Nehrim did it pretty well I think. It told you the general level range of a region, and had the main story go between three relatively separate areas. Unfortunately, if you wnated to explore everywhere, you were still in danger of out-leveling the content. That said, Skyrim did things fine, and seeing the occasional bandit with a glass dagger isn't going to ruin the game for me.

Yeah, I agree the measures are a bit excessive to survive against common foes. Curse the one shot to shot wizards, I have yet to be one or two shot by an archer yet but then there will definitely be swearing on an epic level. I love this game to death but the enemies are poorly balanced. Well the mages anyway are.

One can only hope its a steep difficulty curb.

Exactly the problem.

'Level' scaling will never ever work, since Beth is including non-combat skillups in the level progression. Furthermore, characters don't really scale with level so much as items - so level scaling 'assumes' you have a certain quality of gear to match your level.

This is blatantly stupid. So, no, there are plenty of better ideas for scaling, starting with actually taking a look at weapon damage/armor/spell damage when determining what is acceptable to place in a dungeon. Skyrim's 'solution' is actually the worst result yet - 90% of the stuff I fight dies in 3 hits, except for one mob that somehow takes forever to kill and will mow me down in 3 hits. It doesn't even look right, the special mob just has a new name and the same old gear the other ones have!

Seriously on the verge of giving up on this game due purely to how completely they've failed with the combat.

The only thing that i hate about level scaling is when it becomes so obvious that it detracts from a game.

Now the level scaling in Skyrim isn't as bad as Oblivion as far as quest related enemies but it is as bad in leveled items,loot,and running into "random" characters.I ran into three mercanaries,at the same exact spot,at diffrent levels:

Below level 10 the mercenary was wearing Iron Armor.

At level 10-20 they wore Dwemer.

Level 20 they wore Plate mail.

I haven't hit level 30 yet but i bet when i do and go past the same spot..a mercenary on their way to a job will be wearinng Orcish or Ebony armor,I like the game but stuff like that needs to be handled more subtely.

Actually I find the enemy scaling rather realistic. The dungeon boss should be powerful with the ability to kill you in a couple of hits if you aren't careful, the grunts should be going down in a couple of hits because they are grunts.

Once again in a video game stuff does not have to be realistic. If it were realistic you would die in one hit to a sword.

no it doesnt!

if u have difficult enemies that u couldnt kill at low levels, you wouldnt be able to get the item.

Exploits are pretty easy to do and you don't need to fight the enemy. All you need to do is get the item, avoid the enemy and then you got a very powerful equipment early on that will break the game on normal difficulty. I see it as a huge problem and I'm glad Skyrim didn't make that mistake.


It doesn't matter if it's realistic or not, the system setup for the enemies is fine, at least we don't have every enemy wearing Daedric Armor or Glass Armor. Bandits hardly have anything above Leather and I have yet to see a bandit boss above Scaled Armor. Not to mention that bandits are bandits and boss enemies are boss enemies, I don't see the problem with the system.

OK, I'll throw a dart and take this post. No offense mate

Imagine a world where everything is level 1-3. Hurray! You now have your sense of achievement!
Not good?
Imagine a world where everything is level 25+. Hurray! The scale is set way too high! But guess what, there's some challenge
Not good?
Hmm how about easy in the begining and harder in the out rims. Hurray! There's a scale! But wait, it's not realistic :rolleyes:
Not good?
Oh, how about something like Skyrim with "locked locales". Now you'll have some strong and weak where you go, and when you come back, they'll remain fairly the same. :trophy:

But

The thing is that each of these scenarieos presents a form of scaling. Some are rediculous; some are more feasible. But each will have someone who hates it. What folks are missing is that level scaling is a nessecary evil, especially on a computer game. Level scaling was in th eold PnP games, and it's still around in computer games. The difference is that in PnP the DM can break out of a program if it's not working, or the DM can just throw in something off-scale to keep it fresh to meet the players' needs. A computer can't do this.

Scaling is indeed a time saver; and Scaling has been around since the dawn of PnP. It works, and it does keep things interesting. If it didn't work, it would have been phased out years ago. It's just that some implimentations of it aren't as good as others, and that when it's set in stone, or coded in a program, it will always fail since it can't adapt to meet the player's needs.

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!
well, until my wife tells me otherwise

edit: crap, bottom of the page. might as well throw this post in the gutter :rofl:

You mean I really can't shot fireballs from my hand?

(sarcasm to the poster my quoted poster is replying to... in case anyone misses it )

The problem is that scaling still exists. I some how get one shot by a regular bandit archer while Im at level 34 wearing dragon scale armor.

I find that highly unlikely on Adept difficulty unless you didn't invest in Health.

But in TES it's your skills that level up and that seems to have always been the focus in most regards. And your character level was more secondary and has been a byproduct of leveling your skills.

They actually got it close to perfect in Skyrim, if anything.

Level scaling is necessary, especially now that they've increased the levels you can possibly go up, apparenly upwards of about 80.

And with such a huge area to explore, it would get boring fast if I could easily become capable of overpowering everything quickly.

But what they also did was lock areas to their levels when you first enter them, and not all enemies scale to levels. Now it's a case where you will have a broad mix of leveled enemies, some woefully weak once you get higher in levels, and some still challenging to keep you on your feet.

What was broken in Oblivion was how the way the scaling worked was that you didn't have more challenging enemies, just ones that took longer and longer to take down without abusing exploits so you could still feel like you'd gotten stronger, instead of weaker compared to everything else.

They also scaled the equipment of enemy NPCs much better, and much more sensibly to fit the gameworld and the lore behind it all.

The thing that was great about Morrowind's set up was that you truly felt like a god once you finally got leveled up high enough, because you were by that point actually able to fight things effectively. Morrowind's combat system plain svcked, especially for the first number of levels unless you constantly raised up the Agility attribute. I loved everything else but spending 30 minutes against a rat going *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *thwack!* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *whiff* *thwack!*

Has anyone above level 50 came up against a bandit or any other humaniod wearing anything other than basic level gear?

300 health on novice. As you can see this is quite a problem.

As i said, happened to me with Epic Orcish armor, level 30, base health of 210 at the time (playing a warrior/mage hybrid and have raised all stats about equally).

I've run into Bandits wearing plate mail..Scaled Bandit chiefs will make Dragon battles feel easy.

I don't blame the game developer.Some fans [censored]ed and complained about an iteration of the series from 10 years ago and their still trying to compensate for it.

I"m at level 46 and Bandits are still wearing Fur armor ranging up to Leather Armor, the bosses were wearing Scaled armor, it could go higher on the bosses, I have no idea on that and will need to further play.

This is starting to get to me now, too.

I'm slowly climbing levels while exploring and doing quests around Riverwood. I'm watching the bandits gradually go from crap armor and equipment to much better equipment... as if there's been some sudden improvement in the bandit economy. It's goofy.

And then there's a quest I just completed in a dungeon involving a supposedly powerful mage... who was protected by crappy novice necromancers. You would think a powerful wizard could come up with better students and more impressive loot. However, I know had I waited, the dungeon would have been crawling with much more powerful foes and better treasure.

As good as the game is, it kind of takes you out of the experience.

I think the best solution is to make combat skills level you up and have crafting levels and perks be their own system. That way enemies scale based on your combat ability not how many iron daggers you can make in an hour.

wrong topic.

Level scaling is even worse with a level cap of 81.

Because plenty of people don't mind or, or even like it. :shrug: