When scaling is talked about normally people are refering to all aspects of the system, I am. From loot, to creature spawns to mobs that are level according to the pc. Fallout had npcs that were level according to the player just like OB, except there was a range, a min and max.

I like the system used in FO3.

This is a good point. This is hard concept to balance. Personally, I would like the enemy to constantly scale. However, this takes away the aspect of TES games in that the player becomes a "god" character during late game. I think a good way to scale is to slow the scaling process as the levels go higher and higher.

So in the beginning, the enemy levels as fast as the player.
In mid game, the enemy levels 75% as fast as the player.
Toward late game, the enemy levels 50% as fast.

Maybe not those percentages exactly, but I think it might work well. Not sure. Just my opinion.

That would simply make the character more of a "god" character, which is what you don't want. The game will become too easy and boring at higher levels, because creatures won't pose any real challenge to you anymore. There should be a variety of encounters, with some creatures being less powerful and some being more than or equal to the player. While not perfect, I think the system introduced in Fallout will work just fine. It was a combination of place centric and player centric scaling, and I see nothing wrong with that. It provides a challenge without making things totally predictable on a second play through. If Skyrim expands on that approach, I'll be fine with that. Everything that both sides of this argument are suggesting can be done with a system like that.

Yes it did, and yes it happened outside.
Don't tell me you didn't notice these giant radscorpions filling the world ? They weren't in interiors, and they certainly didn't appeared before you got to a high level.

And GOD STOP WITH THE INANE STATEMENT THAT WITHOUT LEVEL SCALING A GAME CAN'T BE CHALLENGING !
It's constantly rebuffed and proved false, but the selective reading and memory seems to always bring idiocy back...

Range is there in Oblivion too but often left uncapped. For NPCs, I get that they are leveling like player, makes sense. But I think it should be used really discreetly. There can only be a couple of potential heroes or villains. They should be hand placed instead of random spawns coming from leveled lists. They should have names, uniques. And it would be nice that they were randomized in every start.

I saw people saying "Morrowind had level scaling too" lots of the time. Some loot were scaling, like 10 gold becoming 100 gold. Gold is scaling.

Since you know now what I refer as scaling, I expect you to realize the problem of Morrowind was coming from the limitless PC power which limiting the power of PC would be the obvious answer(Well, I offered skill decay but soft cap will work too). Scaling is a weird mechanism to solve this issue. Simply multiplying enemies health with PC will make progress meaningless. This is a fact. Game will become even harder, if you don't efficiently level. This is a fact too. Non-scaled content will become a joke compared to scaled things, like goblins becoming more powerful than deadra. Another fact.

I hope you would see the breaking nature of scaling.

No it didn't. Did you ever open up the GECK and have a look at how it worked? Obviously not. I've been working on a spawning mod that makes some changes and I figured out a fair bit of how the system works, and what you are saying simply isn't true. If you want to spend all that time complaining about a system, then take the time to learn how it actually works first, because you clearly don't know what you're talking about. What you're seeing with the Radscorpions has to do with the way the leveled lists work in the game, which granted could have been done better. It has absolutely nothing to do with one area being locked at a low level and another not. That only happened in interiors which didn't respawn anyway, for the most part. Everything else was just luck of the draw.

If you were to bother to take a look at how the Fallout system actually works, instead of spouting off inaccurate information, you would discover that it already uses much of what you feel should be done with a game. As I said, it's a combination of Placecentric and Playercentric systems. With a few refinements in the Skyrim system, it could easily provide the best of both worlds.

Fallout 3 work fine for me, so I have no worries at all. Did you not like F3's system?

Go to Old Olney my friend. you'll see that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Further out southwest as well, Giant Radscorpions appear regardless of level, and near where Raven Rock is, Yao Goui are waiting to tear the player apart.

There were instances of Giant Radscorpions filling the world, because, they were, as the player levels up, and it is apparent, but it's better than steamrolling the same Molerat when you need to run east out of Megaton.

Fallout 3 just didn't have enough instances of static spawns.

Not to mention the random encounters that sometimes tossed enemies at you which were way beyond your ability to deal with at the time. Like running into a Deathclaw at the Super Duper Mart when you were trying to collect some food for Moira at the start of a game. Or running into a squad of Talon Mercs near Megaton when all you have is a 10mm pistol and a few rounds of ammo.

I loved those moments. At least the deathclaw had an injured leg. Once he can't do the Leaping Pincer Deathstomp, they're pretty harmless!


Getting ambushed by Talon company, or by the Regulators was fun, it made Karma matter a bit.

Sooo...
Basically you tell me that I've no idea what I'm talking about, just to then confirm what I'm saying ? M'okay...
(and no it's not better, if I just want to battle constantly high-level monsters regardless of the immersion or logic I play a Diablo clone, not an immersive RPG)

There were actually two different Deathclaw encounters, In one of them, it wasn't all that badly damaged and could easily rip you to shreds if you weren't smart about how you dealt with it. Fortunately, that one didn't seem to come up all that often. As for the Talons/Regulators, they would have been better if they were more random. After awhile I knew where they'd be and I could just drop a Bottlecap Mine at their spawn point and take them all out at once. Though not all their spawn locations were that convenient, so I'd still have a pretty good battle on my hands.

Man, you're totally contradicting yourself. On one hand you say that going to certain locations you should encounter tougher monsters than in other areas, and now you're saying that running into those tougher monsters is a bad thing? And yes, you clearly don't know what you're talking about if you don't even understand how these systems actually work. Open up the GECK and have a look, and look things up on the GECK Wiki before you go around spouting inaccurate statements.

What is the part of "certain locations" being different than "everywhere" which does escape you ?

"powerful foes should exist in locations and situations that make sense" and "you should encounter powerful foes everywhere" are the same thing for you ?
Wow...

You shouldn't have to deal with weak foes everywhere either. And that's exactly how your supposedly ideal system would work. There'd be no variations, no surprise. "Well if I go there, there's going to be level 30 giants and nothing else. If I go there, then the only encounters I'll experience will be with level 1 rats." A static environment is equally as unacceptable as one where you're only dealing with creatures that match your own level. I want to be surprised, especially on multiple play-throughs, but not having any level scaling at all wouldn't for allow that. After the first time through an area, I'd know exactly what to expect with a fixed system.

[
Good point, but level scaling is not needed here. Randomization of a region's difficulty - set at each new game start - will surprise you.


Level scaling will NEVER surprise you. Randomization will.


Omitting level scaling will prevent this.

Equal part of missing the point and losing it in riduculous hyperbol.
Your thinking ability seems to be on the level of your reading comprehension.

Again, someone who doesn't know how the Bethesda systems work. Randomization is already built into the leveled lists. Just because you're a high level character doesn't mean that you'll always have to deal with a high level opponent. The game looks through the lists and can select any level up to the player's current level. So if I'm a level 20 character, there's still a chance that a level 5 enemy will spawn. But if I'm only a level 1 character, I won't be getting my butt kicked repeatedly because the game is spawning level 20 creatures. Fallout introduced a new variation by allowing individual spawn points to be set to anywhere from Easy to Hard, with some levels in between. So if I'm a level 5 character, I might encounter a level 3 enemy at one spot, or a level 10 enemy somewhere else. There's absolutely no need to randomize entire regions since that randomization is already built into the individual spawn points. The problems that people are describing are only coming about because the game engine so far has heavily favoured higher level encounters, rather than giving equal weight to all levels. That is simply a matter of tweaking the engine, not eliminating the system entirely.

i was under the impression that the dungeon locked when you entered it but it was arbitrarily set. so if you stumbled into a level 40 dungeon with your level 10 character it would always be level 40. at least thats what people have posted. this makes sense to me although i would still prefer a completely unleveled random game.

Your inability to even understand yourself is quite extraordinary.

You keep saying the game revolves entirely around the player's level, again, fire up Fallout 3, exit Vault 11, and trek North to Old Olney and count the Molerat-to-deathclaw ratio. You have no idea what you're talking about, and while you make some good claims, they're the proverbial "Diamond in the rough" in that they're mired in misinformed, misrepresented, or just plain wrong observations on how the game works.

Tell you what. Take the time to see how things actually work and I'll debate with you. But as long as you're carrying on about things you obviously know nothing about, I'm not going to waste my time on you. I'm certainly not interested in responding to what is nothing more than a borderline insult, and an ad hominem attack.

It's not arbitrarily set no, if by that you mean completely random. Each dungeon will have an Encounter Zone attached to it. These Encounter Zones deal with a number things but, in Fallout at least, they only establish a minimum level for the enemies spawned within, and whether the area will respawn or not. The minimum levels are preset though, the dungeons aren't just locked on a random basis. While I can't say for certain, it kind of sounds like Skyrim will also have a maximum level setting, something Fallout doesn't have.

PS: Incidentally, these Encounter Zones can be attached not only to interior areas but also to entire world spaces and to individual spawn points. So there's a great deal of flexibility in the way that encounters can be set up. Plus there's still the option of placing individual creature types directly on the map. So I really don't understand why so many people are convinced that it's a bad system. The only limitation is in the imagination of the devs setting up the encounters in the first place. I'd certainly rather play with this setup rather than having fixed, static encounters everywhere. That approach works fine in a linear game where you progress from one small area to another, but it simply doesn't work all that well in an open-ended world.

Personaly i hate level Scaling.

I hate being level 1 ang going to the meanest baddass Boss in the game, Kill him, and looking the Most powerfull item in the game at level 1.
Man i realy hated oblivion Bandits with Glass armor, and [censored] like that.

Scaling with a Withing a Range then i could be ok with. every NCP has a Bace Level and a Cap level.

Again, that's not at all how it works. If you're only level 1, there's no way you're going to end up with the most powerful weapon in the game. You'll only end with some basic Iron weapon and some Fur armour, not Glass. What you're describing is exactly what would happen if there were no level scaling. With level scaling, those kinds of items will only start appearing when you're at a higher level, not before.

Please people, if you're going to rant about level scaling, please take the time to find out how it actually works first.

Ob Has really soured people on the idea. Look at Kingdoms of Amalur another open world fantasy rpg, there has been lots of advertisemants of its level system. Specifically lots "no level scaling" advertising. But if you bother to look more indepth and check out some of the interviews there is a level range based scaling system. Level scaling rep has been ruined because of OB. I think mini games rep has been too, because people just think skill mini game, not mini games like horse archery for Zelda.