psyclog

This is, in effect, integrated into my proposal: As early on, the player will likely find and handle mostly iron ore, he will likely start off by producing iron items, including daggers. The experience gain fades over time, and by the time he reaches level 50, the experience gain for iron items should be negligible, if the values and parameters have been carefully thought-out. If he didn't work with any iron at all, but started with Dwarfen Metal right away, then let him! By the time he reaches level 50, the dwarfen daggers will be useless to him, but he could gain some new insights from rediscovering that good old pig-iron. You need to realize that this basically introduces qualitative differences in a smooth way, which could deepen your gaming experience: It would force the player to start looking for the rare metals. Imagine the joy if you eventually stumble upon your first Dwemer ruin, full of the precious Dwarfen Metal! You'd happily crawl out with all the over-incumbrance you can handle. Think of your delight when the Orc tribe accepts you as your blood-kin and allows you to wander into their Ebony mines, where for the first time you discover lodes of Ebony ore. These actually were nice moments during my time of playing Skyrim, but they could have been so much more. Okay I know what you mean. I try to roleplay my games as well, but it starts feeling bland when I get the impression that I am deliberately holding myself back in terms of game success. I get my most satisfying gaming experience when the most authentic roleplaying approach is also the most effective one. And in all earnest, this approach should be the prime directive for any RPG designers: Reward enthralling player behavior, not dull player behavior. Punish dull player behavior, not enthralling player behavior. Everything else is grinding, and we don't want that here.

What you are saying is you would like to implement my topic 1), but leave out topic 2) This might give you the feeling of merely "buying" experience with gold, no skill involved... a rather dull affair. Whether you buy iron ingots or moonstone, it's just eye-candy. Concept 2) might loosen things up a little, as you need to make sure you try out all techniques. flobalob, I'm sure you are making a good point, but it's not really on topic, maybe you should create a new one.

In my forum search, I have seen various complaints about the way smithing works in Skyrim: Produce a boatload full of iron daggers or hide bracers to level up your smithing skill to legendary levels, then go about creating high-tier armor and weapons. This is monotonous and doesn't provide for a joyful gaming experience. The same problem applies to enchanting. I see 2 concepts which would, if combined improve the situation: 1) The most often-heared proposal: Larger differences in base experience value of smithing products; f.e. creating a Dwarfen Torso Armor should net you far more experience than creating a leather bracer. (the simplest way would be to couple the experience gain to the gold worth of the items) 2) This is the tricky one: Each consecutive item created of the same type would net you less experience than the one before, following a logistic curve: http://ntumaps.cgm.ntu.edu.tw/aCGH_supplementary/figure_s1.png This means, in effect, that you will gain almost no additional experience for smithing your 101st iron dagger. You need to diversify your smithing, try out all items. This topic 2) would in effect also include the idea of low-tier items yielding less to no experience on higher levels, which I've seen circulating on the boards.