Total Realism Overhaul

[wolfstriker]

Papstalin,just what I have been thinking.It needs to become realistic is a good way of looking at it.Take example you swinging a sword starting at its base damage of 10.This goes up to around 60 when you add in 5ranks of the damage multiplier a top notch Daedric weapon and 30 points of frost damage,not to mention smithing and how that ups the damage potential to crazy high levels.Instead a system that stops the damage potential you can give so that the Glass armor everywhere effect doesn't happen(personally I love the realistic armors).So you require say 6 swings of a short sword to take down an unarmored human and when you are at max skill level and best equipment it takes 2 swings or one lucky critical shot that DBLS damage and hence one shot one kill but rare to happen.Then you make armor just give small protection and voila a nice system that will go the whole game.Just throwing numbers out there and the system will have to be very well thought out.

 

Now you would think that it will become boring since your not really growing in power but there is two things to remember.One is that you make the system based kinda like D&D where you get one extra point of damage as you level so its a very slow progress and you'll start to slowly feel a difference with a say 10 swing fight now 8 and now 5 etc etc.Also,the game auto scales and if you notice some battles are super sweet and hit the perfect combo.This is what you want and so your just keeping it real so that you do not need to have Dark Knights sitting around in taverns everywhere.

 

I think that shouts should be kept super strong in line with you being a dragon slayer and all but have them not effective against anything else.

 

Food that affects stamina.This could be made so that when you start to get hungry the stamina meter drops to half at full hunger.Makes visiting taverns before embarking or even hunting a necessity.

 

Removal of health regen and make a system that you cannot quick save and have to reach certain points like a tavern,a bed roll of enemies you just killed or going thru any door etc.Kinda like Dark or Demon Souls but a little less harsh since the Skyrim is an easier game to play.Then make potions your health source and you will have to learn alchemy then.If you do away with being able to carry an whole assortemnt of armors and weapons you can then make alchemy actually easy to do and so your constantly scavenging for items since you'll need certain potions at certain times(resist frost,boost stamina,poisons etc)

 

There is a mod out that allows you to visually wear a bow,two hander and two one handers at same time.This should be your carry capacity for weapons IMO. :)

 

Maybe up the speeds of forest animals and so make the hunters you see worthwhile.Would become super hard if say an Elk is now twice its speed it is now and slightly larger danger zone so that it doesn't allow you to get too close.

Edited November 21, 2011 by wolfstriker

[GreekIrish]

I have an idea for the mana. Find a way to make the spell sound sound like it's slowing down. I could easily do this. I can just run them through a time stretch and as you got low on mana, the sound of the spell would lower in pitch and slow down. I could mess around with the EQ too to make it more noticeable. I would happily do it for you. You'd just have to find a way to implement it.

[VreyAar]

@VreyAar

sorry, im no modder or a litterate person in terms of writing softwere. wasnt aware this idea means you need to phisically change many stats and gear on each single mob in the game. I can see how that can be challenging :D

 

anyway, were just brainstorming here, we all want the same end result.

I can only guess that variables can be changed for each "type" of creatures, whatever that stands for in Skyrim, myself.

 

I was just speaking theoretically. How the dirty work is done is inconsequential for those purposes.

Its an old dilemma about differences between those two types of RPG design.

 

Which of course, the superior version is winning, by borging the inferior version. :)

I guess its a bit of satisfaction, watching it, for me.

 

 

I think that shouts should be kept super strong in line with you being a dragon slayer and all but have them not effective against anything else.

Even i know this would be totally against the core of the whole lore of the game and setting in general.

Edited November 21, 2011 by VreyAar

[GreekIrish]

Btw, I'll make an audio sample of what I mean, to see if you like it.

[Raddra]

In regards to hunting, I think animals should be severely slowed when hit by an arrow.

 

Its pretty silly to sink an arrow deeply into an elks thigh, only to have it gracefully run away at top speed. I mean, I've never gone hunting before but I imagine an arrow through the thigh would impair an animals ability to run.

Edited November 21, 2011 by Raddra

[Bearget]

The trouble with completely removing levels, and the reason I backed away from the idea, is as follows:

• I think we all agree that a bandit should pose a legitimate threat at any point in the game, whether you've just started out or maxed all your skills.
  
• That said, the level of threat should decrease as you improve your skills (not just your gear). Otherwise, what's the point of increasing skills.
  
• If you have no leveling, then you are stuck with static enemies - the balance of difficulty will not change as you grow more powerful.
  
• On the one hand, this will allow the player to experience a feeling of growing more powerful as time goes on.
  
• On the other, if the player becomes too powerful, then he will only rarely encounter enemies which provide a real challenge, and will spend the rest of the time fighting easier battles.
  
• Obviously this issue can be fixed by turning up the frequency of difficult encounters - but then we have the opposite problem, where early players will encounter difficult fights frustratingly often.
  

 

I think there are a two possible solutions:

1. Keep level-ups, but use them for only two things: determining when a player gets a new perk, and adjusting the encounter tables for enemy types so that less-challenging enemies become less frequent as players advance, and more challenging ones more so.
   
2. Remove level-ups entirely, and use static encounter rates - players have an equal chance of running into advanced Draugr or Dremora at the beginning of the game as later on, and it's up to them to decide whether a particular enemy should be engaged. Perk points are delivered just as often (every 10 skill-ups), but without any other fanfare.
   

 

Both options are less-than-perfect. Levels carry with them certain baggage - the leveling of merchants' inventories, for one (though I imagine that'd be a relatively easy fix), but more problematic is the difficulty encountered by players who primarily focus on non-combat skills. The enemies get harder, but the player's ability to deal with them does not. On the flip-side, the no-level system does not necessarily allow for as dynamic an increase in challenge as many players might like.

 

I'm admittedly uncertain about which system is easier to work with, but at this point I'm leaning towards the former. Attempts at up-balancing the impact of non-combat skills might be enough to eliminate the inequality there. Alternatively, skills could be sorted into "combat-oriented" and "other" - perks would be achieved just as now, counting all skills (so total number of perks remains the same), but enemy leveling would be based primarily on the skill levels in the former category (not entirely though, to account for better gear from enchanting/smithing/etc.).

 

Still, I don't think it's a black-and-white issue. I think there's a lot of value in the argument that Skyrim shouldn't revolve around the player's character, and that it makes little sense for initially-rare enemies to become more common just because your character needs something stronger to fight against. Like I said, for now I think the former system is easier to work with, and should perhaps be the short-term goal. Further out though, I'd definitely be interested in seeing a no-levels system, and testing whether it's possible to balance things so that it a) is neither too hard for beginners nor too easy for late-game play, and b) still allows the player to feel as though his character is becoming more powerful over time.

[CampanaAliquanta]

In regards to hunting, I think animals should be severely slowed when hit by an arrow.

 

Its pretty silly to sink an arrow deeply into an elks thigh, only to have it gracefully run away at top speed. I mean, I've never gone hunting before but I imagine an arrow through the thigh would impair an animals ability to run.

 

An easier way to do this would be for an arrow to cause slow hp degeneration (to emulate bleeding) and as the hunter it's up to you to follow it until it's in such a weakened state that you can actually catch it and kill it. That's how hunting deer with a bow and arrow would go irl.

[ogridum]

Rare things should be rare and not scale to player level.

 

Vendors shouldnt spawn things out of thin air.

 

Vendor shouldnt sell items that are too valuable or too powerfull and even if they get persuaded to sell them it should be costly. Maybe requiring a friendship level, stealing it from their chests, doing a quest for them, intimidating or killing them.

 

All npcs in the world should buy and sell goods.

Npcs should loot, hunt, farm, mine, trade. Extract resources from the game world. Then take it to vendors and only then those would be accessible to the players.

 

Want to talk about realism? Well, start by making NPCs interact with the world like the player.

Edited November 22, 2011 by ogridum

[ogridum]

The main point is.

 

MAKE A BALANCED RULESET FOR ME TO MINMAX ON.

 

 

This way we keep our exploitative min maxer style, WHILE STILL BEING BALANCED. Thats the goal of any balanced mod.

 

The default game has no balance for min maxer/exploity gameplay style in mind.

 

So Im looking for a mod that balances my min maxer playstyle.

 

SO I DONT HAVE TO REFRAIN FROM CHANGING MY PLAYSTYLE WHILE STILL BEING BALANCED.

 

If Im not balanced, then it ruins my experience.

If I have to refrain from min maxing, then it ruins my experience as well.

 

One cannot "not use enchanting, not use blacksmithing, not use alchemy, not spend perk points, not use sneak attacks, not buy from vendors, etc". Having to refrain from using the game tools at my disposal to the best of my ability because they are not balanced with my intelect/play style in mind ruins the experience. Its like the game was made for someone that is still developing its cognitive abilities. How can I take it seriously and derive any sense of achievement from it, if its not even attempting to give me a challenge?

 

In an RPG what I want is to do the best in my ability to overcome difficulty. In the default game, if I do that, I dont derive any fun/pleasure because its utterly broken, not thought out and designed for balancing.

 

So balance it for me. So I can keep my playstyle, this time, without ruining the experience.

Edited November 22, 2011 by ogridum

[wesmoore35]

Heres a few more ideas

 

1.Armors effect the damage you can take. so if some one is wearing no armor they should die in one or two hits

2.Hypothermia so if your wearing no armor or clothes you will get sick

3.the alchemy affects of food onley come out if you use an alchemy kit so they wont have the magic effects with out extracting them via an alchemy station.

I like your plan really good ideas