Please note: I turned this into a modding project, found here:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1264415-wip-interest-check-static-dungeons/

This was just a speculative thread before I made my mind up



Skyrim is pretty great so far, but there is one thing that annoys me greatly:

Level-scaled enemies and loot.

Sure, it's better than it was in Oblivion, but here are my thoughts:
Morrowind: Bethesda claimed that the issue with Morrowind was that the player became too powerful. At level 80 you one-shotted everything.
Oblivion: they kept the same player-levelling system, but introduced auto-levelled enemies and loot, to balance the player's progression.
Skyrim: they changed the player's levelling system so that levelling automatically grinds to a halt at around level 50; and surely, this solves Morrowind's "over-powered" issue? So why the need for scaled content? Why the need for auto-levelled enemies and loot if the player's progression naturally stops at a certain level? I know they stay within certain "level-boundaries", but as I say below, having all human enemies named "bandit" is really not immersive compared to Morrowind where everyone had a unique name.

So, as I said, the reason I want levelled loot and enemies gone is mainly the issue of immersion. Fighting through one of Skyrims (amazing) hour-long dungeons only to find that the final boss is named a generic "Bandit Chief" and the final chest contains an item in the form of "X of Y" (for example "Leather Helm of Flames") is a huge anti-climix to me.
I remember in Morrowind where you could enter a nondescript cave on a small island off the eastern coast and hack through the enemies only to find the legendary Chrysamere, or finding the Mentor's Ring just casually laying in an urn inside a tomb. At least in my mind, finding a unique named artefact is a "wow" experience, whilst finding an "X of Y" item makes me think nothing but "is this better than what I currently have, or should I sell it?"

Considering how much time was spent altering levelling lists and loot tables in Oblivion, giving rise to mods like OOO, shouldn't it be possible to just do it properly from the beginning and manually replace the enemies and loot in the 150 dungeons with static-level versions? Possibly the enemies could be named as well, to get rid of the generic "bandit" type names. I mean, it's only 150 dungeons, it should be quite doable with a bunch of people involved.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? In my opinion a mod like this would be the mod to have for Skyrim.

(And forgive me for perhaps using the word levelled wrong. Not Sure if it's supposed to be "leveled"?)

I think we are already talking about this "leveled"/scaling problem right http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1260732-level-scaling-mod/

I know that, but that thread is more of a discussion about how to change the levelled-lists and whether scaling is OK or not, and that's not the point of this thread.

I guess I didn't make my question very clear, but what I'm wondering is whether it's plausible to rework every dungeon and make them static and non-scaled? I'm not interested in opinions on level scaling - I want to know if people who, like me, dislike scaling would want to work on something like this.
Considering how much time has been spent on mods like OOO, I think it should be quite possible to simply go with an idea like this rather than mess around with the scaling.

The reasoning behind level scaling enemies and loot makes sense. As it allows the player freedom to explore the world and complete quests in pretty much any order they wish. You can go do minor quests and crawl dungeons until you're level 30 and the main quest will still be challenging and rewarding as it will include enemies and loot that make sense for whatever level you happen to be. So, in that way it really makes a lot of sense for an open world where you can pretty much do anything. It also makes it possible to make a lot of quests that can be given to the player at any time, since they don't have to worry about whether they're sending the player to certain doom, or conversely on a pointless walk-in-the-park mission.

That said, the level scaling has the effect of making the world seem pretty safe. You can run across the wilderness, or venture into a dungeon, and be certain that you'll be able to handle anything you encounter. This takes a lot of fear out of encountering new areas. I hate to compare Elder Scrolls to World of Warcraft, but when playing WoW (or a similar game) and start adventuring in an area that is beyond your level it can be freakin' scary! Knowing that if you're spotted or caught you're surely dead. WoW is definitely a linear type of game though, so this sort of level/zone progression works. But I'd love to experience the same kind of blood-pumping, nerve-wracking adventures in Skyrim.

I'm not sure what the solution is though, since as soon as you start making creatures or NPCs static leveled you begin making the game more linear and with less player freedom.

My proposed solution:

1. Make the game world a combination of static and random independently from player character characteristics.
2. De-emphasize the impact of level, skills, perks, equipment and attributes. Five level 1 guys in iron armour and with iron weapon should still be a threat for a level 50 warrior in fully enchanted Daedric stuff. Not a big threat, but not a guaranteed win just by spamming the attack button either.

Why give the generic bandits unique names? It's not like they carry wallets with their driver's licenses around in them. How are you supposed to tell that 'oh, this Bandit Chief is named Hilga Ugly-Eye' or whatever - magic? Silly idea. Besides, the generic Bandits sometimes do have names, and are referenced by name by other bandits and such in the dungeon; just because the person is labeled 'bandit chief' doesn't mean that's their actual name!

As for the level scaling - I'd be happier if the level scaling made more sense, rather than being silly like it is now. For example, make it so Dragons are difficult; more so than Hagravens and Sabre Cats, please. If you have to have a little bit of level scaling, at least make it so things are still relatively correct.

Absolute freedom isn't fun for powergamers: level scaling creates freedom.

The best solution, I would think, is to scale enemy stats at different rates (i.e. bandits are x(your level modifier) levels below you, dragons and guards are always a bit above you, though less and less as time goes on).
Another solution would be to, quite simply, not scale random encounters, but rather only scale dungeons. I wouldn't mind knowing that a given dungeon's level scaling is anywhere +/- 5 levels above/below my level.

Faction quests should not scale IMHO, and the main quest should scale with your highest combat skill, being that the main quest in TES is always "go here kill things".

It seems, though, like the OPs main issue is the immersion breaking that comes with level scaling... ah immersion, how much you wreck any and all attempts at game balance.
Having a table of name roots to randomly assemble names from would be interesting, and not TOO hard to implement. Having unique item names is just plain easy: if they already have some algorithmic weapon name generator, manipulating that to draw from an array of names drawn from TES lore wouldn't be too bad, just time consuming to create.

What would be really cool for immersion would be algorithmically chosen weapon textures: but that's a dream for the future.

Its better than both Oblivion AND Morrowind IMO, Im actually really enjoying it so far. Weak enemies are weak, and tougher enemies are tougher. Its not a cakewalk and Im not being punished for exploring.

It creates an illusion of freedom, a very fragile one at that.

As soon as you realise that for everywhere you go and everything you do the world parametrically modifies itself based on nothing more than your level, every direction becomes a corridor. Your freedom becomes limbo, an endless ground hog day with no hope for resolution. Every combat situation pretty much identical to the last and the ones before and the ones to come, not even the names or faces change, they only cycle, round and around the perimeter of your bubble. Nothing exists out-with that bubble, the world looses credibility causing any illusion of existence or reality or freedom itself to shatter as you're left mindlessly mashing at your keyboard.

At least this is what happens to me

Except that in Skyrim, everything doesn't necessarily scale to your level. There are ranges and there have been many areas that have been way to hard to enter at level 20. So the world retains credibility while allowing the player to explore and choose to do what they want when they want.

With static content, you are forced down a linear line that is decided by the person that adds the content. When you become powerful and you missed anything, that content becomes trivialized and boring. For instance, what if you joined the imperial legion, did some of the main quest, then came back to do some thieves guild? If the thieves guild content was level 10 content and you are now level 30, it would make for an awful overall experience.

In the end, it's because of the huge amount of content and the open ended experience that Skyrim offers, that static content would not work well. The very soul of the game would be stripped away.

Make road and city surrondings easy or level scaling.
Make dungeons far away from civilizatio hard.

Well the first post anolysis of the level scaling is missing a key component: Fallout 3 which is what (as I understand it) Skyrim is largely based on. With it the level of a zone is set based on the first time you visit and stays that way for the rest of the game. So it is still based on character level but then is less threatening as you level.

That is purported to be the way that Skyrim is leveled based on announcements earlier in the year, but I'm not so sure after having played all weekend. certainly most opponents are slightly weaker, but some boss fights are not weak at all. In fact it is like night and day with a few of them. Which is strange when I hear about people beating dragons at level 4.

Due to this I've been avoiding dragons and the main quest and may not get to it till level 20 or so. I think I will just be angry if I could beat a dragon at level 4. That really would be a let down. the solutions to Oblivion scaling are pretty well documented in the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/820948-scaling-overhaul-comparison/ the main division being rescaling (reworking the way it scales) versus unscaling (you can meet or find anything from level 1 ... up anywhere at any time).

My beef with Oblivion overhauls is the lack of modularity. We have more advanced tools and will have them sooner than any previous game, so I would like to advocate for certain approaches to addressing this issue. Level scaling if it is handled like the previous two games can be addressed by editing leveled list entries and this method can then integrate well with Wrye Bash style patching of leveled list mods. Where it is frustrating with Oblivion is that most overhauls go so far as to give their scaling solutions and then go much further by then adjusting magic, combat, stealth, and other game mechanics so as to turn the mod into an overahul that then requires more and more patches to work with other mods. This I don't like - especially since the last few years of Oblivion modding has shown that these aspects of the game are better modded with script extender mods.

I would advocate for leveled list alternatives to be created and then as new creatures and loot are created to either make them cohere to variations on the leveled list options or make patches so that they can work with them. But just the leveled list bit. I'm hoping that such mods will shy away from making edits that can better be done with scripts on the fly.

I wouldn't mind working on an unscaled encounter/loot mod - as in unscaled as in the mod TIE where you can meet/get anything from level 1 up. Then from that work on rescaled options.

Actually, I don't believe the first post is missing a key component, since I wrote "I know they stay within certain 'level-boundaries'" in the reasoning behind Skyrim

(In any event, I don't know why this thread was resurrected since I went ahead and started a project thread regardless of feedback here.)

Ahh didn't read the dates and and such. Sorry.

Replace everything with static enemies
Kill things
Realise nothing respawns
???
Profit?!