Thinking about balance again, if TES is supposed to be an ARPG and Bethesda doesn't want to focus on the "RPG" then they should at least focus on the "A". Previous games in the franchise, like Morrowind, leaned more into the "RPG" side and still had a few things that could keep players who've crossed the power threshold on their toes. Magic and spell reflect is one example, NPCs that can stun-lock you with paralysis is another. You could be in trouble as a pure caster if you were silenced. That's not to say Morrowind is a hardcore game, but at least carelessness can still kill you even at higher levels. Skyrim's mechanics have been stripped down from previous games however, so once your raw bulk and damage hit a certain threshold that's it. There are no more curveballs the game can throw at you, because NPCs don't have the tools. So how should this be mitigated? Well Vanilla Skyrim's combat is bare bones to say the least. Its combat only has slightly more depth than Minecraft's if we're honest, but from mods and playing other games I realize that it could have been a lot better with a few tweaks. I see a lot of people cry whenever it's brought up, but yes, they need to ripoff Fromsoft a little bit. They should do things like drastically lower the damage resistence you get from armor and put more of a focus on not getting hit by managing your stamina appropriately while blocking and dodging attacks. Tainted Grail shows that this can work well in a 1st person game by giving you a limited dodge dash and parries . (even though that game also suffers from major balance issues because equipment starts to way outscale the enemies once you hit mid-game, but that's another topic) They should also do things like force you to commit to your attacks so that a miss leaves you open, lower your movement speed when your casting spells or attacking from range, things every other ARPG has adopted in the last 15 years. I am not asking for TES to become Dark Souls, but I am asking that TES6 makes a bare-minimum effort to have a fleshed out combat system where you can be punished for trying to face-tank enemies. If Todd likes the UNGABUNGA builds so much then he should do it right.
I don't think they got the talent for it. Remember, they had to bring iD to bring even the most bare FPS mechanics into Fallout 4 and Starfield brought jack and shit into the engine to make the game seem like it takes place in space, internally the spaceships might as well still be dragons from Skyrim FFS(just like Vertibirds and Scorched from Fallout, which both use the same code). While it's easy to introduce an ability to aim down the sights or throw a grenade with a hotkey into Gamebryo, proper good melee mechanics are another matter. Look how fucking barebones they are in Skyrim all the way to Starfield and how little changed between then, you would think with TES being Bethesda's bread and butter they would at least get that right.
Ironically enough, Avowed has shown us how you can easily improve on combat mechanics in a Fallout/TES-like game, and indeed combat is probably the only thing Avowed does right. If you look at any footage of the game, you will note that you have dodging, you have chargable attacks on everything(that includes arrows and bullets), you have fast paced combat with actually tough enemies and you have companions helping you out at any point in the game, even from the tutorial onwards. The grenade hotkey is present, just like in Fallout 4 and Starfield so you could add throwing knives or some sort of alchemical grenades into the mix, and of course magic is it's own system which rewards players with powerful spells and is arguably the meta way to play that game. Hell, they added proper boss fights into the game, sure they're not that fancy and mostly just bullet sponges with a lot of charge-up attacks that that's still better than most of Bethesda's bosses. You either have a regular enemy with a shitload of HP or a combat puzzle like with Dagoth-Ur, you don't really get actual bosses that feel like proper fights in Bethesda titles(Scorchbeast Queen in 76 comes close, but that game is an MMO and you need several players to take it out, so not sure if it counts).
You're not going to hear a lot of praise for Avowed, but once again even at their worst, Obsidian does what Bethesd-on't, and frankly with the shitty engine they're using, the only way I can see them improving on the gameplay mechanics is if they either hire modders or some other studio that specializes in this sort of thing, like they did with iD. I dunno who that would be off the top of my head from Bethesda umbrella, but maybe they can ask daddy Microsoft for help. Frankly, it's embarrassing that swinging a billie club Outer Worlds or a baseball bat in Fallout feels pretty much the same as melee combat in Skyrim or Oblivion, arguably the most common combat build of those games. Actually, the dodge mechanic from Avowed was introduced in Outer Worlds and both it and blocking have an entire skilltree dedicated to them, only adding more depth into the normally boring melee builds of these games, so it feels even worse than in a AA space RPG that got a portion of sales and budget these big games had. lol, lmao even.
