Sorry if this has already been posted (difficult to keep up with the number of threads since GI's release).

It seems like right now one of the greatest concerns that everybody has, myself included, is level scaling. I mean really, it ruined Oblivion for me and made things ridiculous. Regardless, I understand that many people enjoy level scaling and that it's basically a nessecity to appeal to the mainstream market. My question is this:

Why not make EVERYBODY happy by making level scaling an option? Why not give the player the choice of whether or not the game world should be levelled, or how it should? Why not add the option at the end of the tutorial, as with New Vegas' hardcoe mode?

So make it enabled by default, that way mainstream gamers don't have to worry about changing settings, but give the community a chance to choose whether scaling should be enabled or not. It could be as simple as in New Vegas, with a message popping up, perhaps describing level scaling and giving the option to disable it; even if it's reccomended not to. The main point I'm pushing here is that it should be entirely OPTIONAL. Nobody is forcing you to play with level scaling, and likewise noone is forcing you to play without. If Bethesda just included this feature, It'd prevent upset from so many of the players who miss the sense of progression that a non-scaled world offers.

I can't imagine it'd be that hard to have an option to enable full level scaling (wherein every creature is tailored to your level) or no level scaling whatsoever, and maybe options inbetween. Maybe I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem like an impossibility but I haven't seen it discussed here yet. Like many or most of the other forum users here, I'd rather not have to mod my Skyrim to remove levelling just to make it enjoyable when an option could be added easily enough.

Discuss!

Ideas? Suggestions?

I suggest they would develop a system that let players choose if they wanted the game to be level scaled or not and to what extend, so there could be a slider valued from 0 to 100.

0 means no level scaling at all, so the monsters on an area are scaled only to the difficulty level of that area.

100 means fully level scaled to player level, like Oblivion.

20 means mostly level scaled to the area difficulty and about 20 percent to the level of the player.

I think that would have to be chosen at the start of the game. We've been told the scaling will be more like Fallout's, where areas of the game world are "locked" at a certain level depending on the level you are when you first enter it. So yeah, that would have to be done before the player has done any exploring. In any case, giving the player the choice would really fix so many complaints.

the option would have to be a once only decision, i expect it could mess up the game if changed during gameplay

Exactly, that's why I would suggest something like new vegas' hard core option. Just before leaving the tutorial, you should be given the option to disable level scaling or to keep it.

Killing a dragon at level 1 is ridiculous. I hope that they don't enable that.

I like the idea and I agree with vaultboyt3, but might be a little bit to hard to realize.

Opinions by those voting no?

The surrounding area where you start is scaled to you. And then as you progress outwards certain areas have a certain level of difficulty, so for example you have just gotten out of jail or something and a player thinks, "hey that artifact is up in the >insert name here< mountains! I can climb up there and be overpowered from the start!" and when he gets there he cans burned to a crisp by dragons see if level scaleing was still up there he would get it no problem (asume he heard about X artifact from the internet of from a friend). Just like in New Vegas would be ideal.

Were there many complaints about level scaling in Fallout 3/New Vegas?

Because if there weren't it would make very little sense indeed to return to Oblivion's level scaling;

where at high levels bandits would have equipment like glass armour and such.

I modded Oblivion to remove level scaling. It was a massive process and leads to all kinds of issues you then have to fix to make the changes work in a static world.

I like the idea but I wouldn't see it being a simple task to achieve and would involve a lot more work than Fallouts hardcoe mode.

If they could make it work, then yes I would like to see it.

i dont want it tbh, i loved being uber in morrowind

Options for everything is the way to go for everything, in my perspective.

I understand that, but if Oblivion had been designed from the ground up to have been more optional I'm sure it probably wouldn't have been quite as hard. That's what I'm trying to push at here.

I don't understand why people would vote no, short of concerns of time constraint etc? I'm emphasising choice. Nobody would be forced to play on any particular setting, and I agree level scaling should be on by default.

No. It just isnt that easy to have an option to remove it as its such an integral part of the game design. Either you have it, or you dont. I would argue anyway that level scaling itself isnt a bad thing - it all depends on how well its actually implemented. You want a range of enemies. Some that are partially scaled, and some that arent scaled at all. If its done well enough, you wont even notice.

Yeah, that would be nice - but its just not practical. Its a resources thing. Would I like Skyrim to be bigger, better, shinier, with more skills, complexity and better AI, and optional everything. Yep. Should they shoot for all of that? Nope.

I agree completely. That's beyond the point of the thread though; whether realistic or not, regardless of difficulty to implement, surely you'd appreciate the option as opposed to being forced to play one way over the other?

Also, explain how it is integral to the game design? I'm discussing the possibility of changing the game design to allow a greater degree of freedom. Morrowind had very limited level scaling, and much of the forum here would agree that it's system was far better than Oblivion's.

I'm not looking at the feasability of this idea right now, I'm looking at what fans of the series would want. I find it hard to see how anyone would prefer to be forced to play one way than given the option of changing it, even if they don't intend to. Whether or not it's feasible to implement such a system is a different subject altogether.

Yes I would like it. Do i think they should implement it? No.

Its integral to game design because thats the way you design the difficulty level. Which areas do you want to be difficult at the start, and which levels do you want to be easy. Do you want a particular fight to involve lots of enemies, or maybe a single tough enemy. Lets say you want an earlyish and unavoidable fight to be against three ogres, which are partially levelled. If you add an option to make the bad guys unlevelled, then you might need to rethink this particular scrap? I dont know how hard it would be to turn the levelling off, as I'm no kind of programmer, but I doubt it would be too easy. Theres always complications and ramifications.

Some people complained about New Vegas's level scaling ruining exploration but that's too bad, if you left Goodsprings and went north to get a tier 4 hunting shotgun from the great khans then you will most likely not make it there as you will be killed by Cazadors or high level raiders. It stopped people from being overpowered at the start. Oh and I never heard any complaints for Fallout 3's.

Why not then? Because it's infeasible?

Did you miss what Gstaff said?
I quote:

"Gstaff, on 08 January 2011 - 03:03 AM, said:
Since people are asking, wanted to briefly touch on level scaling. All our games have had some amount of randomness/levelling based on player level. Skyrim's is similar to Fallout 3's, not Oblivion's.

Hope that addresses some concerns, and we hope you're enjoying the GI cover story.

Have a great night"

Cazadors are just scary in general. Raiders were never -that- much of a threat, but a Cazador swarm even at high level in Power Armor can still kill you fast.

I kind of hope Skyrim has pack enemies, too. In OB, they primarily just came at you one at a time.

No, I didn't miss that at all.

Many people don't like level scaling. Many of the people on this forum would prefer Morrowind's barely levelled system altogether. The option to disable levelling altogether is completely dissimilar to Fallout's system.

Did you miss what the GI article said?

No, its not unfeasible, but in my view a waste of resources. It rather them spend that time on getting the levelling right. Morrowind rather than Oblivions totally bodge-up

I believe the GI article refers to the randomly generated quests. Levelled bad guys seems a sensible way to go for that I guess.

I fail to see a valid point in that. It's not difficult to place appropriately levelled monsters in starting areas and have the more difficult ones elsewhere. Morrowind did it just fine. I agree it wouldn't be easy, I'm talking about an ideal scenario. I don't picture it as very likely but I'd sure love to have the option.

Inversely, think about this:
You've spent years of ingame time developing your character, progressing, developing, completing quests and becoming well known. Whilst travelling one day, you're attacked by a street thug, and guess what? He's just as difficult to kill at level 50 as he was when you were attacked by a similar guy at level 10.

That doesn't sound any fun to me. Entirely removes the point of an RPG skill levelling system because it removes the concept of progression. At higher levels, we should be able to return to areas previously visited and dominate enemies that were once hard.

Happily, this is what already exists in Fallout's levelling system. Regardless, I don't like the idea of entering an area, and it's difficulty changes to suit me.

The point I'm making is this:
Have your levelling. It can be a good thing. It appeals to the mainstream market, keeps the game a challenge, alot of people like it.
But give the people who DON'T like it the chance to disable it and have set level enemies in areas of variable difficulty.


I see your point and I agree, but you're still getting hung up on whether it's possible to implement and the feasability of the whole thing.