Hello everyone!

Lately, i have been playing fallout 2 again. For those of you that don't know it, in Fallout 1 & 2 there was no "level scaling". The enemies you encountered while travelling through the wasteland ("random encounters") were dependent on the area you were, not the level of your character. So, in area X you would meet the same enemies, with the same array of weapons, independently of your level. The NPCs at "standard" locations were also static. If you visited location A for the first time when you were level 10, you would find the same enemies that you would see if you had gone there at level 1. So you knew that you should avoid "dangerous" areas for later, for when your character would have become stronger. Of course, you could always take the risk and go there, hoping for the best... If you managed to survive (like when you encountered a battle between two groups of powerful enemies, and you got to loot the bodies while they were fighting each other).

In Fallout 3, you get to "lock" the level on certain areas, when you visit them the first time. That is a vast improvement (to my taste, many people love oblivion's sysem) to oblivion, yet i am not content. You won't see mutant overlords or albino radscorpions if your level is not high enough, even if you go to the heart of DC. There is, of course, the case of old omney (i really don't remember the name...) where you would find deathclaws, even if you visited the place at a low level. But that isn't enough...

Can any of you nice people recommend a mod for people like me? I searched the nexus, but i didn't manage to find anything "extreme" enough (mart's mutant mod is nice, though...). This would really give me a reason to start playing again...

There's good reason the overhauls dont do it, because it's gameplay wise simply a terrible thing to do. Fallout 3's encounter ranges are very well done.
My advise would be to just do it yourself, it's only about 5 minutes worth of work.

Simply open the Fallout3.esm in FO3Edit, copy the entire 'Leveled Creature' and 'Leveled NPC' blocks into a new esp and go through all the entries and simply set all Levels to 1.
http://i46.tinypic.com/2im5bo9.jpg

Yes it was found to be the same early in OB. OOO doesn't merely remove scaling, it adapts it and puts in mostly hand placed spawns. Which takes an incredibly long time because you have to plan, clear a cell, put in spawns, set up patrols, make adjustments for gameplay and challenge(1), Play test, repeat ad nauseum. It makes my head spin just thinking about how Oscuro, Sotobrastos and their team did it in less than 3 years.

(1. IE "that was too easy for the level intended, coin flip guys more mobs or higher levels" Or that trap sequences was nearly unavoidable lets just adjust this and change that.)

You'll notice in OOO gear is still scaled lightly. IE if I am level 2 I will see bandits wearing fur where as if I'm level 11 I'll see them wearing leather and some iron. Note that's from memory not exact levels.

The main reason we don't have OOO for fallout 3 is that it was a major fuxing undertaking and would be hard to replicate exactly.

Levelled scaling also is not as much of a problem compared to Oblivion. You don't see Raiders sporting Power Armour after awhile, they'll always have the same basic gear. The Fallout approach is not simply to make existing characters tougher, but to add new creatures that are. Instead of basic Super Mutants, you might also end up with an Overlord here and there. You still get the much weaker version as well though so it adds more variety than in Oblivion, where you'd simply have all the Bandits using the best armour and weapons in the game.

I've just played through the game for the first time - and I have to say I'd love to see an OOO approach to level scaling as well. My char had a much easier time cruising around the wasteland on Lvl 5 with Dogmeat than she has on Lvl 30. Conversely, it would be nice to have the occasional much harder enemy at lower levels. Basically, I think Fallout 3 has the same problem as Oblivion regarding level scaling overall.

You ever tried going in Old Olney with your level 5? They have danger zones in FO3. The closer to civilization the safer.

Nope, haven't even heard of Old Olney, but that approach ("The closer to civilization the safer.") seems close to OOO in itself. I've noticed that there are Deathclaws all around now (Lvl 30), which makes walking around much harder than on lower levels. Well, my char can handle them, but they slaughter Dogmeat in seconds.

I hope the Old Olney thing was sarcasm. You missed out on the most awesome power armor ever (sort of).

Lol. Go there with a lead pipe, a pre-war business suit, and a pre-war hat and have a time.

lol

Nope, it wasn't sarcasm. (Or perhaps you meant harmy52's post - but I understood the irony in that one.) I have quite a lot of areas to explore yet. But checking The Vault it seems I should leave Dogmeat behind when checking Old Olney out...

Anyway, I think I'll restart the game with a new char. This time I'll use more mods as well. I wanted to play through it with vanilla game play first.

Old Olney is a town infested with deathclaws


I think it's where you get the T-51b(EDIT: just checked medic power armor), maybe.


Also regarding OOO they actually have a quite ingenious system of barrier ruins set up next to the roads that block you off from taking some path until you level up some case in point try getting to Bruma taking the ring road. You'll find a ruin right next to the path that has marauders that routinely slaughter guards. If you can sneak well you can get bye it if not prepare to die allot of times.


Also on the way to Chorrel there is a spawn on the path there's generally a barbarian shaman/priestess and a berserker. The marauders take until around level 11 or until you have horse to get passed. The Barbarians take around a level 4 to do the same.


It's quite an ingenious method as it generally keeps you on the isles away from the main quest for quite awhile. But also encourages you to stray from the paths when required. The more you look at it the more complex something like OOO becomes.


For instance DC is a natural blocking point to get to Rivet City. If you in-place something like a three levels higher than the player rule maxing out at 13th level. You would increase the challenge and time it takes to get to RC when the pc is a lower level than than 13. This allows you to be at rivet city likely with less stock then normal thereby increasing the amount you would pay to the vendor. And laterally increasing the difficulty further.


Then the trick would be scaling the DC ruins so some areas were say, 10 levels, above you(The mall by abundance of foes, the capitol hill by power of foes and abundance). Then setting up similar barrier for things like TPT and LLL the problem is that there's no ONE SINGULAR path to Lamplight or Tenpenny you end up with people meandering into the north from the east not like Oblivion where you had clearly defined roads with things like guard patrols and such, that led to each city. In FO3 you have a pidge podge of possible paths that could lend some possibility to having an easy path, a hard path and an INSANITY PATH. On the insanity would be something like a series of lvl 20 ruins. the hard would be 10-15 and the easy would be 1-7. and they would have to intersect so you could end up traveling from the easy path to the hard path or meander from the hard to the easy and into the insanity.


It would add a sort of metagame of finding the best paths to somewhere.


Forgive the grammar I'm was kinda using this as a scratch pad.

Fallout3 already does that. That's why I said there is no need for something like OOO in Fallout 3, because it already does it out of the box. The world in FO3 is divided into encounter zones. As soon as you enter an encounter zone, the encounter level is determined by your level. HOWEVER most encounter zones also have a minimum level. That means if such a zone has a minimum level of 10 and you enter it with level 2, you will still get level 10 encounters!

This is all already there in FO3 there is no reason to mod it! The only thing you can do is set the encounter zones to your liking. Basically what took weeks and months of work for OOO, you can now modify in less than 5 minutes.

I realize that but what OOO does is not merely something like the encounter zones. It was literally ripping out the "Level scaling" keeping parts of the "gear scaling". Then hand tailoring each cell for a certain difficulty level. And adding in things like epic level dungeons/quests like Nornalhorst and the wood elf rangers. If I recall correctly they basically removed the default leveled lists. You'll notice with OOO that you won't see in fallout is something like sideways cave and the elvish ruins behind it. You can do sideways cave up until the... ethereal imp I think, at level 1. But the imp's not going down unless you're at least level 6 and geared to that as well. If you use encounter zones you wouldn't be able to do something like that. It also reworked the faction systems IIRC. You'll also find allot of hand placed loot you wouldn't find other wise. Things like daedric daggers in collapsed sections of cave.

Not only that but with hand tailored spawns and the tweaked factions you can do things like set up two opposing raider camps on the opposite sides of a hill with pats that occasionally bump into each other provoking a fire fight.

You want the raiders camps to all oppose each other? An OOO-like mod could do something like that. Graves, you could have it so that every night at eight two raiders would spawn with 3 empty whiskey bottles and start to melee with pool cues.

You couldn't do that by just tweaking a number.

There is psychoelf's http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4759 but it's for FOOK + MMM (and outdated versions at that...and before you ask, no they are not compatible with FOOK2 and MMM RC5 without some editing).

I would like to thank you all for your answers.

All you need to do is go down the list of encounter zones and raise their minimum levels.