SureAI

on this i disagree, i've already told why.. because no game is immune to the use of cheap tactics to gimp and kill opponents too strong for you... like sitting ontop of a rock shooting 200 iron arrows into it... or spells between two stones etc... so after cheating the challenge for 10 mins you get the price... which makes every gear you find after that seam weak and not interesting... l.a.m.e

Is it THAT hard not to cheat? In Fallout 3 one sometimes doesn't know whether one is cheating or legitimately using the stupidity of a super mutant, but in Nehrim it should be pretty clear that jumping onto a place where the enemy cannot reach you is not a valid tactics.

i doubt most of the kids who play think that far ahead.. and there is no remedy in the oblivion engine to make melee enemies engage players thats unreachable by melee.. unless you make a rule that enemies which have engaged, but have not made a hit in x number of seconds will retreat. (kinda like fleeing enemies)

Ofcourse, there were situations where i had to gimp to survive.. if i explored a cave, only to be confronted early in it by one or multiple strong enemies, my only option was to ether run, and if that was not an option, gimp them or reload a save. sad thing however, is that some players take hours to cheat their way through high leveled dungeons to get high level loot they can just equip right away... which is why i suggested implimenting weapon/armor mastery akin to spell mastery, in multiple levels. each level unlocked by meeting the mastery requirement stat or level wise.

Would discourage players to cheat their way through a dungeon to obtain loot they cannot use at that level anyways.

Actually weapon mastery requirements are not a bad idea and we will see whether we implement something like that. But cheaters are not an argument; rather that it would add a new reward for skilling some skills.

Well to stop cheating was never why i formulated the idea, to me, finding a very good weapon early, see its stats and drool... but also seeing it requires me to get stronger, adds a lot of incentive to level up. Idk but, what if rare/legendary weapons that were found, ether in the game world, or in chests/npc's/mobs were misc items, like spell runes, and attemption to 'master' the weapon at a low level would yeild a "requires rank V" then you could inspect your log book and figure out what attributes/skill/level you need to be to accuire weapon mastery V. it would really stop players, esp roleplayers like me, from finding an epic weapon by accident which is x3 as good as the one i was currently using, and just equip it.
There is some promise in the idea, and i doubt i'm the only one who loathe the no requirement ideology of oblivion. (which worked in oblivion because it had a leveled list.. with the exception of umbra which could be killed and looted at any level... atm nehrim is like that, but with a lot of umbra's)

I don't think skill or level should be used inthis case, as skills are to easy to buy and in leveling up you would go running round killing everything just to gain that level. Attributes on the other hand I can see as viable i.e a big warhammer being wielded by a character that has not increased the strength attribute always seems strange. So with that scenario I can see how the strength attribute should have more impact on how much damage can be done.
Maybe you could even make handling these types of weapons less appealing to lower levels by having the skill level increase slower.

well, the idea is that lower levels would not be able to equip high quality weapons. sure even a nobie could handle a steel long sword, but certain powerfull weapons, or specialized weapons .. ehh. (also, can be a combination of skill and attributes, someone wanting say, weapon mastery rank IV would have to focus on weapons over magic to meet that end goal) and btw, skill increases would be linked to level increase, if say the warhammer you found required mastery lvl III, and mastery lvl III = str 60 blunt 50 sowrd 50, then just wasting LP on blade/blunt would not take you there, only presistant effort towards that goal would.

Oh and, weapons bound by mastery levels should be more or less "container items" which would be placed in the misc section. like rune stones (but would siplay weapon stats somehow, but thats not required) clicking on say, a enchanted warhammer would give you the message "requires mastery lvl IV" and once you archived that mastery, you could "master" the item by clicking on it from the misc tab, transferring it to your weapon/armor tab.

Also, there should ideealy be multiple masteries, spell mastery could contain the rare and powerfull staffs, weapon mastery would govern blunt/blade, archery mastery would ofc, govern bows... and armor mastery would contain armor/shields. Combined they would serve an actual character building purpose in oblivon which is currently absent. now, you can be a jack of all trades, master of some... which is lame... a mage running around in epic heavy armor and using a huge warhammer weighing 60 units... yet have 10 heavy armor and 10 blunt.