I stoped reading after your comment about the vagrant in Riften.

I assume you mean he killed you with one arrow? Why is this a big deal? So just becouse your character can obsorb Dragon souls means an arrow in the eye can't kill you? THAT makes no sense.Yeah, I get it, Dragonborn should be special and different from the rest of the populace, but at the end of the day he still a humanoid being and therefore an arrow or any sort of weapon is still a danger to him.

The royal family of the UK are all set apart from the rest of the populace but I am fairly sure they can still be killed.

Anyway! I am mixed feelings about leveling scaling. A part of me thinks as I have described above, and a part of me thinks level scaling should just [censored] off. But, as somone said the map/playable area is far too small for level scaling and for Roleplay. In roleplay terms what I mean is, what if you Roleplay a citizen of Winterhold and just after escaping Helgen you/your character wishes to return home to deal with his experiance, now without level scaling, lets assume the further away from Helgen the greater the difficulty, then this would be impossible to do. Sorry, not a very clear point there I appologise, but my point is without level scaling you would have alot of issues still - not the same ones, but problems for different type of players.

I hate to bump this flame fest even more, but in Skyrim scaling makes total sense to me. If you follow the lore of it, Dovahkiin have a natural ability, even a destiny, to be able to defeat dragons in battle no matter the circumstance. However, they don't get this type of "bonus" against other humans around them. In the early levels, you have these normal bandits with some special ones tossed in. These are the unexperienced, young bandits who haven't held a weapon for very long. Once you get to a certain level though, some harder types of bandits begin spawning. Now let's say you've been playing for even an in year game, these older bandits have potentially decades of experience surviving and fighting on you. Why is it so "unrealistic" that these guys are able to kill you in a couple well placed arrows or a swing with a battleaxe that would take off a fighter's arm, leg or head no matter what kind of armor they're wearing? You're NOT a demi-god in this game, you're a person destined to kill dragons. The only gods in the game are the ones with massive shrines that talk to you in your head. You're a mortal in everything you encounter except dragons. (If you really want to follow the lore, it shouldn't even be a possibility for a dragon to kill you.)

Skyrim is meant as a huge open world where you can explore anything in any order you choose because you'll have enemies around there that put up a challenge but aren't outright restricting you from going there. I've heard people then say "what is there to look forward to?" The simple answer is exploring. Skyrim, in my opinion, is meant to be played as an "experience" rather than as a "game". They create an extremely deep and life-like world with countless places to explore. They weren't interested in telling the player "you can't go here." Rather, they made the world and said, "Here you go, explore it, awe at it, make love to it and bang the s**t out of it, it's yours to do with it what you will."

The only time I agree with not level scaling would be in caves and dungeons that you voluntarily go into a separate area with a "minimum level" where a certain type of enemy exists. Even then, in dungeons extremely below your level, I think a challenge should still be presented in an increased amount of enemies, rather than with tougher enemies. Tell me, what would be more fun to you and feel more "rewarding", having a dungeon with set number of enemies and challenge, even if you're 10 levels above its recommended level, or having it add 6 more regular bandits on top of what it would have been at the recommended level? This way, rather than steam rolling it, you don't feel the world is cheating by throwing extremely powerful enemies at you all the time, but rather that you just mowed down 12 bandits in combat, slicing and dicing them, while they got quite a few hits in on you. You're battered and bruised, but you feel as though you're one seriously bad-ass motherf****r for beating that many guys, even if they're low level. I'm cool with dungeons being too high for a character, but I don't want dungeons to be trivialized by being locked really low as you get higher in levels.

Also, unique items scaling is bad, I also disagree with that. But in terms of the open surface world, the game requires that that is scaled so you can go everywhere whenever without it feeling impossible or trivialized. Does that make sense? :thumbsup:

I also hate level scaling for both enemies and items.
It forces players to grind levels to get the best possible version of the gear they want and at the same time makes ennemies capable to kill you.
But i have to admit it was far far worse in Oblivion :

: haha ! gimme 200 septims to pass or i'll kill you !!
: uh ? wtf ? /Picard facepalm

It is kinda immersion breaking you know Mr Howard, and it IS a problem when RPGing a RPG (makes sense no ?).

And for the cliff racers issue ... wait ... uhuh ... are you sure ? ... oh ok, excuse me i was just told they were not cliff racers but dragons.

Basically, the concept of level scaling isn't wrong, but there is something very wrong when bandits and ice wolves can present more challenging fights than dragons.

My solution: Give each enemy type a level range and do scaling in that range. Say common bandits can only ever be max. level 20. This means at really high levels with the best gear, you will not be too bothered by a bandit. Other small enemies like wolves should com under this.

Meantime, dragons ought to be much more powerful and scale between level 30 and 80, depending on your level. Hence, you will get killed by them early on. Enemies should still level up as you do, just within sensible ranges. Also, the gulf in power between level 1 (and associated gear and stats) and max level is too high. Oblivion was closer to it, although enemies still continued to scale and become ridiculously powerful, the player character's damage output was capped at a fairly sensible level.

Finally, Skyrim has done one important thing right, and that is the end of bandits in full glass and daedric armour. Never again please.

Agree in principal.

Op misses the same point that most miss about scaling though. It's the scaled loot that is really the problem. Scaled enemies can be ok if the concept is used intelligently. Still be far better (for me) with it dropped altogether though.

edit: Ceidwad above me has the right idea for scaling to work a bit. The enemy scales need to be set intelligently. It's no use having dragons, werewolves (typically hard enemies) that come in levels between 1 &80. They should start at high levels to begin with so you're only in a position to challenge them end-game. Of course, this is subjective, some people want to finish the main storyline in 8 hours,I'm just not one of them.

The whole "dragons are too weak" thing is not a level scaling issue. It's a quest progression issue. Yes, you can justify it by pointing to lore, but it ultimately comes down to the fact that the dragons are just keys that unlock the main story. Those keys have to be accessible to all play styles. Including players who like to play pickpockets, healers and bards.

People complain about the character builds being unbalanced as well, but I don't think it's nearly as bad as people say. If, for example, you play a straight thief and put all of your perks into Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Speech, etc., you will find the combat very difficult. Then again, since, if you are playing in character, you are just going to sneak past all of the enemies anyways (and that is relatively easy to do) where is the issue? It's only an issue if you think your pickpocket should not only be a good thief, but a bad-ass fighter as well. That's a role-playing issue that can be solved by choosing the appropriate perks. These characters have to be able to progress through the main quest the same way warriors, smith-tanks, and battlemages do and, since the main plot device for advancing the story is killing dragons, dragons have to be kill-able.

I think a simpler levelling system would be that you remove all the individual levelling categories like one handed etc. with just 3 categories being strength, agility and intelligence but keep the perk trees. So you can use say, a one handed weapon that builds your strength, but put the perks into 2 handed if you wish. The game just keeps track of how you are progressing and the levelling scales with difficulty as the opposition being 2 or 3 levels above to 3 or 4 lvls below your lvl.

With a combat over haul, one hit one kill, you could do away with this lvlled armor. Sure you get better armor, but it acts like real armor and can only take say one or two hits before it breaks.

I'd personally do away with the smithing aspect as it is a bit of a gamebreaker, and totally boring. The enchanting is still useful, but would only be applicable to magic types.


Another obvious improvement would be from the outset you can choose what type of char you want to play, so a thief would have light armor, one handed, archery, alchemy and sneak skills and perhaps 2 magic skills available to put perks into, say illusion and alteration. You can still cast destruction etc. but those perk trees are closed off to you.

Nobody is missing the point about loot scaling. It's generally the first thing people bring up. Loot scaling suffers from exactly the same issues that enemy scaling does. They are not really that different.

Should the loot be static? At what level? If it's static, but enemies are leveled, then either the loot is too valuable and the enemies are too weak, or the enemies are too powerful and the loot is too cheap. If you want loot to match the challenge presented by the enemy, then you have to scale it just like you scale them. If you make everything static, the game is exactly the same every time you play it and the exact same enemies respawn in the exact same locations every couple of days. Much more realistic. :rolleyes: Unless, of course, enemies just don't respawn at all and the game ends when you're done killing everything. Great basis for an RPG, btw.

The point is, there is no perfect solution to enemy and loot scaling. Every single solution brings in problems. It's easy to point out the flaws in a particular implementation; hard to provide a solution. Bethesda uses a hybrid system that combines level scaling with static elements. I think it works pretty well, for the most part.

Problem...swinging a one-handed weapon with a shield in one hand is not the same as swinging a 2 handed weapon. The weight is different and sword fighters rely on muscle memory to advance themselves in using a certain weapon, learning the feel of it as intricately as possible. So saying that you get better swinging a two handed sword by swinging a one handed sword is neither realistic or immersive.

I agree with OP, in a way. The reason why the game makes you feel bland (apart from getting new perks), is that the enemy types are very few and all very predictable. Bandits, mages and draugr make up 80% of the world. And when you get to a new dungeon after seeing the first enemy you know how the rest of the dungeon will go. Seriously, it's not fun to kill same bandits you did 100x before. They are all the same. A part of this is combat mechanics, but even with such combat mechanics, they could have done so much better. Some enemies should have had completely different spells, than that of a player, so he couldnt know what to expect. Thats where excitement and danger sense come from.

Second thing, that was already mentioned non-scaling powerful artifacts that are guarded by very powerful enemies. Yes, that is how it should have been done. You would try hard, prepare and get necessary abilities to face such enemies. And then you would feel REWARDED for defeating them. As it stands now, you get crap items which you wont use later on, because everything scales, and stuff you got 20 levels before DOESNT. It a serious issue. Open world with scaling is fine for some part. But there are no EPIC enemies which would MELT you in 2 seconds if you were to encounter them in some hidden castle far away, and would be endgame dungeons. At least a few of such places would make a game more unpredictable and rewarding.

Dragons should have been done way more grand scale and you should not encounter them after VERY EARLY in game, if you dont restrain yourself. But the game even encourages you to do so.

Agree with OP. Scaling is awful in Skyrim.

Got to about level 40. My mage is destroying stuff. With the exception of certain groups of enemies/monsters he has no trouble at all.

Decided to spend some time leveling heavy armor and archery and stealth to supplement his abilities (He wears robes, a circlet and heavy armor boots/gloves).

Got to about level 50. Stuff is destroying my mage. Don't get me wrong, it's still possible to play the game and succeed....




But... Why did my mage get weaker by getting stronger?

I should have worded it better.

Scaled loot is more obvious, the transitions are more jarring and it's clear there some force at work that (to me at least) appears to be restricting my progression. Vendor lists suddenly being populated by Eleven weaponry at level 'x' is trite, as is noticing that mobs are suddenly packing better equipment. It's all very well, Bethesda saying that "mobs don't have daedric/glass equipment anymore" but it's still irritating, watching them slowly progress through the lower quality equipment with you and then stopping. On a slightly different but still related note it's also stupid being able to make the best equipment possible yourself. Where's the adventuring in that? I want to find powerful equipment, not duct tape it together in Whiterun because my smithing is level 100.

Scaled enemies on the other hand, are not neccessarily a bad thing, as long as it's applied intelligently.

For example, I would expect to get battered by a dragon at level 10 because I'd expect that dragon to be level 30+. I'd also expect to have an easier time with it if I was level 25-30, which is a point, for the sake of argument, that I'm actually starting to become noticably more powerful. If the dragons then started scaling with you (or even faster than you) as you approach the end game then it isn't such a big deal, because that's something that you'd logically expect, progressively tougher enemies towards the end game.

You're right, Skyrim improves on this (since Oblivion) but the transitions are still particuarly jarring in some instances. Dragons are the main suspects, obviously they've done this in the interests of continuity, but that doesn't mean it isn't stupid.

But then you get to great loot(i.e. Daedric weapons and armor) guarded by level 20 Bandits. If you limit the loot scaling too, then one of main reasons for exploration is gone.

Ideal way of doing this would be introducing a level limit on various bandits and then outright replacing them with completely different enemies alltogether. For example, as you said, until level 20 it's Bandits of various quality(Renegade, Highwayman, etc.). After level 20 it's Draugr. After level 40 it's Trolls or ghosts or whatever.

If this was introduced at early enough point in development, it could be even expanded to dungeons themselves. Building a dungeon out of universal chunks and then making said chunks in several different styles would make it possible for the same dungeon to be a cave at level 19 and a Draugr ruin at level 21; with the layout staying the same, just the visuals changing.

It's good to see people here know what they talk about...

Yes, there was Level scaling in Morrowind, quite heavily.
Yes, there are enemies stronger and weaker than you in Skyrim.
Yes, there are static enemies in Skyrim.
No, unique artifacts do not scale in Skyrim.

Because a mage doesn't use heavy armor and bows. It's not an argument against scaling that you're not *role-playing* your character in a *role-playing* game. You're not even complaining about leveling non-combat skills like others, you're complaining that you can't be a master of everything...it just doesn't work that way...

First of all, I don't like the way in which the original post was written. The people who work at Bethesda are not some pixels on your screen. They are actually real people. In that post you have insulted them more than once. If I were a mod, I would perma ban you. I guess that you would not say similar things to people face to face.

There are some good points made in the original post, but it wouldn't surprise me if Bethesda skipped the rest of the post after the first insult.

Your last point is incorrect. Weapon and armor artifacts scale. Check the wiki.

Agreed! The guys over at Bethesda worked their asses off on this game for years and put huge effort into it every step of the way. You can criticize it, you *should* criticize it so they know what they did wrong, but to call them lazy is just incorrect. I suggest anyone who would call them lazy listen to the Bethesda Podcast, it's on iTunes. These guys have a huge passion for this, insulting them just doesn't feel right.

And who the hell are you to tell me what skills my mage should be proficient in?

So basically you're arguing that there is a set number of skills that each character should be proficient in, and that leveling anything beyond those SHOULD punish your character?

Where's the logic behind that?

In essence, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Have you played Dungeons and Dragons, Baldur's Gate, NeverWinter Nights? Did you complain in those that your sorcerer couldn't wear full plate armor? No, because that's not what a mage does. A better course of action would be avoiding being hit at all. A mage wearing heavy armor would not be as effective as one wearing robes that keep him nimble. If you wanted to be a battle-mage you would need to be more focused on one handed weaponry with supporting spells in your offhand. Sorry man, but being a master of everything *is* possible, but getting there is gonna be a [censored]. I might remind you you also get punished for multi-classing in a classic rpg, but can be more powerful later on than if you hadn't.

Long story short, I'm not telling you what you can and cannot do, just that certain decisions make it harder and that it's not a reason against level scaling.

Except it IS a flaw with level scaling in a game that gives you the freedom to build your own character class.

What you're basically saying is that this "play the character YOU want to play" game should just ask you which class you want at the beginning of the game and lock out all the unassociated skill trees.

And concerning the bolded line. Your point is flawed... because in Skyrim you never are more powerful "later" for leveling a wide variety of skills... you're just gimped because every single creature gets stronger every time you level up, regardless of what you're leveling.

I thought leveling my heavy armor skill would improve my mages survivability, because... you know... his armor value would be higher?

The problem? The damage output of enemies completely outstrips the extra armor I gained from leveling heavy armor.

My mage would be stronger if I had just completely stopped leveling any skills at all at 40... and that is ridiculous.

Crowd of casuals is happy, money is flowing so why on earth would they make a game for a small group rpg fans? Business is business isn't it?

This is how Skyrim works. A standard "bandit" will never be higher than a certain low level. Each of the variations (Marauder, Plunderer, etc.) also have a fixed level range. Same with most everything in the game. If you clear an area at a low level then whenever you return there the enemies will be locked on that level range no matter your level. Not all the level lists are up on the wiki yet but take the Dwarven Spheres for instance. They have fixed levels: Standard lvl 16, Guardian lvl 24 and Master at lvl 30. So if you go in a Dwemer ruin early in the game even a standard Sphere is going to give you trouble but return to that ruin at level 30 and they'll still be lvl 16 and you should be crushing them.

You seem very angry...and I'm not sure why that is. I'm not insulting you or trying to anger you. If you're at level 50, the enemies are as hard as they will get. Besides the guards, all the enemies in the game are at max level already. And yeah, a mage with full daedric armor on. enchanted to make them better at magic, and with a heavy armor skill of 100 probably would be better than just wearing the robes, especially with the perk that negates the speed loss. I *never* said you *can't* use heavy armor, I said it's not something a mage would do. I didn't say don't do it; what I did instead was answer your question. Your character got weaker compared to other enemies because you began leveling skills that a mage wouldn't typically use. Skyrim is meant to be slightly realistic, so yes, you get punished for trying to be a master of everything rather than specializing. Why not instead level up your alteration skill and use iron skin or the like, that way you could be using something you're already proficient in (magic) to give you better protection. Again, it's not specifics of level scaling that are your issue, it's that the game doesn't want you to be a master of everything. If there wasn't level scaling, there would have to be something else to hold you back from easily getting all skills to 100. Sometimes you just can't be everything, sorry that pisses you off. :rolleyes:

Edit: Also, what is your character class, "God" perhaps? (Sorry, couldn't resist poking a little fun.)

Implement "Classic mode" and everyone is happy.

Heck, why not even have custom game rules?

- enable/disable level scaling
- enable/disable main attributes
- enable/disable quest marker
- enable/disable fast travel

Of course this would require a lot of work in terms of creating a template-gameplay that works well with any combination of the above mentioned options.