Legendary difficulty damage, doesn't make sense at all?

[Smaisteri]

Is the Legendary difficulty ridiculously difficult or am I just imagining it?

I was messing around with console commands a bit to see if the Legendary difficulty would be more enjoyable later in the game as you level up and gain new skills. So I leveled up my Alteration and chose to upgrade my HP on almost every level. Now my HP is a bit over 300 and I can cast the Dragonhide -spell which is supposed to reduce all incoming physical damage by 80%.

Still, even with that high amount of HP relative to my level and with the 80% damage reduction active, a single normal bandit with a bow will take one quarter of my HP away with a single shot.

This seems a tad ridiculous to me. Is the Dragonhide spell bugged or is the only viable way to play on Legendary difficulty being a conjurer? You die so incredibly fast even when you have the best of the best end-game protection spells, and the enemies tank so much damage that there is no way to play a regular mage character.

[Grumpy]

on legendary you do a quarter of the dmg you would to on adept, but you receive 3 times the damage of the adept player. that mode is only there to challenge the most bullet-sponge enemies in skyrim

[Zsrai]

Legendary (and Master, really) aren't all that more difficult as much as they are just... boring. Enemies turn into stone walls that you hit with a pool noodle. The game play doesn't change any, except you're more susceptible to being one shot.

Mages actually do the best on the higher difficulties since they can just use Conjuration to obliterate all of the enemies.

[Mytheos]

@OP

I think the concept is to start on a reasonable difficulty and then increase the difficulty as the game gets too easy.

Myself, I chose certain levels ahead of time I would increase difficulty, so you knew it was coming and could prepare. ( I also ended up using a mod that further increased the difficulty multipliers )


If you do it right, you maintain a challenge through the game and dont run into the "Punished for being good/using a strong character build".

On any normal difficulty you end up a god half way through the game and it gets REALLY boring.

End game being a well designed Sword n Shield is hard to keep challenging since its almost impossible to die, and you can kill the game in a few hits if you dont pour on extra difficulty with combat mods.

[Smaisteri]

The main thing I was wondering here is the amount of damage the enemy does. If a basic bandit with a bow does one quarter of my HPs worth of damage after an 80% damage reduction... I wonder how difficult the game would be if I didn't cheat and get myself Dragonskin? At that level I'm not supposed to have that spell but with cheats I do, and even then it pretty much sucks.

[Valis]

Basically you just choose a starting difficulty for your current build to maintain a steady flow then raise it to keep the challenge on par with your characters output.

At times I would prefer an equal trade off and do 3x damage as well as recieve it but then again that has it's own flaws and just makes the game too easy for the player.

Mages that focus on Conjuration do well on higher difficulties as stated above but if you want a character that focuses on stealth kills for example then you might want to lower the starting difficulty to build up on otherwise it becomes tedious let alone drawn out until you get more of the required gear/skills etc despite the skils leveling faster which won't do no good really without proper gear later on for harder enemies.

[Mytheos]

Originally posted by Smaisteri:

The main thing I was wondering here is the amount of damage the enemy does. If a basic bandit with a bow does one quarter of my HPs worth of damage after an 80% damage reduction... I wonder how difficult the game would be if I didn't cheat and get myself Dragonskin? At that level I'm not supposed to have that spell but with cheats I do, and even then it pretty much sucks.

Not sure why you'd cheat to make the game easier and then up the difficulty?

Truth is if you start on legendary it makes everything an insane damage sponge, its more about that than the damage you take, which mainly just limits what you can do until you progress.

Either way the better experience is going to come from starting around expert, then every 5-10 levels bumping the difficulty to maintain challenge.

[Smaisteri]

Originally posted by Mytheos:

Originally posted by Smaisteri:

The main thing I was wondering here is the amount of damage the enemy does. If a basic bandit with a bow does one quarter of my HPs worth of damage after an 80% damage reduction... I wonder how difficult the game would be if I didn't cheat and get myself Dragonskin? At that level I'm not supposed to have that spell but with cheats I do, and even then it pretty much sucks.

Not sure why you'd cheat to make the game easier and then up the difficulty?

Truth is if you start on legendary it makes everything an insane damage sponge, its more about that than the damage you take, which mainly just limits what you can do until you progress.

Either way the better experience is going to come from starting around expert, then every 5-10 levels bumping the difficulty to maintain challenge.

Like I said in my opening post, I used console commands to see how the game would feel to play on higher levels. This was purely for testing reasons before an actual playthrough. But the results are so puzzling right now, I don't understand what is going on. I just cannot comprehend how much damage a single arrow can do on this difficulty level, its simply unacceptable.

[Mytheos]

Originally posted by Smaisteri:

Originally posted by Mytheos:

Not sure why you'd cheat to make the game easier and then up the difficulty?

Truth is if you start on legendary it makes everything an insane damage sponge, its more about that than the damage you take, which mainly just limits what you can do until you progress.

Either way the better experience is going to come from starting around expert, then every 5-10 levels bumping the difficulty to maintain challenge.

Like I said in my opening post, I used console commands to see how the game would feel to play on higher levels. This was purely for testing reasons before an actual playthrough. But the results are so puzzling right now, I don't understand what is going on. I just cannot comprehend how much damage a single arrow can do on this difficulty level, its simply unacceptable.

I see, you are saying you cant believe how much damage that does, vs I cant understand how much damage is being done.


In reality it varies on build, but as I said with a standard Sword and Shield setup even on legendary you are incredibly hard to kill end game and usually takes something like a special dragon and dragon lord ganging up on you etc.

And that with combat mods that make it harder and so forth.


Console testing tends to give funky results for doing what you are trying.


In the end if you are experienced with the game and know how to build a character, you can be running legendary by lev 20-25 without too much trouble.

[Rafael Freeman]

Legendary Difficulty solves a problem for me. The first time I played the game, I didn’t understand the game mechanics right away. However, on a secondary play through, I knew exactly what to do.

Legendary Difficulty evens the odds. The trick in the beginning of the game is not to fight every bandit/draugr/troll, but to pick your battles.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Smaisteri:

Like I said in my opening post, I used console commands to see how the game would feel to play on higher levels. This was purely for testing reasons before an actual playthrough. But the results are so puzzling right now, I don't understand what is going on. I just cannot comprehend how much damage a single arrow can do on this difficulty level, its simply unacceptable.

If it's unacceptable, then don't play on Legendary. Problem solved. It's not like mechanics are changed when you move the difficulty slider, it's just damage out and damage in modifiers. So if the highest level is stupid to you, don't use it.

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Legendary Difficulty solves a problem for me. The first time I played the game, I didn’t understand the game mechanics right away. However, on a secondary play through, I knew exactly what to do.

Legendary Difficulty evens the odds. The trick in the beginning of the game is not to fight every bandit/draugr/troll, but to pick your battles.

Yeah, that works for some people. I still hate smacking things 50 times with a pool noodle, so I just roll at Adept or Expert with combat mods and use house rules to keep myself from stacking the deck too heavily. Just another option instead of min-maxing and running at Legendary.

[Rafael Freeman]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Originally posted by Smaisteri:

Like I said in my opening post, I used console commands to see how the game would feel to play on higher levels. This was purely for testing reasons before an actual playthrough. But the results are so puzzling right now, I don't understand what is going on. I just cannot comprehend how much damage a single arrow can do on this difficulty level, its simply unacceptable.

If it's unacceptable, then don't play on Legendary. Problem solved. It's not like mechanics are changed when you move the difficulty slider, it's just damage out and damage in modifiers. So if the highest level is stupid to you, don't use it.

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Legendary Difficulty solves a problem for me. The first time I played the game, I didn’t understand the game mechanics right away. However, on a secondary play through, I knew exactly what to do.

Legendary Difficulty evens the odds. The trick in the beginning of the game is not to fight every bandit/draugr/troll, but to pick your battles.

Yeah, that works for some people. I still hate smacking things 50 times with a pool noodle, so I just roll at Adept or Expert with combat mods and use house rules to keep myself from stacking the deck too heavily. Just another option instead of min-maxing and running at Legendary.

Ideally, I would like to see smarter enemies. Enemies that will keep searching when you have sneak-killed one of their buddies, instead of muttering ‘it must have been nothing’ after 20 seconds, an archer seeking cover when hurt, and so on.

A difficulty setting that would make enemies smart and call for back up would be interesting.

[OMEGA_BOT45]

Legendary dif is easy if you know how to play it, but you will get oneshooted 90% times, if you want play in max dificult i recomend you play "very hard" in my opinion its the best dificult.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Ideally, I would like to see smarter enemies. Enemies that will keep searching when you have sneak-killed one of their buddies, instead of muttering ‘it must have been nothing’ after 20 seconds, an archer seeking cover when hurt, and so on.

A difficulty setting that would make enemies smart and call for back up would be interesting.

Yeah, but first Bethesda would have to be able to program that and... I have serious doubts about their ability (and ambition) to do just that.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Originally posted by rafaelherschel:

Ideally, I would like to see smarter enemies. Enemies that will keep searching when you have sneak-killed one of their buddies, instead of muttering ‘it must have been nothing’ after 20 seconds, an archer seeking cover when hurt, and so on.

A difficulty setting that would make enemies smart and call for back up would be interesting.

Yeah, but first Bethesda would have to be able to program that and... I have serious doubts about their ability (and ambition) to do just that.

Imagine TES6 would have very smart NPC AI, then every 9y on this planet would Q.Q on the forums because the game is too hard and in the end the AI will get stomped in the ground because the sales are more important

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by Grumpy:

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Yeah, but first Bethesda would have to be able to program that and... I have serious doubts about their ability (and ambition) to do just that.

Imagine TES6 would have very smart NPC AI, then every 9y on this planet would Q.Q on the forums because the game is too hard and in the end the AI will get stomped in the ground because the sales are more important

I'm pretty sure that's why they don't make an actual good AI and/or combat system. Like, 99% sure. Their programmers obviously aren't monkeys at a keyboard, they know what they are doing... yet they pump out basic tripe regularly now. The combat systems actually drag the game down instead of improving it, and I really don't see them addressing that.