I actually loved every part of this post, it would improve the game a ton

imo, i should have to figure this out in-game. and, therefore, it's already in the game. you deduce from your own gameplay experiences.

Actually the opposite is true. Bethesda made the same claim you are making about Oblivion, and it was false. We know this because of the hundreds of other games that don't have level scaling.

You can explore freely in a non scaling game, as long as it is open world. Just because you can't go all the way to a bottom of a high lvl dungeon without dying doesn't mean you cant try.

In Bethesda games, there is no high level dungeon. Everything is your level. 50% of "exploration" has been nerfed. Part of the fun of a Non scaling game is "ooh look, I found this cool dungeon, oops it's super high lvl, but I'll see how far I can sneak in"

That is gone from Bethesda games now. Anything you can find, you can clear unless it is quest locked.

Completely wrong. You can tell a post is going to be way off base when it has accusations of "crying" and advice like "change the difficulty sliders as you play"

This can, indeed, be done, and was, in fact, done to an extent in Oblivion. The problem there was that the system went too far; the 'non-scaled' enemies disappeared after you exceeded their level range and the 'scaled' ones did so to an excessive degree, with the end result that high-level combat became either 1) a race to see who could whittle the other guy down faster or 2) a test of how massively one could break 'Weakness to X + X damage type' stacking in order to avoid the whittle-fest.

How it should have been done, and how, to an extent, Skyrim does it, is that the lower-end opponents don't disappear while certain higher-end ones either keep up with or exceed the character's abilities. Even so, the scaling stops at about L53 while a character can hit L81; so, unless one stops leveling a point will eventually be reached where nothing is challenging, because you have 20+ levels on even the most dangerous opponents.

Now, those opposed to scaling claim that such a system makes leveling up pointless, because there is always something as strong, or stronger than, the character; this ignores the part where everything else is easily squashed once you reach a high level, so even though there are a few opponents you have to be careful around you've still gained huge amounts of power in the process.

That said, since not everyone wants to face such opposition their presence and numbers should be tied to difficulty settings as well as levels, and they should not be present in MQ-mandatory locations unless said settings call for it to be appropriate.

for example: 2worlds1. you could die at any point or location throughout the game and during highend character levels you still had to pay attention a touch.

Well, wrong. As I have stated many times, challenge has nothing to do with replayability, nor does it define a game design. In fact, just the opposite as many people will not play a game that focuses on challenge. Please read the MDA document from the GDC several years ago and learn that challenge is only one of several different game design elements. Narrative is another, for example. You can find the document online (it is publically available) and I have posted links to it here in the forums several times.

Keep in mind that an RPG where you choose and design a character means that multiple playthrus offer diversity because the same encounters must be handled differently depending on the character, build, skill, equipment, etc. It's an RPG, not an action game, or at least it claims to be, anyway.

with optional difficulty levels i'm not sure about your point.

Guild quests are already linear and funneled. Everyone already is "compelled" to do quests during repeat plays based on what reward they want and when they want it.

Morrowind main game definitely lacked "End game content". But Tribunal really fixed that. With all the best gear, and lvl 50 from Morrowind, you could still get 1 hit killed in Tribunal, or gang killed in dungeons.

Bloodmoon too, although not as much as Tribunal.

Going back to Morrowind mainland from Tribunal tho, everything was way too easy.

you have it exactly right.

a well-thought questlineisn't determined by enemy level. the order of completion is irrelevant.

yeah advancing guild rank in Morrowind actually felt like it meant something, but the end rewards were usually kinda meh.

I miss STATS from morrowind in TES now. This whole "perks" thing sounds nice on paper, but I feel like it should be something meshed with STATS not just "by use to gain skill rank" only. Not having STR and AGI or INT stats never feels right to me and makes Skryim feel like less RPG and more Action Game X

If you can't post without this hysterical insulting and generic rants, don't bother

This is a great way to put it.

In the reality we know. The world doesn't adapt to you, you adjust and grow and learn to the world around you. The world does evolve, but it does so without any consideration with how ready you are for it.

Skyrim Scaling is more like wish fulfillment. The world carefully remakes itself to give you the ILLUSION of challenge and exploration. Because the world carefully scales to your level, it will never be too challenging. And most long time TES players would say, vanilla SKyrim is too easy.

This idea that non scaling would make everyone grind to 50 and trivialize the content are ignoring the basic fact that Skryim scaled is too easy for 90% of the content.

A scaling world would be like playing a Basketball game where the Rim magically lowers itself to 8ft so you can dunk and pretend you are dwight howard.

I play on 10 foot rims.

It would make the game a better RPG, exploration more rewarding, character building and preparation integral, and combined with a lower level cap and significantly less loot, it would go along ways towards turning Skyrim into a first-person Gothic - which would be a massive improvement.

The "downside" is it would make the game less suitable to the casual "I want to hit stuff with a sword" market that makes up 95% of Bethesda's target audience.

Re-spawning is totally separate from scaling. I agree that respawning after a number of days is the way to go. But scaling is not.

One solution is "New Game+" . Very old school. You get to level 30 or so in Skyrim, beat the main quest. And have the option to New Game +. Now the game starts at everything lvl 30 and you keep your old gear/skills. And even at level 30, there are now bandit caves out there full of lvl 60 bandits ready to smash you. And that level 70 Ice troll that shrugs off your pathetic dmg.

Set scaling would offer this instant challenge and grant you a feeling of accomplishment. With scaling, you KNOW you *should* beat anything and everything you encounter, since it's scaled to be easy enough for you.

bah to those of you who wants to get rid of the lvl scaling i can only say ; next time if youbuy a game make sure it has a I WIN button

What game are you playing? Skryim scales to ensure everything is easy enough for you, no matter where you are. It is already built on the premise of easy win.

"Scaled to offer a consistent challenge" actually is "everything but mages are too easy, and mages are not too easy because NPC's have an ocean of mana"

You have this idea that non-scaled games are somehow easy? The reality is the best non-scaled games, the end game is ALWAYS hard and the end game rewards are always WORTH IT.

Everquest is an easy example. The Plane of Fear didn't dumb down the god Cazic Thule so a level 10 could beat him. The god was a god, and he would smash you unless you had a raid full of high lvl toons and a good plan. I know some people hate MMOs. But EQ is a good example because it's a massive open world, and had fixed levels, and was a western RPG etc...

For a JRPG, Vagrant Story PSone. You had to level up your gear and skills , and you had a new game +. Some enemies became way easy, but boss enemies remained a challenge and you could always die if you messed up. No scaling.

Scaling makes the game EASIER

Unless it's broken scaling like Oblivion where the game got harder and less fun as you leveled up, which was just silly. You fought the same garbage but you just kept getting weaker unless you exploited the crafting

Seems like they could fix this by having certain dungeons that had a minimum level scale that could increase if you outleveled it, but would never be less than a certain level. Some could have a minimum level 10, others could have a minimum level 20 or 30 or how ever hard you wanted that dungeon to be. Then you would have a bunch that had no minimum but just went up with the player.

A level scaling system such as that one would solve the problem of every dungeon being relatively easy in the beginning, while at the same time solving the problem of too many areas being too easy later in the game that you get with no level scaling.

EDIT: I thought that was how Skyrim's leveling was suppsoed to work, although I have yet to find any dungeons that seemed any harder than others in Skyrim at lower levels. Frost Trolls at higher elevations are about the only "tough" enemies I have encountered at low levels.

But without some form of level scaling, the enemies that you defeated at level one would respawn into level one enemies that would be trivial at higher levels. You would have to at least have some form of level scaling for respawned enemies to make it interesting.


They have something like that in Borderlands. It works well in an action game. Not sure how well received it would be in an RPG. Although Skyrim seems to be more of an action game than an RPG . . .

easier example from a developer with just a touch less money: 2worlds1.

you died if you weren't paying attention or don't know when to run.

How does it reward exploration, since area X becomes completely obsolete by the time you hit the low cap to move on to the next area?
If anything, it's a scaled world that promotes exploration since every area in the game can serve your purpose at any time, encouraging you to plan your own trajectory and play whichever way you like.

I find the "If you dislike my way of thinking, you're a casual idiot" *argument* incredibly insulting and it does not further this discussion at all. And I've seen far too much of that here. If you can't think of proper arguments, just don't participate.

You're thinking of it in a "I'll be level 999 and kill everything instantly" way. Ironically, that is how Skryim is now, you can instantly kill anything easily.

With hard levels, it rewards exploration because you can find a high level dungeon at a low level, and make sneak in and steal some loot or just scope the place out. Then you can come back later and kill stuff at the right level and feel like, wow, I worked my way up and now I can kill dangerous things and get good loot.

For some reason people who want level scaling have the following 2 assumptions

• They assume scaling somehow is a challenge
  
• The assume everyone wants to be level 999 and kill everything instantly
  
• They assume that Skyrim is not currently too easy

The fact is, with the scaling, Skyrim is currently very easy. The premise that scaling makes everything "a challenge" ignores the fact that the game is not challenging as it is. Because everything scales to your level, you are *always* ready to kill anything and everything.

I killed a giant at lvl 7 by using a bow and a rock.

In a Hard Level game, that would not be possible. At level 7 Giants would be level 50 or so. My archery would do so little damage that at level 50 their base health regen would offset any hide/bow kiting I could do at that level. A Flame Anti I summon would do pathetic Fire dmg and not pose any threat.

But that is NOT the case in Skrim. In skrim, a level 7 can kill the toughest mob in the game... because of scaling. That's not adventure. That's the game world BABYING the player

The problem with your argument here is that Giants do not level with the player. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Giant So if you are at level 7, Giants are going to a lot tougher than you. By player level 50 Giants are going to be a lot weaker. The fact that you can kill a giant at level 7 with a bow has to do with the advantages of ranged combat over a Giant's relatively slow club attack. It has nothing to do with level scaling. Even if there were no level scaling in Skyrim you would have been able to kill the same Giant using the same technique just as easily. Not everything in Skyrim is level scaled. Giants are just one example of creatures that are not level scaled in Skyrim.

He would have been far better served citing Draugr bosses, since those do level with the player and can be a tough fight throughout the game unless you optimize your character and/or play thereof. They're also vulnerable to ranged combat, for many of the same reasons that Giants are, however they do often have a ranged attack of their own with which to retaliate, which lessens the issue (considerably, in some cases).

@Hexpane:

When discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of scaling opponents, you have to look at it from the end-game point of view, because that's where the problems arise. One of, if not the, most common complaint(s) about Morrowind was the utter lack of challenge past about level 15-20 or so, because there was very little scaling and no high-end fixed-level encounters. They sought to rectify this in Oblivion, but the implementation of scaling there was so ham-handed that it became the #1 complaint instead. Now, that does not necessarily mean that scaling is, in and of itself, a bad thing, since it enables the presentation of at least some challenge to high-level heavily-geared characters; rather, it means that poorly-done scaling is a bad thing.

As for the ease (or lack thereof) of Skyrim's combat, that has little or nothing to do with scaling and pretty much everything to do with the moronic, and therefore easily exploited, AI. That enemies telegraph their heavy attacks from two miles out doesn't help either, as anyone who's paying even a modicum of attention can, if they so choose, avoid ever being hit through timely dodging.

Since it seems to have been missed (again), I'll reiterate and paraphrase a previous point of mine: when debating the worth of scaling, it is important to note that even though those opponents that scale with the player may give a feeling of a lack of progression, the fact is that one is still progressing, as is made evident through the increasing ease with which previously difficult encounters are dispatched. It is also important to note that those who desire scaling do not wish it to be done across the board, but rather that it be done to a select group of foes that are meant to present a challenge to even the most top-end characters.