Take for example if you work out.

You work out to be stronger than people who dont, not just so suddenly everyone you run into is now buff
by virtue of magic.

If that happened, why even bother, no matter what you do everyone is the same as you anyway.

Its like giving out 2nd place trophies because everyones a winner and nobody is allowed to excel and be above others.

Anyone ever wonder why strategy guides are popular? I guess I always knew it but the reality of the situation is some players just want to be told how to play the game to get the best equipment and maximize their character to the fullest extent possible. I am happy majority of the fan base for TES is not like that and they kept the RPG aspect of the game intact.

People also want to be limited on what they can do at certain points in the game so their decision become less important as everything is already mapped out for them. I'm glad video games, especially RPG's have escaped this premise.

But I fail to see how Skyrim doesn't reflect this. I'm currently playing a level 17 warrior-type character. I oneshot wolves, no exception. I can take 2-3 bandits at a time, 4 or more start to become a problem. A giant is impossible to kill, and a dragon is extremely challenging and requires me to use every tool I have to down. I enter a tomb, and make short work of ordinary draugr, while advanced ones give me trouble, and at the end of the place, I tend to find an overlord who forces me to reload a few times.

I really don't see the problem here.

Level-scaling = Open-World RPG
No Level scsaling = Zones = Not-as-open-as-they-want-it-too-seem RPG

Also, if you are being knocked around by bandits you are doing something wrong. My level 50 character had no challenge from anything less than a bandit chief expert.

Double-post.

But once again, Skyrim reflects that. Your character does progress - sure, enemy hp and damage is somewhat scaled, but even if that happens, you're still taking less damage because you took armor perks, and you're not stuck swinging your sword like a farmer because now you can behead people in one swing, parry their blows more efficiently, rush them down with your shield, summon 2 pets instead of one, backstab them for most of their health and so on.

You just don't become superhuman, but the entire point of the scaling is that: allowing you to improve your character while keeping the world consistent.

Mind you, I always disliked scaling - I understood the rational behind it, but felt it wasn't a fair tradeoff. I'd be willing to sacrifice immersion for better gameplay in Morrowind and Oblivion. I feel like Skyrim pulls it off finally. Yes, level scaling still has negatives, but this time they are outweighted by the benefits. It works.

It maybe alittle off, but what bother me the most is having npcs coming up to me from the wilderness, an frighten lady and crook giving me something that is stolen, etcs. Having that repeat so often can be annoying. I wouldnt want that to happen often at all, otherwise it would ruin'in the roleplaying experiences.

Here we go, time to whoop an ass, again. :flamethrower: Explain to me how it is "realistic/consistent/believable" by allowing a player to advance his abilities by making an iron dagger over and over again then making a powerful sword while not increasing the villains abilities in any applicable way? Then explain how that increases the fun and creates better immersion.




You know what would happen then, you'd spend all your time power-leveling crafting, then power-level combats skills against the weak guys so you can destroy the strong ones. If that is fun to you, go play an MMO, TES is not for you.

The problem is he power leveled smithing and enchanting which resulted in him being extremely weak on combat skills. He thinks it is unfair and unrealistic. The thinks he was penalized for his decisions. Well he was, the game made him take responsibility for his decision to be crafter and that is not realistic to him. You are debating with a power-leveler who is pissed he cant exploit that in this game.

Woop ass? *rolls eyes* Just because the current system of smithing allows for such doesn't mean it has to be so in a non scaling world. A proper smithing leveling system would require higher level materials for high skill levels, which would force you to face stronger enemies. As for the linear arguement. While it's not true at all, seeing as you can easily have more than one area matching one level of strength. These kinds of limits is what makes progression rewarding. "I'm now this strong, so now I can go to this epic place" is a great feeling. It's mcuh better than always being to go anywhere, whch frankly gets old really fast.

And how is fighting weaker monsters first and then moving on the stronger any different frmo what you're doing now? main difference is that its decided for you by the game and there are no real character progression compared to the game world.

Mob's Health and Damage always increases every level.

So anytime you DONT level a weapon skill and increase health you are becoming weaker even though you are increasing your level.

I do not have to go to the same stomping ground to get stronger. I can experience new places with out being limited to certain areas. My sniper progresses well. It is realistic based on the decision I've made in game. I'm weak in mele, strong in archery. I'm weak in two-handed, strong in sneak. I'm weak in magic, strong in stamina. I'm happy with that as that's how I chose to play the game. Choosing to spend all my time crafting then getting pissed about my combat skills are not up to snuff, is stupid to me.

Not necessarily. Making stronger weapons and balancing your play instead of focusing on one skill to the extreme will reduce the effects of this.

Nor would you in a non scaling world, as I already told you. It would simply require enough mroe than one area for the same level ranges, aswell as overlapping level ranges. And no it's not realistic at all. It's not realistic that I can be allright at everything at level one, and then suddenly be weaker in one aspect than I was at level one once I reach level 20 just because I chose to focus on something else. Actually, you're not becoming stronger at all, you're just shifting your focus, which is very unrewarding. When you mightaswell stay level one, there is something wrong with the game imo.

It's also a big problem that levels of loot only appear in the world at certain levels. Because this is actually what is making the game linear. Your progression is fixed, you do not have a chance to somehow beat the odds and kill a strnog enemy to get great loot. Because that loot wont appear untill that kind of enemy is fairly easy to defeat.

Just curious, but has anyone else experienced a sudden jump in difficulty at any point in the leveling system? Particularly around level 20-25? I don't remember the exact level around there, but I do know that I had a problem when I ended up leveling mid-dungeon, crossing that magic threshold. For the first half, I'm going through the enemies, one shotting them both in and out of sneak mode with a bow. after I level, and then go through a transition door, I'm suddenly faced with enemies that seem to have gone up a tier or two. Mages are suddenly able to cast stronger spells, taking me out in a few shots. The enemies that I could previously one shot suddenly take 3-4 shots in sneak mode just to take them out. It was pretty drastic, and maybe it could just be like that as I was just going deeper into the dungeon, and they should get harder. But this didn't happen to any dungeon before, and this wasn't even the deepest one I've been through.

Just curious if anyone has experienced this.

Well you essentially have that, the only difference is that rather than dictating what level things are based on some generic and ultimatly very predictable formula that people would figuire out, write wiki's and guides on to show you where you should be at which level creating a path for you to follow. In Skyrim you can go whever you want and know that the content will be appropriate.

I see this kind of logic to where people try to make comparison... bear is strong than wolf.. mamamoth is stronger than bear. thats all well and good when you can actually apply some real world logic to it.. but where it breaks down is when you start making things with no real world knowledge, rather than animals for example NPC's and monsters. Orc is stronger than Hobgoblin? Mages stronger than warriors? Necromancers stronger than Spear wielding Kobolts? What level is a Kobolt? An Orc? Hobgobblin? How does a player determine their strengths? Die and relaod? Does that sound like an emersive way to introduce people to those monsters... via game reloads after being frustratingly killed and pulled out of the emersive gameworld? The point here is that this is where Con systems in MMO's come from, so that you can identify the releative strength of a random mob you run up on because without it you would effectively have to attack something and see if your strong enough to kill it. The same thing would happen in a single player game. You run up on a keep full of bandits? Do all bandits have a default strength or level? If not what level is this keep? Is the only way to find out to go in get killed and reload the game to a save when you die than guess at what level you might be able to come back? What about questing? Why would an NPC give you a quest for a level 20 dungeon when you are only level 10? And how would you know its a level 20 dungeon unless the NPC revealed to you.. hey this is level 20? Again emersion issues.

See its not all that emersive to either know that a wolf is weak so after level 5 they are no problem, anymore than it is to walk into a keep and have no idea how strong anything is and whether or not you are actually ready to be their.. Unless you are talking about applying real world logic in which case you would have to always say "well a keep full of bandits is going to be too tough for me.. because their are more of them!, so that place is to be avoided" and hence you loose the ability to be a hero and your just another peasant avoiding trouble.

It just doesn't work... its a broken system and developers have been trying to find ways to fix it for years. Level scaling is one way... the various Conn systems that tell you what level stuff is, is another fix. Straight up "you can't go there your not high enough level" is another way I have seen it done or just basic linear progression.

I would challenge you to name a game in which a static system actually works in an open world enviroment? I would be curious to have an example of what you see as "the right way" to do it.

Because you're locking yourself into.. two tiers. Because they are combat tiers, Sneak and Bow.

Thats exactly what i was saying.

You cant choose anything else, or you wouldnt be able to kill anything.

I'd for a billionth time to brnig up morrowind, it worked a lot better in terms of world than both oblivion and Skyrim. And yes it did have scaling, it did it much much better.

As for the identifying strength thing. I already know which mobs are strong before I fight them in skyrim. I know that a vampire is prolly strong, and a bandit chief. I actually think every creatures strength is quite apparent either based on their name or looks

The funny part is I'm sure most of those "The game is too easy!" topics are there because the level scaling is more mild than in Oblivion. You can run into tough things and you can also run into weaker things.

Agreed.

In essence every skill in the game increases your power in some way that is directly tied into combat. Even speech which for example reduces costs for stuff so you end up being able to afford more stuff and use more stuff in combat. Blacksmithing has a huge impact on your power level as you increase the strength of your weapons.

So even if you are not directly spending your perks on combat oriented abilities, your overall power increases and the game adjusts for that.

The problem is when you really start min/maxing right out of the game. if you start out as a level one character and do nothing but craft blacksmithing and alchemy till you get to level 10... ya.. the game will be more difficult for you because you have effectively focused too much on one thing. Its not so much a penalty as it simply a game mechanic. Its not realistic, but than again.. neither is creating a fireball in your hand or having dragons flying around attacking people.... its a game... say it with me.. its a game.

The point of the mechanic is to balance the game.. and it does a fairly descent job.. its not perfect, their are ways to exploit it and their are ways to gimp yourself. its a game.... its a game.. its a game.

KotOR had level scaling, yea gtfo.

So you want to limit the places I can go explore, creating a less varied environment/experience in which my progress is based on my skill rather than my decisions.



In a scaled environment tell me how much fun/realistic it is to power-level crafting, creating all the best weapons and armor then not giving the villains any appreciable counter measure. it makes the game out of balance and less challenging. You now both have stock combat skills while your gained an advantage through weapons and armor crafting. That is the very definition of creating imbalance in a game. Imbalance in game, is not fun.


You are basically saying you do not want to face the consequences of the decisions you make in progressing. You do not want any draw backs for power-leveling crafting and creating such an overpowered game state that it is not fun for you otherwise.

The biggest issue I have with the level scaling is actually the dragon scaling where you get random bone dragons at 20+ and random frost dragons at 30+ (or not so random). The problem is, those upgraded dragons destroy whole villages, now perhaps out of a role-play standpoint a dragon should destroy a small town, the problem is you will lose npcs such as the blacksmith in riverwood for instance.

My 2-handed full daedric orc can't do much to help either, since they fly around and use their breath attack and land on buildings where i'm dead in 2-3 full breath attacks, the game also forces me to use a bow, which without perks does horrible damage, or long range magic attacks, so what happens is I gain even more levels through archery which results in the dragons being even stronger.

On a new dark elf character I had 4 dragon attacks in winterhold, the mage college, and now I can't find the npc nathir or what he is called, I literally can't find him anywhere, i've check the whole college except the arch-mage chamber, i've even checked the inn in the town and he has simply vanished and I fear that one of those dragons killed him and he is laying somewhere outside buried in snow, but I still see no traces of him.

I won't spoil anything about that npc except that he sells some ingredients of high value, both for smithing and enchanting, so for him to be dead from a random dragon is really really silly.

Morrowind makes for a poor example, the level scaling in that game can only be described as totaly random. There was no ryhm or reason to it at all, things randomly scaled up for no apperant reason or scaled down. Sometimes the most intimidating scariest looking monsters would be easy to kill and a dumb looking rat would force you to run. It was like a lottery.

I would have said Dragons Age Origins, it would have made for a better case. Morrowind i would use as an example of what not to do when level scaling. It wasn't emersive or balanced, it was random and unpredictable.

To certain degrees as there are max levels of mobs and offsets. So your statement is only partially true.