I keep hearing "there will be scaling, but not the broken scalling of Oblivion etc." What does that mean, per se? Oblivion scaled so excessively that it sometimes seemed players were punished for advancing. Many enemies proved more difficult to defeat at level 15 than their counterparts had for a player at level 3. I approve of keeping the game challenging, the enemies varied, and enemies of certain types always vast in power and not easily defeated, even by the mighty. But it should be done in a way that makes sense. Dungeons should not be crawling with the most powerful enemies in the game at every turn. There should not be as many Liches in a cave as their are skeletons. And Goblin Warlords should not be capable of beating the hell out of any Daedric duke or princling, nor should they be able to go toe to toe with a champion who has rocked the hosts of Oblivoion back on their heels. Making uber-baddies ubiquitous not only diminishes them and their impact by making them nothing special, it also makes the hero feel diminished. Its like if you joined the Mages Guild and discovered that every single member was a Master in at least three disciplines.]

I hope Skyrim has remedied this, but I would like more than the most vague of assurances. How exactly does Skyrim scale? How is it improved over the horrendous scalling that marred Oblivion?

From the latest interview...

Also, I remember hearing that certain areas would be fixed once you entered them. So when you entered a certain dungeon for the first time it might be five levels higher than you, but it would stay that way so you could come back ten levels later (if you wanted to) and mop the floor with its denizens. This was said relatively early on (I think it was somewhere in the GI coverage, but I don't remember exactly where).

EVERY Elder Scrolls game has had level scaling to some degree. It was just handled very poorly in Oblivion; it was global. Everything scaled, and scaled in a bad way. Massive HP boosts just made fights longer and more boring.

The scaling in Skyrim will be more like Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Different areas will have different scales, e.g. levels 5-10, 20-30, etc. Certain areas and dungeons will be high level no matter what, same with low level areas. Weaker enemies will still appear, but tougher ones will begin to appear in greater numbers the higher your level is. It's a difficult balance to achieve: keep the game consistently challenging, but still make a high-level character feel powerful. gamesas learned a lot going from Oblivion to Fallout 3. Hopefully they'll get it right this time.

What if your first forray into a particular dungeon is at level 49? :blink: :pinch: :shrug: hmy:

Sounds like they're going to do OOO scaling.


Good.

Hopefuly, it won't be I'M TWO LEVELS ABOVE YOU AND IM ABOUT TO KICK YOUR ASS *cough*borderlands*cough*

i agree.It was pretty irritable when you fight first time vs a brown bear, the HP pool of the beast was ridiculously big that you think WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is happening, i have to supose this is a challange? or a offense ?
absolutely annoying

FO3 certainly handled it better and I won't freak out abut having level scaling, but I wish they didn't scale levels at all. Makes the game more exciting for me. I get why they do it though and just hope I won't be a level 2 killing some epic beast or a level 20 getting slaughtered by a rat.

What is wrong with it Todd? You don't want people exploring Red Mountain at the onset of the game. You want people to be scared of that area until they're tough enough.

Rats are rats, they should always just be rats.until they mutate into a giant rat.

I think what todd is saying there is that they try to discorage people to visit certain areas at certain levels, without actually preventing them doing so.

Well in Fallout 3 running into a Super Mutant base at level 1 wasn't exactly a good idea. It's possible, they allow you to, but it's not like the super mutants are as strong as mudcrabs just because you're level one. I think that's what we'll be seeing in Skyrim too. Areas could be set to have level 12-15 monsters. If you're level 12 or under, you'll find level 12 monsters, never lower. If you're 15 or up, you'll find level 15 monsters, never higher.

This irritates me too. I don't want them telling me where the strong enemies are. I want to get into dangerous situations and have to run away from enemies far too powerful. Makes things much more exciting.

Don't take his words literally. He meant that when you get to an area and get beaten up then you know "this area is too hard for you, I'll come back later."
Never played Fallout 3 or New Vegas?

Fair enough, and yes. Fallout 3 definitely. DIdn't like Vegas very much.

So long as the scaling isn't something you can notice then it will be done right. I didn't even know Morrowind had level scaling until he said its been in since Arena. Meaning clearly the way Morrowind did it was far superior. But yeah having constant battles with Epic monsters or bandits in super rare gear was ridiculous an made me wonder what in the world they had been thinking when they did Oblivion. It was a step backwards an it sounds like they will do better.