Difficulty Slider Woes

[Daethar]

I really did not agree with the scale that these levelled monsters were set at, so after a forum rant on the subject, I went in game and tried out the built in options to fiddle with how hard monsters are.

 

And I ran into a problem off the bat.

 

If you change the difficulty slider down even one small notch (click on the arrow on the left side) you do 2x the damage. And I believe, though I may be wrong, that moving it to the 25% range lets you do 4x the damage.

With the slider put one small twitch easier, I found myself able to take out Daedra that before beat me up without a sweat. With my fists. And a skill of 10 in hand-to-hand. I didn't want it THAT easy.

 

Now, there are mods that lower the items your run of the mill bandit will be able to beat on you with, and mods that take off the level limits for monsters, but with the game alone I have to settle with either getting my butt kicked by ogres equal to my level with higher health and damage, or being able to take out bands of them with my hands...

[Switch]

Difficulty does seem to be an issue. I had no idea that it got so much easier as you reduce the slider, though (probably because I haven't tried). I've been playing on default difficulty since the start, and do find it too difficult at times. But most of the time I seem to do alright... but then, I haven't played past level 12 yet, maybe it gets worse as you level up. The main quest is definitely too hard on default difficulty thus far, tried it at level 10 and almost had it... then my weapon broke. Wonderful. :P

[lawndart]

I managed to reach level 13 with the slider untouched, and get some mithril armour. However I never found a particularly good sword and most of level 11 and 12 were spent running away. I entered an ogre lair and could just take on the normal guys one at a time, but the boss ogre would splat me with just a couple of hits. I had to leave him unmolested. Ghost slaying, using spells only as I had no ghost capable sword, took some twenty realtime minutes of pounding away at the spook which was unable to get an accurate shot off at me. Mountain lions were just something to run away from. An individual lion took both myself and two guards to defeat and we were in very poor condition at the end. At one point I was attacked by a skeleton and my fine steel longsword did just nothing to it.

The final straw for my first character was wandering back from Skingrad to Imperial City. I had just jogged past a patrolling guard when I ran into a spriggan, jumped up on a rock and pounded it down with spells. Once the beastie was dead I dropped off the rock to resume my journey but within moments I was attacked by a Will o'the Wisp, another spriggan and a troll. I ran back to the guard and we both waded in. The guard did all the work, while I attempted to just stay alive and cause a bit of damage. The troll was killed, then the spriggan succumbed to the guard's onslaught then the will took out the guard. I was completely exhausted, low on all three attributes, and as I couldn't fight or run and was out of potions I was rapidly killed.

I decided to abandon the character at that point.

 

My new character has the slider notched down very slightly and is having a much easier time of it, getting one hit kills on goblins using a bow, for example. This could be just better technique on my part having become used to the interface though, and there is always the possibility that I was not really playing to the best of my characters ability the first time around.

If nothing else the game teaches you to be circumspect around monsters!

[Daethar]

If nothing else the game teaches you to be circumspect around monsters!

 

Indeed. But wouldn't it be nice to have just found that one spriggan and have the battle for your life and relax after it? Or ambush it sucessfully and then take a moment to enjoy how clever you were, without 3 more monsters coming out of the woods?

 

It would be nice if, as levelled monsters get tougher, there aren't the same amounts. 10 ogre younglings turn into 10 monster ogres. 10 scamps become 10 fire daedra. Really, finding Oblivion halls packed to the brim with Daedroths and Atronarchs would be easier to swallow except that I know that it A) it didn't start that way and B) if I level up they will just become hordes of stronger things.

 

On further testing, I like how a sneak bow attack can now take something down in one hit. That makes sense to me. My hunter gets above it, puts an arrow through its skull, and it drops. I just wish it didn't come at the added bonus of missing, getting attacked, and being able to take said monster on with my hands.

 

And how the heck can the guards beat things up if they're supposed to be levelled the same as me? Those Imperial Barracks must offer some great training and superb food, all their members are growing up to be big and strong.

[goseki]

when i first loaded the game i turned the difficulty up just alittle. thinking to extend my game experience and that morrowind got too easy too fast. big mistake. i completed the tutorial and some of the sewers in the imperial city ok. but when i left the city and tried to raid caves i ran into some problems. in one the first monster was a clanfear that i could barely beat, hitting him over 40 times, but even when i did win the long and frantic battle alerted another one just as powerful! no chance!

so i reset the difficulty to dead centre on the bar(defult i think) and am having a much better time at it. battles are still hard, but if i keep my wits about me i can usually win. more than one enemie at a time? sometimes i can fight two by taking flight and healing and dodging, sometimes. three or four enemies at once? big problem.

i kind of like it this hard though. it forces me into adopting different stratagies, ambush, or poisons etc. usually my best bet is trying to get the attention of a single enemy, isolating it and eliminating one at a time.

the difficulty slider could definatly be a little less sensitive though, lowering it turns enemies into weaklings way too fast and i can't imagine how difficult it could have gotten if i had raised the bar any more then the few clicks i gave it.

[dc4bs]

Hehe... I made a custom class Fighter/Thief "Operative".

 

At level 12, I was working on a bandit cave just west of Skingrad. Found one of the bandits had an axe of 120 disintigrate weapon and 25 disintigrate armor on strike... Broke my sword on the 1st hit. I switch to new swords a few times but then ran out of weapons. Resorted to running away and then turning and hitting him with an arrow and then run some more. Useless. No measurable damage done per hit.

 

Yikes!

 

Even the very few times I DID manage to get a solid hit on him before he broke each sword, his health bar lost maybe 1 or 2 pixels in width.

 

I finaly got him to chase me back to Skingrad hoping the guard at the gate would take him out for me. I get there and whoa!?!? No guards, nobody anywhere... Hmm... Darn! Too early in the morning. Run inside the city and the bandit stays outside. Keep poping in and out of the city to keep the bandit interested so he won't wander away.

 

Finaly, the vinyard owner goes through the gate on his way to the vinyard. I pop out, the bandit charges and this joe-schmoe unarmored, average citizen guy takes the bandit out in 2 quick hits before I could even turn around and run back into the city...

 

Something is VERY wrong with this scenario...

 

Very early in the game, it was good. Monsters were hard and could kill you if you made mistakes but if you were carefull, you could prety reliably win fights.

 

As levels went up, it got harder to survive each fight and by level 12, it was simply rediculous.

 

I finaly just got totaly fed up, wacked the difficulty slider to it's lowest setting and now wander around killing stuff with single shots (stealth 3x damage) to improve my marxmanship. stats

 

As bad as the game balance issues were in Morrowind, this is so much a giant step backwords...

 

I just can't stop myself playing completly cause the eye candy is just way too good. ;)

 

-dc4bs

[Tobriand]

With you there... as yet I haven't touched the difficulty, but I think I'm going to have to by at least one notch; at level 12 I *just* managed Azura's quest (I'd been making the assumption of starving vampires = impossible nutters and avoided the quest for 6 levels). Now I'm either 13 or 14, and I've started tactical levelling (i.e. ensuring +5 on a few stats by levelling minor skills) in a desperate attempt to re-balance the game.

 

It's not working - the second Oblivion gate I tried earlier this evening resulted in about half an hour trying to kill a clanfear. I succeeded in getting past the first one with a combination of a surreptitiously summoned scamp and 3 of the 5 +40 damage cold arrows I'd managed to get for aforementioned vampire quest.

 

The next room had 2 at once... the game may be levelled, but fair it is not.

 

It's not helped as a magic user by the fact that all the spells that could be expected to damage the creatures require a level of destruction or what have you of about 75 - which means at least 3 more levels, which will, in all liklihood, render said spells ineffective!

 

Crazy... utterly crazy. With any luck someone'll release a re-balance mod that levels enemies as though your character were 75% of the level they are - *that* ought to be doable. I do hope it'll work on an already created character, though.... :s

[the_lone_bard]

A touch below 50% and you do 2X damage?! Wow... here I was thinking it was something like a percentage gage for enemy HP or something similar. (as if 45% would be 5% less their standard health)...

 

Why make a long slider like that if it really only has 5 positions?

[Daethar]

Crazy... utterly crazy. With any luck someone'll release a re-balance mod that levels enemies as though your character were 75% of the level they are - *that* ought to be doable. I do hope it'll work on an already created character, though.... :s

 

That would be a good solution.

 

Though right now I seem to be doing alright with the "no obsolete monsters or items mod," but doubtless because I am level 20 something, because God knows that as level 10-14 it just made the game harder.

 

Here are a few fixes I can think of:

1) keep Daedra levelled, but make less of them. If the forces of Oblivion had the same number of Daedroth and Spider Daedra as scamps, why not just have them be the invasion force?

 

2) DO NOT LEVEL HUMANS. You, an adventurer, are on a full time job of gaining levels, to mark your experience in the world. The Pit Dog in the arena should not be the same level of a guy who is out there thwacking demons or...why wouldn't the Blades offer him more money to save the world?

I think, in a huge error in judgement, Bethesda equated the level of an npc to making them a challenge, instead of based on their background, training, etc. Sort of like Gladiator. If you are a seasoned war veteran, you should be able to take on any normal soldier, and only a group of them should stand a chance. Instead of how it is now, where the vet would have to fight for their life against a footsoldier and heaven forbid there be TWO footsoldiers. Or, regarding the monsters/daedra, suddenly every opposing army would be filled with generals and warlords.

 

Oh, and for the people who didn't like how easy Morrowind got, did you ever move the difficulty slider up? Because, just like Morrowind, there is NO way they can keep up this levelled stuff, you will eventually hit the limit and then monsters will stop there while you get better items. This is a temporary and poorly implemented fix. It's like if a lot of people complain that their level 99 Diablo 2 character has too easy a time in Normal difficulty, so Blizzard turns all monsters to level 99 in that difficulty. Bwaaaaa.

 

 

btw, I found a goblin with 700 hitpoints on my way through the sewers the other day. My health is barely over 250. That lets me think they didn't do this leveled monster deal right.

[jdarksun]

btw, I found a goblin with 700 hitpoints on my way through the sewers the other day. My health is barely over 250. That lets me think they didn't do this leveled monster deal right.

Unless you installed a mod, it was a Goblin Warlord. They default to lv. 18 (@ 540 hp) and scale with you, so it's possible that it had 700hp at 20-something.

 

The scaling doesn't take into account your character's health, and rightly so - it's a composite of starting health, level, and END (over time). And since level is the only one of those things that will steadily increase over time, it's a fine value to scale off of.

 

I really don't understand all these complaints about difficulty - after the cakewalk that was Morrowind, this is a treat. I'd much rather have a challenge throughout than a tiny bit of a challenge for a handful of levels at the beginning of the game.

 

If you're having such a hard time, rethinking your character's skills can help greatly. If you don't take skills that level rapidly and don't help in combat (Acrobatics, Alchemy (somewhat), Athletics, Mercantile, Speechcraft...), your character is more likely to have the skills and equipment needed to overcome the game's challenges.