Skyrim was getting ready to launch—it was mere weeks away—but former Bethesda producer Jeff Gardiner and the designers were in the midst of a disagreement over balance.
This led Gardiner, who also had years of creative and design experience, to take matters into his own hands. «I had this fight with the designers at the time,» says Gardiner. «They wanted to do things through data and simulations.
And I was like, 'But the player does things, like backs up and double taps'. And they would run AI simulations, where an NPC and a monster would fight each other, and if over 10 times the simulated player won more than 50%, then it was balanced.
But I was like, 'They're not backing up. The AI only does so many things.'» Essentially: the AI was not acting like a human player.
It was just attacking. Thus, Skyrim would only feel balanced for players who ignored a lot of basic combat mechanics. And Gardiner had already seen something like this happen in the previous Elder Scrolls, Oblivion. «So you had this problem in Oblivion with Clannfear, where they'd get you into these things called stun locks, which is the most frustrating thing to a player.