I was unaware that push ups made u invincible, maybe I should double my regime;)

As a Final Fantasy fan, I can say that you are spot on with the fact that there are areas you can't go at level one because you will be destroyed. But that's always made sense to me. It's always been a kind of "Here, there be dragons" mentality to me that there are areas that have stronger predators and that you're less prepared to fiend off. It made the world seem bigger to me, because I knew there was so much stuff out there I couldn't yet see until I was prepared for it.

The part of your argument that's flawed is that Final Fantasy had a step, step, step RANDOM BATTLE system. In Skyrim, you can see all your potential opponents (if you're paying attention) and alter your route to avoid having to fight them.


I was running with your metaphor. I'm just saying that your argument makes no sense. What are the Draugr doing to get stronger while you're "doing push-ups"? It doesn't make sense that you can take out the Blood Horkers, a very feared group of pirates, at level one, but a totally generic group of bandits will be much stronger than they are when you reach level 30. That kind of scaling breaks immersion, because you're suddenly wondering why the company needed help to begin with.

As I said before, they should have a mixture of both scaling and non scaling:

Dungeon X has enemies that at minimum are level 20, to provide a challenge to any poor fool who stumbled in at level 1. However, if you come in at level 30, the enemies are scaled to 35 or something, so that they still provide a challenge to you.

It actually does have something to do with where you can go and when, because those creatures are going to try to kill you regardless of whether or not you want/are able to fight them. For your statement to be true, encounters would have to not be automatically hostile to the player; that would actually do more damage to exploration, since there would be no challenges to overcome unless the player deliberately triggered unnecessary fights.

It's interesting that you bring up character progression, while at the same time citing means of encounter avoidance that have essentially nothing to do with the character and everything to do with exploiting the AI's utter inability to cope with stealthy game-play, since use of the latter invalidates the former to an even greater extent than level-scaled encounters ever could. Speaking of which, the fact that an encounter is scaled does not mean that it isn't, or can't be, challenging; rather, it means that the degree of challenge provided thereby will not be far in excess of what the character can handle at that point in his or her development.

For example: say you have a L10 character, and enter a dungeon; with scaling in effect, the highest level opponent you could expect to find would be about, say, L15, with a possible additional bump for any boss(es) present. This would provide a reasonable amount of challenge, with the bosses being fairly difficult unless you came prepared, but you're not going to get summarily obliterated unless a/the boss rolls a critical hit with a 2H weapon. With static levels, on the other hand, they might be L5, L15, or even L35, and cases 1 and 3 are going to svck; case 1 because it will be a snore-fest, and case 3 because you die if anything in there so much as gives you a hard stare, with no chance on your part to do anything about it.

Now, case 3, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, because you can always come back later when you do have a chance against them; nor, necessarily is case 1 bad, because you may want a breather after defeating a particularly nasty boss of your approximate level. What is bad, however, is that the static system cannot respond to increases in character ability/power because all the encounters are fixed-level (or level-range); the inevitable result is that all encounters will become class 1s, which renders combat basically pointless, as well as boring as hell.

Admittedly, scaling systems run the risk, if not properly implemented, of devolving into nothing but class 3s, which is just as bad as either of those examples, for similar reasons. Even a well-done one still has limits, because it cannot provide that occasional insane fight some folks crave from time to time since the idea is to keep the opponents within a reasonable range in order to prevent summary 1-shots. There is also the issue of scaling systems not working well if the upper bound of character power is massively disproportionate to the lower bound; unless, of course, they are keyed to the character's abilities rather than level, which in turn opens them up to being gamed via equipment-swapping shenanigans.

Still, if I had to choose between the two (I'd prefer a mix of both) I'd go with the scaling system, simply because it can react to character growth, however imperfectly it does so, while a static system cannot.

Well maybe draugr got bored of doing press ups? or duz it even have the mental capacity to do so? what I'm saying is that your enemies should scale.

EDIT: Hey, U know what, I completely agree with u after reading through your posts

You can see your enemies in FF XII.

Final Fantasy XI and XII were the first to introduce this.

hmmm maybe a diablo-isk approach would be cool, by making level scaling enemies with high level bosses (lots of them ) spawn all over the place.

in other words on higher levels low level creatures spawn in greater number but have a boss creature with them

anyways, level scaling or its lack is not the problem, its finding a system that gives the most replay value + challenge

A great difficulty setting was an idea a classmate of mine had:

One difficulty slider for how good the AI and the overall world is.

One difficulty slider for enemy stats like Health, Armor, Damage, etc.

So, you could potentially play the game against really smart but really weak enemies, really dumb but really strong enemies, and anything in between.

You haven't thought that mabye they are easy because they DID NOT SCALE WITH YOU?

I mean, what kind of complaint is that "They totally scale with you, it's [censored], but they are so weak, like it's supposed to be a low level mission or something and I picked it up on low level...". The only thing that scales with you in these and even then, not always is the leader. Heck I went for Dragonhunting quests I picked early only to find weak dragons when I normally find Frost ones in random encounters. How would they scale with you?

Yeah, Morrowind, Everquest, Fallout, games that had no level scaling at all...

EXCEPT IN THE OPEN WORLD WHERE RANDOM MONSTERS WERE ALWAYS AROUND YOUR LEVEL!

Seriously people get down from the elitist high horse of the "Level scaling is for modern casual RPGS" because it's incredibly wrong, nearly every RPG out there had a manner of level scaling, starting with Ultima. Ever wondered why when you had more people in your party and got a couple of levels the number of enemies increased?


Also the whole "you have to be careful to go around" thing also goes against the series main idea, exploration. Different leveled dungeons simply doesn't work because there are absolutely NO indication how strong certain areas are. The idea would basically make areas like Winterhold and Windhelm (areas that ALREADY have stronger creatures present by default) impossible to reach until a certain level. Because you cannot even sneak past an enemy if you are low level.

That still doesn't address the fact that at level 81, my bounties still only bring in 100 gold.



The guards already give dialogue telling you to stay away from certain areas (and then mark your map about where you can find said areas). Have the areas they mention be areas you probably don't want to mess with and there's your indication. They can even scale the dialogue to your level, so that they say you might be able to stand a chance instead of you're doomed once you've reached a certain level. You could also make it so these areas are harder to reach, either because they are high up in the mountains, or because you have to run a gauntlet of enemies to even get there in the first place.

Honestly, the lack of indication is mostly because the world isn't fleshed out that much. If there was more dialogue about dungeons and caves, and you could hear about 20 or 30 areas from sitting in Taverns listening to townsfolk or travelers, the world would be all the better for it.

The Gothic series had no level scaling and it worked fine.

Personally, I hate constant level scaling. What's the point of gaining levels and upgrading gear when it doesn't change how you take your enemies down? The ability to one shot weaker enemies is supposed to be a reward for the time you invest in becoming stronger. If you want your enemies to always have the same level of difficulty maybe you'd have more fun with a Double Dragon/Battletoads style beat-em-up.

Scaling Enemies + Non-Scaling Enemies = Best Enemy Set Up.

What's more artificial than level scaling?

I see three types of player:

Adam: Wants realism. Some places are logically and realistically challenging for a low level character. At high levels, most places are easy and some still challenging, as expected for a hero. (The game is still open world, how could it not be? No one funneled in Morrowind, go whenever, where ever you want. And face some consequences and live the thrill.)

Jack: Go wherever, whenever. Wants a theme park, doesn't mind being railroaded through content. Only thinks exploration.

Mike: Not interested in logic or progression. Constant challenge, is what he wants.

Jack and Mike get together. Adams get shafted. These two are the only pros for level scaling: challenge and freedom to go wherever, whenever. But hey! Constant challenge is basically a hardcoe mode and go wherever, whenever is a cheat mode. If you combine these two, you would get an abomination. And we all suffer because level scaling is the worst mechanic ever created with many many inherit flaws. (Anyone who says level scaling is not that bad will give examples of non-level scaling. Fallacies everywhere!)

At firsrt Skyrim is fun because there are some places in Skyrim which are non-scaled for low levels, these are few and only go up to level 25 but enough to make Adams happy for first 26 levels(as even Mike and Jack would notice). Mike and Jack will never be happy because if scaling is 1:1, Jack will thrive but challenge will be non-existent for Mike. If Mike gets 1:1.x scaling then it will get too hard for Jack(maybe even for Mike). Not to mention the efficient leveling crap turning this upside down based on build types.

Can we abolish this [censored] once and for all and develop a more logical, sound implementation that would cater to all of us? A more dynamic but still non-scaled approach. No? Then just provide separate game modes. I am sick and tired of this [censored].

It incentives certain paths. It prevents none. In this sense it is no different than a scaling system with minimum levels (meaning all creatures in area y will be >level x). If you have level scaling, but cap in certain areas use a minimum cap, then that area is necessarily going to be challenging to impossible for certain leveled characters. That's what I was responding to. The idea that scaling allows for freedom while non-scaling does'nt only makes sense if the game is scaled in such a way that nothing is ever challenging (or that things are always winnable at any level).

That's why the argument is not about scaling or not scaling. It's only about being able to travel where ever, whenever without ever actually being in danger.

I don't think AI should ever be controlled by a difficulty slider. The best AI should always be available no matter what the difficulty setting, otherwise it degrades the gameplay experience. What should be controlled are things like the likelihood that an enemy will attack (eg. animals are less likely to attack on lower settings) or the likelihood that an enemy will flee. Ie. aggression and confidence. But enemies should never be stupider. You could also downgrade their weapons and armor. Personally, I think http://j-u-i-c-e.hubpages.com/_esforum/hub/skyrim-difficulty-settings, raising and lowering the kind and number of enemies the player faces.

The world is filled with examples of scaling, as well. Competitors in any sport, business, career, etc., will always be competing against people of approximately their same level. If my character is giving an NPC a problem, the person they send to teach me a lesson should be scaled to my level. You don't send the neighborhood bully to intimidate Chuck Norris, you send ninjas. Likewise, the guild master doesn't send his best man to wipe out some rats, he gives him a job worthy of his talents. Facing statically leveled enemies isn't always the most logical solution. Granted, those are specific kinds of scenarios, but many quests are, in fact, structured like this.

Enemies with minimum and maximum levels are not pure scaling enemies; they are static/scaling hybrids, which is why there is little difference between statically scaled areas and areas that use ranged leveled lists. One more reason why the rage against scaling in Skyrim is unfounded. It doesn't exist in a pure form anywhere. Every single enemy has a static component to it already: they are, at a minimum, statically tied to the player's level when he encounters them. If you leave and come back, they will be the same. Most of them also have maximum levels, so, as in static systems, the player can eventually out-level them.

The arguments against level scaling ignore one of the key design elements of open world RPGs: the player's ability to create a unique narrative every time they play. It's a very easy way to solve a very complicated problem. It's not perfect, but having statically leveled enemies is a worse solution, not a better one.

If everything is statically leveled, every time you play the game, you will be 'incentivized' to play the same areas in the same order, going to the same dungeons, the same towns, encountering the same NPCs, picking up the same quests. It's impact on replayability is enormous and potentially devastating. Sure, you can choose to go a different route, but 90% of the players won't and they will complain that the game is boring and linear. That's why they invented scaling. To prevent this problem. Now, instead of 90% of the players complaining that the game is boring and loses its challenge (after all, every time you level up, there is less and less reason to explore larger and larger areas of the map) you have 10% of the players complaining that it isn't logical and it prevents them from seeking a real challenge early in the game. That's a design trade off. I doubt very much they will ever go back to static leveling.

What's worse, static leveling encourages meta-gaming. Once you've been through the game a couple of times you can do speed runs to get the best loot and then the rest of the game becomes a walk in the park. That, if anything, is a cheat mode, nothing more than the player's desire to take it easy and avoid challenge later in the game by making a small sacrifice early in the game. In a leveled game, you can't game the system in this way. (That's what crafting is for. )

The best solution is a hybrid system, like the one that they have, but with a few tweaks. If the enemies were more challenging (better AI, more variety, greater numbers) and the difficulty sliders worked properly, I doubt as many people would complain about the scaling. Scaling just becomes an easily identifiable surrogate for other design problems that many players can't easily articulate.

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/75/75543.jpg

It doesn't matter what's pure and what's not. Again, that has nothing to do with the comment I was addressing. The argument was that a non-scaled world necessarily means it's "less open" (for certain, arbitrary definitions of open). I pointed out that scaled worlds can be just as "restrictive". I mean, we could remove character progression and set every enemy at an equal level. In this system, it would be a non-scaled world, but you could always go anywhere at any time without any real risk of death.

So it becomes clear that it isn't scaling that people want. It's pure freedom to do whatever, whenever. This necessarily means progression must be meaningless. You must be able to do everything at any time. If it were meaningful progression, then certain things could not be done until you'd reached a certain skill level.
This is a poor justification for scaling. Allowing me to perform any quest in any order would allow me to create a unique narrative every time I play, but we don't do that because it makes no sense. Certain quests can only be performed at certain stages. You have to progress along certain paths, open certain questlines, reach certain character thresholds. In the same sense, it makes no sense for there to be equal challenge regardless of where you travel. Certain areas are more difficult. Certain dungeons will be deadly to character's who haven't reached a certain level.

Further, this could be achieved just as easily in a static system by randomly generating levels upon a new game. Now it's really a new experience every time, instead of the same experience, but simply completed in a different order. So again, scaling is simply a means to minimize challenge, not provide unique narratives to the player.
I already addressed this. Intelligent dungeon placement allows for a range of directions players may go. Any dungeons near to towns would be less challenging, with difficulty increasing as you move further into the wilderness. Combine this with the knowledge that certain dungeon types (dwemer, daedric) will always be more challenging, and ti becomes clear to the player where they can safely venture. In a game with a couple hundred dungeons, this hardly limits the directions you can take. Roughly 25 percent might be recommended for low level characters, while 40 percent will be difficult, but doable.

They implemented scaling as a direct response to complaints made about the level of challenge in Morrowind. It had nothing to do with exploration. Who has ever felt compelled to explore in an Elder Scrolls game because of the prospect of finding monsters? What drives exploration is the prospect of finding new and interesting things. Unique dungeons, unique loot, unique stories. If it were merely combat, then why even have an open world? Just make a brawler.

Combat has always been prominent in TES games, but it's never been the focus. The focus has always been the world. Combat is simply a means of navigating through that world.
You realize this is absurd, right? The whole argument has been that too much challenge prevents full freedom. Why then, would you deny someone the ability to rush through a dungeon and grab some amazing sword at level one? Isn't that simply the player exercising that freedom? Why can a player go to any dungeon in any order they choose, but can't choose their equipment in the same fashion?

Beyond that, static levels for creatures goes along way towards preventing this very thing. If a dungeon is legitimately challenging or impossible for a low level character, then they can't really expect to get to that amazing sword at the other end. They'd be ripped to shreds a dozen feet through the door. Scaling accomplishes this, by simply making every discovery boring. Random, generic loot in every dungeon, rarely ever a real challenge. If anything, this is what discourages exploration.
Obviously if the made fundamental changes across the board, things would be better. That's because combat is simply boring. It's always been a means to an end, never the end itself. It serves as a challenge to exploration, and makes the rewards that much more rewarding. The introduction of scaling reduces this challenge, reduces the rewards, reduces the meaningfulness of victory.

The fact is that a TES world should be built around believability. Scaling reduces this believability by rendering 95 percent of all areas "safe" for travel. Certain hybrid systems could work if it was built atop strong static levels. I shouldn't be killing vampire masters before I've hit level three, but that also doesn't mean I shouldn't bump into vampire masters before level three. That unpredictability and challenge needs to exist. A world should not be tailored to a character, I should tailor my character to fit into the world.

I like that idea. Sounds pretty straight forward to code, at least for the appearance of AI. Like make enemy Cone of Vision smaller/wider. Make enemy chase duration/range or aggro smaller/wider etc...

100% wrong

Open world, monsters vary by level/type. Daedra Lords or Rats in Morrowind, Gnolls or Frost Giants in everquest etc...

"Random monsters were always around your level" is false.

No, I've already mentioned a million ways in which high/low level areas manifest. Visual clues, distance from roads etc... basic stuff being used for the past 20 years.

"Danger runs" are a part of non-scaled games.if you want to run halfway across the world, expect some risk. It's fun

Why can't you sneak past a low level enemy? I did it in morrowind and a ton of other games.

Morrowind. I can go into a cave, and have level 30 vampires trying to kill me. You're telling me there is level scaling, when they're level 30, and you're level 1?

Also, level scaling does encourage RECKLESS exploration. There is a difference. In Morrowind, it is still possible to explore. You just can't go into ANY CAVE you see at level 1 and expect to kill everything with no problems. Go into a cave - maybe make a save before you go in. See what the enemies are. Run like all hell if they're hard, or fight them if you can. Just don't expect to be able to kill anything you find at a low level. Level scaling makes exploration BORING for many people, as there is no challenge - the enemies are ALWAYS beatable, there is no suspense.

ROFL you are using examples of "real world" scaling and talk about Ninjas and Chuck Norris?

The real world does NOT scale for anything but organized sports/school. Businesses dont take it easy on each other or only compete with like sized. Wal-Mart does not sit and take it easy on local/small businesses. Wal Mart crushes them without soul or feeling of remorse.

Has Apple taken it easy on mobile phone and music software companies?

Lets get real about this.

As I've mentioned, level scaling (in it's pure form) is 8foot basketball rims for people who want to pretend they are LBJ

I completely agree with you.

WIth his schoolyard bully vs Chuck Norris example (which is totaly like real life, and also how does a ninja intimidate? 0.o), you send what is most effective. The Daedra attacking Kvatch, or the dragon attacking Whiterun isn't going to be any easier if you're a low level. Alduin doesn't go - hey look, he's still a wimp. Let's go easy on him. He goes "Oh crap, he could beat me later on. I'll crush him now."

What does former United States President Lyndon B. Johnson have to do with level scaling (or basketball, for that matter)?

Haha, well played. I thought that when I first read it too