I voted other

First, when it comes to an open world, level scaling is actually the best option.

Since a player is allowed to go anywhere, from a gameplay perspective it is very discouraging to be suddenly killed by an enemy that is far more powerful than you whilst innocently exploring.

I have no problems with wilderness encounters, dungeons and side-quests scaling to the level of the character.

However, scaling itself should not be based on the characters level, but rather the level of a characters highest offensive skill. This will allow the game to be enjoyed by gamers wanting to roleplay a more pacifist character.

An alternative idea would be to keep scaling based on character level, but allow characters with the speech-craft skill to hire mercenaries that can travel and protect them in combat. The number of, and skill level of these mercenaries would be determined by what percentage the Speech-craft skill is at.

There could also be the option of having the next arena opponent cut off from you until your character is a higher level. If you try to enter, and don't meet the minimum level requirements, you would recieve a message like "The next opponent is far too powerful for you. Come back when you are more skilled"

I want as little as possible, like in Morrowind. You should never be able to go everywhere from the start of the game. You should have to be careful where you go and careful what you do. You should be able to find super weapons at a lower level and then have to work to get them..... if you can.

Level Scaling killed Oblivion, leave it out.

I disagree I think Level Scaling made Oblivion great but it wasn't perfect. I still think improvements can be made to that system.

Level Scaling is one reason why Oblivion wasn't was replayable. You knew exactly who you were going to be up against and what items you would find at all times, depending on your level. Morrowind was much better in that you could find really tough dudes at low levels and were forced to retreat and come back.

Level Scaling is a disaster the way Oblivion used it.

A similar argument can used for Morrowind. Since you played it the first time, you know what kind of enemies you would encounter in areas that are too strong for you. You also know the weaker areas where you can fight.

You know when playing Morrowind, I don't even remember if I ever ended up on an artifact or daedric piece without it being related to a quest I took or checking on the internet. Thing is, those items are rare, mostly garded by really though enemies in relatively big dungeons somewhere far from roads. And how does it make them broken? Why a level 30 character wouldn't be supposed to be able to use a unique and strong weapon? If there's an item somewhere, it's there, take it if you want. If you've been through the pains of finding them, well you should use it. Why would you be bothered by someone else than you abusing invisibility? Plus, the moment you use/take/anything something with invisibility, you return visible.

I don't get what's the problem to turn into a godlike player anyway, it's part of the fun! You enter the game as weak, slowly progress, change armor and weapons for better ones, be able to reach and explore more fully new places, etc... And by the time you are godlike, well, there isn't much more to do. Plus, as more as you level up, you don't want a similar experience through ALL those hours of play time. Besides being able to reach new places, it's fun you don't get to always fight though enemies on the road you may use often between two cities. If the game experience barely changes, why keep playing for so long? This is no shooter. The fun of an rpg is to see your character progress and get rewards for all the hard work, use a ridiculous combination of rare items to be godlike. The feel of accomplishment is as good as the way that brings you there.

Also, I think level scaling in Oblivion killed the fun of collecting new and better armor pieces and weapons. In Morrowind, you'd work towards getting that money to buy a new piece of armor, or occasionally find some interesting pieces here and there, but more often than not enemies had primitive armor and the better ones were really rare, thus actually saving for good armor was usually an intelligent idea. In Oblivion, well, at some point I kept finding dwemer, glass, elven and ebony pieces from all enemies I encountered, What's the purpose of saving money and buy armor from store clerks when you can just level up a bit and wait for enemies to spawn with these supposedly rare pieces of armor? Even if you were level 50 in Morrowind, you still needed to find these still rare pieces of armor. Ebony was still damn rare as glass, what you could buy in shops was usually good, but at some point the cream of the crop was out of range from the common people. The lack of level scaling not only encourage you to collect and find these rare armor pieces or weapons, but to actually use shops for something else than buying arrows or repairing your equipment.

The thing is though, the first time you played it you had no idea what to expect. The first time you played Oblivion you did, since everyone knew that level scaling was going to be in Oblivion and it was a huge discussion before the game even came out.

You can have both radom and non-random encounters. I just don't want level scaling like Oblivion. I think this poll pretty much says what everyone wants by the results so far.

I much preferred Morrowinds. I hated levelled rewards and items. A quest that has a good reward should be risky to a low level character. And same as they used to say on Morrowind: "If someone is wearing fancy armour and holding fancy weapons, they're going to be a challenge. If not, then they're USUALLY easy."

Plus needing to be at a higher level to be in certain areas adds to the immersion. It gets old if you can explore pretty much the whole world as soon as you've made your character. But if the higher level areas can get you killed, it gives you an incentive to level up, the desire to travel to better locations where you can face tougher foes and get better items and loot, then sell it to better merchants in bigger, more populated towns and cities!

Some posts here say that the world should grow with you at your pace, or else it would not be realistic.

First of all, no two people learn thing in the same speed, and earn things with the same speed, so no it would not be realistic for the whole world to grow exactly like you, especially low life people like bandits, should never grow as fast as the hero of the game, in the skills and possessions.

Second, when you are the hero of the game and are destined to save the world, then you should not be comparable with any other individual in the game, and should feel your superoirity the the rest, and you should sense your progression rate against the rest of the world.

This is a fantasy RPG and the whole point of such games are for the players to enjoy the sense of their character's progression in the game and sense of triumph in achieving things that they were not able to do before.

I say, let the world grow with you, but the pace should vary for each individual, and their progress should not be anywhere near, your rate, and this should apply to NPCs and so no RAT or DAEDRA should gain level with your gaining levels.

And also a select part of NPCs should grow in much slower rate than the hero of the game, and those should be the ones who are practicing is various skills in their digital life, so no bar man should gain level with you as they are mechanically doing the same job repeatedly, and their job has no corresponding skill in the game's skill set.

As for bandits and other foes gaining high level items at higher levels, this should be avoided at the utmost urgency, or it would ruin the sense of achievement of finding rare treasures in the later stages of the game, but higher level monsters and opponents should have a higher chance of possessing higher level items, but is still have to be a minimal chance.

I like how it's said. In Morrowind, you knew not to deal with people with fancy equipment unless you were really ready, this really helped give a sense of immersion and feel into the game. If you're level 20 (like me) and end up fighting bandits with fancy armor in the road to Leyawiin, the armor really doesn't serve a purpose beyond protecting the enemy, it's not special anymore. I remember the Ghostgate in Morrowind, there were people with really fancy armor, particularly those in complete glass armor or who had those daedric masks. I knew these were strong people not to mess with, far more intimidating, giving character and helping you feel in a particular world, that's not something you were seeing often, while in Oblivion, that rapidly becomes something usual.

Indeed. I think by making the higher level armor more accessible and in greater amount that Bethesda actually lost the magic and value of the sets to begin with. What made daedric armor special was how rare, expensive, and unusual it was. Not just anyone would have this set, and if someone did, they were probably some one of significant importance. Granted finding the more difficult sets in Morrowind was hard as heck and required a lot of time and effort, but that's what made it fun and memorable.

The way to handle that is to restrict the mooks to only a certain kind of equipment, and give the leaders the more advanced stuff,

That reminds me, I STILL need to find the full Daedric set in Morrowind. I haven't looked up the locations of the pieces, I've just explored for it... All this time. XD

What they did with Fallout 3 was an improvement but it seems like you could not get any good armor at all untill later in the game. Go back to Morrowind style. I think that good weapons and armor should be SOOOOOO expensive that you need to be really good to buy a full set.

In Fallout 3 you could get really good armor early on but Repair and power armor training kept a lot of things in check. I think they should take most of what they did with Morrowind and combine what they did with Oblivion. Have some enemies level scaled but regular Bandits shouldn't have Glass Armor when they hit Level 20.

Oblivion was super easy on the hardest difficulty if you follow 1 rule.... cap out alchemy at the start and always carry around tons of poison. I cleared pretty much the entire game at like level 50ish just applying 10 poisons to everything. They all died within seconds. So I could cap alchemy and still be level 1, but all that changes as I level is the number of poisons I apply.

Yes the leader of a group should always have better gear than the rest, but not top gear like daedric/glass armors or weapons.

There always should be a really minimal chance of finding really high level gear in random encounters with ring leaders and the like, but it should be a really minimal chance, and should come as a great surprise for the players.

Areas should be separated into different level tier areas that have limited scaling. like level 1-5, 5-10, 10-15.... with possibly a randomly patrolling baddy or 2 in each area that scales with your level. Bosses should also scale higher than the area they appear in. Random loot should be leveled appropriately to the areas, but quest rewards and ultimate gear should not. Running into a randomly patrolling tough opponent would keep the thrill of the unknown in comfortable territory. I like knowing that I can not go everywhere and do everything at level 1.... unlike killing an ancient ayleid* (sp?) king and him dropping a staff that gets replaced by something from a random goblin. Just my 2 cents.

I actually really liked the system Fallout used. Gain experience for different actions like killing monsters and go up levels and choose different skills to increase. Attribute bonuses should be buy-able or quest rewards.

Not a fan of level scaling at all. As I've said many times, level scaling is based on the idea that you can determine the threat than an enemy will pose based on a PC's skill total rather than their skillset. Not only is it objectively wrong (since several skills provide little to no combat advantage), but it means that for the sake of balance, enemies generally get stronger against all tactics at the same time. For example, more HP makes it harder for an enemy to be killed regardless of what weapon or spell is used to attack it, and mind-altering spells are based solely on critter level, rather than some sort of mental resistance stat.

I'd much rather enemies have a variety of strengths, weaknesses, and combat patterns, such that one's character's boss fight is another character's walk in the park. More complicated challenges can be created by teaming up enemies with complementary attributes (the weak but alert enemy paired with the mighty but unobservant one, for example, to challenge both a fighter and a thief).

Basically, the question I want devs to ask is "What should a player do to defeat this enemy?" rather than "What level should a player be to defeat this enemy?". Think of the creature as a puzzle to solve rather than a number to exceed.

PS: While you're at it, come up with some reasons that one melee skill will be better than another besides something simple like blunt/slashing damage resistance. I'd like some reason to choose one skill over another besides aesthetics or "this one has more awesome items".

Funny. I completely disagree with it. The only way that could be considered "linear" is if they set you to a single "line" of travel. A straight "line" of road that is safe for example, and didn't allow you to veer from it at all. Oblivion was linear because outside of very, VERY little variation, everyone's game went the same way. There were people you simply could not kill because they were story necessary. In some cases they were only quest necessary. In FO:NV, if you kill someone who was necessary for a quest, you just can't do/complete those quests anymore.There was only one way to end Oblivion. Exploration does not an RPG make. I love the exploration of TES, and I think that New Vegas does take the use of high level monsters to direct you to the extreme, but I also think that there should be some danger out there. At least in New Vegas you are often warned of it. I don't want a dragon within 3 minutes walk of where the game starts. But that dragon should be out there, in the world (not just in caves, and dragon is an example creature) and it ought to be able to wink at a level one character and kill it.

A linear game has no story options. Super Mario was linear. Née Vegas shoe-horns your movement to introduce you to all the major players, but then it let's you off the leash and into the death dealing world. They have a lotnof invisible walls which need never be reproduced, but otherwise I'm sure a happy medium could be found. And should be.

Oh, really?

1. Load up F3
2. Travel to Little Lamplight, at any level
3. Look like an idiot while a mouthy brat and a few pieces of cardboard stop your "free exploration"

for those worried about finding Daedric armor early, who cares? apparently that person had enough skill to somehow kill the person wearing it. Remember that guy with a full set in morrowind? remember how hard it was to kill him at a low level? they can also make the armor very very rare like it was in morrowind. i personally only found maybe half a set in my 200+ hours of playing.

It was broken in Oblivion because it didn't level your helper NPCs as far as I know and worst of all it leveled regardless of your damage output ability so in the late game the enemy HP would be outrageously high.

It was also broken at the start due to not recognizing your actual abilities. I maxed speechcraft before leaving the Imperial City. I explored as much as I could and improved my disposition to everyone and I also got a fair amount of pick lock. When I left the city to explore it had leveled the foes up such that the game was extremely difficult at first, foes having gained in strength due to my level regardless of the fact that higher speechcraft and security don't make you a stronger fighter.

Needless to say I don't want it to be done identically to Oblivion.

The system needs to be tweaked but not completely overhauled. I want some form of Level Scaling but not everything needs to be scaled.