hmmm if master doesn't offers anymore challenges,maybe you can try "Increased Spawns - Loot - and AI v56" mods by plutoman...

the AI spawn has 50% increased,and the AI has been improved a bit (taking healing potions,using environments as a cover,etc)..also try the DID (Dead Is Dead) mode,hehehehe

good point as i said earlier not everyone can or wants to throw there controlloer due to difficulty i played duke nukem 3d but i played on normal cuz well i svck my friends play shooters and other games on max difficulty and somehow prosper im not that good and alot of people die in skyrim but the op is also right master difficulty means master difficulty not killing mobs of weaklings then fighting one strong opponent at the end of a dungeon i may have a hard time on master but alot of people are cake walking it

Player choice.

That includes changing the difficulty, even in just a minor way. Removing this choice is, well, removing player choice and through this i think it shows you didn't get the OP's point ;p


People have certain expectations, they panic when the game doesn't present itself in the way they expected. It doesn't conform to their view of what it should be and they will try to do anything they can to convince themselves that the game is at fault rather than their expecations of it.

I disagree. I contend that with a suitable set of self-imposed limitations, novice would be just as challenging as master can ever be.

And removing it removes any expectations.



I'm not saying the game is at fault, I'm merely saying it's a bit weird that to make it difficult non-trivial, one needs to ignore a large chunk of said game. I never said it was right or wrong, just that it is weird.

You're confusing role playing with action shooter man

I wasn't aware that it was possible to "win" a TES game, it's not the point.

How exactly do you "win" at playing in a sandbox?

And I wasn't aware that having an optional brutal difficulty level was such an anathema to 'proper' role players. Who knew. I certainly didn't.

I think certainly, its a fear that by conceding a setting which delivers difficulty based upon damage per second, its a declaration of a the games intent to be god of war with more talking. By conceding a difficulty which enforces some narrow character development we move the series ever closer to a freeform Call of Duty: Fantasy Warfare. Certainly I find some of the concessions as they stand already difficult to stomach, but the overall quality of the game has compensated for what I perceive to be flaws.

I do not think that the argument can be merely dismissed as fear on this basis, we are looking at a trend that takes the game away from its roots in character development (that would be the personality, not the skills/stats) and personal storytelling. The more we take the focus off this, we do irrevocable damage to the series, and as someone mentioned before only in terms of their personal perceived flaws, the series suffers if we allow people to get away with stating this is a prevalent point of view in the fanbase, which is patently not true.

I agree with this.

That's just wrong...by that logic The Witcher (1 and 2) should be called CoD as well? Combat difficulty in those two games could be brutal at times but it fit the role of Geralt the Witcher perfectly. And there were posts on Witcher forum that actually encouraged players to try higher difficulty settings because they made you use all of your character's abilities and resources, and thus enhancing the role of witcher even further.

Then, as I said, LESS harm would come from planting it on permanent novice and doing away with the notion of 'difficulty' entirely.

Besides, difficulty doesn't need to come from pure stats, there are lots of ways to up the anté without just stacking more damage/bigger health pools. I suppose it could easily be crudely done like that, but it need not be.

As I've said many times, it is far too easy to become far too powerful. Without even trying. Logical, sensible character progression without unusual RP-enforced restrictions are creating characters waaaaaaaay out of hand.



I feel it should be possible to get a strong challenge whilst not RPing a character as ineffectual as a one armed archer. Equally I feel turning into a god should not be impossible, but it should be a damned sight harder than following typical character progression.


Edit: Yes, I'd agree with the witcher sentiments re: difficulty.

The core difference with the Witcher, is that a character is provided for you. So to a certain extent, yes, its a move towards COD: Fantasy Warfare. That doesn't remove the fact its an extremely good game... but despite initial appearances is a completely different experience to TES.

EDIT: BTW, I am going to stop using the COD: Fantasy Warfare anology, it trivialises and oversimplifies the point, and borderline offensive, which is not the intention.

Good point.

And those aren't artificial restrictions, they HAVE to leave some of that up to player in order to make a game that almost anyone can play how they want.

If you wanna do something, do it. Its not like you need gamesas telling you its ok to play that way.

I wasn't aware that roleplaying games were forbidden from having proper balance and relevant difficulty. Oh wait, that's right...this is an Elder Scrolls game! A game, with a fanbase teeming with drones and apologists that cannot accept any failings, and allow issues and balance failures to magically migrate and mutate from one game to the next without even the slightest complaint. I mean, god forbid Bethesda actually gets better at dealing with the classical shortcomings of their own games that they've been making for how long?



Please, Elder Scrolls isn't even a real sandbox, no matter how many times you people like to repeat that it is, as though it would suddenly render any complaints invalid. A true sandbox is something like gmod or minecraft, where you basically really can "do whatever you want" because you build everything, and the game itself gives you no purpose outside of what you decide.

Elder Scrolls is an open world RPG with an optional construction set, available on only one, out of three platforms it is designed for.

It depends on development time to implement something more complex, and I'd like to hear ideas on those lines. But I'm wary that with limited developer time, whether as a player, I want that development time used on something other than world content such as cities, dungeons, quests.



Its difficult for me to argue, because with 3 characters, I have not had a balance issue once, or accidently levelled that everything dies easily, bearing in mind scaling is designed so that things that exceed your level are met only half the time, and creatures that pose significant problems will only occur occasionally due to the way the scaling is implemented.



Clearly, some methods of playing make it easier to become a god than others. I suspect that if a player who gets annoyed because their speech improved doesn't quite understand natural progression, and certainly it has never been an issue to me, which lends my arguments an utterly biased view, and I would be foolish to deny that.

Bravo, well said.
This is the essence of a good gaming experience.

Even though at it core 'fun' is the goal, challenging yourself is the most enriching.

hm just give the enemies more health idk tough subject to tackle for a noodle head like me but as i said before master should mean master( damn cod mile high club) :intergalactic: :swear:

Try to calm down. If my opening post doesn't make it clear I am neither a drone nor apologist, I don't know what does. I am willing to forgive some things in exchange for the positives when looking at the larger picture sure, but that isn't the same thing, and I'm no stranger to criticising TES. In fact, I was one of the most vocal in opposition to the stringent level scaling Oblivion used.
Strangely enough the points are actually slightly related. When you overcompensate to balance things, the game world itself suffers, and becomes more stale and repetitive. If maxed out Destruction with every possible multipliers, equalled maxed out Combat with every possible multiplier, then really.. all you have is different animations for killing things.
Now this isn't true for all the perceived inbalances, but for some, but its these very inbalances that ensure players have to find different methods of playing which complement the style of the player. A destruction mage may not be as powerful solo, but as a magician he has other tricks up his sleeve when things get tricky, magic is not the same as combat, it involves a bit of thought, the correct spell at the correct time, and this doesn't mean always using destruction. These things affect the personality of the character.



Arguments by taking a definitions to its extreme you must realise thats a weak way to argue a point. Nobody said it was a pure sandbox. Merely it provides the lore, world, people, and an overarching storyline in which to build a character. What you do with it is up to you, you could say the sandbox is as much mental, as it is visual from what you see in the game.
The sandbox is in how you wish to be challenged, and its clearly lack of imagination, and inability to suspend disbelief so essential for storytelling.
Not only to demand the game shows you where to go and what to do, now you want it to tell you what the challenge is.

Purely from the top of my head? Lower vendor gold, more enemies, more healing enemies, enemies using more options like poison/magicka/stamina drain not just from magic, less places to buy/sell things (i.e. people buy less item types), scarcer world resources, merchants get gold back slower, persuade intimidate harder to work, locking becoming almost impossible with perks, limited saves per timeframe.

Lots of ideas, some less viable than others obviously, its just a dump.


Well I will use my mage as an example as most recent. She is, I think about level 38, a guesstimate as some levels unused at the moment At any given point she has had a lot of perks laying about unspent (I'm a bit of a minimalist, only using what I NEED saving the rest). She's quite heavy into the indirect combat mage schools i.e. conjuration and illusion (I like pets/having other people do bidding).

I would estimate that I'm using her to, perhaps....as much as 40% of her potential. I'm barely enchanting (one enchanted item, -23% magica cost for a spell school), I travel alone, I dont use alchemy, I dont use light/heavy armour, I can't even cast the master levels spells although I've got them in the book, I dont use buffs, I dont use poisons. I DO only use bound weapons (mainly to capture souls). Probably some other stuff I've forgotten.

Short version is basically by following a couple of caster trees (not even got the cost reduction perks) and so very many options still available she is godly. Utterly godly.


It is merely an example and my personal opinion that she's stupidly powerful; I'm quite certain people will come and point out that illusion and conjuration are opverpowered and shouldn't be used if I want a challenge. And..well, that's kind of my problem. I'm not exploiting, I'm not abusing mechanics, I'm following a sensible, logical and rational approach for a caster (sow confusion and have minions mop up, why have a dog and bark yourself?) and she's bloody well immortal. In the unlikely event it all does go suddenly wrong I've an absolute heap of things I can do in order to become more powerful before I even cross into powergaming/expliting mechanics territory.


My orc warrior was a similar story although he was slightly less 'minimalist' in nature.


To recap, things the consensus say shouldn't be used to avoid making a demi-god:
Sneak
Smithing
Enchanting
Alchmeny
Illusion
Conjuration
Above average equipment
Companions


Thing is though, these are fun things to use and I believe that it SHOULD be possible to use (note not abuse) any these to the full extent and still maintain a reasonable challenge.

I don't want to be a god, I don't want to walk into a fabled dungeon which has seen no-one leave alive in a century knowing full well the only way I'll so much as chip a nail is if I fall off a cliff. But I'd also quite like to be able to sensibly progress my character without crazy restrictions, particularly since many are illogical and make no sense from a character points of view. "Hey, I'm getting good at this, lets give these walking undead a sporting chance" makes zero sense.


To recap - we're given tools and using those tools whilst (imo) remaining within the spirit of the game make it far, far too easy to make a character who is beyond powerful.



Right or wrong is not for me to say, traditionally it has been my experience that following a logical progression created a pretty balanced, as intended, playthrough of a game. This is not the case here and that just feels off to me.

Most of these are entirely reasonable, and I would absolutely agree with you on several of them.

If I were to offer a compromise in response to your characters, perhaps, whilst less noticeable level scaling is in Skyrim, and far from the mess Oblivions was, maybe they simply didn't go far enough, that levels are based around a very average character, and if the "range of levels" is too tight, you'll still be pushing the boundaries.

So maybe instead of extra difficulty, the game should widen the level gap, so that there are at least a few dungeons that would make a powergamer gasp.

OP, you did do a good job trying to get your point across but what your missing is the following.

You are talking about in f.ex Sonic that players could give themselfs a challenge by doing EXTRA things wich is great.
But in Skyrim ,it's about doing LESS things so that players can give themselfs a challenge, infact u can go trough the whole game just using 3 combat skills and never touching anything else inc potions with resto, heavy armor & one handed or sneak & illusion, or conjuration alone or destruction & conjuration/follower... pretty much any combination of skills will allow the player to just breeze trough on master.

I can understand that it would be the case for 'adept' difficulty, but when it's on the highest difficulty available players should be REQUIRED to use evrything at their disposal.
And developers cant expect people to give themselfs handicaps that is harmfull to the game itself aka advancing your character.

Afterall, if a boxer wants a challenge u dont tell him to just 'play with one hand', you give him a strong opponent so he can measure his skill.

Many ways to fix it I guess, wouldn't really mind what they do, but I genuinely feel that something needs doing.

Anyway, hopefully I've managed to express my personal frustrations with the relative difficulty in a relatively impassive but clear way


Note: For balance I should mention I'm a PC gamer so I can mod, but I try to argue/debate points as if that isn't an option as console gamers lack this option.

Agree. On my first playthrough I started as a Conanlike warrior with [censored] armour and charging on stuff. It was amazing for the first 15 levels. Then I started getting uber gear and the connection with my character was gone because he wasn?'t like Conan anymore, he was some kind of WoW paladin, it wasn't fun anymore. I rushed to the main quest and made a new thief character. This time I used some hide armor and a hood until level 20, I played on expert, i got my ass kicked many times, but the game is much more rewarding and fun. I don't even sleep (my character not me) so I don't get the bonus, I don't like leveling up that fast.

Agreed! Or simply more bosses who then really deserve the name. I love being able to squash lower opponents like a bug, I mean I am Dovahkiin and I am supposed to be the savior of Nirn, but dragons and for example the Gauldursons should be on par with me.

Instead of lower vendor gold and a 3-7 day reset of it, I would like to see potion value getting nerfed. This is the only reason why I sometimes exploit it. I can't just go around with 200 pounds of potions or 150 pounds of ingredients all the time. I know I know, just drop em, but I made them and got attached.

Fair comment, but I don't think it invalidates the point being expressed. The EXTRA things are all around you, and its up to the player to decide if they wish to take on that challenge. The limitations of the game offered little ways to add the challenge, but a game as huge as Skyrim, there are a million and one things to do, its actually quite difficult to search out and complete every quest, which is a more impressive feat than beating the main quest on Master.
This is the point being expressed, that merely beating a game at Master is utterly uninspiring. It does not matter how much harder you make the hardest difficulty, all that does is narrow down the precise method to optimal damage per second... its slightly irrelevant. I am still extremely unconvinced Master is a cakewalk with even a regular fighter build, especially as those posting about it being too easy never seem to be talking about level 10, 20, but only ever level 40 when the monsters themselves only go up to 50. I will hold my hands up and say I've not tried Master, because optimal builds is not how I approach this type of game, but I am certainly being challenged sometimes, and easy others, exactly how the level ranged scaling is supposed to work, it does a bit of both easy, and difficulty in random amounts. Naturally the more you explore, the more the map is level locked. Thats a different discussion.



Actually, the boxer is matched against an equivalent skill and weight level to ensure its a fair and even fight. You could say Boxers have level scaled opponents.

Skyrim was not provided to find out who is the best gamer, its there for you to tell a story to yourself, and if you don't understand how a game can have different goals, demanding the game changes its focus to a more restrictive goal of simply "beat me" will damage the game.