Imagine the rules of tennis were changed so that whoever was losing was allowed to hit the ball into the tramlines. Just to keep the game balanced. Imagine you were playing chess and every time you captured a piece, your opponent was given an extra one, to keep the balance.

The new rules would make playing more fun because you would always have a chance of winning and a chance of losing. People would actually play chess to the end instead of resigning half way through. Is that a good idea? Of course not. Fun, playability and balance are important but they aren’t the only things that matter. The problem is the game is now a cheat. If the environment adapts to your performance the challenge is faked.

So why should it be different with RPG’s? In my view, it shouldn’t be. The only reason player-centricity is commonly accepted, I believe, is that it is hidden away in levelled lists and you don’t really notice it. But it is still a fake and as soon as you understand the game mechanics the challenge is spoiled. Player-centric environments are a gross admission of failure by game designers. They are saying they can’t make the game fun without cheating.

OOO is described as place centric but still retains quite a lot of player-centric scaling. I find this unacceptable. It just makes the game less of a fake than vanilla. The environment is still carefully set to be harder or easier according to how good your player is. In my view, actor scaling, actor placement, loot scaling and quest rewards should all be entirely independent of the player’s level. One exception I might accept is that taking on a quest could trigger the appearance of certain enemies. A purist might object even to that but there is an argument that something within the player’s control is different from something that tracks the player’s level. Let’s call that a grey area. And I would still insist that the enemies themselves were static even in that situation.

One solution that has been explored (in CUO and TIE) makes enemy strength highly random. I find this a coherent solution but I believe there are two other good solutions that have not been properly explored.

One solution would be a heavily place-centric game with no player-centricity. OOO and so-called static mods always retain a degree of player-centricity, presumably because it is difficult to keep the balance as the player advances. But it should be possible to get rid of it all and keep the game interesting, if we accept that the player will be have to stay in a very restricted area near the start and will find some areas very easy later on. As a playing experience there is nothing wrong with this. It makes good sense for the player to rush in terror straight from the sewers to the Imperial City and be too scared to set foot outside until she has done everything she can there. The challenge will be choosing the right placesto visit at the right time. Do we chase a big reward from a hard cave now and risk not coming out again, or do we consolidate in an easy area first? Strategy Master came close to this in Dynamic Place Centric Scaling but decided to set the difficulty levels of each location by the player’s behaviour, which largely defeats the purpose (in my book).

For those who don’t want a static game, there is a simple alternative: to set the scaling and placement not by the player level but by the game calendar instead. The environment would become more threatening with time which is intuitively reasonable. The gameplay and challenge would remain balanced, as with player-centric scaling, the cheating would be eliminated and there would be the added bonus of an incentive to progress or get left behind. I think this would be a much better game experience than the current systems which are all some combination of player centric, place centric and random.

I am not a mod-writer but I think either of these alternative methods, place-centric or time-centric, would be easy to implement by building on the technique used by AnthropG in More Static Oblivion Beta. This saved a lot of coding by having two versions of the player’s level: the real one and the one used by the game to drive the scaling. Would anyone like to have a go?

You?

Also, your use of text size does not impress.

I agree 100% with you, It would be nice if someone would take the time to create such a world.
I wasn't sure about he game getting tougher as time progresses though. But after giving it some thought it actually makes sense. The world moves and evolves, it isn't centric anymore, and beasts and foes get experience and advance in lvl.

This however would have to be carefully calibrated and wouldn't apply to everyone. For instance an Imperial guard who patrols the roads 24/7 would logically get stronger overtime as he gets to fight lots of monsters and develop his skills. A merchant who spends most of his time in the city would develop his mercantile skills but, his combat wouldn't improve at all.
If we take this approach there should be, no limits to the skills. I.E npcs and monsters would not have a level or skill cap.....but neither would you. This translates in the game being always dynamic and always fresh.

Implementing this wouldn't be too difficult from a technical point of view. A quest script with an array storing every foe/npc you meet and calculating different levels of skill progression based on the class and place you meet. Next time you see that NPC a function script could be called that alters the NPCs stats based on the previous calculations. This means that if you see a bandit today and don't kill him, if a month passes by and you encounter him again you can expect him to be stronger.