Thus PC version and mods. And then some

As i keep saying, i want NES diffculty, dammit! (For those who weren't around to experience it first hand, super human effort required to even finish the game, see Megaman 9 and 10 for reference ^_^)

They're that mosahistic? Seriously though, if Skyrim was of hardcoe difficulty, it would hurt critic scores (yes, critics don't like super-challenging games) and sales.

I'm not exactly sure how level scaling works, but I do want the game to remain a challenge throughout. That being said, I do want critters like goblins and wolves to die in one stroke of my sword once I'm high level, and I don't want to be able to take on dragons at level one. If that makes sense. Basically the world needs to be level scaled I guess, so that there are certain areas where I can't go until I'm high level, and when I come back to starter caves at level 15 I want to be able to obliterate those poor goblins.

Weirdly, goblins aren't actually puny cannonfodder in TES very much.
The Goblins in Mournhold were badass, and some of the high-leveled goblins in Oblivion are too...

So what? It's a single player game - you don't want to be super powerful? Don't create a mage. Than you'll just have vary challenging magic wielding opponents that you need to sneak around. It is logical that a "flamethrower" is more powerful than a knife magic being very powerful is at the very root of the world of TES. You don't like the presence of magic altogether? Than maybe fantasy in simply not your genre and you may want to play something else. Bethesda even made something else, with no magic - it's called Fallout 3, I heard people like it

Have low-level enemies be a challenge only to low-level characters, have high-level enemies be a challenge to even the strongest characters.

Have a level cap (or a 'soft' cap as they appear to have gone with???, where skills raise very slowly past level 50), so that you never level past EVERY enemy in the game.

Level-scale enemies as little as possible, so that both easy and hard enemies are in the gameworld at any one time.

Have areas where the harder enemies are unlikely to go, near the starting location and around whatever cities are 'safe' for plot reasons. Make sure the player can tell whether an area / group of enemies is way out of his league (through in-game books, warnings from NPCs, whatever).

Include all manner of fun spell effects, but make the player work for them, and include a disadvantage where necessary.

One great example from another thread was having levitation drain mana constantly, at a rate depending on weight carried, so that only high-level mages could levitate everywhere.

Yup, Ghosts and Goblins and Battletoads for example are games that very few managed to play trough. I didn't, but i did beat Megaman 1 :nod:

And yes, it propably would. Back in those days the insane diffculty was used to mask the poor length and lack of content of the games, and many were conversions of arcade games that were desgined to take your quarters away Still games nowadays are generally too easy. Or maybe i'm just too good? :hehe:

Neither. I roleplay. My whole concern is with developing my character's personality and experiencing that character's story.

Difficulty is irrelevant to my game, it means nothing. I don't play an Elder Scrolls game for the "challenge." The only time I think about difficulty is when difficulty gets in the way of roleplaying.

You're just too used to NES

PS. Loved Battletoads :tops:

I tried making a thread talking about how all the broken spell effects could be balanced. I just got told to mod it in myself because achieving 100% reflect damage is some sort of accomplishment rather than the end of any form of challenge you will face in the game or in any expansions to the game.

In RPG terminology, I'm mostly simulationist/dramatist, hence I want to game to take that direction. Believability, realism to a certain extend, and of course unique world design and a good story. I don't like "gamey" things, on the other hand. I don't want to be much stronger than the average enemy, although I do NOT want them to level with me.

A perfect game world, to me, is a believable, but different one. I liked the feel of Morrowind, although I disliked some of the gameplay mechanics. Oblivion made everything worse, making gameplay even less believable and complex, and having a "default" fantasy world for the most part - which isn't a problem if done well, but Oblivion simply lacked the certain something that Morrowind had.

For Skyrim, what I'd have wanted would be a more realistic, complex gameplay system (more skills, more non-combat-solutions, deadly and dangerous combat for both the enemies and the player), and a less epic but more interesting story (lots of interesting books and discussions, but not fighting against armies and dragons).

I can live with fighting dragons, I guess, if it's done in a believable way. That is, I don't want to beat them in head-on combat, and I'd like not to be able to, either. Although I am sure that the game won't give me that, and I'll have to accept that.

I want what people call a "hardcoe mode", but not because of the difficulty, but because of the realism.

I don't want to be a god-like fighter, I don't want to be cool, I don't want everything around me to be epic. I'd rather be a character, perhaps even a dramatic one. I don't have a problem with being a hero - but only a hero through my deeds, not through my abilities.

It needs to be challenging thruought, until you reach a high enough level to start dominating. I think it should work in reverse also. If you are a low level and walk into a vampire den, you should get your [censored] handed to you. I hope the level scaling is toned down to the point where you could get hammered in one place, but dominate another. The world shouldn't revolve around the player. The world could still be dynamic, but in a wider range than what Oblivion offered. TES games are so huge. If it becomes repetitive, it becomes no fun, no challenge and boring...IMHO.

I fall somewhere between the two ends, but want the level of difficulty to be "managable" by what you do and where you go. If you keep hearing that the big fort just down the road is a dangerous place, I don't want to walk in at level 1 and be confronted by a couple of rats and a weak goblin that dies in one hit. If I wait until I'm at Level 50, I don't expect to find dragons, liches, ancient vampires, and enough other nasty stuff to take on the entire Imperial Legion, only a handful of steps away from a cozy and quiet village. Anywhere that close to town should be limited in its hazard level, so while you'd be best advised not to stroll in at L1, by L5-10 you should be more than capable of dealing with it, no matter how "unoptimized" your character design. Having everything levelled and scaled to you makes advancement seem pointless, and there's satisfaction in occasional encounters with things which used to be scary, but are now mere petty interruptions. Finding nastier stuff should be easy enough, but not without a hike, otherwise the world becomes unbelievable because nobody there would survive. The truly powerful opponents should be some distance from the "settled" areas, but if you're looking for a high level challenge, you know where to find it.

The one major difference between MW and OB was that the level of challenge in MW was voluntary; you could tackle the quests or dangerous places whenever you felt ready for them, because most of the content was of fixed difficulty, with only a few levelled adversaries to maintain a challenge at higher levels. In OB, waiting made no difference in terms of difficulty, because the opponents just adjusted to your current level, but the few "unique" rewards were nerfed if you tackled them earlier, and the routine stuff was all the same levelled garbage as everywhere else, making it pointless to explore. The difficulty and the rewards were all blandly flat and boring to present what was deemed to be a "proper" level of challenge, which could either be too high or too low, depending on how you advanced your skills.

With a minimally-levelled and only slightly-scaled world, dominated by fixed difficulty areas and a few key static placements, you can proceed through it at whatever pace you find best. An aspiring Alchemist/Healer, with little or no interest in fighting, can stick to the "beaten paths" and probably encounter nothing more hazardous than an occasional hungry scavenger or small predator, or the rare highway robber who can sometimes be talked out of the intended robbery, or at least paid off. The ambitious fledgeling Fighter or Battlemage, on the other hand, can start looking into some of those dark holes and ruins a little ways off the path, and find things that will offer them a challenge.

I don't want "godhood" handed to the character without a struggle. It's not a "game" if you can't lose. On the other hand, I don't want to have to hack and slash my way through every situation, especially if I'm playing a character who's supposed to be a fast-talker of note, a rising star at levitation spells, or a total unknown at being extremely stealthy....only because he's never been spotted at it. I'm just concerned that the game will cater mainly to the "fight" players at the expense of RP, and that maintaining what they see as the "proper" level of challenge and difficulty will mean that I'm forced to shape the character to the even further limited "arcade" gameplay, and to the the counter-intuitive skills/perks/levels system that actually penalizes you for getting better at what you're supposed to do (the same problems I had with OB).

Sometimes the "Uber" camp can be amusing, and I don't think that potential for "exploitation" and "abuse" should be taken out of the game completely, but most of the time, I prefer to EARN what I get.

I want a full range of abilities ... eventually. I don't want my characters to be OP early in the game, but I'd like the possibility to exist at end game. I think it's a mostly a matter of gateways so that powerful items and abilities are not available easily or soon..

I'm a role player, so I need to feel that I'm immersed into the game. While there definitely needs to be a challenge, I think there should ultimately be a final outcome where the player really feels like they are Dragonborn. I don't care for spells personally, so that kind of information has no effect on me.

As long as they fix the level-scaling to not be as horrid as it was in OB bliviongate: I think that's what we'll get.

I like towns in games, I like interacting with the NPCs, talking trading, sleeping in inns. If that bit is ok, we're off to a good start in a game. I also like killing things and casting spells, preferably with a side order of difficulty, but if a game is challenging to the point of being no fun, then what's the point. I like a good fight but want to watch the clouds sometimes. If it's a good world, then the level of challenge doesn't bother me. Does that make me a casual, well if you say so, but remember this :
when I get the cellophane off my copy in November, I am going to enjoy myself,not spend my time worrying whether it's rpg enough, or hardcoe enough, or more like MW or OB.

I like how In Skyrim there is a civil war going on.
And in the forums there is a mini Very civil civil war going on.

The way I see it, if you put in the time and effort to reach those high levels you should be rewarded by being godlike powerful. I think the problem with Oblivion (actually probly just Shivering Isles) is you become too powerful too soon. The fix is simple. Just make it so the player has to work for those powerful items and spells. I'm definitely not suggesting that you cut off all access to powerful items and spells to low level characters (*cough* levelscaling *cough*.) But you should make it more difficult to obtain them. If the player has the tenacity to actually make it through a high level dungeon at a low level they should be rewarded with the uber loot at the end.

As for becoming too powerful at a high level, I personally don't have a problem with this. However adding a handful of super-uber dungeons with super-uber creatures in them designed specifically for players who go above and beyond might help lower the tedium. But honestly, if you've spent so much time with a character to get them so powerful that the game starts to become boring, maybe it's time to retire that character and start a new one.

I enjoy challenges in gameplay.
Puzzles, etc, figuring things out. Like in Morrowind when I figured out how to become head of the thieves guild And the fighters guild.
When it comes to combat, meh. I do not play elder scrolls for combat.

I very much enjoyed in oblivion the 100% chameleon. It was very interesting to observe NPC behaviour.
This one time I witnessed an epic battle between goblins and daedra from a gate that spawned near their home.
The daedra won, but it was a close call.
Wouldnt have been possible to witness such coolness without chameleon.

In Morrowind I thoroughly enjoyed levitation. In oblivion there was absolutely no point in entering a dungeon, but in Morrowind I must have searched each one a thousand times, looking for a nice little handplaced secret. Thats where levitation came in handy. I know almost every inch of the Morrowind map thanks to it.

It is my opinion that people who keep moaning and saying silly things about overpoweredness should play a hack n slash, because obviously the elder scrolls isnt their cup of tea.
I enjoy choice in my gameplay. This is what an RPG is about.

I wish they keep in all the expoits from oblivion, lol. Demigod FTW!!

I'm of the belief that there are as many sides/camps as there are fans. Soooo....like 4 or 5 mil or so sides. We all want what we want and most of us don't fall on one side or another...just our own.

TES fans are much to unique to be pigeon holed into just two sides.

you're kidding right.

level scaling didn't make things challenging in OB. It made every fight boring and without challenge. It made bandits wear daedric armor. etc

people who want a challenge should play with zoned level scaling at most. They'll be dying real quick if the walk into something nasty at early levels.

if you want it harder, difficulty slider/setting , use it.

I don't mind being over powered, I just think it should be well earned.

Ad it should be rewarding. Just being able to kill a bunch of people with one swipe of you'r sword isn't rewarding, but being able to skillfully execute moves like no other is. Being able to cast a fireball that looks like every other but is more powerful svcks but being able to eventually summon a hellish fire storm would be pretty sweet if you put enough time into earning such power.