SajuukKhar said:
-Then you get complaints that NPCs are too safe, which is exactly why they put in Dragon, and vampire, attacks on cities in Skyrim, because people complained in Oblivion that NPCs were never in any real danger, and thus they couldn't really care about them.
And now we see the problem with listening to the complaints of the fanbase - you can never win. If NPCs are safe, they complain that they don't die. If NPCs aren't safe, they complain that they can die.
Honestly, the best method around this IMO is to make it a PC only game [Only thanks to the limitations of the fix: It will require a lot of RAM, CPU and rendering power to pull off well, which consoles don't have] and have each town have an actually large population, as opposed to 20 people or so. When someone dies, there is always someone else to replace them in their job. When the Markarth blacksmith died thanks to the Foresworn escaping, I didn't see too many people complaining as there was a substitute in her apprentice to fill the hole she left.
Now, you could go halfway there on a console and when someone dies another person conveniently "Moves in" from Cyrodil or somewhere to replace them, but that gets old pretty quickly with new people conveniently moving in every few weeks.
-But that still doesn't change the fact that by removing the weapon perks, such as bleed damage for axes, armor ignoring damage from maces, and critical damage from swords, you are
1. Making characters more homogenous by giving more classes the same powers
More to the point removing powers from 1 class and adding them to weapons instead. Only classes that use those weapons will actually get the effect. It removes early game homogenisation and fixes weapon homogenisation at the same time. With replacement perks, warriors maintain their bonuses from using Swords/Axes/Maces, or have new bonuses added as a substitute, maintaining diversity for classes and giving diversity to weapons.
2. Making the upgrades to those weapons unbalancing by giving them some massive increase to bleed damage
3. OR making the upgrades to those weapon effects very very trivial by making them stay balanced by keeping them low.
Will discuss in other point.
-Actually, if they keep the weapon perk system they have now, and just alter the bleed/critical damage to scale with your weapon, they would be both large upgrades, but not unbalancing.
Right...
How about having the lvl 1 perk be on weapons by default, and the lvl 3 be available through perk progression?
Not overpowered.
Difference is not negligible, unless there's no point in lvling up from lvl 1 of that perk to lvl 3 in vanilla.
Its not too hard to come up with things like this. You are just unwilling to even contemplate the idea.
-Well, technically, since the game has a soft cap of level 50, meaning, if you stick to your "class" that you made for yourself, you will only get to level 50, putting all 21 perk points into one-handed leaves you with only 29 perk points for magic, making you a very poor mage. Now, if you want to power game, break your RP, and get to level 81 by maxing all your stats that's fine, but the game really wasn't made for that.
Define class. You don't need to power game to break 50, you just need to have a class that isn't focused around the x number of skills that gets you a soft cap of 50. That soft cap of 50 is based off the number of Skills Bethesda thinks a class should have. That is the same as the arbitrary limitations you praise Skyrim for not having. If your character has a reason to have a skill, they can have and level it. Hell, even going through Skyrim its possible to change your character's specialisation through Role Playing and what you are asked to do. From memory its 6 skills or so that you need to hit lvl 50. You can easily level more than that, even if slowly, through role playing. For example, your warrior is poor when he reaches Riften, and decides to help the thieves guild to earn some money. In doing so he increases his skill repertoire to include lock picking, sneaking and pickpocketing. This is entirely seemly within roleplay, as just because you're a warrior doesn't mean you have to be lawful good and unwilling to steal from people.
-Iron, and Ebony, swords have a vastly smaller difference in weight them foam, and uranium. the difference in stagger would be negligible. like a change from 1 to 1.05.
How about Iron and Dragon Bone, or Iron and Dwarven Steel. Hell, going by the weights of the items, a Daedric Sword should 1.28 stagger [An inverse relation can be found such that Stagger/Weight approximately equals 0.08. Hence 0.08*weight=stagger. Daedric Sword's weight is 16. 0.08*16=1.28. You may increase/decrease this by 0.8 thanks to variations in Stagger/Weight], and a Dragonbone one should have 1.51.
Of course the weight difference between foam and uranium would still be much larger, but that would be to the order of 0.01 stagger compared to 3 or 4 stagger - a rediculously large difference made to emphasise the point.
--One-handed duel wielding also makes you far more vulnerable to attacks, and given that they dont actually have to hit you to do damage to you, it does make dieing easier
If you're not careful. Arrows are VERY easily dodged, and spells that would kill you are slow moving and easy to dodge too. Other spells are cast for a short time by their caster and do minor damage, and can be avoided by taking cover as well.
--Two handed, stagger doesn't last very long, and the lower swinging weapons make you easier to block then with fast one-handed weapons
Charge Power Attack. Sure the stagger doesn't last long, it doesn't need to. Charge power attack in, walk out other side, turn, charge power attack back as they come at you, staggering them again. Its largely a matter of timing, but once you get how that timing works, its not hard to execute against a single opponent. Grouped opponents generally require sideways power attacks or backwards power attacks - one of which hits all enemies, the other paralyses enemies.
--the slow time perk lasts for all of maybe two seconds, unless it glitches, not much time to do anything
It lasts for the duration of the power attack. For the quick power attacks, you shield bash. For the slower ones, you stop blocking and step to the side, then attack them as they finish their attack and time resumes at a normal rate. Its hilariously exploitable against dual wielding opponents, but to be fair you just shield bash them instead.
--unfortunately, because the paralyzing effect flies in front of the arrow, most enemies get paralyzed, fall down, and take zero damage from your arrow.
And whilst they're on the ground, you shoot them again. Its hilarious how long it takes things to stand back up from paralyses, they might as well be stuck where they are once the Paralysis hits, 'cause it'll take them ages to get moving again and when they do another paralysis awaits.
--Permanent stagger is not possible without 100% cost reduction, which is impossible to get using vanilla items, and requires using enchanting with exploits.
Fine, permanent stagger isn't possible. Close enough to permanent stagger is, however. You can stop anything coming in its tracks and uber-kite it until its dead. You are practically invulnerable thanks to nothing being able to get close to you, or even attack you from a range - they're just staggered whenever they try.
--Alchemy is admittedly op, if you potion spam, which is in itself an exploit.
Playing the way its meant to be played is not exploiting. The intention of the way potions work was for you to be able to chug down as many as you need in the middle of combat. The intention of enchanting was for you to be able to make as many of you need of more powerful versions of potions. Simply because something is OP does not mean its an exploit. It just means the game isn't balanced well.
--Enchanting without exploits can only give you +40% weapon damage, and the highest you can get the best sword in the game smithed to, without using smithing exploits is 75 damage. with the +40% damage your sword only gets up to 100 damage, congratzz, most high level monsters have 900+ hp. Also you cant apply a +damage enchant to a weapon.
There actually is a few +damage enchants:
+Fire Damage
+Frost Damage
+Shock Damage
There are also enchantments like the Silent Moon one that apply +damage for certain criteria - I.E, at night, or only against animals.
Also, by enchanting 4 articles of clothing with + one handed skill you can get +160% damage, and if you drink a +32% "Fortify Enchanting" potion before hand you get +188%. This is without exploiting the enchanting/alchemy/restoration loop, just what you can achieve with lvl 100 enchanting.
-Even with the +50% cost reduction from perks/items, most high level spells still cost upwards of 100 magicka, so unless you spam potions like crazy, your gonna get like 4-5 spells off before you are completely drained. Which isnt enough to do much of anything.
Getting off 3-4 frost storms is still pretty good. Your enemy won't be able to move, and will have taken some major damage {IMO these spells are the most OP in the game as they seem to apply their damage every 0.1 seconds their target is in them or something. Being targeted with 50% damage reduction thanks to the blocking perk and blocking, +20% reduction from Ice Wraith venom, and a 308 armour class reduction for whatever that's worth I was insta-gibbed from 400Hp to none by 1 of these spells. It didn't even take a second. Kinda crazy, and the same does from time to time happen to enemies, though I haven't determined the exact cause yet}
-Skyrim is a loot driven game, not picking up most thing goes against the point of the game. Also, as I pointed out before, the game has a sot cap of level 50, if you stay in your RP you wont get past level 50, and if you have put 200 points into health, that leaves you with only 300 points to put into magicka, which also means you are super gimped when it comes to carry weight, as you will have zero points left to upgrade that, and you will be able to pick up little, if anything, at all, with your 100 carry weight.
1. Base carry weight is 300. Your mage with no carry weight bonuses will have 300 carry weight - more than enough to loot half of Tamriel.
2. I'm not saying don't loot, I'm saying don't pick up every last object in a dungeon. Going into a nordic crypt I don't pick up every last scalpel, rags, bowl, basket, ancient Nord Sword, ect. I just pick up the loot that is actually worth something: The money {'cause its weightless}, the potions, the poisons, the enchanted items, and the gems/jewellery. This is enough to send the entirety of Solitude broke for 3 days generally, and earn me a small fortune. Its an efficient and effective style of looting that you'll be lucky to exceed the 300 carry capacity with unless you go 4-5 dungeons without visiting town to sell your loot, or run into some dragons and get saddled down with masses of dragon bones.
-but the thing is, is that even if DAO removed the class restriction, and the linear spell progression, it would still have less character customization because of its stats.
When you take parts of things, like weapon damage, outside of the skill, and put into attributes like STR, you are left with a system were each gives lesser increases to your damage to balance out that there are now two systems increasing your damage. Raising your one-handed skill, or your STR attribute, becomes half of what it would be if both were merged into one. Thus, raising your skills/attributes provides a dramatically less noticeably character progression then the way Skyrim handles it, which is mostly all through one system, AKA perks.
The more systems you have controlling the same thing, such as weapon damage, the less each of those systems can provide in terms of increases because of the need to balance out the two systems, and thus there is less difference between characters by raising skills. Its better, and offer far more noticeable character progression, to remove attributes entirely, and merge everything into a singular perk system.
Skyrim still manages things through 3 systems for melee weapon damage:
Your skill level
Your Perks
Your Weapon
DA:O has two: Your strength, and your weapon. You don't have skills and perks, you have an ability tree that unlocks different abilities, and by activating some of these you can gain an increase to either attack/defence, just like how drinking a potion in Skyrim can provide you with extra weapon damage.
For the hypothesis of the system with more factors effecting weapon damage being the one that has more homogenisation, it turns out the opposite [Arguably. I don't see 2-handed builds in Skyrim playing very differently to each other].
-Now that is a flawed comparison, slapping a snorkel onto a car doesn't make it better. Adding +damage perks does. When you add perks to a spell in Skyrim, such as a plus damage perk, you are taking away the 8 damage the spell did, and replacing it with 16 damage, you are taking you a blank secondary effect, and replacing it with a more fear damage effect, you are taking out a blank third effect, and replacing it with a impact effect. The skyrim perk system is a system of replacement, it is exactly like taking something out of a car, and putting something newer, and better, in its place.
Ok, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to laugh.
A blank effect?
Well sorry, I'm just replacing a blank area around my car with a snorkel!
Also, adding a snorkel does make a car better: It allows it to traverse submerged areas like swamps. Without one, the engine fails to get any air and stalls, and your car is stuck in the middle of water.
You don't replace 8 damage with 16. You get 8 damage and apply a *2 modifier to it from the side.
You don't replace a "Blank effect" with a working effect. You add a working effect onto the side.
When you have to resort to these kinds of excuses, your better off not trying. You can try to make up as much stuff as you want regarding 'blank slots', but don't expect to be taken seriously.
1. I dont have to include spell making because the spells made in spell making are not in the game by default, there is no (20 sec paralyze + 40 fire damage a second + 15foot aoe) spell in the game itself, those individual spell EFFECTS exist in the game, but as for the spell itself, it does not. spells made via spellmaking have nothing to do with comparisons of vanilla spells, because they are not vanilla spells, they are vanilla spell effects, that you can use to make non-vanilla spells, but they not vanilla spells.
In terms of spell variety, however, those spells must be counted as they are still a part of the vanilla [Read: Unmodded] game. They are still potential spells that can be created using the game's systems and cast. In terms of overall spell variety, Skyrim has fewer spells than Oblivion thanks to the removal of this feature. You can argue that fewer spells means greater balance, which is true, however when comparing the variety of spells excluding spell making system spells is disingenuous. You are purposefully tipping the scales in your favour.
Spell making in Oblivion is the same as perk adding in Skyrim in this case, except for Skyrim's version is balanced with fixed values rather than player input values. Both are simply combining spell effects, but one you count as making a new spell, the other as illegitimate.
2. Oblivion has, Flare, Flash Bolt, Blazing Spear, Heat Blast, Immolating Blast all of them are just ever upgraded versions of the "Fire Damage Xpts on Target". Skyrim on the other hand, with all perk combinations included, has 15 variations of the fireball spell. Skyrim has more fireball spells then Oblivion, and when you do the same for all destruction spells Skyrim has, Skyrim has overall, more spells then Oblivion, they are just merged into one spell, that is upgradeable. That is what I have been trying to say, Oblivion has 10 copies of the same spell, while Skyrim only have one copy of the spell, but you can upgrade it in more ways then there were vanilla spells in Oblivion.
TBH I'm against the inclusion of Flash Bolt, Blazing Spear, ect. as individual spells as they are simply Flare with +damage. In terms of the sheer number of spells, Oblivion wins thanks to the number of individual spells named in the spell book. In terms of variety of spells, that drops down thanks to the majority of Oblivion's individual spells being clones of a single variety of spell.
3. Yes, and when you combine all the different combination those perks have, you get more variations then Oblivion had, which was the point I was making at the very beginning, Skyrim has less total spells in your spell list, but with the perk system, you can do MORE/have more different variances of them, then Oblivion had.
You get more variations than Oblivion had excluding the spell making system, which was Oblivion's equivalent of the perks that add effects to spells. Include both, exclude both - I don't care, but be consistent about spell effects when talking about variety in spells. Don't exclude the ones in one game because you feel like it, but include the ones in another.
Loonyyy said:
I didn't like that the world now had loading screen hidden cities, which prevented the inclusion of Levitation, which was one of my favourite parts of previous games (Remember that town in Morrowind you had to levitate to get to? That was awesome).
Yeah, this is one of the reasons we need a new console gen - more power so that they can process and render a city and its surrounding cells at the same time. I miss levitate, it was a very useful and fun spell =(.
Oh well, until that time comes there's always mods on the PC - including one that has already made Cities exist without loading screens. Woo!
