That's the thing though. I searched for this term "level scaling" but there is nothing prior to Oblivion. With Oblivion, suddenly level scaling became a word for both systems. I find this wrong because the problem is clearly with level scaling and not leveled lists.

Wow, I didn't realize it could go that high. The Irony is, Albino Radscorpions in Fallout 3 have the same HP, but Damage can be inflicted so much faster, instead of hacking away 100 or so times.

You know, if they want to actually scale an aspect of an enemy, it almost always should be the target's Offensive strength, not defensive strength. That way it gets harder without becoming more tedious. Still, an inferior option to just adding more creatures to each encounter, or more creatures period.



The problem with semantics, is, words are only as accurate as the people who use them. Morrowind/Fallout 3 had a scaling system, but not the direct level scaling we see in Oblivion. Gaming is an emerging art, and is constantly creating new words, or re-purposing old in the gaming context, so the best we can do is use what's recognized easily, while supplementing it with clarification.

So until the usage changes, correct or not, to effectively explain and address the issue, it has to be identified with the common, yet not entirely accurate moniker of "level scaling".

The term level scaling is still fitting in MW well since it means that the world is affected by your lvl. It was just less noticable than in OB.


Tedius is bad. If an ogre had about 5-600 hp and higher dmg they would have been much more challenging, yet less tedius. I hope this is imprented in Skyrim.
I think they 3 new "boss" creatures(Super Mutant Overlord and Ghoul Reaver, not the Albino Radscorpion so much) added in Broken Steel was way too annoying. I think they should have removed the +40 dmg to played perk on the Overlords to make it more fair. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Mutant_Overlord. Not sure how the Reavers manage to do so much dmg, but they are way to fast to be fair.

You can get away with a free-to-explore, non-leveled world, but to make it work you'd have to have a very gentle scaling of character power by level/skill/gear/etc.

If (purely as an example) a level 20 character is 50% stronger than a level 1 character, rather than 500% stronger (or in the case of something like FF, 5000% stronger), the non-scaling nature of the world isn't a problem. The various encounters and challenges can be designed to be easy/average/hard/etc against a baseline somewhere in between the level 1 and level 20 standard. Gaining levels/upgrading gear/etc will make any given challenge a little bit easier, but it won't render any of them outright trivial.

Some older CRPGs worked that way, but it's out of fashion nowadays.

Same difference. Whether it's the same creature with beefed up stats, or a different creature with higher stats, the problem is the same... the enemies you face are always as strong as you. How can you feel a sense of progression if, for example, when you progress enough to comfortably take on wolves, they suddenly disappear and are almost all replaced by much tougher bears? Or as crazed imps start becoming manageable, they suddenly become gargoyles?

Morrowind was also broken. As player became overpowered way over the world. Tribunal was for this broken game. They felt the need to add more powerful enemies. Completely ridiculous things, like the example you showed. I don't count it as Morrowind though, I count it as the beginning of the end. Mournhold being a closed city, it was supposed to be a one time thing. :banghead:

@The_ugly_guy_at_the_Store,
well, I am the one man against level scaling, will bicker about the difference till something changes.

@Huleedi,
Morrowind used leveled lists to randomize the content more than a scaling method. I actually think it is a mild tutorial method which holds back the world until PC skips first few levels.

My example is, if Todd goes to a trip to the African Savanna and comes back: he would say "I never saw a lion".
At his 5th trip however, he then sees a lion. He would say,"Finally, I was lucky this time" That's the time between level 1 and 10. It feels natural. Makes the world bigger than it actually is.

However, when I go there, at my level 1, I can stumble upon a lion because in addition to leveled lists, Bethesda would also place a static lion there too. Chance is very low but still there. Again, very unique experience for me.

The idea was not leveling to player. The idea was giving some tutorial time for player. I actually checked all leveled lists in both Oblivion and Morrowind and how many of them were randomized and how many were set to only spawn highest one. Well, let's say things disappeared from Oblivion for a reason.

I'm pretty sure if Oblivion randomized all lists and never used scaling(PC Level Offset), we weren't making this conversation. There is a world of difference.

True enough, but it wouldn't be right to say levelled lists don't pose similar problems to level scaling. Both can be (ab)used to ruin the sense of progression.


And then every time after he almost always sees a lion. A place where he rarely saw a lion, then on his magical 5th trip and beyond he sees lions left and right.

If you were to use levelled lists to make the world seem "dynamic", you wouldn't drastically alter the level-ratio of enemies. They may be in different areas, but there'd still the same amount of high-level and low-level enemies. Increasing the ratio of high-level enemies as you level has the same effect on gameplay as level scaling.