Players have been arguing about the balance in The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim for many years (and tweaking everything in the “right direction” with mods). As it turns out, the balance situation could have been even worse.
Former Bethesda producer Jeff Gardiner shared how he personally had to take on rebalancing TES V Skyrim:
“I was ‘fighting’ with the developers back then. They wanted to do [balance] through data and simulations. And I was like: ‘But the player does [specific] things, like backing away and landing a power attack.’ And they ran AI simulations where an NPC and a monster fought each other, and if the simulated player won more than 50% of the time, that was considered balanced.”
The AI did not act like a real player and simply attacked, meaning Skyrim would be deemed a “balanced game” even though many core gameplay mechanics were ignored.
In the end, Gardiner tuned Skyrim's balance by himself: “I spent two weeks before release doing this, hoping that ‘everything would be fine.’”
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Cover art author: Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks. Image source: steamcommunity.com