T w e n t y S i d e d
After I write a column I often find myself thinking, “What bits are people most likely to argue with?” To a certain extent this is healthy. You want to make sure you make your point clearly and persuasively. On the other hand, hardening against every possible objection can bloat the essay. You’ll spend half the piece making your point and the other half making the point of the opposition in order to build your case against it. And in doing so, you’ll introduce more points that also need to be hardened, and so on. And pretty soon you’ve got 10,000 words that nobody has time to read.
I’m sure lots of people played Skyrim as a mage and had a good time anyway. They’re likely going to point out how the impact park lets you juggle foes forever. That’s true, but while you’re slowly chipping away at enemy health and stun-locking them with fireballs, the guy with a massive hammer has cleared the room out, run into the next room, and killed all those guys too. There’s just no contest. Magic in Skyrim sucks.
I think rather than measuring balance by DPS, it’s much more useful to measure by expediency. Measure how long it takes a player to plow through a given section of content using various builds. This measurement should include out-of-game costs like time spent navigating menus to chug potions and such.
Stealth is an interesting third way that I didn’t discuss in the article. It’s not as powerful as melee, but it’s way better than magic. If you’re doing it right, you should never get hit in combat. Which means you can dump all your points into stamina and turn yourself into an ambulatory warehouse of loot. It’s pretty low risk and the armor looks okay. But it’s an acquired taste. Fighting bosses can mean either five minutes of goofy hide-and-seek, or a bladder-busting potion binge, depending on how you approach it.
I’ve tried a few of the “better magic” mods. They help with the balance, but they don’t help with the lack of fun. (Drab gear, boring kill animations, etc.) I keep adding mods, but I still haven’t managed to find anything as satisfying as running into a room and killing everyone with an axe the size of a stop sign.
