This is kinda beth/fo/tes game specific but could be done in any rpg, give me your thoughts, other than "Level scaling?!?!?! NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Is level scaling good or bad? Well it’s both, as far as I can see you need more creature variety tho that does not fix the problem of a rat killing your level 100 character. So you put them into categories 6 and a boss category that’s handled slightly differently. The low end will always be easy to kill and outgrow the middle 2 will always have a chance to kill you but the more skills you have the less likely that is the last 2 will kill you if you are not prepared or under skilled.

Now we have to remove the limits they put on everything cap it all at 9999, yes all of it then come back and have it stop leveling stuff code wise to prevent oddities and also tell you when its zeroed out basically when you stop taking damage or get affected by stuff. This way by the time you hit 300 or so on a skill and have all its perks plus the best equipment you can easily get near too or zero out damage or an effect like stagger or poison. Just balance as so you can do that in 1/3^{rd or 1/6th (10-20 hours)} the games normal playing time on easy, that way each time you slow the growth rate you slow it by 20% each tick on the slider up to 400%.

Creature levels follow a calculated number of your best attack/defense numbers unmodded or modded by equipment, their spawn levels are capped X% of your best numbers so you always have a chance against whatever is spawned with more rare spawns of something harder to kill, if you raise the cap the more normal it becomes to find something harder to kill making the rare spawn a more grueling fight.

Out of the box the game is set to easy, it’s just what most people want, however difficulty itself is broken into 2 sliders a creature toughness scale which pushes the level cap higher allowing tougher normal spawns and a EXP/level growth rate slider so you can lower how fast you gain skills,ect.

Finish up by creating a level or chance list that can randomly add enchantments/stats to the equipment that’s places in that list or to a linking list of equipment. This way you no longer need to make specific weapons you can dump enchantments into a list link that list to an equipment list and be done with it, this also allows for more variety, at worst you’d have to come up with 2 or 3 names for each main enchantment and enchantment combination so it can auto generate a name. This way no more running out of equipment so quickly. Alchemy/potions/spells can be done in this way to a weak potion is still not going to heal you much but you have a chance to find a better mid to high level potion or spell that can affect your lvl 100 character or equal level creatures.

There is no such thing as a rat that can kill a level 100 character. Rats in both Morrowind and Oblivion are always level 1.

Many people don't realize that most enemies, in both Oblivion and Skyrim, operate exactly as they did in Morrowind. They are a fixed level and do not scale with the player. Oblivion added some enemies (not as many as some people would have us believe) that also scale. However, it incorporated scaling in too crude a fashion. Skyrim refined this with a partial return to the more static leveling found in Morrowind while still retaining some of Oblivion's scaling.

This is ture, but I want it a bit less capped. Tho most of my issues with Skyrim are level/skill growth rate and lack of equipment variety, same ones I had with everything after Oblivion.

Of course, if you can run mods, the option always exists to go in and create half a dozen new varieties of rats that have different attributes and such. King Rat has YOU for dinner, and says you taste just like chicken...

Meh I'd like a higher quality base that only needs a few tweaks to be playable and not have to wait a year+ for the community to fix it, FO3 and Skyrim are unplayable out of the box, least to me it is.....

Eh, you kinda lost me. Creating those rat varieties would only take a few minutes, and certainly would not require waiting for a year. That's the thing about doing it yourself to suit youself. That being said, a lot of people probably would not be happy with more deadly critters on an adept setting, so I think Beth's goal is to please the majority and let the rest get mods or mod it to suit themselves.

... Once you get into model, texture, AI and balance across 6 different things it all kinda scales up. Even then it dose not have to be varieties of the same creature, it would just be nice if the base game was not such a mess. Then you have equipment issues, level issues, creature level and balance issues I tend to wait till each of these is fixed. I mean Skyrim is such a downgrade from Oblivion its scary without stats they can do less equipment varity makething things worse...it all goes to whatever is less work for them all the while removing hard code from the game..... I really wish they left in item degradation and stats, they could have just not used them.... last item degradation mod I tried was script heavy and did not work right, something like that has to be hard coded.....

ramble mode X2

Fallout 4 might be even worse, tho if they can manage maybe they make it so scripts run more efficiently than ever, if they could get scripts to run as well as hardcode but I do not think that's their call since they use a crappy engine. Tho FO4 might have a better system for scripting... its not just item degeneration but a ton of small stuff thats kinda hard to do, it would be nice if we had more control over run/jump/fly, add new skills/perks,ect,ect I think they managed to make it easier to slow your speed down in Skyrim in NV it seemed so buggy. I just want more control over stuff and we wind up getting less with a bunch of new crap that's overly limited.

I dunno... I didn't like Morrowind all that much until I modded it, and I didn't like Oblivion at all until I modded it, and Skyrim I found to be playable without mods, but much better modded. I think that sort of thing kinda comes down to individual tastes. When I modded Skyrim, I wasn't thinking of "fixing" anything, just making the play more to my liking, and so more enjoyable. That's what mods are for, eh?