Hi,

I've just been going through all the content that was released in the IGN Skyrim preview (totally lost touch with TES over the last couple years).

I think it would be a bit of an understatement to say that I am excited for many of the new things that Skyrim promises us, least of which is the variety of environments that are promised! And the graphics look sweet!

But my main concern, so far, is regarding the leveling system that will be used in Skyrim (and was not touched upon in the preview).

In Oblivion, they went with a garbage system that cheaped out (compared to Morrowwind) and completely destroyed the immersion of the game. There were a few great mods released later which randomised the game world a bit and made leveling a bit more challenging.

But seriously...lvl 5 & EVERYTHING in the world is lvl 5 with you. Lvl 30 and everything, even random goblins start dropping daedric weapons with epic enchants that are worth 100s of gold? Ridiculous.

So anyway, my question I guess, is whether Skyrim will be following this same garbage system, or are they going to take a cue from those awesome mods that were developed and the huge hue & cry that was raised about the new leveling system in Oblivion from the Morrowind vets?

Because if leveling in Skyrim is as pointless as Oblivion was, that's going to be sad. :/

Level scaling will work like it does in Fallout 3. I didn't play Fallout 3, so this is second-hand knowledge. But hopefully it's accurate. It sounds like these are the major differences from Oblivion.

(i) The game will feature higher and lower leveled areas. So for instance, one dungeon might be leveled between 7 and 13, whereas another might be between 18 and 25. The game sets the level of these dungeons as close as possible to your level, when you enter. So, suppose you are level 4. Then the first dungeon will be level 7, and the second dungeon level 18; if you are level 12, then the first dungeon will be level 12, and the second will be 18; if you are level 15, then the first dungeon will be level 13, and the second 18; if you are level 24, then the first dungeon will be level 13, and the second 24; and so on. Also note that once you've entered a dungeon, the game fixes the level of that dungeon for the remainder of the game. But because dungeons will vary in their levels, you can't just run through the game and set all the dungeons to level 1; also, this seems to motivate making your character more powerful, because if your level 6 character gets killed in a level 7 to 13 dungeon, you can just level up a few times, and then come back to complete the dungeon.

(ii) Creatures generally have a fixed level. So you won't find the same enemy in a level 3 to 9 dungeon that you will in a level 25 to 30 dungeon, just with higher stats - or at least, if the creature from the lower leveled dungeon does appear in the higher level dungeon, it'll have pretty much the same stats as it did in the lower leveled dungeon. Higher leveled areas will either have stronger types of creatures, or they'll just have higher numbers of level level creatures, or some combination of this. Similarly, bandits won't somehow get a whole lot of fancy and expensive armour as your level increases.

(iii) Loot will scale in pretty much the same way as creatures. So if you go to a level 7 to 13 dungeon, you'll find loot appropriate to characters of that level, even if your character is level 30. There should still be some hand placed loot around, however.

HTH

It will be more like Fallout 3 so that some areas are not leveled with you and some are.
Also it seems that no matter what level you level up you gain levels (no one has ever said that sentence).
But the larger the leveled level is the faster you level up (same again )

I never played Fallout so I am unfamiliar with this system, but what you mention sounds friggin' AWESOME!

Sounds like they fixed all the kinks with the leveling system from Oblivion! That + the overhauled magic system (I never liked melee in Oblivion...magic was awesome though!) means it's going to be damn near perfect when it comes out!

Acording to the German coverage every type of creature will be assigned a level span beyond which they will neither get stronger nor weaker. If that span's lower boundary is 10, then they'll be lvl 10 while you're lower. If the upper boundary is 20, then they'll stop getting stronger once you've leveled beyond that. Each type of opponent will have different such spans: some enemies will be omnipresent, so their span is very wide. On the contrary, bandits, for example, will have a very narrow level span, so you won't see them in Daedric or Glass armor anymore.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1166906-leveling-in-skyrim/page__view__findpost__p__17173297 is what I read as well, and besides, FO3 improved Oblivion's level scaling, NV improved FO3's. I'm sure Skyrim's version of level scaling will have a lot less to complain about.

I actually don't think Bethesda will take much from FONV's system, it was good but it didn't noticeably scale the world to your level, it just separated different level areas. And in FO3 you felt the scaling anyway. So I think beth takes its own way. Not that I like it, but not that I don't.

oooops wrong thread. sorry for the necromancy