Rebalancing Skyrim

[Fluzing]

There should be some changes in magic, but not making the spells twice as strong or anything, I love playing as a pure destruction mage because its basically putting another difficulty level on top of Master, actually using tactics in a fight is what makes it fun. Not just randomly slashing your way through enemies.

 

No, there should be some changes made to warriors. There is no fun in oneshotting enemies at the highest difficulty.

[Bereskarn]

Smithing seems very overpowered right now. With a +smithing necklace, ring, and pair of gloves I found, each one of my two legendary swords can almost two shot most non-boss enemies, and my armor takes attacks as if they were rocks flung at a tank, and neither my one-handed nor heavy armor skills are near 100 (I am playing on Master). It seems I've reached that point that you always reach eventually in any Bethesda game, where you are basically The God Emperor of Mankind reincarnated. I think that a mod that increases the amount of enemies that you fight by a lot would be a good solution to increasing the overall difficulty of the game. I also think that there should be more problems with overspecializing your character, so you can't simply choose the best of the best things, be good at them all, and impossible to defeat. We need more things like heavy armor increasing chance of being detected while sneaking or spells taking more magicka to cast so that heavy armor would be a lot more useful for warrior type characters who get hit a lot, and so that other types of characters would be more likely to choose light armor. Enchanting and Smithing need to be turned down a notch. +40% damage with bows or one handed weapons at 70 enchanting is insane. The enchantments should be more like "+15 archery skill" than "+30% bow damage."

[RavingRavec]

Smithing seems very overpowered right now. With a +smithing necklace, ring, and pair of gloves I found, each one of my two legendary swords can almost two shot most non-boss enemies, and my armor takes attacks as if they were rocks flung at a tank, and neither my one-handed nor heavy armor skills are near 100 (I am playing on Master). It seems I've reached that point that you always reach eventually in any Bethesda game, where you are basically The God Emperor of Mankind reincarnated. I think that a mod that increases the amount of enemies that you fight by a lot would be a good solution to increasing the overall difficulty of the game. I also think that there should be more problems with overspecializing your character, so you can't simply choose the best of the best things, be good at them all, and impossible to defeat. We need more things like heavy armor increasing chance of being detected while sneaking or spells taking more magicka to cast so that heavy armor would be a lot more useful for warrior type characters who get hit a lot, and so that other types of characters would be more likely to choose light armor. Enchanting and Smithing need to be turned down a notch. +40% damage with bows or one handed weapons at 70 enchanting is insane. The enchantments should be more like "+15 archery skill" than "+30% bow damage."

 

45% 1h 45% 2h 45% arch 28% reduced cost in anything, 28% magic resistance.

 

All percentage enchants should be applied once > Not being able to stack on eachother.

 

Problem solved, not hard to implement.

 

Edit: Tested this with my own gear and it would make 1h weapons deal about 150-200 damage and bows +-180, all with the best smithing improvement and 100 skill in 1h and archery. Thats a lot better then the current 420 dmg on both 1h weapons and bows.

Edited November 23, 2011 by RavingRavec

[BladyKillher]

My proposition how would I like armors to be balanced/used.

I managed to found data and get some changes/tweaks with fallout tessnip on skyrim.esm for stamina drain but can't get it for speed changes, jumping, falling.

Does anybody knows where I should search for those?

 

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Movement

 

walking:

speed should be just a tiny bit faster than it is now but same for all wear/armor, no stamina drain.

 

running:

clothes - speed same as it is now, no stamina drain.

light armor - same as now, but drains very small amount of stamina (should have no problem in combat but for longer travel you would have to take rest/potion from time to time)

heavy armor - slower speed and drains small amount of stamina (not to much to be combat inefficient but you should rely on horse for traveling)

 

sprinting

clothes - speed as it is now but more stamina drain than it is now

light armor - speed should be little bit slower, stamina drain between heavy and clothes

heavy armor - slower and drasticaly drains stamina (to be used mainly for closing-up to enemies in short distances, you should rely more on enemy coming to you)

 

jumping

clothes - takes very low stamina, not much to notice but enough to discourage bunnyhop spamming.

light armor - midway between heavy and clothes

heavy armor - drastical hit on stamina, jumping should be used only outside of combat.

 

falling

clothes - little reduced than it is now but you are light, nimble and no extra pressure on muscles...

light - you are still kinda agile but extra weight gives more force for your muscles to counter/absorb on landing

heavy - drastical hit,

 

sneaking (sneaking should be lot harder than it is now.)

clothes - clothes has no impact on sneaking. (maybe there should be a little bonus to hide visually (not sound) if you wear plain clothes like dresses, shoes etc "useless" crap because they look lot like enviroinment. Magical robes shouldn't have that since they have magic on them and mages are to proud to be sneaking around :))

light armor - you can still sneak but should remain in walking mode while sneak if you are going for a melee sneak attack.

heavy armor - lot of noise even when walking in sneak. heavy armor should be for more direct approach, never for sneaking into critical hit. Sneaking would be possible if you try to evade been discovered but never to engage into combat.

 

weapon drawn

There should be notable difference between sheathed/drawn movement speed because if you draw weapon out your hands are encumbered by item and normal walking/running/sprinting is interupted by it. Heavier/bigger weapons should have more impact.

 

----

Goal:

 

clothes

Gives you lot of mobilty and ability to run dodge, jump, chase, in-out of combat etc ninja stuff but you have no physical protection and must rely on magic protection and/or your player skill to avoid been hit. You can easily sprint and bunnyhop your way out of fight.

 

Light armor

gives some protection if you get hit but you still rely on your player skills and magic. You won't be able to chase so much and if things get tough you can still wiggle your way out of fight but will have to use more tactical retreat due to stamina drain with sprint.

You can sneak up to someone but have to do it slowly.

 

Heavy armor

You have lot of protection and are made for fight and endure hitting. With no armor and light armor you can run away if things get tough but with heavy armor running away will only make you tired, killing/disabling/discouraging opponent is a way to escape death.

Chasing someone or getting sneak/critical hit in melee would be impossible.

[Fluzing]

My proposition how would I like armors to be balanced/used.

I managed to found data and get some changes/tweaks with fallout tessnip on skyrim.esm for stamina drain but can't get it for speed changes, jumping, falling.

 

"Lots of text"

 

 

Your changes would not balance any of the problems listed here. They would only make the game less enjoyable for heavy armor users.

[RavingRavec]

My proposition how would I like armors to be balanced/used.

I managed to found data and get some changes/tweaks with fallout tessnip on skyrim.esm for stamina drain but can't get it for speed changes, jumping, falling.

 

"Lots of text"

 

 

Your changes would not balance any of the problems listed here. They would only make the game less enjoyable for heavy armor users.

 

Yea its not really going to change a f***ing thing lol

[Hectire]

Once you can combine dragon shouts like Become Ethereal with things like Fire Storm, any enemy can be overcome with a bit of skill and timing. Alduin fell before my Lightning Storm and summoned minions in mere moments. Magic, if developed properly, is plenty good enough to play the game with. And, because this is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, that's all I care about.

 

You think it is OK that you can defeat the last boss as if it were a normal mob, because it is a SINGLE PLAYER GAME? Every game needs balance especially RPGs.

 

Where did I say he died faster than, or as fast as, normal mobs? I didn't. "Mere moments" is a pretty ambiguous amount of time, which generally implies it "wasn't very long." But, it also implies that it was not instantaneous, and that it took longer than "seconds."

 

Also, this thread is about magic being too weak. So, the Alduin example was my counterexample illustrating why it is not weak when used properly. Your incredulous response makes next to no sense in this context. In fact, it's a bit of a non sequitur.

 

Out of curiosity, what level were you? Once you get 40+ as a mage IN COMPARISON to everything else, you have a much much harder time, in other words : Underpowered. Wether enchanting is a must or not, i would say yes, others may disagree. But if I spam the strongest destruction spells on a single opponent for about 20 seconds straight they die. If I play my warrior I 1 shot master difficulty mobs, and even bosses with 1h swords, 1h axes, and bow.

 

There should be some changes in magic, but not making the spells twice as strong or anything, I love playing as a pure destruction mage because its basically putting another difficulty level on top of Master, actually using tactics in a fight is what makes it fun. Not just randomly slashing your way through enemies.

 

The disagreement I have with this logic, is that because it is a single player game, you should only weigh how well you do versus the environment, not other hypothetical characters which do not exist as far as that particular save game is concerned. In multiplayer games, balance is much more of a comparison between what different players can do. In single player games, the comparison is weighted more heavily to how one fares versus the game's content. If mages are overpowered, and melee is MORE overpowered, then BOTH are overpowered. Mages are not by comparison underpowered in this scenario. That type of logic only makes sense in a multiplayer environment where the player community will tend to exclude classes/builds viewed as less powerful. In a single player game, being effective enough to be chosen for a group is a non-issue, and so the measure of overpowered/underpowered is a matter of whether or not a particular build can plow through the content without gratuitous challenge. That said, I've found my experience as a mage to be completely fine, and perhaps even a little bit easy. The game may need tweaks, yes, but it is a bit misleading to call destruction "underpowered."

 

I'm also curious which enemies take 20 seconds to die, and which spell you're using against them? What level are you, and how many levels have you invested into Magicka?

[Fluzing]

 

 

 

Where did I say he died faster than, or as fast as, normal mobs? I didn't. "Mere moments" is a pretty ambiguous amount of time, which generally implies it "wasn't very long." But, it also implies that it was not instantaneous, and that it took longer than "seconds."

 

Mere moments sounds pretty fast to me. It is the final boss for crying out loud. Anything under a 10 minute battle is not epic enough for my liking.

[Physika]

Mages arent powered enough? Im sorry what?

 

I STOPPED playing my archmage because the game got too easy for me, and rolled a pure melee instead, and i ONLY play on Master difficulty.

 

Yes mana is a *censored* at first, which is what staves are for, but once ur robes are passing 100% mana regen, AND you have the mask that adds another 100% mana regen the game gets EASY. Dual cast fireballs alone will kill any opponent in the game with ease.

 

Not to mention the benefits of 100 enchanting means u can get one school for FREE!!

 

-Exo

 

Out of curiosity, what level were you? Once you get 40+ as a mage IN COMPARISON to everything else, you have a much much harder time, in other words : Underpowered. Wether enchanting is a must or not, i would say yes, others may disagree. But if I spam the strongest destruction spells on a single opponent for about 20 seconds straight they die. If I play my warrior I 1 shot master difficulty mobs, and even bosses with 1h swords, 1h axes, and bow.

 

There should be some changes in magic, but not making the spells twice as strong or anything, I love playing as a pure destruction mage because its basically putting another difficulty level on top of Master, actually using tactics in a fight is what makes it fun. Not just randomly slashing your way through enemies.

 

Honestly I think magic is fine. On master difficulty if magicka didn't run out during a fight then I would be surprised. If you're playing on master it should take more skill than spamming a single spell to defeat an opponent. If you're also willing to use exploits (100 smithing with iron daggers, 0% mana cost per spell, etc) then you are only making the game more boring for yourself. Isn't the reason you play master difficulty to challenge yourself and have fun? Rather than trying to turn Master difficulty into Normal difficulty, just play as if you normally would and don't look for exploits and have fun. I currently have a mage at level 16 on master difficulty and it is quite challenging, but I manage to keep on going. No exploits here.

 

I do think melee is over powered though, from my experience. I played up to level 56 on master difficulty with one-handed dual weapons. I had 112 damage on each of my legendary daedric swords and they were very powerful, especially when combined with elemental fury (didn't enchant them because of this). I didn't want to buff my weapons too much with smithing bonuses. I could kill a lot faster with my swords than with my bow. My bow obviously had other advantages, so maybe it's balanced with archery. I never used companions either since it kind of ruined it for me on master. They basically tanked all the damage while I did DPS. Made it too easy.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Physika

[Fluzing]

Rather than trying to turn Master difficulty into Normal difficulty, just play as if you normally would and don't look for exploits and have fun. I currently have a mage at level 16 on master difficulty and it is quite challenging, but I manage to keep on going. No exploits here.

 

A great part of the fun of RPGing for me and many others is optimizing your character. As soon as a game becomes broken when you do that, it is the game's fault and not the player. Holding yourself back is extremely frustrating and is not a sollution for lack of difficulty. Master difficulty should be balanced with the best players in mind (hence the name "Master"). It should assume that you will use the maximum of your abilities. You call smiting an exploit, but it is has been designed to function this way by the programmers, so it is not an exploit, it is an example of bad design and it is up to the community to fix this.

Edited November 25, 2011 by Fluzing