The Balance of Skyrim

So I have some people trying to tell me that the balance in Skyrim is broken. I question if these people are playing the same game I am.

So far, to me, the balance in this game has been masterful. I'm playing on Adept and have had my fair share of challenging battles. I still feel every time I level up (I'm level 29 after 56 hours of play) and gain new gear I'm becoming more and more powerful, which is evidenced by the ability to kill lower level enemies (which still populate the game world and don't magically disappear as I level up), yet I still get challenged by higher level enemies. I think Skyrim walks this fine line of near perfectly.

Let's say this: It's the first RPG I've ever played that has me genuinely interested in playing on Master difficulty, just to see what it's like.

But again, some people are saying it's broken, and they're pointing to things like loot progression, and smithing and enchanting. I have had great fun with the loot progression and I find it very rewarding, and I've had no problems with smithing or enchanting (probably because I simply don't power-level any skills, nor do I try to exploit any "flaws" in the system).

So are these people wrong? Or do they have a point? If they do I certainly don't see it.

Thoughts on the balance of Skyrim?

I think a lot of people have taken the enchanting thing to the limit, that can make the game a little too easy. At least that's what I've read (complaints on forums), I'm always careful not to get too crazy in the pursuit of godlike items or doing the 'best build' or whatever.

I just w/ what feels good (and sometimes what looks good!), keeps the game challenging. It's still an accomplishment for me to take down a giant, that's the way I like it!

PS - playing on Adept as well, i dont play the higher difficulties in games becuase it generally means youre just banging on enemies twice as long ='.'=

Apart from a few people who complain about super-high levels, a lot of the complaints I've seen have been about the crafting skills giving you uber-loot if you power-level them. Well, duh, I say.

It's like the people who complained about Morrowind because if you went to such-and-such-a-place and looked behind the third dresser of the guard tower you could find a strong sword, or went out of your way to create potions of godlike strength, you would be really strong from level one. That's their problem, not the game's. If you don't want all the powerful stuff, then don't play the game that way. Simple!

Originally Posted by Fluent
So are these people smoking crack because Skyrim is the best RPG ever made?

1. I'm not smoking crank
2. Skyrim is not the best RPG ever made

As for the balance in the game I've already posted in a few threads. I didn't improve smithing, enchanting, alchemy, etc and most of the time I play on adept difficulty. The only skill I have on 100 (and I'm now level 44) is heavy armor. However in my case some bosses were impossible to kill without lowering the difficulty. Although those were rare, I'm pretty sure I still can't kill dwarven centurion master on adept difficulty without bringing some mass of pots with me when entering any dwarven ruin. Which means - the game is not balanced for everyone and certainly not for every playstyle. It looks as if it's "balanced" only for players who start maxing enchanting already on level 1.

Also as stated here:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php…-far-thread-3/

* Destruction magic damage doesn't scale well - eg at/around level 50, your destruction spells can be doing next to nothing to any similarly levelled creatures, whereas a melee/bow character will find their damage has scaled incredibly. May be intentional?

I've wrote about this in some previous threads. For whatever reason I do next to nothing damage with destruction spells although I'm past 70 in that skill, while with one-handed weapon and skill under 40 I kill some bosses with just a few hits. That's what you call balanced? Yea, right.

Some people complain about some skills scaling poorly (Destruction being one of them), which made the game a bit harder on later levels than it should have been. Also, I found that shields made some encounters downright trivial. Being able to swiftly stagger any opponent meant that you could stagger-lock certain enemies that otherwise had very powerful attacks (like liches & certain dragons). As soon as they begun to cast a spell/raised their head to use a breath attack, I would just hit them with my shield and they would stop doing whatever they were doing. It made the final boss of the game less challenging than a pack of bandits.

I think the high level balance will depend on whether they kept Oblivion's system of level-based hp, which just lead to absurd damage-sponge enemies being everywhere, with no comprable increase in player damage ability. They never seem to learn that lots of hp doesn't make a fight challenging, it makes it a long, boring battle of attrition.

I did meet a master centurion sphere that seemed to be pretty unbalanced compared to the rest of the dungeon it was in, but that was largely because it was a hp sponge beastie on top of being a pretty heavy hitter. Once the creation kit gets released it'll be a simple matter to go in and adjust that sort of thing. I teaked a lot of the FO3 DLC enemies down to reasonable levels that way to make things playable again. Ghoul reavers, anyone?

Skyrim is bloody good game and provided you don't game the system it is balanced for most people. It is definitely balanced for my play style (paladin type char).

I know people like to make Skyrim out to be the best game/rpg ever made but that's simply not the case. It has many flaws like many other good games/rpgs out there now and I can see how the game is not balanced for everyone nor it has all the features people expects in an RPG. How can it be?

I never really understand why people have the need to say this game is the best or not? Its like saying apple is better than orange…

I think it is well balanced considering the scope and size of the game. I think the destruction issue depends a lot on the player. On the other game forum I am active in a lot we have a lot of mages and some of them are in the destruction line mainly and say its balanced. It goes up and down a bit but with moderate attention to how you are building your mage they say they have not had a big issue with destruction (although a few complained). So, purely ancedotal, my feeling is a lot has to do with the player since some players have not had an isue with destruction.

I flip around on difficulty myself, adjusting as needed. Course I am so not going for max builds or gear so sometimes I get my ass handed to me and need to lower things. I don't enchant nor do I recharge magic items as I feel soul binding is evil on my character. My only magic is restoration and altertation. I am a 2 handed stealth ranger wearing fur armor and approaching level 30. I have some skill in 1H which I use in sneak mode and a spell in the other.

Overall I am very content with the scaling so far and have had no problems. I don't feel any need at all to build a certain way or that I have to "start enchanting at level 1". Granted, however, I don't put a whole lot of worry or focus on worrying about combat as long as I have some challenge yet can also fight and win without getting to frustrated. I often find some of the hard battles just need a different strategy or approach. Or I come back at a later time.

I'm level 40 playing on Expert - I really like the balancing in battles so far.
I'm playing a fighter with some healing skills. I can kill bosses without adjusting the difficulty. Some bosses are very tough - I like it this way

Joxer, didn't mean to offend anyone with the smoking crack comment. But to me, the game is a masterpiece, and pointing out these issues is just nitpicking. But ok, I guess some people claim they have a legitimate complaint about something. But in my experience, it hasn't happened to me. Of course, I haven't played every build possible to play test every build and how balanced they are all. I haven't done that. But I've played for 60 fun-filled hours with my build, and I've done a bit of everything with him, and have ran into zero problems with smithing, enchanting, alchemy, etc. I can't say anything about destruction magic since my skill in destruction magic is low. But for the crafting systems, and the overall balance in the game, I think it's just masterfully done. Given the scope and size of the world, it's amazing that they were able to achieve a great balance between difficulty and feeling more powerful as you level up, and a balance between leveling too fast or too slow. They did a great job I think.

And I do think it's one of the best RPGs ever made, I really do. But that's just my opinion. I considered Morrowind and Chrono Trigger to be the greatest RPGs ever made before Skyrim, and now I look at it as a 3-way tie for the lead. I'll take any of them as the best ever made.

But again, no issues with smithing, or enchanting, or alchemy. Then again, I haven't tried to power level these skills, at all. I don't craft 50 iron daggers every time I'm in town. I do make a ton of potions and sell most of them for profit, but even doing that my alchemy skill is only in the 30s so far. So alchemy also seems very well balanced. Enchantment skill goes up very fast but for good reason, you don't use it a lot. But again, if you decide to power level it, it will go up much quicker, and you'll have access to much more powerful items much earlier than intended. I don't find that broken, I find that as an option to those who actually want to power level their skill. It's basically saying ok, you can power level the skill if you so choose. I'm fine with that, because I know I won't be doing it in my game, so that's all that matters. The game itself isn't broken by any stretch, it's only broken if you make it broken.

As for the difficulty balance, I find it too to be great. Even on Adept difficulty. I still find myself challenged by certain enemies or certain groups of enemies, yet I still feel like an all around badass because I'm wearing enchanted Orcish armor and carrying a legendary sword and shield, and can summon a Dremora at whim. So the game I feel, does an absolutely incredible job of walking that very fine line between feeling powerful, yet not making the game too easy. Again, the word masterful comes to mind.

Like I said, haven't tried Destruction magic at high levels, so not sure what's going on there, but I have a niggling suspicion that I would find it to be just fine, because for one, I trust the devs and what they've done with this game. I don't find game developers to be stupid people, they are smart and they know what they are doing. How could they possibly mess up something as important as destruction magic? I don't believe they could, therefore I won't believe it until I see it. Someday I will see it, when I create a mage character, but not anytime soon unfortunately.

If one thing is for sure, it's that everyone's experience of Skyrim seems to be much different. Some people say the game is perfectly balanced, some say it has problems, some say it's the greatest game ever made, some say it sucks (really?), and some just say it's great but it has flaws. Everyone is right in their own mind.

Originally Posted by Menigal
Apart from a few people who complain about super-high levels, a lot of the complaints I've seen have been about the crafting skills giving you uber-loot if you power-level them. Well, duh, I say.

Not really, in my opinion. Duh, that is.
Maxing out smithing nets comparably better benefits than maxing out most, if not all, of the other skills and power leveling it is really easy.
For example, power leveling magic schools is not as straightforward as smithing and you won´t be able to cast higher level spells anyway due to mana costs. Power leveling enchanting is similarly beneficial as smithing, but at least you have to obtain enchantments and soul gems first.

Smithing even when not totally maxed can net way too good equipment without leaving a town and that´s not a particularly good design I think. I´d say it´s even verisimilitude breaking, especially in the context of daedric artifacts which aren´t level scaled and as such inferior to what one can craft with around 80 in smithing (daedric artifacts can be upgraded via smithing as well, but not as effectively as normal gear).
I´ve played on master difficulty which at higher levels seems to more-or-less expect players to take advantage of crafting if they don´t want gameplay to become tedious, but on normal difficulties I imagine crafting can trivialize most of the content even without abusing its synergies. Even when taking the synergies out of the picture, smithing and enchanting feel like "master difficulty skills only".
Btw, abusing crafting to get those sky high armor values is useless - even though the game displays whatever value one has, the effective cap is at 567 and everything above that doesn´t count . That, however, introduces a different imbalance to crafting, especially related to light/heavy armour skills - with high enough skill values one can potentially reach the cap quite regardless the armour type. Having different caps for different armour materials would be in my opinion a better implementation.
I think that the ability to improve base stats of weapons and armours is too pronounced, allowing to put an enchantment-like capabilities instead (like better chance to score a critical hit, for example) might´ve helped here.

Also, in regards to "power leveling", well, there sorta isn´t another way to level smithing. Other skills level more-or-less naturally as you go, but there isn´t really a way to level smithing other than grinding. If you only use it to improve your gear from time to time, I doubt you´ll be ever able to put those dragon bones and scales to any use other than selling them.
So basically, I think that if one wants to be good at smithing, power leveling is a must, the only question is when one chooses to do it.
The other issue is the grinding requires no effort. If I could rebalance it, I´d probably let it to level even faster than it does, but I´f introduce skill gain caps for various materials (crafting iron daggers would stop adding gains after, say, skill level 40) and make crafting components much rarer, mainly for vendors that is.
That would ensure mastering the skill at level 10 wouldn´t be possible and exploration would play more important role in raising the skill, as it is now, finding an ore vein is quite a non-event.



The other usual complaints are mostly valid too, I think.

Taking lockpicking perks is a waste since one can open any lock without them and lockpicks are easy to come by. The perk making novice locks easier to pick is almost insulting .
Speech perks seem nigh useless to me as well. While I failed at persuasion checks quite often, for some reason I almost never failed at intimidation, these checks are used relatively sparsely and don´t seem to have significant influence on quests anyway. Sometimes I´ve found missing persuasion options to be quite annoying, like in the case of

Pickpocketing isn´t a game changer either.
Besides one feature which seems unintended to me (pickpocketing back money paid to trainers), I rarely encountered a situation when pickpocketing a key was the only way to open a container/doors and in one situation I remember that required it it was easily doable just by drinking one potion, with the skill at low 20s.

Destruction school seems rather sucky to me. Higher level spells cost quite a lot of mana (of course, crafting has exploits even for that ), friendly fire may be an issue in regards to companions and master spells seem weak, especially taking 5 seconds needed to cast them into consideration.
I really don´t understand why raising destruction skill doesn´t raise damage of the spells (it seems to work for enemy spellcasters though, at least on master difficulty, at higher levels these were generally the biggest threat for my character).
Speaking of exploits, or "exploits", in regards to magic, unless I missed something, one pretty much has to utilize enchanting, because otherwise higher level spells cost way too much, I think one cast of a master destruction spell costs around 600 mana with perks, and mage-y gear obtainable without crafting didn´t seem all that useful to me.
The problem, of course, similarly as with other potentially exploit-y stuff, is that it´s kinda hard to recognize where taking a "honest" advantage of game mechanics stops and exploiting starts.


Obviously, since it´s a singleplayer game, one can employ some house rules to rebalance the game to own´s liking, but I would certainly prefer the game to be more "authoritative" in this regard.

That said, TES games have never been paragons of balance and all things considered I think Skyrim is mostly balanced quite well. Enemy level scaling was handled mostly well for this type of game, economy doesn´t feel "broken" and it´s impossible to build a master of all trades character.

Originally Posted by lostforever
It is definitely balanced for my play style (paladin type char).

Related to this, there´s another kind of imbalance I´ve noticed after a while - majority of quest content I´ve enjoyed the most (Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, daedric quests) was geared towards neutral/evil characters.

I'm playing on "normal". I've been playing a pure mage (conjuration, destruction and alteration). The game started off with quite a few challenging encounters, but by the time I hit Level 30 or so, there were few that were actually challenging (I always have a conjured dremora at my side and ebony skin + mage armor perks). At level 37 this is still the case. Little to challenge me, unless I'm caught by surprise. I have not had trouble with the master dwemer constructs - I just strafe around them and blast with lightning until they die BUT I think many combats favour ranged attacks, esp by mages. Getting up close and personal is likely to be much harder, esp if they creature's armour is very strong and your weapon does not have an enchantment to which it is vulnerable (and there is no guarantee you will carrying around such a weapon - mages are lucky, they can switch between frost/fire/elec on the fly).

One 'balance' (game play?) issue that does irritate me: despite my level (37) and 300+ armour rating, I still get damaged by mudcrabs - I'm sorry, but that is just wrong. Creatures which deliver damage below some threshold should not be able to penetrate a high armor class but the 80% max damage reduction limit (according to uesp) ensures that anything can damage you.

Another balance issue is the ability to guzzle as many potions as you want in no time at all - well I have not noticed any limit. Oblivion imposed a limit. It's completely unrealistic and means if you have enough potions you can survive any encounter.

Game is too easy even if you restrict yourself to basically not use anything. See the following list of restrictions:
http://forums.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=26354

1. No selling to vendors. All your gold is the gold you loot directly and get from quest rewards.

2. No buying any items you would equip or use to make items you would equip. Buying stuff like a mining pick or spell books is fine though, since it doesn't really make the game much easier, just less annoying, and isn't really abusive.

3. No consumables. Enchants and soul gems for recharging them is fine, though, but potions/poisons/scrolls are not.

4. No smithing/enchanting. You might still not break the game without this restrictions since you can't buy materials from vendors to power-level them, but figured I'd keep it safe and include this restriction.

5. No % reduction above 75%. This means you must keep yourself vulnerable to at least 25% of enemy damage (via armor/resists), and cannot reduce cost of spells to lower than 25% by stacking cost reductions. Keep in mind that magic resist and racials stack strangely with elemental resists, so make sure you understand how they work (I still need to test some of it), and the restriction means that after you factor all the different stacking mechanics, you must take at least 25% damage compared to a naked character of a race with no resistances.

6. No gear swapping in combat. If you want, you can also make it more strict and forbid opportunistic gear swapping (so you run around with the same set of armor regardless of what enemy you're facing), but I'm not sure it'll be possible to finish the game like that. Weapon swapping is OK, of course. It's simply no swapping in/out of +stam/hp/mana gear for free regen, or swapping to frost resist items right as a dragon starts breathing frost and swap out immediately after. Those are pretty abusive.

7. No exiting a dungeon once you start it, unless you load to a save from before you entered it. This is to prevent you from level-locking the dungeon to a lower level and coming back at a higher level and breeze through it.

8. No followers. No help from any NPCs whenever you actually have a choice. They scale with difficulty and trivialize the game.

9. No summons. I think they scale with difficulty as well. If they don't, though, you could remove this restriction.

I also didn't use stealth. Apparently that is broken too, but I'm not saying that based on personal experience so take that with a grain of salt.

Now, if you actually use the stuff in the game, any of it, then you just make it easier. If you use them effectively, you make it extremely easy!

That said, yes, balance in Skyrim is terribly broken. The only way for the game to become "balanced" is if you intentionally (or unintentionally) play like a complete idiot. Kinda similar to Dragon Age's difficulty. Except Skyrim is even easier even though the restrictions I used in Skyrim are much more severe than the ones used in Dragon Age (I pretty much used the ones described here: http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/to…/index/1879811 ).


To be honest, it really looks like Bethesda don't actually care about any of this. Balance is not something that makes their games sell, apparently. After all people who play TES seem to play it for the "Wow! Look at that world!" factor. Not "Wow! What awesome gameplay and great options I have a hard time deciding which to take because they're all effective and feel needed for success in the game!" They really need to learn a thing or 2 from Blizzard. In fact if they would just copy some systems from Diablo 3 (armor system, resistance system, character/monster power scaling with level, crafting system) the game would've been SO much better. Maybe even "awesome".

Originally Posted by galzohar
That said, yes, balance in Skyrim is terribly broken. The only way for the game to become "balanced" is if you intentionally (or unintentionally) play like a complete idiot. Kinda similar to Dragon Age's difficulty. Except Skyrim is even easier even though the restrictions I used in Skyrim are much more severe than the ones used in Dragon Age.

I find the comparison to Dragon Age a bit strange. I don't recall having any such issues with balance in that game. In fact, DA:O was one of the more difficult RPGs I had played in awhile.

I would say it can become unbalanced if you *think* about your perks a little rather than the average gamer who might spread around the perks.
Recently switched to Expert after enchantment upgrades and left Lydia at home. I have a Lvl 31 archer with a nearly complete tree in archery, 4 x enchanted items with +33% to bow damage, and bows I picked up - most things are a walk over except mages.
The only reason I boosted enchantment was I needed a bow damage amulet to match my exisiting 3 x 20% items (from loot/shops), so I thought "why not"? So unlocked the first 3 perks and the skill one in enchanting. My enchant skill is 60, my smithing is 50, and I dont plan to unlock any crafting perks in smithing tree except perhaps the one that lets you improve magical armour.
I created a "smithing" clothes outfit with 4x 20% smithing skill (apron, gloves, ring, necklace) and with that its possible to upgrade items to "Epic" with a potion.
Next will create a 4x 20% lockpicking set and a 4 x 20% pickpocket set. 4 x Alchemy set if I need it.
Then I have a Paralyze enchantment waiting to be put on my bow, which I have not even done yet.

Still enjoy finding loot - as long as I do not craft my own gear this will continue i hope. (eg just found ebony bow and glass armour). However I can see the item levelling at work now.

Might have to increase to Master level. 50 hrs or so in, might just finish of TG and MQ (maybe DB) lines and be done with it.

Morrowind GOTY balance is broken in the first five minutes if you manage to take down a Dark Brotherhood assassin….

I'm using mundane weapons in Skyrim and the balance is perfect. At level 35 I'm still using the (fine) Skyforge Axe. With perks its at 39 damage. If I'm not careful in combat I'm a dead man. Love it!

Spotted this… And it really explains "the balance" great if you ask me:

Hahaha, priceless!

My glass-canon sneak can get one or two shotted by a bandit with a sledgehammer, so I think it is balanced well enough without having to resort to any ridiculous self-imposed restrictions. BTW, I haven't abused smithing or enchanting, made just a few upgrades and many soul gem recharges.

I'm basically a fire mage and I have to make sure not to get hit in melee. I pretty much die in one hit by a competent melee fighter. However, they almost never get that one hit I have a bow that I poison with weakness to fire and whittle them down with a X3 sneak attack. After that, it's blast, watch them stagger, blast, watch them stagger, blast, watch them die. Lydia is my meat shield, without whom I'd be slaughtered. I must have a tank companion, or I'm overrun. I really enjoy playing this way. I literally am a glass cannon.

As far as enchanting, alchemy, and smithing; I try to use what I've found legitimately, because you can become unstoppable if you abuse these. If I find an amulet that gives 12% to alchemy. I'll break it down and then enchant 4 pieces that give 12%. Same with the other schools. The only time I abuse alchemy is when making potions of carryweight. I'll boost my alchemy as high as I can before making those suckers I think my current potions are giving me an extra 57 pounds.