LE Skyrim Overhaul

[Seremoth]

What i'm talking about is more or less, an overhaul. One good example was what OOO did with Oblivion - made it more interesting, tweaked every aspect of scaling and kept it challenging. FWE and MMM for Fallout 3 are also great examples but these 2 did not have to mess with level scaling since Fallout was fine to begin with.

 

First and most important.

 

1) Enemy level scaling/Sense of progression

I have 5 characters most of which are beyond level 30. I believe that levels are not as rewarding as they should be and that enemies (with a few exceptions) scale to your level for the sake of "challenge". In fact same enemies in many occasions are easier to kill with my level 5 warrior than with my level 30 warrior (same build and all, since i have leveled up some non-combat skills a little).

Levels are almost obsolete and sense of progression is not as it should be. As i see it, for example, it would be best that bandits remained bandits and didn't become hard boiled veteral warriors all of a sudden and at the same time that Dragons should be quite impossible to beat when you are not a hard boiled warrior yourself.

 

Desirable characteristics:

 

-Tweaking the scaling system so that levels matter more.

-Powerful enemies impossible to kill at lower levels.

-Weak enemies remain weak.

-Keeping the game challenging (maybe making it even harder) while revamping the enemy scaling system.

Also something very important:

 

Atm you level up by any skill. The result of this is that as you level up any non-combat skill, you actually become progressively weaker, since most enemies level with you. I have tested this extensively.

Also the benefits of most skills are too few compared to this enemy scaling. For example i have found that if you brew a lot of potions, you will end up needing even more, or if you forge an armor it will end up being sometimes worse than the one you wore before.

Only enchanting, can be considered beneficial in the end and that's only for melee characters and only with full enchants. Imo game should reward these skills instead of penalise them.

This, as you understand, renders the non-combat skills more or less useless (except maybe at 100 and not for all) so a simple "alternative" to all of the above is reducing or removing level progress from non-combat skills.

 

2) Item scaling

 

90% of items (and quest rewards) in the game are generated according your level.

 

Desirable characteristics:

 

-Less scaled loot - adjustment according the enemies in the dungeon only if they are not scaled as well.

-More unique loot

-Not scaled merchant items (this especially is ridiculous)

 

 

3) Skill points

 

At the moment individual skill points -perks excluded- give you some minor benefits (armor increases values, weapons increase damage values, magic reduces costs). I have messed with the console to see these benefits and i do believe they could become more interesting/powerful. Not too powerful ofcourse but for example offer a slight increase in every aspect of a skill. Not many great ideas on this one for now but i believe it has many interesting possibilities.

 

-Better scaling with skill points, especially with magic, affect more things

-Inability to advance from novice to adept etc without paying a fee to train for it like in Oblivion

 

4) Realism & other things

 

-Adding adjustable primary needs.

-Adding a sense of danger to the winderness by populating it with more encounters or random events.

-Removing skill-ups for lower level items (like iron dagger or leather bracers from blacksmithing - atm it's ridiculous how easily you can raise it)

-Adjustable skill progress speed.

-Weather condition affect you.

-Fixing dialog lines in the game (it's unacceptable for npcs to not know that you are a master in their own guild)

-Harder pickpocketing

-Harder locks - 0-25 can pick only novice and so on. This should go with "improving the loot of high lvl locked chests".

-Potion cooldown

-*Optional* enchanted weapons have more charges - on master i found that a single fight will deplete a weapon completely

-AI tweaks (for example npc villagers when at dragon attack event)

-Dragon tweaking - Making dragons immune to everything except you and/or buffing them. Frankly i'm tired of seeing bandit chiefs/giants/saber cats slaying dragons by themselves. Also adding some extra abilities to it since even when alone on master difficulty, they are a piece of cake/not particularly epic.

 

 

Can add more if you are interested.

 

 

5) Spell creation like in the previous games - (do not know if this is possible but mages surely could use more flexibility and choices of playstyles). Also magic revamping and making dual cast a little more worthwhile.

 

-Mages become as interesting as they were.

-High level spells and dual casting becomes a little more useful

 

 

Bottomline: Please make Skyrim into more of an rpg and more worthy of its predecessors than it currently is!

 

 

TL:DR - Read the "-" parts only

Edited November 19, 2011 by Seremoth

[Seremoth]

Bump, almost half of the community of Skyrim are against level and item scaling.

[KawaiiSpider]

I like all your ideas so far. In Oblivion I used overhaul mods to do all these things and because of that Oblivion easily became 100x better. Honestly I don't know why Bethesda still bothers with level scaling; it seems like a bad idea no matter how it is implemented.

 

Also if possible I would love it if this overhaul made it so that shops restock, since it would make things more realistic and make playing a thief more fun.

[Eikinskjoldur]

I support the claim for an overhaul like this.

 

Been reading posts where people talk about killing 3 dragons before level 5 and then having trouble dealing with a bandit at 30... that is just stupid and is making me want to shelf this game until a good overhaul comes out

[ruthik]

x2

[Seremoth]

Updated:

 

Played through most of the game and some parts were imo neglected and can use more love.

 

 

MINOR SPOILER: When you become master in each of the 4 guilds.

 

Dialogs must be improved for npcs to recognise you are actually the master of their guild. For example they tell you things like: "hope you don't cause any trouble here newbie" when you are supposed to be their master.

-Also could use some more content when you become their mastera, or a special, unique reward like the power you get on the XXX guild questline end.

 

I like all your ideas so far. In Oblivion I used overhaul mods to do all these things and because of that Oblivion easily became 100x better. Honestly I don't know why Bethesda still bothers with level scaling; it seems like a bad idea no matter how it is implemented.

 

Also if possible I would love it if this overhaul made it so that shops restock, since it would make things more realistic and make playing a thief more fun.

 

They do restock every 48 hours.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Seremoth

[Sangre]

I'm with you on this. Level scaling is evil heresy in TES!

[PsxMeUP]

I totally agree with everything you said. Level scaling is the most idiotic thing. Makes leveling up pointless and even breaks the game on occasion. Skill-ups have broken many of my games since Oblivion. I always grind alchemy and now in Skyrim it's smithing too. By the time I'm 100 in both I can be at level 20-30, which means mudcrabs can kick my ass if my combat levels aren't high enough. To balance the game out I have to download various enchantment mods like unlimited rings. Perfect example of how broken level scaling is, it's quite possible to finish Oblivion's main quest at under level 5. I'm sure the same can be done in Skyrim.

 

I once proposed modders create new metals and use them as way to scale all items, and merely use design makes (elven, dwarven, human) for aesthetics and possibly race bonuses. It would fix a lot of problems. All weapon and armor makes would be available from the start in their iron form. Later, once you level up, you would start to find more steel, mithril, ebony gear - same makes but better metals. I guess Bethesda doesn't want to turn people away cause we do have the freedom to explore the entire world with no barriers. How are you to know that so-and-so cave is for experts? You enter it and have to run cause it's full of giants, which would piss off many players. Well, leave cues at entrances. A cave entrance doesn't need to say "FOR LEVEL 30+", but it can have skulls and dead bodies littering the entrance. The more bodies you got, the more difficult it will likely be.

[Scribblesix]

Whilst I agree that leveling breaks immersion one must consider game balance. I found Skyrim challenging unto around level 12 or so (I suspect mostly because I practiced non combat skills rather than the combat orientated ones. But after that the game has become very easy; despite playing a far from optimal 'build' on the hardest setting (Conanesque barbarian using no equipment more advanced than steel and no magical items) I barely die to anything than elder dragons. Without leveled enemies this game would be rather boring, especially as you are asking for the perk system to be buffed. i suspect most players would prefer a comprehensive mod that makes the game more not less challenging.

 

 

anyway to evaluate your primary point.

 

1) Enemy level scaling/Sense of progression

-Tweaking the scaling system so that levels matter more.

-Powerful enemies impossible to kill at lower levels.

-Weak enemies remain weak.

-Keeping the game challenging (maybe making it even harder) while revamping the enemy scaling system.

 

The last is the most important some ideas off the bat: Halve health and stamina gain, halve combat skill gain. Reduce non-combat skill effectiveness. Completely overhaul blacksmithing. I would like to keep 'vanilla' bandits challenging (in groups perhaps) as you level.

 

2) Item scaling

 

yes, this is horrible glass and ebony items should be incredibly rare, and never available from ordinary merchants without a radial quest of some kind and even then only a few merchants should stock them. They should only ever be dropped by high level bosses and very rarely found in chests. (keep Excalibur locked in a cupboard whilst you wield a pig iron club...) . I think overhauling smithing also ties into this. I would make each smithing 'perk' accessible only after completing a relevant radiant quest.

 

4) Realism & other things

a-Adding adjustable primary needs.

b-Adding a sense of danger to the winderness by populating it with more encounters or random events.

c-Removing skill-ups for lower level items (like iron dagger or leather bracers from blacksmithing - atm it's ridiculous how easily you can raise it)

d-Adjustable skill progress speed.

e-Weather condition affect you.

-Fixing dialog lines in the game

 

a) I think you mean a New Vegas like hardcore mode. Yes. very much wanted.

b) http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6176 but not to everyone's taste; it makes the game much more arcady.

c) good idea, perhaps working with iron, or petty soul gems can get you to skill 40% or so.....

d) Good idea.

e) Hypothermia would be fun something like fallout's radiation perhaps, every item grants a degree of cold resistance (though functioning more like a DR than a % decrease) certain areas and weather conditions are then associated with an environmental cold damage, a snow storm on the plains necessitates a full suit of clothing or nord blood, The throat of the world might need fur lined apparel. whilst swimming amid ice flows magic.

[David Brasher]

An overhaul mod could be rather simple with almost no research and development time. This is what I plan to edit in mine:

 

(1) No leveled weapons. The bandits will almost always use iron and steel weapons.

 

(2) No leveled armor. The bandits will not use advanced armors.

 

(3) No leveled loot. The treasures in dungeons will always be the same level, so that a low level character could find a great treasure or a high level character could find a pathetic treasure.

 

(4) NPCs are at a something more like fixed leveled and do not always match you. (So bandits are very hard to kill when you are level 1 and are very easy to kill when you are level 45.)

 

It seems like in vanilla Skyrim, the creature spawn lists are pretty good and don't need to be tweaked. At low levels, you can encounter bears and sabre cats that will kill you in like two hits unless you run away. When you are high level, you still see wolves and skeevers, so I don't have a plan to edit creature spawn lists.

 

I have wondered about tweaking dragons. The average bear or sabre cat or bandit has a better chance of killing you than the average dragon.

Edited January 28, 2012 by David Brasher