LE Character Development

[xXToYeDXx]

It's no secret that a lot of Skyrim's issues stem from a variety of imbalances in the character development system.

 

What you find is any build focussing solely on physical combat, be it straight up whack em style or sneaky assassin style, will become far too powerful far too early. This ruins the end game even on Master difficulty. I'm currently playing a level 48 archer/rogue and I'm 2 shotting ancient dragons on Expert, and 4 shotting them on Master. I get that my character is supposed to be Dragonborn, and thus be powerful as all hell, but if it was any easier it would be god mode.

 

Conversely with any build focussing on magic combat you find that character development starts slow for the first 10 levels or so, then picks up a bit until level 30 and then drops off from there. Spells do not scale very well from novice through master levels, and you find that by the time you can make efficient use of master spells, they are still quite mana inefficient. Magicka cost scales disproportionately with damage done. Early on your Magicka to Damage ratio is somewhere around 0.8 magicka per 1 point of damage. At expert the ratio is around 1.2 magicka for each point of damage. Those values take into account the 50% cost reduction from perks. At around level 30 the scaling seems to just drop off. Your spells no longer become anymore powerful as you continue to level while enemies do. This makes the end game far more difficult for mage builds.

 

With crafting skills the games difficulty drops off quite early, around level 20 or so. Once you get smithing and enchanting up to 100 with 10 perks in each you can smith some of the best gear in the game and buff them with some of the best enchants in the game. This includes a 100% increase in enchant effectiveness, a 100% increase in gear improvement from smithing and Blacksmith + Enchanter Elixir boosts. The game becomes a small child any Dragonborn can easily punt.

 

As for suggestions on how to balance this, it really is a matter of opinion. Every player's play style is different. However I don't like the idea of being forced to skill up magic, heavy armor, 2 handers and alchemy to hit the level cap on a thief. If I'm not going to play like a roid raging barbarian, why am I forced to skill up heavy armor when light armor is much better suited to my playstyle. Conversely, why are roid raging barbarians forced to level up light amor and bows when heavy armor and sword & board are better suited to them. I get that it's hard to accomplish this without seperating each potential build out and making the player choose during character creation, but there has to be more intuitive ways then what's currently in the game.

 

Maybe lower the level cap, and make certain choices unavailable based on previous choices. For example, if you want to play thief, take up light armor as a proficiency and heavy armor is no longer selectable, unless you choose to respec. Select one handers and two handers are no longer selectable, again unless you choose to respec.

 

I also know that it's as simple as not trying to hit the level cap so much as just levelling up whatever makes sense for your playstyle and forget about the rest.

 

I'm not advocating for a class selection option at character creation. I think that starting the game as one character, and ending it with a mage, thief, warrior or fighter based on the choices you made during the game is a fundamental mechanic for the franchise and I would never want this to change. However I do think that there are much better ways to design it.

 

So I propose a mod that works similar to this. Change the system to make choices more meaningful without losing the ability to respec via other mods like Ish's Respec Mod. This way the option is there, but since the player choice is more meaningful, it forces the player to think about choices before they arbitrarily start randomly placing their perk points into useless skills. (Useless in the sense that Destruction spells are useless to thieves or light armor is useless to warriors.)

[xXToYeDXx]

I just had a thought. What if crafting were removed altogether and loot tables altered to include some higher tier weapons and armor to find while exploring.

 

Weapons and armor from each smithing tier can be found in chests and on enemies relative to their location. ie. Dwarven items can be found in Dwemer ruins, Daedric items found near Daedric shrines etc. On top of that, also include items ranging from basic to legendary based on drop percentages. ie, higher chance of basic, much lower chance (but still a chance) for legendary.

 

Also, include a chance for the items to come enchanted with a semi-random enchant, (runs checks for player skills and perks and determines what might be valuable to that character)

 

That way the items aren't impossible to obtain, but they do have to be obtained from exploring and questing instead of just grinding a skill for 20 minutes and making them on the cheap.

 

I'm not sure how hard this might be, but I think it would do the game great. The game is already so much about exploration, it boggles my mind to think why they included such an exploitable crafting system that takes so much away from that exploration.