I talk about my thoughts on level scaling (which is adjusting the level of NPCs based on the PCs level), both how I have used it and how I think it should be used.
Having a top class designer/programmer talk about topics I've wondered how professionals approach for 2 decades now is truly a privelage, thank you for sharing these thoughts and stories. This might as well be my favourite channel at the moment.
@mauree1618 But the plates still weigh the same, you just use more of them. A 25 pound plate never weighs 5% more just because you've leveled up. I think a better way to do level scaling is not to make low level enemies tougher as you progress, but to gradually replace them with tougher types of enemies.
@@mauree1618 That's IF your goal is to get "infinitely stronger". Most people, especially in video-games, don't want to just "infinitely get stronger". they want to "feel" stronger than they were before. It may make sense in some games or systems to include some form of level scaling, but too many companies and devs use this in the wrong way/at the wrong time leading to experiences feeling worse than they otherwise would. It's why games that focus on "knowledge" progression tend to feel good as you play them. Souls games in general are amazing at this. Early on everything feels overwhelming because of the lack of knowledge and experience but as you get further in, you get better and better. Sure your gear and level goes up but most of the time the difference isn't that big. What changes dramatically is the player's knowledge of the world and mechanics. Even if you start the game from scratch, you'll FEEL more powerful even though you have the same stats/gear as the first time around. It also allows proficient players to tackle challenges outside their "expected" range.
Yeah, it's not a perfect analogy and there's a lot of nuance, it seems like you just have to pick the difficulty that makes sense for the type of game and audience.
I remember playing TES Oblivion, which has a level scaling that follows you. It was the first PC RPG of the type I had played, so I did not figure out until quite late, that you could lie down and sleep, and that this would allow you to level. I finally figured this out in a quest where I had infiltrated a bandit camp. I ended up sleeping within their camp, leveling up like 10 levels, and this turned the three bandits into seven or more, with quite a tough chief. I remember feeling quite miffed about this at the time.
Not to mention all the bandits that suddenly have full suits of Daedric or glass armor. Hell even a full suit of steel plate still takes a lot of work to build
Sorry but I don't remember enemies respawning/scaling while you are in the cell with them. Speaking of the Oblivion scaling, if you're playing as a mage or a warrior character the enemies aren't too hard. The issue is that you can't level however you want, especially if you level Speechcraft or Merchantile (though they aren't that useful in Oblivion because you can accrue a lot of fame just by doing quests as the mentioned fighter or mage to increase disposition with lawful NPCs and the majority of them will like you enough to tell you quest information and allow to buy houses)
There was also issue of HP gained on level ups depending on your current endurance, so if you not leveling heavy armor, block and repair (or whatever it was called) to +5 multipliers from level 1, all this health is just gone, you'll never get it back, even if you level your endurance to 100 later. Oh man, what a garbage system it was.
Hi Tim! Thanks a lot for answering my question!🙂 I've always been a fixed-level kind of gamer as well. I remember how it broke my immersion when, in Oblivion, my high-level character used to come across puny bandits... who wore insane Daedric armor and wielded swords so expensive they could've just sell them and retire from thieving! 😀Anyway, your comments are as insightful, clever and amusing, as usual. Thanks so much again! Really love this channel! EDIT: oh, and regarding the mixed system used in The Outer Worlds (a game I recently played and really enjoyed), I think it's elegant and smart, in the sense that it kind of manages to get "the best of both worlds" (the feeling progression of a fixed-level system, and the lasting challenge of level scaling) but, nevertheless, I still think it's more realistic that... well, a Deathclaw is always a Deathclaw and its HP and the damage it deals are "objectively" the same regardless of your XP 🙂
The Oblivion issue is also in Skyrim. There are levels for dungeons but enemies also scale up to a point. They also have range limits. It's obviously trying to fix the previous games issues but creates it's own. It definitely has the problem of gear scaling meaning you could hit dungeons where you were higher level than the enemies but the game gave most of them ebony weapons. This totally breaks the economy because a single dungeon could buy a house easily. The good thing about both games is that Bethseda encouraging modding means you can mess about with this in so many ways to fit personal preference that you can change the entire dynamics of the game. It's such a tricky thing to balance.
In Oblivion I always felt I would have been better if bandits don't scale very far, but instead once you've leveled up high, and have progressed far in the story, you face entirely different opponents, like daemonic/daedric squads sent to kill you. But at the same time you still face regular bandits ocassionaly so you feel progression. However they could implement story elements that would rationalize why you start seeing new more powerful opponents. (eg The forces of Oblivion taking you more seriously or a faction puts a bounty on your head so veteran skilled mercanaries now target you, monsters that have slept dormant for a millenial get awoken across the land because of some main story event half way through the game)
A great concoction of encounters makes for a great and memorable experience. - At low character level, low-level enemies are necessary in order to facilitate levelling and progression; to have something achieveable. - At low character level, high-level enemies either provide a bruised ego and "I'll be back when I level up" imprint on the player, or potentially even an achievable challenge at that point for experienced players. - At high character level, low-level enemy encounters (particularly en masse) are great for showing the player how far they've progressed relative to their starting power, and make for a fun spree. - At high character level, high-level enemy encounters are good for world-building/setting, such that the player feels like they can deal with foes so powerful that nobody else can.
This might mostly just be a Skyrim problem and not always applicable to all RPGs but one thing i hate about level scaling is if i want to focus on non combat abilities, perks, and skills like crafting or speech. These are usually long term investments i immediately get punished for in the short term. By increasing my blacksmithing for example i don't really get to increase my damage and armor as the armor/weapon improving is really weak early game while all the enemies get way better gear, armor and just over all stats so you kinda feel like in order to have a chance in combat with these builds you have to go back to the old reliable stealth archer approach.
Yes but that's why you control when you level up. If you smith 300 iron daggers, maybe wait a bit, try and buy a weapon of a higher tier( dwarven/elven etc.
@@valentinchappa6702 I'd say it is a bad design if you have to control when you level up and what skills you improve so that the same areas aren't crowded with harder enemies. It makes focusing on anything other than combat punished two times - the first time is that you're not getting stronger and the second time is that your enemies are getting stronger. And it happening is not justified by the game in any serious attempt, so it's also bad for building a believable, consistent world. Oh, you've gone to sleep? Liches apparently invaded forests and bandits got a massive delivery of dwarven equipment, probably because they'd heard of you becoming so competent smith.
This is topical with Cyberpunk 2077 recently going from leveled zones to across-the-board level scaling in it's 2.0 update, thanks for going over it. As annoying as it was to go a single block over and get pummeled by different gang members in similar clothes to the weaker gang, or to be able to wipe out main quest bosses easily because I had over-leveled, I think I prefer it to the current system where the game seems stagnant, every fight is the same difficulty from a subjective standpoint, and I can't give wipe out simple mobs or give myself a challenge by going to a different zone anymore.
I personally like games where progression adds more utilities and playstyles and ways to deal with situations, but leaves damage and health static across all levels. Multiplayer shooters like battlefield or planetside 2 do a real good job at that, but i also really enjoy Fallout 4 with the 'scourge' and 'true damage' mod, that also remove health and damage scaling. Instead of warping physics to hit harder the PC gets better at handling their guns and gets access to more tools. It also makes spending perks into social skills less punishing
It comes down to implementation. I usually have more questions to leveling itself. In my opinion games often give too much power every level, which not only creates power creep, but also throws away my immersion. That issue is more prevalent in first person RPGs like Skyrim and modern Fallout, but to some degree also goes to the isometric games too. I think that you do not need to see your numbers grow dramatically to feel the progression. Less is more. Also flat progression is something that i find very interesting. Like finding new ways to deal with challenges instead of just growing your numbers bigger to the point when you can simply stat-check everything and not think about more creative solutions. That is most likely why i was much more engaged with combat in Baldur's Gate 3 at lower levels - as before the game rewarded me for using my surroundings and creating traps with explosive barrels or pushing enemies from the edges, while in the later part it mainly came down to hitting enemies a lot and throwing many fireballs, which is simply not that interesting.
I like flat progression as well if for no other reason than it feels less incongruous with the reality of the setting. When you have HP bloat it feels very videogamey, when you have gear progression that leads to longer time to kill, it feels more logically consistent, even if in actual gameplay it isn't always radically different. It's best for sure imo though, when the difficulty and progression is tied to things like new abilities or challenges rather than bloated stats.
@@austinglueck2554 also as a part of flat progression and difficulty management - i like the idea of rare finite tools that are a bit overpowered. Like the explosive barrels during the first act of BG3. Finding them is a great boon and can help you out greatly in a pinch, but there is a limited number of them - so you can't just spam using them whenever like a fireball spell. I had so much fun using those barrels to be able to win encounters that i would otherwise either avoid or would have much more trouble with. But because they are finite - their use always felt meaningful - i was always aware that if i decide to use it now then i might not have it when i'll need it later. So even if it trivialized a few fights for me - the game didn't feel trivial because of them. Instead it felt good - like the game gave me tools that allowed to go beyond the power level of my group and let me to decide when and how to use that limited powers. Not only it makes the game less videogamey and predictably formulaic, but also it's a great reward that doesn't permanently increase your power level and as such doesn't lead towards power creep.
i like level scaling in small doses, where i don’t notice it unless i’m looking for it. the limited level scaling you described definitely makes a lot of sense to me in that regard. i think the big thing i don’t like about scaling is that scaled enemies you meet later in the game often don’t feel any smarter or more capable - they just have better stats and equipment. as a result, fighting them at high levels feels like the designers dragging the encounters out beyond their natural endpoints, rather than feeling like appropriate challenges for high levels.
It might be harder to implement, but personally I think I like the Arcanum style best. I like "a deathclaw is a deathclaw," but also as you progress in story, fame, etc the world is getting more dangerous or more dangerous factions are noticing you. Makes narrative sense and helps fight the urge to metagame. Otherwise I like it when the player can't really tell it's happening. I believe Baldur's Gate had a system where there were several pools of random encounters based on your party level. The higher level pool would spawn deadlier creatures like ogre magi or dread wolves more often while the lower level pool would spawn creatures like gibberlings or xvarts more often. It made a lot more sense than bandits in deadric armor or level 99 Draugr .
Always hated level scaling in games I want to feel powerful after gaining several levels. I do like your solution though, and wish more games use your idea.
DLCs are planned in advance. Not the exact content, but the xp, skill, and perk advancement curves are plotted out. Then when we make the DLC content, we know what to expect from player abilities, and we can increase the level cap with a bit more confidence.
Level scaling that affects everything makes it feel like you never get stronger. Its a huge issue in WoW leveling now where because everything scales nothing ever feels easier. You never feel more powerful until you reach max level and can outgear stuff. It feels horrible to never feel strong while leveling.
Level scaling, random loot and aggressive respawn (smart respawn can be pretty good decision (by acts\chapters, plot triggers, environment changes, etc..)) are the most annoying things in RPGs
Spot on, limited level scaling works great! I hate that when I get to level 99 now everything even the lowly rats are level 99 fire breathing laser eyed monsters. Like.. no. God no. The way you described it is perfect.
I prefer fixed levels or your limited level scaling idea but I think in the end of the day it's really up to the focus of the game and its intended playerbase. Fixed levels and limited scaling can do wonders for world building and role playing meanwhile pure scaling really caters to players that are more interested in the gameplay and the continuous challenge than in getting immersed in the world and the story so both have their merits in the right circumstances with the right purpose in mind.
I loved how fixed TOEE was. My favourite playthrough I did with only 2 characters (fighter and bard). The beginning at the gatehouse was brutally hard, then my guys got super powerful and then I had these 2 mega heroes taking on the temple .
From my experience as a player, level scaling takes away the fun of upgrading equipment and leveling your character. Fixed levels feel much more rewarding, it's nice to get destroyed by enemies and then later on destroy then back because you got so much more powerful. I think many games opt for level scaling because it's a cheap way of balancing a game, whereas in fixed levels you have to carefully plan how the player is going to progress
I think the first time I encountered a system with limited level scaling (pretty much what you described) was in Wizardry 8. Although I am not huge a fan of level scaling in general, I agree that this version of it achieves a nice balance between progression and challenge.
The Gothic 2 Night if the Raven approach to this is unbeaten in my opinion. World areas are locked off by the sheer force some enemies hold and you must find a way past them to unlock a new area. But as the story progresses, not the previous enemies are scaled, but new ones are introduced into old areas. This doesn't break your sense of progression and still leaves the door open to increase difficulty as the player's level rises.
Thanks for the opinion tip Tim. I never liked level scaling cause it ruins the sense of progression and it also forces certain difficulty level to players. It also reduces upgrade options cause players are forced to choose the best upgrade option after levelling up. I am fully aware of the issue of getting OP of not implementing level scaling but after some thoughts, it's not as bad as I thought cause: 1. It's player's choice so it's player responsibility if they are getting too strong. 2. Related to #1 , this allows player to design their difficulty. Do they want some challenge or just relaxing gameplay? let them decide. 3. When an area is too weak for player, player would be bored and they'd move somewhere else to find stronger area. That being said, some games have XP limiter which prevents getting too much XP in certain chapter. The limit is raised after completing the chapter if I'm not mistaken. This is good solution to prevent getting OP but still allows player to level up.
I've always liked how skyrim did things. For example, giants were always level 15 throughout the whole game. Bandits leveled up with you only to an extent. After you got to a certain level the bandits stop leveling up.
I appreciate the idea that level scaling can make the game more fairly challenging overall, but it definitely is frustrating when the whole world scales and makes me feel like I'm being PUNISHED for leveling up. Plus, I like being able to get in over my head and push through for extra rewards, or to go back and clean shop in early areas if I ever want to just rapidly clear out old quests. Monster Hunter is my favorite example of no level scaling - you can fight any monster in any level of gear. If you want to challenge yourself you can use basic starter weapons or armor. If you want to just blow past weak monsters you can go into low rank with G-rank gear. But because GETTING that gear requires you to have killed monsters of that strength at least once, you always have to push into the challenge first in order to earn that power. Which makes the power feel even more appreciated. The global level scaling comes from a good place - the world is open and the player could go anywhere so we want to make sure they aren't punished for their choices - but far too often it makes the entire world feel samey and forgettable. Only a handful of games with true scaling managed to make it really work, and those were the ones that scaled more based on overall progression of objectives than with character level. Stuff like Breath of the Wild, where enemies got stronger as you defeated more dungeons, but that in turn came with better weapons so your damage output never felt overly lacking. Global scaling killed Oblivion for me when I realized that if I didn't level optimally I might not be able to fight anything without cheesing the fight, and it DEFINITELY killed my enjoyment of Diablo 3 when I realized that the only way to gain power was gear, and that leveling up made me weaker because I would just outlevel my lucky legendary drop.
My favorite level scaling (or lack thereof) was Dungeon Siege 2. I remember finding a locked door on what was a relatively easy area of the game. I lockpicked the door and was able to get inside this crypt. There were some graves in the crypt that I went to check out for loot. One of the graves had a super high level undead character. This thing came to life and straight brutalized my party. In that game if I remember correctly you dropped all your stuff where you died. So I had to go back to the area. But this undead character didn't wait for me at the crypt. He just stayed right by my last portal. It took a long time to be able to get out of there alive. I had to raise up many more levels before I even had a chance. But I loved that the enemies could follow you and weren't really bound to their starting location.
I like the limited level scaling you described. It feels like a good balance. I didn't pick up on levels getting fixed in the outer worlds, but it is one of my favorite games, and it worked great for me.
Thanks for the video! That is definitely my preferred way of doing level scaling as well. I think it's often referred to as rubber-banding. As in the level of the enemies will stretch a bit from their base but not too far.
That was actually my favorite part of OW so far. I landed in Monarch and got my butt handed to me, and then later I came back and was actually able to fight my way through to the other landing bay and that was really rewarding. I had no idea though that me going there early gave me an advantage. That's cool. I think that's a great balance between fixed levels and level scaling. Totally stealing that idea if I ever make an RPG :)
My favourite type of level scaling one that allows the upper range of (random) enemy power to adjust to player level. That way you can introduce stronger enemies, but not replace the weaker ones completely and thus not destroy the sense of progression. At the same time I am for fixed level encounters present in the game that do not scale to player level (for example on the critical path or in certain side quests).
I think the recent assasins creed trilogy tackles this really well. It gives the player the option to choose between Make all enemies scale to my level Make enemies always 2 levels under me Make all enemies 2 levels higher than me Use dev's original intent with static levels per region
I can think of a few interesting case studies for level scaling and its complexities. 1) Final Fantasy 8. Enemy stats scaled at a slightly higher rate than PC stats per level, but a secondary system was available to PCs that empowered their stats through 'stealing' magic from monsters, and then 'equipping' it to the PCs. With only these two factors, the difficulty curve was relatively smooth with some end-game bosses being very challenging. But at around level 12-15, players were given the Card ability for the card mini-game. This would take an enemy on low health and turn them into a card, but interestingly, also prevented you from receiving XP for defeating the enemy. The optimal trick here was never to defeat all enemies with Card, while stealing their magic to empower yourself. Since enemies also got better magic to steal as the game went on, which gave you better stats, you would stay at around level 15 for most of the game (instead of reaching 70-99 depending on grind), and even end-game bosses were much easier. 2) Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. At character creation, you chose major vs minor skills, the idea being you'd intentionally pick the skills you wanted to be good at as major. Your character level increased for every 10 major skill level-ups, and enemies scaled with that. Obviously, selecting skills you didn't care to use as major and never levelled up kept the enemies at low level. Also, I think you only levelled up on resting, so some people completely skipped resting. 3) Skyrim. Skyrim tried to address Oblivion's problem by having enemies scale on your total skill level-ups. There were two problems with this (on launch, I don't know how its current scaling behaves as they implemented an 'infinite' levelling system since). Firstly, if you levelled up, say, blacksmithing or lock-picking, enemies would scale up. A player levelling up non-combat skills would suddenly discover combat was increasingly impossible for them. Oops. Additionally, the scaling algorithm for some reason scaled up damage, I suspect multiplicatively. If you were approaching 100 in all skills having explored most of the game, enemy archers and casters would start to kill players in one hit (unless they used infinite recurrence crafting exploits). 4) Witcher 3. It did not originally include level scaling, but ran into the opposite problem of Skyrim: what happens when a player completes sidequests that the game intentionally leads them to? Massively over-levelled players. CDProjekt did a great job of making all its side quests interesting enough for players to do all of them, but expected players to only complete a couple before returning to the main questline. So it set its enemies' levels at around the rough XP expected for players to have mostly focused on main questline and maybe a couple of sidequests. But by the time most players reached a later zone, Skellige, the game was expecting players to be roughly level 20-40, but many were at 50 or above. The area was supposed to be intimidating, but for many it was simple (even if the monster designs and attacks were very cool). The addition of level scaling later largely restored challenge to the later zones, and the game was mostly improved for it. Level scaling is fun, but it's definitely difficult to get right, especially as secondary systems providing players additional power creep into games, making it much harder to have a smooth scaling experience.
Oblivion had two other problems that Skyrim scaled back somewhat. 1) Enemies scaled to your level also scaled their equipment. It became quite silly, as Tim points out in his video, that bandits on the roads suddenly had end-game level gear like the valuable daedric sets. 2) Quest rewards were also level scaled. Completed the quest at level 4? The reward is now outclassed by practically everything because there were better versions at levels 6-10, 11-15, and so on. Unrelated to level scaling was the progression in general where you gained HP/MP based on your Endurance/Intelligence so an optimal character trained skills to max out those stats first. Otherwise, assuming you leveled up, you were either a wet tissue or destined to be a fighty boy forever since your pools would be so low.
@@LaPollaAtomica At least at launch, Skyrim did still have the problem of enemies having scaled gear. Most enemies I fought towards the end were firing Daedric arrows at me (which I suspect was part of the 1-shot scaling problem) which is a pretty funny situation for a highway bandit to be in, as Tim said. Likewise, most Draugr enemies were considered Deathlords at the end of a playthrough. Just, entire tombs full of them! No footsoldiers to be seen. Must've been a lot of nobility, back in the day
I think you put it quite well at the beginning, challenge vs progression. Level scaling sacrifices the feeling of progression while enforcing a certain level of constant challenge. I think there is literally no redemption for the vanilla implementation if level scaling. You lose the progression and the challenge being constant bores the player. But I think there are soft level scaling that can be used for games where progression is not that important to the game. However, if you can increase challenge in any other way, you should do it that way. Level scaling simply costs too much for the player. It costs immersion, progression, their ability to optimize their path, area identity etc.
I love this and wish I would have found your channel earlier. I’ve always loved discussing games and breaking down specific pieces I love or feel need improvement. The latter is more fun as it furthers the convo into hypothetical resolutions. Watching you gives me those vibes except it removes the amateur hypotheticals lol. Keep it up!
i love your channel sm. i think i can speak for everyone here we want to know everything about fallout. even little conversations you can remember, little notes whatever! we want it all
World state changes that make early game areas much more terrifying are another tool designers have. Hollow Knight pulls this off very well with its first area, as midway through the story progression the infection spreads and fills the place with new, challenging enemies and blocks off certain pathways.
I used to like fixed systems exclusively, but some recent releases have convinced me that scaling can be good. Two examples are the TBRPG Battle Brothers and the AAA Cyberpunk 2077 as of the latest update. Battle Brothers does an amazing job of scaling and I really recommend it to anybody who wants to see good scaling in action. You still feel like you're making progress and becoming stronger because individual enemies are mostly fixed in terms of their stats, but instead their quantity increases up to a certain cap. It also wisely splits between player-based scaling and time-based scaling on different axes, so you get both at the same time. The world as a whole scales to time so players can outpace it or fall behind, while other aspects of content (e.g. quests) scale more to player strength so there's a reliable level of difficulty there. Cyberpunk 2077 is an interesting case study because it's had two versions, one with fixed levels and one with scaling. The former actually felt bad because it meant that there were certain gangs in the city that were objectively weaker than others, which doesn't really make sense in the lore. Certain gangs that are supposed to be fearsome and powerful were in low-level areas, so by mid-game you were blowing them away with a sneeze and you never got a chance to learn about their unique mechanics in-depth. Really, no faction "deserved" to be in the low-level areas because none of them are equivalent to rats or kobolds or another common low-level enemy. Now the game has been updated to use a scaling method instead. Several things were apparent to me. You can now go anywhere you want rather than being forced to follow a more linear progression path. That helps make the game so much more replayable, since you are free to explore in any direction to take on whatever content you feel like. The other big thing I noticed is that I started feeling the differences between the different factions in gameplay terms. Rather than simply having strong and weak enemies, now I was learning archetypes for each gang and picking up on their distinct fighting styles so I could change my tactics up in response. It was a much more satisfying experience. I also like how there are no longer "early-game" and "late-game" gangs and factions. Instead of blowing past the early-game gangs and then never thinking about them again, they remained on my mind throughout the game, which was good for both atmosphere and variety. Although there were some issues with feeling like I was always struggling to keep my head above water vs. the scaling, they still helped you feel a sense of progression by giving you access to new abilities and mechanics as you level up. You gain an advantage over the scaling if your build is powerful and has strong synergies. The only people who fall behind the scaling are those without any synergies or sensible builds, and those people could just lower the difficulty. I think any system that allows for these synergies will have no problem with players feeling like they're falling behind the scaling, since it's not just a question of stat comparisons anymore -- the mechanics go beyond that.
I appreciate the nuanced solution. It makes each player's version of the world slightly different and could add some replay value. I'm not sure on the value of setting encounter level to player level while it's within the encounter range, but I like that the encounters have a min and max and love that they remember what level you were when you first encountered them.
I skipped the Khan base because I wasn't able to take them on. Coming back with power armour and wiping them out with ease was immensely satisfying. One of my favourite rpg memories ever
My problem with static leveled enemies is usually that it feels extremely arbitrary, especially in games that have action combat. It really makes it feel like the skill of using the action combat is less relevant, when you can simply outlevel your opponents. The worst examples of this are usually "recolored" enemies that suddenly deal more damage. That is not "difficulty", that is "gating". I think this touches on the much broader question of whether an "RPG" really is defined by having progression systems, or should it be defined by the way you can guide the story in many different ways with a "blank slate" character. With games getting more and more complex, there is less and less need for variables to dictate gameplay.
Then why lie to the player by putting an XP bar in the game to start with? It really seems like level scaling is just a way to put the sugar of leveling up in without actually affecting the action game design. Just give players new guns or something instead if they don't actually get anything for putting in the grind.
@@-Zakedodead I agree to a certain extent, levels are everywhere today and I think they shouldn't be. Still, a lot of modern action RPGs today use them as a means for horizontal progression, so they're still important in those games. The problem arises when a game tricks you into thinking you're supposed to grind instead of learning the mechanics.
"Recoloured" enemies are interesting. There's two other factors at play that should be taken into account. The first is dev time, obviously. Designing an entire new enemy is very difficult for video games. For something like pen and paper D&D where all you need is a description, some stats, and an artist, having a gamut of possible enemies for every player level in the game is viable. But for a video game, where each enemy requires hundreds of hours of modelling, animation, and voice acting, the same thing is much more time intensive. So from this perspective, 'recolours' aren't intended to gate so much as make efficient use of time. The second thing is that there are solutions. One I quite like is how Killing Floor 2 approached its difficulty levels, which in turn could be used for 'recolours'. As you turn up the difficulty, you face the same enemy types, but each enemy gets an additional attack type. A 'grunt' enemy that previously just had a melee attack on basic difficulty then gains a short leap on the next difficulty, and a flurry attack on the difficulty above. This could easily be applied to levelled versions of basic enemies, not only making them more interesting to fight, but also helping by tutorialising the player through exposing them to the early mechanics.
I prefer unleveled or fixed leveling, it feels natural to let players explore harder areas, get destroyed and make then train the skills so they can finally get around. Or just beat an enemy too hard for them and get a really powerful reward for their effort.
Personally, my preferred method to play through The Outer Worlds was to go directly to Monarch, fight my way across the planet, and then continue the game. I wish there had been more level-inappropriate zones
I agree 100% about limited level scaling, if it's the kind of game where level scaling makes sense. I played a fair bit of Oblivion, back in the day, and, like most Bethesda games, I couldn't bring myself to play it more than once because it just felt so stale. Then a mod came out called Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul (OOO), and it brought the game back to life! It did a few things, but the main one was going over every dungeon, NPC and loot table and giving them limits, so they didn't just level with you all the time. It took the unlimited level scaling and made it limited, and the game was easily 10X better for it.
I do like the static+ranged system for regional or one-time encounters, but one thing I think would be interesting and could use the dynamic level scaling system is in repeat encounters with the same NPC or set of NPCs, like say there is an opposing faction or antagonist who grows along with you as you become a greater threat, and the more powerful you become the stronger they get to match you until the game finale, this might even be a companion who betrays you for instance, and in that case the dynamic scaling adds to the sense of progression, but in that there is other people out there building their strength till you meet them or getting stronger every time you see them in ways that make sense for the plot.
I agree I think also for me what I personally like is a game that always has something you can level up to in regards to power the player has.. but at the same time still gives a challenge to the player. To explain what I mean, in The Legend Of Zelda, Breath of The Wild, there are enemies like Lynel's. From when you met them its ridiculous how hard they are but as you "level up" and get better Gear you eventually have the ability to beat that enemy, it's not a walk in the park but what was once a insurmountable obstacle, is now something the player can beat, but was still challenging to master Steam rolling enemies can be fun but only to a degree. I agree with you, I feel that semi fixed leveling is alot better, the player should feel powerful by the end, but should the player be able to steam roll everyone by the end of the game? I kinda wonder what's your take on this? Thanks also a very good vid!!❤
I would say Arcanum was a special type of level scaling. There's a word for it, basically means it makes sense to the fiction but I can't put my finger on it. I had some D&D games where I tracked notoriety for level scaling where if your enemies know who you are they would devote an appropriate amount of resources to take you out. Or a bandit group that knows your a group of badasses by either reputation or by just how well your equipped would just pretend to be travellers or something. Which is also a kind of level scaling too.
You could say that such level-scaling is 'diegetic', but I've never actually heard it be described in that way. Ludo-narrative consonance/dissonance means something subtly different, describing whether the implications of the game rules cohere with the narrative thematically rather than whether or not they cause story continuity problems in a literal sense, but is commonly misused to mean the latter.
@@globalistgamer6418 I think I agree with diegetic being the better term here, but I also think the term ludo-narrative dissonance is broad enough to be used to go after continuity or general differences that aren't just linked to themes, regardless of where the term originated. In particular in RPGs, specifically when referring to gear progression and leveling, I think discontinuity *can* hurt the thematic resonance between narrative and gameplay.
I've been thinking a lot about level scaling recently, especially in the context of being able to progress through the main storyline at least somewhat in a non-linear fashion. I'm a big Dragon Age fan and Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite, but as I keep replaying it over the years I notice more and more things that I think were designed poorly. The game goes to such lengths to tell you "you're free now to go do whichever main quest you want in any order" but then there are gating combat encounters set in the areas the designers don't actually want you to explore early on. Each area has its own enemy level ranges, and initially I thought that was a great way to approach level scaling, but then I realized that unless that range is quite high (at least in the areas that are main-quest related), then it takes away agency from the player because they're not *actually* able to complete each main quest in whatever order they want. I've been thinking whether the fix for this would be simply a bigger level range that effectively goes from the level players are when finishing the intro, up to close to the level cap. Or if there's a more elegant solution to enemy levels and scaling that would still make sense within the game's setting and story, while allowing the player to progress through the main story in whatever order they want. I know that in a game that offers more solutions than just straight up combat (at least for the main quests), then it's easier to go through even higher level areas to complete the main quest, because solving the quests through alternative ways that aren't combat is something baked into the design of the game. This approach I feel keeps combat more to the "realistic" level that is expected in more dangerous areas, while still allowing the player to complete the questline in the area if they are willing to find alternative approaches. I would love to hear your thoughts about level scaling in this context of a non-linear main storyline, Tim! Is there a particular solution that comes to mind?
I also have mixed feelings about level scaling. Players want to feel powerful; they want to return to old zones and defeat enemies with a single shot. I was considering implementing a 5-level cap on scaling to allow this, while also extending playtime in those zones.
Why design a huge, immersive world full of skills to learn, people to meet and places to explore... and then design a leveling system that makes me weaker if I take the time to do so? Thank you for your thoughts, sir!
A subject matter with many interesting points to have a conversation :) I remember Skyrim being one of the first games openly (as, clearly presenting it as a feature instead of hiding it like RE4 did with adaptive AI and difficulty) going for this scaling within ranges (iirc Oblivion had a mix of set levels and level scaling depending on the encounters being in the open world, side dungeons or main quest-related). One of the oversights was the character progression system -being a chaotic mess- being inadequate with this design, as you got 1 perk point per level to increment *any* skill including non-combat ones. So leveling non-combat skills in a row could make fights suddenly rise in difficulty because the enemies scale with the player's *level* , and since most of the game is centered around action combat and dungeon delving that could lead to an unpleasant experience. Still I think scaling within ranges is a great compromise for everyone, we just have to be careful to scale the appropriate parameters and take into account that the tools at the players' disposal can also have a "range" of sorts for a given level. Speaking of tools and options, an elegant way to do full level scaling imho would be to still have that notion of varying difficulty, in different (non-exclusive) ways: One would simply be permanent bonus or malus, say with N as the player level/stats (or whatever you decide to take as reference for scaling) you go "enemy type A is weak fodder so it will always scale at N-x ; enemy type B must be a challenge so it will always scale at N+y". Another way would be to play with the available options to overcome encounters: Let's put our character against a big huge dragon. At level 1 your character has his basic attack and/or damage spell and the dragon (also level 1 with scaling) still has a big health pool, elemental breath attacks, maybe some magic and physical resistances... Despite scaling it's still a *near*-impossible challenge. And here it becomes interesting because the player can either 1) come back later when they have access to skills helping them mitigate the dragon attacks and bypass its defences (yet with scaling the dragon will still be a tough encounter stats-wise) or 2) with preparation, -cheese tactics- emergent gameplay and a healthy dose of sheer luck, manage to defeat the dragon early and get cool rewards, like the true trickster hero they are (of course the real trickster is the game designer who hid that fire resistance potion and enough materials to craft half a dozen spike traps in the surrounding area) . As an ardent proselyte of horizontal progression I particularly like that latest approach, as it allows encounters to be relevant in different ways and encourage the player to engage and understand the systems at play. Of course this is far from one size fits all, you can adjust those levers and many others to ensure the players don't get bored, as long as you learn from Skyrim by scaling enemies to a point of reference *really* indicative of the character's actual capacities. Also don't forget your intentions and target audience, even designing with utmost care and consideration you can't please everyone and players will always prefer one way over another, so it's better to stick with one choice and execute it well. For the anecdote, real time with pause always buggered me because it highlights the huge discrepancy in micromanagement between character classes some systems have (looking at you DnD...) : Either every action is impactful and you go turn-based, or macro and positioning prime over individual actions and you go real-time; if half your party just auto-attacks while the other half requires you to pause after every action to plan their next move it feels very unsatisfying and the auto-pause options menu should be absurdly detailed and go on for kilometers to make it actually useful and a smooth experience😅 To end that unending digressive rambling, compare real time strategy games and see how Total War and WarCraft (just the real time battles and units, not the building and expansion loops) have very different pacing and feel just from their respective balance of macro/micro-management. RTWP CRPGs sometimes felt like playing both at the same time with clashing design philosophies 😵💫 Then again, that's mainly a class design problem.
Tim I had no idea you worked on Outer Worlds. I love that game so much. I remember when the game first came out I played for more that 24 hours straight and needed to make myself take a break 😂. What a Fantastic experience and world.
What are your thoughts on games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 which have soft-capped power scaling, where beyond a certain point you get diminishing returns on stat investment? So you can still feel a sense of progression, but you don't ever become so powerful that enemies become completely trivial even if their level is fixed.
@@Soren59 That's a fact for anyone with 30+ years experience in gamedev, critical thinking and ability to use formal logic. But ignorant sh*t eaters and kiddos, infants, they like it, of course, they got used to eat unoriginal hollow trash like DS. It is literally the worst series of all time. 1/10 game. It's ridiculous that people think of it as "hardcore" as well, kids who never played hardcore games of the 70s-90s. Insane world with billions of biorobots and conformists.
It's a complicated problem, and I am not sure there is an optimal solution to it. The advantage is that a given content is accessible for a wider spectrum of levels, and that it allows a system in which people can play together even though they are of vastly differing levels. The disadvantage is the lack of perceived progression. Allowing the player to choose isn't good either, as it dilutes the experience. A level range for enemies (min-max) isn't a particularly good solution either, because if you are in the range, the enemy scales with you. If you always happen to be in that range, it means you have a full enemy level scaling experience. What I've seen from Skyrim and Fallout 4 is not a bad idea: Enemies have fixed levels, and based on your level, they will spawn semi-randomly to fit your level, without being exactly your level. The advantage is that you'll see "big bad bandit", "medium bandit" and "normal bandit" in a group, meaning you have enemies which you surpass, some which are on par with you, and maybe on that is above you and is more challenging. Scaling the amount of enemies in a given spawn-group is one way to scale enemies, without making the player lose the sense of progression too. Another way to solve this problem is to rethink the concept of "level" itself, and how the power of the player and mobs are designed fundamentally. The player could simply just start from a power level of 100 and end up with 200, meaning mobs that are 80 strong are challenging at the start and easier (but not negligibly weak) at the end. In many games levels is highly determinant of power levels, even punishing lower level ones severely.
gosh I love that. I think if a game benefits from having a leveling system that’s the way to do it. I keep waiting for someone to think of a clever way to give a character a sense of growth and progress without using a traditional leveling system but lord knows how to work that out 🤷♂️ i suspect we all crave it but it would require so many other traditional design changes I suspect.. like rewriting the book
I would probably have completely fixed enemy levels. But lower level areas also containing some "outposts" of much higher level enemies. This makes it rewarding to clear out low level regions later in the game too. The fixed level help with guiding the player by blocking of paths with enemies that are too risky to pass at that stage of the game.
About the landing pad on Monarch - yeah, that's exactly what I did. And when I saw how dangerous they were, I left! I was also playing on hard, on easier difficulties you might be able to take them...
My trouble often is more with power levels themselves. Such as when D&D level 2 has TWICE the hit points as 1st level. In some cases this lets a level 2 brigand take a crossbow bolt in the chest without flinching, but a level 1 would collapse instantly. I know there are massive differences between ordinary tennis players and athletic world champions, but not the 20 levels D&D portray. You'd basically have to stop ANY encounters with humans after leve 3 or so. A skyrim bandit is either annoying or ragequit frustation, just because of level above their head says so.
D&D rules have a lot of issues at lower levels especially. I think the statistical instability of individual rolls is even worse than this, since the effect of luck overwhelms tactics. I guess a lot of these decisions were likely made to aid the practicality of running PnP sessions, with DMs being able to apply human judgement to smooth over some of the absurdities, but they aren't an ideal fit for CRPGs where the ease of these factors is reversed.
Yeah d20 is so random and overwhelms any skill ranks you have. Sometimes I steal the GURPS 3d6 instead, then toss a coin if I hit 3x6 or 3x1. Heads mean +2- tails mean +1- so you reach those natural 1 or 20 also. If coin was heads up before tossing, YOU decide to toss the coin or only turn it over, tails up means you MUST toss the coin.
How does something like supernova come in to this? Are stats just raised across the board for all enemies? I also love the more immersive aspects of that difficulty like limited fast travel, limited saving, having to sleep, having to consume food/drink. I really like these survival type modes. What's the thought behind making a difficulty mode like that?
Interestingly, in Outer Worlds, I often felt like the Upgrading of my weapons was a treadmill of baseline competency. Leveling up made me actively deal less damage, so I had to deal with expensive upgrade costs to keep being able to melee the same kind of raider-style enemies properly. I prefer a fixed level in a game, coming from Tabletop RPG's/D&D, where the level corresponding to the power level of a threat, not just it being a number. A CR 10 Dragon had a lot of more going on in terms of its capabilities to the player, and its world, than a CR 4 Wyvern. It gives me an idea of my place in the world as well, when I know I'm taking on more conceptually exciting threats in a game. To a degree, why I dislike palette swap enemies, as they are just low level concept enemies put at bigger level (Goblin to [Elemental] Goblin, etc).
I generally like some form of level scaling for things to become more difficult, just because a lot of RPGs these days become much too easy at later levels.
Isometric RPGs like Fallout that move through a sequence of set piece locations don't need level scaling, but with open world games, the tradeoffs are theoretically worth it to me to include scaling to increase replayability and freedom.
The worst of it to me was level scaling loot, even rewards for quests. I think if the player is able to defeat a higher level enemy, or break into a challenging area and steal stuff, early on at a low level they should be rewarded well for that with items that are far above their current level rather than scaling the loot down so as to preserve the game balance and economy. Maybe lower level items and quest rewards could be leveled up to the player level, but not brought down to the player level if they succeed in completing a difficult challenge.
_"The worst of it to me was level scaling loot, even rewards for quests."_ this is how Divinity Original Sin 2 worked at release (i dont know how it works today because they patched a lot and i have not played since then) and it was a major problem
I like fixed or flexible, I dont like it when basic NPC's with bad items hit as hard as a Deathclaw. I also dont like it when the Deathclaw is not scary at low levels, I want some NPC's to scare me. Let me have some power fantasy, I do understand some quest points may need some kind of auto levels to add challenge.
You can also approach it in a way that you scale the number of enemies without making individual enemies stronger. If you're level 5 and you meet a level 5 enemy, it's challenging, if you're level 15 you meet 3 level 5 enemies in the same location - each individual one is now trivial to defeat, but to defeat them all is a tactical challenge.
My favourite system is actually when enemies/areas have a minimum level, but no maximum level. I like the idea of some places being too dangerous for me, and having to come back to them. I also like it when, through either clever tactics or cheese, I manage to beat an encounter that I definitely shouldn't have been able to. However, I'm also not a fan of the inverse difficulty curve that many RPGs have, especially since it often means that, past a certain point, virtually all challenge disappears. I started enjoying The Witcher 3 a lot more when I turned on enemy upscaling, and a pack of wolves went from a minor annoyance to a real threat.
It can work if it's done as a mix, perhaps. It's boring when all of the enemies feel exactly the same all of the time. I love your idea of 'pinning' enemies, hehe.
I don't like level scaling. I know overleveling is an issue, but when all enemies level up with you - it completely defeats the whole purpose of leveling. Also, after all - you learn and practice because you want life to be easier. I don't see why games should not follow that logic. I do like your idea for min/max level for a given location tho. I wouldn't even mind if it didn't freeze the level, but instead updated it on each visit.
I personally prefer that enemies level up only if they are weaker than me, if they have higher level keep them like that so either i have a challenging fight or i can comeback and have nice fight, not a fan of crushing enemies so easily, although implementation is paramount in both cases (fixed level, level scaling) I'll put two examples which has happened to me with both systems: 1-Fixed level: This happened with New Vegas, i wanted to play the Old World Blues DLC as soon as possible, meaning i went in there lower level, it was challenging (really challenging at times), but i beat it, here is the thing when i got out i was God, must of the rest of the game and DLCs where a walk in the park, i had to start over because of that. 2-Level Scaling: Witcher 3 levels weaker enemies to your level but are certain situations were it went stupid hard, there was a mission well advanced in the game where you had to fight a lot of rats in a narrow space, yes only rats, but those 15 or maybe 10 rats where like level 40, they kill you instantly luckily i could disable the leveling pass the rats and turn it back on.
I think the New Vegas DLCs would have been better off as completely self-contained experiences (similar to how the Neverwinter Nights expansions worked) and are best off treated that way. Other than Honest Hearts, they are very unique campaigns that IMO are better than the main game (Dead Money, especially) but, as you say, they aren't very compatible in power level.
Hey Tim, now that you bring Arcanum to the table. How plausible is to see an enhanced edition or a remaster or something? I dont even know who holds the rights to the IP. But I'd love to have a version that runs smoothly on a modern machine without having to use fan made patches. Keep being awesome!
I didn't know that, but that actually makes it seem MORE plausible, since Microsoft now owns both Activision and Obsidian (though I doubt it is considered a worthwhile focus for them).
While most people can agree level scaling is frustrating, fixed levels / limited scaling also have their lot of issues, and one of them is that players can simply grind to overcome any difficulty. Pokemon is a very good example of this: when they don't manage to beat a gym trainer, most children are going to think "Ok let's grind a bit more and come back later". Players usually tend to grind instead of actually learning the game's mechanics and getting objectively better at the game. This is especially true in games where players gain a lot more power each level. To continue the comparison with Pokemon, let's look Cassette Beasts. Creatures become stronger as they level up, but a low level creature can still easily beat a high level one if played incorrectly. The level difference will give a slight advantage to a creature but it won't just simply win them the fight. TLDR: If players grind too much when faced with a difficult situation instead of actually learning from their mistakes and learning the game's mechanics, a good solution is to reduce the amount of power gained each level.
I usually turn on the option to scale enemies up to my level if it is an option, but not down to my level. I like doing all side quest and exploring, but in some games, this leads to overleveling the main story quite easily, which can lead to trivial fights with little or no challange so it feels like waste of time doing through them.
In some games it works but generally really agressive level scaling for me results in no sense of progression, combat fatigue (sometimes i just wanna roll some mooks to get a break) and its also weird when 10 godzillas suddenly roam around the starter town.
Level scaling can really break games, im thinking of Oblivion, but in it's own way it can be really fun to beat the broken scaling once you know what you are doing.
I have been thinking of implementation of regressive leveling system. It does not make logical sense in the way people aquire skill progression. It does however make sense in meta that players engage. A small portion of gain such as ability increases for leveling would still apply. The large portion would require a reduction on skills that make a charcter well rounded. A specialist that has less impact on being capable in other situations. The players would have to compensate for that speciality, and rearrange other skills, companions, equipment, ect.
I like it best when the game is always a challenge but at the start some areas are too difficult but as you level up those difficult areas become easier but still a challenge. Every area and enemy in a game should pose a threat to the player in my opinion.
I generally prefer beef gates over level scaling but I wonder if it's viable to sort of mix things where overworld would had set regional levels but instanced dungeons would be semi-level scaled where mobs will have minimum levels but if you were overleveled in comparison the dungeon would spawn stronger monsters
I never understood the issues people had with Oblivion monster scaling (it's player levelling that is atrocious). Unlike Fallout, it makes no sense to make some places hostile to lower level characters - it's relatively liveable land all across, minding demon invasion. So enemy scaling enabled the world to feel so much more open to the player, while retaining meaningful combat throughout the experience. It also makes levelling being rewarded with new enemy types regardless of places a player gets into. Level scaling is a tool and it serves its purpose in Oblivion, while its absence serves its purpose in Fallout.
Right. With a combat oriented rpg some kind of a level scaling is a must in my opinion. Maybe it doesn't matter as much if game is mostly about the story. They did it pretty well in Wiz 8 - despite the scaling you will feel powerful when you progress, it just avoids "powerful" from translating to sloppy.
Having a top class designer/programmer talk about topics I've wondered how professionals approach for 2 decades now is truly a privelage, thank you for sharing these thoughts and stories. This might as well be my favourite channel at the moment.
It is my favorite channel for sure. i learn soo much from Uncle T.
A friend of mine put it this way: I don't lift weights for the weights to get heavier. I think I agree.
But you do need to use progressive overload (lifting heavier) if you want to keep getting stronger.
@mauree1618 But the plates still weigh the same, you just use more of them. A 25 pound plate never weighs 5% more just because you've leveled up. I think a better way to do level scaling is not to make low level enemies tougher as you progress, but to gradually replace them with tougher types of enemies.
@@mauree1618 That's IF your goal is to get "infinitely stronger". Most people, especially in video-games, don't want to just "infinitely get stronger". they want to "feel" stronger than they were before.
It may make sense in some games or systems to include some form of level scaling, but too many companies and devs use this in the wrong way/at the wrong time leading to experiences feeling worse than they otherwise would.
It's why games that focus on "knowledge" progression tend to feel good as you play them. Souls games in general are amazing at this. Early on everything feels overwhelming because of the lack of knowledge and experience but as you get further in, you get better and better. Sure your gear and level goes up but most of the time the difference isn't that big. What changes dramatically is the player's knowledge of the world and mechanics.
Even if you start the game from scratch, you'll FEEL more powerful even though you have the same stats/gear as the first time around.
It also allows proficient players to tackle challenges outside their "expected" range.
Yeah, it's not a perfect analogy and there's a lot of nuance, it seems like you just have to pick the difficulty that makes sense for the type of game and audience.
I remember playing TES Oblivion, which has a level scaling that follows you.
It was the first PC RPG of the type I had played, so I did not figure out until quite late, that you could lie down and sleep, and that this would allow you to level.
I finally figured this out in a quest where I had infiltrated a bandit camp.
I ended up sleeping within their camp, leveling up like 10 levels, and this turned the three bandits into seven or more, with quite a tough chief.
I remember feeling quite miffed about this at the time.
Not to mention all the bandits that suddenly have full suits of Daedric or glass armor. Hell even a full suit of steel plate still takes a lot of work to build
Sorry but I don't remember enemies respawning/scaling while you are in the cell with them. Speaking of the Oblivion scaling, if you're playing as a mage or a warrior character the enemies aren't too hard. The issue is that you can't level however you want, especially if you level Speechcraft or Merchantile (though they aren't that useful in Oblivion because you can accrue a lot of fame just by doing quests as the mentioned fighter or mage to increase disposition with lawful NPCs and the majority of them will like you enough to tell you quest information and allow to buy houses)
There was also issue of HP gained on level ups depending on your current endurance, so if you not leveling heavy armor, block and repair (or whatever it was called) to +5 multipliers from level 1, all this health is just gone, you'll never get it back, even if you level your endurance to 100 later. Oh man, what a garbage system it was.
Hi Tim! Thanks a lot for answering my question!🙂 I've always been a fixed-level kind of gamer as well. I remember how it broke my immersion when, in Oblivion, my high-level character used to come across puny bandits... who wore insane Daedric armor and wielded swords so expensive they could've just sell them and retire from thieving! 😀Anyway, your comments are as insightful, clever and amusing, as usual. Thanks so much again! Really love this channel!
EDIT: oh, and regarding the mixed system used in The Outer Worlds (a game I recently played and really enjoyed), I think it's elegant and smart, in the sense that it kind of manages to get "the best of both worlds" (the feeling progression of a fixed-level system, and the lasting challenge of level scaling) but, nevertheless, I still think it's more realistic that... well, a Deathclaw is always a Deathclaw and its HP and the damage it deals are "objectively" the same regardless of your XP 🙂
The Oblivion issue is also in Skyrim. There are levels for dungeons but enemies also scale up to a point. They also have range limits. It's obviously trying to fix the previous games issues but creates it's own. It definitely has the problem of gear scaling meaning you could hit dungeons where you were higher level than the enemies but the game gave most of them ebony weapons. This totally breaks the economy because a single dungeon could buy a house easily.
The good thing about both games is that Bethseda encouraging modding means you can mess about with this in so many ways to fit personal preference that you can change the entire dynamics of the game. It's such a tricky thing to balance.
In Oblivion I always felt I would have been better if bandits don't scale very far, but instead once you've leveled up high, and have progressed far in the story, you face entirely different opponents, like daemonic/daedric squads sent to kill you. But at the same time you still face regular bandits ocassionaly so you feel progression. However they could implement story elements that would rationalize why you start seeing new more powerful opponents. (eg The forces of Oblivion taking you more seriously or a faction puts a bounty on your head so veteran skilled mercanaries now target you, monsters that have slept dormant for a millenial get awoken across the land because of some main story event half way through the game)
A great concoction of encounters makes for a great and memorable experience.
- At low character level, low-level enemies are necessary in order to facilitate levelling and progression; to have something achieveable.
- At low character level, high-level enemies either provide a bruised ego and "I'll be back when I level up" imprint on the player, or potentially even an achievable challenge at that point for experienced players.
- At high character level, low-level enemy encounters (particularly en masse) are great for showing the player how far they've progressed relative to their starting power, and make for a fun spree.
- At high character level, high-level enemy encounters are good for world-building/setting, such that the player feels like they can deal with foes so powerful that nobody else can.
This might mostly just be a Skyrim problem and not always applicable to all RPGs but one thing i hate about level scaling is if i want to focus on non combat abilities, perks, and skills like crafting or speech. These are usually long term investments i immediately get punished for in the short term. By increasing my blacksmithing for example i don't really get to increase my damage and armor as the armor/weapon improving is really weak early game while all the enemies get way better gear, armor and just over all stats so you kinda feel like in order to have a chance in combat with these builds you have to go back to the old reliable stealth archer approach.
Yes but that's why you control when you level up. If you smith 300 iron daggers, maybe wait a bit, try and buy a weapon of a higher tier( dwarven/elven etc.
@@valentinchappa6702 I'd say it is a bad design if you have to control when you level up and what skills you improve so that the same areas aren't crowded with harder enemies. It makes focusing on anything other than combat punished two times - the first time is that you're not getting stronger and the second time is that your enemies are getting stronger. And it happening is not justified by the game in any serious attempt, so it's also bad for building a believable, consistent world. Oh, you've gone to sleep? Liches apparently invaded forests and bandits got a massive delivery of dwarven equipment, probably because they'd heard of you becoming so competent smith.
This is topical with Cyberpunk 2077 recently going from leveled zones to across-the-board level scaling in it's 2.0 update, thanks for going over it. As annoying as it was to go a single block over and get pummeled by different gang members in similar clothes to the weaker gang, or to be able to wipe out main quest bosses easily because I had over-leveled, I think I prefer it to the current system where the game seems stagnant, every fight is the same difficulty from a subjective standpoint, and I can't give wipe out simple mobs or give myself a challenge by going to a different zone anymore.
Its an absolute pleasure to listen to a legendary designer share his thoughts.
I personally like games where progression adds more utilities and playstyles and ways to deal with situations, but leaves damage and health static across all levels. Multiplayer shooters like battlefield or planetside 2 do a real good job at that, but i also really enjoy Fallout 4 with the 'scourge' and 'true damage' mod, that also remove health and damage scaling. Instead of warping physics to hit harder the PC gets better at handling their guns and gets access to more tools. It also makes spending perks into social skills less punishing
It comes down to implementation.
I usually have more questions to leveling itself. In my opinion games often give too much power every level, which not only creates power creep, but also throws away my immersion. That issue is more prevalent in first person RPGs like Skyrim and modern Fallout, but to some degree also goes to the isometric games too. I think that you do not need to see your numbers grow dramatically to feel the progression. Less is more.
Also flat progression is something that i find very interesting. Like finding new ways to deal with challenges instead of just growing your numbers bigger to the point when you can simply stat-check everything and not think about more creative solutions. That is most likely why i was much more engaged with combat in Baldur's Gate 3 at lower levels - as before the game rewarded me for using my surroundings and creating traps with explosive barrels or pushing enemies from the edges, while in the later part it mainly came down to hitting enemies a lot and throwing many fireballs, which is simply not that interesting.
I like flat progression as well if for no other reason than it feels less incongruous with the reality of the setting. When you have HP bloat it feels very videogamey, when you have gear progression that leads to longer time to kill, it feels more logically consistent, even if in actual gameplay it isn't always radically different.
It's best for sure imo though, when the difficulty and progression is tied to things like new abilities or challenges rather than bloated stats.
@@austinglueck2554 also as a part of flat progression and difficulty management - i like the idea of rare finite tools that are a bit overpowered. Like the explosive barrels during the first act of BG3. Finding them is a great boon and can help you out greatly in a pinch, but there is a limited number of them - so you can't just spam using them whenever like a fireball spell. I had so much fun using those barrels to be able to win encounters that i would otherwise either avoid or would have much more trouble with. But because they are finite - their use always felt meaningful - i was always aware that if i decide to use it now then i might not have it when i'll need it later. So even if it trivialized a few fights for me - the game didn't feel trivial because of them. Instead it felt good - like the game gave me tools that allowed to go beyond the power level of my group and let me to decide when and how to use that limited powers. Not only it makes the game less videogamey and predictably formulaic, but also it's a great reward that doesn't permanently increase your power level and as such doesn't lead towards power creep.
i like level scaling in small doses, where i don’t notice it unless i’m looking for it. the limited level scaling you described definitely makes a lot of sense to me in that regard. i think the big thing i don’t like about scaling is that scaled enemies you meet later in the game often don’t feel any smarter or more capable - they just have better stats and equipment. as a result, fighting them at high levels feels like the designers dragging the encounters out beyond their natural endpoints, rather than feeling like appropriate challenges for high levels.
It might be harder to implement, but personally I think I like the Arcanum style best. I like "a deathclaw is a deathclaw," but also as you progress in story, fame, etc the world is getting more dangerous or more dangerous factions are noticing you. Makes narrative sense and helps fight the urge to metagame. Otherwise I like it when the player can't really tell it's happening. I believe Baldur's Gate had a system where there were several pools of random encounters based on your party level. The higher level pool would spawn deadlier creatures like ogre magi or dread wolves more often while the lower level pool would spawn creatures like gibberlings or xvarts more often. It made a lot more sense than bandits in deadric armor or level 99 Draugr .
Always hated level scaling in games I want to feel powerful after gaining several levels. I do like your solution though, and wish more games use your idea.
Could do with a part 2 on designing levels/scaling for encounters in multiplayer games like MMORPGs, as that seems like a whole other beast.
I love and agree with all of this!I’m curious: how does this affect your approach to DLC’s?
DLCs are planned in advance. Not the exact content, but the xp, skill, and perk advancement curves are plotted out. Then when we make the DLC content, we know what to expect from player abilities, and we can increase the level cap with a bit more confidence.
Level scaling that affects everything makes it feel like you never get stronger. Its a huge issue in WoW leveling now where because everything scales nothing ever feels easier. You never feel more powerful until you reach max level and can outgear stuff. It feels horrible to never feel strong while leveling.
Level scaling, random loot and aggressive respawn (smart respawn can be pretty good decision (by acts\chapters, plot triggers, environment changes, etc..)) are the most annoying things in RPGs
Don't forget levelled gear.
@@benl2140 Yes, but this level scaling type thing.
Spot on, limited level scaling works great! I hate that when I get to level 99 now everything even the lowly rats are level 99 fire breathing laser eyed monsters. Like.. no. God no. The way you described it is perfect.
My morning ritual 🙏
I prefer fixed levels or your limited level scaling idea but I think in the end of the day it's really up to the focus of the game and its intended playerbase.
Fixed levels and limited scaling can do wonders for world building and role playing meanwhile pure scaling really caters to players that are more interested in the gameplay and the continuous challenge than in getting immersed in the world and the story so both have their merits in the right circumstances with the right purpose in mind.
I loved how fixed TOEE was. My favourite playthrough I did with only 2 characters (fighter and bard). The beginning at the gatehouse was brutally hard, then my guys got super powerful and then I had these 2 mega heroes taking on the temple .
From my experience as a player, level scaling takes away the fun of upgrading equipment and leveling your character. Fixed levels feel much more rewarding, it's nice to get destroyed by enemies and then later on destroy then back because you got so much more powerful. I think many games opt for level scaling because it's a cheap way of balancing a game, whereas in fixed levels you have to carefully plan how the player is going to progress
I think the first time I encountered a system with limited level scaling (pretty much what you described) was in Wizardry 8. Although I am not huge a fan of level scaling in general, I agree that this version of it achieves a nice balance between progression and challenge.
Each of these videos is literally a little gem, Tim is a legend
The Gothic 2 Night if the Raven approach to this is unbeaten in my opinion. World areas are locked off by the sheer force some enemies hold and you must find a way past them to unlock a new area. But as the story progresses, not the previous enemies are scaled, but new ones are introduced into old areas. This doesn't break your sense of progression and still leaves the door open to increase difficulty as the player's level rises.
Thanks for the opinion tip Tim. I never liked level scaling cause it ruins the sense of progression and it also forces certain difficulty level to players. It also reduces upgrade options cause players are forced to choose the best upgrade option after levelling up.
I am fully aware of the issue of getting OP of not implementing level scaling but after some thoughts, it's not as bad as I thought cause:
1. It's player's choice so it's player responsibility if they are getting too strong.
2. Related to #1 , this allows player to design their difficulty. Do they want some challenge or just relaxing gameplay? let them decide.
3. When an area is too weak for player, player would be bored and they'd move somewhere else to find stronger area.
That being said, some games have XP limiter which prevents getting too much XP in certain chapter. The limit is raised after completing the chapter if I'm not mistaken. This is good solution to prevent getting OP but still allows player to level up.
I've always liked how skyrim did things. For example, giants were always level 15 throughout the whole game. Bandits leveled up with you only to an extent. After you got to a certain level the bandits stop leveling up.
I appreciate the idea that level scaling can make the game more fairly challenging overall, but it definitely is frustrating when the whole world scales and makes me feel like I'm being PUNISHED for leveling up. Plus, I like being able to get in over my head and push through for extra rewards, or to go back and clean shop in early areas if I ever want to just rapidly clear out old quests. Monster Hunter is my favorite example of no level scaling - you can fight any monster in any level of gear. If you want to challenge yourself you can use basic starter weapons or armor. If you want to just blow past weak monsters you can go into low rank with G-rank gear. But because GETTING that gear requires you to have killed monsters of that strength at least once, you always have to push into the challenge first in order to earn that power. Which makes the power feel even more appreciated.
The global level scaling comes from a good place - the world is open and the player could go anywhere so we want to make sure they aren't punished for their choices - but far too often it makes the entire world feel samey and forgettable. Only a handful of games with true scaling managed to make it really work, and those were the ones that scaled more based on overall progression of objectives than with character level. Stuff like Breath of the Wild, where enemies got stronger as you defeated more dungeons, but that in turn came with better weapons so your damage output never felt overly lacking.
Global scaling killed Oblivion for me when I realized that if I didn't level optimally I might not be able to fight anything without cheesing the fight, and it DEFINITELY killed my enjoyment of Diablo 3 when I realized that the only way to gain power was gear, and that leveling up made me weaker because I would just outlevel my lucky legendary drop.
My favorite level scaling (or lack thereof) was Dungeon Siege 2. I remember finding a locked door on what was a relatively easy area of the game. I lockpicked the door and was able to get inside this crypt. There were some graves in the crypt that I went to check out for loot. One of the graves had a super high level undead character. This thing came to life and straight brutalized my party. In that game if I remember correctly you dropped all your stuff where you died. So I had to go back to the area. But this undead character didn't wait for me at the crypt. He just stayed right by my last portal. It took a long time to be able to get out of there alive. I had to raise up many more levels before I even had a chance. But I loved that the enemies could follow you and weren't really bound to their starting location.
Damn, this channel is a goldmine of game design. Where were you all these years? How did I miss you?)
I like the limited level scaling you described. It feels like a good balance. I didn't pick up on levels getting fixed in the outer worlds, but it is one of my favorite games, and it worked great for me.
Thanks for the video! That is definitely my preferred way of doing level scaling as well. I think it's often referred to as rubber-banding. As in the level of the enemies will stretch a bit from their base but not too far.
That was actually my favorite part of OW so far. I landed in Monarch and got my butt handed to me, and then later I came back and was actually able to fight my way through to the other landing bay and that was really rewarding. I had no idea though that me going there early gave me an advantage. That's cool. I think that's a great balance between fixed levels and level scaling. Totally stealing that idea if I ever make an RPG :)
My favourite type of level scaling one that allows the upper range of (random) enemy power to adjust to player level. That way you can introduce stronger enemies, but not replace the weaker ones completely and thus not destroy the sense of progression. At the same time I am for fixed level encounters present in the game that do not scale to player level (for example on the critical path or in certain side quests).
The outer worlds was amazing one of my all time favorite games, can’t wait for avowed and outer worlds 2 which I hope you have a hand in creating! 😊
I think the recent assasins creed trilogy tackles this really well. It gives the player the option to choose between
Make all enemies scale to my level
Make enemies always 2 levels under me
Make all enemies 2 levels higher than me
Use dev's original intent with static levels per region
I can think of a few interesting case studies for level scaling and its complexities.
1) Final Fantasy 8. Enemy stats scaled at a slightly higher rate than PC stats per level, but a secondary system was available to PCs that empowered their stats through 'stealing' magic from monsters, and then 'equipping' it to the PCs. With only these two factors, the difficulty curve was relatively smooth with some end-game bosses being very challenging. But at around level 12-15, players were given the Card ability for the card mini-game. This would take an enemy on low health and turn them into a card, but interestingly, also prevented you from receiving XP for defeating the enemy. The optimal trick here was never to defeat all enemies with Card, while stealing their magic to empower yourself. Since enemies also got better magic to steal as the game went on, which gave you better stats, you would stay at around level 15 for most of the game (instead of reaching 70-99 depending on grind), and even end-game bosses were much easier.
2) Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. At character creation, you chose major vs minor skills, the idea being you'd intentionally pick the skills you wanted to be good at as major. Your character level increased for every 10 major skill level-ups, and enemies scaled with that. Obviously, selecting skills you didn't care to use as major and never levelled up kept the enemies at low level. Also, I think you only levelled up on resting, so some people completely skipped resting.
3) Skyrim. Skyrim tried to address Oblivion's problem by having enemies scale on your total skill level-ups. There were two problems with this (on launch, I don't know how its current scaling behaves as they implemented an 'infinite' levelling system since). Firstly, if you levelled up, say, blacksmithing or lock-picking, enemies would scale up. A player levelling up non-combat skills would suddenly discover combat was increasingly impossible for them. Oops. Additionally, the scaling algorithm for some reason scaled up damage, I suspect multiplicatively. If you were approaching 100 in all skills having explored most of the game, enemy archers and casters would start to kill players in one hit (unless they used infinite recurrence crafting exploits).
4) Witcher 3. It did not originally include level scaling, but ran into the opposite problem of Skyrim: what happens when a player completes sidequests that the game intentionally leads them to? Massively over-levelled players. CDProjekt did a great job of making all its side quests interesting enough for players to do all of them, but expected players to only complete a couple before returning to the main questline. So it set its enemies' levels at around the rough XP expected for players to have mostly focused on main questline and maybe a couple of sidequests. But by the time most players reached a later zone, Skellige, the game was expecting players to be roughly level 20-40, but many were at 50 or above. The area was supposed to be intimidating, but for many it was simple (even if the monster designs and attacks were very cool). The addition of level scaling later largely restored challenge to the later zones, and the game was mostly improved for it.
Level scaling is fun, but it's definitely difficult to get right, especially as secondary systems providing players additional power creep into games, making it much harder to have a smooth scaling experience.
Oblivion had two other problems that Skyrim scaled back somewhat.
1) Enemies scaled to your level also scaled their equipment. It became quite silly, as Tim points out in his video, that bandits on the roads suddenly had end-game level gear like the valuable daedric sets.
2) Quest rewards were also level scaled. Completed the quest at level 4? The reward is now outclassed by practically everything because there were better versions at levels 6-10, 11-15, and so on.
Unrelated to level scaling was the progression in general where you gained HP/MP based on your Endurance/Intelligence so an optimal character trained skills to max out those stats first. Otherwise, assuming you leveled up, you were either a wet tissue or destined to be a fighty boy forever since your pools would be so low.
@@LaPollaAtomica At least at launch, Skyrim did still have the problem of enemies having scaled gear. Most enemies I fought towards the end were firing Daedric arrows at me (which I suspect was part of the 1-shot scaling problem) which is a pretty funny situation for a highway bandit to be in, as Tim said. Likewise, most Draugr enemies were considered Deathlords at the end of a playthrough. Just, entire tombs full of them! No footsoldiers to be seen. Must've been a lot of nobility, back in the day
I think you put it quite well at the beginning, challenge vs progression. Level scaling sacrifices the feeling of progression while enforcing a certain level of constant challenge.
I think there is literally no redemption for the vanilla implementation if level scaling. You lose the progression and the challenge being constant bores the player.
But I think there are soft level scaling that can be used for games where progression is not that important to the game. However, if you can increase challenge in any other way, you should do it that way. Level scaling simply costs too much for the player. It costs immersion, progression, their ability to optimize their path, area identity etc.
I love this and wish I would have found your channel earlier. I’ve always loved discussing games and breaking down specific pieces I love or feel need improvement. The latter is more fun as it furthers the convo into hypothetical resolutions. Watching you gives me those vibes except it removes the amateur hypotheticals lol. Keep it up!
i love your channel sm. i think i can speak for everyone here we want to know everything about fallout. even little conversations you can remember, little notes whatever! we want it all
World state changes that make early game areas much more terrifying are another tool designers have. Hollow Knight pulls this off very well with its first area, as midway through the story progression the infection spreads and fills the place with new, challenging enemies and blocks off certain pathways.
I used to like fixed systems exclusively, but some recent releases have convinced me that scaling can be good. Two examples are the TBRPG Battle Brothers and the AAA Cyberpunk 2077 as of the latest update.
Battle Brothers does an amazing job of scaling and I really recommend it to anybody who wants to see good scaling in action. You still feel like you're making progress and becoming stronger because individual enemies are mostly fixed in terms of their stats, but instead their quantity increases up to a certain cap. It also wisely splits between player-based scaling and time-based scaling on different axes, so you get both at the same time. The world as a whole scales to time so players can outpace it or fall behind, while other aspects of content (e.g. quests) scale more to player strength so there's a reliable level of difficulty there.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an interesting case study because it's had two versions, one with fixed levels and one with scaling. The former actually felt bad because it meant that there were certain gangs in the city that were objectively weaker than others, which doesn't really make sense in the lore. Certain gangs that are supposed to be fearsome and powerful were in low-level areas, so by mid-game you were blowing them away with a sneeze and you never got a chance to learn about their unique mechanics in-depth. Really, no faction "deserved" to be in the low-level areas because none of them are equivalent to rats or kobolds or another common low-level enemy.
Now the game has been updated to use a scaling method instead. Several things were apparent to me. You can now go anywhere you want rather than being forced to follow a more linear progression path. That helps make the game so much more replayable, since you are free to explore in any direction to take on whatever content you feel like. The other big thing I noticed is that I started feeling the differences between the different factions in gameplay terms. Rather than simply having strong and weak enemies, now I was learning archetypes for each gang and picking up on their distinct fighting styles so I could change my tactics up in response. It was a much more satisfying experience. I also like how there are no longer "early-game" and "late-game" gangs and factions. Instead of blowing past the early-game gangs and then never thinking about them again, they remained on my mind throughout the game, which was good for both atmosphere and variety.
Although there were some issues with feeling like I was always struggling to keep my head above water vs. the scaling, they still helped you feel a sense of progression by giving you access to new abilities and mechanics as you level up. You gain an advantage over the scaling if your build is powerful and has strong synergies. The only people who fall behind the scaling are those without any synergies or sensible builds, and those people could just lower the difficulty. I think any system that allows for these synergies will have no problem with players feeling like they're falling behind the scaling, since it's not just a question of stat comparisons anymore -- the mechanics go beyond that.
I appreciate the nuanced solution. It makes each player's version of the world slightly different and could add some replay value. I'm not sure on the value of setting encounter level to player level while it's within the encounter range, but I like that the encounters have a min and max and love that they remember what level you were when you first encountered them.
I tend to like level scaling specially in the Borderlands series, Borderlands 3 they nailed it in the level scaling for co-op.
Glad to see you Tim !
I skipped the Khan base because I wasn't able to take them on. Coming back with power armour and wiping them out with ease was immensely satisfying. One of my favourite rpg memories ever
My problem with static leveled enemies is usually that it feels extremely arbitrary, especially in games that have action combat. It really makes it feel like the skill of using the action combat is less relevant, when you can simply outlevel your opponents. The worst examples of this are usually "recolored" enemies that suddenly deal more damage. That is not "difficulty", that is "gating".
I think this touches on the much broader question of whether an "RPG" really is defined by having progression systems, or should it be defined by the way you can guide the story in many different ways with a "blank slate" character. With games getting more and more complex, there is less and less need for variables to dictate gameplay.
Then why lie to the player by putting an XP bar in the game to start with? It really seems like level scaling is just a way to put the sugar of leveling up in without actually affecting the action game design. Just give players new guns or something instead if they don't actually get anything for putting in the grind.
@@-Zakedodead I agree to a certain extent, levels are everywhere today and I think they shouldn't be. Still, a lot of modern action RPGs today use them as a means for horizontal progression, so they're still important in those games. The problem arises when a game tricks you into thinking you're supposed to grind instead of learning the mechanics.
"Recoloured" enemies are interesting.
There's two other factors at play that should be taken into account. The first is dev time, obviously. Designing an entire new enemy is very difficult for video games. For something like pen and paper D&D where all you need is a description, some stats, and an artist, having a gamut of possible enemies for every player level in the game is viable. But for a video game, where each enemy requires hundreds of hours of modelling, animation, and voice acting, the same thing is much more time intensive. So from this perspective, 'recolours' aren't intended to gate so much as make efficient use of time.
The second thing is that there are solutions. One I quite like is how Killing Floor 2 approached its difficulty levels, which in turn could be used for 'recolours'. As you turn up the difficulty, you face the same enemy types, but each enemy gets an additional attack type. A 'grunt' enemy that previously just had a melee attack on basic difficulty then gains a short leap on the next difficulty, and a flurry attack on the difficulty above. This could easily be applied to levelled versions of basic enemies, not only making them more interesting to fight, but also helping by tutorialising the player through exposing them to the early mechanics.
I prefer unleveled or fixed leveling, it feels natural to let players explore harder areas, get destroyed and make then train the skills so they can finally get around. Or just beat an enemy too hard for them and get a really powerful reward for their effort.
Personally, my preferred method to play through The Outer Worlds was to go directly to Monarch, fight my way across the planet, and then continue the game. I wish there had been more level-inappropriate zones
I agree 100% about limited level scaling, if it's the kind of game where level scaling makes sense.
I played a fair bit of Oblivion, back in the day, and, like most Bethesda games, I couldn't bring myself to play it more than once because it just felt so stale. Then a mod came out called Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul (OOO), and it brought the game back to life! It did a few things, but the main one was going over every dungeon, NPC and loot table and giving them limits, so they didn't just level with you all the time. It took the unlimited level scaling and made it limited, and the game was easily 10X better for it.
I do like the static+ranged system for regional or one-time encounters, but one thing I think would be interesting and could use the dynamic level scaling system is in repeat encounters with the same NPC or set of NPCs, like say there is an opposing faction or antagonist who grows along with you as you become a greater threat, and the more powerful you become the stronger they get to match you until the game finale, this might even be a companion who betrays you for instance, and in that case the dynamic scaling adds to the sense of progression, but in that there is other people out there building their strength till you meet them or getting stronger every time you see them in ways that make sense for the plot.
I agree I think also for me what I personally like is a game that always has something you can level up to in regards to power the player has.. but at the same time still gives a challenge to the player.
To explain what I mean, in The Legend Of Zelda, Breath of The Wild, there are enemies like Lynel's. From when you met them its ridiculous how hard they are but as you "level up" and get better Gear you eventually have the ability to beat that enemy, it's not a walk in the park but what was once a insurmountable obstacle, is now something the player can beat, but was still challenging to master
Steam rolling enemies can be fun but only to a degree. I agree with you, I feel that semi fixed leveling is alot better, the player should feel powerful by the end, but should the player be able to steam roll everyone by the end of the game? I kinda wonder what's your take on this?
Thanks also a very good vid!!❤
I would say Arcanum was a special type of level scaling. There's a word for it, basically means it makes sense to the fiction but I can't put my finger on it.
I had some D&D games where I tracked notoriety for level scaling where if your enemies know who you are they would devote an appropriate amount of resources to take you out. Or a bandit group that knows your a group of badasses by either reputation or by just how well your equipped would just pretend to be travellers or something. Which is also a kind of level scaling too.
Ludo-narrative consonance?
You could say that such level-scaling is 'diegetic', but I've never actually heard it be described in that way.
Ludo-narrative consonance/dissonance means something subtly different, describing whether the implications of the game rules cohere with the narrative thematically rather than whether or not they cause story continuity problems in a literal sense, but is commonly misused to mean the latter.
@@globalistgamer6418 I think I agree with diegetic being the better term here, but I also think the term ludo-narrative dissonance is broad enough to be used to go after continuity or general differences that aren't just linked to themes, regardless of where the term originated. In particular in RPGs, specifically when referring to gear progression and leveling, I think discontinuity *can* hurt the thematic resonance between narrative and gameplay.
Good morning Tim 🙂
I enjoy fixed scaling because the game feels more "hand crafted" by someone and not just a math calculation.
I've been thinking a lot about level scaling recently, especially in the context of being able to progress through the main storyline at least somewhat in a non-linear fashion. I'm a big Dragon Age fan and Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite, but as I keep replaying it over the years I notice more and more things that I think were designed poorly. The game goes to such lengths to tell you "you're free now to go do whichever main quest you want in any order" but then there are gating combat encounters set in the areas the designers don't actually want you to explore early on. Each area has its own enemy level ranges, and initially I thought that was a great way to approach level scaling, but then I realized that unless that range is quite high (at least in the areas that are main-quest related), then it takes away agency from the player because they're not *actually* able to complete each main quest in whatever order they want. I've been thinking whether the fix for this would be simply a bigger level range that effectively goes from the level players are when finishing the intro, up to close to the level cap. Or if there's a more elegant solution to enemy levels and scaling that would still make sense within the game's setting and story, while allowing the player to progress through the main story in whatever order they want.
I know that in a game that offers more solutions than just straight up combat (at least for the main quests), then it's easier to go through even higher level areas to complete the main quest, because solving the quests through alternative ways that aren't combat is something baked into the design of the game. This approach I feel keeps combat more to the "realistic" level that is expected in more dangerous areas, while still allowing the player to complete the questline in the area if they are willing to find alternative approaches.
I would love to hear your thoughts about level scaling in this context of a non-linear main storyline, Tim! Is there a particular solution that comes to mind?
I like the hybrid. The player gets a nice cocktail of friction and triumph.
That thumbnail is great lol it looks like tim is about to explain his master plan to James bond or something lolol
10:03 - Looking at you, Oblivion 😡
I also have mixed feelings about level scaling. Players want to feel powerful; they want to return to old zones and defeat enemies with a single shot. I was considering implementing a 5-level cap on scaling to allow this, while also extending playtime in those zones.
Why design a huge, immersive world full of skills to learn, people to meet and places to explore... and then design a leveling system that makes me weaker if I take the time to do so?
Thank you for your thoughts, sir!
A subject matter with many interesting points to have a conversation :)
I remember Skyrim being one of the first games openly (as, clearly presenting it as a feature instead of hiding it like RE4 did with adaptive AI and difficulty) going for this scaling within ranges (iirc Oblivion had a mix of set levels and level scaling depending on the encounters being in the open world, side dungeons or main quest-related). One of the oversights was the character progression system -being a chaotic mess- being inadequate with this design, as you got 1 perk point per level to increment *any* skill including non-combat ones. So leveling non-combat skills in a row could make fights suddenly rise in difficulty because the enemies scale with the player's *level* , and since most of the game is centered around action combat and dungeon delving that could lead to an unpleasant experience.
Still I think scaling within ranges is a great compromise for everyone, we just have to be careful to scale the appropriate parameters and take into account that the tools at the players' disposal can also have a "range" of sorts for a given level.
Speaking of tools and options, an elegant way to do full level scaling imho would be to still have that notion of varying difficulty, in different (non-exclusive) ways:
One would simply be permanent bonus or malus, say with N as the player level/stats (or whatever you decide to take as reference for scaling) you go "enemy type A is weak fodder so it will always scale at N-x ; enemy type B must be a challenge so it will always scale at N+y".
Another way would be to play with the available options to overcome encounters: Let's put our character against a big huge dragon. At level 1 your character has his basic attack and/or damage spell and the dragon (also level 1 with scaling) still has a big health pool, elemental breath attacks, maybe some magic and physical resistances... Despite scaling it's still a *near*-impossible challenge. And here it becomes interesting because the player can either
1) come back later when they have access to skills helping them mitigate the dragon attacks and bypass its defences (yet with scaling the dragon will still be a tough encounter stats-wise)
or
2) with preparation, -cheese tactics- emergent gameplay and a healthy dose of sheer luck, manage to defeat the dragon early and get cool rewards, like the true trickster hero they are (of course the real trickster is the game designer who hid that fire resistance potion and enough materials to craft half a dozen spike traps in the surrounding area) .
As an ardent proselyte of horizontal progression I particularly like that latest approach, as it allows encounters to be relevant in different ways and encourage the player to engage and understand the systems at play. Of course this is far from one size fits all, you can adjust those levers and many others to ensure the players don't get bored, as long as you learn from Skyrim by scaling enemies to a point of reference *really* indicative of the character's actual capacities. Also don't forget your intentions and target audience, even designing with utmost care and consideration you can't please everyone and players will always prefer one way over another, so it's better to stick with one choice and execute it well.
For the anecdote, real time with pause always buggered me because it highlights the huge discrepancy in micromanagement between character classes some systems have (looking at you DnD...) : Either every action is impactful and you go turn-based, or macro and positioning prime over individual actions and you go real-time; if half your party just auto-attacks while the other half requires you to pause after every action to plan their next move it feels very unsatisfying and the auto-pause options menu should be absurdly detailed and go on for kilometers to make it actually useful and a smooth experience😅
To end that unending digressive rambling, compare real time strategy games and see how Total War and WarCraft (just the real time battles and units, not the building and expansion loops) have very different pacing and feel just from their respective balance of macro/micro-management. RTWP CRPGs sometimes felt like playing both at the same time with clashing design philosophies 😵💫 Then again, that's mainly a class design problem.
Tim I had no idea you worked on Outer Worlds. I love that game so much. I remember when the game first came out I played for more that 24 hours straight and needed to make myself take a break 😂. What a Fantastic experience and world.
What are your thoughts on games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 which have soft-capped power scaling, where beyond a certain point you get diminishing returns on stat investment? So you can still feel a sense of progression, but you don't ever become so powerful that enemies become completely trivial even if their level is fixed.
Those systems suck. And overall both are trash games and some of the worst series in gamedev history.
@@TrueNeutralEvGenius Lol... well, that's a take.
Someone is pissed off at Elden Ring being a GOTY.
@@Soren59 That's a fact for anyone with 30+ years experience in gamedev, critical thinking and ability to use formal logic. But ignorant sh*t eaters and kiddos, infants, they like it, of course, they got used to eat unoriginal hollow trash like DS. It is literally the worst series of all time. 1/10 game. It's ridiculous that people think of it as "hardcore" as well, kids who never played hardcore games of the 70s-90s. Insane world with billions of biorobots and conformists.
Love the limited level scaling min/max range idea
This is the way. Except for end game bosses, those should always be a challenge, even if you've gone through the DLC
It's a complicated problem, and I am not sure there is an optimal solution to it. The advantage is that a given content is accessible for a wider spectrum of levels, and that it allows a system in which people can play together even though they are of vastly differing levels. The disadvantage is the lack of perceived progression. Allowing the player to choose isn't good either, as it dilutes the experience.
A level range for enemies (min-max) isn't a particularly good solution either, because if you are in the range, the enemy scales with you. If you always happen to be in that range, it means you have a full enemy level scaling experience.
What I've seen from Skyrim and Fallout 4 is not a bad idea: Enemies have fixed levels, and based on your level, they will spawn semi-randomly to fit your level, without being exactly your level. The advantage is that you'll see "big bad bandit", "medium bandit" and "normal bandit" in a group, meaning you have enemies which you surpass, some which are on par with you, and maybe on that is above you and is more challenging.
Scaling the amount of enemies in a given spawn-group is one way to scale enemies, without making the player lose the sense of progression too.
Another way to solve this problem is to rethink the concept of "level" itself, and how the power of the player and mobs are designed fundamentally. The player could simply just start from a power level of 100 and end up with 200, meaning mobs that are 80 strong are challenging at the start and easier (but not negligibly weak) at the end. In many games levels is highly determinant of power levels, even punishing lower level ones severely.
gosh I love that. I think if a game benefits from having a leveling system that’s the way to do it.
I keep waiting for someone to think of a clever way to give a character a sense of growth and progress without using a traditional leveling system but lord knows how to work that out 🤷♂️ i suspect we all crave it but it would require so many other traditional design changes I suspect.. like rewriting the book
I would probably have completely fixed enemy levels. But lower level areas also containing some "outposts" of much higher level enemies. This makes it rewarding to clear out low level regions later in the game too. The fixed level help with guiding the player by blocking of paths with enemies that are too risky to pass at that stage of the game.
About the landing pad on Monarch - yeah, that's exactly what I did.
And when I saw how dangerous they were, I left!
I was also playing on hard, on easier difficulties you might be able to take them...
My trouble often is more with power levels themselves. Such as when D&D level 2 has TWICE the hit points as 1st level. In some cases this lets a level 2 brigand take a crossbow bolt in the chest without flinching, but a level 1 would collapse instantly. I know there are massive differences between ordinary tennis players and athletic world champions, but not the 20 levels D&D portray. You'd basically have to stop ANY encounters with humans after leve 3 or so. A skyrim bandit is either annoying or ragequit frustation, just because of level above their head says so.
D&D rules have a lot of issues at lower levels especially. I think the statistical instability of individual rolls is even worse than this, since the effect of luck overwhelms tactics.
I guess a lot of these decisions were likely made to aid the practicality of running PnP sessions, with DMs being able to apply human judgement to smooth over some of the absurdities, but they aren't an ideal fit for CRPGs where the ease of these factors is reversed.
Yeah d20 is so random and overwhelms any skill ranks you have. Sometimes I steal the GURPS 3d6 instead, then toss a coin if I hit 3x6 or 3x1. Heads mean +2- tails mean +1- so you reach those natural 1 or 20 also. If coin was heads up before tossing, YOU decide to toss the coin or only turn it over, tails up means you MUST toss the coin.
My favorite scaling system is the static minimum level enemies that scales with you when you reach their level.
How does something like supernova come in to this? Are stats just raised across the board for all enemies?
I also love the more immersive aspects of that difficulty like limited fast travel, limited saving, having to sleep, having to consume food/drink. I really like these survival type modes. What's the thought behind making a difficulty mode like that?
I loved the idea of Kithakor.
Interestingly, in Outer Worlds, I often felt like the Upgrading of my weapons was a treadmill of baseline competency. Leveling up made me actively deal less damage, so I had to deal with expensive upgrade costs to keep being able to melee the same kind of raider-style enemies properly.
I prefer a fixed level in a game, coming from Tabletop RPG's/D&D, where the level corresponding to the power level of a threat, not just it being a number. A CR 10 Dragon had a lot of more going on in terms of its capabilities to the player, and its world, than a CR 4 Wyvern. It gives me an idea of my place in the world as well, when I know I'm taking on more conceptually exciting threats in a game. To a degree, why I dislike palette swap enemies, as they are just low level concept enemies put at bigger level (Goblin to [Elemental] Goblin, etc).
I generally like some form of level scaling for things to become more difficult, just because a lot of RPGs these days become much too easy at later levels.
Isometric RPGs like Fallout that move through a sequence of set piece locations don't need level scaling, but with open world games, the tradeoffs are theoretically worth it to me to include scaling to increase replayability and freedom.
The worst of it to me was level scaling loot, even rewards for quests. I think if the player is able to defeat a higher level enemy, or break into a challenging area and steal stuff, early on at a low level they should be rewarded well for that with items that are far above their current level rather than scaling the loot down so as to preserve the game balance and economy.
Maybe lower level items and quest rewards could be leveled up to the player level, but not brought down to the player level if they succeed in completing a difficult challenge.
_"The worst of it to me was level scaling loot, even rewards for quests."_
this is how Divinity Original Sin 2 worked at release (i dont know how it works today because they patched a lot and i have not played since then) and it was a major problem
You're the man 👊
I like fixed or flexible, I dont like it when basic NPC's with bad items hit as hard as a Deathclaw. I also dont like it when the Deathclaw is not scary at low levels, I want some NPC's to scare me.
Let me have some power fantasy, I do understand some quest points may need some kind of auto levels to add challenge.
You can also approach it in a way that you scale the number of enemies without making individual enemies stronger. If you're level 5 and you meet a level 5 enemy, it's challenging, if you're level 15 you meet 3 level 5 enemies in the same location - each individual one is now trivial to defeat, but to defeat them all is a tactical challenge.
My favourite system is actually when enemies/areas have a minimum level, but no maximum level. I like the idea of some places being too dangerous for me, and having to come back to them. I also like it when, through either clever tactics or cheese, I manage to beat an encounter that I definitely shouldn't have been able to.
However, I'm also not a fan of the inverse difficulty curve that many RPGs have, especially since it often means that, past a certain point, virtually all challenge disappears. I started enjoying The Witcher 3 a lot more when I turned on enemy upscaling, and a pack of wolves went from a minor annoyance to a real threat.
It can work if it's done as a mix, perhaps. It's boring when all of the enemies feel exactly the same all of the time. I love your idea of 'pinning' enemies, hehe.
I don't like level scaling.
I know overleveling is an issue, but when all enemies level up with you - it completely defeats the whole purpose of leveling. Also, after all - you learn and practice because you want life to be easier. I don't see why games should not follow that logic.
I do like your idea for min/max level for a given location tho. I wouldn't even mind if it didn't freeze the level, but instead updated it on each visit.
I personally prefer that enemies level up only if they are weaker than me, if they have higher level keep them like that so either i have a challenging fight or i can comeback and have nice fight, not a fan of crushing enemies so easily, although implementation is paramount in both cases (fixed level, level scaling) I'll put two examples which has happened to me with both systems:
1-Fixed level: This happened with New Vegas, i wanted to play the Old World Blues DLC as soon as possible, meaning i went in there lower level, it was challenging (really challenging at times), but i beat it, here is the thing when i got out i was God, must of the rest of the game and DLCs where a walk in the park, i had to start over because of that.
2-Level Scaling: Witcher 3 levels weaker enemies to your level but are certain situations were it went stupid hard, there was a mission well advanced in the game where you had to fight a lot of rats in a narrow space, yes only rats, but those 15 or maybe 10 rats where like level 40, they kill you instantly luckily i could disable the leveling pass the rats and turn it back on.
I think the New Vegas DLCs would have been better off as completely self-contained experiences (similar to how the Neverwinter Nights expansions worked) and are best off treated that way. Other than Honest Hearts, they are very unique campaigns that IMO are better than the main game (Dead Money, especially) but, as you say, they aren't very compatible in power level.
Hey Tim, now that you bring Arcanum to the table. How plausible is to see an enhanced edition or a remaster or something? I dont even know who holds the rights to the IP. But I'd love to have a version that runs smoothly on a modern machine without having to use fan made patches.
Keep being awesome!
Activision holds the rights so it's very unlikely
I didn't know that, but that actually makes it seem MORE plausible, since Microsoft now owns both Activision and Obsidian (though I doubt it is considered a worthwhile focus for them).
While most people can agree level scaling is frustrating, fixed levels / limited scaling also have their lot of issues, and one of them is that players can simply grind to overcome any difficulty.
Pokemon is a very good example of this: when they don't manage to beat a gym trainer, most children are going to think "Ok let's grind a bit more and come back later". Players usually tend to grind instead of actually learning the game's mechanics and getting objectively better at the game.
This is especially true in games where players gain a lot more power each level.
To continue the comparison with Pokemon, let's look Cassette Beasts. Creatures become stronger as they level up, but a low level creature can still easily beat a high level one if played incorrectly. The level difference will give a slight advantage to a creature but it won't just simply win them the fight.
TLDR: If players grind too much when faced with a difficult situation instead of actually learning from their mistakes and learning the game's mechanics, a good solution is to reduce the amount of power gained each level.
I usually turn on the option to scale enemies up to my level if it is an option, but not down to my level. I like doing all side quest and exploring, but in some games, this leads to overleveling the main story quite easily, which can lead to trivial fights with little or no challange so it feels like waste of time doing through them.
In some games it works but generally really agressive level scaling for me results in no sense of progression, combat fatigue (sometimes i just wanna roll some mooks to get a break) and its also weird when 10 godzillas suddenly roam around the starter town.
Level scaling can really break games, im thinking of Oblivion, but in it's own way it can be really fun to beat the broken scaling once you know what you are doing.
I have been thinking of implementation of regressive leveling system. It does not make logical sense in the way people aquire skill progression. It does however make sense in meta that players engage. A small portion of gain such as ability increases for leveling would still apply. The large portion would require a reduction on skills that make a charcter well rounded. A specialist that has less impact on being capable in other situations. The players would have to compensate for that speciality, and rearrange other skills, companions, equipment, ect.
I like it best when the game is always a challenge but at the start some areas are too difficult but as you level up those difficult areas become easier but still a challenge. Every area and enemy in a game should pose a threat to the player in my opinion.
That's a ferocious point. Raiders past a certain level of growth need labels that fit them. Busyness Executive? Hehe.
10:08 when you get the minigun and the only people left that aren't either bulletproof or bulletsponges are random civvies and townspeople
I generally prefer beef gates over level scaling but I wonder if it's viable to sort of mix things where overworld would had set regional levels but instanced dungeons would be semi-level scaled where mobs will have minimum levels but if you were overleveled in comparison the dungeon would spawn stronger monsters
I never understood the issues people had with Oblivion monster scaling (it's player levelling that is atrocious). Unlike Fallout, it makes no sense to make some places hostile to lower level characters - it's relatively liveable land all across, minding demon invasion. So enemy scaling enabled the world to feel so much more open to the player, while retaining meaningful combat throughout the experience. It also makes levelling being rewarded with new enemy types regardless of places a player gets into.
Level scaling is a tool and it serves its purpose in Oblivion, while its absence serves its purpose in Fallout.
Never played ever quest should i try 1 or 2? Just want to see what inspired so much.
That's what they did in Wizardry 8, the best RPG of all times.
Right. With a combat oriented rpg some kind of a level scaling is a must in my opinion. Maybe it doesn't matter as much if game is mostly about the story. They did it pretty well in Wiz 8 - despite the scaling you will feel powerful when you progress, it just avoids "powerful" from translating to sloppy.
I remember FO3 had some hilariously strong monsters everywhere on the map if you had a decent level + the DLC turned on.
im not even a game dev i make music but i still love watching these lmao