1881

Gotta agree with St Gabe here. You can’t just say “stop doing that”. My first character did it as well (Smithing + Enchanting). I didn’t do the “stack skill mods trick” to get +1000 damage on weapons or anything, but even with just 100 enchantment you can give your self 100% resistance to all magic (making you basically immune) as well as such a significant bonus to the Light Armor skill that you’re also basically immune to arrows and swords.

To say “well, don’t use that” is the same as saying “make a level 35 character that doesn’t get to use any of his perks”, which is silly.

It’s not a huge deal, I just rolled a new guy and didn’t put perks into smithing/enchanting, but you have to remember that people reached this level of insane enchanting by investing their build in it (and even at about 75 enchanting it is not obvious that I’m going to turn into an unkillable death machine as soon as I get the “2 enchantments per item” perk.)

That said, I am glad enchanting is as powerful as it was. It was really rewarding to run around for an hour and murder dragons with a shrug. Once that wore off I just declared myself winner and rolled a new guy to go through the story missions.

Chris Woods

1882

Cautionary tales! Spread the word.

1883

And now for something completely different…

I’d like to know how he coerced all those women into his house to begin with…

1884

Wow, I’m in a different game. Level 20 archer/stealth, and I’m overjoyed if I can smith an elven bow, and I can’t enchant for crap. I’ve put all my perks so far into archery and stealth, and I’m still not very far up those trees, and I don’t have enough magika to conjure up a fire antranouch (sp.)

Perhaps it is just that I’m not really paying a lot of attention to how to maximize my build, just kinda doing my thing and tossing my few perks into the two areas of focus unless I don’t have a high enough level in those two when I level up to get anything decent, then I may throw it into, oh, pickpocket may be cool.

Either the game will go through a radical shift in the next 15 levels or so, or perhaps they designed the game with someone like me in mind, a casual RPGer who isn’t RPG-smart enough to be able to do what I should do to become invulnerable.

1885

How on earth do you get “just 100 Enchantment” by level 35 if you’re not gaming the system?

1886

I think you’re correct, although I’m sure people will argue that maxing out Sneak is still broken. (Personally, I can’t wait to get my super-ninja reward.) I’m at level 32 and the game has been a blast. The only two skill trees I’ve really been paying any attention to has been my Sneak and my Archery. I’ve dabbled in One-Handed, Light Armor, Smithing, Lockpicking, and even dropped a couple of wayward points into Destruction and Block. I haven’t seen the wild balance swings that others have.

1887

“Gaming the system” = “grinding.” MMOG tradition is to craft, and craft, and craft some more. It’s not “gaming the system,” it is the game.

So, OK, I see that people are upset that if you max out smithing and enchanting the game becomes impossibly un-challenging. I still maintain that you have the freedom not to use that power to ruin your own fun, just by using less bodacious equipment, but if you don’t agree, that’s your choice.

I also hear that Bethesda games are unlikely ever to have Dark Souls combat, which is also too bad for the people who want that, I suppose.

So the question for ES6 becomes: will Bethesda care any more about making the game unbreakable by power-gamers in first ship? And I still want to know whether the Oblivion mod scene was able to rebalance Oblivion in a compellingly improved way.

1888

Well crafting was my #1 skill so while I didn’t ever go out with the intention to farm souls I did make sure that I had a constant supply of gems and I used soul trap regularly. Then whenever I got full I’d enchant all the gear I’d looted before selling it. That was enough to get me to 100 by level 35 or so. That didn’t feel like “gaming the system” to me. 40 hours of doing that is a lot of investment.

1889

I’d like to know this info as well. Sounds neat.

1890

Why wouldn’t you have 100 enchanting by 35 if your character is an enchanter? It’s not gaming the system to collect souls and enchant things. That’s playing the game as an enchanter.

The core problem here isn’t enchanting or smithing. It’s how bonuses stack, linearly, without cap. While there are some issues with how strong a single enchantment is (they’re probably about 20 to 30 percent too strong on an individual basis with maxed enchanting, or to put it another way about right if you don’t use any +enchanting potion) it’s that I can, say, stack 4 25% cost reductions to get 0 cost, or stack two 50% resists to be 100% immune, or stack 4 pieces of smithing gear with a smithing potion to blow past the normal cap by about a factor of 300%.

There are many solutions to this. For example, a hard cap to a bonus. Or a limit on how many sources can buff a skill. Or a rating system, where each point of bonus is less effective than the last. Or an Eve style diminishing returns system, where you can keep stacking bonuses, but at some point you’re paying a real price in efficiency.

Smithing skill stacking is the worst offender. Even without trying to break the system, you’re probably going to break the system. It’s so out of proportion I’m not entirely convinced it’s working as Bethesda intended, even with their normal disregard for balance. Most Bethesda systems fall over when you push on them. Smithing falls over when you glance at it.

1891

I guess define “gaming the system”? I used a Bound Sword as my primary weapon, and with perks it’s 100% soultrap all the time. Whenever I went to town I bought all the empty soul gems and used all the filled soul gems I had, then went back into the world and did stuff.

Level 35 is, in my experience, really fucking high unless you’re working a myriad of skills. It took me 55 hours of gameplay to get there. That’s 2 points of enchanting every hour which doesn’t sound like gaming anything. I only had Conjuration, One Handed, Light Armor, Smithing and Enchanting as my “good skills”. I’d gain Lockpicking and Restoration occasionally, but didn’t use either enough to keep up with those five.

Chris Woods

1892

Constantly trapping souls just to enchant weapons to make money and max out your enchantment skill might not be exploitative along the lines of any of the dozens of “How to get 100 Enchantment EASY!!!” youtube videos out there, but it is grinding. Repo is right about that being the game in an MMOG, but Skyrim isn’t WoW. I don’t think Bethesda should be expected to cater to balance the game around people who obsessively enchant/smith/chop wood in a MMOG mindset simply because the mechanic is there.

Edit: Hey, if you guys say it’s easy to get to that level just playing the game by level 35, then fine. I’m not an enchanter. I use it occasinonally to make something that I need, and that’s it.

1893

So using your sword in every fight is “grinding” your 1h skill? As a crafting-based character I think it’s a no-brainer that I was going to be crafting focused when approaching combat and selling items. How else was I supposed to do it? Is maxing out a skill after 40 hours really too quick?

1894

make a broken item, find out that it’s broken, stop using it.

I don’t think I could ever do this, but then, trying to make broken items is part of the fun for me in an Elder Scrolls game. It’s just part of my character’s quest for ultimate power. i mean, Saruman wouldn’t have cared that he had a broken item, so why should I?

As far as what the designers’ job is, they should probably be able to keep me busy for a good 30-40 hours (my money’s worth) before I can acquire or create such a broken item, with the gentleman’s agreement that I’m not going to run off and scour FAQs. As long as they put in that much due diligence I don’t really have a problem with it.

1895

No. I’m using my axe in almost every fight and by level 23 (or 24, I forget), my 1-handed skill is in the forties. I don’t expect it to jump 60 points in the next ten levels, but maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see.

1896

55 hours in a single player RPG to max out a skill is “grinding”?

How many hours can pass in a single player game to max out a skill before it’s not grinding? If I was actually trying, I bet I could hit 100 enchanting in 5 hours easy. Now that’s grinding.

1897

Aside from Heavy Armor/Light Armor, which only level up by either you buying skills per level at a trainer or by getting hit in combat and even so it depends on how much damage you take, etc, all other skills are VERY easy to level up. My archer had 80 sneak and 68 archery by level 20 and I didn’t even buy skill at the trainers.

People sometimes abuse the system (constantly casting muffle is a no-brainer way to raise your illusion to 100 in a flash) but aside from the defensive skills all skills, in the 1 to 20 level range, skill up too fast. I’d even say the overall leveling is too fast up to level 20 and only around that level does it slow down properly and post 30 it becomes rather grindy.

Also, playing in Master difficulty I got my One Handed skill to 60 at level 20; you say you have it at the forties, well, how did you level? Remember that unless you restrain yourself to only leveling via combat skills it’s pretty easy to just go crazy and level up to 20 by pickpocketing, selling stuff and raising your speech skill, etc. Again, it all depends on difficulty and how you are playing not exactly if you are grinding or not.

1898

No problem. I’m glad you realized that I wasn’t really describing a problem that I have a solution for. It’s a paradox really. I enjoy going up the power curve, and trying to stay ahead of it. For me, that’s a huge part of the enjoyment in Morrowind and Oblivion. Not so much other games, but there’s something about the Elder Scrolls games where I just want to find the next item or skill or perk that will give me a decided advantage. That’s part of the appeal for me in these games. So those people that you described that Bethesda put these things in the game for? Yeah, I’m those people. I’m the one who loves to try to become as powerful as I can within the rules of the game, while also enjoying the quests and the exploration and the world-building.

And yet, the moment I cross that tipping point, where it suddenly becomes not challenging at all, that’s when the game breaks for me. Suddenly I don’t see the point of exploration so much anymore. Or of finding quests. Suddenly NPCs seem really shallow and uninteresting, and the million little flaws in the animations and the broken things in these games come to the forefront. It’s as if the illusion suddenly gets taken away when I feel like I can’t die anymore, and it doesn’t just ruin the combat portion of the game. It ruins everything. The whole veneer comes off.

I’m not sure there is a solution, except to stay vigilant and be a little afraid of breaking my own game. Like Tim James is saying, maybe try to learn from other people and stay away from game-breakingly powerful stuff. But what may ruin one person’s enjoyment might not be the tipping point for me. I think the tipping point is different for everyone.

Like Gordon mentioned upthread, the chameleon suit in Oblivion was a negative for a lot of people, so I stayed away from it with my character. But I still eventually became an unstoppable killing machine as an orc warrior. The funny part is, when the expansion came out, I couldn’t stomach playing my god-like orc anymore, so I created a new character and I couldn’t resist going out and creating a chameleon suit. And I loved it. Yeah, it kind of broke the game, but not in a way that I personally minded. It wasn’t as bad as the god-like Orc I had eventually created.

So I’m not sure what the solution is. The tipping point is different for everyone. And I don’t want Bethesda to stop putting in god-like abilities in their games, because I love striving for them and finding them myself (that’s why I’m trying to gloss over posts which go into detail about how people became too powerful: I want to discover it on my own, not by reading what others did, because that’s part of the fun). But at the same time, I do hate being so tentative and fearful that the next cool thing I find might cause me to cross that tipping point where everything breaks for me. It’s inevitable. It will happen. I just hope I can delay it enough to be able to enjoy the whole game.

In Morrowind I only explored about 1/2 of the map before I broke it. In Oblivion I was able to finish the main story, and two of the guild quest lines before I broke it. I was able to go a lot farther because I was a little cautious from Morrowind. I’m enjoying Skyrim so much right now, so I’m hoping I don’t break the game until I’ve at least been able to enjoy most of what it has to offer first.

1899

The reticule is still showing so it can’t be the HUD opacity slider. It’ll be the ini parameters but I can’t remember which one(s) off hand.

1900

Really? I’ve been using my warhammer for pretty much everything and it’s at 63. I’m level 14.