Changing the order you do a quest in doesn't change the fact that you know exactly how it will pan out. It doesn't matter that you can go anywhere if it doesn't make much difference.

In fact, tackling challenges before you are ready is a challenge in and of itself, where success rewards innovation and clever gameplay. Freedom to go wherever whenever you want doesn't even make sense all of the time. If someone says some place is too dangerous, it better be dangerous, like "oh, maybe I should watch out and be careful and go when I think I am ready", instead of "oh look, a quest. Let's go there right now!"

I completely agree. It would be devastating to your freedom in the game. I think it's perfect now in Skyrim! You can go anywhere whenever you like. You can start with the main quest or keep it for last... It's only logical, not a conclusion only crying frustrated kids would end up with.

Whoever wants to be King of Skyrim and show off to their friends what great players they are, should play at "Insanely difficult". Gee, even give them an achievement for it if that's what they want.

But no level scaling would also mean: encountering extremely easy enemies now and then. So if this is about difficulty, just change the difficulty level. You can do it any time in the game. And don't come back crying then if you get killed by a mudcrab after a minute gameplay...

What isn't true however is that, with a, say, invisible wall in a linear game you will be unable to go to the given area untill the game itself unlocks it for you. With an open world with non scaled enemies, not only will you have able to go there based on your own ability to use whatever means your character provides , you may also "unlock" an area in an order not directly intended by the game designers. The essence of a linear game is that you go through events as planned out by the game designers. In an open world with no scaling you could easily have large areas open to low levels, filled with bandits and the like, and certain regions with higher leveled enemies. The game would still be entirely open world in that you did not follow a planned bath of exploration in the world at all, as you would in a linear game, in stead you may only have seen half of the lower leveled areas before venturing to some more difficult places.

That said I honestly, having thought about agree that a certain level of scaling is a good thing, in very select cases, such as, say areas where you'd find yourself with the means to leave without going through a fight.

Obviously because Morrowind is completely void of level scaling, right?

Levelscaling gets way more flack than it really desrves because frankly Skyrim's system is really like the level of Morrowind or a fully modded Oblivion in this regard.

There are quite a bit of static elements, you can find weaker enemies just as often as stronger ones.
Oh sure, some enemies don't appear before certain levels, but is it like you can beat a normal dragon, single handedly on the first level?

These "natural obstacles" pretty much go against the main idea of the series, exploration. If enemy levels would purely be based on area, then regions like Winterhold, Windhelm would be unreachable until higher level.

Starting in the same location doesn't make the game linear, since you can go anywhere after you get out of Helgen. There are often multiple ways to finish quests, but you're right, there are no "alternate endings" to the quest, because you end up accomplishing the same objective. And, as always, none of the Elder Scrolls games have ever had you make a really big impact on the world, due to the never-ending gameplay. Allowing significant changes to the game world would create a giant coding mess for the developers, and it would divert resources away from other features.

The main differences between morrowind's and Skyrim's scaling from what I've noticed, is that in skyrim you will unable to find deadric untill a certain level, where as in morrowind you could, in theory find if you were lucky, stuff like that made morrowind so awesome for me. This also means that in skyrim, once a certain level of gear has been "unlocked" through levels, it is suddenly extremely common, meaning you can never have anything that is actually rare, aside from the much improved deadric quest reward of course

its hard to find a good ground for such things if u abolish level scaling the game becomes way too predictable for replays, if u make too much u get OB which just makes leveling pointless

so some thing in the middle has to be invented.... skyrim did not get it just right but it got close.

actually no game has done this to my knowledge, its either super hard coded levels or complete scaling crapness

There are no Daedric items I know about (except there might be weapons at some static Dremoras), but there definietly are for lower levels like Dwarven items in Dwarven ruins or elven equipment on Falmer.

Also you can focus on smithing and get Daedric equipment pretty early, you still need a semi-rare ingredient though.

You missed a zero in both numbers I think. 40k and 20k iirc.

The game would become boring to me by level 15 like in Morrowind if there wasn't any. I see it as a necessary evil.

You don't have to have "zones" for there to be no level scaling. Unless I don't remember MW correctly the only area/zone that you might have a problem low level was inside the ghostgate around red mountain. But you could be walking around Balmora (low level, the very first city you are sent to, if you choose, to deliver a package) and run into a daedric ruin with dremora, scamps, and storm atronachs walking around. If you wanted to fool with them, have at it. Having to sneak around it or find another route to your destination gave some tension in the game. But it wasn't a "Balmora's zone is for level 15-25".

Skyrim could be exactly as it is now. But maybe Fort X, inhabited by Bandits, might be level 25. So the "zone" is any level, but if you get too close or decide to attack Fort X, Cave Y, Dwemer Ruin Z, you might find inhabitants higher or lower level than yourself.

Repeat...you do not have to have The Reach as level x to level y zone, and Solitudes zone for level a to level b, you can have a free roam world like Skyrim is now, but certain camps, forts, dungeons, ruins, and all the other cool locations you stumble upon while exploring could have varying levels of creatures. Disturb them at your own risk.

But I guess too many are like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9obgyYB1IU

That still creates a funneling issue, even though it would be less pronounced than zoned leveling.

Guild quests would inevitably send you along a specific track, and without scaling, you'd feel compelled to do those quests in the same order and at the same point in your game every time, since waiting too long would make them too easy and not waiting would make them impossible to complete.

I agree that some areas should be scaled to be harder than others (although I think Skyrim does this to a certain extent already), but having areas that aren't scaled at all just ends up creating frustration/tedium/repetitive gameplay.

Don't get me started on the idea of actually crafting deadric stuff -.-'. Anyway, yes and the idea of finding hand placed dwarven stuff is great. However this should go for the entire game. Deadric should be something you find on your adventures, laying in some forgotten vault somewhere, not something that just happens to show up at a certain level and suddenly becomes semi-common.

Don't get me wrong, skyrim is miles ahead of oblivion in terms of scaling. But it is not at a morrowind level (even though morrowind did lack actual high level content to a certain degree). Also, let's not forget that skyrim still scales on some quest rewards you can only get once. The nightingale armor being one of the major examples. This should never happen :/.

I'd also like to see more unique items out in the open world, unrelated to quests. While oblivion had close to none, skyrim does have a few (that rather cool horned helmet being one) and quite a lot of useless, allthough named stuff. And this is certainly, once again, a huge improvement, but It's just not there yet.


@nevevarine

you made your post while I was writing mine so I hope you don't mind you getting this little sidenote as a response from me ^^

To me, having to go back and get better before being able to do a certain quest in a guild questline, is actually a huge plus. This actually gives you the feeling of you having to work and improve in order to get to a certain position in the guild, it means you can't simply walk in the door and magically become guild master as you are able to do in both oblivion and skyrim.

As for repetition, honestly, I'm not interested in doing a place I've already been to, the game scaled or not. On my second major character I find myself skipping place I can remember from my earlier playthough anyway, so I don't see how this would change with the world being non scaled. And in morrowind fx, there were plenty of places you could not go at a low level, but I never felt "funneled" at all. The TES games are so big that if you find an area that is simply too hard, you'll just go to the next cave which may well turn out to be easier.

Maybe guild/main quests could be leveled so you don't do a quest that is too hard and have to wait, or too easy because you put off that quest line for later. Side quests etc...could be no-scaling. I had no problem in OB with "you have to be level x to do this quest"

That being said I still prefer MW guild ranks where, you know, you actually had to have some skill to advance! Not become arch-mage by level 10 with virtually no skill in magic. I mean what mage would listen to you if you couldn't even cast firebolt because you have 15 in destruction and don't use spells. (I've gotten in the college casting healing hands on what's-her-name then pretty much advanced with with hardly any magic use)

Daedric swords were... not too extremely uncommon... of course you had t fight daedra to get them but that was no problem. there were plenty to kill in the ruins. But you needed to be pretty strong to take one on. You could not do it early on in the game.

This is also basically a reply to mes2370, since you both raise a similar point.

I agree that I'd like to see a bit of a return to Morrowind's skill requirements for guild advancement. I'd be a fan of "practical tests" that can require a certain level of mastery in order to pass them, as well, but even just having the numeric requirement would be good.

That said, I don't think that removing scaling would be a good fix, since then, as I said, you just end up doing the same quests at the same point in your game in order to keep them challenging. And I don't want a return to Oblivion's "You have to be x level," because that was an artificial restraint placed on the quest that had more to do with the item you were going to receive than with the challenge of the quest itself.

ok you no scaling fans answer me this
Why wiould you create a relative huge game world with hundreds of caves, dungons and other goodies if there is no point of doing them since there will be no challenge beyond a certain lvl

would be so much easier making this game more linear than th old AD&D games
you do A and when you complete you can do B or C any one will lead to even D and game over
No challenge no replayibility

No scaling in these sort of game means that after 50 hours of game play you can shelve the game and get on with your lmiserable life

Or second scenario
You want it easy and want somebody to hold your hand while you kill everything insight with little or no problems

no lvl scaling tend to make games like this boring in the long run and prone to players losing interest after their first playthru with little or no challenge

The answer is simple - make character progression a LOT slower, so you become all-powerful after 500 hours instead of 50 hours.

No level scaling + slow character progression = fantastic RPG with a believeable gameworld that remains challenging for hundreds of hours and doesn't feel like it all revolves around the player-character.

I completely agree with the Oblivion thing. having a level requirement to recieve the quest is a bad way to do it.

As for guild rank requirements, I think that the best way to "test" your character would indeed be practical tests, if the devs could make it work. I'm not sure all skills are actually made in such a way that this is possible, but in theory this would certainly be the best way. If that didn't work however I think morrowind's number system worked well too.

On the scaling issue, I still don't think that at all. as I said, TES games are so big that there are plenty of room to have a diversity of quests within the same difficulty range.


@pussnheels
Aside from what sheogorath88 already responded with, there is also the satisfaction of actually being better than a part of the world, having spent a lot of time getting there. Part of what bothers me about a scaled world is that no matter how good I get, the entire world just seems to get just as as good, giving me no sense of progression.

There is this mod: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=6206

Description:

They could solve that problem (or at least make it better) by making it so there is a small chance of finding any type of gear as loot from level one and increasing that chance as you level up, rather than making it so that you have no chance of finding certain gear before a certain level. They did that with the monster spawns. It only makes sense tha tthey should do it for loot as well.

Actually, I believe that they did do it for loot. I've heard of low level characters finding daedric loot before.

But it's incredibly rare. Maybe more rare than some would like.

No level scaling does not restrict you from the rest of the world.

What it actually does is test your ability to adapt to the world and adapt your play style. Walking into the Dark Pit of Fire should not be the same experience for a level one as it was for the Happy Bunny Forest at level 1. Walking into an area with Frost Trolls, whom start out at level 10 while you are still level 2 should be a different experience than walking into the area and the Frost Trolls are also level 2.

With that said, the world should be a mixture of scaling and non-scaling enemies.

Wait the old AD&D games were linear? Not the way we played them. We had a group of players who took turns being DM but we all played in the same game world. It was a living open world, with cities that each had their own unique character, different countries that sometimes warred with each other, history and backstory for everything and it was all of our own making. We kept track of new locations on a big map as the world was developed.

Skyrim and TES games (not to mention all the mods) remind me so much of the way we used to play AD&D back in the 1980s. We never used a "Dungeon Module," because even back then, the user created stuff was better than anything off the shelf. The only things we bought from TSR were the handbooks, but then we rewrote a bunch of the rules cause a lot of them did not make sense.

It was anything but linear. Many of the adventures were out of doors and there were always an indefinite number of ways to solve problems. Lots of areas were "recycled" into multiple campaigns because new creatures would move into that old ruin once the old ones were cleared out. The challenge there was to make the new campaign interesting even though the players already knew the layout of the ruin, but that sometimes made it more fun because the players felt like they had an "advantage" over the bandits now inhabiting the ancient zombie ruin because the party of hearty adventures might know about a secret passage from their last adventure in the ruin that the new bandits had not found yet, which let them set up an ambush.

Those were the days my friend!

There were times when the players decided not to do what the DM had prepared because they wanted to do something else instead and the DM had to adapt and improvise. Way nonlinear. Of course, we had a very creative group of DM's who were willing to improvise rather than use their "god power" to force the players back onto the chosen path.

Plus, we rotated DM duties, so the DM's followed the golden rule of "do unto others" because they knew that if they were too arbitrary with their DM power, they would be punished next time they sat in the player seat.

Okay, back on topic, Skyrim is very reminicient of AD&D the way we used to play it in my old group. Non linear adventure and exploring.

The problem I have with Morrowind is that nothing respawns underground. That doesn't make sense because once you clear out a bandit cave, new bandits would move in eventually. It also makes for a dead world eventually because you will eventually clear out every dungeon. For this reaon I could not get into Morrowind as much as Oblivion because I knew I would eventually run out things to do in Morrowind. Unless you have level scaling you either end up with a dead world because stuff does not respawn, or you end up with a world full of trivial monsters that are too easily slain.

For this reason I support level scaling. Skyrim's level scaling system may not be perfect but it is pretty darned good. There is a chance you will meet tough monsters at lower levels and you still meet a sufficient number of weak monsters at higher levels.

Good to know. I still have not found any Daedric loot with any of my six characters and several of them are over 40th level, but I am not complaining. Daedric loot should be rare.