balance overhaul across the board

[Lekill]

This is a list of general rebalancing of the game from out there and myself, that i believe appropriate. I'm not a modder, but i would help with playtesting for value adjustment (wich would be the most tedious part of making it) and ideas If anyone jumps on the wagon. Suggestions are very welcome.

 

Attributes:

 

1. Carry weight should be governed by health instead of stamina.

 

2. Stamina increase should provide increase in speed.

 

Items:

 

1. Item weight/damage/armor/value rebalance as seen fit.

 

Magic Playstyle:

 

General:

 

1. Change all dual casting perks except destruction to something more useful, like same effect without dual casting, at higher skill req.

 

2. Tune spell costs and bonuses to spell costs to make early pure mage viable.

 

3. Make lower level spells more expensive to buy

 

4. Change Novice-Master "spell school" perk effects to provide bonuses to all levels of spells, Master capping at 25% cost reduction, for a 50% total along with rank reduction.

 

5. For buff spells, exp gain should occur when the player loses the effect in real-game time (not while sleeping or waiting) to prevent exploit from redundant casting, while at the same time avoiding the annoying "exp gain only when near enemy". As continued effects, they should give the player a small penalty in magicka regen.

 

Alteration:

 

Alteration is to be considered mages "defense" school

 

1. Add fortify health spell version from adept to master (to prevent use from non-compromised builds.)

 

2. Damage reduction spells should cost more at lower levels and have greater duration.

 

3. Make equilibrium an alteration spell at appretice level.

 

4. Make polimorph spell versions aiming at increasing character speed (along with the change on stamina, it would also provide mages with a way to increase their speed without wasting in useless stamina.)

 

Conjuration:

 

1. Make bound weapon spells to provide exp gain on damage done, to prevent exploit

 

2. Summon luggage

 

3. Change atromancy to something more useful or modify thrall spells to only be more powerful so it doesnt become a dead perk.

 

4. Make bound weapon damage to scale with skill and replace mystic binding perk with an additional effect (perhaps absorb magicka and/or stamina in small amounts)

 

5. Make soul stealer to cast soul trap with a chance %, instead of always.

 

Destruction:

 

1. Master destruction spells are unusable when they should be what you want to use. Make them like novice "stream" spells with more range, damage, and a slightly longer firebolt-type charge up.

 

2. Tune Vanilla master spells to reduce charge times, along with reduced range-damage-cost to make them usable.

 

3. With Destruction 1, lightning storm becomes obsolete, it should be modified to do the same as the lightning rune, but on casting, as a sustained effect, and dealing less damage.

 

4. I just find it annoying that destruction spells damage followers. I thing removing that would not greatly affect gameplay, as long as they still damage non follower npcs.

 

5. Dual casting tweaked to a proper damage/additional magicka cost ratio as many have already done.

 

Enchanting:

 

1. Bonus weapon damage enchantment magnitude should go down, 160% max is just too much. should be capped at around 20% per piece.

 

2. One handed bonus effect should apply to daggers, but not while sneak attacking, making dual-wielding daggers viable without overpowering sneak attacks.

 

3. Fortify magic school should cap at 10% or so, to prevent free casting, and still provide a valuable bonus along with skill in said school. A max 90% reduction is more than enough IMHO.

 

4. Along with price drop on continued enchanting, exp gain based on enchanted item value would be a good way to prevent exploit.

 

5. Allow enchanting of backstab multiplier, scaled to skill level. Maybe cap at 1.5 max

 

Illusion:

 

1. Add chameleon effect spells up to adept

 

2. Add silence effect spells to make school have at least some use for non-stealth

 

Restoration:

 

Restoration should be tweaked to be non-mages defense magic school of choice

 

1. Add spells with fortify health regen and fortify stamina regen.

 

Combat Playstyle:

 

General:

 

1. Reduce damage bonus from base perks across all weapon types.

 

Archery:

 

1. Improve base shot arrow recovery from 33% to 50%, make hunters discipline to recover ALL shot arrows.

 

2. Provide autoaiming bonus to eagle eye, so it can be used on moving targets and not just for sniping.

 

Block:

 

1. Reduce damage bonus from deadly bash, after all, its a shield, not a second weapon.

 

Heavy armor:

 

1. Put fists of steel on a separate branch so you don't have to waste a perk point.

 

2. Make conditioning to only make heavy armor weigh nothing, to further differentiate it from light armor.

 

One-Handed:

 

1. Make dual flurry to provide 10% bonus armor as an additional effect to offset lack of blocking when dual-wielding.

 

Smithing:

 

1. Make exp gain based on item value, and item value reduction for continued crafting of same items, to prevent exploit.

 

2. New curve for smithing enhancement magnitude, to make it slightly more useful at low skill levels and less op at high skill levels.

 

Stealth Playstyle:

 

General:

 

1. Increase value of miscellaneous items like plates and goblets, to make being a real thief worth your while.

 

Alchemy:

 

1. Increased exp gain from crafting potions

 

2. Balance ingredient availability:

- npc-dropped ingredients like giants toe, saber cat eye & tooth etc should be double.

- wheat from farms should be x3 or x5 per harvestable.

 

3. Reduce ingredient weight

 

4. Reduce crafted POTION weight to 0.1 or 0.2. POISON weight is fine imo.

 

Light Armor:

 

1. Exp gain should be tweaked to account for most light armor builds focusing on avoiding damage altogether (through sneaking and range) instead of soaking it, but i havent figured how yet.

 

Lockpicking:

 

1. Novice to master locks are unattractive perks. They should be modified to provide a bonus to gold found on chests. Golden touch could be modified to provide the ability to craft lockpicks from iron ingots.

 

2. Increase lockpicking difficulty and lockpick skill bonus per rank. Provide alternate ways to deal with locks for warrior (container bashing) and mage (open locks), and make them non-silent and so that they do not benefit form perks that enhance loot. This would make lockpicking a more specialized and worth skill.

 

Pickpocket:

 

1. Increase pickpocketing chance cap to 99% as some mods have already done.

 

2. I don't see why cutpurse and Keymaster shouldn't provide 100% effectiveness.

 

Sneak:

 

1. No exp gain from sneaking to non-hostile npcs to prevent exploit not worth it. Increased exp gain form sneaking to hostile FACTION npcs. Reduced exp gain from sneak attacks.

 

2. Reduce sneaking effectiveness at higher levels, and when in field of view.

 

 

Speech:

 

1. More persuasion and intimidation dialogues.

 

2. Master trader should give merchants less adittional gold, perhaps half, perhaps a percentage bonus.

 

3. Selling items to a fence should provide more exp gain than selling to non-fence.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Lekill

[Wintercross]

looks good, however I think you should still gain exp from sneaking near non-hostiles as the whole point is to get better at what you do.

Why would you only get better at sneaking past people that want to kill you? makes playing a theif a little harder as most of your targets will be non-hostile.

[Lekill]

looks good, however I think you should still gain exp from sneaking near non-hostiles as the whole point is to get better at what you do.

Why would you only get better at sneaking past people that want to kill you? makes playing a theif a little harder as most of your targets will be non-hostile.

 

that's to prevent leveling by sneaking forever behind a merchant, but you're right. it wouldn't be good even if it were faction based, as sneaking while house-breaking should still count for exp-gain. So thats out

[Sabatasso]

Armor skills should actually be increased just by moving around with the armor on, but I'm not even sure that there is any point in those skills at all. I mean, a ballistic vest protects me just as well as any super trained elite soldier... if you get my meaning.

[Lekill]

That would go a long way to solve it. A passive constant exp gain for moving on armor making it higher for light than for heavy, and without removing damage soaked exp gain for heavy, and perhaps adding increased exp gain for sprinting in light?

[Sabatasso]

As a lvl 36 sneaker I have 27 Light Armor, so in reality I am being "punished" for being a successful assassin. Those few times I actually need to fight head-to-head, my damage reduction is not up to date. I won't sink the level of exploiter by having skeevers continually hit me until I have a decent Light Armor skill. I only got 150 combined health as well, so in situations where I can not use sneak attacks against "boss" type mobs, the whole fight turns into a potion-fest. But if I invest more points into health, then 95% of the fights in the game becomes un-challenging because I can just soak the damage.

 

I like being mortal, though, and "be quick or be dead", but the balance between regular fights and boss fights needs to be changed. I am always OK with being killed fast when fighting dragons, though, and survive solely by resistance potions, gear and careful approach which is fine. The unbalanced fights I am talking about is when I can one-shot sneak attack my way through a mine, until I meet a "boss" that barely notice my blades scratching his hides, while he one or two shots me. (Worth noting that I don't use double damage gloves intentionally, and I don't have the x15 sneak dmg dagger perk because I think it's way overpowered. I am not after one-shot killing everyone, which is why I also limit my sneak perks and use a "harder sneaking mod".

 

Difficulty should be AI "smartness" and not increased HP and damage multipliers on the mobs, which I feel is the biggest issue. To specify, I never mind dying in two-three blows if I make a mistake, but then I feel I should be able to do the same in return when I don't make any mistakes, at least against human and animal mobs. Dragons and "monsters" falls into a category where I can explain to myself without breaking immersion why they can take so much damage. I also never sneak attack a Dragon even if I am able to, because I want the fight to be challenging.

 

I don't have all the answers to what can be done to make this game more "realistic" and challenging, but I do know that I want some serious changes along the lines mentioned by the OP.

Edited December 15, 2011 by Sabatasso