It's a necessity of a free-roam game.

why not have restricted scaling like the starting area all the creatures start at level one then stop scaling at five then the areas around the world that have starting creatures as level 5 start scaling even if your not there then they would stop after 5 levels again (level 10) then areas with level ten starting creatures start scaling when you reach lvl ten and so on so forth. so if you venture to far from cities or roads to early you wont stand a chance but if you stay at cities and roads all the time you'll never level your combat skills up. so that my opinion of a god scaling system. also im not saying it has to be in 5's just so everyone know just using 5 times as a basis.

Both sides bring out some good points but bottom line for me is that there was no level scaling in Morrowind and I liked it just fine. I didn`t, however, like Oblivion`s level scaling as I needed to first level to level 25 to get decent quest rewards (They were leveled) and fighting overly strong monsters was more annoying than fun (Slashing them for 5 minutes? Come on).

Strangely I`m enthusiastic about Skyrim`s scaling. I think it will be fine BUT we will see when the game comes out.

This.

If it isn't any lvl scaling you will get specific zones for different lvls and reduce the free-roam part of the game.

A lot good rpgs have level scaling (baldurs gate 2/ wizardry 8). Level scaling is good if implemented right. Silverfall and Oblivion are only two games I can think of where it was done horribly wrong. To make a open world game like skyrim without level scaling the game will get boring fast. Unless every opponent you fight is still somewhat challenging at level 99 and 1 kind of like gothic 2/3.

Personally I would get really bored if enemies levels don't scale. In morrowind the level scaling was VERY minimum. Once you are high level in morrowind you can pretty much 1 shot everything in the world. At that point you might as well stop playing the game. What is the point playing if I know everywhere I go in the world these is no real fight to be had. If I wanted to be god I go play a hack and slash game or PVE in carebear :biggrin: World of Warcraft.Leave easy nearly thoughtless gameplay out of open world games please.

Yes, and the less scaling there was, the better the game.
So it rather prove my point.

and if you head into the part of a major city where all the gangs hang out, you'll potentially get ina lot of trouble unless you know some serious self defense and/or have a reputation there.

Well, maybe the best of both worlds is:

Level Scaling to THE PLACES: OK

Level Scaling to THE PLAYER: NO

That way, you DO get variety without it feeling like the world revolves around you

this is what i want, every creature in skyrim must exist at level one, high leveled or not. i dont mind level scaling as long as it is not like oblivions like when you level up a low leveled creature is replaced by a stronger creature. also at any pc level, armored enemy npcs should have a percentage of what they will be equipped with for example, 90% fur/iron, 75% leather/steal, 50% chainmail/silver, 25% mithril/dwarven, and the expensive armor and weapons could only be found in unique locations, i would like this

But this comes down to the fact that you will have difficulty spikes again. You will be in an easy area, move into another area, way too hard, then you move back into an easy area you just tear up. Like I explained above, Skyrim will allow for a nice challenging game no matter where you are and there will still be areas that are way too hard for you and areas as you level will stay low level as they have a limit that they can be scaled but overall, you will always feel that your getting a challenge in the game but you will feel that your getting stronger as well. The bracketing for dungeons and scaling within that bracket I think is the missing key to perfection in level-scaling that will make it perfect.

It's a necessity of a free-roam game.

im pretty sure ill find skyrims level scaling system okay. the level locking dungeons for skyrim reminds me of a video game im currently playing, demons souls. there are high leveled areas and low leveled areas, but there is no level scaling in demons souls, only your pc levels up by taking soul points from your enemies

this is what i want, every creature in skyrim must exist at level one, high leveled or not.

Randomized is OKay, but Scaling is not. That makes perfect sense. Look up "Difficulty Curve" Please, before commenting, and then ask a designer how it's an integral part of any game experience.

And you cling to poorly constructed arguments and logical fallacies. But at least I get paid to be emotionally charged.

I agree, the level range of a particular creature, no matter where it is(Generally) should be consistant. I shouldn't see a Wolf at level 5, and he's level 5, then come back a few days later level 20, and a Wolf there is Level 20.(Or whatever their cap is) Ideally, they should naturally fluctuate in their level range.

But that doesn't mean that, at level 20, in order to maintain a proper difficulty curve, there shouldn't be a Minotaur in the same Area now. How do you know he didn't naturally wander there?

Again, Look up Difficulty Curve. In a True Open-world game, it's not good design to create large gaps of obsolete territory because the player leveled up. Every player is going to level at a different rate, and Scaling addresses that to maintain a balanced difficulty curve for as many people as possible.

That's just it though, you don't have a point to all this. There's no reason why Level scaling and your suggestions have to be mutually exclusive.

No. I would be really pissed off if I just started a game and ran into the toughest creature I could possibly encounter, getting my butt kicked in the process and having to restart the game. There has to be some consideration of where the player is at before you start tossing high level creatures at him. Anything else would be very poor design and turn off alot of people. That's exactly what happened to me in Morrowind, and why I didn't end up playing the game. I went to some cave near the first settlement, and before I had a chance to get used to how things worked in the game, I was dead. I thought it was totally lame and never went back to the game again.

Not really. The only game that had massive level-scaling was Oblivion and it was an experimental attempt at making the game more challenging overall instead of being spikes of easy then over the top hard, then easy again. However, they found out it didn't work quite like it should have. I think people really need to let it go, it's called experimenting, without it you get nowhere and then the series stagnates and dies because nothing ever changes or gets improved. The other games had pretty significant level-scaling but it wasn't blatantly obvious like Oblivion's. You probably wouldn't have noticed it if their armor didn't keep improving in Oblivion, though Oblivion's was severely amped up. Level-scaling is more prominent in past games then you might think, it's far from "almost none".

With fallout 3 they refined the massive level-scaling a bit, making the overall difficulty more stable without scaling everything like Oblivion and also instead of spiking like Morrowind but it could use a little tweaking. Well in Skyrim, now it's tweaked a little bit more again, chances are it's in the sweet spot this time around. From what we know, it seems like they have got it this time around as we know we will still have the hard areas where you won't be able to do them until you get to a certain level because they will be too high level but you will always have a challenge because now dungeons and some other enemies have a level range such as say 8-15 and if your level 6, the dungeon will be scaled to level 8, it's going to be hard because the enemies are 2 levels higher than you. Now, if your level 10, the dungeon will be scaled to 10. If your level 16, the dungeon will be scaled to level 15.

The whole point of level-scaling is to not have parts of the game be incredibly easy where you could find where the easy content is and level with it and then you would never have a challenge as you would constantly be ahead of the content or you would be in an easy area and you go to another place two feet away and it would be drastically different. Now the challenge is a more constant thing, allowing you to have enjoyable gameplay and still have areas of danger that if you decide to go into and manage to live against enemies far superior to you to get powerful items, it's your choice. This is what they have been trying to achieve with level-scaling and it's good, no more easy mode, which most of the people don't want easy mode (myself included) but then they are against level-scaling, which makes the game more challenging.

Oh, so in all those games, while you may have reached level 10, all your opponents were still only level 1? Sounds boring. One way or another, you need to add creatures that will provide a high level character with a challenge. That's all that level scaling really is. In an open world like Bethesda's games, the most practical way of doing this is through leveled lists.

What about my post Akka? What do you think is wrong(or right) with my arguments?

This ^^ [/color]

And as some have said already everything in the game (most) have a min & max level scale, so a wolf or what have you will start at level 1 but max may only hit level 5 as example. Not everything levels up with your character after a certain point, if you already know this and don't comprehend or disagree with what I quoted above then there isn't much else to say.

And fyi Fallout 3 is a easy game along with one of my favorite games as you've stated in comparisons F: New Vegas, there both easy games by design the level scaling has little to nothing to do with the difficulty (my opinion anyway). Games now days that are released on multiple platforms cannot be too difficult as they use to be because of dare I say it but mainstream. So that's just how it goes, if you don't understand that then you don't understand nothin im done talkin - T.I.

Very true. And Fallout 3 level system was not so bad imo, it is very very difficult to make a good scaling system for games like these I imagine.

When I first played Oblivion I had to mod it as I did not like the scaling, I thought MW static approach was much better. But after playing Fallout 3, I realized that scaling was good if used properly. OB overdid. In MW after level 20 something the challenge ended. But I still did not think it was a must, now after playing Fallout New Vegas, I think scaling is a must for open world rpgs. In linear rpgs there is scaling by default, as you progress the weapons/armor get better, the beast get harder,etc But with the open world design you lose that with out scaling(level range scaling) that sense of progression.

Also encounters are less fun because there either too hard or too easy. In Morrowind the battle system was not great so it mattered less but as combat gets better is matters more and more. Take Oblivion for example, I recently tried playing Nerhim(?). When I started out the monsters were easy and I just bashed the attack button as fast as I could, I thought to myself well I guess Oblivions combat has not aged well I use to think it was the best rpg combat out there, oh well. Then later on I fought some stronger guys and suddenly things changed, no longer was I spamming the attack button but now I was using the block button, dodging attacks, trying to figure out the best time to use a strong attack or perhaps some quick weak attack spamming is enough to finish this guy off. Skyrim will use an even more elborate system than Oblivion, I don't want to spend my time spamming the weak attack in Skyrim because I have reached x level and everything is a joke, nor do I want to be confined to a small area of the world because if I go any were else I will die in one hit.

Now as I said at the start Oblivion did not do scaling well(I used frans mod). Total scaling is bad, but I think the way Skyrim is going, using a level range scaling system like Fallout 3 is good.

These are my main reasons for scaling:

-Surprise factor during replay, if all chest are static you learn whats in them and you lose a lot of the fun factor in finding them.

-Better challenge curve, things don't become lame when you reach x level. Even the best combat system is lame if everything is a pushover. And you don't get overly frustrated by everything being to hard.

-Better loot curve, as you get better you get better stuff, long ago when I was a console player I was really into the Final Fantasy games, and it was great the steady progression of better and better stuff. This was lost in MW, great more crap, oh whats this, more crap,etc

But we don't want to go overboard like Oblivion, I want a system that still does stuff similar to more static systems like:

-Sense of getting more powerful, its always a lot of fun squashing some beast that a few hours earlier you had to run for your life from.

-It adds a great dynamic of risk/reward, you take a risk and get rewarded appropriately. Like in MW were you managed to sneak past tons of powerful beasts, then found a cool new sword for all your trouble.

-Realism/immersion makes me feel more like this is a living world that would function whether I am there or not.(though when I was younger I never understood why as I went through a linear rpg each new area always had stronger beasts and better loot)

So to get all this a level ranged scaling system like Skyrim will use seems best. Fallout 3 had hand placed loot and tough encounters & places yet gave you a lot of freedom from the start. And no scaled unique items, which is absurd.

I agree that we shouldn't have a scaling like in OB and that MW had too little of it. FO3 is the best of 2 worlds in my opinion.

Skyrim imo, is the best of 2 worlds, it's tweaking the system even beyond what FO3 did. Oblivion was the start of the revolution to make the game challenging all the way through instead of having spikes of difficulty that would be too easy or too hard and everywhere in between. Level-scaling is the system made to keep things from ever being too easy. Oblivion was the first iteration but it didn't work out as hope, so they put it in FO3 and tweaked it and it worked well and now Skyrim is taking it even further as they have already said it isn't FO3 version, it's just closer to FO3's than it was Oblivion's.

Should have specified that FO3 is the best so far. I agree that Skyrim is more likely to be the best so far.

It's a necessity of a free-roam game.