Improved Level Scaling

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:38 am

I still would assume some amount of scaling/level listing of creatures in the outside world, well find out.


Like wise. I'm presuming they're just going to be using various encounter zones with a set minimum level, some of them quite high. But there'll still be some variation occurring from there. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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Anthony Rand
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:52 am

Like In Fallout 3, if I go east of Megaton at level 5 or so, I may run into an adolescent radscorpion(Or something as low as a molerat) that occupies one of the slots flagged as "Leveled" or whatever the terminology is they want to use. If I come back at level 20, it's written that a Giant Radscorpion or something of similar power can spawn there, but it doesn't mean it will. From an immersion standpoint, and this is where Akka loses me every time, there is no logical conclusion you can make that says "It's impossible for that Giant Radscorpion to be there now, because it wasn't there x number of days ago", because that's outright false. The Creatures are present in the game world regardless, I don't have to suspend any extra disbelief to come to a conclusion that "It just wandered here".

Let me get it straight...

So... You explore the world. You never see a single large radscorpion. You play hours (tens of hours).
Then, now that you are high-level, you do see them very often.

And when I point to this and say it feels very arfiticial and strains the suspension of disbelief, because suddendly there is plenty of Giant Radscorpions all over the wilds when there was none before, you're lost and can't follow why it's "in your face level scaling" ?
And because you're unable to get something as obvious you then throw ridiculous accusations at me pretending I'm not able to understand myself ? Oh God, the irony...

Look at the first line of your own signature, pal, because you really need it. I've already pointed it to you that instead of accusing me of contradicting myself, you should question your (basic) comprehension, because you sure have some ugly problem if you can't even grasp why the sudden appearance of high-level foes all over the map just because I've reached a level range, feels terribly gamey.

"the whole fauna just wandered here, coincidentally when I reached some high level, I don't see anything weird here !"
The game engine also placed too much emphasis on higher level actors when deciding what to spawn. While it was entirely possible to have a Level 3 Vicious Dog spawn in the Wasteland when you were level 20, rather than a Giant Radscorpion, it didn't happen all that often. The result was that you ended up running into the same types of encounters everywhere you went. It should have placed an equal emphasis on all levels, rather than focusing on the tougher creatures. I can fully understand why some people have misconceptions as to how things worked because that's how it seemed to due to that bias, even though the actual mechanics of the system didn't work that way. That problem was fixable for me through manipulation of the leveled lists, but it shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Hey guy, isn't it funny, you are just describing EXACTLY the same problem I complained before !
You know, the one which made you tell me that I was an idiot who knew nothing about the game ?
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u gone see
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:35 pm


Hey guy, isn't it funny, you are just describing EXACTLY the same problem I complained before !
You know, the one which made you tell me that I was an idiot who knew nothing about the game ?


You're saying the system is broken, so just get rid of it altogether. It's not broken, it just needs some minor tweaking here and there. They made vast improvements between Oblivion and Fallout, the same will no doubt hold true with Skyrim. And no, you don't know anything about how the game works. Most of what you've been complaining about was nothing more than design decisions, and had nothing to do with the system itself.
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Andrew Lang
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:26 am

Let me get it straight...

So... You explore the world. You never see a single large radscorpion. You play hours (tens of hours).
Then, now that you are high-level, you do see them very often.





You can actually see Giant Radscorpions as early as level 3(Since I can never seem to exit the vault below that) out in the far West. They do exist in game already, and there's no logical reason to say they haven't wandered in in the time you've taken to get from level x to y.

Now, I'm not saying there wasn't an unreasonable overabundance of them, or any scaled creature really, but that's not an issue with the concept of Leveled/randomized/scaled lists, that's an issue with it's implementation and tuning, so try again.
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Chase McAbee
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:42 am

You can actually see Giant Radscorpions as early as level 3(Since I can never seem to exit the vault below that) out in the far West.


They also appear in a couple of the random encounters, so they're usually not a complete surprise by the time they start spawning. I have to admit though, in the default game they tend to appear more often than I would like. But that's easily fixed by tinkering with the leveled lists. Bethesda could have done the same thing, but they decided they wanted them to appear more often and structured the lists accordingly. It was mainly a design decision, with a bit of a slant by the game engine.
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Lucky Girl
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:43 am

You can actually see Giant Radscorpions as early as level 3(Since I can never seem to exit the vault below that) out in the far West. They do exist in game already, and there's no logical reason to say they haven't wandered in in the time you've taken to get from level x to y.

Now, I'm not saying there wasn't an unreasonable overabundance of them, or any scaled creature really, but that's not an issue with the concept of Leveled/randomized/scaled lists, that's an issue with it's implementation and tuning, so try again.

So you're now saying that you see my point, after spending several posts insulting me about my supposed unability to making sense and even understanding myself ?

And yes it's fundamentally an issue with the level scaling. It is made more visible because the team lacked subtlety with the implementation, but it's still at the core the concept of "the creatures in the world are somehow linked to your level". You seem unable to understand that this very concept is what is repellant to many - so until you're able to understand such a simple idea, refrain from making comment about my unability to make a point ; it's bad behaviour to projects your own deficiencies unto others.

You're saying the system is broken, so just get rid of it altogether. It's not broken, it just needs some minor tweaking here and there. They made vast improvements between Oblivion and Fallout, the same will no doubt hold true with Skyrim. And no, you don't know anything about how the game works. Most of what you've been complaining about was nothing more than design decisions, and had nothing to do with the system itself.

Actually, my point is that level scaling is useless and inherently bad, because you can get the same good points without it, it has the tendency to bring lots of problems, and its very concept is anti-immersive, going against how the world should behave, using a meta-gaming mechanism rather than an immersive/natural/logical mechanism.
Level scaling is conceptually bad, and as such rather than bothering with a system including it, it's better to just not use it at all and rather work on randomization and good world design, which end up making for a better result overall.

The problem, again, is that level scaling is by nature anti-immersive and counter-productive. You can hide it with more or less talent, but it's still inherently bad for the game. I can manage to cut my meat with a chainsaw, but it's still messy and prone to accident, so it's better to use a knife.
When you see that the less actual scaling there is in the system, the better the game, you should start to get a hint that perhaps scaling at all isn't a good design decision (yes, using scaling is a design decision in itself, just so you know).
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tiffany Royal
 
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Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:09 pm

....
Actually, my point is that level scaling is useless and inherently bad, because you can get the same good points without it, it has the tendency to bring lots of problems, and its very concept is anti-immersive, going against how the world should behave, using a meta-gaming mechanism rather than an immersive/natural/logical mechanism.
Level scaling is conceptually bad, and as such rather than bothering with a system including it, it's better to just not use it at all and rather work on randomization and good world design, which end up making for a better result overall.
...

I see your point from the start but I was busy trying to show the difference between leveled lists and scaling mechanism. Let me say this, I fully agree with you. It should use some sort of ecological design rather than the current mechanism. I have to admit that this would be very hard to develop. I play Stalker and I like their dynamic A-life system. But I can try to show you some points about TES's difference.

In this game PC starts as a newbie. This is the gaming part, requires some sort of meta-gaming mechanism. I always see the early part of the game as tutorial where the game holds some of its high level content back. I think it is good design to keep high level content from appearing early in the game. But as seen in examples, high level content can still be placed where it makes sense by hand or leveled lists. So it is only a percentage. By the time PC gets to a level when he/she gets familiar with the environment, when he/she "searched enough" then there will be the fully realized world. The content, spawns or uniques, is still hand placed and place centric. It comes down to the believability of this fully realized world and accessibility and believability of a little bit watered down level 1 version and the designers' talent with leveled list placements, and especially not using creature/item/actor scaling. What you want is achievable within the system, you have to excuse them for the early parts of the game but you have the right to question the gap between these two stages.

I would like to see a food chain where the population actually increase/decrease accordingly. PC killing so many deers causing wolfs to become too hostile. Or killing so many wolfs increasing deer population. Places being rated on their geopolitical importance and NPC groups and factions fighting to get these places. And loot being in circulation dynamically with NPCs. Pirates having hideouts close to the sea and having good loot accordingly, city regions being well protected by guards and fighter guild forcing bandits to outer territories. Binding spawns to inter-province migrations. And all dynamic, living breathing world. I would even let the player to choose his/her level from the start, not everyone would want start the game as newbie to suffer tutorial stages.

Well, it seems Bethesda is not ready for that, maybe technologically or psychologically. Until then current methods work as a loose representation, we'll have to deal with it.
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lucile
 
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