Why is max difficulty so horribly unbalanced?

[ThaDaLinkWent]

So I thought about doing some playthroughs on all my Elder Scrolls and Fallout games on max difficulty the other day but was stopped in my tracks with Oblivion's max level difficulty. Heck even Fallout games are more lenient in their difficulty spikes than this game. Goblins and rats can kill in 3-4 hits and heaven forbid you fight more than one creature at a time. Just getting out the sewers before you finish your character creation is an unreasonable death march. As I got out of the sewer, I was spotted by a mudcrab. I thought to myself 2 maybe 4 arrows will kill this thing... Boy was I dead wrong.

As I shot my 14th arrow into this simple mudcrab, I was thinking to myself "I wanted a challenge but this is a ridiculously long drawn out fight!". I mean can somebody tell me where this mudcrab got the infinity gauntlet and where he is hiding it? Tacking massive HP pools on simple creatures makes fighting an unnecesarily painful, long process to the the point it's no longer fun and you just wanna get it over with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs

[ManualMakron]

The max difficulty of Oblivion is designed to be played around. It's made for experienced players.

[ThaDaLinkWent]

Originally posted by Marko:

The max difficulty of Oblivion is designed to be played around. It's made for experienced players.

Doesn't really answer my question as to why max difficulty is so horribly unbalanced though. Tossing out the phrase "made for experienced players" is a bit vague and subjective. Everybody has their own perspective on what the phrase "experienced players" mean. There's a big difference between something being challenging and fun vs something just being flatout punishing at every available opportunity. Even then there is debate about which is which.

[Seal Enthusiast]

Gameplay in the Elder Scrolls games has never really been well thought out, mostly because it just isn't the main focus. Oblivion is a prime example of this, with the whole entire scaling enemies problem.

So to answer your question, they just didn't want to put much work and time into making the game 'funner' at a higher difficulty and just took the easy way out by just tweaking stats.

[Col Com Dante]

the highest difficulty in Oblivion is basically a test to see how well you can min-max your character. You have to use every possible advantage over your enemies, efficiently level, and certain race/birthsign choices are almost mandatory. It's not fun (for me), just painfully difficult.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Originally posted by Col Com Dante:

the highest difficulty in Oblivion is basically a test to see how well you can min-max your character. You have to use every possible advantage over your enemies, efficiently level, and certain race/birthsign choices are almost mandatory. It's not fun (for me), just painfully difficult.

This.

[The Flying Rodent]

Max Difficulty in Oblivion simply makes your character deal 1/6 Damage to enemies, and makes them deal 6x damage to you. I don’t think much thought was put into how this would effect the game, and in Skyrim this Damage difference between the difficulties was toned down a lot (down to 3x on Legendary not 6x).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873311868

To be honest, it is not ‘difficult’ once you figure out how to play around the damage differences, but it SEVERELY restricts what sort of characters are viable and how you can play them. Pretty much anybody that uses direct combat (melee weapons, armour and blocking ) will get eviscerated; Ranged and indirect fighting characters less so.

The link above is to a guide I wrote documenting my process of trying to make a Max Difficulty build.

Basically: Conjuration early game (your summons still deal normal damage) , and Destruction/Poisons mid-late game (poisons aren’t effected by Difficulty, and weakness spells allow for exponentially silly damage), are just about the only ways to deal enough damage to get by on Max Difficulty.

[////]

question is: when this max difficulty starts? is it 80% of the slider? 90%? 99%? 100%? what if 100% of the slider isn't max difficulty at all, but yolo difficulty? maybe it's full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mode?

hardcore isn't just about pushing to the max. it is about state of mind where you see no perspectives and remain... [insert something what's not against your morale.]

now... take the amulet. give it to jauf... um...

Originally posted by Col Com Dante:

the highest difficulty in Oblivion is basically a test to see how well you can min-max your character. You have to use every possible advantage over your enemies, efficiently level, and certain race/birthsign choices are almost mandatory. It's not fun (for me), just painfully difficult.

and yeah, this.

[Ω Spriggan Ω]

I'd prefer giving and taking 6x damage but the simple fact remains at least for me...
you attack far too quickly in this game and the AI is so flawless in its block power attack 3 strikes then block again. :P

for example in skyrim you can see the enemy doing their windup to attack in this you just block and hope in that insane flurry of attacks block of them recoils your enemy so you can get your 3 in and block again. touch spells are useful if an enemy keeps blocking.

I acutally laughed quite a bit when i went to the arena and while fighting an enemy staggered me and proceeded to run 4 circles around me at the speed of AI light slashing me with a shortsword. i found that to be quite hilarious

[Johnny Casey]

Horribly unbalanced? What do you expect from X0.6 damage modifer for your damage, and X6 damage modifer for enemy?

Plus, if you're doing jack sh*t in max difficulty, that means you're doing proper warrior build with armor&weapon which is absolute trash in Oblivion.

Use magic. This isn't Skyrim. Magic is far better than any weapon related combat and there's abosolutely no reason to use weapons.

[The Zucc]

"why is oblivion max difficulty actualy hard argh makes no sense"
hmmmmmmmmmmm

[ThaDaLinkWent]

Originally posted by The Zucc:

"why is oblivion max difficulty actualy hard argh makes no sense"
hmmmmmmmmmmm

Nice selective reading skills you have there. If you read the topic question properly it asks why is max difficulty UNBALANCED not hard. Think before you speak next time.

(My impression of you): Look at me I'm on the internet. I leave mean, edgy trying to be condescending comments in forums that contribute nothing to the conversation because that makes me cool.

So what now tough guy another mean, edgy comment? Or a condescending one? Let me guess...both right???

[////]

Originally posted by ThaDaLinkWent:

Originally posted by The Zucc:

"why is oblivion max difficulty actualy hard argh makes no sense"
hmmmmmmmmmmm

Nice selective reading skills you have there. If you read the topic question properly it asks why is max difficulty UNBALANCED not hard. Think before you speak next time.

(My impression of you): Look at me I'm on the internet. I leave mean, edgy trying to be condescending comments in forums that contribute nothing to the conversation because that makes me cool.

So what now tough guy another mean, edgy comment? Or a condescending one? Let me guess...both right???

look at me i'm on the internet. i watch popular youtube videos and act as if i'm the one questioning, despite the fact that my opinion is being forged.

dude... don't give this troll a cookie or he'll become fat. i mean, you've started a nice discussion... why not let it be populated with healthy fauna and frora?

[Chrono]

i am able to play the max difficulty rather easily but i do feel it was done very poorly

[.: DBM :.]

Todd Howard is so good at video games that he made Max Difficulty intentionally-so, to provide even a true gamer such as him a real challenge.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by -𝔅elligerent 𝔅rad-:

Todd Howard is so good at video games that he made Max Difficulty intentionally-so, to provide even a true gamer such as him a real challenge.

Not really, he just did things the lazy way by tweaking PC damage dealt and damage taken. NPC vs NPC damage is still normal , as is Poison Damage (so characters that use Summons and Poisons don’t have much trouble on Max Difficulty ).

They also didn’t balance magic very well in Oblivion compared to physical combat (*cough* Weakness to Magicka Stacking *cough*), but that’s just one of Oblivions many balance issues lol.

Originally posted by Chrono156:

i am able to play the max difficulty rather easily but i do feel it was done very poorly

It’s pretty much a matter of squeezing out of the game engine the most ‘effective’ build/play style available, and then using that. The build/play style itself isn’t really that difficult , it’s just restrictive.

Admittedly I did have fun figuring out what these were though. So much so that I wrote a guide about it! :)