/tes/ - The Elder Scrolls Discussion

I was the pro impenetrable heavy amour fag. but i feel that i didn't explain my system well making it seem unbalanced.

so to start i should begin with weapons. i think that their should be 2 types of attack,thrust and cut/slash. each will deal damage of three different types. crushing damage, piercing damage and cutting damage. depending on the weapon some attacks will do more damage than others, for example a club will deal more damage with a cut that a thrust even though it will deal crushing not cutting damage, i just couldn't come up with a better word for cut but a thrust will be more difficult to parry and have a greater range.

i will also add parring as important part of combat. now in addition to blocking you will be able to knock an incoming blow away from you if your character has sufficient skill and you time it well. i will also add a bind system. because of this hand protection on a weapon will become an advantage for obvious reasons. a weapon with greater leverage will also be an advantage.

different weapon types will deal more of certain types of damage and less of others. a spear will deal high piercing damage low cutting damage and very little crushing damage. if these aren't realist they can be changed just an example a one handed cut and thrust sword will deal high cutting damage and high piercing damage but relatively low crushing damage.

each of the three damage types will be useful in different situations. cutting damage will apply a bleeding affect and be higher than than the other damage types i think it is reasonable that a cut opening up large gash is worse than a hole from a thrust or broken bones from crushing damage to balance this a cutting damage will effected more by Armour than crushing or piercing damage. piercing damage will be more effected by amour than crushing damage. this means that although you will have a higher damage out put with a sword that a mace the mace will more constantly damage all foes.

Another important part of this system will be locational damage. meaning that even the best armored will have weak points and attacking them were their amour is not or is weak will allow a sword to do high damage again. if fighting a npc in full plate you could still land a thrust in the armpit to do very high damage.

the locational damage also means that hitting someone in the head or heart will do more damage that the foot. a hit in a vital spot will be a instant kill against an unamoured foe. i hope that this system would allow any weapon type to be viable while still making each different and making your weapon a difficult trade off between versatility, reach, weight and ease of use.

up next the different materials, tiers and scarcity

>>8866

> better word for cut

Swing?

>>8866

I'm one of the people that was disagreeing with you in the earlier thread (I'm at work now so I can't write a proper in-depth post out, but I will come back later and write up a proper summary/consolidating post that lists my thoughts from the other threads) and I'll agree that you've clarified your idea and it certainly sounds better than it did before, but that said I'm still not in agreement with you.

Just briefly (as I said I'll do a proper post later when I'm free) this looks an awful lot like the Morrowind combat model.

While I'd say the combat in Morrowind has a worse reputation than it deserves, I just don't think this sort of thing is viable in a modern game.

I can totally see where you are coming from in a move towards greater realism point of view, I think this would come at the expense of game-play.

Like I said in the earlier thread, I think if when you are playing the game you are always pausing and swapping equipment based on your enemies this is going to have two big flaws:

> it is going to be irritating and not fun

> it is going to be very immersion-breaking

> its going to make carry capacity into a big deal

I also think that the current system is fine in that good equipment should be good against bad equipment and vice versa – it makes a high-level weapon should be good against any low-level armor regardless of weapon type – I don’t see how a weapon and armor made of the same material would somehow be unbalanced in combat usefulness?

I also think this would have a problematic relationship with enchanting in the sense that you could end up with weapons feeling under-powered so Enchanting becomes basically a necessity (which is something to avoid).

And finally, I think this would be another nail in the coffin for people not wearing armor. Playing as a mage character and not wearing armor should be viable (not that it has been in any of the games so far) and making the armors more specialist and powerful isn't going to help this.

ended up writing a lot more than I intended

>>8868

I believe a fix for the unarmored fellows would be relying on the armor spell instead: A catch-all magic field that is not as effective as specialized builds but it's still viable.

>>8868

Here comes the proper in-depth thoughts post.

Rather than going straight into what things I would implement or change in the armor system in Elder Scrolls games I think it is first necessary to establish the features we are trying to improve or implement. For me this makes a fairly basic wish list with three main points, which provides the background for the ideas, obviously the hard part is working out how to achieve these goals.

> more variety, both in terms of items/materials and their functionality, specifically I want different playthoughs to feel as unique as possible, with different items bringing different and novel features and challenges

> striving for a more polished, immersive and enjoyable combat system in the game, this is obviously a difficult thing to nail down, but some combination of realism, worthwhile/challenging to master skills and that intangible “satisfying” feeling you rarely get in games when you complete the set or make your own set for the first time, or when things just "feel right"

> finding a balance, specifically finding a way to keep armor types (heavy, light, and possibly even medium) and unarmoured balanced and enjoyable, and I think the key thing for this is sorting out Enchanting – I see armor and enchanting as being very closely related.

With these points in mind we can consider changes/improvements with more objectivity.

In terms of variety, it isn’t just as simple as adding more items and materials to the games. The key is to include more items that people will actually use in their games. If we take Skyrim, it scores badly here for two mains reasons, firstly the unique items feel very underpowered compared with the items you can craft and enchant yourself. I do not think there are any weapons in the game that have any advantage over weapons you could craft yourself (with possible exceptions being the “broken” weapons with unusual swing/reload times – longhammer and zephyr, and even then only with enchantments you make). So you never actually use them. And secondly, while having bandits use “common” equipment, making higher level armor and weapons “feel” rare, this combined with a general lack of variety in materials/types (lack of variety being an issue in all Elder Scrolls games, but particularly in Skyrim) means you end up fighting the same bandits over and over again which isn't fun for long.

In terms of being fun, I think the key think is for the game to be hard to master, but incredibly satisfying to do so. On top of this, I think another key is to keep things as fluid as possible, have the gameplay be fast, and don’t force players to pause, swap equipment, drink potions and stuff in the middle of fights, to this end equipment needs to be versatile enough for you to use it without the need to swap around. I’d also have health and magika not regenerate over time on higher difficulties to improve the challenging aspect of the game - I appreciate this is a little at odds with the I don’t want people pausing to drink potions point, but I’m sure a hotkey/”you’re low on health hit E to drink a potion” mechanic could be implemented.

>>8885

The solution to these challenges, for me, comes in two parts – One, include more types of equipment and materials, and make different materials have different pros and cons so different items play and feel different to one another (without it detracting from gameplay and enjoyment – i.e. don’t have it so you need to pause and swap armor midway though a dungeon to counter different enemies) and two, stop enchanting being over-powered. Again, easier said than done.

I think this is a real question of balance, and without playtesting we can’t really be sure where the goldilocks(tm) point is. That being said, here are my suggestions:

Bring back medium armor, and aim for at least 5 “stock” materials (we can discuss what “new” materials would fit into the ES universe) in each for crafting your own armor. There would also be other armor types that are not player-craftable (unique armor sets, faction armors and so on). In addition to this we would need to differentiate armor/material types, but without it affecting gameplay too much (e.g. I feel the heavy armor is good vs swords, light armor is good vs maces idea would be too much), one way to do this is bring back equipment decay and repairing (and have different materials decay at different rates, I would however remove the idea of items being completely broken, and just have their stats go down over time unless repaired, again this would need to be play-tested for balencing). The other way, which I think is the key, is to play around with the enchanting potentials for different materials.

The “mundane” materials (steel, leather, iron etc.) would naturally be very poor for enchanting, this has the added bonus of meaning that figher type character won’t feel obliged to master enchanting (indeed no skill should be a “must” and there has been at least one “must” skill in every game). That said, unique reward items (which as per above would be better than you can make yourself) would have good enchantments, so things like fighters guild rewards would actually be valuable again.

There would be other “specialist” materials that do well with specific types of enchantments (glass could be good with fire, stalharim with ice and so on). And these would have perhaps lower basic armor value that we are familiar with from previous to balance this a bit.

Finally, we would have Daedric armor, and perhaps a light and medium equivalent (dragonscale for medium and perhaps some novel new light material, any suggestions?) which would not necessarily have wildly better base armor stats than the best materials you can craft yourself, but would have far, far better enchanting potential. These “endgame” armors should be very rare (as few as 2-3 complete sets available in game?), hard to obtain, and non-craftable. This makes would hopefully make it feel like an achievement to get a full set, and would encourage players to take their time and play around before deciding on what enchantments to put on them.

Keeping with enchanting, we would have non-armour clothes and robes have massive enchanting potential. Just how much better would need to be play-tested for balance, but as an initial suggestion something like this scale:

Mundane armors (Steel etc.) enchant potential is 0.5

Specialist materials (e.g. glass) are 1.5 for their preferred enchantments (e.g. fire for glass) and 1.0 for other enchantments (e.g. frost for glass)

Rare/special materials (Daedric etc.) have an enchant potential of 2.5 for all enchantments

Clothes, robes and specialist mage clothes have an enchant potential of up to 5.0 depending on quality (there should also be variety and progression in non-armored equipment)

The final point that needs to be fine-tuned would be how magic-based damage interacts with armor. In some games destruction magic ignores armor rating, but this doesn’t seem to have been very successful. I think a combination of having destruction magic level better (i.e. damage goes up as you level up) and retaining at destruction ignoring at least some armor rating is the way to go (again, goldilocks(tm) fine tuning would be needed!).

WHAT IF. instead of just basing armors entirely of materials, you also have armors based on "styles".

For instance, you could have base Iron armor, which is shit but cheap and easy to repair/find/craft. but you could have it "stylized" in nordic quality, which would change its desing and stats while providing another bonus and maybe a drawback too.

Let's for instance say that you're focused on heavy armor. Let's say you want Steel armor in elven style for your elf character (haha, who plays a mer amirite?). What would be the selling point? well, let's assume elven styles are usually lighter and less noisy, maybe the Stamina-related drawbacks of wearing normal heavy armor are lessened because of how light and well fitted this particular style is. But maybe it also degrades a little faster than other styles (bar maybe the "base" style).

What if you want orcish quality? Well friend, that'll cost you but we can guaran-fucking-tee that orc style armor degrades quite slowly and suffers from less armor-rating drops as it deteriorates, maybe it also offers a #% resistance against blunt weapons? Sure it might be heavy as fuck and difficult to repair (orc smiths are in high demand and not found everywhere on this region) but you're getting your money's worth as far as durability goes.

The same general idea can be applied to weaponry. It's about cosmetic

This system however will *NOT* be replacing the current material-to-quality base rating, Iron armor/weapons in any style is still objectively LESS protective/durable/ than ebony.

>>8898

> armors have a material and style

It's certainly an interesting concept, without doing some play-testing it is hard to speculate how this would play out in the games.

I've got to be honest and say I'm not entirely sure what would change if you changed the style of the armor but not the material other than cosmetics?

I get your point about Elven style could be lighter, but this would just confuse the lines between the heavy/light and medium if you have it) armor types.

I think if you were going down this route you would have to limit it to heavy materials can be made in heavy styles, light in light styles and so on.

That said, from a purely cosmetic/variety point of view I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of having different styles of *some* of the armor types, but I would restrict this to this to something like the following (and these would depend on the region the game is in, for this set I'm going to go off a High Rock region game as that's what I want ES6 to be) and I would avoid making the stats/performance of the armors too different to one another:

> Iron - Imperial, Nordic, Wrothgarian

> Steel - Imperial, Nordic, Breton

> Dwemer - Western, Eastern

> Ebony - Merish (akin to standard), Nordic (basically the carved nordic from ES5), Royal (something based on local kings/lords armors)

> Leather - Breton, Nordic, Imperial

> Scaled - Breton, Nordic, Elven

> Glass - Dunmer, Imperial, Royal

> Chainmail - Breton, Imperial, Wrothgarian

And so on

What I personally think would have more of an impact would be to bring back having more armor sections - Helmet, Cuirass, Pauldrons (R&L), Gauntlets (R&L), Greaves, and Boots.

It seems obvious to me that the reason they simplified to just have four armor slots in Skyrim was that they realized having more would make enchanting even more OP than it already was - however if we use the enchanting "potential" scheme i outlined in my earlier post this would be mitigated.

So in terms of game-play you could swap around different materials in each slot to balance things. This also for me would have an added bonus of making completing your armor set be more "satisfying". Its probably an autistic spectrum thing, but completing a set is really satisfying and this would be greater with more things to collect.

>>8925

some interesting points to digest, I certainly agree that different weapons should feel different to use in game, but I am cautious about saying that swords or maces should be better or worse against different types of enemies from a balancing point of view.

What I mean by this was that the weapons in Morrowind (sorry, I know this is blasphemy) were horribly unbalanced, not so much because some weapons were harder to use (spears anyone) but because there just were not any good high level weapons of some types.

By all means have hammers swing more slowly than swords, but keep the damage per second for both as close as possible, and do something like include more types of power attacks.

I would also say that rather than including more than one "attack" button, it would be better to focus on the timing of attacks - like blocking an attack them swinging your sword (or mace or whatever) at the right time should net bonus damage, and I agree that where you hit the enemy should make a difference based on the armor on that body part and if it's a head-shot and so on. A possible problem with this is that it would make character height an issue (i.e. short Bosmer get hit in the head by taller characters) but it does make sense that a smaller character should be less brawler oriented so I'm not too concerned about it.

I'd also like to see fatigue have more of an effect in combat, your damage should go down a LOT when you're out of fatigue and blocking should be harder and so on.

Written far more than I planned to again - this is a really good thread!

part 2

>the materials

i want to see the different materials have different properties not just for enchanting but in weight and durability as well. for example a glass weapon can have greater reach for the same weight as a heavier material but this would come at the cost of durability. i think that some materials should be unsuitable for some weapon types as well like morrowind a glass mace doesn't make sense it is a mass based impact weapon made of a light brittle material. clearly an important part of this is item condition it was a mistake for skyrim to do away with it. for most weapons i don't see what happens to your bow, the string breaks? i think a good way of implementing this would be for the bonuses from tempering to be lost over time e.g. you go from fine to good to shit to made in china and the damage is reduced with each tier. weapon type will also effect the rate of decay a weapon that relies on mass for its damage like a warhammer will be less susceptible.

>the tiers and scarcity

high tier items need to be scarce for the sake of character development and progression. their was nothing worse than going through a bandit dean in oblivion and everyone wearing glass and daedric amour it removed any economic challenge daedra lords in Morrowind were bad enough and removed any sense of achievement in gaining the best gear for you character. most enemies should have basic gear at all levels so as not to break the economy and to give the player a sense of achievement for getting good gear their self.

>smithing/crafting

i think that all gear basic gear of all materials should be craftable especially because of the scarcity, so that crafting builds can feel the achievement but for non crafting builds commissioning a npc to craft an item must be added, high tier shit will be fucking expensive so you have a use for your drakes. i also want to see the customization feature carry over from fallout 4 so you can make truly personal gear for you character and play style.

this bring me on to styles. i love the idea the way i see it working is factions and races each have their own styles which you learn either by joining a faction or unlocking a perk

one of my pet peeves from skyrim was that i couldn't make imperial style out of ebony to show the grunts how much better i was than them racial styles would be of a certain class Heavy medium or light and could be made out of any material i dont like handholdning and it would be funny to see a outlander make light amour out of ebony one last pet hate you should not gain weight between the materials put into a item and the items weight 2 one unit ebony ingots and a 0.1 leather strip should not turn into a 16 unit sword this fucks me off far more than it should

>>8925

> removing unamoured as a skill was the right move it doesn't make sense to me as one. how are you supposed to get better at being cut up with practice.

Agreed, it doesn't make sense, however applying logic to the leveling seldom does - how does making loads of iron daggers make you a better smith, or selling loads of stuff makes you ore eloquent/better at making friends.

I'd suggest that rather than leving unarmored making you better at taking damage, I'd say make it give you a boost to your non-combat skills while you are not wearing armor (so magic is better/easier, and stealth is easier and so on).

The other key would be to build off my suggestion on making stamina more of a big deal in combat - have it so your stamina depletes less in combat as your skill goes up.

I see this as being very viable in game from both a balancing and fun-ness point of view.

>>8939

I'm too happy about removing certain combinations of equipment from the game, while I get the point about glass blunt weapons, I think that they have become very ingrained in the games now, and they're here to stay.

So I think keep all the weapon combinations.

I also think you need to make at least some items non-craftable. The idea of being able to smith your own daedric armor is just stupid to me, it doesn't fit the lore, and it devalues it in the game.

I like the idea of commissioning NPC smiths to build you a set of armor, and I think this would be how you get the faction armors. It makes sense that you can't craft your own legion/thieves guild armours, and if you can pay the guild smith to make you a set this would be great.

I also like the idea of being able to dye certain clothes, and equipment, but this would need to be lore friendly so fetchers don't make a pink set of daedric armor and so on.

I'd also suggest having different forges having different abilites, so making armor at some shitty forge in a village is worse than using the kings-own-blacksmith-forge-made-out-of-a-dragons-skull or whatever, you get the idea. The same would apply to enchanting altars.

I'm also not too keen on the idea of "making any equipment out of any material". I'm happy with different styles of each material (as per my earlier post ( >>8934 ) but I don't think being able to make say orcish armor out of glass makes sense or would add anything.

I'd also say rather than unlocking the ability to smith items by selecting perks you should have to get the recipe either by training with a smith, reading it in a book, or trial and error.

This would then leave room for more interesting smithting perks, I've suggested a few potential ones below:

> Artisan - all crafted armors are lighter as you learn to angle materials to provide more protection with less weight

> Tempering - using low quality forges now has less of a negative effect on the equipment you can produce (up to three levels, with the final one granting 100% effectiveness form all forges)

> Innovator - equipment you produce has far greater durability

> Tempering mastery - all crafted weapons gain additional damage points

> Savant - all crafting recipes are unlocked

And so on.

>>8941

Meant to say "I'm not too happy about removing certain combination from the game"

sorry

>>8941

oh i agree glass orcish amour would be shit i just want retards to be able to try it so it can fail on them

>>8943

I still think just having different styles for some of the armor types is the way to go.

It is going to get very confusing if the "styles" have the same names as the materials too. For the purposes of avoiding things getting too confusing you'd need to give the style a different name:

e.g.

Orchish = the Orichalcum metal equipment

Wrothgarian = equipment made in the "orchish" style

I like the idea of having different styles for some of the materials, but for other materials I just don't think it makes sense - a Material like glass/malachite is totally different in it it's physical properties to "normal" metals so it just wouldn't be possible to form it into the shapes you could metal and vice versa.

That said, I can see having different styles available within the Glass equipment "tree" being a good thing.

Going back to your point in your last post (I assume you're the same guy in the earlier post - apologies if you're not) - you said it doesn't make sense that you can make a glass mace, but you do think it makes sense to have Glass armor made like Orchish etc?

I think that the way to go with this is to have smithing "recipes" unlock by learning them in books, being taught them by an NPC Smith.

This way if you start as say a Nord you would by default know how to make things in the "Nordic" style, and you could learn how to make "Mer" style armors by training with Mer blacksmiths and so on.

Going on from my earlier posts about having five "standard" armor materials per type, and a non-craftable rare/endgame armor with different cosmetic styles and so on, here is a quick mock-up of how this could work in a game, I'm going for a High Rock area themed game for the "styles" and so on, but I think this is fairly easily translatable to different regions with minor tweaks.

The general idea is to have five tiers, which generally go up in quality for each weight (light/medium/heavy) and a rare/best non-craft-able armor for each type.

Tier 1 would be for level 1-4, Tier 2 would be 4-8, Tier 3 would be 8-12, Tier 4 would be 12-16, Tier 5 would be 16+ and the final "special" armor would be limited to 2-3 sets available in game, so it wouldn't be in the level spawn lists. In terms of quality I'm thinking it is marginally better than tier 5 on armor rating, but as per my earlier post it would be far better for all enchantments.

Light Armor

Tier 1 = Hide/Fur (bad for enchanting)

> Wrothgarian Fur / Nordic Hide / Illic Bay

Tier 2 = Leather (bad for enchanting)

> Imperial / Illic Bay / Redguard

Tier 3 = Mithril/Alloy (minor bonus to attribute enchantments)

> Mer / Illic Bay / Redguard

Tier 4 = Elven/Moonstone (minor boost to magic-type enchantments)

> Somerset / Cyrodilic / Dirreni

Tier 5 = Glass/Malachite (Better fire-based enchantments)

> Dunmer / Imperial

Specialist = Amber (Good for all enchantments)

Medium Armor

Tier 1 = Studded (bad for enchanting)

> Imperial Iron Mail / Nordic Studded / Illic Bay Studded

Tier 2 = Steel Chain-mail (bad for enchanting)

> Imperial Steel Mail / Mer/Elven Mail / Wrothgarian Mail

Tier 3 = Orcish/Orichalcum ( minor bonus to resist enchantments)

> Wrothgarian / Eastern(like the Skyrim degins) / Goblin-ken

Tier 4 = Carved Alloys / metal plus quicksilver armors (minor boost to attribute enchantments)

> Nordic Carved (Ebony + Quicksilver) / Gilded Elven (Elven + Quicksilver) / Imperial Scaled (Steel + Corundum + Quicksilver)

Tier 5 = Stalhrim (Better for Ice-based enchantments)

> Nordic / Dunmer

Specialist = Dragonscale (Good for all enchantments)

Heavy Armor

Tier 1 = Iron (bad for enchanting)

> Imperial / Wrothgarian / Illic Bay

Tier 2 = Steel (bad for enhanting)

> Imperial / Nordic / Illic Bay

Tier 3 = Bone Armors (minor boost to resist enchantments)

> Dunmer(Bonemould) / Nordic-Carved-Bone / Wrothgarian-Carved-Bone

Tier 4 = Dwemer (minor boost to magic-type enchantments)

> Vardenfell Dwemer / Blackreach Dwemer / Volenfell Dwemer

Tier 5 = Ebony (Better for shock-based enchantments)

> Dunmer / Imperial / Nordic

Specialist = Daedric (Good for all enchantments)

>>8978

Fucking fantastic theorycrafting over here. But in my opinion, nothing should have enchantment penalties, especially not for lower tier armors that are less effective anyway.

>>8981

There are a number of reasons why I think having "mundane" armors be bad for enchanting is the way to go, which are laid out in the earlier posts in the thread.

The critical points with nerfing armor enchanting are:

> to bring back more balance, if non-armor clothes have enchanting bonuses over armor then they will be viable in game, which is good for game-play variety and for role-playing as a pure magic user

> so players are not shoehorned into practicing enchanting as a skill - no skill should be required in every play-though, and the only way to make a non-enchanting play through viable is to have viable alternatives (i.e. useful unique items and quest rewards that are better than you could craft yourself - and do this by 1. making your enchantments on armor weaker and 2. making the unique/reward items better)

>>8982

Then why not just nerf enchanting as a skill in general? Why does shitty armor need shitty enchants too?

>>8983

Enchanting should still be good, but it should definitely not be something the game effectively forces you to do as has been the case in the past.

Like any skill mastering it should be beneficial to your play-though, but choosing to ignore it and not level it up shouldn't be so much of a disadvantage as it has been in previous games (especially Skyrim).

It should be perfectly viable to play though the game as a "pure" fighter character with no interest in magic or enchanting (at least up to the very-high levels, which you wouldn't be able to reach if you were not leveling up other skills anyway).

The advantage of armor should be for the most part that it gives you armor rating, so you take less damage. However, if you have it so armor is just as good for magic users as robes/going unarmored then it's a problem because it's unbalenced and there is no advantage to not-wearing armor. This stifles variety, and shoehorns you into playing a certain way which is never a good thing.

If you're asking more specifically why the lower-level armors should be worse for enchanting than the higher level armors then there are two main answers to this:

> it makes logical sense that mundane materials (e.g. iron, steel, leather) would not interact well with magic., whereas the more magical materials would work better. There is already a precedent for this with Stalharim having an affinity with Frost magic, and from an immersion point of view I'm sure you'd agree that it "makes sense" for something like Daedric armor that is imbued with the blood and soul of an immortal Daedra would have more magical potential and power than a lump of iron hammered into a helmet.

> It adds to the general progression of equipment in the games, and mirrors how the armor rating goes up with quality. The idea that the equipment you have at level 1 has the same enchanting potential as the equipment you get at level 50 is just a bit silly.

That being said, if you have a different or better idea for how the armor should be implemented in the games this is the thread to tell everyone about it!

>>8987

I don't care much for 'realism'. The point I want to make is that if you're using lower-tier armors your enchanting level will be low anyways.

>>8978

>>8977

disregardful this >>8943 i was drunk posting

i like your enchanting idea but i think that it would be interesting if it worked in reverse. say the medium tier amours like dawaven are the best for enchanting and then they get worse so you reach a point where you have to chose between a high amour rating tank or a magically buffed spellsword type build. lore wise we could say that the process of the deadra joining with the ebony acts as an enchantment and blocks any further enchantments this could be over come with a twin souls type perk as it would still offer a significant disadvantage over an item with two effects lets say that because ebony is the gods blood it is already strongly magic and this interferes with any new enchantments and glass im sure there will be a reason.

also because i do belive that deadric needs to be craftable for the sake of a balanced smithing skill but i agree that the way skyrim handled the process lore wise was shit i would make it require full enchanting to bind the deadra's essence to the ebony full smithing to create a item capable of standing up to the transformative process and full conjuration to summon and subjugate the deadra as well as provent its escape to oblivion all of this mixed into a cool ritual preformed under a full moon at night would do the lore justice i think

>>8996

> i was drunk posting

No worries, hopefully it was the 415 vintage or even the 399 but I don't think you can find that anywhere nowadays

> the medium tier amours like Dwarven are the best for enchanting and then they get worse so you reach a point where you have to chose between a high amour rating tank or a magically buffed spell-sword type build

This is certainly the sort of thing I was going for, balancing the game generally speaking and making more armors viable for greater variety.

That said, I think it would be bad from a game-play/enjoyment perspective if your character's equipment maxes at level 12 or something. This was part of the problem with Skyrim - Smithing was too easy to level up, so you end up having 100 smithing before level 10, giving you the best armor possible in the game. It didn't help that the reward and unique items in the game were poorer than stuff you made yourself. So you ended up having no incentive to go dungeon crawling to get the boss chest rewards, or do Daedric quests, or level up in the guilds to get cool rewards.

I think part of what makes the games so fun is the feeling of progression you get - slowly getting better and better equipment, for me the pace of this was very good in Morrowind, less good in Oblivion (the fact every bandit starts wearing god-tier equipment at level 20 cannot be criticized enough in my opinion), and just plain unbalanced in Skyrim.

So what is the solution? I'm going to go away and have a think about it and come back with a proper suggestion for this.

>>8996

> the process of the deadra joining with the ebony acts as an enchantment and blocks any further enchantments this could be over come with a twin souls type perk as it would still offer a significant disadvantage over an item with two effects lets say that because ebony is the gods blood it is already strongly magic and this interferes with any new enchantments and glass im sure there will be a reason. also because i do belive that deadric needs to be craftable for the sake of a balanced smithing skill but i agree that the way skyrim handled the process lore wise was shit i would make it require full enchanting to bind the deadra's essence to the ebony full smithing to create a item capable of standing up to the transformative process and full conjuration to summon and subjugate the deadra as well as provent its escape to oblivion all of this mixed into a cool ritual preformed under a full moon at night would do the lore justice i think

I'm sticking to my guns about not letting the player be able to craft daedric (or the other "super" armors) - rare and powerful things feel valuable in the games again, the very idea that a blacksmith with no magical knowledge could create Daedric armor just kills the lore and immersion for me.

What I would suggest is that to improve the equipment you should require level 100 smithing, and you would have to use the highest quality forge in the game, as well as a daedra heart (which should be rare, this was about right in Skyrim to be fair). This way you still get a really good benefit if you chose to level up smithing, but not one that is effectively forcing you to use the skill.

Similarly, you would need to have 100 enchanting skill, and the highest quality enchanting station to enchant the armor.

While on enchanting, I would suggest that we do away with the one-enchantment per piece mechanism, and instead allow you to have up to say five enchantments on a single piece, but have it so the strength of the enchantments is tuned accordingly (e.g. a cuirass with just one resist enchantment would be at 100%, but with two each would be at 50% and so on).

>>9004

nought but the cheapest sujamma for me

>>9007

i'm more of a cyrodilic brandy or mead type personally

Coming back to the question of whether lower-tier armor should have good or bad enchanting potential - Ive had a think about this and I still feel the way to go is to have all armors be worse for enchanting than robes, and also to have the proposed scheme where "mundane" armors are worse for enchating than the "special" armors.

I will totally agree that this doesn't have good balance comparing say Steel armor to Dwemer, but that is kind of the point! The armors you can craft/find at low levels should be worse than the armors you can craft and find later in the game.

I just dont see any justification for having low level armors be good for enchanting, either from an immersion/lore/realism point of view, or a game mechanics/fun point of view.

One mechanic I think would be incorporated, and would be good for balancing is to have the "mundane" armors like iron or steel degrade slower than enchanted armors.

This sort of balancing is preferable because it is more useful to a lower level character - a low level character isn't going to be enchanting much anyway, and having the armor need repairing less is beginner - friendly, and by the later levels when they are using more high level armor it makes sense that they will be more comfortable with maintaining it better and so on.

It's also going to be easier to improve low level armors and equipment with your smithing skill, and you wont need higher level forges to upgrade and repair it. So all in all it will have advantages, but the advantages are aimed at lower level characters, which makes sense as it's low level armor that you are going to be updating and upgrading as your character levels up.

People, I've been thinking.

In Skyrim, you're REALLY going to need good enchanted gear as a pure mage. You'll want a hood or a dragon priest mask, some robes (that can give up to +150% magicka regen), preferably a ring and necklace with boosts to magicka/magicka regen or fortify [magic school]. Probably want to enchant some gloves with fortify magicka too.

A warrior can do fine in unenchanted armor as long as it's a tier fitting with your level (not iron at level 15 for example) and you perk that shit. Getting fortify one-handed gauntlets or fortify stamina boots is not essential, but is a nice boost.

Magic shouldn't be dependent on having very strong enchants.

>>9021

>In Skyrim, you're REALLY going to need good enchanted gear as a pure mage. You'll want a hood or a dragon priest mask, some robes (that can give up to +150% magicka regen), preferably a ring and necklace with boosts to magicka/magicka regen or fortify [magic school]. Probably want to enchant some gloves with fortify magicka too.

This is the kind of the point we have been making about balance and so on.

Yes you can play through the game as a pure-mage character, but there is no advantage to robes over armor as the armor you can enchant yourself is better than anything you can find and armor enchants just as much as non-armor.

They also got rid of the bonus to spells you used to get in the previous games if you were not wearing armor (which was barely noticeable admittedly) meaning there is literally no possible advantage to wearing robes over armor.

> A warrior can do fine in unenchanted armor as long as it's a tier fitting with your level (not iron at level 15 for example) and you perk that shit. Getting fortify one-handed gauntlets or fortify stamina boots is not essential, but is a nice boost.

I'll agree that you can play the game up to a point with un-enchanted gear, but if you play on the higher difficulties (which you need to otherwise the game is far too easy) you will definately find that this ceases to be viable around level 30+ (ignoring the completely game-breaking sneak archer play-style).

All of which is slightly beside the point we're making here which is that the game is horribly unbalanced in a few areas, one of which is that the armor and enchanting become very OP very quickly.

The problem specifically with armor and enchanting is that you the player can craft and enchant better equipment than even the Daedric artifacts in the game. Then you also have the enemies continue to use low-level equipment throughout the game.

The result is that you have equipment that is almost infinitely better than your enemies.

Having the bandits not go Oblivion and start wearing Daedric armor is the right way to go, so the balancing has to come from the other side of the equation.

What I mean by this is that armor and enchanting need to get looked at.

Yes by the time you are level 50 you should be a virtually invincible God, that's the point of the games. But the road to this needs to be a lot longer, and a lot harder, and that will make the rewards more satisfying and enjoyable.

If you can rush smithing by pumping out a load of iron daggers, and rush enchanting by enchanting those daggers, giving you the best equipment in the game at levels as low as you like, then where is the challenge, and the corresponding satisfaction from the grind to the top?

This is where some of the key points from earlier in the thread come in:

1. armors are not as good as robes for enchanting, so even if you do try to "go Skyrim" and craft your own high level armor and enchant it at a low level it isn't going to be game-breakingly OP (it will still be very good though)

> Magic shouldn't be dependent on having very strong enchants.

Totally agree, I'd say you can play Skyrim as a mage without enchantments, but why would you when enchanting is so easy to do, and it is so over-powered?

More specifically we need to find a way of making playing as a mage without armor viable in the game.

2. not all blacksmith stations / forges are equal - by having the early game forges create slightly poorer equipment than the best forges (lets say the ones available to the high level fighters guild members, or when you have become a thane/equivalent in the cities) it will encourage you to keep unlockinging better forges in the game and also give you a boost for doing quests. We would have the same mechanic with enchanting stations (i.e the rubbish ones are not as good as the ones in the mages guild, which are not as good as the arch-mages personal one and so on).

3. the best armor in the game is limited to 2-3 sets in game, each piece is hidden (you could implement a similar mechanic to Deathbrand in Dragonborn if you want to make it more noob friendly) and you cannot create it at forges (but you can improve it at forges). This armor is better than other armors for enchanting, and can ONLY be improved or enchanted at the highest level forge/enchanting stations.

>>9040

There's 3 of us in here actually. Yay for /tes/

>>9040

> look at pic

> instantly get little lies by fleetwood mac on my head

Have a nice trip mate

>>9021

Warriors need enchantments though. Carrying capacity buffs, element resistance buffs, Health/Stamina buffs, maybe some swappable Hlaalulery for things like alchemy buff (potions of healing and stamina and some poisons are very useful for a warrior, and shops don't always carry enough) and merchant-related buffs for better prices.

>>9172

They're useful, not essential.

If you pick the right race, perk the right skills and spread your stats out properly you can play a warrior without enchanted gear.

Mage without enchants? Ha!

>>9172

> Warriors need enchantments though.

I really disagree, you should be able to play without enchantments (at least up to the very high levels) otherwise it makes the enchanting skill too-powerful and it feels like the game is forcing you to use it

Enchanting should be a really useful boost or advantage, and become increasingly useful and necessary at higher levels to counter stronger and better equipped enemies

It just doesn't feel satisfying or make sense that a very low level character can make and use enchantments that are better than anything you can find in the game - okay, if you get to be arch-mage and have the best soul gems etc. in the world to use then it makes sense that you can make some really good enchantments

But you shouldn't just be able to wander into the Jarl's keep with a suit of steel armor and put on enchantments that are better than any quest rewards or daedric artifacts

To make quests rewards, and loot actually feel valuable and worth dungeon crawling to get out of the boss chests you need to bring back unique items like the mundane ring from Oblivion.

If you're playing as a warrior you can join the fighters guild and get some rewards that give you boosts, this makes more sense than doing it yourself and it actually provides an incentive to work your way through the guild!

On the mage topic, this was a really silly point in Skyrim if you're a pure mage enchanting is pretty much useless to you - the robes are not very good for enchanting so it's preferable to just buy them, you wont be using weapons and you can't enchant your own staffs (until Dragonborn DLC and even then it's rubbish and useless), and there are no enchantments to boost destruction magic damage.

So you end us with enchanting (a magic-type skill) offering no benefits to mage characters and being really easy and over-powered for warrior-characters.

How silly is that!

>>9189

To be honest, playing a mage can be made a lot easier by adding magicka enchants to gloves (no good pre-enchanted gloves can be found for mages) and fortify destruction on necklace and ring.

>>9198

I wouldn't say a lot easier, but it would help.

The point I'm really making is that enchanting, which is a magic skill, is of much less use to magic users than non-magic users which is just silly.

>>9189

>How silly is that!

The kind that comes with the official Bethesda seal of quality.

>>9208

This could and should be Bethesda's new catchphrase - imagine the E3 demos

> here we see the character placing a bucket over the shopkeepers head to allow them to steal

> whole crowd chimes in like it's a panto "how silly is that!"

> queue big-bang-theory level laughter

> and now my character is joining the Thieves Guild as this is the only way to progress with the main quest…

> HOW SILLY IS THAT

> hysterical laughter begins to make the entire building reverberate

>>9216

>and now I'm demonstrating the unrelenting force shout on Lydia! 'FUS RO DAH'

>How silly is that?

>let's talk with one of the guards, shall we? See what he has to say!

>'I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee'

>laughter destroys everything withing a radius of 5 kilometers, and everyone within 20 is rendered deaf.

>>9172

> Warriors need enchantments though. Carrying capacity buffs, element resistance buffs, Health/Stamina buffs, maybe some swappable Hlaalulery for things like alchemy buff (potions of healing and stamina and some poisons are very useful for a warrior, and shops don't always carry enough) and merchant-related buffs for better prices.

> Warrior

> Alchemy

What sort of warrior build is doing alchemy?

To me, a "pure" warrior build doesn't bother with alchemy, or enchanting, and uses at MOST one magic type skills for balence (e.g. a bit of destruction for range if they don't use a bow, or a bit of restoration for healing and fortify spells). Of course adding other skills will make your build more rounded, but the point is that the game shouldn't force you to do that! If you want to play as a PURE fighter you should be able to do so, even if playing as a more rounded character would be preferable in some situations.

For the purposes of a comparison on the "pure fighter" game-style, lets look at Oblivion and Skyrim:

In Oblivion you can join the fighters guild, practice no magic skills and not even have access to enchanting which you would have to be fairly progressed in the mages guild. Your character would be viable up to high levels without any magic skills or equipment, and you would be getting decent equipment (that is leveled, and sometimes enchanted) as rewards for Fighter's guild quests and general dungeon crawling.

Not only that, but you would get some genuinely unique items as rewards (e.g. Lord Rugdumphs Sword, Amenlion armor, various rings with useful enchants including damage reflect).

Even at high levels you are not forced to do enchanting and join the mages guild as you can use the Sigil stones to do enchanting.

So in a standard play through as a fighter it is viable for you to play as a pure warrior, and you get rewards for the fighters guild quests that are useful and complement the play style.

Now Skyrim, the companions quest line has almost no quest reward items, other than a skyforge steel weapon (that is admittedly very good at low levels). It could be argued that the guild is more of a werewolf guild than a fighters guild, but nonetheless it is below par compared with the guilds of previous games both in rewards and story/missions.

On top of the guild having no item rewards, enchanting is very easy and accessible in ES5, as is smithing, so your fighter character ends up with hugely OP equipment even at low levels that you make yourself, and negates the potential rewards you could get from quests or dungeon crawls.

I've seen people play most of the first two hours of their play-through sitting at forges and enchanting tables which tells you something is wrong.

>>9311

You're not getting the point I was making

The point is that from a pure role-play point of view it SHOULD be viable to play as a pure warrior character, and a pure warrior isn't going to be bothering with alchemy.

YES having a well rounded character that is proficient in lots of skills and is more balanced SHOULD (and indeed does) make the game easier, but it should NOT be a necessity.

Remember, we are not talking about how to play Skyrim here (as if anyone needs tips on how to play when it's super easy to make a suit of armor that makes you immune to pretty much everything), we are talking about how we would like to see armor implemented in an Elder Scrolls game

tldr: I am not suggesting alchemy is useless (far from it) but I am saying that if you want to play as a pure warrior you should be able to (at least until you get to the high levels)

>>9325

And ideally from a roleplaying standpoint, shops that sell the restoration items would have much more available. I'm not sure the current stock would even be enough to handle people living in town that hurt themselves chopping wood.

I would say though, in Skyrim outside of destruction magic being way overpowered but only when enemy NPCs use it :^) and dragons' shout attacks, you can do that pretty well even on Legendary difficulty.

Granted you need to get fairly far into the game on that difficulty to be worth it. Being low level and getting two-hit-killed by a mudcrab of all things is just unthinkable.

>>9331

> And ideally from a roleplaying standpoint, shops that sell the restoration items would have much more available.

No arguments here, shops should be shops, not dumping grounds for quick septims as now seems to be the case.

>I would say though, in Skyrim outside of destruction magic being way overpowered

It actually isn't overpowered at all, this is actually another symptom of the Armor problems in ES5:

Destruction Magic ignores armor rating and just damages health directly.

In ES5 smithing and enchanting are far too easy, so everyone makes the highest level armor possible by about level 5.

SO:

You're most likely playing as a character with combat skills BELOW what they should be at your level and amour level HIGHER than what it should be at your level and you don't have much health because you're still low level and you're probably put some in magic etc.

So physical damage (swords, arrows etc.) barely affect you in your OP armor, but magic ignores your op armor and hits your health direct. So basically you think Magic is OP because your character builds are too focused on equipment.

And then of course you get pissed off about destruction magic being OP (even though it isn't) and grind your Enchanting skill so you can make a set of Armor with magic resist by level 10.

So in short, by level 10 you've made equipment that is ridiculously OP (which wasn't possible in earlier games because enchanting wasn't as OP, and you had to get the best items as quest rewards e.g. mundane ring) and you're annoyed because the game is too easy.

> Being low level and getting two-hit-killed by a mudcrab of all things is just unthinkable.

This is the best part of the games! Comparing your humble beginnings to your monster character at the end of the game! The game absolutely should be crushingly difficult (on high difficulty) so you can get that satisfaction of becoming the most powerful being on Nirn!

And it has to be a proper journey, not just grinding out OP equipment for the first couple of hours of the game.

Pretty much the only way to enjoy Skyrim is to play in a way where you purposely limit your character build (e.g. no stealth archer, no OP enchants etc.). Even ramping it up to Legendary difficulty is just ramping up damage taken and nerfing damage you dish out, which is just irritating because it isn't genuine difficulty, it's artificial difficulty that isn't effected by your combat skills or anything like that.

>>9350

>Destruction Magic ignores armor rating and just damages health directly.

Which is what makes it overpowered in the hands of hostile NPCs on higher difficulties. Enemies have billions of HP compared to your 2 hitpoints, to exaggerate for effect. Did you see how one attack hitting the player and a second attack nowhere near the player killed the guy in the webm above?

Meanwhile, goats and elk take a full 220 magicka pool worth of destruction magic without giving a damn.

That character is something like level 60 in that webm, good pool of health, the Gaulder amulet for even more health, and at least one piece of armor enchanted with frost resist. Combat skills aren't bad either, and the levels are almost 100 for all three :^) weapon types.

Did I mention the second attack in the webm didn't even go in the general direction of the character and DEAD.

>And it has to be a proper journey, not just grinding out OP equipment for the first couple of hours of the game.

Not even Morrowind killed you that easily. Wearing heavy armor was enough to stop level 1 rats and mudcrabs from killing you with the ease of an action movie hero killing generic bad guy 40 with a single punch.

>>9357

Like I said, the "difficulty" slider in Skyrim is a cheap artificial difficultly that just makes you do less damage and enemies do more damage.

And then you're surprised and annoyed that enemies spells do more damage than yours!

> evel 60 in that webm, good pool of health, the Gaulder amulet for even more health, and at least one piece of armor enchanted with frost resist

By level 60 you should be using the Lord stone (for damage and magic resistance), have some enchantments that boost magic resistance (up to 80% resistance) and you should probably be using a cloak spell or ranged attacks rather than trying to rush several enemies in a confined space.

This isn't relevant to what we were saying either - you couldn't be a pure warrior that is level 60 - you would have had to level up lots of other skills to get that high level anyway.

> Not even Morrowind killed you that easily. Wearing heavy armor was enough to stop level 1 rats and mudcrabs from killing you

I think you will find it did, especially with the annoying luck/chance to hit thing that meant you were swinging for ages doing nothing.

I dunno man, maybe you just suck at the game, Skyrim really is not at all hard. Sorry.

>>8866

Slash(ing)? That's how Pathfinder and DnD and shit do it

>>9399

>implying it only happens on legendary

Ebin. n'wah, this happens on Normal too, wreck shit at just about every level then some n'wah with a spell appears and it's 40%+ of your health gone per hit if you don't have natural magicka resistance. Try pulling the retard stick out of your brain.

>by level 60 you should use this specific build

No n'wah, by level 60 it should still be entirely player's choice, not shoehorned into a specific autismbuild just because Bethesda don't know what the fuck they're doing with magic anymore.

>>9399

There's a custom difficulty slider mod

Here's the standard difficulty levels table, with damage dealt by players on the left and enemy damage on the right

Novice | x2 | x0.5

Apprentice | x1.5 | x0.75

Adept | x1 | x1

Expert | x0.75 | x1.5

Master | x0.5 | x2

Legendary | x0.25 | x3

I have mine set to

[custom] |x0.7 |x3

That way enemies are deadly, but are also no damage sponges. I find that when combined with combat mods, it's balanced pretty well

>>9446

At this point I'm going to stop responding because you're just ignoring what I am saying.

>>9451

Interesting, but doesn't that just end up with both you and the enemies doing very little damage to one another and just make fights last longer than normal?

On the topic of armor but not related to gameplay mechanics, I wish we had more types of the same armor (same weight, cost, armor rating but different look). Skyrim did some things right with 4 types of fur armor, steel helmet and steel horned helmet but it kinda ends there :S

I'd like for most helmets for which it would fit to have a horned and hornless version cause I also want smooth ancient nord helmets or iron helmets, or ebony helmets with horns for maximum intimidation.

Also, I just realized there isn't a single light armor piece with good horns, which was dissapointing :/

Iron helmet, steel horned helmet, ancient nord helmet, helm of yngol, dragonplate helmet and daedric helmet are all heavy armor.

>>9491

This had so much potential.

Im almost as dissapointed as i was with spore

the more I think about it the more I feel like a lot of the big design problems with Skyrim are a direct result of the game being shoehorned into working on the aegis PS3 and 360 consoles

Have I been here to long?

>>9527

aeging…

although in the context of this thread aegis is slightly relevant… did anyone ever use the aegis of the apocalypse in Oblivion?

>>9528

AGING

fuck me

>>9527

This right here. Most people like to wank about how PCs have better graphics and better frames but I'm more concerned about the fact that consoles are plain out underpowered and can only handle games up to a certain size.

>>9532

That and shoehorning controls to make them suitable for a plebby controller

>>9570

Shit, this too. Some games don't need advanced controls anyway so it's nice to have a controller (way more comfy) but it also kills a lot of games.

What are the three threads that this started on?

>>9724

As far as I can recall:

>>8701

>>9383

>>6387

But possibly others as well, I think you can make the argument that a lot of the problems with Skyrim are a result of armor (and equipment/enchanting in general) not being very well implemented or balanced, so it tends to come up quite a bit.

>>9452

i would just use skytweak, personally, fucking love that mod.

>>9491

i like how fallout 4's armor system is exactly what you're talking about. when you upgrade armor beyond a certain point it adds some stuff onto them. i saw it happen to some of my armor stuff so i know it happens.