My thoughts exactly. In addition if you cannot take the rubberbanding that is part of the fallout franchise to date then either don't get fallout or sell your preorder copy. If not man up and do some gratuitous violence.

Why do people consider this a bad thing?
You think FO3's SAME ENEMIES, SAME LEVELS, SAME CRITTERS EVERYWHERE is good? By mid to end game even Giant Radscorps and Yao Guai died with 1 shot of the Terrible shotgun. I wanted a good difficulty progression, instead everything became pushovers, even Enclave soldiers.
I was happy to have discovered locations like the SatCom Arrays only to be disappointed seeing the same raiders that have been attacking me throughout the whole game.

Hey at least NV introduced new critters (and Sub-critters if you will) with different Geckos, Lakelurks, Deathclaw-types, Super Mutants (Nightkin).

I think the system is fine, even in Fallout 3 you could still go places but could get killed easily by the tougher creatures if you weren't careful.

That's the case for any BGS game. Their games cannot be "beat" per se because their focus is on exploring the world, not doing quests or following a specific storyline.

By the way, OP, as was pointed out, your post isn't what rubberbanding means the way Todd described it.

Also, regarding the reveal of the level of enemies in VATS, I suggest that people do watch the videos carefully again. I saw one time that this happened during the "Atom Bomb Baby" sequence. All other VATS enemies did not show level. I think that level may be shown only if you have certain perks to do so. I would say only for human(oid) enemies but not creatures/robots, but that doesn't seem to be the case because I saw both a raider with level shown and other raiders without it being shown.

Exactly what I was thinking ... just not as blue.

Consider what a bad thing? Level scaling is bad, look at Oblivion's glass armored bandits and minotaurs everywhere, level scaling breaks immersion, because in real life, no one scales to your level, and Fallout 3 had level scaling.

Did you even read my post?

Except New Vegas did have rubberbanding, in particular the DLC enemies and the hit squads, as did Morrowind, in particular the leveled spawning lists for Daedra and certain Bloodmoon enemies. And conversely (am I using that term correctly here?), Fallout 3 had dangerous areas similar to Quarry Junction, such as Old Olney and the the Deathclaw Sanctuary, that were highly dangerous even at low levels. Not to mention the Super Mutant Behemoths. The only thing really special or unique about the Quarry Junction and the various nasty creatures around it was that it was practically next door to where you start in the game.

Reddit is a cesspit of a place. Seriously, don't ever go there for actual information. There's a reason people say Reddit is just 4 C H A N in college.

For some reason ^ that name is censored....why?

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I did read your post. I didn't mean you.

What? In real life people do scale up to you or catch up that is. its way more unrealistic to have a static world that just sits there not changing while the player basicaly becomes a god.

Also if you went too far west in Fallout 3, you encountered Yao Guais, those are nasty at low levels unless you have a high powered damage weapon like a Combat Shotgun. If Fallout 4 is an improved version of that and is kind of in between Fallout3/New Vegas, I'll be pretty happy.

Most of what I know about rubber banding is like, say you're playing an MMO, you start in one place, start moving, then all of a sudden you're back to a previous spot.

What OP is talking about, I think, is Level Gating, which I do not actually see to be a thing.

Remember, not everything Reddit or the Internet tells you is truth.

I just assumed that "Raider Scum" guy with his level on display was because of a perk similar to the one in New Vegas that let you see an enemy's health.

Edit: Beaten to the punch, I see.

You're right! Here, OP! Have a http://i.imgur.com/AnEUdWR.png

I agree with this.

If the leveling (rubberbanding) is like New Vegas, then that's a good thing.

When did "rubberbanding" stop referring to "MMO lag" and start referring to... leveling? In a single-player game?

Is this the trendy new term now?

To me, rubberbanding has always meant that the NPCs that you passed ages ago suddenly catch up to you in order to keep a racing game exciting.

Talaran posted a link to an article on the first page. It's the first I'd heard the term used like this.

Outside of Oblivion don't every Bethesda game have this? I remember being attack by giant rad scorpions early in the game when I first played FO3 in the DC ruins and got attack by one at Ravens Rock before I was suppose to go there. Even Skyrim had it to some degree. Try going to area where a dragon is suppose to be early level(like right after leaving Helgan) and there is usually a whisp mother who are pretty hard and some caves had frost trolls who are harder then dragons early on. Does it limit exploring? Sure to some degree but chances are you'll run by that area again later on in the game.

I don't think it's as black and white as the system in Destiny.

Aaah man, I was hoping it'd be a bit more like new Vegas! I liked the fact that certain enemies in certain locations were to be avoided at all costs, until you had the level and recoupriments to handle the engagement. It really made the progression system feel more dynamic, like the more time you put into the game the more areas were unlocked to you, wothout reverting to things like locked doors or unlocking some arbitrary barrier. Well, I mean, all video games are arbitrary in structure, but I did like having more in-game "natural barriers" that utilized something deeper into the rpg sandbox than whatever player 1 was using, or doing.

All that said however, and I do understand that the aforementioned system was a pain in the rear to new players, or players whom maybe don't click with rpg mechanics. It's all perception honestly, and maybe the rubber banding system will ultimately feel rewarding.

I "click" very well with RPG mechanics and I didn't like Obsidian's invisible-walls-made-of-high-level monsters. I'd rather they had been honest about it and just made the linear game they obviously feel more comfortable making. I thought the high-level creature placement was a dishonest way of trying to present the game as an open-world game when it was really a linear game at heart.

But - to give Obsidian the benefit of the doubt - perhaps Bethesda forced them to make try to create an open-world game. If so, I blame Bethesda. New Vegas is neither a particularly satisfying linear world nor a particularly satisfying open world.

At any rate, "RPG mechanics" is not defined solely by combat. Many other factors besides combat contribute to the definition of "RPG mechanics."

Yeah, the way New Vegas handled (or lack thereof) level scaling and beefgates just felt like they were actively discouraging nonlinear exploration. And every Bethesda RPG, except maybe Arena, uses a lot of level scaling; I feel like we wouldn't even be talking about level scaling that much if Oblivion didn't highlight *everything* wrong with it.

I think level scaling is necessary to preserve a wide character progression and a nonlinear open-world. There are tons of side-quests and locations where they just can't predict what level the character will be at when they come across them; they've got to make sure the content is an appropriate challenge with an appropriate reward for all characters. Skyrim did fine; there were tons of locations and quests that offered a huge challenge for weak players, the difficulty progression in the major questlines was appropriate, and there wasn't any "how did this bandit get glass armor" crap like in Oblivion. If Fallout 4 is the natural next step from that, I don't see what the big deal is.

The way its being described sounds like it will work very similiar to skyrim and I liked how it worked in that game.

Skyrim also had areas that had high level characters that could ruin a new player. There wasn't very many high leveledlocations though and I think think that we will see more dangerous places this time around because they know it's wanted.