I'm talking about leveling. I was just reading an article on the original Final Fantasy and reminiscing on the early days of RPGs, since that's when I started. Back then, you basically *had* to level, but it was rewarding whenever you did. Of course, the downside to the system was that you almost always had to grind to get those levels. Still, the excitement of gaining a level was great. You were inherently more powerful, possibly gained new skills, maybe got a fun graphic or even an announcement to the world if you hit a particularly high level. It was something to look forward to.

Then enter Bethesda's system, which I know had good intentions. Enemy levels were tied to player levels, both to keep a constant challenge and save on resources for the programmers (you didn't always need brand new areas to have bigger challenges). It was a decent idea in theory, but in reality it has the same old problems plus some new ones. I've played a lot of Bethesda games, and while I like them as a whole, I always hate this part of the system. And it's usually what keeps me from enjoying any of the games through to the end. Why? Well, there's a couple reasons.


First of all, now I dread leveling. Once I see my XP bar getting close to another level, I feel panic instead of excitement. In games like Skyrim, I have to be very careful not to take certain actions because leveling up the wrong skill means I'll get the level and be fighting tougher monsters with weaker combat skills. In the Fallouts, it's a little better, but I still have to plan ahead if I want to rush for that bobblehead before I level up. I also have to spend more time in character creation and planning out my perks carefully. In other words, I have to take quite a bit of time off of playing the game because planning ahead is so important. And that's pretty much all because you get *less* powerful compared to your enemies as you level up.

Of course, that's how it feels. Although there is a sweet spot in most Bethesda games when you've leveled up enough to get the basic powers you want, but not so much that you hit the next higher tier of monsters. And the reason you want to stay there is because of the grind. Yes, it's back, and in full force... in fact, it's worse than the old RPGs. You see, there's little point to it. Everything just takes longer. It's not more challenging... if you planned ahead, you can kill a deathclaw or sentry bot in 1 shot just as easily as a radroach (or a dragon as easily in Skyrim). But if you don't plan ahead, everything in the game just takes longer, even the "beginner" areas. It can also ruin certain builds, as you can play through 3/4 of the game as a one-shot wonder pretty easily, but once you get high enough level (note how it's not far enough in the game), all of a sudden it doesn't let you do that anymore.


The main point of this whole thing is that *it's not fun*. And sadly, the "appropriate challenge" model has spread to a lot of other games. There is no real challenge in having enemies tied to your level, and not much to strive for. You're either ahead of the curve, and they're too easy, or behind the curve and the game is possible, but just a grind. It's why I played and enjoyed Fallout 3 + 4, Skyrim, Morrowind, and others, and enjoyed them for a time but never finished them.

So... your complaint is that you have to put thought into how you will grow your character instead of going gung-ho on everything with no tactics whatsoever? Also, from what I have seen, most enemies don't scale to your level the entire time. Some enemies will only scale up to a specific point at a low level.

I disagree, I think having the enimies level up with you makes the game more interesting and challenging. I also like the idea that I have to take some time to plan my charactors stats and skills because the choices I make actually matter to the style I play.

There's alway "god-mode" if you want to hop in and just kill things without any effort or thought.

I do not think it ruins RPGs as a whole, you can make one if you want, it is up to you and Bethesda won't tell you what to do.

most RPGs aren't fun in the first place

they rely way too much on grinding levels and collecting weapons and gear ^^

Bethesda's games were the first ones, that brought this boring (in my opinion) genre into enjoyable open world games, that offer so much more

Have to agree with the grinding part. I spent ages and ages and ages and ages trying to grind enough to beat the Weapons on Final Fantasy 7, eventually I just got fed up and went to do some thing fun instead.

There's a point where it just becomes a chore and you stop enjoying the game and working it.

Sorry?

Level Scaling actually works a bit differently in Fo4 than the other titles.

Its now Level Scaling with Zones.

The Zone controls the level range of the expected mobs. So its entirely possible that you will run around Sanctuary and destroy the level capped LvL 10 mobs there.

Some people wont be happy with that either claiming that the act of "Capping" means that eventually the threat or thrill will slip away entirely.

I would say its a fair bit harder to create a character that is entirely useless in the combat side of this game as well.

Agree that the leveling feels bland these days. You level up about every 3 minutes and you gain a perk on every level and you can level infinitely, which means all characters will eventually look the same, or mostly the same. There's nothing SPECIAL about it (see what I did there?)

There's very little excitement in leveling up for me, and I try to cling to those lower levels as long as I can before I turn into the Wasteland God. What really bothers me is the lack and diversity of skills, and the fact that we can't actually use them anyway. There's a Charisma check for some conversations, but you don't actually have something like a Persuasion, Bluff, Intimidation, Smoothtalking, Whatever skill that you can apply in various situations depending on what kind of character you want to be. All you have is 4 bland options that don't change with your six or personality, or anything else.

Each SPECIAL stat should have a handful of skills sorting under it so the SPECIAL only becomes the governing stat and the skills work as a sort of specialization that can reflect your characters trade and personality. That's one of the major things that makes FO4 an non-RPG.

... that offer so much more....

shooting instead of thinking?

Making the leveling of the enemies dependent on your level makes one thing: the world flat.

Where you had in previous rpg′s a world where you had to look where hard enemies have been and avoid them in the first and try to find ways through easier enemies (and take down the harder enemies later when you leveled up a bit) you now have all the way different races of enemies that are as low as you and can be taken down with nearly no problem.

Now you don′t have to care for your steps through the gameworld, a deathclaw, beeing one of the hardest enemies in all Fallouts, can be taken down in the first 20 minutes in the game and even short later with a shotgun or whatever without big problems. And my character just left the vault where he/she was stuck 200+ years not even knowing weakspots on this giant thing.

The zones thing is just something that works if you really approach them with different and higher levels - if you sneak through the whole map with level 1-5 your map will be filled up with low level enemies entirely.

The system only works cause Bethesda expects you not to do this - the same they did not expect the player to shoot old shawn right in the face on the first meet.

The level scaling is present in most RPGs and was not something Beth invented (a mistake some make because of OB, which is just a game with some of the worst level-scaling in RPG games).

In FO4, the difficulty is dependent on region: NW is easier than NE which is easier than Boston which is easier than west and south which is easier than the Glowing Sea in the far SW (okay, the real order of difficulty might be a bit different, but it is something like this). Loot quality, surprisingly, doesn't seem to increase with higher levels: on Lv. 75 you still find the same BLEEP you find on lv. 1

Actually, level-scaling in FO4 is so light that you could take it out and the only difference you may notice is the smaller spawn of Legendaries.

Open World RPGs were a thing before Beth even started making RPGs. They are famous for not abandoning open world RPGs when the Golden Age and their more story-oriented, but very linear, games became de-facto staple of the RPG genre (which Betehsda doesn't care about because they started making their RPGs before that time came) and many deluded people think that RPG have to be like them to be RPGs (ignoring the Action RPGs, JRPGs, roguelikes and Hack'n'Slash RPGs which are all, ironically, more similar to older RPG games).

And due to Skyrim's popularity, suddenly most RPG developers decided that Open World RPGs are the future.

Ah good, we even have the example of a person who thinks that RPG = RPG inspired by Golden Age RPGs.

Smells like a lot of opinions up in this piece.

I disagree.

Try still being unable to kill a basic wolf in Oblivion at level 3, 45 hours in-game time. Oblivion had the worst vanilla levelling system, and Fallout 4's is better.

Not exactly as good as modded Skyrim with Third Era Attributes + Perk Extravaganza, but pretty good in its vanilla form IMO.

^ That made me chuckle.

Could you imagine being a developer reading these forums? Everyone wanting something different and regardless of how many of their ideas you put into your game they just keep complaining. Ha! I would lose it!

I don't think a developer would last too long if they took the whining and complaining of us peasants to heart. What a thankless job that would be.

They could have simply keep their franchises what they are - Wolfenstein for the Shooter fans and Fallout for the RPG fans.

Now we have something very strange hybrid that.....appeals some players (more the shooter ones) but scares a lot of the classic rpg fans away.

Not sure if gaining players for loosing others is a that way intelligent financial trade.

You're worrying waaay too much about level scaling. You would have to try to "fall behind the curve".

Is it really the players job to underscale himself to get more fun?

I always thought that′s the job of a designer

why would you sneak through the whole map with level 1-5?

if you search for ways to break a single-player game, you will always find them ^^

the fight against the deathclaw just wants to introduce you to the power armor idea... there is nothing wrong with it

It's not like you will face other deathclaws pretty soon. It's basically just an instrument to provide variety in the main quest.

what Fallout and the Elder Scrolls series offer, is that the game would've worked without being an RPG.

Imagine taking all the leveling system away, make stats for every single weapon and every single creature that don't change throughout the game.

The games wouldn't be as replayable as they are, but they still would be fun open world games and would still get great scores.

The RPG part of those games is really only a part of them and that's what I love about Fallout and Elder Scrolls and even Witcher nowadays

Then don't play. I personally view what Bethesda did with this seried as a massive improvement.

They completly broke my expectations on a rpg franchise cause they wanted to get you into the same boat

... thats the only thing that happened.

Bethesda got mad about Obsidian cause of failed metacritic expectations and bonussales, but now i look at a metacritic of a fallout 4 that gets good reviews from the professionals for "what it is", but a huge slap from the user reviews for what it turned into.

I really can understand that specific type of users/customers like the new changes, but these changes are a slap into the face of the classic franchise fans that most of them never wanted or expected: to turn fallout into an eviscerated open world shooter.

Bethesda. Making RPG's for people who don't like RPG's.

Games are made so that the majority of people can get through them.

The people who represent the minority of skilled players obviously breeze through it, and always will, but they represent at most 5% of all players, and the game caters to the other 95% for whom the game is still a challenge

Fallout is hard enough that most people will have to fight their way through it, have you looked at the wiki, do you know where some of the good early weapons spawn, do you start the game with a plan for which perks you want later, DO YOU READ THE FORUMS, congratulations, you are in the top percentage of informed players, and should have no trouble turning the game into easy mode whether you want to or not.

Until you start adding insanity mods there is very little likelihood that anything in the base game or expansions will present a significant challenge to many of the players who want a challenge, because the majority people who already have issues will stop playing if you crank up the difficulty enough for the few.

I challenge people to play by rolling dice for their perks, no rhyme or reason for them, and see how op they get when they don't select for the optimal perks. The crafting perks are massively important, and I have a brother who didn't distribute his special to allow access to them, so guess how much more frustration he has had than me who has min maxed from the moment I started the game.

This combined with all the radiant quests sending you again and again to low level areas is an serious issue at higher levels.

Find it fun that lots of people complained about no level scaling in ESO, as in how could you have level scaling in an multiplayer game with players at all levels

Took me 30 hours to start final fantasy and beat the first weapon around 38 hours all weapons have been dead. Ages of grinding is something different if you ask me...

I'm not sure what game you're playing, but in FO4 that statement is flatly untrue. I played levels 1-15 on Normal. At level 80 I'm playing on Survival and leaving vast piles of headless corpses in my wake. With my perks I routinely drop 4 enemies every time I enter VATS. The only way anything below an alpha deathclaw stands a chance against me is if I switch to handguns, like Inigo Montoya fighting left-handed.