I hated in oblivion as much as the next guy/gal having to swipe a high level monster 1000 times with my sword to kill it, i mean it really was ridiculous with some of the highest level monsters, but the type of scaling used in new vegas i found even worse.

For the simple reason that as i leveled up the game began to die behind me, whole areas and zones populated by low level monsters that gave me no reason to return and have fun in, plus outrageously tough monsters that stopped me from exploring other areas at the beginning of the game.

How is it going to work in Skyrim? if there is no level scaling how are they going to stop entire zones and areas becoming obsolete with low level creatures as we progress? or is this linear game mechanic now something that is desired in the ES? so that we just level up, move toward the end credits and not bother returning to enjoy the world we just travelled through?

Pretty much. Derp kids can't stand that sort of thing you know.

Anyway, the better option is to just remove level scaling in general. It should only exist to beef up monsters and NPC's to a set level from their base. For instance, rats should have a base of level 1. Once you reach a particular level (lets just say 10) they could have leveled up to level 3 to have that serve as their max level. Normal dragons would start at, say, level 25 right from the games start and would go to level 50 or even higher once you climb past that level and they would cap off. Boss monsters/major quest monsters should be static, and so on.

That is the best way to do the game imo. So that not every monster is constantly growing but they aren't entirely static either.

And as far as actually making low level areas become interesting again after the first time again, they should make most dungeons and areas dynamic. Say you clear out a dungeon full of rats and dogs, may be you come back later and bandits take over. You kill them, come back later, and a dragon made a nest. Stuff like that. Obviously certain areas should remain relatively low level (ie, one area you'll never see anything better than marauders, but in another you might find 2 or 3 dragons and a mob of giants) and others should remain relatively high level.

Apparently parts close to civilization will have permanently weak baddies, parts far away will have permanently tough baddies and the bits in the middle will have scaling to a limited degree.

There is level scaling.


It is not like Oblivion's terrible system. They've said that it's "like" or "inspired by" the level scaling in Fallout 3 (not the barely-scaled, linear FO:NV)

Dungeons will apparently have a set level range - for instance, one might be 30-40. Step into it at lv10, it's lv30. Step into it at lv33, it's lv33. Step into it at lv50, it's lv40.

I did not notice it at all in Fo3. Which is a good thing, you are not supposed to notice things like level scaling.

Aside from potentially being an aid for developers in designing quests to ensure that they always have the potential to play out nicely regardless of the PC's level, I never saw the point at all. It's pure laziness more than anything and aside from random spawns, it should pretty much be removed entirely.

Well, it's handy in making an actual "open world" game instead of a "linear" game where you progress from the low level area to the mid level area to the high level area. (And, no... I don't consider a game with an open map, but the areas closed off by the fact that the high level monsters there will instantly squish you to be "open world". This is why I consider the first half - at least - of Fallout: New Vegas to be a linear game.)

If you replayed a couple of time you noticed. The national guard depot was guarded by level scaled robots. I also got the impression that raider equipment was of better quality at higher level.

But standard Fallout 3 was very easy. Broken steel solved the difficulty problem but introduced a very visible level scaling.

I found vanilla/Normal FO3 to be just about right. Broken Steel.... "broke" too much. I don't bother installing it anymore.

This sounds pretty much like level scaling to me. Note rats was always level 1 wolfs did not have multiple levels, they got replaced by timber wolfs. Who again was partially replaced with mountain lions. The only moster who grew in level was the bosses lich, goblin warlord, minotaur lord and similar. Yes bandits leveled up all the way.

Except for this the system sounds pretty much like Fallout 3 and hopefully Skyrim, not everything is your level, you both run into weak enemies and things you cannot kill.


Here we agree 100%, and this is one of my greatest fears for Skyrim, to little high end content and no respawning in dungeons like in Fallout 3.

Why I said remove it in general. Ie, making it make more sense and be much more subtle.

The feeling of running into an enclave hellfire patrol and discover that two albino radscorpions was pursuing you is interesting, also far better than to fast traveling to a gas station and find you landed on top of two radcorpions who was on top of a lot of unexploded cars was just interesting until the enclave gave general fire support. :sadvaultboy:

That's not removing the level scaling, that's... making it better... which is what they will do with Skyrim...

Then we basically agree on that point to, strange world.
Too many fools has the level scaling is evil view and it should be no level scaling without thinking of the consequences.

I hope they go with Area scaling. Town should have tough characters...but they'd be the guards, the guys on YOUR side (unless you break the laws.) Same with areas that are closer cities, to a lesser extent (start of with rats, then wolves, etc, as you move further out.) Makes sense.

The trouble with Oblivion's scaling is that's it makes you feel rather hopeless. Walk around town - there's nothing that looks like it's worth stealing. Walk out in the sticks, there's no really interesting enemies. This is all a bit disheartening, as you have no idea what to look forward to. Then there's the jarring realisation that all the rats have gone and been replaced with bears for...well, no reason at all, and that all the bandits are now suddenly sporting elven cuirasses and silver bows. It was a game mechanic laid bare.

The level scaling was designed to help those playing a TES game for the first time, I know. But it really killed the mood for the old hands. It made the world make no sense, and there was no reward for player skill, only grinding up character skill.

I love you. You should work for bethesda

Area scaling a-la FO3 is already confirmed.

the only difference is that Dragons are considered an area.

Let's say a particular dungeon (or dragon) is set to level 15-20.

• If you first enter that area (or encounter that dragon) when the PC is below level 15, then it will be permanently locked to 15, whenever you go back or find that dragon again, he will always be level 15.
  
• If you first enter that area (or encounter the dragon) above level 20, then it will be permanently locked to level 20.
  
• If you first enter that area (or encounter the dragon) when you are at character level 15-20, then it will be permanently locked to your level.

This was confirmed way back in January 2011 and mentioned again in numerous interviews.

So if you enter a zone at level 15, it locks at that level and if you return there at level 40 no level 40 monsters will spawn there at all? so you'l be one shotting everything in that area? if that is the case then that has killed the game for me, ES was about replayability, feeling like the world was alive, not a linear experience, i very much doubt the game will be like this, i'm sure that no matter what zone you go to no areas will have only low level monsters, i'm sure some high level ones will appear to match your own level too.

Yes, this is exactly how it will work. Unless there is some mechanic where if you clean out a dungeon that it respawns with completely new monsters and creates a new area level.

I am certain however, that if you enter a dungeon, leave without killing everything and then come back it will be at exactly the same level it was the first time you entered it. same applies to dragons as confirmed in a few different interviews.

Hopefully there will be some dungeons with very high starting points like a level 40-50 dungeon, but I suspect many people who play the game will never get anywhere near character level 50.

Oblivion was the only game in TES series were enemies levelled up with you and, whenever you went, you found creatures at you level. This is not a good thing, in my opinion, and it doesn't make the world "feel alive". It makes feel like you being the center of the world and everything levelling up when you do, which is extremelly stupid. In addition, at the end of the game, there were no Rats or Imps or whatever, it was full of uber creatures... this sudden extinction of simple creatues as wolves or rats was... stupid.

I liked it how it was in Fallout 3, and I would like to see something similar (which seems to be the case). If I'm a low level character, some creatures should be impossible to defeat (as, for example, Deathclaws in Fallout). At high levels, some creatues should be a joke... if it's not like this, well... what is the aim of levelling-up?

Actually, level scalling and leveled-lists were present in every TES game...

Oblivion's level scaling wasn't that different from Arena's or Daggerfall's...

rather i believe it'll work more like this:



"from what we've been reading i predict that the loot system functions similarly as to how the leveling system is supposed to work.

in other words...

loot is leveled according to the location it's in and according to the player's own level.

ex: in a cave filled with enemies of let's say... level 3 to 6, the level of the loot found in this location would be between 3 and 6 so probably iron or leather equipment.
if your character is level 3 or lower the loot level you find in this location would be at its weakest and conversely if it's 6 or higher the loot level would be at its highest but never stepping out of the bounds imposed by the location level.


special loot like unique weapons and armor are an exception to this rule making their stats fixed and not dependent on the leveling system. "



going by this logic, if a location has a lv30 reward it's easy to assume that said location would be filled to the brim with lv30 enemies. if a lv5 character enters that location, he'll most likely die in horrible horrible ways until that player either levels up his character to match the enemies in said location or the player is that good and can retrieve the hard earned reward by pitting his character against a mob of enemies that are definitely above his own level by a large margin and win.


levelling would also differ between creatures so that rats would only go from say level 1 to level 10 and in a level 30 dungeon you might encounter some rats but they would be wouldn't be the main enemy for that dungeon but rather a "flavor" grunt enemy and at most only at level 10.

again, this is not fact but it's what i can surmise from the info that's been released until now.

It was stupid in that it was extreme in it's implementation, but what's the point of one-shotting everything you see in 80% of the zones once you've reached a high level? now that IS stupid with regard to sandbox play, it might be fun for people that love to finish a game and then having nothing left worth doing afterwards except feel the warm glow of having clocked it, but for anyone that wants to still be playing after the credits have rolled it's terrible news.



There should be a gradual gradient where you become stronger but not lock mobs at a level, thats just overkill and makes a large part of the world pointless to revisit at higher levels, as for the deathclaws and cazadores in vegas, i didn't like them, they just ruined my exploration when i was low level.

If you are level 50, I think you should be able to one-shoot kill rats and other low-level creatures. It makes sense, that's all. So if you visit a forest and a pack of wolves appear, you should be able to kill them very very easily... they were a problem back in its day, but know you have improved and you can finish them quickly... I think they shoulb lock at certain level. Of course, there should be some challennging stuff, at high levels. Very tough creatues, difficult to kill even at level 50... so the game still offers some challenge.

the level scaling will be similar to fallout 3. frankly anything is better than oblvions scaling where even at level 50 with the best possible equipment and max stats and skills you still felt like the same pathetic little urchin you where when you left the sewers.