I mean, at least different enemies are more susceptible to different types of magic damage. Mostly, given attacking, you’re right, though. I’ve often looked at mods for the magic system, but honestly, the mod scene is just so…overwhelming.
Yay it works!
I have to use MO1 because MO2 refuses to install due to some weird Visual Basic issue. But whatever. It works! Yay! And my save from 2017 is intact, so yay again!
The 360 version was the best in this regard once they added Kinect support. I can’t recall the details, but there were a bunch of voice commands for me switching to sword and shield or my bow, or to spells. Plus the melee system was best when played with the controller. So with the combination of the controller and voice commands, I didn’t have to pause constantly and go into the menu, and the combat itself was really nice too. I loved the “THUNK” feel of the controller when you blocked a hit with the shield. It really added to the feel of duking it out. Same with when you hit something with your weapon and there was haptic feedback and the enemy went flying.
Oh yeah, and you could yell FUS RO DAH instead of hitting the button, which was also satisfying.
Just plain old hotkeys…let me assign anything to whatever hotkey I want. Let me cast healing spells without taking off my weapon, etc etc etc. There are 100 fixes that would be so easy to implement that would go a long way to making the game less clunky.
I’m trying to think of a game where magic and melee combat by one player character are handled well. The Witcher 3 is not a bad example, but the magic there is pretty limited. A dedicated “cast spell” key would be a good start.
This mod has received good reviews. Might help w/ some of the complaints (I haven’t personally tried these.)
Another hotkey manager:
Yep, you could switch between a couple of different attacks based on how you moved, and each weapon had different stats based on the attack style. There was also a menu option to always use the strongest attack, which I probably used every playthrough. Running back and forth to effectively use a spear might have been something to do, but wasn’t much fun.
I think the biggest combat change from Morrowind to Oblivion was ditching to-hit chances. It didn’t bother me at the time, but since Oblivion’s more action-oriented approach I can’t go back. In terms of combat, every Elder Scrolls game released this millennia has been an improvement on its predecessor.
I think there have been a few combats mods that try to mimic this through stagger. There was Duel back in the day, but I haven’t used combat mods in a while and can’t comment on the modern ones.
If you equipped a shield it’d periodically block attacks based on your stats.
Oh, man, the to hit chances! Yeah that sucked. I could land a perfect blow and it not count because the roll didn’t come out right. Much better now.
Oh that’s right! God that was a half ass-ed system. Auto block. Or not.
Have you tried Vortex? Much better than the old Nexus Mod Manager. It supports multiple profiles, conflict detection, and automatic load-order sorting. The first time I used it, I got mad at how easy modding is for the kids these days.
I have not. I wasn’t planning on adding more mods now, I’m just enjoying my one character I’ve been using for 120 hours, and wanted to keep the mods that I use for that character.
Skyrim is definitely a game with a ton of untapped potential, which is why it is so beloved by modders. It’s a great sandbox to play in with bad mechanics to play with.
Honestly it’s a poorly designed game on a lot of levels. Loot, perks/leveling, companions and difficulty curve all need to essentially rebuilt from the ground up. Mods can address a lot of these issues, but as others have pointed out it’s very easy to spend more hours trying to mod Skyrim into a good game than you’ll ever actually play it.
I hope Bethesda has learned something from the experience, but I’m not optimistic. I have no earthly idea how much money Skyrim made but if you could conclusively tell me that they reinvested even 1% of their profits into post-game support I’d be legitimately surprised.
At what time frame are you talking about though? I think Morrowind felt balanced for about the first 20 hours, before it all went to hell and I became an overpowered god. I think Oblivion lasted for well over 50 hours before my 2 handed orc became a god. But on hardest difficulty, I was chugging along just fine in Skyrim at the 120 hour mark. It was still really challenging at times, and fairly easy at other times. They did a great job compared to the previous two games in making sure it wasn’t too easy too soon (at least on Master difficulty, I didn’t try lower difficulty levels).
Eventually, every game with this many systems is going to be unbalanced and you’re going to become an overpowered god, and maybe that’s a good thing. But for a game with the size and scope of these games, that should take a long time. I don’t know where that point is in Skyrim, but at least for my stealth archer I wasn’t there yet at 120 hours.
I feel that Skyrim is well balanced up to the mid-teens to early-20s on Master difficulty. Then you break the game wide open and will never die again.
Huh, I find I’m wishing legendary was tougher around level 30 on average.
And I just generally disagree with your argument that a bad power curve is inevitable in these type of games. The issue is that your non-combat skills increase your player level, which is what scales enemy strength. Because of this, the game has to assume a level 28 player might have potentially maxed speech and crafting and pickpocketing but have almost no combat skills, but that level 28 bandit they are going to fight still needs to be beatable. That’s why the scaling is terrible.
I just think their game designers are the definition of mediocrity and couldn’t find an interesting solution.
I don’t think balance is what’s wrong with any of the Elder Scrolls games, except insofar as it led to the design decision in Oblivion to have everything automatically level with you. Yes, Morrowind is easy to break over your knee. I had 400 hours of fun with it anyway - more than I would have had if it had been meticulously balanced, frankly. Maybe Skyrim is more balanced (well, definitely more so than Morrowind), but that doesn’t make the loot interesting, the combat good, etc. And it being wildly unbalanced also wouldn’t make those things better, necessarily
I remember the balance issues Skyrim had. But… I’m currently playing with Ordinator on Expert and at level 52 everything’s still pretty great. Challenging enemies and interesting loot. Just started finding Daedric items. And an Ancient Dragon’s breath will melt two full health bars if it nails me. Archers with high level bows and arrows are a significant threat.
Of course I’m playing a mage with 200 health and no armor, so that doesn’t help. But it’s great fun.
Yeah, the build REALLY affects how balanced/unbalanced it is. Heavy armor/fighter/2H sword has a lot less challenge by level 20 than a light armor sneaky type, obviously. I can’t even remember what level I managed to get to (40ish?), but there are still dragons out there that give me trouble. Sounds like I went the same route as a lot of people here…stealthy archer/mage type. Decent 1H weapons though, but dragon fire can sure hurt.
Feh, balance. Games are more fun when they’re lacking balance.
There’s definitely something to be said for just having some enemies that you just CAN’T GET TO right now. The Gothic games were particularly unforgiving if you ventured too far off the beaten.
Tricky challenge to make it always SEEM like your life is genuinely in danger without actually making it TOO difficult.