This is also how I understand it. It's a better system than Oblivion, but really, especially since there are a limited amount of levels (70s) based on getting every single skill to 100, I would rather they just bite the bullet completely and realize that an encounter is an encounter.

Dragon from hell should not scale down to me and bandit from campfire should not scale up to me. It's just my opinion and has been for a long time.

Just echo'ing the sentiments of most of the other posters. Oblivions loot scaling destroyed the game for me, as someone else said, thank god for OOO.

Anyone know whether there will be hand placed loot in Skyrim? Ie,, like Morrowinds system, eg, finding Eleidons Ward in that ruin, a daedric bow in that shrine after levitating or the daedric dai-katana in that egg mine? Happening upon loot like that was brilliant. Oblivions system of randomly spawning crap in a chest depending on your level was awful!

It would only work if the ranges are indeed like 10-15 and not 5-25, 25-50.

There is also dynamic content generation via Radiant Story, which looks to player's skills, playstyles, recently visited locations, encountered enemies to generate challenge instead of scaling to a primitive level number.

This is a place centric system concerning the world building.(edit: players' variable movement through the world and variable leveling speeds will ensure the system is dynamic and unique in each playthrough, including the first one.) Quests are player centric. I think this is an important separation.

I am not advocating a static approach, I love dynamic systems. But level scaling is a very simple tweak to fulfill my idea of a complex living breathing world with beast population control based on food pyramids, bandits and factions in constant war to conquer strategic places, existence of other unique adventurers and legendary items changing hands or being lost in the world, inter-province migrations and trading to balance population and economy, bandits and pirates actually storing appropriate loots in appropriate locations. And a radiant story system that takes more things into account to launch special appropriate quests to the special situations on the fly. Maybe in TES 6.

I agree, and I think this might be the case - I somehow doubt we'll end up with level 70 mud crabs, and likewise I somehow doubt we'll end up with level 1 dragons.

And I know you were joking but it wouldn't be possible to have a world capped at level 1 - areas have minimum as well as maximum levels.



Agreed, although I think the partial-scaling might help make the difficulty curve a bit more forgiving. It also means that the world should genuinely be fully explorable at level 1, rather than forcing players to avoid whole regions because the enemies are far too strong.



Yes - I don't think Bethesda have released details about specific level ranges yet though. I hope the level ranges aren't too wide, otherwise the system would end up basically the same as Oblivion's awful one.

OB level scaling was the worst idea ever. Especially Item scaling

I completely agree. In addition to making more sense i feel that it allows the player to have more control over their experience.

Morrowinds level scaling is hardly noticeable as unless the dungeon/ruin/special area is part of a quest that has a boss the enemies will only be like a couple levels ahead of you

If there are areas in which the enemies are much stronger than you, and you die from entering, the game is still open worlded. Why? Because you could go into that area as you pleased. The level scaling in Oblivion was great until after level 25, thats when it started getting ridiculous, they had the right idea in Morrowind. Enemies with preset levels is the way to go if you ask me.

The fact that some things were levelled and scaled in Oblivion wasn't a problem. The fact that almost EVERYTHING was levelled and scaled was a HUGE problem.

Morrowind had both levelled and unlevelled content, and it worked. You could often find and survive places that were above your capabilities, but you had to take all sorts of precautions and bolt at the first sign of trouble. The static content kept you aware of just how weak or strong you really were, and the levelled stuff maintained a reasonable degree of challenge according to your level, to a point. What didn't work well in MW was that the levelled content stopped at around L20-30, because the game designers never expected the players to keep their characters going beyond that point, so the Expansions were designed with a lot of extremely high-level content to compensate.

Locking the dungeons to your current level when you first encounter them was a mediocre solution in FO3. The system in FO3 allowed a little bit of rare random spawning of more serious nasties at low level, so you could actually encounter a Deathclaw at Level 1, but the odds were ridiculously against it (good, because the uncertainty kept the game "scary"). Unfortunately, the lesser creatures all but vanished after a while, many of them replaced by their "supercharged" counterparts (Radscorpions replaced by Giant Albino Radscorpions, etc.), and the "tamer" areas around the towns were suddenly over-run by high-level monsters that the static resident defenders had no way of coping with (military robots, Yao Gui - a reference to "Yogi" bear? -, etc.). Your character's presence in the vicinity was often a death sentence for the settlements, and to the roving traders. Those areas needed to be either capped or otherwise limited, but weren't.

Regional caps in the "safe zones", "harder areas" backed up by local lore, and a mix of levelled and unlevelled content are needed to keep the game challenging and interesting to explore. One "across the board" system is neither realistic nor fun, in my option, unless you want nothing more than a mindless and empty "hack and slash" title to keep your attention diverted for a couple of hours before you toss the game on the shelf and move on to the next one.

My own feeling is that they introduced new enemies at too rapid a pace in Morrowind. I think they could have spread the appearance of new enemies out more: instead of a new enemy appearing every 2 to 5 levels, new enemies could appear every 10 to 15 levels. New variations using stock meshes (as with Diseased and Blighted versions) could be thrown into the mix. I think most players would have been pretty happy with Morrowind (and Oblivion) if they'd done that.





I hear this is in Skyrim. I'm apprehensive about it. But I'll wait and see. Most likely I'll be modding it out of my game altogether at some point, I imagine.





I agree. The regional 'hard zone" in Morrowind made sense because there was a strong lore reason for that hard zone to exist. My opinion is that a similar hard zone would have been harder to explain in Oblivion. I just don't see many spots around Cyrodiil that are the equivalent to Red Mountain.

I guess, basically, I just wish they'd stuck with the Morrowind system. I don't much like either the Oblivion or the Fallout systems.

wait, so what you're saying is that there will be areas that have a min\max level and will lock to a certain level when a player enters BUT ON TOP OF THAT the radiant story mechanic will create missions that will be challenging and will scale the missions to fit the player?

is that what we assume it will do??


cuz i gotta admit i almost agree with the OP. i DO want to feel i've grown stronger and it doesnt make sense for the entire world to level with you BUT, and that's a BIG BUT (i love big buts and i can not lie) - i do want a challenge and i dont want to have areas of the map that are locked by harder creatures. dungeons can be locked, but not on-ground areas.
i want a challenge since that is what creates excitement for me. if , when im half way through the levels i am already too strong to have a challenge and fun than i will get bored. if many encounters make me play hard and play good than im excited. im on the edge of my sit. for that to happen there needs to be some level scaling anywhere across the map. not just in certain zones.
if certain zones will not level up than i, as the player, will never have much fun in these zones.
if certain zones are only really high level that means i will only enjoy them when im at their level. not before. not after. this will render most of the words "not fun". at least for me.

that's how i see things.