In Nehrim they had designed everything manually by hand, and there was virtually no level scaling at all. So yes!

I was going to start a new thread, but thankfully I did a search and found this one first. Here's what I was going to say about level scaling:

Level scaling in Oblivion either made it incredibly boring or insanely difficult, depending on your understanding of how to get +5 with your initial skill build.

Either way, it didn't provide the necessary element of intimidating, threatening opposition or the rewarding feeling of attaining power and overcoming it.

Fallout 3 scaling, while better, could also svck. It makes no sense for some areas of the desert to spawn bloatflies but others to spawn only high level attack bots, and the enemies in certain locations didn't fit with the story elements present. It's ironic to me that no fast traveling would solve this entire issue for obvious reasons, while allowing some areas to remain matched to low level could be done when the story for the location would fit it. However, I really liked when they brought in new enemy types with a story explanation for their existence once you are further into the game. That made sense to me, and it matched the apparent growth as mutational perks, increased skills, and more powerful weapons charge up your character. However, the way the world worked in Fallout I could see why a merc in town would stay level with your power.

Either way though, in Fallout the power disparity between the players and other characters was not as significant as it is in a fantasy game like Elder Scrolls. Guns make being a one man army seem more plausible without needing as much explanation, but in Elder Scrolls only your value as a magical warrior given power due to destiny explains being able to take so many hits and fight extremely powerful forces. But that presents a problem, because you need to be able to defeat enemies in the beginning while gaining significant power later on. Scaling seems more absurd because it isn't cohesive with the story of someone gaining in power, especially when you are traveling back and forth all over the map.

I can see why certain landmarks could have more powerful occupants as time goes on, but scaling everywhere you go doesn't always make sense. Opposition on the roadways should be daunting at first, but later on only occasionally notable. They should use a story explanation for more powerful enemies hounding you later on in the game. Maybe dragon attacks could increase as you level up? Certain monsters could start breeding more intense offspring as a result of the dragons' influence? Teams of assassins from the crumbling empire or various Nord factions could be hired to take you out due to your increasing influence as a leader? If there is an explanation for scaling, and it is only applied to the right areas, I am okay with it. If later in the game there are ruins with bandits in them, those bandits should be weak and easy to kill, with bad loot. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a locked chamber or crypt past them that they couldn't get into, filled with high level wraiths and a chest with a powerful and unique magical sword.

My suggestions are that I think that areas should scale to a little above your level if you haven't been there, scale to your level if you have been there but you have another quest to do in them, but once you have been there and finished all quests related to the area they shouldn't rise up to follow your level. There is no point to making it worth going back to locations you have already been when there are so many in a game like this. In fact, going into a landmark and seeing that is empty is actually helpful in my opinion because then I know if there was anything unique there I already got it (assuming that, like they said, Skyrim will have more unique aspects to their landmarks). Additionally, roads you have been on should not scale. High level enemies that occasionally track you down anywhere on the map make sense if they are after you, but roadways, which should be safer than most places, logically shouldn't scale. The only point to having roads is decreasing the chance of enemy encounters and increasing travel speed. Of course, if Bethesda intends for us to actually use the roads, they already know this.

Those of you who haven't played F3 yet kinda owe it to yourselves to do so, since I suspect it will be a bigger influence on Skyrim mechanics-wise than Oblivion. Play F3 and then see what you think about the level scaling.

Definitely agreed. While I was a bit harsh on the F3 scaling there, I can't express how much of an improvement the scaling is over Oblivion. Leaps and bounds.

And since it's hard to quantify how much of an improvement everything about this game looks compared to F3, let alone Oblivion, I am not really concerned. But in case Bethesda needs any inspiration we are here WILDLY SPECULATING!

@DCDeacon I have a question.In Oblivion level scaling made adventuring not dangerous. In Skyrim, will some region be too dangerous at first?

@KenjiSenpai Some are certainly tougher than others. Some you may have to leave and come back later when tougher.

I know they'd mentioned Fallout 3 scaling, but we didn't get any details about it. Good news!

Have any info from Twitter - go here: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1159110-info-from-twitter/page__gopid__17010191#entry17010191

You know what the best scaling system is? No scaling at all.

Nothing kills immersion like an invisible force following you around and adjusting enemies to match your characters skill, this is a dangerous fantasy world, not a "make your own adventure" game.


The alternative to scaling is simply offering ways to escape from a very dangerous situation: IE: Almsivi/Divine Intervention. Perhaps very tough enemies could simply mock or ignore you knowing that you are no match for them.

No main should be scaled, because thats the MAIN quest, its what most will play, for more casual players who just want to run through the game the main quests makes sense for that, the side quest should be less leveled.

with the exception of main roads and the areas immediately surrounding major settlements there should be absolutely no level scaling whatsoever.......completely random. after playing mods like TIE and WAC where the world is entirely unlevelled and random its hard to go back to any sort of stupid levelling system. when you go into some new cave you found you never new what was going to be their. your level 10 character might encounter some level 3 bandits........or some level 30 lich kings. you just didnt know and it made the game world much more exciting. you were more cautious when you went into a new area and you slowly scoped out the place first and alot of times you had to turn tail and get the hell out of their. that is how the gameplay should be. just because some people svck at games and get upset when they run into areas with higher level creatures and die and then complain about how they didnt get some quick time event or slow motion power to save their asses. we need to stop designing games around those people.

remember people: Skyrim's level scaling isn't directly FO3's level scaling. they only said that it was closer so that we could get our landmarks.

and besides, I think they learned their lesson. no need to keep speculating on it. it'll probably feel like any other game would, level-scaling wise.

besides, IF it happens to be too similar to OB's level-scaling, I'll just put the difficulty slider all the way right (toughest). that way, I'd be afraid of rats lol

This system may include the following, if you've played Fallout you'll have some idea how it works:
-Some areas may not be scaled some of the time
-When you first get to an area the scaling is generally set and remains that way unless you are a far higher level, in which case it tries to catch up but always a few levels below you so the combat is still easy
-Some areas may be set to scale above your level so you have to return in a few levels, unless you are not at a certain point in the game plot or at a certain level already, in which case they may continue to scale above your level
-Some areas may always scale to your level
-Areas you frequently return to, like roadways or towns, or quest locations, may vary in their scaling in that roads may always scale below you after you've gotten to a certain level, loot or equipment in these areas or shops may scale or not scale to your level depending on the context, and quest locations will most likely scale back up to your level if you've been there before but the quest needs to be set there
-Hopefully equipment, shops, and loot are balanced and not completely tied to the levels of enemies (as in, item scaling and enemy scaling are different systems)

It's altogether a more evolved scaling system than we saw in Oblivion, and hopefully it will also be better than Fallout's. I think they realized the problems the old systems posed and they are interested in making sure that the gameplay makes sense, remains challenging in the right locations and situations, avoids obnoxiousness in that frequent problems with already visited dungeons, human enemies, and roads scaling in illogical ways are no longer problems, and is persistent with your story and character growth.

At least, I think that's how they hope it will work.

I've played through both fallouts at least 10 times each, mostly on vanilla, and No scaling is far better than scaling. The scaling in Fallout 3 and NV was a joke (it was worse in F3), and an insult to the original fallout titles.

None of this "Balancing" stuff. Enemies, shopkeepers, etc should have what they have. Rare items are rare and very expensive, cheap items are cheap and numerous, tough enemies are tough so you can run if you need to, and weak enemies are weak so you can rightfully flatten them like you deserve to. THATS what an adventure is, not knowing whats ahead. If everything that is thrown in your path is something that you expect, then the game isn't fun. The Leveling system is just another way to turn non-linear games into linear games like everything else on the game market.

I'm inclined to agree with you that in a lot of situations I would prefer no scaling, especially when it comes to shops, regions, and town quests. You shouldn't be able to traqeze off to any town right after you start the game and be able to buy much or complete quests without getting massacred.

However, I would like to point out that you wouldn't have played through both Fallouts at least ten times each on vanilla if it made the game so unenjoyable. It didn't ruin your game experience. Scaling has room to be improved, and even if it doesn't quite make the game a lot better, it doesn't have to be half bad. They're going to keep it, and I'd rather figure out how it could be improved than expect them to take it out.

The best level scaling is "No level scaling", just areas with different level of difficulty and loot.

But those areas can differ a bit in each play through, to make it fresh every time.

I do not like to think that my visiting a place any time has affected the difficulty level of that area, or my gaining level affected the difficulty level of areas that I have not visited yet.

Let the difficulty level of the areas be predetermined at the beginning of each game, and be kept that way until the next play-through.

But the difficulty level of different areas can stretch from level 0 to level 70 in their player level equivalent, so there could always be places that are too hard for the players, or there are areas that are just right for the current level of the players, and areas that are too easy for them.

And let them choose the magnitude of the challenge that they like to take themselves by choosing any area that they like to enter.

And those areas can be surface areas, or inside the dungeons, and as a general rule of thumb, the deeper one goes into each dungeon, the more challenging it should become, unless we want to add the surprise of finding a hidden haven, deep inside a cavern complex, or something like that.

Predetermined difficulty level can go well with procedurally generated quests as in "Radiant Story", as they can check for that parameter in the areas, and place themselves in a place that fits with their required difficulty level range.

Exactly. I dont know what the thinking would be for a leveled MQ. Would people actually find killing a Dragon at lvl 1 with a couple of punches fun?
And how the [censored] would the lore try to cover for THAT?! What happened to being descendants of GODS? I might just not buy the game if they did that....

That's moronic, why should you harm the diversity of gameplay when you don't have to? If the gameplay is best without automatic scaling, then why should any compromises be made?

I enjoyed the games, yes, but Leveling aspect always nagged at the back of my mind, and the only real purpose it served was make the game way too easy and ultimately lack diversity. Before you chime in with "just mod the game" the entire point of an adventure game is that it's a world created by somebody else that you get to play in. If I have to go through and add a million mods to correct glaring gameplay issues, then it defeats the point of the entire experience since I've changed the world to suit my liking, I don't want to play GOD with the game and shape it to be how I want it, I want to play an unmodified game as it should rightfully be from the start.

I think they are still trying to make all areas accessible from the start , which is rather stupid .




Why it was cheap? it was a reward for leveling . When i kill a boss with 10 hacks at lvl 1 i expect to kill him with 1 hack at level 20 , if it takes the same effort then leveling is pointless and i prefer to play Diablo instead .

It takes like 100 hours to get to level 40. You earned it to slap dagoth ur around.

I hadn't played much of the main quest but I was exploring and ran into him. I didn't have the quest items or whatever, but I wrecked him in that first little run-in. I'd imagine that experience would have been cooler if he had wrecked me and then I would have felt like I actually needed to play the main quest. But it was more like, wow, I just beat supposedly the big enemy in the game with no effort. What's the point now? And I stopped playing. It was not a reward for leveling, it actually just made me feel like all the leveling was pointless because there wasn't a single threat to me in the world. Even Vivec. Hah.

I think that level scaling works for more of the ways to play the game and it is definitely necessary if you have fast travel. Personally, I would prefer if there wasn't fast travel. But, there is. And the game would be a lot worse with fast travel but no scaling, at least if you actually used fast travel. Thus level scaling is necessary if they are designing a game open to fast travel, and it does improve the game at least in the context of the other mechanics (fast travel), whether you agree with those mechanics or not. I'd hardly consider that a moronic perspective.

It would be really hard to make the game work without scaling, and I'd want them to do it, but they just aren't going to do it that way. So, again, I'd rather the scaling was contextual and implemented that best that it can be. It's pragmatic to be realistic, though it svcks to not get exactly what you want all the time.

In MW FO3 and FONV you never noticed it and it always felt natural.

You’d run into some tougher new enemies mixed in with the easier as well as the more difficult enemies that you were dealing with before.

You could go anywhere from the start, but there were some places that you’d likely get your ass kicked if you ventured there to early.

Main quests were scaled with the idea that in order to have made it this far, you must at least be at level “X”.

That works for me.

Actually this doesn't work and it is immersion breaker , why should the game decide when i want to proceed with the MQ ?
OB screwed everything with "you have to be lvl 25 to do this" , game should not know what level you are and not spawn enemies accordingly , if you are not good enough to do something take some time to improve and return later.

Also this is a domino : lvl related quests , doors that do not open , immortal NPCs , scaled loot , scaled available spells.
This is hand holding and when you supposedly go to make a free roam rpg hand holding is wrong.

I think that Robotmilk meant that quest developers should presume at a given part of the main quest that, based on the fact that the player has made it so far, they must be at least level "X". I do not think that he meant that players below level "X" should be restricted from doing the quest, only that it would be very difficult for such a player.