One for enemy damage and one for player damage. You can slide player damage down and enemy damage up to make it like the sliders of the older games, you can just raise enemy damage to make it harder but still fast, or you can just make combat more/less lethal by raising/lowering both evenly. What do you think?

There may be better systems out there, but this sounds better than the one slider we had in Oblivion.

yea I would love that option, make ES games play out more like demon's souls where all weapons are dangerous not just your enemies or your own depending on difficulty. I'd like to be able to realistically kill someone in less than 4 swings, but actually be afraid of getting killed myself.

Its not that I even want hyper realism, I just want faster more fluid combat that is dangerous without making enemies pin cushions.

I agree. This is one of the things Bethesda games do wrong - combat is far too lengthy. You shouldn't have to hack at an enemy for 5 minutes to kill them.

However they've supposedly much improved the combat system, so I can't pass judgement on what it's like now. Hopefully much more realistic.

I'd be interested in that.

As said, we'll see what the improved combat system is like. It sounds better but my expectations are low so I'm already planning modifications to the hitpoints/weapon damage for a less tedious combat.

I'd like to be able to realistically kill someone in less than 4 swings, but actually be afraid of getting killed myself.

I actually don't want combat to be more lethal, but that would be the beauty of this system

I don't like how the difficulty slider works by affecting combat damage. I rather it do other things to make the game harder for you, because the way it works with damage almost seems like it's cheating the game against or for you with higher or lower difficulty. I always used mods for making my game harder. Having two sliders for the game that just affect damage would be better than one though.

Those two highlighted parts of your post sorta contradict eachother. In 1 on 1 fighting, two well trained swordsman likely would be fighting for minutes before one was able to kill the other. Also don't forget almost all enemy in Oblivion that took a while to kill wore armor... and that would certainly prolong a real fight. So saying you want the combat to be faster, and not lengthy,. yet more realistic... doesn't make much sense to me.

It's realistic to land fifty blows on an opponent before he finally dies? No armour is that good. Maybe a fight would last a while, but it would be due to dodges and blocks, not because both fighters are damage sponges.

Two sliders:

The realism slider. It determins the damage taken from the elements, and it also decides wheter you need to sleep, drink, eat or not.
The difficulty slider. It determines the damage dealt by foes and the magicka consumation.

Could the realism slider just be a 'hardcoe' mode simillar to that of Fallout:NV?

yeah don't need a slider, need a checkbox for that. Otherwise I like the original idea, with a slider for you and a slider for enemies.

I would prefer that enemies stay at one set health reguardless of difficulty but what the slider ajusts is their skill level.
If the slider was set to the hardest possition then their block and weapon stats get a good bonus.
This would make killing them harder and more dangerous for the PC while not making every enemy appear like Superman.

I dont want too many options. Id rather Bethesda just balanced 3 or 4 difficulties and added a hardcoe mode on the side of those

love that idea

Demon's Souls is a different type of game than this for one.

Two Demon's Souls was hard not because you or anyone else had more health. It was always because you yourself slipped and did something wrong to die.

Edit: Oh read your post thorougly. Gotcha.

Agreed 100%. I am a true believer in 1 hit kills when implemented correctly. I don't expect to see an NPC running around in a mood with an arrow sticking out their head!

Problem is, to do this the game would need to be on easy, which means that you take 5 times as much damage before being killed.

I'd love to be able to put the slider so it's 1 hit on them and 1 hit on me!

There should be no slider for the player. If there is then people will just slide it up and then slide down the enemy bar so they can just steam roll through the game. There should be a realism mode so ppl can get a whole new level of difficulty and a difficulty slider that increases the damage the enemies do and their skill in dodging and blocking your attacks.

The only problem I see with the slider is the defense and health multiplier that turn enemies into damage sponges. Remove that and it's fine.

I don't agree with that, people should have the freedom to play how they want. If people chose to 'steam roll' though the game it might be a sign that the combat is boring and repetitive.

So if someone you dont even know makes the game incredibly easy for themsleves that bothers you? Let them play it how they want, since when did games have to be an edge of your seat, death lurking behind every door expierence? Although those are fun games, I still enjoy just listening to my ipod and mindlessy killing hundreds of enemies without having to look behind my back every minute to see if something is going to kill me, I do that enough in real life as it is But seriously, I like the 2 slider idea, I think it will turn the combat from the unskilled button hammering of Oblivion and more into combat being based more on the characters combat skills...although button hammering can be fun at times...

Watch movies. When the main protagonists fight, it takes more than 5 minutes for someone to prevail. Same in TES, only here every fight is a big fight.

Problem with Oblivion is that many enemies get loads of health at higher levels so you need to hack at them a long time to kill them. Increasing difficulty and you do less damage pretty dramatically so you has to hack forever.
Goblin warlords, wraiths and other boss level enemies does not have armor just lots of health.

An related problem is that in Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout you gain more health as you level up, health gain increase as endurance goes up and if you concentrate on raising endurance you ends up with over 300 at level 20 in Oblivion, probably over 500 at level 30, now add a good armor and you get very hard to kill.

And yes two swordsmen will fight for a good time in a duel if both are good at blocking and have good armor. Fight ends then one manages to do a hit at a weak spot, hurting the other enough to have him drop the sword or fall so you can move in and kill. Fatigue is also important here as they react slower then worn out.
A battle will be more violent as you can not concentrate on blocking all enemies, one other enemy might get a hit on you while unoccupied and you are busy with another enemy.

For the difficulty slider, just make the enemy do more damage at higher difficulty and you more damage at lower.

To the people who don't like the difficulty slider being an option, I wouldn't be opposed to having an option to toggle whether the difficulty is locked so that it's only accessible from the main menu. Technically you could always change the difficulty, but you can't do it on the fly in the middle of the game if you have the option locked.

A mode where you need to eat and sleep is cool too, although it's pretty unrelated to the difficulty slider.

Ive often thought about a Exp gain Slider atleast for previeus Beth games , so that you dont level too fast .