Level scaling, in what its meant to achieve for open world games like the Elder Scrolls, is a brilliant addition to the Elder Scroll series.

What it does: Scale the enemy's relative strength in an area to the player's level.
Specifically for Skyrim: Enemy levels in dungeons when you first enter it. Smart move, Bethesda. Also, some areas will be designated as "easy" or "hard" according to theme and be scaled relatively to the player level as easier or harder. Also nice.
Why it works: The purpose is not dictate where the player needs to go in order to present the players an appropriate amount of challenge in combat - we know that much and understand that it complements the open world of the Elder Scrolls series so well. The key assumption of level scaling is that the player level is a good indication of player combat prowess in handling enemies.

It is this key assumption that I wish to discuss in this thread, as it leaves a hell lot of ways to "gib" yourself.

You see, in the Elder Scroll series, non-combat skills can contribute to your player levels. In Oblivion, the main culprits were Merchantile, Speech Craft, Athletics, Acrobatics, and security. If you were hoping that speech craft, athletics, and acrobatics were going to help you out in taking out enemies in Oblivion, you'd be sorely mistaken. (Security, and Armorer. Merchantile, security and armorer helps indirectly, but not nearly as much as the combat skills). Yet if you chose any of those skills as the Major skills which contribute to your player levels, you'd be leveling up but not gaining additional combat prowess. Since you levelled up, the enemies however will be stronger henceforth.

Essentially, choosing any of these non-combat skills as Major skills (ie they contribute to your levels) will definately "gib" you.

In Skyrim, ANY skill will contribute to your levels (apparently improving high level skills more so than lower level skills. This is nice IMO). So you can not chooose NOT to pick non-combat skills to represent your toon's rise in combat prowesss. So to be stronger relative to your enemies in Skyrim, you're going to have to try your hardest NOT to level up merchantile, speech craft, security and other skills that don't help you take out your enemies as much as combat skills would. Good luck with that.

See where I'm going with this?

Non-combat skills are great, and should stay in the game. However, non-combat skills do not complement a level scaling system well as non-combat skills are poor indicators of player combat prowess. Hence non-combat skills should not contribute to player levels.

Well, if its too late to change this at this point of the game, I'll just wait for a mod to do it for me.

If this were nothing but an action-adventure game you might have a point, but it's not. It's a role playing game, and as such non-combat skills can be just as important in determining your character's overall role as the combat based ones.

Valid points, this is why it seems "Purist" type classes are more powerful than mixed classes. It's not so much that noncombative skills shouldn't factor in, it's that they should have a lower impact than combat oriented skills. I'm not entirely sure of what would be necessary to accomplish that.

In the larger scheme of things, scaling should always compliment fixed monster placement, and never replace it. Wild enemies are as much a part of the atmosphere as the buildings or NPC's

So if you make a character that avoids one handed, two handed, block, armor, smithing, sneak, archery, alchemy, destruction, restoration, illusion, conjuration, alteration, and enchanting, you're screwed.

Really the fact that areas will lock to your level when you first enter them will balance this issue. If you haven't raised your combat skills enough, go back to an area you explored at a lower level and fight enemies there.

1. Another role of leveling is getting perks. If you increase your non-combat skills, shouldn't you be able to get perks for those skills? (One could break the link between levels and perks, but this would require a substantial revision of the system).

2. Characters who have focused on non-combat skills should be relatively weak at combat.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. All skills contribute to your level, only non combative skills should to a lesser degree. Especially when the higher your skill the more xp it contributes to your level. Perhaps non combat skills should stay at an even amount of xp contribution even at higher skill levels. Combat skills could act as the system currently is designed, the higher your skill points are the more xp received for each skill increase.

I doubt this will be an issue. Unless you don't use any of the combat skills. But thats on you.

Or, rather than character level the system can take account of select skills and tailor the level (and type) of bad guy based on combat skills. And I thought I read something about that, populating dungeons based on what "type" of character you are. "Easy" could populate enemies that you are strong against (2 handed hammers smoosh Giant Spider) or with ones you are poor against (low Armour and shield gets shot with arrows). Rather than taking all skills into account, only those affecting battle could be used, and it would allow for a dungeon filled with foes that are specific to your playing type (Magic users get their showdowns with other magic users, assassins get powerful slow whited monstrosities to back-stab.....)

Yes.

triple negative... I'm so lost :sadvaultboy:

But what I assume, is that I can have max mercantile and speech craft, be level 20, and be stuck fighting level 20's even thought my attack skills are about 4.

However, it's not like you can avoid fighting. Plus it's more Fallout-level scaling, so you'll still see plenty of rats at level 25

Don't quote me completely on this as I could be wrong ive had a really busy day but it seems like none combat skills fall under a specific archetype which levels up with a combat skill.

Anyway it seems like the none combat skills scaling thing is different with Skyrim (better), so it may not be a issue. Id haft to read again on it though

Not to mention that the overall strength of a character will only be partly influenced by their skills. The perks you choose when you level up are going to play a much more important role than your actual skills will. Those will primarily be used to unlock specific perks, and the player will have the choice whether to take them or not.

Relatively weaker, not helpless to the point that they can't skill up their combat abilities. I'd think only around a 25% reduction in scale-check compared to combat skill. Not a ton, but enough so that people aren't gimped out of RP.

Of course... If companions are something that we can get, and Todd Howard wants "More, less developed" companions as opposed to 2-5 "New Vegas" Style, I think it's actually possible to ignore this, and instead take on "Escorts" to help you through the rough bits.

I think the new Skyrim levelling system will address this quite well. By the main character stats being only behind the scenes and the visible ones being health, fatigue and magicka all level ups will now contribute to the 3 main combat related stats a player is most interested in.

It is difficult to say how adaptive this system will be in combat until we get to play it though.

Agreed.

Now, I'm not sure I fully understand your solution - 25% reduction in scale-check compared to combat skill - but it sounds like the idea is that enemies will scale at a lesser rate with your non-combat skills, when compared with your combat skills. So, all else being equal, the enemies faced by a level 10 non-combat oriented character will be 25% weaker than the enemies faced by a level 10 combat oriented character. Is that roughly right?

But here's why I think that might be unnecessary, if the goal is to allow non-combat characters to increase their combat abilities. We know that Skyrim won't feature global enemy scaling. Some areas will feature enemies - even when scaled to their maximum level - which are relatively weak for sufficiently high level characters, even if those characters are mostly non-combat oriented. Non-combat characters wanting to level up their combat skills can fight enemies in these areas.

The obvious problem with this solution is that it's a "grinding" solution. But, again, I don't see this as a huge problem. That's just the cost of going for non-combat skills. And I think that's a cost we should want in the game.

Its the opposite. To improve roleplay options, specifically in developing non-combat skills, non-combat skills should be taken out of the levelling contribution.

In a game where level scaling is present, the main role of player levels is an indicator of your combat prowess, which is used to determine appropriate combat challenges to throw at the player. If you've been spending some time talking to people in the city to collect information (speech craft) and doing a lot of trading (merchantile) before heading for encounters, you're going to find that the game thinks you are much stronger in combat than you really are. Your levels are NOT an indicator of your character's personality.

You see, I LIKE collecting info and making myself fully prepared before entering an encounter. Hence I would like to make good use of non-combat skills as I feel good preparing myself for a life threatening situation. I call this "smart play". However, the level scaling system DISCOURAGES me from improving myself in non-combat skills as the enemies will become much stronger relative to me if I build up non-combat skills. The enemies becoming more powerful relative to me defeats the whole purpose of all my preparation!

This wouldn't be such an issue if these skills lead to important info and supplies which you can take advantage of in your combat encounters (maps, numbers of enemies, types of enemies, suitable strategies, info on appropriate supplies to buy such as poison antidotes for spiders, flaming pots for trolls, caltrops for fast moving creatures), but these elements are not present in Oblivion, and doubtfully strongly present in Skyrim.

Let me repeat: My suggestion is NOT to remove non combat skills, but rather remove their contribution from the level scaling system. This will encourage people to develop non combat skills as they will only be advantaged but never penalised for utilising non-combat skills, and thus encourage more role playing options.



While it is true that perks will play a role in your character prowess (we don't know how much yet!), that's still no reason to put those who develop their non-combat skills at a disadvantage as it discourages the use of non-combat skills and thus discourages roleplay options.



I disagree. Non-combat skills should not incur a cost as it discourages role play of a smart adventurer. Unlike what you'd read in various novels, adventurers who are heading for danger who value their lives would very well like to collect info on what he's getting himself into and prepare accordingly. But that would be all for nought if you become relateively weaker to enemies as you've improved non-combat skills in the process.



No. It discourages role play.

I disagree. Any skill should should be important enough that deficiency in that skill should be a serious impediment to the player, and any proficiency in that skill should be a benefit. Scaling ideally applies to monsters, to traps, to locks, to the stubborness of persuadable NPCs, to the magic resistance of things you wish to spell, and to anything else skills might be called upon to defeat. You should be sorry that your combat skills aren't up to snuff, and you should be very thankful that at least you can sneak past most enemies, or avoid death traps, or heal yourself, or open complicated locks, or talk Lord Smash-Your-Face into surrendering without a fight.

NO SCALING,i hate it so much. Look at nehrim...the roads were pretty safe, you could go to any city at a low level and live, but venture off the road in a high area and your stuffed. Make it like that berthesda; its realistic. I mean, along the roads, guards scare off or kill the little monsters before they grow while in caves and the wild, theyre allowed to flourish and thrive. and plz, make dragons powerful. There was not one powerful monster in oblivion. Look at almalexia or karstaag from morrowind. They were powerful and a challenge even for a high level character, a level 10 diddnt stand much of a chance without the ebony arrows of slaying.

Maybe you should have a skill level and a combat skill level

It's a good point that levelling non-combat skills will make it harder to defeat level-scaled opponents...but is that so very wrong? After all, even from a RP perspective, it makes sense that a character who specialises purely in combat skills would be better in combat than a character who specialises in Speechcraft and crafting skills.

In the end, however, it's probably a moot point as there are now very few skills that don't support combat anyway. Infact, there is only Speechcraft as far as I can tell since the crafting skills are likely to give you huge combat buffs as they did in Oblivion and support skills like Alteration and Sneak have some use in combat situations too. On top of that I seriously doubt the game's difficulty level will be such that it can only be completed with optimum builds so picking some of the less combat-orientated skills may actually lead to a more satisfactory level of challenge.

Well, non-combat skills help the character's combat-readiness indirectly. Of course, that was borked in Obl, but hopefully not in Skyrim. IIRC, they rolled Mercantile together with Speechcraft, so that should allow for better equipment/more consumables. The crafting skills are self-explanatory. Security - better loot, which results in better equipment, etc.Maybe avoiding damage from traps too. I see no problem, really.

Also, hopefully, there will be more quests where you don't have to necessarily kill stuff. The big weakness of TES always was that there were a ton of non-combat skills, but to fulfill quests you nearly always had to kill something, so these non-combat skills really didn't help you to progress in the game. If more quests were along the lines of "get me X" and you didn't _have_ to fight to get it, then the things would have been very different, IMHO.
Skyrim only has 5 non-combat skills though and they all could help to make the character stronger via equipment.

Good point. Part of why I recommended non-combat skills be removed from combat scaling is because the level scaling only applies to combat difficulty (as well as the available loot) and the role of combat skills vs level scaling is so significant.





From an RP perspective, true. But IMO the best way to support effect of level scaling as is counter intuitive. In gaming where the main focus is on combat (sorry, but it really is) and the level scaling only applies to combat difficulty, you need to give players reason to develop those non-combat, RP flavour skills such as speechcraft, merchantile and so on. Personally, I'd like to play "smart" RP-wise through preparation, but I can't bring myself to develop those RP flavour non-combat skills because of the level scaling system will punish me for it. The level scaling system (or, should I say, combat level scaling system) as is does not support RP very well.






Indirectly, but their role in supporting combat isn't nearly as much as a direct combat skills.

I think you've more or less got the idea. The combat level scaling system is unfriendly to non-combat skills, and is essentially is a huge sign saying "Don't develop these skills! Your RP won't help you in this game!".