LE More Realistic Enemy Scaling

[Deleted7922709User]

I'm a big fan of mods that increase the difficulty of the game. In vanilla, enemies were simply to easy to stomp on, and the only way to make it harder was arbitrarily making the DB weaker and making all enemies tougher/stronger.

 

So a lot of the difficulty mods cause level-scaled enemies to show up earlier, or bring in new high level enemies, but they hold something in common: higher level enemies always have way, way more HP and do way, way more damage. An enemy that one-shots me takes 40 sword swings to kill? Seriously? Meanwhile an enemy from a lower level I can kill in one or two hits does almost no damage, even if the Dragonborn isn't wearing any armor.

 

That seems really silly.

 

I feel like all human NPCs should be roughly as durable. A level 1 bandit may be a level 1 character, but he's still a human. He shouldn't be exponentially less durable than a level 30 bandit. He also shouldn't do exponentially less damage. On the other side of the same coin, a level 30 bandit shouldn't be able to one-shot my level 19 character and take 40 sword swings to kill. He's a bandit, not a demigod. But of course, a level 30 bandit should still be stronger overall than a level 1 bandit. He should do more damage, have better HP and equipment, but maybe he shouldn't have 600 HP while his earlier equivalent has less than 50? No healthy adult human is six times as resilient to swords and fire than any other healthy human.

 

 

If anyone wants to take this project on or can point my towards something that sort of addresses this, I'd be really grateful!

[DaemonGrin]

Gotta ask what difficulty are you playing on, are you using overly powerful weapons, did you level enchanting and smithing at the start? I only ask because at level one on legendary using vanilla weapons and immersive weapons mod not power-leveling enchanting or smithing, the only thing I can sometimes manage to 2 shot kill are skeevers with usually a 2h weapon. Sneak attacks at lvl one going through Bleak Falls Barrow took near 8 shots with long bow and iron arrows including the x2.0 dmg bonus each hit to take down draugr, more with restless. I've only seen the difficulty take a hit in the 30's and that's because I had impact and enchanted gear nearly giving me infinite mana. I totally agree with you the balance is not there but for different reasons mainly a don't think a Forsworn Ravager, Bandit Chief, etc should be stronger then Dragons otherwise why the hell does skyrim even need a dragonborn just send in the 4th tier bandits etc lol.

 

I hope someone helps you out,

Geoff

[Deleted7922709User]

Gotta ask what difficulty are you playing on, are you using overly powerful weapons, did you level enchanting and smithing at the start? I only ask because at level one on legendary using vanilla weapons and immersive weapons mod not power-leveling enchanting or smithing, the only thing I can sometimes manage to 2 shot kill are skeevers with usually a 2h weapon. Sneak attacks at lvl one going through Bleak Falls Barrow took near 8 shots with long bow and iron arrows including the x2.0 dmg bonus each hit to take down draugr, more with restless. I've only seen the difficulty take a hit in the 30's and that's because I had impact and enchanted gear nearly giving me infinite mana. I totally agree with you the balance is not there but for different reasons mainly a don't think a Forsworn Ravager, Bandit Chief, etc should be stronger then Dragons otherwise why the hell does skyrim even need a dragonborn just send in the 4th tier bandits etc lol.

 

I hope someone helps you out,

Geoff

 

I was playing on Master with Skyre dungeon scaling, Ace, Duel, and ASIS with the Uncapper. Right now I'm on level 19. I had to turn it down to Expert because half the enemies could 1-shot me and took a ridiculous amount of time to kill, especially since shield bash was more or less useless.

 

I don't mind higher level enemies, but a higher level enemy shouldn't drop me in 1 hit when it's a non-boss. I agree about dragons. Even with Deadly Dragons on, dragons are still easier to kill than say, a Falmer nightstalker or whatnot. Why? Because dragons roughly scale with the player. Occasionally you get caught off-guard and have to fight a frost dragon or something before you hit level 20, but those kinds of encounters are rare rather than being the norm.

 

I think the dungeon scaling has the most to do with it because I don't think T3ndo had

[Mebantiza]

So what is it your after exactly? For myself, at this point, I think Skyrim is fundamentally broken for me. Far too easy. Ive been using HLE mod and SIC, Legendary, and the games still too damn easy. For an example, I just went through Dead mans Respite@L65. All those Draugr Reapers and Deathlords? They have like 1500hp and all I have to do is stand there and swing away with my 1 sword(51 Skill in One Hand, with my follower helping out-and they just die. Something is so wrong, but I cant put my finger on it it or seem to actually make Skyrim's creatures somewhat difficult to kill. Once you make your crafting breakthroughs in Alchemy, enc and Smithing, you make sets of uber gear -hand out a set to your follower, and the game becomes something of a joke-at least for me.

 

I can tell the problem does not seem to lie with the mobs per se, but rather, it seems to me, both Follower offensive power and my own defensive power is scaling way out of alignment with the mobs. During the end battle in Dead Mans I got so frustrated I took off my characters BP -dropped AC down to 379 and still at took, at worst, slight damage. No point was I in any real danger of dying even with multiple boss Draugr around. So either my mods aren't really working anymore-or Ive gotten too good at modded vanilla skyrim to make it remotely challenging anymore.

 

Of course, having light and heavy armor perk trees as broken as they doesn't help one bit. I dont use any 'cheat' mods of any kind.*armor mods-but its easy dual enchant Armor sets that make you basically invulnerable to all but the hardest mobs, even at modest levels. Well, I do use lots of mod armor-and It seems to me, the AC boosts on a lot of them do tend to get way out of hand. For an example of how absurd things get, I can craft belts and cloaks that yield stupidly high AC. End result is total AC over 1000 easy. That tends to wreck scaling pretty much right there imo.

 

Skyre *maybe* fixes enemy scaling and difficulty? But I am not using as the mod is abandoned(though patched by 3rd parties). So yes, I agree we do need a mod that reliably scales enemies, but I think the problem is deeper. I think too many things are not really scaling well. Problem with Skyre is I don feel like experimenting with a complete overhaul and spending weeks and months trying to figure out how to make an overhaul work and the endless patching and researching necessary to make it compatible with what I like to use now.

 

So, is the problem this?

-Outdated or poorly conceived 'difficulty' mods that need to be removed or totally redone?

-Followers too generally OP(especially duel-wielders)

-Modders making armors with too high AC?

-Is scaling in skyrim just totally borked to begin with?

-weak sauce dragons and so on.

-Broken and OP perk trees?(cough Im looking and you sneak)

 

I suppose one way to 'fix' things would be to run around the entire game with Iron daggers and the same for your follower, but that seems pretty silly as well. But anytime I see someone say they are having 'trouble' and finding Skyrim 'too difficult', I have to wonder if they are talking about the same game?

 

Games just too damn easy-or my mods are broke...I donno.....

 

We need an Ultra-Ultra Legendary perhaps?

[Deleted7922709User]

So what is it your after exactly? For myself, at this point, I think Skyrim is fundamentally broken for me. Far too easy. Ive been using HLE mod and SIC, Legendary, and the games still too damn easy. For an example, I just went through Dead mans Respite@L65. All those Draugr Reapers and Deathlords? They have like 1500hp and all I have to do is stand there and swing away with my 1 sword(51 Skill in One Hand, with my follower helping out-and they just die. Something is so wrong, but I cant put my finger on it it or seem to actually make Skyrim's creatures somewhat difficult to kill. Once you make your crafting breakthroughs in Alchemy, enc and Smithing, you make sets of uber gear -hand out a set to your follower, and the game becomes something of a joke-at least for me.

 

I can tell the problem does not seem to lie with the mobs per se, but rather, it seems to me, both Follower offensive power and my own defensive power is scaling way out of alignment with the mobs. During the end battle in Dead Mans I got so frustrated I took off my characters BP -dropped AC down to 379 and still at took, at worst, slight damage. No point was I in any real danger of dying even with multiple boss Draugr around. So either my mods aren't really working anymore-or Ive gotten too good at modded vanilla skyrim to make it remotely challenging anymore.

 

Of course, having light and heavy armor perk trees as broken as they doesn't help one bit. I dont use any 'cheat' mods of any kind.*armor mods-but its easy dual enchant Armor sets that make you basically invulnerable to all but the hardest mobs, even at modest levels. Well, I do use lots of mod armor-and It seems to me, the AC boosts on a lot of them do tend to get way out of hand. For an example of how absurd things get, I can craft belts and cloaks that yield stupidly high AC. End result is total AC over 1000 easy. That tends to wreck scaling pretty much right there imo.

 

Skyre *maybe* fixes enemy scaling and difficulty? But I am not using as the mod is abandoned(though patched by 3rd parties). So yes, I agree we do need a mod that reliably scales enemies, but I think the problem is deeper. I think too many things are not really scaling well. Problem with Skyre is I don feel like experimenting with a complete overhaul and spending weeks and months trying to figure out how to make an overhaul work and the endless patching and researching necessary to make it compatible with what I like to use now.

 

So, is the problem this?

-Outdated or poorly conceived 'difficulty' mods that need to be removed or totally redone?

-Followers too generally OP(especially duel-wielders)

-Modders making armors with too high AC?

-Is scaling in skyrim just totally borked to begin with?

-weak sauce dragons and so on.

-Broken and OP perk trees?(cough Im looking and you sneak)

 

I suppose one way to 'fix' things would be to run around the entire game with Iron daggers and the same for your follower, but that seems pretty silly as well. But anytime I see someone say they are having 'trouble' and finding Skyrim 'too difficult', I have to wonder if they are talking about the same game?

 

Games just too damn easy-or my mods are broke...I donno.....

 

We need an Ultra-Ultra Legendary perhaps?

 

The easy thing to do is to just avoid going with the cheese options and keep your character within some bounds of normalcy, but of course that means that you're going to get one-shotted by a lot of enemies. That's what I do, and boss enemies can be frustrating, but regular enemies feel balanced. The trouble is finding balanced enemies.