Leveling system fix (Idea)

[Chatt7]

New Leveling System

As you level up, a lot of the enemies scale with you. For example Bandits are replaced with Bandit Outlaws and so on. Skyrim does this by checking your level and scaling unexplored areas to that. As you visit an unexplored area for the first time the difficulty scaling will stop and be locked for that area. (one of) The problem(s) with this difficulty scaling is that it checks your overall level. For me this meant that when I started putting perks into non-combat perks such as smithing and enchanting around level 20, the enemies grew stronger than me. This was frustrating as f*** as I felt I grew weaker from becoming a better blacksmith. It made me regret going for those perks and made me realise that leveling up blacksmithing, enchanting or alchemy will only make the game harder,,,, which made no sense to me.

 

That is I why I sat down and tryed to figure out a different leveling system that would remove this problem.

I've made the system so it's possible to test it through console commands. Actually you only need:

player.addperk <Perk Code>

It has to be mentioned that I haven't played a pure mage so far, so it might not work as well for that class.

Feel free to test it out yourself and reply with your feedback/ideas. I would really like to mod this myself, though I'll need some guidance.

 

The main idea is to split skills into groups and have you level each group separately.

The skills are split into 3 groups:

Main Skills

Secondary Skills

Production Skills

 

Main Skills

The main skills are those which should improve your combat abilities directly. You may place the perk you are used to get at every level-up in one of these skill trees:

• Conjuration
  
• Destruction
  
• Heavy Armor
  
• Light Armor
  
• Block
  
• One-Handed
  
• Two-Handed
  
• Archery
  
• Sneak

 

Secondary Skills

The secondary skills are those which are often overlooked, because they aren't the best. You are given an extra perk every 3rd, 4th or 5th level (has to be tested).

• Alteration
  
• Illusion
  
• Restoration
  
• Lockpicking
  
• Pickpocket
  
• Speech

 

Production Skills

The production skills are those, which are used for creating/improving items. The way I would have wanted this to be leveled, would be to give the player a perk, each time the total skill-level of these three skill trees had been increased by a certain amount (For example, if a total of 20 skill-levels are needed for a new perk, you could level smithing 10 levels, alchemy 5 and enchanting 5, to gain one perk, which could be placed among the three skill trees). But as this is really hard to simulate using console commands, I'll be testing it with the same perk award system as the secondary skills. Which means that an ekstra perk is awarded every 3rd, 4th or 5th level (or something like that).

• Smithing
  
• Alchemy
  
• Enchanting

[Guss]

dont understand, everyone is saying its to hard or so easy at master? i play adept from lvl 1 -15 i was going all out in stealth skills then 16-25 so far into warrior i have put 3 points in bs, 2 enchanting, 2 lock picking and only times i have issues is with the super mages or maybe a dragon here or there. currently wearing non-upgraded blades armor. confused by your leveling system here....

 

really all you need is potions, upgraded enchanted weapon, and upgraded armor then you are good as gold, with some points in the skills you are currently using the most.

[Wazzpants]

Smithing and enchanting are both overpowered once they're high level. I was playing a mage type character for most of the game. I'd die a lot, playing on the second hardest difficulty but it wasn't overly hard. Around level 25 I got my smithing and enchanting to 100. I made some smithing clothes that gave me I think 100% better smithing combined. Then made my dragon scale armor, upgraded it and enchanted it so all of my destruction spells were free to cast and my one handed weapon damage was 120% more plus extra health, mana and mana regen. The rest of the game was super easy. I never had a problem fighting anything ever again. I did all of the storm cloak missions after that and I could easily take down entire forts/cities by myself. The dragon fights were a joke. I made some daedric weapons that did around 300 base damage plus 69 fire and 69 lightning damage on top of that. When you have two of those you can kill a giant in one combo, and I only had 3 perk points in one handed weapons.

I don't think there are any better items in the game than the ones you can make when you have 100 in each of those skills, and they're actually really easy to level up if you do them at the same time. All you need is about $6000 for the smithing and just travel around to the different smiths and buy their iron and leather and make iron daggers. I'm not sure how much you need for enchanting, but I'd just buy all of the petty soul gems I found, then enchanted the daggers I made and sold them back for way more than what I paid for the ingredients.

The paralyze enchant gives you the most money, and then the steal health one.

[Chatt7]

dont understand, everyone is saying its to hard or so easy at master? i play adept from lvl 1 -15 i was going all out in stealth skills then 16-25 so far into warrior i have put 3 points in bs, 2 enchanting, 2 lock picking and only times i have issues is with the super mages or maybe a dragon here or there. currently wearing non-upgraded blades armor. confused by your leveling system here....

 

really all you need is potions, upgraded enchanted weapon, and upgraded armor then you are good as gold, with some points in the skills you are currently using the most.

 

Im not saying the game in general is hard or easy... Im saying the game becomes harder as you level up your non-combat abilities, which makes no sense to me.

if I hadn't enchanted my armor and leveled up my black smithing i would have been better off...

[ThomasQ]

lol Wazpans.. If you're going to make and wear one of the sickest armors in the game, then put it on master :P

[Chatt7]

Smithing and enchanting are both overpowered once they're high level. I was playing a mage type character for most of the game. I'd die a lot, playing on the second hardest difficulty but it wasn't overly hard. Around level 25 I got my smithing and enchanting to 100. I made some smithing clothes that gave me I think 100% better smithing combined. Then made my dragon scale armor, upgraded it and enchanted it so all of my destruction spells were free to cast and my one handed weapon damage was 120% more plus extra health, mana and mana regen. The rest of the game was super easy. I never had a problem fighting anything ever again. I did all of the storm cloak missions after that and I could easily take down entire forts/cities by myself. The dragon fights were a joke. I made some daedric weapons that did around 300 base damage plus 69 fire and 69 lightning damage on top of that. When you have two of those you can kill a giant in one combo, and I only had 3 perk points in one handed weapons.

I don't think there are any better items in the game than the ones you can make when you have 100 in each of those skills, and they're actually really easy to level up if you do them at the same time. All you need is about $6000 for the smithing and just travel around to the different smiths and buy their iron and leather and make iron daggers. I'm not sure how much you need for enchanting, but I'd just buy all of the petty soul gems I found, then enchanted the daggers I made and sold them back for way more than what I paid for the ingredients.

The paralyze enchant gives you the most money, and then the steal health one.

 

Hmm maybe I haven't got it to a high enough level. I try to level up black smithing without using the iron dagger exploit, as it's clearly broken.

I might as well set the skill through the console and remove some of my money, instead of creating 1000 daggers.

[Wazzpants]

lol Wazpans.. If you're going to make and wear one of the sickest armors in the game, then put it on master :P

 

I honestly don't think it'd make any difference. I can dual cast thunderbolt as much as I want which stumbles anybody it hits so they don't even get close to me, if there's more than one guy I can dual cast chain lightning, fire ball, blizzard, lightning storm, ect. Then with my extra mana that I don't use on my destruction spells I can summon a daedric lord and use the big healing spell on myself.

 

 

 

Anyway I'd really like to see the leveling system be like oblivion where you pick your main skills (4 or so) at the start of the game, they level up twice as fast as all the rest of them (or rather the rest of your skills level up half as fast as your main skills) and you only gain levels when your main skills level up. Maybe you'd have to set your difficulty at the beginning of the game so on hard you only had 2 skills that were your main ones and could only put perks into those ones or something along those lines.

 

How the level up system is right now you just have too much freedom to do whatever the heck you want. I started as a pure mage then got my smithing/enchanting to 100 then started on one handed. I could very well make a sick set of daedric armor and go with two handed wepons, bows and sneaking and be the ultimate murder machine.

 

This is where less would be more. It'd be an actual challenge if you were limited and the game would have way more replayablility.

 

 

Yeah and how smithing levels up is retarded. You get the same amount of xp for doing an iron dagger and daedric stuff...

Edited November 29, 2011 by Wazzpants

[n1n3f0ur]

What you have suggested is not a leveling system fix. Your proposed system is an overhaul that doesn't have the slightest resemblance of a TES leveling system. If you really want a fix try these. (http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1969) (http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1992). They have balancing issues, leaving your character completely overpowered for the base stats of creatures, NPCs, items and the like, but allows for the 'jack of all trades' type playstyle that Bethesda promised with the new level progression system. If you think that these would be well received changes then create the mod; just don't call it a fix when it is an entirely new system.

[givebeesachance]

Just because YOU don't use alteration and illusion doesn't mean other people don't.

 

I would say that there are oddities in the rate these things advance. I haven't put a single perk point on sneak or lockpick yet they are higher than my destruction skill (and my fights consist of 90% me spamming fireballs). I was also capable of picking master locks at 120 lockpick which is probably... not right. Granted it took about 20 picks but by the time you actually get the skill level to make locks easier you have nigh infinite picks.

 

Smithing levels up stupidly and we know this. Alchemy seems to be silly as well. The potion is worth more because it has more effects even if these effects are useless and contradictory. Impure potions should be worth less (and by extension provide less XP).

Edited November 29, 2011 by givebeesachance

[Chatt7]

What you have suggested is not a leveling system fix. Your proposed system is an overhaul that doesn't have the slightest resemblance of a TES leveling system. If you really want a fix try these. (http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1969) (http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1992). They have balancing issues, leaving your character completely overpowered for the base stats of creatures, NPCs, items and the like, but allows for the 'jack of all trades' type playstyle that Bethesda promised with the new level progression system. If you think that these would be well received changes then create the mod; just don't call it a fix when it is an entirely new system.

 

Nice, thanks. I can use Enchanced Perk Points for this 'overhaul' (apparently not 'fix') :P