The fourth creature type could be "boss" creatures, starting at level 12, and would level with you for 35 levels.

In addition to this some zones could also have additional spawns to certain creature types or have additional spawns across the board.

Also, maybe there could also be varying levels of gear quality amongst the different creature types. the gear quality of the different creature types would work like the creature types, in that the higher your level the more common the higher quality gear, but the lower quality stuff wouldn't completely disappear.

• I. "Very Poor" (creatures with little/no gear, or just clothing). This gear quality type would be exclusively available to the "Simple" creature types, and would be their default gear quality.
  
  
• II. "Poor" (a few pieces of low quality gear). This gear quality would be available to "Simple" creatures past level 6 and would be the default gear quality of "Medium" creatures.
  
  
• III. "Common" (a full/near full set of low quality gear, possibly mixed with a peace of medium level gear). The Uncommon gear quality would be available to "Simple" creatures who're level 10, "Medium" creatures of level 8 or higher, and is the default gear quality of "Strong" creatures.
  
  
• IV. "Uncommon" (a set composed of a mix of medium gear and low quality gear). "Uncommon" gear quality would be available to "Medium" creatures of level 14 and "Strong" creatures of level 11.
  
  
• V. "Rare" (a set of medium gear with a piece of high quality gear). "Rare" is available to "Medium" creatures of level 19, "Strong" creatures of level 17, and would be the gear quality default of "Boss" creatures.
  
  
• VI. "Very Rare" (a set composed of medium and high quality gear, leaning a little to the high quality). "Very Rare" would be available to "Strong" creatures of level 24, and "Boss" creatures of level 17.
  
  
• VII. "Superior" (a set of full/near full high quality gear). "Superior" would be available to "Strong" creatures of level 29, and "Boss" creatures of level 25.
  
  
• VIII. "Petty enchanted" (similar to "Superior", but would have quite a few enchanted pieces of Petty quality). This would be available to "Strong" creatures of level 34, and "Boss" creatures of level 30.
  
  
• IX. "Lesser enchanted" (similar to "Petty enchanted", but would have Lesser quality enchantments). This would be available to "Boss" creatures of 36.
  
  
• X. "Common enchanted" (similar to "Lesser enchanted", but would have Common quality enchantments). This would be available to "Boss" creatures of 42
  
  
• XI. "Greater enchanted" (similar to "Common enchanted", but would have Greater quality enchantments). This would be available to "Boss" creatures of maximum level (47).

Now, let's come up with a hypothetical situation.

Player is level 45 (which is the lowest max level in Oblivion w/o exploits if i remember correctly). Player goes into a dungeon. There are a total of 50 NPCs. 20 of them will be "Simple", 14 "Medium", 11 "Strong", and 5 "Boss" creatures.

Out of the 20 Simple creatures 10 of them will have Very Poor gear quality, 7 will have Poor Quality, and 3 will have Common Quality. Out of the 15 Medium creatures 6 will have Poor. 4 will have Common, 3 will have Uncommon, and 1 will have Rare. From the 12 Strong creatures 3 will have Common, 3 will have Rare, 2 will have Very Rare, 2 will have Superior, and 1 will have Petty.

Now, it's the Boss creatures where things get a little sticky, as they're small in number and have a large variety of gear quality types. 1 would get "Rare", another would get "Very Rare", a third would get "Superior", and after that the last two would probably be randomly picked out of the last 4 gear quality types.

Out of this scenario a lot of the mobs will be low level and have svcky gear, and only 3 of the mobs would have enchanted gear, and unlike Oblivion only a couple of these mobs might actually have enchanted gear that would sell for a good profit. However there'd also be a few mobs that'd be able to hit you like a MF.

I still think that encourages a "stopwatch" leveling system...see my previous posts to see what I mean. I offered a system similar to the one you are describing, but with a smoother leveling gradient.

As for the loot, I partially disagree. I don't want loot separated a la WoW into items of different qualities. Sure, there could be some items in the game (artifacts) which are very powerful and whose stats are much better than any other weapon or armor of the same type in the game. But separating gear into classes like that and slapping them onto different enemies promotes the idea of "random enemies with random gear." Instead of using gear stats to help define an opponent, use their level and skills. Then, you don't have to have a bunch of mismatching bandits and such running around caves and ruins. The different armor types (leather, daedric, glass, etc.) should have their own pros/cons unique to the items and be available from the start of the game. What makes the armor effective is the player's skill in that armor. Thus, thieves (who classically wear leather and cloth) can look the part, as (I would hope) leather armor would be tailored with attributes more enticing for a thief than a mage.

If this system were enstated, I could walk into a battle, see an enemy in full leather gear, and say "this guy's a thief, he will be fast and have this and that combat techniques." Now, my battles take on a more strategic form, as I judge my opponents and combat them in the most effective way possible for my character class. Enemies should be tough based on what they can do rather than what they're wearing.

I just thought of something that needs to be addressed should the high level areas I posted about earlier be implemented: what could you use to indicate some enemies are much stronger than others (besides getting one-shotted upon fighting them)?

I'd say a few ticks, some slight personality traits. A smarter thief would not charge that guy with a claymore straight out of the gate. I would guess smarter stealth types would start an alert, then join the fray once you were already engaged. Smarter mages would work on buffs before direct damage. Smarter warriors? I am not sure what to do here.
And then better gear could reflect a harder opponents. But on a small scale, like the difference between netch leather and chittin. Not rough leather and glass though, thats just obtuse. There was a post or two about 25+ opponent count caves. Another indicator could be actual patrols vs static guards.

By "higher level areas", that doesn't mean "scaling", where Rats are stronger than normal. It means that there's a tougher levelled list for that particularly dangerous area, and a few more powerful types of creatures COULD appear there. Instead of a Rat near the city, or a Mudcrab near the shore, you might encounter a Grizzly Bear, a Land Dreugh, a Troll, some type of Daedra instead, or face whatever inhabits that notorious area and makes it "feared". Or you could still run across a plain, ordinary Rat.

Keeping the "civilized" areas somewhat safe, except for occasional bandits or thieves and perhaps a stray creature that wanders in, makes it a "safe haven" in comparison to the "wilderness". In MW, the areas where you started out were relatively "tame", but you could still find things that could kill you, even at moderate level, if you looked hard or deep enough. The desolate areas of Molag Amur were tougher, even at low level, and you didn't want to go wandering too far inside the Ghost Fence at Level 1 for ANY reason. There were still levelled adversaries, no matter where you went, but the lists were tougher in some places than others. The main benefit was that you could CHOOSE your degree of difficulty by how far you were willing to delve into such places. If you kept going, you had nobody to blame but yourself if you ran into something far beyond your ability. That struck me as far more enjoyable than the "same everywhere" in OB, where if you got ahead or dropped behind the "difficulty curve", the entire game got either too easy or too hard. In MW, you could take on those tougher challenges as you felt ready for them.

I actually like the idea of "half-speed" levelling of SOME opponents. It would extend the challenge a little further, without making it TOO obvious that it was happening. Mixing those into areas with regular unlevelled opponents as well would give you the best of both worlds. Flattening the skill and attribute curve a bit for the Player Character, the NPCs, and the opponents as well, so the differences between low and high level aren't as extreme, would also be a positive step, in my opinion.

Bethesda should adopt aspects from the fallout 3 system

That was pretty much what they did for Morrowind

I don't want to see too many daedra in levelled lists. Sure, some should stray away but most should stay near the Daedric ruins, unless there's a skilled conjurer nearby.

Also, the end-game boss should never be levelled. I don't want to be able to complete the game with my level 1 character again. Bosses should only level, if at all, to keep it a challenge for your high end charcters.

I agree. The ability to beat a boss should be indicative of your skill and progress in the game. Levelling bosses makes that progression non-existent, as the ability to beat all bosses at any level destroys any tangible effect of levelling your character.

Heading in a new direction, the levelling of skills is one issue, but so is the availability of spells and abilities. I've always liked the idea of having new spells and abilities opening up as your character becomes more powerful, and the older ones just increasing in damage/duration/effect. I also would like to see some spells and abilities that can only be learned through acquiring certain tomes, scrolls, whatever, especially at high level. Having to quest and explore to find new abilities would add to the depth and immersion of the game world, as just suddenly being able to cast certain spells or jump on water for no reason other than you used a certain skill enough seems somewhat odd, but requiring a certain skill level and making these things a challenge to obtain would be a bit more realistic. These could be in some of the high level dungeons (see my previous posts) and could even be built into the MQ dungeons, to give the character new spells and abilities as you progress through the game.

What do you guys think?

Also, they should make the lower end guys near the boss not level with you. Would be annoying when you kill his levelled minions and think, oh, I'll be able to face him, only to have him not level and kill you in one hit.


Good ideas. I think that certain spells should only be available through tomes and such. If the levitation act (:rolleyes:) is still in place, it'd be a nice way to get the spell.

I think that this issue could be solved using the scaling system that NeBy and I proposed (see our earlier posts). The "boss guards," if you will, will scale with you, and when you can beat them without too much trouble, you have a shot at beating the boss. The boss's level should be static though.




:) glad you agree.

I'd like to start a new subject to get the topic going again: assuming the character levels as the player progresses through the game, should the environment (both political and natural) change? I thought of the phasing done in WoW, and thought that implementation in TESV could really make the world feel dynamic, like it actually had life.

Any ideas as to how this could be implemented, and how this could relate to the scaling of enemies/player leveling/new item and spell availability?

Actually, what I've started doing is having the (limited, OOO) level scaling in Oblivion be based on in-game time passed and not character level. For example, on day 10, the world acts as if I am level four, so any OOO leveled lists will generate items/characters based on that.

This makes the world grow and develop and remain a challenge without removing the incentive to level that actual level scaling would do. Leveling up is now 100% a benefit to the character.. and, in fact, it is necessary to survive!

This "time scaling" also makes the world feel kind of.. ominous, to me. Like it IS moving, and changing, politically or magically or whatever. It feels scarier because it's changing independently of my character. The "political and natural environment changes" you describe are a lot like how it feels to play it this way, with time scaling.

I'd say have SOME leveling of enemies but keep it moderate. Rising up in level doesn't make rats suddenly mutate into minotaurs.
Sure a few enemies can become a BIIIIIT harder but only so they still kinda pose a challenge, they shouldn't negate all your progress though as they did in Oblivion.

However on the other hand a lot of NPCs don't level along with you meaning if you do a escort mission on a higher level it has a far higher chance of failure than on a low level due to the NPC dieing.
So I'd say keep enemy leveling VERY moderate.

I think the problem of leveling is multifaceted so the solution need to be as well.

First off make the map bigger, that way where you start can be made somewhat safer. When you first start out that area will have only easy enemies to engage and many of the first quests will be local. All major cities are safe from monsters outside their wall out to 300 meters, so an Ogre won't be just outside the walls on the road to a major city. The only exception might be a quest to remove a monsters who IN FACT has gotten too close.

All major roads that are well maintained are safe. There are no monsters on these major roads and only occasional level appropriate bandits, thieves, and hostile adventures. If you go off the road that's is when you will meet higher level monsters...and when I say off the road I mean a good 300 'in game' meters. You can't accidentally agro a monster if you walk within sight of the road. Small paths and unkept ruined roads are of course dangerous -- if it looks creepy watch out!

Have all major adversaries level up with you. Have all monsters appear in three forms: low, medium and high. High level Ogres, Skeleton Warriors, or just Mountain Lions would be TRUELY fearsome creature that you'd only see rarely and when you reach higher levels. That keeps you seeing new thing even at the end game.

At high levels many low level monsters and even wilds animals still exist...but they avoid you...they see you and run away. That also makes you feel good about your character, because you SEE the effect you have. With humanoid characters teh interactions are more complex. If I meet a bandit on a road and I'm a high level maybe he doesn't confront me, maybe he tries to befriend me if I seem or neutral. Have humanoid NPCs react to you as they should. If they think they can take you they might attack, if they think your are more then a match they might try to coerce you or bypass you; however if you're way too fearsome they just run the other way.

One of the things I enjoyed about Morrowind was having to work to become strong enough to take on the tough enemies - acquire the better loot.
This being said, I don't want to become strong and instantly have instant access to infinite numbers of top notch gear.

One thing that would have made a lot of sense in Oblivion (or any narrative where armies begin to mobilize for civil war or to deal with the big bad or whatever) would be to make the roads progressively more dangerous over the course of the main plot. That is, before it kicks off, soldiers can patrol the roads heavily, but once they've all been pulled to protect the cities or march on the enemy, opportunistic bandits (or worse) will be more commonly encountered.

This would be exactly the OPPOSITE of what I'd want to see in a game. Using time-scaling, you'd be under constant pressure to "improve" as fast as possible. No time for checking out places just for the sake of exploring, or taking an extra day or two to interact with the locals and find out what's of interest. No, you'd have to rush on to the next thing just to crank up your skills in time to deal with the next wave of toughter opponents.

What I found good about having "safer" and "riskier" zones, where the harder areas are a "step ahead" of the levelling curve, is that you can tackle the game at whatever pace best suits you as a player. If you want more challenge, get off the beaten path and go searching for it. If you want to stop and "smell the roses", or just "veg out" and watch the world go by for a bit, there's nothing stopping you or penalizing you for it.

I learned rather early (accidentally) in my first play of TES: IV that if you aggravate a whole group of monsters and then lead then towards an Imperial Guard on patrol -- he's dead meat. The guard will fight the monsters, often died, and the player is then able to cleanup high-end loot

TES is fun because that can happen, but such things also can wreck the game. I would even bet the 'sim' nature of these games could wreck the next game, if Bethesda isn’t careful. As these games get bigger and more complex they become chaotic in ways it is hard to ‘game test for’.

Yeah, I can respect that. I agree that "time scaling" is inappropriate for TES games (even though I'm enjoying it a lot in Oblivion!) Part of the charm of TES is that you don't have any particular pressure from the game. You could spend months and months just living in an abandoned cabin, exploring the immediate area and hunting game, for example. But if you did that with time scaling, you'd eventually be overwhelmed.

Still, it's a technique that I thought was interesting and I thought I'd share . And there might be some appropriate means to integrate it into the game (perhaps by time scaling "safe" zone areas from level 1, slowly to level 10, and then capping them there. Or having city guards time scale.)

Time scaling could be quite suitable for specific cases, just not as an overall system. If a few NPCs or creatures scaled over time at a fairly low rate, to represent either "training" or some form of mutation that's affecting an entire species, that could fit nicely into an extended questline. For example, having some FG-style organization which just formed or has recruited a bunch of new members, and having them gradually improve as the game progresses, would nicely reflect their training and increased experience.

Then replace "time" with "progress in a major quest line". For example, at start the surroundings of the town of Njallafjalla are rather calm and orderly, with almost no problems aside a few low-level outlaws. Then you uncover an incoming invading force of some kind, and as you work for or against them, higher-level adversaries begin to appear: scouts and later on the main body of the invaders in one case, more city guards and later on reinforcements from nearby towns in the other case, opportunistic bandit leaders with their troops in either case.

That too could work well for specific situations. Ideally, in my opinion, using different levelling schemes for different areas, groups, types of creatures, or loot of different categories, as the situation calls for, would make a lot more sense than one overall "generic" levelling and/or scaling scheme that quickly becomes obvious and annoying. "Variety is the spice of life", as the saying goes, and variety makes for a more interesting game experience.

I'll take one of everything, if you don't mind.....

Very true, I spent the first 40 hours of Oblivion just avoiding the main quest. I loved dipping in to tiny bits of the main quest and then spending days of game play just doing my own thing. I hope in the next game I can do the same thing. I should have to play the main quest first and only after get free will and wander at my own pace. In fact I would much rather have a way that 'until I walk into a certain spot' the main quest doesn't exist at all. That way the main quest doesn't even matter in the game world until I say so.

Dead Emperor? What dead Emperor? Whatever the story is it shouldn't start in my world even as gossip or hearsay UNTIL I say I'm read to start and when it does start there is no time limit. At the start of Oblivion I would have liked Kvatch to be still standing and no Oblivion Gates open, and in that way I could have enjoyed an open & happy world for as long as I wanted. Also, once I started the main quest seeing Kvatch destroyed would have mattered to me more if I had seen it standing before, right? That's just my POV.

That was sort of the point of the leveling system NeBy and I opted for (see our previous posts). It is graded, allows for stronger enemies, doesn't put the player in god mode from the start, and rewards the player for leveling their character. There are still enemies whose level is independent of the player, but they are meant more for a test of the player's skill and acquiring great, non-scaled loot. I'm very weary of time leveling, as TES is an open world game, and taking too much time exploring would be detrimental if there were time-leveled areas. And putting a cap on them sort of defeats the purpose of time-leveling. It's a cool idea, and probably good for a second or third play through, but better as a mod than a built-in feature. However, having time frames on quests and quest lines might be a cool addition (maybe requiring a high athletics skill to run fast enough to beat the timer?).



I partially agree. I don't think that the world should necessarily revolve around the player, but rather the player is a large part of something much larger. I would prefer that the main quest wasn't something that was so played out, like escaping from prison and the emperor lamely getting killed by assassin's in some underground passage. It should be a quest line that, although the fate of the world rests in the player, your part in the main quest is unavoidable, for good reason and not by chance; you should have a direct reason to WANT to do the main quest line. I have to say I really didn't feel that motivated to finish the main quest in OB, since, for the most part, it was just me killing tons of monsters and necromancers and daedra to save a province full of retarded NPC's who enjoy getting killed when being escorted and have no thoughts that are different from every other NPC. You should have allies, there should be a few concrete plans, and there (in my opinion) should be some sort of puzzle to the main quest...it shouldn't be SO straightforward and mindless. But to want the main quest to start when you want either 1) ruins the immersion of the game, or 2) could potentially make finding the main quest difficult. You were able to take on the main quest at your choosing in OB, which I think, at least most of the time, should be kept in the next game.



I like the idea of the progress in the main quest line being reflected in the political and ecological stability of the game. I actually suggested this earlier. However, leveling enemies based on the progress in the main quest line is a bad idea. If the player decides to ignore the MQ until the very end, they will have levelled and gotten all the best loot without any challenge from everything in the game, as nothing will have levelled. Then, when the MQ is started, the player is god and nothing can touch him/her. Also, it limits the end-game experience, as you are so much stronger than everything in the game.

That's why I wrote "major quest line" (there can be a multiple of that), not "main quest line", and that's why I limited the "upgrade" of enemies in my example to a rather small area surrounding a specific town, connected to this specific quest line.

Really ... If I would have meant "main quest", I would have written "main quest".

It could still cause issues. In order to continue the quest line, the player may be forced to grind to level up so that he/she may continue the quest. I'm not much of a proponent of grinding, as I think that, once a quest is offered to the player, the player should be able to complete it. It's an interesting idea, but I still think that the gradient leveling that we suggested accomplishes the task of scaling so as to keep the game fresh, as well as maintaining a player's ability to complete quests when they are offered.