The first time I played Fallout 3, I was terrified of downtown D.C., and had a lot of trouble with the Super Mutants. I felt like they threw us into the middle of hell for the GNR part of the main quest, and I loved the way that felt. Level scaling or no, Bethesda shouldn't be afraid to send us into challenging areas before we'll be prepared. As long as it's not "Old Olney curbstomp no hope" level of challenge, anyway.

...Seriously? Downtown D.C. WAS NOT one of the high-level scalings, in fact it had low level scaling enemies ._. .....The only true trouble or sudden rubberbanding was walking into the Capitol Building and Mr. Behemoth came out to say "OHAI". Hell, a Hunting Rifle took care of most of the issue. I'd say Super Mutants are the most infamous enemy types to be low-level scalers, only becoming really challenging when you hit lvl.20 and faced 2 Overlords in one of the buildings.

What did you use when you were in Downtown that made the Muties so much trouble? Most people I recall just had a fun time at DC because of the Muties acting like an EXP sponge.

Oh, I don't feel that way about DC any more now that I've actually played the game. I just had a Laser Pistol, since I tagged Energy Weapons and the only decent energy weapons come long after that point. It was a combination of that, not knowing what to expect, and Super Mutants eating a lot of Small Energy Cells before getting killed. Nowadays I have no fears, but I still tag Energy Weapons at the start; I just like the difficulty curve better that way.

I took the 'rubberbanding' thing to mean that the level of an area wouldn't be locked and would vary over time. You pass through an area on Monday and kill some mole rats. When coming back through on Friday, you have to hide to avoid being seen by the deathclaw that's sniffing around. A week later you are ambushed by a small group of raiders that are hanging around.

Guess we will have to see how it works.

Enemies have levels now which is displayed in vats so I guess we will see how it works come 11/10/15.

Rubber banding sounds like it they have ranges for zones.

A 30 plus zone would eat your lunch at low level.

I doubt you would see a Deathclaw in a 1 to 10 level zone, but at higher levels you might see bandits plus some relatively strong molerats.

Still I expect a level 20 Sole Survivor would barely noticed the difference between a level 1 molerat and a level 10 one.

I saw in the Concord fight that the Sole Survivor took a automatic pipe rifle off a raider he had killed.

It has a crude reflex sight on it formed from a short piece of pipe.

That suggests that the opposition will be using modded weapons and it provides one more way to boost the opposition.

Higher level raiders will have stronger and more modded weapons to use against you.

Downtown was not an friendly place for low level characters, it was not an hard place either.

Think they kept the Skyrim setup but it looks like they will make hard places so the enemies are always higher level than you.

Fallout NV had no level scaling and it made the game pretty linear in the start, you had to go south, and take the east road up to Vegas as this was the leveling area.

"We call it rubberbanding; we'll have an area where enemies scale from level 5 to 10, and then this area will be level 30 and above," Howard says. "You'll run into stuff that will crush you, and you will have to run away."

He's not talking about two different areas. He's saying that an area you visit may be level 5 to 10 at one point, then level 30 at another. So no, you won't see a Deathclaw in a level 1 to 10 zone, but that level 1 to 10 zone may be a level 30 zone the next time you visit it. Hence the rubberbanding.

I'm not sure that's what he meant. You could read the sentence as "we'll have that area blah blah, and then this area blah blah", but I guess we'd need to know the tone he said it with to be sure.

In Oblivion, level scaling worked by having NPCs level with you at an offset, with min/max levels; so a bandit with a minimum level of 6 and an offset of -3 would always be three levels lower than the player, but never go below level 6 regardless of player level. They also had leveled gear that would change, so at lower levels you'd see bandits in Fur or Leather armor, but at higher levels they'd spawn in Elven and Glass armor. Creature spawns were a bit different; most creatures had a static level, but were replaced by higher level creatures (ie Imps would be replaced by Spriggans, then Minotaurs as we level up). I don't need to explain how this is ridiculous and inconsistent with the setting.

In Skyrim (and Fallout 3, although I haven't given 3's leveled lists as close a look as TES games), enemies are replaced by stronger enemies of the same kind as you level up. So, bandits and raiders will always wear the kind of gear you'd expect them to wear, and you'll never see a creature that doesn't seem to belong (although Fallout 3 still suffered a bit of that with the random creature scaling, it was greatly improved in Skyrim). So I don't think level scaling will have any more problems of believability. The other complaint about level scaling is difficulty, though; what's the point of leveling up if everything just levels with you? But then, the game has to offer a consistent challenge, and they've got to keep most of the open world either accessible for low levels, or still worth visiting for high levels. They could just reduce the power difference between level 1 and whatever the endgame level is, but I imagine they don't think that's a good alternative to level scaling. "Rubber-banding" seems to be a fair compromise. At any rate, the problems I had with level scaling in Oblivion aren't problems any more.

Maybe this post was uninvited, but I just really like talking about level scaling. Sorry?

Well, he was talking about an area being level 5 to 10 area, then referred to 'this' area (implying the same area, as different area would be 'that' area, not 'this' one) being level 30. And they refer to the system as 'rubberbanding', which wouldn't make sense if each area had a static level. The term implies that the level range of an area can stretch then snap back, being different at different times.

Yessssss.

Maybe there'll be a mighty monster mod that does that.

Witcher 3 scaled it's item loot pool, that's not a game I would use as an example of Scaling done right. Everything else minus the combat is amazing.

As for Fallout 4, I'm not worried, Fallout 3 was well done from a design POV, it's only the DLC stuff that got ridiculous with the HP bot syndrome which unfortunately was repeated in Skyrim. I'm hoping Radiant stuff is minimum, I want preset stuff. I'll take preset stuff over radiant so that we can have better writing.

That's a shame to hear. I have it installed, but haven't played more than 20 minutes or so yet.

After seeing Witcher 2, that's about what I expected.

the rubberbanding thing sounds promising; there's not really a good way to do enemy scaling in games. The worst is when everything scales with you. I personally like where some parts of the map have harder enemies. I know where the challenges are. But its not really immersive if you think about; and worse it can make the rest of the game really stale. This is one of the least of my concerns tbh

What I would like to see, is an open world game that includes other adventurers and enemies, going about their own business in the game world.

IE. leveling up on their own, from their own adventures. This happens in the Disciples series. This handles level scaling.

In the Desciples series, there are others on the map that will attack the PC or others not of their faction; they will loot dungeons before you even get there ~and gain XP for doing it. If you conquer a city, they can attack that city and take it from you if they can defeat your guards... Some could even decide to poison the city water supply first, and attack your guards while they are sick.

What happens is that if you encounter them in the early game, they are just starting out ~just like the PC; but if you encounter them late in the game, they are a leveled force to be reckoned with. If you try to snipe-n-run, they gain experience from that.

Imagine you are playing a game [TES/FO] for the second or third time, and finding the familiar bandit's cave in the hills ~instead overrun by mercenaries, that just killed all the bandits, looted their stash, and are entrenched in the cave with supplies for a month.

They had something like that in Oblivion, where you could randomly encounter generic NPC "adventurers" in various dungeons.

But as for the NPcs looting things and gaining XP? Doubtful. few people would enjoy it.

Why would they care, or even notice? The point of it is emergent antagonists.

(And emergent changes to the environments.)

**I'm not a fan of servile games, and certainly don't ascribe to the idea that games only implement what's actively fun for the player. I feel that the player needs a few stabs now and again, and I don't mean from dying enemies.

Because people would notice if they went somewhere, and everyone there was already dead, and the stuff was missing.

Its realistic, and causes a whole bunch of new gameplay scenarios, but it leads to possibly missing these other adventurers for extended periods of time, and thus resulting in you finding many locations already looted, which only lessens the reward of exploring. What is the point of designing these "dungeons" and enemy encounters when the game will just finish them itself?

They originally had something like that planned for Oblivion, back when it had the full radiant AI system, where NPCs could do anything, including actually raid dungeons, and even break into your house and steal your stuff, and you COULD possibly find them and take the stuff back, but more often the not play-testers never found them, and it ultimately just made the game feel more broken then anything because it defied the expectations that games normally offer.

Game have certain expectations with them, such as you being the one to loot dungeons, when you find many of the dungeons already looted by NPCs, the player loses any reason to bother looting any dungeon at all, unless specifically taken there by a quest, as the likelihood that THAT one has also been raided is forever sitting in the back of your mind.

Why bother playing the game when the game is just beating itself all over the place? Might as well just turn the game into a movie at that point.

Ehh I am still a tad lost, (not the first time)

So if say I build a settlement in an area thats typically 1-10, It will never change no matter my level? as in even if I am level 30 any threats posed to settlement would be 1- 10 there. ( I am really worried about deathclaws spawning and wiping out crap I worked hard on.

Is that your guys take?

That is the point.

That should simply be the breaks.
(The game saying, "tough, deal with it ~or quit".)

Because it won't always have happened, or might BE happening, or may have happened, and the character of the location is changed.
(Looters could have mined the place when they left. )

One of the most impressive things for me in Fallout, was when I realized that the army laid waste to Necropolis, and all of the ghouls were dead.
[I've since gathered that they may have patched that part out of the game. They made plenty of mistakes to begin with, why go back and add more?]

I would not worry about it. Fallout 3 was very well balanced in the scaling. F4 is bound to be much better

I dont think that will be a problem, as they will likely designate areas around towns as being fairly low level, or, once you cleared/captured the town, they would prevent such high level monsters from spawning until your settlement reached a high "rank" or something.

Skyrim had a similar system in place, were certain dungeons had a minimum level set, such as the tombs of the named dragon priests where always set to level 25. Even if you went there at level 1, the place would be set at level 25. However, if you were over level 25, the place adjusted to your level, just the same as places without minimum level sets.

I doubt any outside area will get stuck at any one level for the whole game.

And that is why its bad.

That doesn't really change the situation much though, the game is still playing itself, which defeats the point of you playing it.

Because it wasn't a mistake. The point of games is to have fun, not to throw [censored] in the player's face because of "deadlines" or w/e. That is why 99.99% of games(again, a figure of speech here) dont do that sort of stuff, and the ones that do only do so to cater to a niches.

Having a game that has NPCs that complete dungeons is like buying a box of your favorite snacks, and then being told out of the 100 packages of said snack that were advertised in the box, 20 of them are gone because the snacks can eat themselves, and then being told by the company who makes the snacks "WELL DATS JUST DEM BREAKS!". Its like, why the hell did I bother paying for a 100 count box if I am not getting 100 of those snack packs?

Funny and i agree

I like the idea that there will be a random range to the scaling. I never liked seeing "raider" and automatically knowing they were going to be an easy kill.

Maybe in FO4 that generic raider might actually be Chuck Norris!

No, you're misinterpreting the quote granted it isn't abundantly clear so it's forgivable. They're using the zone-level mechanic from Skyrim, where an area is set to level's 5-10. When you get to that zone at level 4 the enemies will spawn based on level 5 parameters. At level 7, you'll see enemies at that level of difficulty. So on and so forth with the max being 10. Beyond that the enemies will stay locked at level 10 in that particular instance.

I had no issue with the Fallout 3 scaling. Most of the time I got frustrated when after i killed the 3 Feral Ghoul Reavers I found 4 bottlecaps and a Harmmonica. Its just frustration born from playing too many rpgs on computers in my gaming youth though.