What are your thoughts? Are there other open-world games that have done level scaling well? Is there a game you played that could have benefited from using level scaling? Let us know in the comments below!
Paper Mario: TTYD included a good way of keeping players from fighting the same weak enemies over and over: a badge that let you skip fights with enemies that didn't stand a chance against you just by hitting them first (followed by a badge that let you do so just by bumping into them).
The only unimersive level scaling experience I can never forget happened while playing Fallout 4. Everybody knows about the behemoth of the pond... Swan. Well... on my first playthrough,I decided to engage him at around level 40,cos i heard of the difficulty everyone else experienced. So, i set up a little trap with 3 bottlecap mines and 4-5 frag mines a few feet from the pond, and then sneak attacked him with my Instigating Gauss Rifle i found only 10 minutes ago. He died as soon as the bullet struck him. Very dissapointing to say the least.
I can't believe you didn't mention WOW. At this this point virtually everything in the game (except raids) scales. Not just with your level but also with your gear. But some enemies only scale their health not they're damage. So they can't be one shot but they also do virtually 0 damage to you.
I've always felt that level scaling is a shortcut for lazy progression design. Skyrim may be better than Oblivion in some regards, but I still had the exact same problem where if I leveled pickpocket a bunch and then went into a dungeon, I'd be completely hosed. I preferred the highly limited version that showed up in New Vegas. There were *very* few areas where I could easily notice any kind of level scaling, and instead the game was just good at telegraphing when going to a certain area would get you killed if you were too low level. Made the whole world feel more immersive, alive, and dangerous.
I like games where you can walk straight to the most dangerous places and get your arse kicked. Makes me feel like I'm an adventurer (if perhaps a bad one) rather than taking a tour.
Agreed. I know current design theory sees that as a flaw, but I'm old school (and also just old); if I blunder into a monster that rips my spine out in one hit, I just make a mental note: "travelling too far west is dangerous, don't mess with monster X yet, etc."
Did someone mention new vegas? I feel like that game uses masterfully crafted world-design to utilize what little level scaling it has masterfully. You can absolutely straight from goodsprings north into giant radscorpion land and get your arse kicked, and the game uses a lot of natural barriers, like mountains or gulfs, to ward you off from places with super mutants, cazadors or radscorpions. You can still absolutely go these places, but the game subtle influences you to keep to the roads and follow the main story, as the world gradually opens up in a natural manner.
Perhaps to avoid scenarios where the player says "this game is to hard that guy killed me in one hit blah blah blah" those places could be stated as dangerous unless you're skilled and have good stuff and whatnot. Also, perhaps the npcs would say something like "you look strong enough to go to Scary Evilland" when you are prepared by the game's standards.
My big take away from this is that: level scaling it’s meant to preserve and facilitate The difficulty curve, but incorrect application of it completely flattens the difficulty curve.
Also an option: asymmetric level scaling. Say, an enemy starts at level 10, and gets one level everytime the player gains three. This still results in a scenario where the player is initially outclassed but eventually becomes powerful enough to outclass the enemy in turn... but it takes much longer. In this example, it would take until level 14 to reach parity, and by level 20, the player would only be four levels ahead. If the entire game plays out over the course of 20 levels, this keeps that enemy a scary threat for the entire first half of the game, and a useful adversary for most of the second half - all without making it seem like the player isn't growing in relative strength.
Thats a choice that makes enemies relevant for longer, which sounds good for bosses you have to get through in order to progress, but for a lot of the random stuff in the world is the exact opposite of what you want. Most RPG's span being peasant level to hero of ages fighting gods in only a few days of real time, so instead of slowing relitive progression, they drastically boost it. The second a wolf stops being challenging to have a notable risk of death in the encounter, it should be trivial to a point of almost being ignored (indeed by a few levels past the game is made better if it doesn't agro automatically, maybe even running away). Its not desirable to have a bunch of "no longer quite a challenge but still almost close" opponents, instead thats the part of games that feels like a grind with little for the player to be excited about. Next up is the story progression, and how it changes how we see the world. If your level 20, chances are the level 10 based area is going to feel thematically drastically beneath you even if the level mechanics still make it equally hard as what your supposed to fear. After all why worry about a bandit camp when your fighting the spawn of hell? Thus it should feel the same by the games mechanics as it does by game lore, feel free to one hit those dudes on your commute through and not even bother to loot the stuff, it'll let you feel powerful with your new gear in a way that you just wouldn't if you moved onto the next lot of scaled foes who take a simlar number of hits. Those reliefs in the difficulty curve are important to break up cycles of building tension, meanwhile also allowing past areas to feel more like safe homelands, letting the new regions and enemies added to feel drastically more scary than those we've seen before.
Power scaling is'n't so much about giving enemies "levels" but about how their core stats scale with player level. Normally you'd craft a bracket system where level 5 = average X HP, Y Strength, Z Evasion and then each individual enemy / area is modified or tweaked after play testing reveals the challenge at to high or to low a level. What global "level scaling" does is get rid of that cost entirely, no more play testing for difficulty required, just an algorithm that automatically sets stats based on player level. Which causes things to get wildly out of hand because player power isn't just their level, but also their gear and ability load out. Because the last two aren't checked it's very possible to "level" into an impossible scenario. You grinded for gold on some monsters or explored a few too many areas and now your about 5 levels ahead of the expected curve but without the gear that goes with the next few areas, monsters now have that gear and the player is severely outmatched. I found a much better way to do this was level bounding, monster A starts at "level 10" and scales until "level 15" where it reaches power cap. The level bounds for the monsters are determined by the rank of the dungeon / area being explored, a level 3 character attempting to explore a level 50 area is rightly going to get their butts stomped.
That is an intriguing solution to early game obsolescence and late game grind. Adjusting for higher levels would be the main issue to address. We will call the enemies' unadjusted power their "base level." In example, a level 50 player would probably not be able to beat a base level 50 enemy because it would actually be 76. A base level 30 enemy scaled to 56 would be a better challenge. That is easy enough to do by predicting average player level at any given point in the game once you have your math nailed down. Assuming a player level cap of 99, you would want the enemy base level cap around 70. That puts the final boss at 102 so that he will always challenge the player's full mastery of the game's mechanics rather than time investment. You could also throw in weaker enemies throughout the game scaling 1/4 instead of 1/3 to adjust tension and let the players breathe. If they feel super heroic facing one group of enemies then it puts the power of more serious enemies into perspective. Subtly weaker enemies are also a good narrative tool. Imagine a hero fighting his way through an entire army to save his friends, only to meet one last challenge between him and his goal.
This does remind me of the model for skyrim, where it at least felt to me that I was progressing faster in power than the level scaling. It doesn't quite solve the problem, since you bad leveling might still hurt your effective power level, but compared to strict level scaling it does allow that important aspect of becoming more powerfull. Note that in strict level scaled system, leveling up is depowering you (as your gear and so on will have fallen behind compared to your level).
Yeah. I remember seeing a friend play one of those games, and a cave system was entirely inhabited by goblins. Ok. But he was a high level player, so every goblin was a goblin warlord. So.. what is this, some kind of goblin peace talks? The goblin version of the UN? Totally broke immersion, as you say.
@C. D. Dailey since when? Goblins are balls of chaotic barbarism. I wouldn't trust a Goblin with money, they'd eat it, set fire to it or trade it for a sharp rock or something.
Honestly, that's how I feel about RPGs in general, they use this number system to create this false illusion of empowerment even though nothing about your character changes in any meaningful way.
If you have to scale every enemy's difficulty based on the pc's level, then don't make a game where the pc levels up. It's pretty fucking simple to me.
Fallout 4 is bad for this too. Orcs who previously took 2 headshots to kill with a sniper rifle suddenly take 20 at higher levels. And this turns the whole game into a series of encounters where you drain a ton of ammo, so you're forced to go to a vendor to get more or just ignore potential encounters entirely. This doesn't just make progression meaningless it also turns mundane encounters into 30 minute long firefights that should only be 3 minutes tops. If every fight is a challenge, the game turns into one giant grind. Might as well play an MMO at that point.
The way they designed the leveling mechanics definitely made things tricky to balance in Skyrim. Most of your power comes from the perks you take, less than the raw level of each of the skills (though they do play some role). There's a big difference in strength between a character with a level 40 one-handed skill and 2 perks in the tree and a character with a level 40 one-handed skill who used smithing to level up and get 6 perks in the one-handed skill tree.
@jocaguz18 while true the damage of the dragonbone sword is 15 compared to the 7 of the iron. sure that gets +10 extra if buffed but one handed gives you 0.5% dmg per level and 20% per perk point while also giving bandits and chest glas and other strong gear. So yeah it gives you strenght but not a lot.(also you have to find the two strongest swords sadly)
@@garyermann Except that perks had requirements in their respective skills. That said, it is mostly something that impacts those who decide to grind out their non-combat skills early on. Rather than the intended more passive means of leveling (not that this was an actual option for smithing...)
The problem is that it is hard to become an all-rounder in Skyrim. You are forced to specialize and use those specialties or else your enemies become too strong. This is realistic, eg in real life, you could devote all of your efforts to being the best at Fortnite and not have any job prospects despite your Fortnite dominance. Alternatively, you could get an education and level-up in a job and not be any good at Fortnite. It doesn't make for a very fun game when you're forced to specialize and it feels like you don't have as much control over the experience, because at some point you are essentially forced to do the same thing over and over to help train your specialization.
It annoys me more than it should that this line has become emblematic for Oblivon, when it _isn't actually in the game_ and would make no sense if it was. Everyone has heard of the High Elves, they're like 10% of the population. I wish whatshisface had gone with mudcrabs or something.
Leveled encounters are much more likely to be both interesting and challenging if the same kind of adversary or challenge isn't on offer every single time. D&D handles this exceptionally well by giving the DM guidelines to build multiple types of encounter, showing how to make a swarm of smaller pests be just as dangerous as a couple of brigands, and how difficult a typical encounter should be (Half should be just as powerful as the party's effective level, a third should be interesting to fight but not really dangerous, and the rest be either very easy or considerably difficult).
Scaling health is actually my least favourite thing about dnd as tabletop rpgs go, it means things that should be lethal (getting coup de graced in your sleep with a greataxe for example) not kill you unless the rules are ignored and necessitates the monsters dealing unreasonable damage so they can still threaten a lv 15 character. Skill scaling isnt as bad as it isnt obviously unreasonable that a rogue gets good enough at lockpicking to reliably open cheap security (aside from social skills) and such but any physical quantity shouldnt having linear progression from 1 unit
Tabletop RPGs in general are better at scaling, not just because of the rules, but the fact that the DM usually knows what the players can handle, and what the like out of a game.
@@sophiaglass2000 It's also fairly common that a tabletop GM understands how to change an encounter in ways it's hard or impossible to in a CRPG. For example, making a simple group of zombies planned to be attacking a nearby town when the players arrived, but which the players unknowingly skipped, become the vanguard of a group of necromancers trying to invade the county from the neighboring kingdom who are now keeping the Marquis and his troops too busy to help the now higher level PCs deal with other threats.
To add to the others: Not only does the GM know his party, it's also a case of the GM constantly being there and being up to date. If the developer could see where you ended your session and then design the next encounters, for when you get back to playing, then you could have a similar effect. But in videogames you need to make the whole game first and then the players can do what they want, while in DnD the game/story is created along with the players experiencing it.
My biggest take from playing Numenera (at least when it comes to combat): Large groups of weaker opponents are a higher risk to players than just one or two strong opponents. Because you can usually only attack or disable one enemy per round, so with more enemies you'll ultimately take more damage, even if you can kill each in one hit.
In the case of the player who missed the early game quest, I think the real question is why was a low level character being called upon to fight a global big bad in the first place?
Low level characters killing global big bads is an issue in itself. I hate it when games do that. They should be killing rats or do menial tasks. iirc in some final fantasy mmo they did just that, constant praise from npc's from the get go.
@@BonaparteBardithion This. Games need this. No other games than Witcher and Kotor series makes you decide with consequences. Even if they have consequences, you're set for life if you do the quest. Take a village terrorized by bandits. Most depth in a game is either you kill the bandits and become village hero for life, or you ignore it until trigger point and village is ransacked and is a bandit camp from then on. No multilayers say a village elder is cut off from his "protection fee" now that the bandits are gone and resorting to selling drugs for extra cash and forming a mafiaesque organization or constant wolf attacks because there are no bandits in the woods to fight them away. Like these.
Boo. The feeling of crushing early game mobs by your mere presence is great. Going off into a high lvl area where you get one shot makes it feel dangerous and mysterious.
Mmmh, fond memories of Might and Magic 6, when low level areas respawn and you go back to visit, for old time sake you know. Or teleport to dragonsands at level 1 and try to dodge the party one-shotting dragons. Man, now I want to play mm6 again!
I am ambivalent. Running into a dungeon that you are underleveled, but prepared for, feels rewarding. That feels dangerous. But because there's' often not an immersive way to leave a fight in open world games, it's tempting to just keep trying until you succeed.
This is where you mix in some caps, like Skyrim did. Some enemies/areas won't scale above a certain level, while other enemies/areas won't scale below a specific level.
And if there's a high level area that is difficult to defeat, I want to level up some and come back later. But if they also level up, that defeats the purpose of leveling.
That rat in glass armor made me LOL Imagine if rats would also get armor as you level up (and not just humanoid enemies ) that would be hilarious , someone needs to make that mod seriously
Oblivion taught me some harsh lessons about level scaling. If you run into an ogre cave you better have a few hours on your hands. Swing swing swing swing swing...
Whenever you level up. Go find a highwayman to mug to grab his equipment, because he will have stuff that has never been available to you anywhere in world before. And the only way to win: Is not to play.. Seriously fuck Oblivion..
Did you ever play the old 'Gold Box' RPGs, or was that before your time? They were turn-based, but battles took forever sometimes, because of all the enemies you'd be fighting. At least, that's how I remember it now. (That was a long time ago.) I still miss those old games, though. If they only had good sound effects and a cover system (so the fighting was a bit more tactical), I could still play them today. :)
Level scaling unique loot was a major drawback in Skyrim, tho. In order to get a decent version of, say Miraaks sword, you had to grind to a stupidly high level.
Upgrading specific weapons should always be available. Darksiders II let you level up your weapons by sacrificing other weapons to them. Their stats would go up and you could even get some of the qualities of the sacrificed weapons. So if you were using a level 5 scythe and sacrificed a level 3 hammer to it that also did fire damage, your scythe could get fire damage added to it when it reached level 6.
I think the lack of level scaling is what makes games like Dark Souls 1 so enjoyable. Though the world is a series of paths, it's is effectively open. Each cross in the path can take you to harder or on track enemies/bosses. You learn what's manageable through exposure and experience. One playthrough might make a path easier or harder depending on how you chose to play. I think that it's ultimate freedom and openness that just works so well in soulborne games.
In dark souls not the avatar, but the player himself levels up. I wanted to start my very first DS(3) run as beggar, but couldnt beat gundir, however after a finished run i just achieved flawless victory on the first try.
Soulsborne games still have some baked-in level scaling - identical or very similar enemies in later zones can deal/take much more damage simply because the game expects you to have an upgraded weapon and healthbar by the time you encounter them.
@@wertuias1511 But that's not level scaling that's area scaling, you can and people have played through the entire game without leveling and only using the broken sword hilt, these enemies aren't any weaker for it as they would be if it were level scaling. Level scaling has to be tied to the players level, or it's not level scaling.
@@wertuias1511 that's not the same thing. Every encounter in Dark Souls has predetermined stats unaffected your own level. Whether you're at level 5 or level 700, the Hollows in the Painted World will have the same stats, which will be higher than the Hollows in the Undead Burg.
Dark Souls is still very linear though. It being a series of paths means that the developers can still expect when a player will be at a certain area, and balance the game accordingly. This is impossible for a game like Skyrim, where you can be in any area at any moment, which means that a certain degree of scaling is necessary.
"Developers don't know where players will end up, they don't want noobs encountering a boss, or veterans fighting rats; hence they use level scaling" Dark Souls 1: "Am I a joke to you?"
They are talking about games that are open world, Dark Souls is a much more linear experience where it is easier to control the power scale of enemies relative to the players.
@@shadowmaydawn dark souls is sorta linear but you can go to a lot of "late game" areas right off the bat if you know what you're doing, especially if you took the key as your gift
Something a creator should keep in mind is something I call "The Paradox of Freedom". Basically, if all choices available to a player are equally valid, then those choices are meaningless. A good example of this would be Spore's creator. It can make any creature design work, which in practice means the player has no mechanical incentive to think about their creature's design, which is kind of the opposite of what the game wants. Similarly, in an open world game, you don't /necessarily/ want all regions equally accessible to all players at all levels. Indeed, I would encourage a creator to put some regions with specific levels in mind. The primary freedom the player is looking for is the freedom to try, more than necessarily to succeed. Similarly, I would say there's some enjoyment to be had from having an overleveled character curbstomp an early-game dungeon. That isn't to say you should /never/ use level-scaling, though, just that it needs to be done with a certain amount of care.
"Oblivion is the poster child of how not to do level scaling." No, that would be Final Fantasy 8, a linear JRPG that had absolutely no reason to have level scaling.
Not true, FF8 had a very simple way to sidestep the level issues, and you weren't absolutely screwed if you did level. Now Last Remnant, THERE is a game where the level scaling is actively malicious.
To be fair, FF8 did have both minimum and maximum levels for encounters in a given area, so if you were below the minimum level of the monsters, leveling up actually evened out the playing field. The big problem was that leveling up by itself didn't give you hardly anything compared to what some monsters get per level.
This immediately reminded me of how -Sabine- Crystal from _The Order of the Stick_ could just hang out and have fun all the time because she would level up automatically every time Haley Starshine had worked her butt off to gain XP.
Ah, thanks. As I checked the Wikipedia page it didn't sound right but I was rushing, and I stopped following it years ago. (My luck that after his long hiatus due to an injury that I would be stricken for several months and fall hopelessly behind.)
@@cuteswan I mean both are fairly accurate. Crystal was the more explicit version, but Sabine was in the Linear Guild, played up as a recurring evil antagonist team. Hilgya, Durkon's opposite number, spent the intervening years since splitting off from Durkon A) having/raising a kid, and B) doing dwarven politics to finagle a fortune out of the families she abandoned. This apparently made her powerful enough to hang with Durkon in the present, who'd been doing nothing but questing for the intervening time.
An example of when Level Scaling goes wrong can be seen on the SNES title 7th Saga. When they localized it for western audiences, they changed the algorithm for the player characters so they gained half the statistics that they did in Japan. However, they did not make this same alteration to the other 'champions' that the Player -could- have become. This is important because those characters are also major opponents in various parts of the game. So when you're coming up to a castle helmed by an opponent, you're both level 10 (broad example), you've been able to handle the monsters well enough, yes, but this guy on the throne has the sort of stats you would get at level 20. And when you come back at 20 to try again, they're level 40 in stat standards. Level Scaling has its uses, but just like with Procedural generation, if you don't code it to handle player choice, or to account for where you assume the sane, the crazy, and the unlucky might be, then it can quickly go from 'fun exploration' to 'why did I bother going here?'
The challenge of beating it whitout leveling much because otherwise the mandatory rival fights became impossible is like the only remotely fun thing about 7th saga tbf
Yeah, maybe it'd be more satisfying to know that if you're finding early areas easier, it's not because your character is any stronger, because they aren't; it's the player's improved skill.
I've played games with level scaling where the enemies' power curve is not as great as you, so you will always out level them but not everything becomes a curb stomp after a while.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is another good example of the Skyrim style leveling. If you're level 5 and enter a level 12-16 zone, the enemies will be level 12. If you're level 14, the enemies will be 14. If you're level 20, the enemies are level 16.
It's a cool system, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey does similar with its zones. But if you're a completionist like me, you end up seriously out-scaling the enemies in the zones the story tells you to go.
That game has a different problem though, which is that a zone's level will freeze when you first enter it, so if you do to much exploring you end up with ridiculously weak enemies that never scale up. This also damage your ability to level up, as weaker enemies reward less exp, so you have to deliberately go out of your way to avoid certain areas to keep them challenging for later.
Seriously. It's incredibly frustrating effortlessly mulching an entire dungeon of tissue paper enemies just to reach the end and get curb stomped over and over because the boss can practically one-shot you.
@@ChristieWryte Well that is because boss-fights in an CRPG is nonsense and doesn't belong there. They belong in arcade games. This notion of a boss an order of magnitude greater than normal enemies simply can't work properly, because it either makes the boss a impossible, a bullet sponge nuisance, or every other fight a boring trudge.
Honestly the Skyrim system is technically great. Bethesda just didn't use it to its full potential. But that's Bethesda, great in developing a good base but not that good in actually building upon that.
I basically stopped playing Elder Scrolls Online when equipment started scaling, because having a basic weapon that does 3067 damage kinda makes the numbers meaningless.
So far I never checked in detail how level scaling works in Elder Scrolls Online, but I noticed that there was no real progress to be felt when I gained a few levels.
Sometimes when you damage enemies just enough in Fallout or Elder Scrolls, they'll flee in horror. It totally ads to the immersion and sense of becoming stronger if it was heavily underleveled enemies that fled from you most often
While Skyrim did make some improvements to level scaling, it still had some issues. I remember doing an early game quest at end game levels and this quest was designed to have a lot of relatively weak skeletons. When I had to deal with a horde of draugar deathlords it felt like scaled way beyond what it should have, especially considering I mainly leveled non combat skills for a while. That being said, playing some games like Xenoblade 2, level scaling would’ve vastly improved that game. Many of the quests are locked behind the RNG of getting a specific character to drop from a dumb gacha system and many of them are designed for early game levels. So getting a character to finally drop and do their quest in the end game I was 50 levels above and couldn’t have even done that quest until now.
Don't forget the Forsworn Conspiracy. Try doing that quest on a mid to high-level character where you didn't level your 1-handed skill, and you refuse to join the Forsworn... good luck getting past their leader, armed only with a shiv... Oh, and his magic resist is so high that as a mage, you stand no chance.
I feel like Guild Wars 2 does this very well. It makes all zones appropriate for everyone at maximum level. It also makes it so that everyone can play together. Beyond that, being a higher level still comes with an advantage with skills, abilities and traits that a low level character simply doesn't have access to, thus the higher level still feels like it's an actual higher level, without completely nullifying all sense of combat. It also means that max level players can still enlist the help of non-max level players for help in certain zones. Because of a whole other host of things I wont go into here, it means that you constantly have max level, experienced playes, out in the world, even in the early zones, able and ready to help out any new player who might need help with a boss or objective. It really helps to cultivate a sense of community and living world. However, zones only scale down, not up, meaning that higher level zones will effectively be off limits to new players in terms of level differences. They can still go to those places, but enemies will be MUCH stronger than you, and pretty much wreck you all the time.
One of the best mods I found for Skyrim was one that completely removed scaling. To make that work it also changed loot and spawning criteria. The result felt a bit like the great worlds of Gothic I and II, where there were areas you simply were afraid of going to. I still feel that there are few games that have managed to create worlds as convincing as these two games. Does anyone remember the forest outside the garrison in Gothic I. There's a Shadow Walker in there. I was deathly afraid to step foot in there because I knew that it would not only kill me, if I ran into it. It was also faster than me and usually would spot me faster than I could spot it among the brushes. The forest meant death. Coming home at night and realising that you have strayed of the safe path felt terrifying. Even if Skyrim was never intended to be played that way, having to work to build my character up to even consider approaching a Draugr dungeon felt great. I was never more proud of taking on Bleakfalls Barrow than I was in that playthrough because I actually had to work for it. Everything that felt mysterious or scary actually was. And as my character for stronger, I was actually convinced that he was becoming the Dragonborn of legend.
Skyrim _was_ more successful with its level scaling, sure, but even then because loot didn't really scale quite as well it still felt kind of odd when a couple of lesser potions were guarded by a gang of untiring draugr deathlords.
My favorite game which got around that problem masterfully is an old school game called "Gothic 2". In gothic there is no explicit level scaling. But! As you progress you get new monsters which previously were met only in explicitly very dangerous places. It makes for extremely satisfying play. I truly recommend it even though the graphics dated quite poorly
They basically did... by lore the orcs in they first see are weak, then we get stronger uruk hai, then even stronger Morgul orcs, all gate kept by time rather than even location. Even bosses like ring wraiths leveled, a flaming torch sending them running at the start, and appearing on "totally not a dragon" dragons, immune to damage of any man near the end. If we didn't have plot armor, they'd have raised the entire shire/inn to the ground from said dragon, taken the ring back and be kicking back with a beer before sundown, but instead the enemies scales in level with the main characters, and because it fits the building darkness of the story the audience can suspend any disbelief of the methodology.
In Guild Wars 2, the level scaling is really good. Low level areas are still easy, but they don’t die in an instance. Big events are still challenging, regardless of level.
Yup. Because a lvl80 character that enters a lvl15 area doesn't _really_ become a lvl15 character. They've acquired quite a few advantages on their way to lvl80 that don't go away. That way, earlier areas still feel like something you've progressed beyond, but the scaling prevents them from being completely trivial to play through. You can play alongside actual lvl15 characters and do twice their damage instead of x500 times their damage.
It helps that players are weakened when overleveled, but not strengthened when underleveled. There are still areas that you can't go in as a low level player, and thus you have goals to strive for. Unfortunately, it also uses very similar types of enemies throughout the game. Those centaurs outside the starting zone aren't any different than those in the level 50 zone. And all the tutorials end with fighting a massive boss. Actually, a lot of MMO's do that, making you fight a Borg Cube in the Star Trek MMO tutorial. I get wanting to make an exciting first impression, but it does kill the sense of immersion when the awesome enemies you fight in the tutorial would be scraped of the shoes of the trash mob bandits you fight 5 hours into the game.
It's a combination of multiple factors. For one, high level players have much better gear that doesn't scale quite as easily to low tiers. For two, high level players have a large variety of different skills. And for three, high level players are more likely to know what they are doing and optimal play. So the scaling doesn't trivialize the player's work, but it also doesn't make newbie areas stupidly trivial either.
AFAIK GW2 doesn’t scale your secondary stats on your armor, just the base damage. additionally you have all the new abilities and passives. I think it makes it feel like you’re not some god even at 80, just a more skilled warrior.
TES: Oblivion! Getting killed picking a fight with a random guard after heroically averting an apocalypse as the Hero of Kvatch makes you feel like maybe the entire main quest was just people indulging you because you're a weird misshapen freak and they feel bad for you. edit:That's where the amazing modding community came in though and saved the day.
Oh yes, there is this PSP game called Grand Knight History, a niche game, as it is made by the niche studio Vanillaware. It runs on a level scaling system where the player and the characters they control gain a very small amount of boosts from leveling up, but enemies gain a lot more when their levels go up. Basically it turns into a situation which around lv10 your characters are going to grow tired easily and have to constantly go back to refuel, by lv20 it becomes exceedingly difficult to explore for a long distance, and eventually a lv50 character might not even manage to step out of the city where the supposedly weakest monsters appear. The trick to the game is to make new characters and use resources you gathered from the higher level characters to give them stat boosting items, or give them training manuals to increase stat. Which also means that the ideal setup to kill the final boss is basically a team full of lv1 characters with max stats stomping the boss into oblivion. And woe to any player who wanted to be cheeky and grind the final dungeon to increase your levels when you realized your lv1 team can stomp all regular encounters and decided to play around. If you accidentally gained too many levels you're going to have a lot of trouble going up against the final boss. Personally I am not a very great fan of that particular level scaling system, although I admit it was very intriguing. Besides, in true Vanillaware games fashion, the best thing about their games is literally anything except the gameplay. (Art, music, plot are all super great) So I suppose there really wasn't much to lament once you're used to playing stuff from Vanillaware
But Guys...Gothic didn't have scaling and an open world where u could go anywhere u want and just had to be cautious about the enemie's levels. This type of "not giving too much information" and letting the player run into a massacre was the thing everybody told me was the most fun.
I remember in Oblivion clearing a dungeon for the first time and finding a cool new stronger dwarven sword. Once i left the dungeon rested and leveled up suddenly all the goblins in the world had dwarven gear swords armor and stuff. This made the reward for the dungeon i just did completely worthless. I modded the game then and there. Lucky i played the game 5 years after release so plenty of good leveling overhaul mods.
15 years? I first noticed level scaling in Elder Scrolls 1: Arena. That's 26 years old now. They probably though it was a magic formula but didn't realise it doesn't scale well. Level scaling kills skill progression.
Oblivion’s level scaleing Sword of awesome ultimate death that once carved the body of a god Lv1 12 damage and a Chance for a 2 second stun Lv30 55 damage and a chance for a 10second stun
I think my favorite approach for open world RPGs has been rescaling the world based on plot points. Make most the world doable or only slight out of reach to a starting player, give or take a few deep dark caves, than after certain plot points everywhere becomes more dangerous. The first examples that come to mind are gothic 2 and dragons dogma, though DD has more harsh leveling in the pre-change world than is likely ideal. The other option I have like a lot is the "roads are safe" approach, in that enemy level for at least most the world is based more on how far away you are form civilization and the reagual travel routes than on where you are on the map relative to starting position. This gives you the feeling of being able to go anywhere on the map while still allowing for a more traditional enemy level set up.
2:04 If these rats don't already exist in a game somewhere, somebody needs to stick them in one. Their designs are great and the fact that they're doing their best to guard a dungeon is hilarious.
I remember seeing a video about the game gothic which was doing open world without level scaling. They used powerful foes to lock some areas until the player was strong/craftier enough to pass them.
Dragon's Dogma doesn't use level scaling and, while it can lead to some problems in the late-game, I love the fact that a pack of goblins that would take a couple minutes to fight at level 10 in an early area can be easily dealt with in a few seconds after level 30. The sense of progression is so much more important than feeling like every fight is dangerous.
That's a game that would have benefited from a level scaling system, actually. I won't be thinking about how much I've progressed if I just one-shotted the dragon. I would be thinking about how anti climatic that was. Especially since the game's combat is fun, I want to actually enjoy it, but past the first couple of hours it's boringly easy. Hard mode is even worse, since it give you more exp to level quicker, you outclass everything even quicker.
When I realized that items still scale in Skyrim, it kinda ruined the experience for me. I avoided smithing in one playthrough and getting, for example, ebony armor on a lower level by playing well was just impossible. In Morrowind or Dark Souls you could just run to the right spot or dungeon and get your favorite piece. I stopped playing Skyrim shortly after because the magic was gone.
Resident Evil 4 had a nicely achieved curve of challenge. As the main character upgraded, you encountered new and stronger enemies. But the weaker enemies still kept popping up here and there, giving reference to how badass you had become so far.
This is exactly how I felt in Odyssey. I didn’t bother with several of the animal/monster challenges because I was playing for the story, and despise spending an hour trying to plan and strategize just for the sake of a side quest. What is the point of leveling up my awesome demigod character when I can get killed in two hits by a random wolf?
@@wariolandgoldpiramid Lol it became confusing after Odyssey came out. Like, they're both great and famous games, and almost everyone on the internet know their names, you can easily mix those up.
There should not be such thing as opponent level scaling. There should be places, there you could encounter particularly leveled opponents (places with particular (fixed) levels of danger).
I feel like the reason level scaling is both a thing and a problem is the way leveling is made. Basically if you power up character and ennemies simply by giving them more damage and health... well yeah it's going to be lame. Instead if levels only barely change the stat but mainly give new tools to the player then it's alright if the player stumble against a high level boss early, it will feel challenging because they don't have a lot of options and the boss has a lot of way to deal with you, but as long as you don't get killed in one hit and don't take 50minutes to put a dent in the boss it's alright if it's challenging. It means the encounter pushes you to play well, if you don't end up thinking "If only I had more level" but instead "if only I played better" then the game did it's job right. Basically what I'm saying is, if your game needs level scaling to function then the core design of your game is flawed. Don't get me wrong scaling based on stat can be a legitimate way to do difficulty (even if I feel like it's cheap), but if you think your player should always have a somewhat even match with the opponent, then why have stats at all?
I've been trying to tell people this for years. If it's all about the lifebar than you've already constrained your design. It's why I can't stomach tab-target MMO's anymore; it all boils down to DPS, tanks and healers in a tug of war with the enemies' lifebars.
@@misa105 I mean, I can get addicted to cookie clicker so I get it. ButI don't think it's healthy or makes for a good game, just because it's effective doesn't mean it's beneficial. Also if you really need to show numbers go up, you can always show things like stats of number of monster killed. That might aswell be what experience is when you have level scaling anyway.
I think Dishonored handled this pretty well. There is no level scaling but powers and equipment are unlockable with a cost in loot and results are game-changing. It gives the player the incentive to explore and scavenge and the new powers open up old areas in a different way.
This is exactly how Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 work. Leveling up raises your stats slightly, yeah, but the TRUE reason you want to level up there is because doing so gradually unlocks more abilities and combat options for you to experiment with. Also the most meaningful *stat* raises (related to HP, MP, defense and the like) come from hitting certain points in the story rather than the EXP, meaning that grinding usually doesn't put you into much of an advantage. Sure, a lvl 99 player is going to have an easier time with the superbosses than a lvl 65 one, but the margin is fairly small and a skilled player can fill the gap wiothout grinding.
Oblivion really did do such a bad job with level scaling. I’ve been playing that game since I was 11, and I never continue playing past around level 25, because right around then the difficulty just breaks
With Guild Wars 2, it's a bit different because a high level character inevitably has accumulated a fair bit of powerful equipment with stat-boosting runes and other bonuses, as well as having fully developed builds that are not subject to level-scaling. A new character cannot use this equipment. So, yeah, someone who has gone through the full game will plow right through these areas anyway. The level-scaling is a bit more effective for World Bosses and Legendary enemies, but those fights are more reliant on gathering as many players as possible and successfully coordinating that herd of cats.
ADOM has a really interesting level scaling variant where monsters don't spawn at level according to your level, but instead spawn at level according to their base level + how many of their buddies you're killed. So by default, Jackals are very low-level canon fodder enemies, but because you might have to kill so many throughout the game, they're also one of the more dangerous late-game threats.
ADOM is excellent and so complex, I remember the small cave where monsters scales twice your level so if you level up to much beforde going through that cave it become a really hard challenge I wish I could finish this game but I gave up last year and now I've forgotten everything and don't have time neither motivation to play it again Still one of the best (if not the best) roguelike I have played
Yeah, going anywhere, enemies scale a bit slower than your character. Lynels could be found by low experienced players. Going to the final section of the game after finishing the tutorial. Hmm...
I was ahead of the curve from start to finish because i actived a teleporter in the castle early. With that you can just go there and get half a dozen endgame weapon every time you need to defeat strong enemies.
It's a bit different but I really liked how The Witness approached this problem in their open world puzzle game. They actually had different areas that required different skillsets to work in. So you could choose what skill to learn based on what area you wanted to explore. I guess a similar system could also work for RPGs.
Now I'm imagining the witness with level scaling xD Go to a new area that is supposed to be early game, and have to solve an absurdly complex puzzle for which you never had the basic version to try and understand how it works. Now that would be an awful game.
I think that in most cases "level rubber banding" is better. That allows you to set a lower limit for the areas that you want to feel imposing while still having the rest of the game feel smooth and polished. You can also set an upper limit for enemies that should at some point feel weak, such as rats. Both of these things allow the players to experience the sense of wonder and amazement of a richly developed world with less hickups, but still have that sense of empowerment once you realize you have outgrown the enemies you encountered early on.
I agree, but that does make we wonder if the real issue in games that could or do benefit from level-banding is actually that the levels make so much difference everything has to be exactly matched to you for fear of being wildly over or under powered. Perhaps if individual levels just had less of a raw mathematical impact, you could solve the issue of only being able to enjoy a tiny sliver of the open world at one time without needing level scaling at all?
@@michaelwoods2672 the main benefit is that it is level systems are easily digested by players and relatively easy to implement compared to more complex and interesting progression systems. I don't say that to knock leveling systems or anything, that's just the main draw that makes leveling systems so prevalent.
@@michaelwoods2672 Well it might have more to do with how levels cumulative affect balance. If your way of having, say 20% benefit from a single level, is to exponentially increase power by 20% each level, then being 5-10 levels ahead would give you between 140% to 620% advantage, which might make the figts utterly trivial. If on the other hand the math did not scale up the power difference to hard when a larger difference came into play, then the fights would be easier, but not necessarily so much easier that they would be trivial. An example of the latter would be a system where your damage and opponents flat damage reduction would scale similarly. In such a case the effect is really the difference between the 2 stats, and not so much their absolute value, and this moves the effect of level difference from exponential to linear. One could call this some kind of rubber-banding on a mechanics level, by basically having deminishing returns on how much better you get by being better.
Level Scaling is precisely why I set the difficulty to the easiest setting on Fallout: New Vegas. Because a .50 cal BMG to the head should be fatal to literally any human being with an uncovered head, I don't care how badass of a raider they are.
pretty sure Morrowind also has level scaling, but a bit different, it's those ninja monkeys in the creation kit, they are creatures, that changed depending on your level, so on level 1 you would meet a rat and on level, let's say, 5 you would meet an alit in place of the rat. Also, some creatures just normally scaled with your level, like those daedra damned cliffracers (let's raise one for Jiubb)
Level scaling when applied without an above average difficulty selection is a pain. Prime example would be modern WoW. While I wouldn't call the old version difficult you had a bit of a difficulty option by tackling quests above your own level. That option is out in the current level scaled world. This makes it so that enemies have to be scaled to work for a player brand new not only to the game but the genre, forcing the same difficulty onto the 15 year veterans with more years of genre expertise.
It's a two way street. On the one hand, you had all these questing zones and such that weren't scaling with you, so even if you started early you likely had to leave before you finished the story content you may not have had the first time going up. On the other hand, yeah, you could do it in any order you wanted, and particularly in the endgame helped ensure things felt as powerful as they were supposed to be. Now in the new system, you're encouraged to play a zone out to completion story-wise, but as mentioned the difficulty is far easier to make timeconsuming and cementing LFD spam as the best way to levelup. Really I just wish WoW didn't have to have the uncomfortable situation where the unkillable galaxy-conquering demons we were battling last expac are now by default weaker than these random beach crabs we happened to find on this island. If we'd decided to call up Boralus and Zul'dazar to help out with the invasion, apparently these random ass sailors would have kicked Sargeras out no problem. That's still level scaling by a different measure; keeping difficulty constant to the enemies fought, even if logically they shouldn't be this tough.
Yeah I feel a mix is what is best to apply. I also feel that one can have a specific discussion about level scaling in a multiplayer game. Way to make it so you and you friend can play together even if you not on the same level. And how one need to tackle that. Because that present it own challenges as well as reasons to do it.
Who else here enjoys it more when they come to a area and realise that none of their conventional tactics will work and they'll have to avoid it or put in alot of creativity and effort? Level scaling really takes that away in most games. You have to limit yourself to make anything challenging. Like in my previous fallout 4 games I played on survival but by level 20 I was already essentially a God. This time around I've made my charecter much less combat and health focused to retain that early game feel.
I'm terrible at these games anyway, so everything seems challenging. :) And if I have to fight the same battle multiple times, I'll just go play something else. There's nothing I hate worse than that! Luckily, as long as a game has an "Easy" or even "Very Easy" difficulty setting, I'm fine. I don't care about a game being challenging, because I'm more interested in exploring the game world than in combat. But tastes vary. (And so do ability levels, of course.)
The cited problems are actually addressed by the dynamic leveling in Guild Wars 2, which is weird since you cited that game. Players that are higher level than the level range of the map is scaled down. So the issue of everything being immediately accessible doesn't stand. The issue of not feeling that you're getting stronger is also addressed by GW2. For example, performance boosts such as the benefits from Superior tier Runes and Sigils that are you can only equip after Level 60 remain there even if you go to a Lv 1-15 map. At Lv 1-15 you'd not have unlocked all your utility skills and traits from your specialization lines. Also, having a full set of Exotic or Ascended equipment at Lv 80 will give you a slight stat advantage compared to wearing equipment of a lower rarity. All this is still true even after downscaling. The dynamic leveling feature of GW2 only tunes down your stats, but doesn't affect other aspects of your character progression. So, at a Lv 1-15 map, you are stronger at lv 80 than when you were at Lv 15, but still at a level where the fights retain a tad of a challenge. This would be level scaling done right.
I suppose in the case of BL3 that, because the main draw for many players is just the loot, it kinda makes sense that leveling is implemented to encourage variety through the main campaign.
That explains why I always feel so weak in Oblivion! 1 Daedra can take me down to half health no matter how much I level. In an earlier game I played I literally ran away from everything. I close shut the jaws of Oblivion by bolting past every enemy I saw and garbing the Sigil Stone.
I think my favorite ways to see level scaling is in games where, a growing tool bag, or long term character builds can sort of foil the effect. Say maybe after level 15 you gain a stunning bash skill that makes early game rats trivial while more imposing enemies resist the stun effect entirely, until you level up enough to learn a more powerfull version of that skill. While your relative power is the same, you gain a wider pool of stuns, poisons, slashes, and bashes to pull from to give you that extra edge you meed to win. Alternatively adding some intense customization of stats and skills usually leads to me min maxing into a specific role, and playing to my strengths to solve what the game throws at me. While both the player and the enemies average stats might be the same, now the player might become enough of a glass cannon to clear a horde of enemies before they notice. The problem with that is anyplayer who tries to hybrid class, isn't interested in the madness of searching for the "perfect" build, or doesn't have some way to work around weaknesses, either through multiplayer creative use of some mkre versatile skills, is going to have a hard time.
My favorite example of level scaling was when in the sewers of novigrad Geralt needs to pass through some rats and for some reason if you toggle level scaling on one rat becomes invincible and just keeps summoning rats until you die😂
Glad you mentioned Guild Wars! I've played Guild Wars 2 for 5 years now, and (if we forget raids and the last tier of Fractals) the game can be *really* easy. When I tried its big brother, GW, I... Uh... Was so bad at the game. Because it actually expects us to think about strategy and the foes, AND it downscales the player. That part is... Very painful, to say the least.
It helps that it scales based on story progression. (Or maybe just time. Haven't checked.) Zelda doesn't have levels or stats it can base it on. It makes it scale very naturally with character's skill playing skill - even if that skill is primarily avoiding huge monsters like me.
I like the idea of capping scaling and scaling bosses. It is fun getting to the point where you can one shot little enemies but bosses still pose a challenge.
If you've played prodigy math than you'd now why the difficulty scale is so fast just make you take as many math problems as anyother enemy , it's a surprisingly good educational game but I'm at lvl 64 and common monsters still take as long as they did when I was only lvl 1, but that just makes me remember that I'm playing an educational computer game which made me quit when I got all the elemental gems which opened the learning academy and was only given more work after completing every mission in 10 world's I expected to face a final boss not collect notes to make me slightly stronger
Lunar back in dunno how many years ago scaled bosses I think only your relative HP grows higher so you can tank more hits while the rest of the difficulty stays the same
I remember that game. Leveling was still to your advantage because you could get through the generic enemies easier and arrive at the boss in better shape, so progression wasn't wasted, but the boss would still feel like a legit threat.
I've thought about this for sooo long! I'm glad you talk about it. :D One reason for why I love Gothic 3 (even though it's a clunky and buggy mess) is because none of it scales up with the player. And NPCs don't have arbitrary level numbers. The power and danger of NPCs is beased on who and what they are. So you never end having trouble with a wolf late in the game just because it's high level or something like that.
After getting ganked by Oblivion's level scaling I reloaded before I levelled up and just...didn't. And then the grinding of the combat stat's was done. And yes, you're right, it still wasn't fun.
I like xenoblade's approach, which is having a mix of creatures at different levels, and showing you their level. The world feels a lot more immersive when it breaks up the difficultly curve with big monsters you can't fight until the end game.
Breath of the Wild does level scaling by starting you off fighting brown enemies which are the weakest form then scale them to blue, silver, and gold as you get stronger. Places that hold useful secrets or passages to progress are usually populated by one of two of the toughest enemy types in the game. One being Guardians that don't scale but you will encounter them all the time. If you are a first time player, they can be scary to deal with because of their fast movement speed and powerful laser that will one shot a low level Link from a distance. But a skilled player can overcome them easily at any level. The second one is the Lynel and is the most dangerous enemy in the game. This one scales in difficulty as the player grows and vary by the weapons they wield, forcing different types of fighting styles to defeat them based on their weapon. They are always hyper aggressive so it makes encountering them quite the ordeal no mater how strong you've gotten until you're close to end game and have a firm grasp on their strategies and weapons that won't break so easily.
I have to take some issue here; Oblivion did the same type of level scaling as Skyrim. Depending on level you'd encounter different enemies with different abilities; some of them felt same-y (zombies, skeletons, and necromancers) while some were dramatically different (daedra). There certainly were issues, but Skyrim wasn't unique from Oblivion.
In terms of mechanics, no, in terms of implementation, very much yes. There are many separate leveled lists for simlar sounding enemies in Skyrim, letting devs differentiate something placed as environmental ambience from intentional challenges, and letting certain areas stop scaling at all past a point in the game and actually feel to the player as safe newbie zones that you have to defend from the big bad world by rooting evil at its source. Meanwhile while I loved oblivion, the highwayman on a bridge near town being able to single handled wipe out the entire city was pretty stupid... although credit where credit is due, at least wolves stayed weak enough.
@@SheepInACart Honestly, from my memory of reading the Oblivion game guide, dungeons had enemy lists they'd pull from based on level that would cap out, and enemies had level scaling that would cap out. There may have been some enemies that had infinite scaling, but I don't think it was everyone. That is, to my knowledge, exactly the same as Skyrim. I think it's literally just a question of tweaking a few numbers, not doing anything substantially different (ergo, not making the bandits scale infinitely).
Great video! never thought of the limited scaling of important enemies as a solution but that could definitely work! I guess it wouldn't get around another problem of level scaling which is that it feels like the world revolves around you, but that's...kind of what level scaling is, so I guess that's unavoidable. I am a little softer on level scaling from watching this video though.
Technically yes, games like modern shooters have you spawn in with some of the better gear in game and have no stats whatsoever while still giving a challenging story, but this is no longer an RPG, and falls flat in an open world as it provides little incentive to side quests.... cosmetics and feel good text is extremely powerful used sparingly, but if its the main motivator it grows old super fast.
What are your thoughts? Are there other open-world games that have done level scaling well? Is there a game you played that could have benefited from using level scaling? Let us know in the comments below!
Paper Mario: TTYD included a good way of keeping players from fighting the same weak enemies over and over: a badge that let you skip fights with enemies that didn't stand a chance against you just by hitting them first (followed by a badge that let you do so just by bumping into them).
The only unimersive level scaling experience I can never forget happened while playing Fallout 4.
Everybody knows about the behemoth of the pond... Swan.
Well... on my first playthrough,I decided to engage him at around level 40,cos i heard of the difficulty everyone else experienced. So, i set up a little trap with 3 bottlecap mines and 4-5 frag mines a few feet from the pond, and then sneak attacked him with my Instigating Gauss Rifle i found only 10 minutes ago.
He died as soon as the bullet struck him. Very dissapointing to say the least.
Extra Credits just a heads up, your wagon for Skyrim was going backwards. 3:55
I can't believe you didn't mention WOW. At this this point virtually everything in the game (except raids) scales. Not just with your level but also with your gear. But some enemies only scale their health not they're damage. So they can't be one shot but they also do virtually 0 damage to you.
I've always felt that level scaling is a shortcut for lazy progression design. Skyrim may be better than Oblivion in some regards, but I still had the exact same problem where if I leveled pickpocket a bunch and then went into a dungeon, I'd be completely hosed. I preferred the highly limited version that showed up in New Vegas. There were *very* few areas where I could easily notice any kind of level scaling, and instead the game was just good at telegraphing when going to a certain area would get you killed if you were too low level. Made the whole world feel more immersive, alive, and dangerous.
I like games where you can walk straight to the most dangerous places and get your arse kicked. Makes me feel like I'm an adventurer (if perhaps a bad one) rather than taking a tour.
Agreed. I know current design theory sees that as a flaw, but I'm old school (and also just old); if I blunder into a monster that rips my spine out in one hit, I just make a mental note: "travelling too far west is dangerous, don't mess with monster X yet, etc."
Did someone mention new vegas? I feel like that game uses masterfully crafted world-design to utilize what little level scaling it has masterfully. You can absolutely straight from goodsprings north into giant radscorpion land and get your arse kicked, and the game uses a lot of natural barriers, like mountains or gulfs, to ward you off from places with super mutants, cazadors or radscorpions. You can still absolutely go these places, but the game subtle influences you to keep to the roads and follow the main story, as the world gradually opens up in a natural manner.
Play 'Gothic' ;-)
Perhaps to avoid scenarios where the player says "this game is to hard that guy killed me in one hit blah blah blah" those places could be stated as dangerous unless you're skilled and have good stuff and whatnot. Also, perhaps the npcs would say something like "you look strong enough to go to Scary Evilland" when you are prepared by the game's standards.
There should be a mix of both. Like in fallout 4
My big take away from this is that: level scaling it’s meant to preserve and facilitate The difficulty curve, but incorrect application of it completely flattens the difficulty curve.
In the Elder scrolls online, killing mobs is actually harder at higher levels
So despite level scaling, the difficulty curve goes up
If implemented poorly, It turns the curve into a straight line.
Also an option: asymmetric level scaling. Say, an enemy starts at level 10, and gets one level everytime the player gains three. This still results in a scenario where the player is initially outclassed but eventually becomes powerful enough to outclass the enemy in turn... but it takes much longer. In this example, it would take until level 14 to reach parity, and by level 20, the player would only be four levels ahead. If the entire game plays out over the course of 20 levels, this keeps that enemy a scary threat for the entire first half of the game, and a useful adversary for most of the second half - all without making it seem like the player isn't growing in relative strength.
Thats a choice that makes enemies relevant for longer, which sounds good for bosses you have to get through in order to progress, but for a lot of the random stuff in the world is the exact opposite of what you want. Most RPG's span being peasant level to hero of ages fighting gods in only a few days of real time, so instead of slowing relitive progression, they drastically boost it. The second a wolf stops being challenging to have a notable risk of death in the encounter, it should be trivial to a point of almost being ignored (indeed by a few levels past the game is made better if it doesn't agro automatically, maybe even running away). Its not desirable to have a bunch of "no longer quite a challenge but still almost close" opponents, instead thats the part of games that feels like a grind with little for the player to be excited about.
Next up is the story progression, and how it changes how we see the world. If your level 20, chances are the level 10 based area is going to feel thematically drastically beneath you even if the level mechanics still make it equally hard as what your supposed to fear. After all why worry about a bandit camp when your fighting the spawn of hell? Thus it should feel the same by the games mechanics as it does by game lore, feel free to one hit those dudes on your commute through and not even bother to loot the stuff, it'll let you feel powerful with your new gear in a way that you just wouldn't if you moved onto the next lot of scaled foes who take a simlar number of hits. Those reliefs in the difficulty curve are important to break up cycles of building tension, meanwhile also allowing past areas to feel more like safe homelands, letting the new regions and enemies added to feel drastically more scary than those we've seen before.
That is an interesting idea, and could fix becoming overleveled too fast without removing the progression from the game.
Power scaling is'n't so much about giving enemies "levels" but about how their core stats scale with player level. Normally you'd craft a bracket system where level 5 = average X HP, Y Strength, Z Evasion and then each individual enemy / area is modified or tweaked after play testing reveals the challenge at to high or to low a level. What global "level scaling" does is get rid of that cost entirely, no more play testing for difficulty required, just an algorithm that automatically sets stats based on player level. Which causes things to get wildly out of hand because player power isn't just their level, but also their gear and ability load out. Because the last two aren't checked it's very possible to "level" into an impossible scenario. You grinded for gold on some monsters or explored a few too many areas and now your about 5 levels ahead of the expected curve but without the gear that goes with the next few areas, monsters now have that gear and the player is severely outmatched.
I found a much better way to do this was level bounding, monster A starts at "level 10" and scales until "level 15" where it reaches power cap. The level bounds for the monsters are determined by the rank of the dungeon / area being explored, a level 3 character attempting to explore a level 50 area is rightly going to get their butts stomped.
That is an intriguing solution to early game obsolescence and late game grind. Adjusting for higher levels would be the main issue to address. We will call the enemies' unadjusted power their "base level." In example, a level 50 player would probably not be able to beat a base level 50 enemy because it would actually be 76. A base level 30 enemy scaled to 56 would be a better challenge. That is easy enough to do by predicting average player level at any given point in the game once you have your math nailed down. Assuming a player level cap of 99, you would want the enemy base level cap around 70. That puts the final boss at 102 so that he will always challenge the player's full mastery of the game's mechanics rather than time investment. You could also throw in weaker enemies throughout the game scaling 1/4 instead of 1/3 to adjust tension and let the players breathe. If they feel super heroic facing one group of enemies then it puts the power of more serious enemies into perspective. Subtly weaker enemies are also a good narrative tool. Imagine a hero fighting his way through an entire army to save his friends, only to meet one last challenge between him and his goal.
This does remind me of the model for skyrim, where it at least felt to me that I was progressing faster in power than the level scaling. It doesn't quite solve the problem, since you bad leveling might still hurt your effective power level, but compared to strict level scaling it does allow that important aspect of becoming more powerfull. Note that in strict level scaled system, leveling up is depowering you (as your gear and so on will have fallen behind compared to your level).
Yeah. I remember seeing a friend play one of those games, and a cave system was entirely inhabited by goblins. Ok. But he was a high level player, so every goblin was a goblin warlord. So.. what is this, some kind of goblin peace talks? The goblin version of the UN? Totally broke immersion, as you say.
I like Goblin U.N
Arguably better then irl UN. The goblins all agree on most things
My god the goblin were gathered to make the goblin equivalent of the United.Goblins.Nation’s
Goblin UN. LOL
Hmm. Goblins are good at money and banking. Maybe that cave could be Goblin Wall Street.
@C. D. Dailey since when? Goblins are balls of chaotic barbarism. I wouldn't trust a Goblin with money, they'd eat it, set fire to it or trade it for a sharp rock or something.
i hate level scaling, at least when its a universal always on type thing. makes progression feel utterly meaningless.
Honestly, that's how I feel about RPGs in general, they use this number system to create this false illusion of empowerment even though nothing about your character changes in any meaningful way.
If you have to scale every enemy's difficulty based on the pc's level, then don't make a game where the pc levels up. It's pretty fucking simple to me.
@@toprak3479 But, but, the monetization... Selling gears, materials, TIMESAVERS!
@@shadowmaydawn leveling is super important in RPGs. But most games that call themselves an RPG today are action games, not RPGs.
Fallout 4 is bad for this too. Orcs who previously took 2 headshots to kill with a sniper rifle suddenly take 20 at higher levels.
And this turns the whole game into a series of encounters where you drain a ton of ammo, so you're forced to go to a vendor to get more or just ignore potential encounters entirely.
This doesn't just make progression meaningless it also turns mundane encounters into 30 minute long firefights that should only be 3 minutes tops. If every fight is a challenge, the game turns into one giant grind.
Might as well play an MMO at that point.
"I fought mudcrabs more fiercesome than you!"
Literally.
I quit playing World of Warcraft when I landed in Northrend and found myself fighting level 60 murlocs.
sorry for the correction, but "fearsome", not "fiercesome"
Skyrim still had some problems see the "while you learn smithing, the draugr are training"
The way they designed the leveling mechanics definitely made things tricky to balance in Skyrim. Most of your power comes from the perks you take, less than the raw level of each of the skills (though they do play some role). There's a big difference in strength between a character with a level 40 one-handed skill and 2 perks in the tree and a character with a level 40 one-handed skill who used smithing to level up and get 6 perks in the one-handed skill tree.
"While you were partying in Whiterun, I was studying the blade"
@jocaguz18 while true the damage of the dragonbone sword is 15 compared to the 7 of the iron. sure that gets +10 extra if buffed but one handed gives you 0.5% dmg per level and 20% per perk point while also giving bandits and chest glas and other strong gear.
So yeah it gives you strenght but not a lot.(also you have to find the two strongest swords sadly)
@@garyermann Except that perks had requirements in their respective skills. That said, it is mostly something that impacts those who decide to grind out their non-combat skills early on. Rather than the intended more passive means of leveling (not that this was an actual option for smithing...)
The problem is that it is hard to become an all-rounder in Skyrim. You are forced to specialize and use those specialties or else your enemies become too strong. This is realistic, eg in real life, you could devote all of your efforts to being the best at Fortnite and not have any job prospects despite your Fortnite dominance. Alternatively, you could get an education and level-up in a job and not be any good at Fortnite.
It doesn't make for a very fun game when you're forced to specialize and it feels like you don't have as much control over the experience, because at some point you are essentially forced to do the same thing over and over to help train your specialization.
“Have you heard of the High Elves?”
"I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee." Or is that from Skyrim?
GameDevYal skyrim my dude
It annoys me more than it should that this line has become emblematic for Oblivon, when it _isn't actually in the game_ and would make no sense if it was. Everyone has heard of the High Elves, they're like 10% of the population. I wish whatshisface had gone with mudcrabs or something.
Heads Full Of Eyeballs they added those voice lines as they tried to make the NPCs less generic and make the world much more alive
Er... maybe? Are they the guys with the curved swords?
Leveled encounters are much more likely to be both interesting and challenging if the same kind of adversary or challenge isn't on offer every single time. D&D handles this exceptionally well by giving the DM guidelines to build multiple types of encounter, showing how to make a swarm of smaller pests be just as dangerous as a couple of brigands, and how difficult a typical encounter should be (Half should be just as powerful as the party's effective level, a third should be interesting to fight but not really dangerous, and the rest be either very easy or considerably difficult).
Scaling health is actually my least favourite thing about dnd as tabletop rpgs go, it means things that should be lethal (getting coup de graced in your sleep with a greataxe for example) not kill you unless the rules are ignored and necessitates the monsters dealing unreasonable damage so they can still threaten a lv 15 character. Skill scaling isnt as bad as it isnt obviously unreasonable that a rogue gets good enough at lockpicking to reliably open cheap security (aside from social skills) and such but any physical quantity shouldnt having linear progression from 1 unit
Tabletop RPGs in general are better at scaling, not just because of the rules, but the fact that the DM usually knows what the players can handle, and what the like out of a game.
@@sophiaglass2000 It's also fairly common that a tabletop GM understands how to change an encounter in ways it's hard or impossible to in a CRPG. For example, making a simple group of zombies planned to be attacking a nearby town when the players arrived, but which the players unknowingly skipped, become the vanguard of a group of necromancers trying to invade the county from the neighboring kingdom who are now keeping the Marquis and his troops too busy to help the now higher level PCs deal with other threats.
To add to the others: Not only does the GM know his party, it's also a case of the GM constantly being there and being up to date. If the developer could see where you ended your session and then design the next encounters, for when you get back to playing, then you could have a similar effect. But in videogames you need to make the whole game first and then the players can do what they want, while in DnD the game/story is created along with the players experiencing it.
My biggest take from playing Numenera (at least when it comes to combat): Large groups of weaker opponents are a higher risk to players than just one or two strong opponents. Because you can usually only attack or disable one enemy per round, so with more enemies you'll ultimately take more damage, even if you can kill each in one hit.
In the case of the player who missed the early game quest, I think the real question is why was a low level character being called upon to fight a global big bad in the first place?
Maybe they're only a regional big bad, but they had time to expand while you were ignoring them.
That'd be a fun narrative mechanic to add too.
Low level characters killing global big bads is an issue in itself. I hate it when games do that. They should be killing rats or do menial tasks.
iirc in some final fantasy mmo they did just that, constant praise from npc's from the get go.
@@BonaparteBardithion This. Games need this. No other games than Witcher and Kotor series makes you decide with consequences. Even if they have consequences, you're set for life if you do the quest.
Take a village terrorized by bandits. Most depth in a game is either you kill the bandits and become village hero for life, or you ignore it until trigger point and village is ransacked and is a bandit camp from then on. No multilayers say a village elder is cut off from his "protection fee" now that the bandits are gone and resorting to selling drugs for extra cash and forming a mafiaesque organization or constant wolf attacks because there are no bandits in the woods to fight them away. Like these.
Boo.
The feeling of crushing early game mobs by your mere presence is great.
Going off into a high lvl area where you get one shot makes it feel dangerous and mysterious.
Mmmh, fond memories of Might and Magic 6, when low level areas respawn and you go back to visit, for old time sake you know. Or teleport to dragonsands at level 1 and try to dodge the party one-shotting dragons.
Man, now I want to play mm6 again!
I am ambivalent. Running into a dungeon that you are underleveled, but prepared for, feels rewarding. That feels dangerous. But because there's' often not an immersive way to leave a fight in open world games, it's tempting to just keep trying until you succeed.
This is where you mix in some caps, like Skyrim did. Some enemies/areas won't scale above a certain level, while other enemies/areas won't scale below a specific level.
But you can still do both of these things with scaled gameplay...
And if there's a high level area that is difficult to defeat, I want to level up some and come back later. But if they also level up, that defeats the purpose of leveling.
That rat in glass armor made me LOL
Imagine if rats would also get armor as you level up (and not just humanoid enemies ) that would be hilarious , someone needs to make that mod seriously
Reminded me of rat soldiers from golden sun.
Oblivion taught me some harsh lessons about level scaling. If you run into an ogre cave you better have a few hours on your hands. Swing swing swing swing swing...
"How do we make enemies harder? I know, give them a bajillion HP!"
Whenever you level up. Go find a highwayman to mug to grab his equipment, because he will have stuff that has never been available to you anywhere in world before.
And the only way to win: Is not to play..
Seriously fuck Oblivion..
Did you ever play the old 'Gold Box' RPGs, or was that before your time? They were turn-based, but battles took forever sometimes, because of all the enemies you'd be fighting. At least, that's how I remember it now. (That was a long time ago.)
I still miss those old games, though. If they only had good sound effects and a cover system (so the fighting was a bit more tactical), I could still play them today. :)
I would like to point out a very relevant line from the game:
WHY
WON’T
YOU
DIE
Worst part is that judging by Fallout 4 Bethesda STILL HASN'T LEARNED.
Level scaling unique loot was a major drawback in Skyrim, tho. In order to get a decent version of, say Miraaks sword, you had to grind to a stupidly high level.
or you could download a mod that would improve the rewards you already had as you level up
@@santiagogodoy974 Sure, but that should not be an requirement. My point is that game builders should learn from this example.
Upgrading specific weapons should always be available. Darksiders II let you level up your weapons by sacrificing other weapons to them. Their stats would go up and you could even get some of the qualities of the sacrificed weapons. So if you were using a level 5 scythe and sacrificed a level 3 hammer to it that also did fire damage, your scythe could get fire damage added to it when it reached level 6.
@@santiagogodoy974 Or it could just start at the level it is supposed to have. Don't be so bloody afraid to let the player have a good time.
Or take up enchanting and alchemy, and watch as loot becomes almost completely irrelevant.
I think the lack of level scaling is what makes games like Dark Souls 1 so enjoyable. Though the world is a series of paths, it's is effectively open. Each cross in the path can take you to harder or on track enemies/bosses. You learn what's manageable through exposure and experience. One playthrough might make a path easier or harder depending on how you chose to play. I think that it's ultimate freedom and openness that just works so well in soulborne games.
In dark souls not the avatar, but the player himself levels up. I wanted to start my very first DS(3) run as beggar, but couldnt beat gundir, however after a finished run i just achieved flawless victory on the first try.
Soulsborne games still have some baked-in level scaling - identical or very similar enemies in later zones can deal/take much more damage simply because the game expects you to have an upgraded weapon and healthbar by the time you encounter them.
@@wertuias1511 But that's not level scaling that's area scaling, you can and people have played through the entire game without leveling and only using the broken sword hilt, these enemies aren't any weaker for it as they would be if it were level scaling. Level scaling has to be tied to the players level, or it's not level scaling.
@@wertuias1511 that's not the same thing. Every encounter in Dark Souls has predetermined stats unaffected your own level. Whether you're at level 5 or level 700, the Hollows in the Painted World will have the same stats, which will be higher than the Hollows in the Undead Burg.
Dark Souls is still very linear though. It being a series of paths means that the developers can still expect when a player will be at a certain area, and balance the game accordingly. This is impossible for a game like Skyrim, where you can be in any area at any moment, which means that a certain degree of scaling is necessary.
"Developers don't know where players will end up, they don't want noobs encountering a boss, or veterans fighting rats; hence they use level scaling"
Dark Souls 1: "Am I a joke to you?"
Demon souls : "i Absolutely want the noobs encountering a boss, actually, they will meet the final one by the end of the tutorial ! and die !"
Veterans are definitely fightings rats in dark souls, but is it a good thing? xD
They are talking about games that are open world, Dark Souls is a much more linear experience where it is easier to control the power scale of enemies relative to the players.
This does apply to every other dark souls game right?
@@shadowmaydawn dark souls is sorta linear but you can go to a lot of "late game" areas right off the bat if you know what you're doing, especially if you took the key as your gift
Something a creator should keep in mind is something I call "The Paradox of Freedom". Basically, if all choices available to a player are equally valid, then those choices are meaningless. A good example of this would be Spore's creator. It can make any creature design work, which in practice means the player has no mechanical incentive to think about their creature's design, which is kind of the opposite of what the game wants.
Similarly, in an open world game, you don't /necessarily/ want all regions equally accessible to all players at all levels. Indeed, I would encourage a creator to put some regions with specific levels in mind. The primary freedom the player is looking for is the freedom to try, more than necessarily to succeed. Similarly, I would say there's some enjoyment to be had from having an overleveled character curbstomp an early-game dungeon.
That isn't to say you should /never/ use level-scaling, though, just that it needs to be done with a certain amount of care.
"Oblivion is the poster child of how not to do level scaling."
No, that would be Final Fantasy 8, a linear JRPG that had absolutely no reason to have level scaling.
Both are quite bad
Steelcrow81
You’re close.
Oblivion is the poster child and Final Fantasy 8 is the grandchild.
Ah Final Fantasy VIII, the game that punished you for playing an RPG like a goddamn, motherfuckin' RPG.
Not true, FF8 had a very simple way to sidestep the level issues, and you weren't absolutely screwed if you did level.
Now Last Remnant, THERE is a game where the level scaling is actively malicious.
To be fair, FF8 did have both minimum and maximum levels for encounters in a given area, so if you were below the minimum level of the monsters, leveling up actually evened out the playing field. The big problem was that leveling up by itself didn't give you hardly anything compared to what some monsters get per level.
Title - "Imagine you're playing an RPG." - It's Oblivion, It's Oblivion, IT'S OBLIVION
This immediately reminded me of how -Sabine- Crystal from _The Order of the Stick_ could just hang out and have fun all the time because she would level up automatically every time Haley Starshine had worked her butt off to gain XP.
I think you mean Crystal. Sabine is the fiendish rogue in the Linear Guild.
Ah, thanks. As I checked the Wikipedia page it didn't sound right but I was rushing, and I stopped following it years ago. (My luck that after his long hiatus due to an injury that I would be stricken for several months and fall hopelessly behind.)
@@cuteswan I mean both are fairly accurate. Crystal was the more explicit version, but Sabine was in the Linear Guild, played up as a recurring evil antagonist team. Hilgya, Durkon's opposite number, spent the intervening years since splitting off from Durkon A) having/raising a kid, and B) doing dwarven politics to finagle a fortune out of the families she abandoned. This apparently made her powerful enough to hang with Durkon in the present, who'd been doing nothing but questing for the intervening time.
An example of when Level Scaling goes wrong can be seen on the SNES title 7th Saga. When they localized it for western audiences, they changed the algorithm for the player characters so they gained half the statistics that they did in Japan. However, they did not make this same alteration to the other 'champions' that the Player -could- have become. This is important because those characters are also major opponents in various parts of the game. So when you're coming up to a castle helmed by an opponent, you're both level 10 (broad example), you've been able to handle the monsters well enough, yes, but this guy on the throne has the sort of stats you would get at level 20. And when you come back at 20 to try again, they're level 40 in stat standards.
Level Scaling has its uses, but just like with Procedural generation, if you don't code it to handle player choice, or to account for where you assume the sane, the crazy, and the unlucky might be, then it can quickly go from 'fun exploration' to 'why did I bother going here?'
The challenge of beating it whitout leveling much because otherwise the mandatory rival fights became impossible is like the only remotely fun thing about 7th saga tbf
Oh... so that's why I couldn't do anything in that game...
My thought has always been if you use level scaling than why have levels at all
Yeah, maybe it'd be more satisfying to know that if you're finding early areas easier, it's not because your character is any stronger, because they aren't; it's the player's improved skill.
I've played games with level scaling where the enemies' power curve is not as great as you, so you will always out level them but not everything becomes a curb stomp after a while.
It's stupid. Assassin' Creed 2 was fine without levels.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is another good example of the Skyrim style leveling. If you're level 5 and enter a level 12-16 zone, the enemies will be level 12. If you're level 14, the enemies will be 14. If you're level 20, the enemies are level 16.
It's a cool system, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey does similar with its zones. But if you're a completionist like me, you end up seriously out-scaling the enemies in the zones the story tells you to go.
@@leXie_Concussion Assassin's creed does not need a levelling system.
That is a level range scaling system.
That game has a different problem though, which is that a zone's level will freeze when you first enter it, so if you do to much exploring you end up with ridiculously weak enemies that never scale up. This also damage your ability to level up, as weaker enemies reward less exp, so you have to deliberately go out of your way to avoid certain areas to keep them challenging for later.
Skyrim's level scaling system was still a mess of nonsense. Good episode though.
Seriously. It's incredibly frustrating effortlessly mulching an entire dungeon of tissue paper enemies just to reach the end and get curb stomped over and over because the boss can practically one-shot you.
@@ChristieWryte Well that is because boss-fights in an CRPG is nonsense and doesn't belong there. They belong in arcade games. This notion of a boss an order of magnitude greater than normal enemies simply can't work properly, because it either makes the boss a impossible, a bullet sponge nuisance, or every other fight a boring trudge.
Much better than Oblivion though.
It’s Bethesda
There’s always bugs
Honestly the Skyrim system is technically great. Bethesda just didn't use it to its full potential. But that's Bethesda, great in developing a good base but not that good in actually building upon that.
I basically stopped playing Elder Scrolls Online when equipment started scaling, because having a basic weapon that does 3067 damage kinda makes the numbers meaningless.
Its why diablo 3 never held my attention
Some of that scaling has an advantage in an mmo. A level 10 character can play with his level 43 friend.
So far I never checked in detail how level scaling works in Elder Scrolls Online, but I noticed that there was no real progress to be felt when I gained a few levels.
Sometimes when you damage enemies just enough in Fallout or Elder Scrolls, they'll flee in horror. It totally ads to the immersion and sense of becoming stronger if it was heavily underleveled enemies that fled from you most often
"If you can just bop Skelly McDeathface on the snoot real quick, and kill them instantly, your narrative immersion is gonna be shot"
XD
While Skyrim did make some improvements to level scaling, it still had some issues. I remember doing an early game quest at end game levels and this quest was designed to have a lot of relatively weak skeletons. When I had to deal with a horde of draugar deathlords it felt like scaled way beyond what it should have, especially considering I mainly leveled non combat skills for a while.
That being said, playing some games like Xenoblade 2, level scaling would’ve vastly improved that game. Many of the quests are locked behind the RNG of getting a specific character to drop from a dumb gacha system and many of them are designed for early game levels. So getting a character to finally drop and do their quest in the end game I was 50 levels above and couldn’t have even done that quest until now.
While you practice lockpicking, the draugr train...
@@moartems5076 technically, legendary skill levels solve this problem: you just max your combat and then just grind levels on crafting ones.
Don't forget the Forsworn Conspiracy. Try doing that quest on a mid to high-level character where you didn't level your 1-handed skill, and you refuse to join the Forsworn... good luck getting past their leader, armed only with a shiv... Oh, and his magic resist is so high that as a mage, you stand no chance.
I feel like Guild Wars 2 does this very well. It makes all zones appropriate for everyone at maximum level. It also makes it so that everyone can play together. Beyond that, being a higher level still comes with an advantage with skills, abilities and traits that a low level character simply doesn't have access to, thus the higher level still feels like it's an actual higher level, without completely nullifying all sense of combat. It also means that max level players can still enlist the help of non-max level players for help in certain zones. Because of a whole other host of things I wont go into here, it means that you constantly have max level, experienced playes, out in the world, even in the early zones, able and ready to help out any new player who might need help with a boss or objective. It really helps to cultivate a sense of community and living world. However, zones only scale down, not up, meaning that higher level zones will effectively be off limits to new players in terms of level differences. They can still go to those places, but enemies will be MUCH stronger than you, and pretty much wreck you all the time.
I hate scaling in AC: Oddesey, I never felt that I've done any growth. The regular guard is always on par with murderer of armys like my character.
Oh I hated it in Odyssey and then they raised the cap! I spent 80 hours grinding so I could get the Legendary gear at max level.
Most things are probably done get you to spend more money
Agreed. Its obnoxious when the enemies beef gate you from above but then follow you as you level. *Cue fighting a lvl 50 chicken.*
One of the best mods I found for Skyrim was one that completely removed scaling. To make that work it also changed loot and spawning criteria. The result felt a bit like the great worlds of Gothic I and II, where there were areas you simply were afraid of going to. I still feel that there are few games that have managed to create worlds as convincing as these two games. Does anyone remember the forest outside the garrison in Gothic I. There's a Shadow Walker in there. I was deathly afraid to step foot in there because I knew that it would not only kill me, if I ran into it. It was also faster than me and usually would spot me faster than I could spot it among the brushes. The forest meant death. Coming home at night and realising that you have strayed of the safe path felt terrifying.
Even if Skyrim was never intended to be played that way, having to work to build my character up to even consider approaching a Draugr dungeon felt great. I was never more proud of taking on Bleakfalls Barrow than I was in that playthrough because I actually had to work for it. Everything that felt mysterious or scary actually was. And as my character for stronger, I was actually convinced that he was becoming the Dragonborn of legend.
Skyrim _was_ more successful with its level scaling, sure, but even then because loot didn't really scale quite as well it still felt kind of odd when a couple of lesser potions were guarded by a gang of untiring draugr deathlords.
My favorite game which got around that problem masterfully is an old school game called "Gothic 2". In gothic there is no explicit level scaling. But! As you progress you get new monsters which previously were met only in explicitly very dangerous places. It makes for extremely satisfying play. I truly recommend it even though the graphics dated quite poorly
How to do it right? I only say one word: Gothic.
[It didn't need any level scaling at all, simply because it was well written - and STILL open world]
Can you imagine if Legolas from LOTR had level scaling with the Orcs in the novels?
They basically did... by lore the orcs in they first see are weak, then we get stronger uruk hai, then even stronger Morgul orcs, all gate kept by time rather than even location. Even bosses like ring wraiths leveled, a flaming torch sending them running at the start, and appearing on "totally not a dragon" dragons, immune to damage of any man near the end. If we didn't have plot armor, they'd have raised the entire shire/inn to the ground from said dragon, taken the ring back and be kicking back with a beer before sundown, but instead the enemies scales in level with the main characters, and because it fits the building darkness of the story the audience can suspend any disbelief of the methodology.
At level 15, he can shield-surf... but so can the Uruk Hai!
In Guild Wars 2, the level scaling is really good. Low level areas are still easy, but they don’t die in an instance. Big events are still challenging, regardless of level.
Yup. Because a lvl80 character that enters a lvl15 area doesn't _really_ become a lvl15 character. They've acquired quite a few advantages on their way to lvl80 that don't go away. That way, earlier areas still feel like something you've progressed beyond, but the scaling prevents them from being completely trivial to play through. You can play alongside actual lvl15 characters and do twice their damage instead of x500 times their damage.
It helps that players are weakened when overleveled, but not strengthened when underleveled. There are still areas that you can't go in as a low level player, and thus you have goals to strive for.
Unfortunately, it also uses very similar types of enemies throughout the game. Those centaurs outside the starting zone aren't any different than those in the level 50 zone. And all the tutorials end with fighting a massive boss. Actually, a lot of MMO's do that, making you fight a Borg Cube in the Star Trek MMO tutorial. I get wanting to make an exciting first impression, but it does kill the sense of immersion when the awesome enemies you fight in the tutorial would be scraped of the shoes of the trash mob bandits you fight 5 hours into the game.
It's a combination of multiple factors. For one, high level players have much better gear that doesn't scale quite as easily to low tiers. For two, high level players have a large variety of different skills. And for three, high level players are more likely to know what they are doing and optimal play. So the scaling doesn't trivialize the player's work, but it also doesn't make newbie areas stupidly trivial either.
AFAIK GW2 doesn’t scale your secondary stats on your armor, just the base damage. additionally you have all the new abilities and passives. I think it makes it feel like you’re not some god even at 80, just a more skilled warrior.
TES: Oblivion!
Getting killed picking a fight with a random guard after heroically averting an apocalypse as the Hero of Kvatch makes you feel like maybe the entire main quest was just people indulging you because you're a weird misshapen freak and they feel bad for you.
edit:That's where the amazing modding community came in though and saved the day.
Oh yes, there is this PSP game called Grand Knight History, a niche game, as it is made by the niche studio Vanillaware. It runs on a level scaling system where the player and the characters they control gain a very small amount of boosts from leveling up, but enemies gain a lot more when their levels go up. Basically it turns into a situation which around lv10 your characters are going to grow tired easily and have to constantly go back to refuel, by lv20 it becomes exceedingly difficult to explore for a long distance, and eventually a lv50 character might not even manage to step out of the city where the supposedly weakest monsters appear. The trick to the game is to make new characters and use resources you gathered from the higher level characters to give them stat boosting items, or give them training manuals to increase stat. Which also means that the ideal setup to kill the final boss is basically a team full of lv1 characters with max stats stomping the boss into oblivion. And woe to any player who wanted to be cheeky and grind the final dungeon to increase your levels when you realized your lv1 team can stomp all regular encounters and decided to play around. If you accidentally gained too many levels you're going to have a lot of trouble going up against the final boss.
Personally I am not a very great fan of that particular level scaling system, although I admit it was very intriguing. Besides, in true Vanillaware games fashion, the best thing about their games is literally anything except the gameplay. (Art, music, plot are all super great) So I suppose there really wasn't much to lament once you're used to playing stuff from Vanillaware
Good to see somebody else commenting on Oblivion, I always hated Oblivion because I never felt my character was getting strong at all.
Correct me if I'm wrong but Skyrim still has that problem that you level social/crafting skills and you level up and so the enemies and loot.
But Guys...Gothic didn't have scaling and an open world where u could go anywhere u want and just had to be cautious about the enemie's levels.
This type of "not giving too much information" and letting the player run into a massacre was the thing everybody told me was the most fun.
I remember in Oblivion clearing a dungeon for the first time and finding a cool new stronger dwarven sword.
Once i left the dungeon rested and leveled up suddenly all the goblins in the world had dwarven gear swords armor and stuff.
This made the reward for the dungeon i just did completely worthless. I modded the game then and there.
Lucky i played the game 5 years after release so plenty of good leveling overhaul mods.
15 years? I first noticed level scaling in Elder Scrolls 1: Arena. That's 26 years old now.
They probably though it was a magic formula but didn't realise it doesn't scale well.
Level scaling kills skill progression.
Oblivion’s level scaleing
Sword of awesome ultimate death that once carved the body of a god
Lv1 12 damage and a Chance for a 2 second stun
Lv30 55 damage and a chance for a 10second stun
I think my favorite approach for open world RPGs has been rescaling the world based on plot points. Make most the world doable or only slight out of reach to a starting player, give or take a few deep dark caves, than after certain plot points everywhere becomes more dangerous. The first examples that come to mind are gothic 2 and dragons dogma, though DD has more harsh leveling in the pre-change world than is likely ideal. The other option I have like a lot is the "roads are safe" approach, in that enemy level for at least most the world is based more on how far away you are form civilization and the reagual travel routes than on where you are on the map relative to starting position. This gives you the feeling of being able to go anywhere on the map while still allowing for a more traditional enemy level set up.
2:04 If these rats don't already exist in a game somewhere, somebody needs to stick them in one. Their designs are great and the fact that they're doing their best to guard a dungeon is hilarious.
And if you decide to enter that dungeon, you have to face their boss: 3:25
@@Supaserrin Definitely, a rat with the highest quality gear would make quite the boss.
I remember seeing a video about the game gothic which was doing open world without level scaling.
They used powerful foes to lock some areas until the player was strong/craftier enough to pass them.
Dragon's Dogma doesn't use level scaling and, while it can lead to some problems in the late-game, I love the fact that a pack of goblins that would take a couple minutes to fight at level 10 in an early area can be easily dealt with in a few seconds after level 30. The sense of progression is so much more important than feeling like every fight is dangerous.
That's a game that would have benefited from a level scaling system, actually. I won't be thinking about how much I've progressed if I just one-shotted the dragon. I would be thinking about how anti climatic that was. Especially since the game's combat is fun, I want to actually enjoy it, but past the first couple of hours it's boringly easy.
Hard mode is even worse, since it give you more exp to level quicker, you outclass everything even quicker.
And then you have Xenoblade Chronicles, with late game monsters just chilling out in the starting areas.
When I realized that items still scale in Skyrim, it kinda ruined the experience for me. I avoided smithing in one playthrough and getting, for example, ebony armor on a lower level by playing well was just impossible. In Morrowind or Dark Souls you could just run to the right spot or dungeon and get your favorite piece. I stopped playing Skyrim shortly after because the magic was gone.
Resident Evil 4 had a nicely achieved curve of challenge. As the main character upgraded, you encountered new and stronger enemies. But the weaker enemies still kept popping up here and there, giving reference to how badass you had become so far.
This is exactly how I felt in Odyssey. I didn’t bother with several of the animal/monster challenges because I was playing for the story, and despise spending an hour trying to plan and strategize just for the sake of a side quest. What is the point of leveling up my awesome demigod character when I can get killed in two hits by a random wolf?
You said Odyssey, I immedietly thought of Super Mario Odyssey and got confused.
@@wariolandgoldpiramid
Lol it became confusing after Odyssey came out. Like, they're both great and famous games, and almost everyone on the internet know their names, you can easily mix those up.
I have observed this world long enough to know that here, hunting and trapping digital beasts is its own reward
Angie Chan I thought you were talking about mario oddesy and was very confused
I'm pretty sure AC:O just had level scaling just so Ubisoft can sell you stuff. It wasn't needed at all.
There should not be such thing as opponent level scaling. There should be places, there you could encounter particularly leveled opponents (places with particular (fixed) levels of danger).
I feel like the reason level scaling is both a thing and a problem is the way leveling is made. Basically if you power up character and ennemies simply by giving them more damage and health... well yeah it's going to be lame.
Instead if levels only barely change the stat but mainly give new tools to the player then it's alright if the player stumble against a high level boss early, it will feel challenging because they don't have a lot of options and the boss has a lot of way to deal with you, but as long as you don't get killed in one hit and don't take 50minutes to put a dent in the boss it's alright if it's challenging. It means the encounter pushes you to play well, if you don't end up thinking "If only I had more level" but instead "if only I played better" then the game did it's job right.
Basically what I'm saying is, if your game needs level scaling to function then the core design of your game is flawed.
Don't get me wrong scaling based on stat can be a legitimate way to do difficulty (even if I feel like it's cheap), but if you think your player should always have a somewhat even match with the opponent, then why have stats at all?
I've been trying to tell people this for years. If it's all about the lifebar than you've already constrained your design. It's why I can't stomach tab-target MMO's anymore; it all boils down to DPS, tanks and healers in a tug of war with the enemies' lifebars.
cuz some ppl rly like to watch numbers go up
@@misa105 I mean, I can get addicted to cookie clicker so I get it. ButI don't think it's healthy or makes for a good game, just because it's effective doesn't mean it's beneficial.
Also if you really need to show numbers go up, you can always show things like stats of number of monster killed. That might aswell be what experience is when you have level scaling anyway.
I think Dishonored handled this pretty well. There is no level scaling but powers and equipment are unlockable with a cost in loot and results are game-changing. It gives the player the incentive to explore and scavenge and the new powers open up old areas in a different way.
This is exactly how Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 work. Leveling up raises your stats slightly, yeah, but the TRUE reason you want to level up there is because doing so gradually unlocks more abilities and combat options for you to experiment with. Also the most meaningful *stat* raises (related to HP, MP, defense and the like) come from hitting certain points in the story rather than the EXP, meaning that grinding usually doesn't put you into much of an advantage. Sure, a lvl 99 player is going to have an easier time with the superbosses than a lvl 65 one, but the margin is fairly small and a skilled player can fill the gap wiothout grinding.
The rats used in this video are cute and hilarious with that dopey expression.
Short answer yes. Oblivion is famous in that regard.
Oblivion really did do such a bad job with level scaling. I’ve been playing that game since I was 11, and I never continue playing past around level 25, because right around then the difficulty just breaks
With Guild Wars 2, it's a bit different because a high level character inevitably has accumulated a fair bit of powerful equipment with stat-boosting runes and other bonuses, as well as having fully developed builds that are not subject to level-scaling. A new character cannot use this equipment.
So, yeah, someone who has gone through the full game will plow right through these areas anyway. The level-scaling is a bit more effective for World Bosses and Legendary enemies, but those fights are more reliant on gathering as many players as possible and successfully coordinating that herd of cats.
ADOM has a really interesting level scaling variant where monsters don't spawn at level according to your level, but instead spawn at level according to their base level + how many of their buddies you're killed. So by default, Jackals are very low-level canon fodder enemies, but because you might have to kill so many throughout the game, they're also one of the more dangerous late-game threats.
ADOM is excellent and so complex, I remember the small cave where monsters scales twice your level so if you level up to much beforde going through that cave it become a really hard challenge
I wish I could finish this game but I gave up last year and now I've forgotten everything and don't have time neither motivation to play it again
Still one of the best (if not the best) roguelike I have played
5:09 "I'm a god, how can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocen-" "PAW! AHAH!"
"YOU DED! Not big surprise"
potion stacking be like
Glad to see this addressed. It's always been something that's put me off a lot of games that use it.
I'm surprised they didn't talk about BotW's level scaling system.
Yeah, going anywhere, enemies scale a bit slower than your character. Lynels could be found by low experienced players. Going to the final section of the game after finishing the tutorial. Hmm...
...I never noticed that they did scale.
@@HighPriestFuneral They do. The bokoblins, moblins, lizalfos and lynels all scale up based on how many hearts you have.
@@affinityforanime Hah, I can't believe I never noticed that! I guess that shows how well it was implemented.
I was ahead of the curve from start to finish because i actived a teleporter in the castle early. With that you can just go there and get half a dozen endgame weapon every time you need to defeat strong enemies.
It's a bit different but I really liked how The Witness approached this problem in their open world puzzle game. They actually had different areas that required different skillsets to work in. So you could choose what skill to learn based on what area you wanted to explore. I guess a similar system could also work for RPGs.
Now I'm imagining the witness with level scaling xD Go to a new area that is supposed to be early game, and have to solve an absurdly complex puzzle for which you never had the basic version to try and understand how it works. Now that would be an awful game.
Level scaling is my number one game pet peeve and my least favorite game mechanic of all time. It breaks immersion worse than fourth wall breaks.
I think that in most cases "level rubber banding" is better. That allows you to set a lower limit for the areas that you want to feel imposing while still having the rest of the game feel smooth and polished. You can also set an upper limit for enemies that should at some point feel weak, such as rats. Both of these things allow the players to experience the sense of wonder and amazement of a richly developed world with less hickups, but still have that sense of empowerment once you realize you have outgrown the enemies you encountered early on.
I agree, but that does make we wonder if the real issue in games that could or do benefit from level-banding is actually that the levels make so much difference everything has to be exactly matched to you for fear of being wildly over or under powered.
Perhaps if individual levels just had less of a raw mathematical impact, you could solve the issue of only being able to enjoy a tiny sliver of the open world at one time without needing level scaling at all?
@@michaelwoods2672 the main benefit is that it is level systems are easily digested by players and relatively easy to implement compared to more complex and interesting progression systems. I don't say that to knock leveling systems or anything, that's just the main draw that makes leveling systems so prevalent.
@@michaelwoods2672 Well it might have more to do with how levels cumulative affect balance. If your way of having, say 20% benefit from a single level, is to exponentially increase power by 20% each level, then being 5-10 levels ahead would give you between 140% to 620% advantage, which might make the figts utterly trivial. If on the other hand the math did not scale up the power difference to hard when a larger difference came into play, then the fights would be easier, but not necessarily so much easier that they would be trivial. An example of the latter would be a system where your damage and opponents flat damage reduction would scale similarly. In such a case the effect is really the difference between the 2 stats, and not so much their absolute value, and this moves the effect of level difference from exponential to linear.
One could call this some kind of rubber-banding on a mechanics level, by basically having deminishing returns on how much better you get by being better.
Level Scaling is precisely why I set the difficulty to the easiest setting on Fallout: New Vegas.
Because a .50 cal BMG to the head should be fatal to literally any human being with an uncovered head, I don't care how badass of a raider they are.
Fallout 4's survival mode tried this, but then made it too realistic making things with armor that would protect from bullets nigh unkillable
Altrunchen That wasn’t level scaling. It was RPG logic.
Hay extra history thanks for the extra videos I am using them in the history playlist on my channel just wanted to tell you thank you
pretty sure Morrowind also has level scaling, but a bit different, it's those ninja monkeys in the creation kit, they are creatures, that changed depending on your level, so on level 1 you would meet a rat and on level, let's say, 5 you would meet an alit in place of the rat. Also, some creatures just normally scaled with your level, like those daedra damned cliffracers (let's raise one for Jiubb)
If you think implementing level scaling is a good idea for your game. Think wether it is necessary to have levels at all.
2:27 "and nowhere is this illustrated more than in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion"
*Dragon Age: Origins has entered the chat*
Level scaling when applied without an above average difficulty selection is a pain.
Prime example would be modern WoW. While I wouldn't call the old version difficult you had a bit of a difficulty option by tackling quests above your own level. That option is out in the current level scaled world. This makes it so that enemies have to be scaled to work for a player brand new not only to the game but the genre, forcing the same difficulty onto the 15 year veterans with more years of genre expertise.
It's a two way street. On the one hand, you had all these questing zones and such that weren't scaling with you, so even if you started early you likely had to leave before you finished the story content you may not have had the first time going up. On the other hand, yeah, you could do it in any order you wanted, and particularly in the endgame helped ensure things felt as powerful as they were supposed to be. Now in the new system, you're encouraged to play a zone out to completion story-wise, but as mentioned the difficulty is far easier to make timeconsuming and cementing LFD spam as the best way to levelup. Really I just wish WoW didn't have to have the uncomfortable situation where the unkillable galaxy-conquering demons we were battling last expac are now by default weaker than these random beach crabs we happened to find on this island. If we'd decided to call up Boralus and Zul'dazar to help out with the invasion, apparently these random ass sailors would have kicked Sargeras out no problem. That's still level scaling by a different measure; keeping difficulty constant to the enemies fought, even if logically they shouldn't be this tough.
3:53 does your cart move backwards?
Yeah I feel a mix is what is best to apply. I also feel that one can have a specific discussion about level scaling in a multiplayer game. Way to make it so you and you friend can play together even if you not on the same level. And how one need to tackle that. Because that present it own challenges as well as reasons to do it.
Who else here enjoys it more when they come to a area and realise that none of their conventional tactics will work and they'll have to avoid it or put in alot of creativity and effort?
Level scaling really takes that away in most games. You have to limit yourself to make anything challenging.
Like in my previous fallout 4 games I played on survival but by level 20 I was already essentially a God. This time around I've made my charecter much less combat and health focused to retain that early game feel.
I'm terrible at these games anyway, so everything seems challenging. :) And if I have to fight the same battle multiple times, I'll just go play something else. There's nothing I hate worse than that!
Luckily, as long as a game has an "Easy" or even "Very Easy" difficulty setting, I'm fine. I don't care about a game being challenging, because I'm more interested in exploring the game world than in combat.
But tastes vary. (And so do ability levels, of course.)
we need bigger episodes on topics like this. more specifics examples too.
The cited problems are actually addressed by the dynamic leveling in Guild Wars 2, which is weird since you cited that game. Players that are higher level than the level range of the map is scaled down. So the issue of everything being immediately accessible doesn't stand.
The issue of not feeling that you're getting stronger is also addressed by GW2. For example, performance boosts such as the benefits from Superior tier Runes and Sigils that are you can only equip after Level 60 remain there even if you go to a Lv 1-15 map.
At Lv 1-15 you'd not have unlocked all your utility skills and traits from your specialization lines. Also, having a full set of Exotic or Ascended equipment at Lv 80 will give you a slight stat advantage compared to wearing equipment of a lower rarity. All this is still true even after downscaling.
The dynamic leveling feature of GW2 only tunes down your stats, but doesn't affect other aspects of your character progression. So, at a Lv 1-15 map, you are stronger at lv 80 than when you were at Lv 15, but still at a level where the fights retain a tad of a challenge. This would be level scaling done right.
I like how you articulated what I've felt for many years!
*Borderlands 3 wants to know your location*
Just Some Guy without a Mustache preach
"It's a siege-mustache!"
I suppose in the case of BL3 that, because the main draw for many players is just the loot, it kinda makes sense that leveling is implemented to encourage variety through the main campaign.
Ok, you have a beard?
whats bad about Blands 3 enemy scaling?
That explains why I always feel so weak in Oblivion! 1 Daedra can take me down to half health no matter how much I level. In an earlier game I played I literally ran away from everything. I close shut the jaws of Oblivion by bolting past every enemy I saw and garbing the Sigil Stone.
I think my favorite ways to see level scaling is in games where, a growing tool bag, or long term character builds can sort of foil the effect. Say maybe after level 15 you gain a stunning bash skill that makes early game rats trivial while more imposing enemies resist the stun effect entirely, until you level up enough to learn a more powerfull version of that skill. While your relative power is the same, you gain a wider pool of stuns, poisons, slashes, and bashes to pull from to give you that extra edge you meed to win. Alternatively adding some intense customization of stats and skills usually leads to me min maxing into a specific role, and playing to my strengths to solve what the game throws at me. While both the player and the enemies average stats might be the same, now the player might become enough of a glass cannon to clear a horde of enemies before they notice. The problem with that is anyplayer who tries to hybrid class, isn't interested in the madness of searching for the "perfect" build, or doesn't have some way to work around weaknesses, either through multiplayer creative use of some mkre versatile skills, is going to have a hard time.
Considering you mentioned GW2 i'm surprised you did not talk about it much. It is the best example of level scaling I've ever played.
My favorite example of level scaling was when in the sewers of novigrad Geralt needs to pass through some rats and for some reason if you toggle level scaling on one rat becomes invincible and just keeps summoning rats until you die😂
That exactly happened to me as well. Kept dying for half an hour before I gave up and turned off the level scaling
Glad you mentioned Guild Wars! I've played Guild Wars 2 for 5 years now, and (if we forget raids and the last tier of Fractals) the game can be *really* easy. When I tried its big brother, GW, I... Uh... Was so bad at the game. Because it actually expects us to think about strategy and the foes, AND it downscales the player. That part is... Very painful, to say the least.
Breath of the Wild has some of the BEST level scaling of any game i've played that has it
It helps that it scales based on story progression. (Or maybe just time. Haven't checked.) Zelda doesn't have levels or stats it can base it on. It makes it scale very naturally with character's skill playing skill - even if that skill is primarily avoiding huge monsters like me.
Do enemy classes/ranks scale with how many beasts you've finished, or shrines completed?
@@paradigm_sh1ft I know they scale based on Shrines. I think Beasts only effect the Calmaity Gannong fight thou.
I like the idea of capping scaling and scaling bosses. It is fun getting to the point where you can one shot little enemies but bosses still pose a challenge.
If you've played prodigy math than you'd now why the difficulty scale is so fast just make you take as many math problems as anyother enemy , it's a surprisingly good educational game but I'm at lvl 64 and common monsters still take as long as they did when I was only lvl 1, but that just makes me remember that I'm playing an educational computer game which made me quit when I got all the elemental gems which opened the learning academy and was only given more work after completing every mission in 10 world's I expected to face a final boss not collect notes to make me slightly stronger
Love the last dragon!
I couldn't have thought of a better explanation about level scaling.
Let's make "bopping Skully McDeathface on the snoot" the new term for making quick and easy work of a boss.
Dunkey had a great video on something similar to this in fact. Great to see people share the ssmd opinion.
Lunar back in dunno how many years ago scaled bosses
I think only your relative HP grows higher so you can tank more hits while the rest of the difficulty stays the same
I remember that game. Leveling was still to your advantage because you could get through the generic enemies easier and arrive at the boss in better shape, so progression wasn't wasted, but the boss would still feel like a legit threat.
I've thought about this for sooo long! I'm glad you talk about it. :D
One reason for why I love Gothic 3 (even though it's a clunky and buggy mess) is because none of it scales up with the player. And NPCs don't have arbitrary level numbers.
The power and danger of NPCs is beased on who and what they are. So you never end having trouble with a wolf late in the game just because it's high level or something like that.
After getting ganked by Oblivion's level scaling I reloaded before I levelled up and just...didn't. And then the grinding of the combat stat's was done. And yes, you're right, it still wasn't fun.
I like xenoblade's approach, which is having a mix of creatures at different levels, and showing you their level. The world feels a lot more immersive when it breaks up the difficultly curve with big monsters you can't fight until the end game.
Movement in an Extra Credits video?
I don't understand...
Breath of the Wild does level scaling by starting you off fighting brown enemies which are the weakest form then scale them to blue, silver, and gold as you get stronger. Places that hold useful secrets or passages to progress are usually populated by one of two of the toughest enemy types in the game. One being Guardians that don't scale but you will encounter them all the time. If you are a first time player, they can be scary to deal with because of their fast movement speed and powerful laser that will one shot a low level Link from a distance. But a skilled player can overcome them easily at any level.
The second one is the Lynel and is the most dangerous enemy in the game. This one scales in difficulty as the player grows and vary by the weapons they wield, forcing different types of fighting styles to defeat them based on their weapon. They are always hyper aggressive so it makes encountering them quite the ordeal no mater how strong you've gotten until you're close to end game and have a firm grasp on their strategies and weapons that won't break so easily.
I have to take some issue here; Oblivion did the same type of level scaling as Skyrim. Depending on level you'd encounter different enemies with different abilities; some of them felt same-y (zombies, skeletons, and necromancers) while some were dramatically different (daedra). There certainly were issues, but Skyrim wasn't unique from Oblivion.
In terms of mechanics, no, in terms of implementation, very much yes. There are many separate leveled lists for simlar sounding enemies in Skyrim, letting devs differentiate something placed as environmental ambience from intentional challenges, and letting certain areas stop scaling at all past a point in the game and actually feel to the player as safe newbie zones that you have to defend from the big bad world by rooting evil at its source. Meanwhile while I loved oblivion, the highwayman on a bridge near town being able to single handled wipe out the entire city was pretty stupid... although credit where credit is due, at least wolves stayed weak enough.
@@SheepInACart Honestly, from my memory of reading the Oblivion game guide, dungeons had enemy lists they'd pull from based on level that would cap out, and enemies had level scaling that would cap out. There may have been some enemies that had infinite scaling, but I don't think it was everyone. That is, to my knowledge, exactly the same as Skyrim. I think it's literally just a question of tweaking a few numbers, not doing anything substantially different (ergo, not making the bandits scale infinitely).
Great video! never thought of the limited scaling of important enemies as a solution but that could definitely work! I guess it wouldn't get around another problem of level scaling which is that it feels like the world revolves around you, but that's...kind of what level scaling is, so I guess that's unavoidable. I am a little softer on level scaling from watching this video though.
Simple solution: remove player scaling.
Technically yes, games like modern shooters have you spawn in with some of the better gear in game and have no stats whatsoever while still giving a challenging story, but this is no longer an RPG, and falls flat in an open world as it provides little incentive to side quests.... cosmetics and feel good text is extremely powerful used sparingly, but if its the main motivator it grows old super fast.