Does TES need an overhaul of combat?

[SajuukKhar]

After a quick Google search there is a cap at around 39-45% by default, which can be worked around by maxing your restoration tree, getting the perk that increases your magic's effectiveness against undead, becoming a vampire to take advantage of this perk, then doing a loop involving boosting restoration, enchanting and alchemy. A simple enchanting/alchemy exploit does have a cap, however with high restoration, or using the console, you can break through.

A cap prevents any and all progression past that point, the 39-45% you mention is merely the highest base magnitude, and not a cap.

Similar to how the highest one can smith a dragonbone sword with 100 smithing and dragon smithing perk is 75 damage, yet with +smithing gear you can take it beyond 75 to past 100. The damage rating of 75 is not a cap, its a highest base magnitude.

There is a very large difference between the two, and that so called "Cap" has been in there since the game was released, it wasn't patched in.

Powershot, quickshot and bullseye are advantageous no matter what bow your using.
And even excluding that, the DPS difference between a long bow and a Daedric bow is about 3.5 DPS in favour of the Daedric from a quick online search.
Base damage also isn't that vastly different - 6 damage vs 19. Its 3 times the damage, sure, but when your unable to be detected thanks to highly leveled sneaking, an extra 2/3 as many shots isn't going to matter.

You are aware that base damage is when your skill is at zero and you have no perks?

At 100 skill, and all perks, the damage difference between Daedric and the long bow is 57, while the long bow is at 18. Along with the arrows Daedric has 81, and the long bow has 26.

Most mid level bandits have somewhere in the ballpark of 250-300 health, with the sneak attack bonus of X3, assuming you have the perk, that means Daedric bows will get close/be able to 1 shot enemies, while long bows would take multiple shots.

Furthermore, even at 100 sneak skill, and all sneak perks, most enemies are smart enough to find you within 5 shots. the difference between a daedric bow, and long bow, is taking out everyone before they find you, or taking out two before the other three find you.

Mods should edit the game to suit the players want. Nothing more, nothing less.
A game should come with some degree of complexity to its difficulty levels. If the only difference is how many attacks it takes to kill the enemy, the game has done it wrong.

Then most games ever, from FPS, to RPgs, have done it wrong as that describes most games difficulty settings. The only time games have real mechanical differences is when they put it in a very special difficulty like New Vegas's hardcore mode.

If a player wants long, drawn out battles its their choice to use what exists in the game to do so, and it is perfectly possible for them to do so too.

right

If a player wants added complexity or depth, they have to resort to mods.

right

For this reason, complexity and depth should be included in the base game as they are something that is not achievable vanilla unless in the game's release, whilst tedium is easily introduced through other methods, with mods as an improvement on how its introduced.

nice point, except, nothing you stated before actually supports this. In fact what you said before is contradictory to this.

Tell that to Bethesda. TES these days is a game for the Xbox. It doesn't work well on the PS, its interface and optimisation, especially on release, is terrible on the PC, and the only redeeming feature it has on the PC is the ability to mod. Mods are available to turn a console game into a PC game when talking about TES, with other mods there to add in extra features.
I'd also be surprised at mods on consoles. How would console players go about installing them? Downloading them? Creating them?
At best modding on a console would be similar to Halo's Forge - a half assed effort really. Any more and console hard drive size, processor speed, lack of RAM, lack of KB+M, lack of features in the file management system, reliance on disks and more would limit modding greatly.

the game ran great on the Pc at release, and the UI isn't that bad.

The UI isn't good, bu the UI has NEVER been good on a Elder Scrolls game, even going back to Morrowind. The bad UI isn't a sign of console related anything, and despite all the cries of bad, unnavigable UI, it took me literally all of about 3 minutes to learn how to navigate it via the arrow keys quickly.

If you have had any experience with PC games, using the arrow keys to navigate menus should be second nature to you at this point.

As for mods on the console
-Same way as any DLC, the same way it is on the PC
-Same way as any game or DLC on the 360 works already
-On the PC, then moved over to the Xbox

the only thing holding back modding on the xbox is microsoft, if the restrictions were removed, a large number of PC mods could be ported over to the xbox, some of the more super high detail mods wouldn't be viable due to the Xbox's limited specs, but a large number of mods would work fine.

Well, I've never played Skyrim with a build then. My playthroughs have been:
-Duel Wielding one handed weapons and Heavy armour
-Two Handed weapons and Heavy armour
-One Handed Weapons, Block and Heavy armour
-Sneak, Light Armour and Archery

And even with just that I became OP as all hell. Why should Destruction magic + Light Armour be any less so?

You are aware all the builds you listed work becuase of synergy?

-Duel Wielding one handed weapons and Heavy armour
-Two Handed weapons and Heavy armour
-One Handed Weapons, Block and Heavy armour
-Sneak, Light Armour and Archery

All of these, are skills with synergy. Destruction magic synergies with other magic, and when used with other magic, it becomes OP.

Your "destruction magic + light armor" example is like saying "why cant I win with a Alchemy and block only build?"

You essentially pulled two entirely unrelated skills, and asked why don't they work.

You might as well be asking why doesn't a round peg go into a square hole?

 

[Joccaren]

\A cap prevents any and all progression past that point, the 39-45% you mention is merely the highest base magnitude, and not a cap.

Similar to how the highest one can smith a dragonbone sword with 100 smithing and dragon smithing perk is 75 damage, yet with +smithing gear you can take it beyond 75 to past 100. The damage rating of 75 is not a cap, its a highest base magnitude.

There is a very large difference between the two, and that so called "Cap" has been in there since the game was released, it wasn't patched in.

Seeing as I have never actually tried to exploit it, I'll leave this. Apart from my research I remember hearing complaints at one point about the exploit being 'fixed' in a patch somewhat early on, though I'm not going to bother looking for that.

You are aware that base damage is when your skill is at zero and you have no perks?

At 100 skill, and all perks, the damage difference between Daedric and the long bow is 57, while the long bow is at 18. Along with the arrows Daedric has 81, and the long bow has 26.

Most mid level bandits have somewhere in the ballpark of 250-300 health, with the sneak attack bonus of X3, assuming you have the perk, that means Daedric bows will get close/be able to 1 shot enemies, while long bows would take multiple shots.

At the same time the Longbow can shoot twice as fast. Whilst it doesn't allow for instant assassinations, you are able to take down such bandits in maybe twice as much time as with a Daedric. [Two shots at 26 damage = 52, more than half of one shot at 81]

Furthermore, even at 100 sneak skill, and all sneak perks, most enemies are smart enough to find you within 5 shots. the difference between a daedric bow, and long bow, is taking out everyone before they find you, or taking out two before the other three find you.

Or you could move around a little, use that shout that distracts the enemy, or any number of easy tricks. And at level 100 sneak, so long as they don't bang into you you can, at times, be completely invisible to an enemy only a metre or so away from you. Of course shooting will negate this, but wait long enough and they'll walk off.

Then most games ever, from FPS, to RPgs, have done it wrong as that describes most games difficulty settings. The only time games have real mechanical differences is when they put it in a very special difficulty like New Vegas's hardcore mode.

Some FPS have options such as no health regen for this, and against AI they generally work by increasing the AI's intelligence - rather than just running at you shooting, they'll flank you, take classes that counter yours or do a variety of intelligent stuff. In RPGs, this is added with the introduction of new abilities for the AI to use, forcing you to adjust your play style to compensate - theoretically anyway. Skyrim's version of this is making the AI attack more often [Technically increasing the AI's weighting towards aggressiveness]. It doesn't change how you play the game, whilst flanking enemies can cause you to keep moving rather than staying behind the same cover, and new abilities force you to figure out how to counter them.

nice point, except, nothing you stated before actually supports this. In fact what you said before is contradictory to this.

How so?
The two other points that you quoted basically laid out the way things are presently, vs the way, IMO, they should be. As is you can add artificial difficulty via only equipping the weakest weapons, but you can't add slight changes to the mechanics through this. The way it should be is that you can do both within the game without modding, as outlined in the last paragraph.

the game ran great on the Pc at release, and the UI isn't that bad.

The game ran rather poorly on the PC TBH for what it was. It didn't have HD textures, had short LOD fade range, was graphically unimpressive, and still managed to stutter occasionally on a powerful rig. With what it was I should have been able to maintain a flawless framerate of 60+ throughout the whole game, however parts of the game's system would induce lag seemingly at random from time to time, despite what was offered.
And no, my PC is not bad. I've got 2 560Ti 2Gbs in SLI, 16Gb DDR3 RAM and an i7 2600K OC'd to 4.8Ghz. They weren't being fully utilized in Skyrim, yet I still encountered occasional stutters, texture pop in issues and CTDs, which should not happen in a well optimised game.

The UI isn't good, bu the UI has NEVER been good on a Elder Scrolls game, even going back to Morrowind. The bad UI isn't a sign of console related anything, and despite all the cries of bad, unnavigable UI, it took me literally all of about 3 minutes to learn how to navigate it via the arrow keys quickly.

If you have had any experience with PC games, using the arrow keys to navigate menus should be second nature to you at this point.

This really depends on what you count as bad. The UI in Skyrim was not good on consoles, and flawed there, but obviously designed with thumbstick navigation in mind, and not to scale to the PC.
Really, the minimum for a PC UI is that it can be effectively navigated by mouse. In Skyrim, this was a no-go. You could navigate by mouse, but it was far from optimal. There were few options on screen in the lists, requiring you to scroll down a lot to get anywhere, and the way the menus were laid out was obviously meant for repeated single directional input, rather than single click navigation. Using the SkyUI mod, the interface becomes decent. From there it also adds in a few things that even the console version of the interface should have had;
Larger lists with smaller pictures/models and a lot of the info shown on the card displayed next to the items name so you can see what you need to know at a glance, rather than having to cycle through a list of unknown length, and highlighting what you want. Now, I can appraise my inventory in a few quick glances, With default Skyrim I had to spend a while scrolling through the lists to find out just what I had, and what its properties were.

As for mods on the console
-Same way as any DLC, the same way it is on the PC
-Same way as any game or DLC on the 360 works already
-On the PC, then moved over to the Xbox

DLC is different to mods.
For one, it generally comes with an installer. This means the user doesn't have to dick around in the Data files to install the update. Mods, however, generally come as a set of files with a Readme giving instructions on what to extract where, which plugin files to activate, possible mod conflicts and a lot else.
Few users would want to go through the trouble of compiling their own installer for the mod on the Xbox, and this would result in few, if any, mods. If there were conflicts it generally wouldn't be an instant "Do you wish to overwrite this file?", but getting into the game and finding something doesn't work.
You'd also then need a site to host the files which you'd download to your Xbox, rather than having them distributed by Xbox Live or the Publisher like I'd guess DLC is.

Some mods could work ok - the ones relying only on plugins - though even then there is no guarantee thanks to what those mods may add.

the only thing holding back modding on the xbox is microsoft, if the restrictions were removed, a large number of PC mods could be ported over to the xbox, some of the more super high detail mods wouldn't be viable due to the Xbox's limited specs, but a large number of mods would work fine.

Any graphical enhancement mod, large mode [I.E: Adding Morrowind into Skyrim], or mod that has a large number of things happening at once or is poorly optimised [Yes, mods require optimisation too] would not work on the Xbox due to its limited specs. Every mod you load takes up more RAM. With only 512Mb - 256 of which is dedicated to graphics - the Xbox would struggle with mods.

All of these, are skills with synergy. Destruction magic synergies with other magic, and when used with other magic, it becomes OP.

All of my builds are just that build + the armour that inevitably levels thanks to being hit. Really my duel wielding one handed build is just a duel wielding build. The armour just levels thanks to combat damage. Why is a purely one handed build viable, but not a purely destruction magic?

Your "destruction magic + light armor" example is like saying "why cant I win with a Alchemy and block only build?"

You essentially pulled two entirely unrelated skills, and asked why don't they work.

You might as well be asking why doesn't a round peg go into a square hole?

I'm asking why one combat approach + the necessary armour from combat damage works, whilst the other doesn't.
So much for all builds being viable no?
It is really only all builds with sufficient synergy, with synergy being highly inconsistent between builds.

 

[WoW Killer]

So much for all builds being viable no?

You're being a bit loose with the word viable there. A Destruction specialist is viable; I've beat the game with one. It's not optimal, but it's viable.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Do me a favour. Go pick up a stick, a baseball bat, a toy lightsaber, or anything long and thin that could approximate a sword.

Do a few practise swings as if you're imitating an attack. What do you notice? The sword travels in a curve around you. Whether you're swinging across your body, or doing a downward slash, the sword follows a curve set by the way the shoulder joints roll in their sockets. The only time you'll get a straight line is if you do a forward stab. That's one move out of the dozens that typically make up a melee fighting style.

The motion is circular, the attack is, by definition, linear. to direct an attack, you sword must intersect their person which creates a fixed line between you and them.

Moreover, one does not swing wildly from left to right with a sword especially if one is relying on something other than heavy armor to keep them alive. Doing so makes it all but impossible to actually transition to the defense using either sword or shield.

If you think that sounds pretty crappy, congratulations. You've just realised why melee combat in first-person games is always inherently gimped.

I was not defending TES combat. I agree that it's rubbish and in large part it is because of perspective. I'm simply saying that the problem is not that combat is circular. An attempt to describe it as such is folly; combat is only routinely circular when you are outnumbered and in an actual battle, the odds of walking out of an engagement where one is totally surrounded is slim.

Skyrim is the best of the series yet in terms of combat; that doesn't mean it's good. The previous games set the bar surprisingly low.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

snip

Eh, in that aspect I was more talking about sleep, and using it to restore stamina. The game really dislikes it when you try to do this. You can give a permanent stamina regeneration buff, or you can give a permanent stamina increase buff, or you can get a permanent buff that sets the stamina to a certain value, but as of yet I've found it near impossible to have sleeping restore your stamina thanks to the type of ability that applies the status effect. I've tried every combination of settings for it without using Papyrus code as a substitute, but it has never worked.

Also, would you have any idea why my character is able to sprint and power attack on 0 stamina now? Its kinda breaking the whole point of having stamina -.-

I'm honestly not sure. My only guess is that the game simply sets a flag when stamina gets to zero that disables power attacks and blocks rather than checking at time of attempt to see if the move is valid. I've never bothered looking into that to be honest.

It would be easy enough to test. Create a character, drain them of all stamina, save, reload that same save and immediately attempt a power attack. If it works, it is likely then that the state is set when fatigue reaches zero rather than a thing checked in real time.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. In Morrowind for example, there simply did not exist mechanisms to check player actions against some state; you had to change states based on nothing more than derived stats and the game clock.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

All of my builds are just that build + the armour that inevitably levels thanks to being hit. Really my duel wielding one handed build is just a duel wielding build. The armour just levels thanks to combat damage. Why is a purely one handed build viable, but not a purely destruction magic?

It is actually perfectly possible to use only destruction magic + armor and win the game. The problem with destruction magic is actual a two part issue. The first part is that damage exists in key stages: you've got your low damage over time that you start with, then attacks that go to 25, 50, 75. . . damage. An enormous amount of training exists between effective use of each stage (or at least exploration for - magicka use items, good magicks regen items and magicka buff items). This leads to moments where there are many enemies suitable for 50 damage attacks but the player can only cast a 25 damage attack regularly. Couple that with the fact that Destruction Magic results in rarely getting hit and you'll find that unless the player invests heavily in alteration, they can easily be killed in a single attack.

The second problem is that in the end, the best damage one can muster with spells is far less than what one can manage with bow or sword. Master level destruction magic is sufficient of course, but considering one can manage 900 damage attacks in melee without resorting to glitches (full set of + blacksmith gear, potions of enchanting and smithing simply available in the environment), in the very long run destruction simply cannot keep pace. That master spells also take forever to cast coupled with that squishy problem from before means that no matter how powerful destruction magic you have, it is always inferior to other options.

That doesn't mean it isn't viable. It's just more arbitrarily difficult.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Melee combat in TES needs fixing.

Magic's ok in Skyrim. Sucked in Oblivion.

Is your avatar Rin!?

Is yours a sheep?

No, it is a Tiger Lilly obviously.

 

[Lunar Shadow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0kTAW-Un9o

This is proof that first person melee can work well. The COmbat in this game is viceral and you can use movement and your viewpoint to direct your swings/stabs/chops (think of the movement keys as your feet and your mouse as your hips) and I have had some very viceral and on your toes fights in that game, trading blows with a foe until one of us makes a mistake and fails to recover.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

This. Absolutely this.

The Elder Scrolls would do well to give us a strong third-person mêlée system, to compensate for the fact that a character's head and the game's camera can't consistently move independently. I'd be in favour of first person becoming something that's tied to archery almost exclusively.

As is, the game does nothing to give an incentive to mix and match styles. You can pelt Draugr with arrows until they keel over or hack at them with weapons that barely feel like they're connecting.

The only time where the mêlée weapons feel like they do connect is when kill moves are engaged.

 

[Joccaren]

You're being a bit loose with the word viable there. A Destruction specialist is viable; I've beat the game with one. It's not optimal, but it's viable.

Destruction Mage stuff

I should probably re-clarify what I mean when I say viable.

Yes, a pure destruction mage is possible to do.

Compare it to the circumstances in the game, and its viability disappears thanks to the factors Eclectic pointed out.

Its like a pure smithing build that just uses their fists and smiths themselves armour. Its viable in that you can do the build, and finish the game with it, but I would find it difficult to call it a successful build.

If you have a very low chance of surviving an encounter with many enemies that deal mid-high damage, or hell, even one in the case of dragon priests, I do not consider the build viable. A lot of things have the ability to pay off with a bit of luck and skill even in life. The odds of return on the risks associated, however, make the prospect of, say, me swimming from Melbourne to New Zealand, an non-viable proposal.

Perhaps I should consider it different for games, seeing as you get infinite chances to retry something and games are designed around this principle most of the time, however this defeats the purpose of viability in games thanks to being able to try and try again until you mange to get through it.
Another point somewhat unique to games is that viability is innately tied to difficulty. On Easy or medium, I would say a Destruction mage is viable, thanks to how easy the difficulties are. On Master, the risk vastly outweighs the potential returns, and the build loses its viability.

I'm honestly not sure. My only guess is that the game simply sets a flag when stamina gets to zero that disables power attacks and blocks rather than checking at time of attempt to see if the move is valid. I've never bothered looking into that to be honest.

It would be easy enough to test. Create a character, drain them of all stamina, save, reload that same save and immediately attempt a power attack. If it works, it is likely then that the state is set when fatigue reaches zero rather than a thing checked in real time.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. In Morrowind for example, there simply did not exist mechanisms to check player actions against some state; you had to change states based on nothing more than derived stats and the game clock.

Hmm.
The problem then becomes how to fix that. Well, that might not be hard, I have a feeling I know what's causing it, but after fixing it upgrading stamina becomes pointless. Do you know if there's a way to change how much stamina you can gain on level up? If so, that would solve a lot of problems for me quite quickly.

 

[Ando85]

I always thought the combat was the worst aspect in TES. I just made it a non-issue by just moving the difficulty slider all the way down. The challenge of higher difficulties didn't really make the game more fun, it just made me use up more health items.

They create beautiful expansive worlds to explore with dozens of hours of content which is why I really enjoy the games. I just wish the combat itself was a lot better.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

This. Absolutely this.

The Elder Scrolls would do well to give us a strong third-person mêlée system, to compensate for the fact that a character's head and the game's camera can't consistently move independently. I'd be in favour of first person becoming something that's tied to archery almost exclusively.

As is, the game does nothing to give an incentive to mix and match styles. You can pelt Draugr with arrows until they keel over or hack at them with weapons that barely feel like they're connecting.

The only time where the mêlée weapons feel like they do connect is when kill moves are engaged.

And ironically enough, in Skyrim the kill moves rip you out of first-person, and happen automatically in third-person. It's as if even Bethesda realised that you can't pull off a spinning decapitation move unless the player can see their character's whole body.

I doubt they actually realized that. They probably considered it as a badass-looking aside, the same way the VATS kill cams are in no way necessary in FO3 or New Vegas. They're just nifty window dressing.

 

[LordFeast58]

You're just realizing it's shit now ?

Being such a combat focused game, they really should concentrate on making a good combat system, you would think. Their RPG mechanics are weak and shallow anyway, so scale back on them more (if need be) and make a fun action/adventure type game with good combat, more enemy variety and some magic, instead of a 'rpg' that tries to do alot of things, but doesn't do anything particularity well. (besides exploration) But even the exploration falls flat when it just leads to boring encounters/bad combat/crap loot system.

TES tries to do everything and spreads itself too thin.

It's trying to do combat, exploration, RPG elements, multiple races, wide open world, guilds, magic, lore, monsters etc. but just ends up skimping on everything and only really suceeding in a giant open world.

Other games focus on story and characters and do that very well (eg. Dragon Age Origins) whilst Dark Souls focuses on combat and monsters.

TES needs to spread itself less thin. Like cut all the food and stuff out of the game. Who cares about the food in the game?

Good lord, please don't give DA Origins the example of good story telling. It's terrible and predictable for a game that says that they are 'story heavy'.

 

[WoW Killer]

I should probably re-clarify what I mean when I say viable.

Yes, a pure destruction mage is possible to do.

Compare it to the circumstances in the game, and its viability disappears thanks to the factors Eclectic pointed out.

Its like a pure smithing build that just uses their fists and smiths themselves armour. Its viable in that you can do the build, and finish the game with it, but I would find it difficult to call it a successful build.

If you have a very low chance of surviving an encounter with many enemies that deal mid-high damage, or hell, even one in the case of dragon priests, I do not consider the build viable. A lot of things have the ability to pay off with a bit of luck and skill even in life. The odds of return on the risks associated, however, make the prospect of, say, me swimming from Melbourne to New Zealand, an non-viable proposal.

Perhaps I should consider it different for games, seeing as you get infinite chances to retry something and games are designed around this principle most of the time, however this defeats the purpose of viability in games thanks to being able to try and try again until you mange to get through it.
Another point somewhat unique to games is that viability is innately tied to difficulty. On Easy or medium, I would say a Destruction mage is viable, thanks to how easy the difficulties are. On Master, the risk vastly outweighs the potential returns, and the build loses its viability.

I'm not sure viable is the word you're looking for. Viable doesn't mean equal to everything else. Viable means it's possible to beat the game using it, and I've done that. And that's on Master, and even using mods to make the game more difficult (one mod that should be mandatory for everybody btw; disable fast travel). But your examples aren't realistic, because nobody does just one thing. You'll be levelling up other skills even if you don't mean to, and you'll get more perks through the game than you know what to do with. My very first character was a mage, and after maxing Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, taking Illusion up to Quiet Casting, and a few points in Enchanting, I ran out of things I wanted and started branching into Two-handers just for some flavour. Your Blacksmith build is going to be using that armour he made, so he's branching into Heavy or Light (probably Heavy given the unarmed perk). Using fists? Take the Dual-wield path in One-handed.

It's not balanced though. Absolutely not. Magic in Skyrim is like the quintessential example of bad balance. Destruction is poor damage coupled with an exploitative stagger mechanic. So while you can beat anything, it feels like cheating when you do. Then you've got the magic costs. You can take perks to halve the cost of a given level of spell, but then through Enchanting you can make anything zero-cost by endgame anyway. If I had to pick one game to point to and say "here's how not to do it" it'd be Skyrim.

And here, right now, I'm half way through a Two-handed/Light/Stealth playthrough and I've suddenly got the urge to start over as a Mage. So thanks for that

 

[Joccaren]

I'm not sure viable is the word you're looking for. Viable doesn't mean equal to everything else. Viable means it's possible to beat the game using it, and I've done that. And that's on Master, and even using mods to make the game more difficult (one mod that should be mandatory for everybody btw; disable fast travel).

I never said it meant equal to everything else, merely that having a low chance of surviving an encounter with either multiple mid rank enemies, or one high rank enemy - even though it is possible, and you can get good enough at gaming the system and greatly increase your odds - then the build is not viable. By virtue of the fact that something like a Dragon Priest can one hit you quite easily as a pure destruction mage, whilst you will take ages to kill it, leaves pure destruction mages a very hard class to make it through the game as.
This can be compared to other classes for relative viability, but what I'm talking about isn't tied to that.
Maybe viability isn't the right word for it, but then as I went on to state a bit later if that's the case it isn't the right word to use for anything in videogaming - its pretty much always possible to accomplish playing as a 'non-viable' class/weapon/character/W.E in a game, just very hard. Practicality is possibly a better word, but it doesn't quite work either. Its why, in the first post I made on this subject near the top of the page I used both viability and practicality to describe the situation, though still vaguely.

But your examples aren't realistic, because nobody does just one thing. You'll be levelling up other skills even if you don't mean to, and you'll get more perks through the game than you know what to do with. My very first character was a mage, and after maxing Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, taking Illusion up to Quiet Casting, and a few points in Enchanting, I ran out of things I wanted and started branching into Two-handers just for some flavour. Your Blacksmith build is going to be using that armour he made, so he's branching into Heavy or Light (probably Heavy given the unarmed perk). Using fists? Take the Dual-wield path in One-handed.

*shrugs*
The builds in my original post were my builds. One handed weapons, Heavy armour/Two handed weapons, Heavy armour/One handed weapons, Block, Heavy armour. I ended up putting my spare perks into the low levels of smithing and alchemy so I could sell stuff for more money. The classes I play will be predefined, like my character, from before I start the game. My Sword and Shield Warrior who used to be part of the Imperial Legion would have no clue about Magic, Alchemy, Enchanting, Sneaking, Thieving, Lock Picking and would only have little experience in Two handed weapons, having instead specialized in one handed with a shield during his training.

And here, right now, I'm half way through a Two-handed/Light/Stealth playthrough and I've suddenly got the urge to start over as a Mage. So thanks for that

=P
Sorry about that.
I'm curious as to how well a two handed stealth player would work out though. The skills don't exactly conflict, but they don't seem like they'd mesh that well either.

 

[Laser Priest]

I feel all Bethesda games focus more on a world to explore than the combat. That said, I wouldn't mind more intense combat. I don't seek it either.

I definitely would like improved magic, though. I've never used magic so unsatisfying as Skyrim's before.

 

[WoW Killer]

I never said it meant equal to everything else, merely that having a low chance of surviving an encounter with either multiple mid rank enemies, or one high rank enemy - even though it is possible, and you can get good enough at gaming the system and greatly increase your odds - then the build is not viable. By virtue of the fact that something like a Dragon Priest can one hit you quite easily as a pure destruction mage, whilst you will take ages to kill it, leaves pure destruction mages a very hard class to make it through the game as.

You shouldn't be getting one-shotted. Alteration can reach the same mitigation cap as both Light and Heavy (while having better magic resistance), so the only difference might be lower HP. It does take a ludicrous amount of time to kill anything like this on Master though, you've got that right.

I'm curious as to how well a two handed stealth player would work out though. The skills don't exactly conflict, but they don't seem like they'd mesh that well either.

Well... I should say Two-hand + One-hand + Bow + Light + Stealth. More of a weapon master build. I take a sword and a greatsword and use them both. Then with the Armed to the Teeth mod I look like a total badass:

Spoiler

 

[SajuukKhar]

At the same time the Longbow can shoot twice as fast. Whilst it doesn't allow for instant assassinations, you are able to take down such bandits in maybe twice as much time as with a Daedric. [Two shots at 26 damage = 52, more than half of one shot at 81]

Which still makes the longbow inferior to the daedric bow.

Or you could move around a little, use that shout that distracts the enemy, or any number of easy tricks. And at level 100 sneak, so long as they don't bang into you you can, at times, be completely invisible to an enemy only a metre or so away from you. Of course shooting will negate this, but wait long enough and they'll walk off.

You are aware that enemies can find you if you use the shout that is made to distract because it creates "noise" on your character? Also, the fact that you have to wait to do the same thing that a Daedric bow can do without waiting further shows the inferiority of the lower class bow.

Some FPS have options such as no health regen for this, and against AI they generally work by increasing the AI's intelligence - rather than just running at you shooting, they'll flank you, take classes that counter yours or do a variety of intelligent stuff.

Few FPS do that, very few, And again, most RPgs dont do that unless its in some special mode like NEw Vegas's hardcore mode.

How so?
The two other points that you quoted basically laid out the way things are presently, vs the way, IMO, they should be. As is you can add artificial difficulty via only equipping the weakest weapons, but you can't add slight changes to the mechanics through this. The way it should be is that you can do both within the game without modding, as outlined in the last paragraph.

I think you need to reread what it is exactly what you typed

Mods should edit the game to suit the players want. Nothing more, nothing less.
A game should come with some degree of complexity to its difficulty levels. If the only difference is how many attacks it takes to kill the enemy, the game has done it wrong. If a player wants long, drawn out battles its their choice to use what exists in the game to do so, and it is perfectly possible for them to do so too. If a player wants added complexity or depth, they have to resort to mods. For this reason, complexity and depth should be included in the base game as they are something that is not achievable vanilla unless in the game's release, whilst tedium is easily introduced through other methods, with mods as an improvement on how its introduced.

First off, the point of "mods should edit the game to suit the players want", is exactly what TES does now by allowing people to mod in whatever systems they want.

Secondly, complexity is subjective, one could argue that making enemies have more HP, and do more damage would cause you to have to dodge/block more, thus making the game more "complex" because you didn't have to do those things in earlier difficulty levels because of enemies low hp/damage output.

Thirdly, the two "If a player" sentences you have are how Skyrim works already, and the "for this reason" sentence isn't supported by the previous sentences at all. Your entire argument was a mess of contradiction.

The game ran rather poorly on the PC TBH for what it was. It didn't have HD textures, had short LOD fade range, was graphically unimpressive, and still managed to stutter occasionally on a powerful rig. With what it was I should have been able to maintain a flawless framerate of 60+ throughout the whole game, however parts of the game's system would induce lag seemingly at random from time to time, despite what was offered.
And no, my PC is not bad. I've got 2 560Ti 2Gbs in SLI, 16Gb DDR3 RAM and an i7 2600K OC'd to 4.8Ghz. They weren't being fully utilized in Skyrim, yet I still encountered occasional stutters, texture pop in issues and CTDs, which should not happen in a well optimised game.

Funny enough, I have one 460 gtx, 4 gigs of ram, and a 3ghz quad core... and had ZERO stuttering, and no CTDs that could be identified as caused by anything but mods. You are doing something wrong.

As for it being "graphically unimpressive" go on top of the Throat of the World and look out on all of skyrim, calling that unimpressive, is BS.

This really depends on what you count as bad. The UI in Skyrim was not good on consoles, and flawed there, but obviously designed with thumbstick navigation in mind, and not to scale to the PC.
Really, the minimum for a PC UI is that it can be effectively navigated by mouse.

To say it wasn't good on consoles is frankly BS. I have yet to see console users complain about it. Everything past the line I stopped at, was option, and not fact.

DLC is different to mods.
For one, it generally comes with an installer. This means the user doesn't have to dick around in the Data files to install the update. Mods, however, generally come as a set of files with a Readme giving instructions on what to extract where, which plugin files to activate, possible mod conflicts and a lot else.
Few users would want to go through the trouble of compiling their own installer for the mod on the Xbox, and this would result in few, if any, mods. If there were conflicts it generally wouldn't be an instant "Do you wish to overwrite this file?", but getting into the game and finding something doesn't work.
You'd also then need a site to host the files which you'd download to your Xbox, rather than having them distributed by Xbox Live or the Publisher like I'd guess DLC is.

Some mods could work ok - the ones relying only on plugins - though even then there is no guarantee thanks to what those mods may add.

-Firstly, the claim that DLC is different to mod is 100% false. The Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLCs were a simple BSA, and ESP, the same thing 99% other mods use. The DLC work EXACTLY like mods.
-Secondly, many mods do have installers, and indeed, NMM is a installer program for mods that automatically places mods into folders they belong in, you act like you haven't modded since Morrowind, the "dicking around in the data files folder" you describe has LONG been a thing of the past, and mod makers wouldn't mind making installers, because they ALREADY make their mods NMM compatible.
-Thirdly, yes, it would EXACTLY be a "would you like to overwrite this file", seriously, this is EXACTLY what nexus mod manger does, are you in the dark ages of modding?
-Or Microsoft could make its own version of the Steam workshop.

Any graphical enhancement mod, large mode [I.E: Adding Morrowind into Skyrim], or mod that has a large number of things happening at once or is poorly optimised [Yes, mods require optimisation too] would not work on the Xbox due to its limited specs. Every mod you load takes up more RAM. With only 512Mb - 256 of which is dedicated to graphics - the Xbox would struggle with mods.

That is why I said some mods wouldn't work on Xbox, but a large number of them would, house mods, or companion mods, or the like.

All of my builds are just that build + the armour that inevitably levels thanks to being hit. Really my duel wielding one handed build is just a duel wielding build. The armour just levels thanks to combat damage. Why is a purely one handed build viable, but not a purely destruction magic?

Then you are bad at making builds, or finding skills that work together, a good mage never has to use armor, alteration takes care of that.

I'm asking why one combat approach + the necessary armour from combat damage works, whilst the other doesn't.
So much for all builds being viable no?
It is really only all builds with sufficient synergy, with synergy being highly inconsistent between builds.

All builds are viable, what you are describing its a build though.