One of the reasons why I don't touch Requiem is because I play TES games for the freedom and sandbox, i.e. to freely mess around with customized spells/enchantment/tricks, to freely travel around and kill stuff and have fun. I have a habit that when I play RPG I tend to roleplay (or rather, LARP) so I never have a great need for extra difficulties, because I don't fully min/max as well because it's OOC.
For me, Requiem changing way too many things (i.e. everything) is something kills my interest because that spells massive incompatibility for me, and another big issue is by completely unlevel everything, it actually diminished the gameplay value for me because 0% level scaling doesn't fit the nature of a sandbox game at all (that is, if you play the game for the sandbox value above other things). When a sandbox game forces your character to adventure in a specific routine because OP encounters are everywhere, then the nature of being a sandbox naturally diminished.
One big problem is the nature of "hardcore" RPG doesn't fit in the structure of Sandbox games (especially TES) very well. First off, most hardcore, or oldschool RPG (think: Darksun, Infinity Engine games, Fallout 1&2, TOEE, KOTC, and of course Goldboxes; heck, even JA2 and XCOM) provides plenty of non-meta knowledge for you to asset the difficulty of the next encounter and understand your probability of survival, i.e. transparency. This is not possible in TES games, because they are not turn based, you have no "Inspect" button, and in major cases there is no other way to test a new opponent's strength other than hit him, which often doesn't end well because in TES the normal way to end a conflict is to kill or be killed.
Another huge issue is, TES by nature is a single character game, while all the games I mentioned above are by nature party based (I put emphasis on "by nature" here, because you always have the freedom to play a party TES game or a solo BG2 game for example). You guys complain that you must be a jack-of-all-trades, or playing as a mage being not fun in Requiem. In reality, the lethaliity of arrows or two handed power attack in Requiem could not be too different from your classic hardcore RPG, but the problem is, unlike other RPGs you have one warrior with good HP to take the hit, a cleric to heal, and a rogue or mage to deal damage, in Skyrim you are the meatshield, the healer, and the damage dealer all in one. If the lethality is not Requiem level, then you can easier specialize in one area (pure mage, light-armored rogue, etc) and still win, but with Requiem level lethality (i.e. hardcore RPG lethality), specialization won't really work because you are required to have the strength of a whole RPG party in your sole character (remember, in Skyrim, enemies mostly come in groups of 2 to 4).
So, some may say "use summons!" or "use followers!", sadly that doesn't translate into a proper hardcore RPG team experience, because your AI are dumbasses, uncontrollable, and in a complete balanced situation your followers' survival rate are not much higher than the bandit he's dueling with. In proper hardcore RPGs, team members are all controlled by the character and thus therefore can coordinate and fight with much higher efficiency. That's impossible in TES, and for its heavy actions you can't even do RTWP such as Mass Effect.
Still, there ARE hardcore, action oriented, solo RPGs without level scaling, no? Well yes, Diablo, roguelikes, Witcher, etc. But these are not sandboxes (even semi-sandboxes like ADOM or TOME4 uses level limit to block high level dungeons away from low level characters), these are nowhere as hardcore as Requiem (roguelike games CAN one or two shot you but they are turnbased, and you can inspect monsters), and the characters here are all superpowered compared to the monsters.
Yet still, there ARE hardcore, can-be-soloed RPGs with NO level scaling, yet still provides great freedom to play, aren't there? Well YES, a few, but still there. Ultima, Gothic, even WoW. But they are not the same as Requiem:
- Ultima's creatures' stats are mostly static with no difference in their place of origin or time of appearance. Bandits and trolls (for the latter depending on which Ultima of course) you can handle them all since level 1, while Dragons and demons are tough but you won't see them until late game. One extra thing: you can revive with legit, in-game mechanism if you mess with the wrong crowd.
- Gothic: Gothic is probably the closest to Requiem experience, but yet it is nowhere as openworlded as Skyrim.
- Special candidate: Morrowind. From what I read from you guys though, Morrowind is still nowhere as hardcore as Requiem, perhaps mostly due to the brokenly easy difficulty of MW. Unless you go fighting goblins or werewolves at level 10 or something like that.
So my point? Putting 1 or 2 hit kills into Skyrim, which is in essence a solo FPS H&S, in order to shoehorn it into a "hardcore, oldschool experience" just feels wrong. At the very least, they've picked the wrong game to remake such experience. Do you know why you guys complain "reloading for 10x to kill a bandit is no fun", "forcing me to lower difficulty settings to survive is stupid"? Because unlike a REAL oldschool RPG, which Requiem no doubt is trying to emulate, in Requiem there is no party member to (efficiently) heal or resurrect you, there's no warrior to take the blows from you, there's no legit way to recover from mistakes or try again i.e. Ultima, JA2, XCOM (yep, that's "rebuilding your whole squad").
So yeah, Requiem can be enjoyable, if:
- You use some clever or tough followers to meatshield for you (if you're a rogue or mage) or deal damage (if you're a shield-wall type warrior). From what I've read, you guys don't even use followers? I don't know if Requiem's followers have permadeath, but if they do, then it's still not a solution because Skyrim NPC are dumb and dumb NPC are NOT equivalent to hardcore oldschool RPG team members.
- You're a masochist like DraQ.
tl;dr
Mod in 2-3 followers with different classes with GOOD AI to fill in your lack of skills, and you can turn Requiem into a proper hardcore oldschool (I'm getting sick of those two words) RPG with much less frustration.
. Please don't even suggest using complex tactics. "Herding cats" doesn't even being to describe the sort of chore it would be.
