So from what I've gathered the Enemies always leveling with you like they did in Oblivion is gone which is a good thing.
I'm not so certain 'Locking' all enemies at a certain level when your first visit a place is a good idea either since it punishes the players who like to explore.

I pop in Skyrim on 11/11/11 and take off exploring area after area after area.
Well that's great except for now when I revisit those areas later on at a higher level all the enemies are 'Locked' at their lowest levels.
The challenge is gone.

I understand that it will work like Fallout 3 where certain enemies will have a level range.
For example a Rats level range might be Level 1-5 and Skeletons range may start at Level 5 and be capped at 10.
The problem is if you visit a certain area as Level 1 that has Rats and Skeletons then all the Rats will always be Level 1 and all the Skeletons will be Level 5 in that area for the rest of the game.

All of that is to say this: Why not just have enemies scale along with you but still be capped at certain levels?

For example if you enter above said area with rats and skeletons at level 1 then the rats are level 1 and skeletons start at level 5.
If you re-enter that same area at level 5 then the rats are now level 5 and the skeletons are still level 5.
If you re-enter that same area at level 8 then the rats remain at level 5 but now the skeletons are also level 8.
If you re-enter that same area at level 12 then the rats are level 5(capped) and the skeletons are level 10(capped).

I think level scaling can be a good thing if its handled correctly (not all enemies scale no matter what for the entire game).
I also think locking enemies at a certain level for the entire game from when you first visit that area is just as bad though.

Enemies should have level ranges dependent on what they are and scale along with you the player until they reach their capped level.

Discuss

I know dungeons lock(which makes sense to me) but do area on the map also lock? I know if Fallout 3 when you reach any area creature type locked, but I thought they still they still match your level as close as they could based on there range, how did it work.

Another I am the type of player who likes to run everywere, not use fast travel yet I never notice this as an issue in Fallout 3.

Also do to the more passive/neutral nature of wildlife now, I think this will be even less of an issue. I just wonder how Dragons will be handled.

Well due to the more passive nature of wildlife it actually encourages exploring more.
I would absolutely hate having all enemies in entire areas locked at their lowest levels for the entire game just because I decided to explore at an early level.

I also hope loot you find in dungeons is scaled to your level as well.
In Oblivion you just go to Rockmilk cave over and over and on the bottom level every enemy had 'epic enchanted everything'.
A few runs in that cave and you were rich and had all the best gear and it broke the game.

I'd much rather have epic loot but more spread out and harder to find and it would only be epic for the level your currently at if that makes sense.

I disagree, you will be fight less, so it will not matter as much. And the big challege out in the world will be the random dragon encounters.

A level scaling system that works
What do you want in a level scaling system?
? I have heard from many of you that you don’t want a level scaling system period, or that you want one but not one that locks the area. Well I have come up with what I think is a great solution for this. In every area you have multiple mobs, every time you load a screen the console or pc should be able to generate the mobs. Here is how I think it should be done.
? All mobs generated should follow this formula let’s say you are level twenty and enter a valley area there is 100 mobs scattered throughout. The computer or console should generate based on your level 20 that 50% will be within 5 levels either side of your level while 35% will be within 10 levels lower and 15% will be within 10 levels higher then you.
? So we have 50 mobs that will be level 15-25 35 mobs that will be level 10-20 and 15 mobs that will be 20-30. This allotment will allow challenge, along with ease. Each mob based on level will have certain percentages for better loot and obviously the higher level the mob the better chance of getting better loot.
? Dungeons should be a closer match to your level something on the scale of all mobs being within 2 or 3 levels either side.
? Also they should be able to achieve the right ratio by plotting out camps and such to have several lower level mobs with a higher level mob to be the leader such as four bandits and a bandit lord as leader, two of the bandits should be lookout and rotate watch with the other two on a set timer that changes each time the camp is loaded, this will ensure that the player can strategically kill the bandits and bandit lord. The four bandits should range in level from15-20 while the bandit lord should be 20-25.
? Higher level mobs in the 15% category should be lone mobs that are traveling along or in their own little spot. Such as a level 30 cave bear that travels around that you need to look out for or a level 27 troll who resides around a certain bridge. These higher level creatures should also have a huge chance of dropping great loot for the extra challenge of facing them and the cost of potions and repairs to actually defeat them, while lower mobs have more general loot.
This is my opinion and one that I think would work, please don’t flame just disagree or agree and feel free to add your thoughts or advice.

Bethesda cannot possibly screw it up like they did with OB, don't worry

This is the problem I have with your suggestion. If I enter the same area four levels later and the rats have all gotten super beefy, but the skeletons are just the same sacks of bones, my immersion will feel betrayed.

Now, if each mob had a level range, and the region itself had a "level range" from the weakest mob's lowest level to the strongest mob's highest level, and everything scaled up as a percentage, that might work.

So in your example, say rats and skeletons are all this particular cell will spawn. The cell level range is 1 to 10 (I'm simplifying it to have a total range of 10 for math reasons).

• If you enter at level 1, rats are level 1 and skeletons are level 5. You're at the lowest level of the region, so everything else is too.
  
• If you enter at level 10 and above, rats are level 5 and skeletons are level 10, same as your above suggestion.
  
• However, if you enter at level 5, rats will be level 3 and skeletons will be level 7 or 8 depending on rounding. You're halfway between the cell's level range, so everything else is halfway through its level range.

This ensures that everything gets stronger all the time, so if a monster has a lower level range it will always be weaker than one with a higher level range. It also makes difficulty more consistent. In your suggestion, if you're within the level range of an enemy it always matches you perfectly. In this system, if it starts off stronger than you, then it'll be stronger than you until you're nearly at its maximum level.

I haven't thought it through though. There's probably certain situations where it can cause problems, like enemies with large level ranges (dragons for example).


Randomized enemy levels would just kinda get annoying after a while. Also, to ensure that high level enemies spawn alone, the game would have to shuffle around spawn points every time it loads a region, which would either greatly increase load times or just wouldn't be possible the way the games are coded. It would also be a little bizarre to fight off a rat that's randomly stronger than a minotaur.

Randomized monsters also takes away half the fun of an open world, that being static content. Enemies placed specifically to create challenge. Oblivion sadly lacked this, but Skyrim from all signs won't.

*raise hand*
Level scaling is just a lazy way to not bother with actual real content design. If the game is adequately designed, then no level scaling is necessary.

If someone is looking for danger, then he should have to go where the danger is logical. Making logically safe place suddendly filled with high-level monsters just break the inner consistency of the world (and immersion), and make exploration and leveling pointless.

If I'm a high-level adventurer, I should have to look for epic adventures in famously dangerous places, not just go to the next cave and find liches and dragons that spontaneously came into being just because I'm high-level.

I only see this as a problem if you go around entering dungeons and quickly leaving them. This isn't really "exploring."

But anyway I read somewhere that the enemies will generally get harder the higher up in the mountains you get, meaning a low level character isn't as likely to enter dungeons up in those high areas, because the enemies around the dungeons will be difficult. I really love the idea of enemies getting harder as you get higher into the mountains, reminds me of OOO's enemies getting harder as you go deeper into the wilderness. I think the level scaling in this game will be really well balanced, unlike oblivion.

@akka, level scaling doesn't have to work like that. Skyrim will have minimum and maximum levels for areas/dungeons, meaning the world shouldn't feel nearly as much like it all revolves around your level.

Please don't flood this thread with your canned responses, it actually has the potential for discussion.

I disagree this is an open world game, linear rpg's are scaled by default, each time you reach a new area the mobs are harder and there is better loot. This does not work in a truly open world game. And there are ways to make leveling still matter while using scaling. Here is why I think scaling is good:

When I first played Oblivion I had to mod it as I did not like the scaling, I thought MW static approach was much better. But after playing Fallout 3, I realized that scaling was good if used properly. OB overdid. In MW after level 20 something the challenge ended. But I still did not think it was a must, now after playing Fallout New Vegas, I think scaling is a must for open world rpgs. In linear rpgs there is scaling by default, as you progress the weapons/armor get better, the beast get harder,etc But with the open world design you lose that with out scaling(level range scaling) that sense of progression.

Also encounters are less fun because there either too hard or too easy. In Morrowind the battle system was not great so it mattered less but as combat gets better is matters more and more. Take Oblivion for example, I recently tried playing Nerhim(?). When I started out the monsters were easy and I just bashed the attack button as fast as I could, I thought to myself well I guess Oblivions combat has not aged well I use to think it was the best rpg combat out there, oh well. Then later on I fought some stronger guys and suddenly things changed, no longer was I spamming the attack button but now I was using the block button, dodging attacks, trying to figure out the best time to use a strong attack or perhaps some quick weak attack spamming is enough to finish this guy off. Skyrim will use an even more elborate system than Oblivion, I don't want to spend my time spamming the weak attack in Skyrim because I have reached x level and everything is a joke, nor do I want to be confined to a small area of the world because if I go any were else I will die in one hit.

Now as I said at the start Oblivion did not do scaling well(I used frans mod). Total scaling is bad, but I think the way Skyrim is going, using a level range scaling system like Fallout 3 is good.

These are my main reasons for scaling:

-Surprise factor during replay, if all chest are static you learn whats in them and you lose a lot of the fun factor in finding them.

-Better challenge curve, things don't become lame when you reach x level. Even the best combat system is lame if everything is a pushover. And you don't get overly frustrated by everything being to hard.

-Better loot curve, as you get better you get better stuff, long ago when I was a console player I was really into the Final Fantasy games, and it was great the steady progression of better and better stuff. This was lost in MW, great more crap, oh whats this, more crap,etc

But we don't want to go overboard like Oblivion, I want a system that still does stuff similar to more static systems like:

-Sense of getting more powerful, its always a lot of fun squashing some beast that a few hours earlier you had to run for your life from.

-It adds a great dynamic of risk/reward, you take a risk and get rewarded appropriately. Like in MW were you managed to sneak past tons of powerful beasts, then found a cool new sword for all your trouble.

-Realism/immersion makes me feel more like this is a living world that would function whether I am there or not.(though when I was younger I never understood why as I went through a linear rpg each new area always had stronger beasts and better loot)

So to get all this a level ranged scaling system like Skyrim will use seems best. Fallout 3 had hand placed loot and tough encounters & places yet gave you a lot of freedom from the start. And no scaled unique items, which is absurd.

I'm not worried about Skyrim's scaling, I'm more worried about the actual combat.

Fallout 3's Scaling system felt more pervasive than it really was, because of the enemies with over 1000HP. Overall, the combat and enemy design itself was what dragged the difficulty curve all over the place. New Vegas on the other hand, while it doesn't have any scaling, made many improvements to the combat itself. I often muse that I like New Vegas better as a game, but like the Capital Wasteland more as a place. The overall world design (Including how the scaling works with a difficulty curve) was better than New Vegas.

So really, what I'm saying is, what type of scaling, and how aggressive it is, depends on features we don't know enough about, to say what will actually work best.

Leveled Loot should be completely abandoned though. Random Loot is still acceptable (For containers) as long as it's logical in the context it's given. By context, let's take a few examples.

A particular dungeon is designed as "high level" and a particular container deep within should reflect that. A container in a Dwemer Ruin, should have Dwemer items, though exceptions to the rules exist, as context changes. (IE, Mercenaries using a Dwemer ruin as a hideout would probably have picked it clean)

i agree and the lone high level monster would be ona random travel loop. they have just as much of a chance to walk through a bandit camp and fight the bandits as of walking into you. you could also factor in a precentage of trash mobs that would only fight you if cornered because they are low leveled. each camp spawn point is going to remain the same with just slightly varying differences in level arrangment. and the majority of mobs are going to be lower then you level or right at it.

You're presuming that all areas will respawn like they did in Oblivion. I doubt very much that this will be the case in Skyrim. It's more likely going to be like Fallout 3 where the only areas that respawned was the wilderness and a few select interiors. It really doesn't make any sense that you would clear a cave then three days later it's fully repopulated again.

In theory sure, but it all depends on how it will be implemented in practice.
It may work IF
- It makes sense to have such "level zones" (if a regular woodsmen village is high in the mountains, it still doesn't feel believable that they would all be superstrong heroes just because they are in "high level zone", for example),
- and if the difference between the minimum and maximum level also makes sense (if I go in a logically rather safe place late in the game, like the fields outside a major city, it wouldn't make sense that it's filled with high-level monsters just because I went in when I was lvl 30, while some area where I went in early that were described as deathtraps have just a few goblins in comparison).


This has nothing to do with level scaling or not, it has just to do with lack of content for a level that was easily reachable.
Put the max level at 15, and see, no more problem about challenge !
Increase the amount of content for high-level character, and see, no more problem again.
Diminish the power you gain through level, and again, no more problem.

If you put every monster at level 100 when the max level is 50, then even without level scaling there will always be challenge.
If you put every monster at "player level minus 20", then nothing will ever be a challenge, even with level scaling.
(of course these examples are complete exagerations and never existed in any decent game, it's just to show that both concepts are totally unrelated and that challenge is not actually a point for or against level scaling)

True, but as you progress from dongeon to ruin to fort, while those will be "locked" leveled places, you will still be progressing.

Say, for example, you enter dungeon #1 at level 1. That dungeon will accomodate you for your first dungeon

Say, you level up twice in Dungeon #1. You are now level 3

Now you enter a new Ruin, at level three. That Ruin will accomodate you for your current level, as well as possibly throwing a challenge at you (a high level creature at the end of the ruin)

Say you beat the creature and are now level 5. You enter said fort and everything accomodates you for being level 5.

Can you see the trend? I can totally see this working with minor flaws. and with time still on Bethesda's plate, i can safely assume that they will work out minor kinks in this system.

Did you read my post? If you do that(add more high level encounters), then even less fights will match my level. More complex the combat system is the less fun it is to fight lots of weak mobs. Which means lots of filler fights And not being able to explore because of lots of strong mobs is just as bad. MW had scaling it just stopped at 20 or so, I use mods when playing to keep it going. So it is better. But not ideal. Read my post about my exp with Nerhim for example.

I did read, I just disagree.

Morrowind had little high-level, difficult content, while also having a quite easy and fast leveling, which caused the whole lot of "Morrowind is too easy" problems, which is, again, a completely separate isseu from level scaling.
Same for Nerhim, you again just point that an easy game is a boring one, and that fighting become more interesting when you have to do something else than spamming the weak attack button. That's pretty much a given, but, again, it's absolutely nothing to do with level scaling.

I share your opinion on the good things of a static world, which is not surprising, but as for your reason to prefer level scaling, let's just say you just draw the total opposite conclusions than me. Lack of surprise and feeling of progression are precisely the two worst problems with level scaling, so seeing you giving them as example of why you want it is... weird. Loot inflation is also far from a plus, so not really something I would give credit to level scaling, on the contrary.

Same for FO3, though it was certainly a MUCH better situation than Oblivion, it was still horrible with its level scaling, which became very "in your face" and annoying after reaching 15th level or so.

For me, the best way to keep challenge while not having level scaling would just to add more realism in the game. Becoming more powerful while still not being the usual god walking on Earth, not because things scale up and follow you (again, what's the point of putting a leveling system if it's to nullify the idea ?), but simply by making levels less powerful, and keeping fighting inherently dangerous, even against lower level foes - after all, even a battle-hardened soldier doesn't beat regularly ten people alone in a fight, and can be killed just by one greenhorn if he's not careful.
Becoming some steel wall able to take fifty hits from a battleaxe in the head always felt rather ridiculous to me

I fully agree. Level scaling is not needed.
Remote regions (away from civilization) should become progressively more dangerous.
It should be the players decision to venture farther out into these regions, if he/she feels ready for it.
Cosmic miracles like fixing regions to the players current level: silly.

+1 for no level scaling at all. Level scaling is a cheap way to avoid the extra work needed to properly balance the game, that's all. If there is a dangerous area with level 30 giants then I always want there to be level 30 giants and if there is an easy area (close to towns, roads or villages for example) then it doesn't make sense if suddenly level 20 monsters pop up only because my character is level 20.

A level 1 character shouldn't be able to explore the whole province. It doesn't make any sense and where is the fun in exploring if you can simply run around everywhere with your level 1 guy during the first few hours of gameplay and then there is nothing left to explore? I think it's much more fun if there are some mysterious areas that you don't dare to enter until you are high(er) level. That way you can slowly explore the world as you level up and each time you become stronger you can try to explore a new area that might have been too dangerous earlier.

There will always be a point where the challenge is gone in a world with no level scaling. But that's the reason for raising stats, leveling up and finding better equipment in a RPG to me. If I constantly meet dangerous enemies even if I'm level 50 then it feels like I didn't achieve anything. And it feels artificial because I know that the enemies I meet weren't there before. Every game needs to end at some point. They just need to balance it properly so you can play 100+ hours before your character becomes so strong that he won't find a challenge anymore. If on PC you can of course use mods to slow down leveling as much as you like anyway.

The new leveling system sounds of course much better than Oblivion's, but I wonder why they need a leveling system at all. I still don't know how exactly it will work out in game, even though I've played FO3 (in FO3 I think the level scaling was still too noticeable).

The problem with this approach though is that it has a negative impact on re-playability. If I go through an area that has level 30 giants, then I'll know exactly what to expect if I decide to play through the game again. There'll be no surprises. That's the main advantage of level scaling, you can go through an area twice and it won't necessarily be the same either time.

Level scaling brings no surprise, on the contrary.
What brings surprise is randomization, which doesn't need to include the player level.

Just as with difficulty, this argument is wrong because it grants level scaling an effect that has nothing to do with it.


As an aside, this "I'll know it's here next time I play" is an argument that I never saw holding much water. It's a bit like saying that random-generated quests are more interesting than handwritten ones, because after the first playthrough you know the handwritten ones while the randomized are always a surprise !
I'm pretty sure that random-generated quests, despite being "surprising", are a very poor replacement for handwritten ones.

Whether it's good or bad depends entirely on how much their level matters in the end. There's nothing bad with level locking. Fallout 3 worked just fine, the rest is just personal taste. Most people prefer it, some don't.

I want it Morrowind style. Period.

What really holds little water, is all of your arguments completely ignoring the fact that The Elder Scrolls games have to account for millions of different players all leveling and progressing at a different rate, and that level scaling, whether or not it's implemented correctly, is a great tool to ensure a smooth difficulty curve no matter how the player chooses to play.

The issue comes in when the game becomes formulaic, as in Oblivion. So a partial randomization - Logical scale is what works. If you just have randomization, it becomes frustrating, because you can explore 20 miles of terrain, only to unexpectedly get cut down by a Deathclaw that the player was not aware of, nor had any reason to believe existed (Can be addressed if you telegraph information though)

On the flip side, a totally Scaled world, creates no sense of growth, even if the enemies you encounter are aesthetically different.


So you accomplish compromise by writing in enemy slots tagged as scaled randoms, along with pre-existing logical statics.

The whole point of the scaling debate, isn't if it worked in Oblivion, or Fallout3, it's if it can work at all, and it definitely can, there can be no argument to the contrary that has a foundation in logical game design.



I do hope you recognize the difference between "Difficult" and a "Difficulty Curve", some of the easiest games have exceptional difficulty curves, some of the hardest, lack a curve at all. It's about pacing and accessibility. And like any good art, the more accessible a game is, the more it can be appreciated. A game like Armored Core: For Answer, has a Difficulty curve that hits vertical "Cliffs" that throws the majority of players off, while a game like Mass Effect 2, has a comparatively smooth difficulty curve, that keeps the player engaged.