Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim or HERE THERE BE DRAGONS

[Marc v4.0]

It must be a difference of playstyles then, because I never had to fire more then 3 arrows at anything to bring it down without going all sneak-hax on it. I only kept a blades skill up so i could deal with those damn skeletons.

Backpedaling is an important part of any first or third person action game and shame on them.

[Pip Boy]

Originally Posted by Marc v1.0

It must be a difference of playstyles then, because I never had to fire more then 3 arrows at anything to bring it down without going all sneak-hax on it. I only kept a blades skill up so i could deal with those damn skeletons.

Backpedaling is an important part of any first or third person action game and shame on them.

You apparently either had the best bow in the game all the time or never got past level 2, because it gets to the point where average enemies take about half a plex arrows before they go down.

EDIT: Anything on how magic is going to work? I like that you could enchant weapons and armor in the other game, but hated soulstones, and making my own spells was really fun, yet poorly balanced. Almost all spells made were either way overpowered or underpowered, not much of a middle ground.

EDIT: More specifically, are they going to address the fact that a mage was undoubtedly the most powerful kind of character in the game, followed by rogues, followed by those poor fools who tried to wear armor?

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

You apparently either had the best bow in the game all the time or never got past level 2, because it gets to the point where average enemies take about half a plex arrows before they go down.

Thiiiiis. At level 20, I ratcheted the difficulty all the way down, and it still was taking me four or five arrows to kill things.

EDIT: Anything on how magic is going to work? I like that you could enchant weapons and armor in the other game, but hated soulstones, and making my own spells was really fun, yet poorly balanced. Almost all spells made were either way overpowered or underpowered, not much of a middle ground.

Enchanting armor and weapons is definitely still in, but it's sounding like they're giving up spellcrafting in favor of actually making the default spells worth a damn. You can also apparently dual-wield the same spell for some boosts to that spell.

EDIT: More specifically, are they going to address the fact that a mage was undoubtedly the most powerful kind of character in the game, followed by rogues, followed by those poor fools who tried to wear armor?

No idea. Given the way leveling works, which is classless now, I'm gonna go ahead and guess just based on what I've seen so far that the best combination will probably end up being some sort of mage/warrior hybrid (1-handed weapon+spell). Really depends on how prevalent mana potions are.

You also can't craft ridiculously broken spells anymore, sooooooo.

Originally Posted by Marc

Backpedaling is an important part of any first or third person action game and shame on them.

If it's any comfort, it apparently had nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with the fact that character models in third-person view (another thing they're apparently working on) look ridiculous when they're running backwards full-speed.

[Marc v4.0]

I have no idea, then. I just loaded up my save to make sure I wasn't just wearing the rose-tinted glasses and I have no problem just wasting fools and monsters left and right with the difficulty slider at half.

I do have a really bitching bow, so I might just be using one of the best bows.

[Nikose Tyris]

Using a rusty iron bow, I can one shot anything from a sneak, and it's about 3 arrows max without it.

Enchanting is, in Morrowind and Oblivion, very similar. Don't expect any significant change.

I play Morrowind/Oblivion in FPS and I really hope I don't get strong-armed into a third person view.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Nikose Tyris

Using a rusty iron bow, I can one shot anything from a sneak, and it's about 3 arrows max without it.

We have had very very different gameplay experiences then.

Enchanting is, in Morrowind and Oblivion, very similar. Don't expect any significant change.

Wait, you're saying that because nothing changed between the last two games, nothing will change in this one?

That's... not very solid logic.

Particularly when they're overhauling the magic system (Mysticism is gone, by the way) enchanting is based on.

I play Morrowind/Oblivion in FPS and I really hope I don't get strong-armed into a third person view.

FPS is still the default, they're just making the 3PS view non-sucky.

[Krylo]

If I remember right, a few bows do what Nikose/Marc are talking about. Most do what Book/Pip are.

Might also be some discrepancies in important stats and archery skill between you guys. Might also be someone is using the arcane archery mod (which makes Archery pretty bitchin').

Anyway, a buff to bow damage is welcome, as that in the beginning of the game bows were kind of shitty with how close you had to get and how 'much' damage they did. Later on they got awesome, yeah, but eh.

Speaking of, I never really had a good powerful mage character in oblivion for the same reason. In the beginning of the game magic was pretty shitty, didn't do enough damage, drained mana too quick, etc. Once you get the ability to make your own spells it gets better, but by that point I had gone most the game stabbing stuff and my magic skill sucked and fuck training it up then (and I do like to avoid console commanding things like that).

Though that may have been because I was using Oscuro's for every game past the first, and as a result was mostly fighting enemies at higher level than myself as opposed to everyone being balanced to my level.

[Yrcrazypa]

Yeah, playing as a sneaky archer/thief I must have had a shitty bow, because I could never kill anything quickly. Nothing could catch me either, so it really was a moot point. Maxing out speed and athletics was useful.

[Sithdarth]

I'd have to fire it up to be sure but I had an ebony style bow that added something like 25 or 30 damage of some element and then I think they were ebony or silver base arrow of storm or some such that added on an additional 20-25 lightening damage in something like a 10 yard radius over something like 3 or 4 seconds. All of which I found just wandering around. Actually I might have enchanted the bow with a sigil stone. Needless to say after Alchemy and casting magic into the sky to train myself to level 54 and using trainers to max my archery there really wasn't much that would survive an arrow even if I wasn't sneaking. My favorite past time was running around the Imperial city shooting guards as they attempted to pelt me with arrows just to see them fly into the air and several yards backwards from the giant elemental explosions caused by my bow.

My approach to the game is why be good at one style of combat when I can just put in the time, and money, to be good at both magic, melee, and ranged combat.

[Pip Boy]

I got through a great deal of the game using a spell that had 2 effects.

One effect was to deal massive fire damage.
The other effect was to make me invisible for 2 seconds.

Before the invisibility wore off, I would cast a real invisibility spell that lasted longer and costed less mana, since its not combined with a damage effect.

The result was that enemies never even knew I was there. I just herped and derped until it was ridiculous.

Also, my complaints about magic weren't just that magic is more powerful than melee, ranged, or sneaky, but that being a mage makes you good at all of those things in addition to being good at magic. There is no point in a lockpicking skill if you can simply cast lockpicking spells. There is no point in being good at shooting arrows if fireballs are more effective, and paralysis spells help to keep them at a distance. There is no point in learning to be sneaky when invisibility spells bypass the need to even give sneaking any effort. Instead of hours of crouching around dark corridors, simply throw up an invisibility effect and spring past everything.

So a level 20 mage is not only better than a level 20 archer because he is more versatile, he is simultaneously better at melee fighting than a level 20 warrior, better at ranged fighting than a level 20 archer, better at sneaking and lock-picking than a level 20 thief. Its insane.

EDIT: The only disadvantage is that mana is limited, but by making your spells carefully you can conserve mana while still being very powerful, and stacking willpower well enough keeps it regenerating almost as fast as you use it.

EDIT AGAIN: And since having a higher skill in something makes a spell of X power cheaper to cast, enchanting your gear (something restricted to full members of the mage's guild) can raise your skills at certain spell types above 100*, making even super-powerful spells cheap to cast. One of my characters was a mage that stacked destruction and willpower so well that I could just derp everything to death in one shot of my custom lightning spell (Hand of Zeus) and then regenerate my mana fast enough to cast it over and over for a very long time before running out.

EDIT ANOTHER TIME: Oh yeah, there's also the fact that they get all those light and night-vision spells. Normally you can only get night vision by being an ugly cat that everyone hates or a vampire, in which case daylight burns. Nah. I'll just cast night-vision. 10 mana well spent. Detect life couldn't hurt either.

I mean, I understand you're not supposed to be overly metagame in something like Oblivion, so Im not going to go casting fire spells on myself to raise Destruction, but to have the ability to create my own spells and not use custom spells in interesting and powerful combinations would just be stupid. Theres more to being a mage than running around shooting lightning. Unless you're really, really good at shooting lightning, that is.

EDIT: On the rare occasion you run out of mana, just summon a big mean minion to fight them for you for a little while while you pop mana pots or hide in a corner to regen mana.

*Apparently they've patched this and only acrobatics/athletics can be raised above 100 via Fortify effects