Both.

I have some pretty in-depth ideas on the subjects of enemy/loot scaling and leveling, but it would take a lot of time to really lay them all out so I'll try to keep it brief.

If I had to choose between a game with no scaling/leveling, and one with scaling/leveling similar to Oblivion's, I'd definitely choose the former. However, I think that as a few others have said, the ideal is some minimal scaling and leveling in certain circumstances, along with established areas of relative safety to contrast with more dangerous areas.

I think that the main quest line should have some scaling/leveling for the simple fact that the player shouldn't be forced to grind or develop outside of the questline to be able to finish it. It should be possible to attempt the main quest at low levels, though there should be parts that are very difficult. And if the player waits until a higher level to work on the MQ, it should be somewhat easier but not so much so that it becomes boring or pointless.

Outside of the MQ, leveling and scaling should be very minimal. A level 1 char should be able to encounter any type of foe in general, as should a level 40 char. A level 1 char should be a bit less likely to come across super strong foes in areas of average danger, just to make it possible for low level characters to explore at least some of the game world in relative security. Also this gives higher leveled players a bit more incentive to explore these areas, as they'll get better loot/drops from the enemies they encounter. I don't think that there should be a drastic difference between the average strength of foe encountered by a level 1 char and the avg strength encountered by a level 40 char in these zonez of moderate danger, just enough to find some balance. In very dangerous areas, strong foes should be extremely prevalent regardless of character level, so only a high-level character could survive for long. In general cities, main roads, and communities should be relatively safe, meaning you encounter fewer monsters in these areas (or none at all) and any that you do see will almost surely be pretty weak.

Regarding treasure/loot, there should be more handplaced loot in chests and at the end of caves and ruins. There should still be some randomly generated loot sources, but the leveling/scaling should be drastically toned down. It shouldn't be possible to find Daedric Armor in random loot. The amount of money a level 1 char is likely to get from random loot should not be supremely less than the average amount of money a level 40 char is likely to get, but there should be a small difference... Like 10 coins or so; hardly noticeable, but just enough to slightly favor those who take the time to build up their characters.

In short, I think that parts of the world should be essentially impossible for all but the strongest players to access. I think that there should be rewards for taking the time to build a strong character, but that they should come from handplaced loot in dangerous regions rather than a better chance at valuable randomly generated loot. And I think that in general, a high-level character should have less trouble playing through the game, but that it should never become a cakewalk, which means that there probably needs to be scaling to a certain extent, but that it should be as minimal as possible.

This isn't a challenge, it's replay value and moral consequences.

And juggling between all of those choices and their consequences to find a satisfying outcome isn't challenging, because ...?

A zoned scaling using that as a base like this:

Loot leveling: Tied to the zone and the enemies in it (no player level effect).
Enemy leveling: Tied to the zone, but randomized with given thresholds the zone has (no player level effect).
Loot scaling: Tied to the zone and its enemies (no player level effect).
Enemy scaling: Tied to the zone, but randomized with given thresholds the zone has (no player level effect).

Something like that would be my preference. A game offering challenges you can not withstand without leveling up, but also keeping in mind that the critical path needs to be able to be completed without a need to grind (as in, assembling the zones so that the game "needs to be played", so to speak, in order to "win" it - do some sidequests, explore, etc - but not so much that it feels frustrating and not so that character progression is nullified by playerscaling when considering the main questline).

For an open world game to remain somewhat challenging there's got to be some sort of level scaling. I thought that the Fallout 3 restrained level scaling system worked pretty well for the most part.

I'm pretty sure that the level scaling in Oblivion was a direct response to the many, many posts that folks wanted the game to continue to be challenging at high levels. I suspect Bethesda also liked the freedom offered by the model, as it enabled players truly to go where they wanted/do what they wanted from the very beginning of the game. Having seen the consequences of getting what players asked for, I imagine they'll adopt a more sophisticated approach. Leveling isn't satisfying unless you have the opportunity to become relatively stronger. It's also less than satisfying if nothing is a challenge.

Indeed, that was one of the major complaints that Morrowind recived. Everything got extremely easy after reaching level 30 or so.

Morrowind use level scaling, though, but not as extreme as Oblivion. I wouldn't want to play an open-ended RPG without level scaling, it's extremely common for RPGs to use level scaling. Bioware games like Mass Effect use it too.

No, it's not challenging in the sense that it adds difficulty to the gameplay...it could be considered mentally taxing, but even that is a bit of a stretch. In-game decisions are a way to keep the player immersed, no doubt, but if you can kill everything with one hit the game is still boring. And if everything is the same level as you the entire game, the you feel like your character is static in a changing world.

I would like to see worldwide, long-term and less significant, short-term consequences for some of the player's actions in TESV, but decisions aren't what make gameplay difficult. The enemies of the game, puzzles, bounties, etc., are what make the game challenging.

Let's take a "sandbox RTS" as an example, Hearts of Iron (any version). The game let's you play through WWII as almost any country which existed in 1936, and your first choice is to pick which country.

Do you really believe that the difficulty of the gameplay is the same, no matter if you pick the USA, Germany, France, Poland or Luxembourg?

I would hope they wouldn't do localized regions of difficulty unless those regions were something small, like a cave. Certainly not a region (unless it was something like an expansion, or The Big Bad's area), unless there were many fun exceptions. Basically I don't want to see that vampires or big scary wizards are dense in one area of the map but nowhere to be found in another.

I would only really like to see bosses have a base level, but start leveling when you got close to the level so they still would be climactic.

After watching this thread grow I've slightly changed my opinion on level scaling.

I think there may be places for it. Like with guards. You never want it to be easy to commit a huge crime and get away with it.

Ive seen a few people posting about how easy Morrowind became at higher levels. I think theres a solution that dosent include scaling the chalange to suit your level. Each skill can only be trained to 100, which means there is a limit to your combat capabilities (not including enchantment effects and buffs), so to balance the game there should be an area or two where there are creatures that would have level 100 combat capabilities, and maybe even one or two creatures with some skills higher than level 100, forcing the player to have to resort to enchantments and buffs even at the highest possible levels.

To conclude, I've changed my opinion, but only slightly. I think that a chalange can be maintained so long as more uber high level areas are created, and level scaling has a place, but mainly in the number of enemies you will face, and to very strict limits.

I like the idea of struggling through an area, and then being able to come back after I've gained a few levels and one-shot my former foes. In esence, I want a system that makes my character feel more powerful as they level up, while still introducing new challenges to keep me in my place. I hate it in games like Oblivion or the Koei "Warriors" games where you feel weaker and weaker the more you level up, because the enemy always remains perfectly in step with you. It seems odd that you present the greatest threat to your enemies at lv.1, with your character's effectiveness slowly decreasing as they level up alongside you.

I agree, it takes me 20 minutes to kill everyone in Bruma who dies permenently.

In caves, Nix hounds are nix hounds. most anywhere else, not only (as you state) are they not around at level 1, but in quite a few places, you'll come back and see a blighted Kagouti istead of a nix hound. In the Grazeland region, that Nix Hound might be a Winged Twilight... if your level is high enough. Not my opinion here, it's an actual list from Morrowind.esm. Specifically "ex_grazelands_lev+2" that I'm looking at. Other places? you top out at level 10 with a Betty Netch (Ascadian Isles). Of course, you hit the top levels of half the lists within a few hours of gameplay...

Morrowind tries to make the challenge adaptive, but at level 22 or so, the big daedric enemies already appear on the outside maps. They appear inside a maximum of 6 levels sooner. So what Oblivion tried to do was nothing Morrowind didn't do. It's just that Oblivion appears to use a different RNG that causes it to be very limited in what spawns. Either way, Nix Hounds ARE replaced as you level. End of story.




You should care how diverse the bestiary is. It's the primary way to avoid Goblin Warlord syndrome. But the last thing I want is a TES game to be as starkly leveled as a JRPG. Consider that before insisting that everywhere be assigned a "target level" for challenge. Do we really want a game that might as well say "Congratulations! You have reached level 5. The West Gash Region(TES3)/Bravil(TES4) is now open for exploration without certain death!"? I don't.

I like the region idea but only if they make it so each region has a mix of new enemies and some low level ones. Each time you went into a new region you would discover a new enemy and realize you aren't top dog here like in the other region, but the region would have a mix of low level enemies too so you would still feel a little strong and it would mix up the wildlife a bit.

I'm not averse to there being powerful creatures "out and about". But the main thing is that you CAN'T do that without level scaling unless you have the bestiary to make it happen. I *AM* averse to making "really fast and strong" enemies appear without a minimum level to spawn. Stuff I can't fight? OK. Stuff I can't fight that I also can't flee? Might as well hard lock the area. It's no less fun-killing than blundering into a trap you can't escape. Dying is OK, but check the Irrational Interview with Todd Howard. He's right: as long as it's "my fault" I died, that's fine. Making me die because I ran into the wrong enemy and having literally "no plan of escape" just svcks.

To put it another way, dying in a game is always annoying, but the player flat-out deserves a valid way to "get out of a bind" without having to play a specific way. "Don't wear heavy armor" and "well, you should save every 10 feet" aren't options.

However, TES is open world, and I have no intention of buying a game that level-restricts areas to appease the forums.

As I said before, the areas should define the level of the monsters, but each zone can define a minimum and a maximum for the loot and monster levels of that area, and the player's level can define the actual level of loots and monsters within those limits, and a chance random spawns can make more variety again within those limits.

There can be a bell-shaped normal distribution of the chance of danger level for loot and monster spawns within the limits defined by areas and the player's level would force the bell-shape to lean in one direction, so if the player's level is much lower than the areas level then the bell shape leans to lower levels, and if the player's level is higher than area's level then the bell-shape leans toward the higher levels, thus the chance of higher level monsters and loot increase in the area, within the limits defined for that area.

Some monsters, guards and loots can have wider, lower, or higher level range individually defined for them to make more challenging and/or rewarding experiences for specific situations and places, but those would be hand placed by designers, and would not follow the area's definitions.

Those areas' minimum and maximum definition can widen a bit on areas which we like to have more variety, so is we want it to behave more like Morrowind, we widen the maximum and minimum range of danger level a bit but keep the maximum limit on levels about 20-30, and if we want an area to behave like Oblivion, then we set the minimum to 1 and Maximum to 100 and Lower Randomization of danger level to something about zero.

Thus if we can define the virtual height-maps for minimum and maximum of danger levels for areas and could define the Randomization factors for those areas as well, and let the engine select the loots and monsters, for those areas from the leveled lists depending on those factors, and let the designers to place manually defined (fixed or random) loots and monsters as they like, then we have an engine which can emulate, Morrowind, Oblivion, or any other style of loot and monster distribution that we like.

You do not like the shipped system? Then make a mod to force the game behave like Morrowind or Oblivion, or make a new challenge/reward system as you like. It's within your power to do so.

I really didn't like the leveling scale used in Oblivion for several reasons. Oblivion was my first TES game and it had a huge impact on me and motivated me to want to play the older TES games. During my first play though i was all about leveling up and fighting bigger and badder monsters and gaining the best items possible. This excitement was short lived however and I never felt like anything was too difficult for me and I also never felt like I was getting any better. After several playthroughs of Oblivion i was sick of the fact that everything levels to me and I stopped leveling all together and I played for hundreds of hours this way remaining at level one the entire time. I felt that this play style was a lot more gratifying and a nice change in pace. Then one day i decided to pop in Morrowind ( thank god its backwards compatible ) and i was immediately impressed. I was literally scared to venture to far because some areas had enemies I was not yet capable of defeating regardless of how great of a player i was. I had to increase my skills and save up gold to buy items to help me win these battles which I thought was just amazing. It felt like a true rpg. I was completely immersed and had a feeling of vulnerability that i had never once felt in Oblivion. Not to hate on Oblivion but it definitely fell short in this category. I just hope they learn from this and make an awesome 5th game that gives players both a feeling of power but also a feeling of vulnerability.

Nix Hounds never "went away" in the MW random spawn lists. At various character levels, higher difficulty adversaries were ADDED, but none were subtracted. If a Rat had a minimum level of 1, and a Nix Hound 2, with a Kagouti at 5, then you had a 100% chance of encountering a Rat at L1, a 50% chance of either a Rat or a Nix Hound at L2, and a 33% chance of either of those or a Kagouti at L5 or above. The ODDS of seeing the basic creatures went down as the number of other possibilites rose, but the initial entry was always there. Those odds were easily "skewed" by adding multiple entries, so you'd either see more or less of them as you levelled, compared to the other possibilities. By having 3 or 4 identical entries, each with a different minimum level, you could "phase in" the appearance of a creature gradually, rather than have them go from non-existent to common in one leap. You could even have 5 or 6 entries of the "basic" creatures and just one reference to ANOTHER list, which could include a wider variety of "rarer" chances, so the second list would be used 1 in 6 or 7 times, to give more variety without the tedium of having to add all of those rarer possibilities to every local list.

In Oblivion, many of the basic creatures were entirely replaced by stronger "variants" as you levelled, which begged the question: "whatever happened to all of the supposedly common creatures?"

THESE

However, in Morrowind there were always specific creatures in specific places. In example, when I was level 11 doing my 2nd to last quest for House Hlaalu where you have to find the Robe of St. Roris, I found an ascended sleeper. To say the least, I died.

No scaling, thanks. Just put the critters where they naturally go.

The difficulty of the gameplay isn't a direct cause of the choice of which country you choose, but rather because of the obstacles that are part of completing that country's campaign. It's similar to having easier quests and harder quests; taking the quest is not difficult. It's the obstacles that you have to overcome to complete the quest that determines its difficulty. But merely having quests that have consequences does not guarantee greater difficulty, since it could involve simply choosing whether to give an item to this NPC or that NPC.

Now if what you want is a greater variety of more difficult quests, or the choice to take a more difficult quest over easier ones, potentially for a more desirable consequence for the world, I am 100% with you. But choice itself does not determine the difficulty of the game. It's the gameplay that does.

The difficulty depends on your goals. As Luxembourg, you could try to ally with Germany and then attempt to take a piece of some other country, which wouldn't be tremendously difficult. I managed to annex almost the entire Balkan peninsula, Turkey, most of Vichy France's foreign holdings, including Vietnam and parts of the Middle East, and occupy 1/3 of the Soviet Union while playing Hungary. Taking on Germany head-to-head would certainly be up there on the difficulty scale, though.....

The good thing about regional difficulty levels is that you can tackle the game AT YOUR OWN PACE. No forced "quick, go there, do this" with a character that's either 15 levels "beyond that" or else a character who's not geared for the task.

MW was "closer" to right, but the popularity of mods like Creatures, MCA, Giants, and others which add high-level opponents is proof that it wasn't "perfect" by any means. OB went to the opposite extreme, and the outcry over that is pretty obvious. Some form of mixed system with regional, levelled, static, and scaled elements seems like it would be better than one "simple" and too-blatant approach. If I can easily tell how it's done without really thinking about it, then it's not "right", and the "magic' is gone.