Lets talk about RPG game design! Specifically regarding leveling, scaling, and grinding.

Now, I know the dev's wont listen to anything anyone could, will, or did ever post here. So here's my modest proposal: TES VI should have no leveling or character variety or scaling at all. It would save dev time for programming in more Runescape. Yay crafting! And higher detail but never-quite-good-enough-for-spoiled-consol-itis-brats graphics! This would also fix the grinding issues, cause then you wouldn't need character skill to increase at all if there was no scaling and everything was the same! Fantastic! I wish I could throw in something about canabalistic Irish eating the children of the poor so you'd know I was being satirical, but half-way through that I realized I can actually see that happening! $%&!! I feel like I can't stop TES VI: Electric Boogaloo any more than I can stop the sun from burning out.

I guess I'll start with my opinions on leveling:

TES III was, IMO, the best for leveling in the TES series. Stats that provided a boost from one high skill to a related crappier skill, and allowed for characters that had significantly different attributes which played very differently. The "level up" screen and stat multipliers were clunky. Script mods took care of that with seamless "level ups", where relevant stats just increased on their own with relevant skill progression, and even still give you a couple stat points to freely place wherever to further help highly custom character builds.

Oblivion wasn't completely terrible either. Post-mods of course. Auto-scaling enemies really mucked it up in vanilla if you didn't max out stat multipliers.

Skyrim, they completely ditch stats altogether so that they can use some of the worst auto-scaling I've seen, outside of Oblivion. Rule #1 of Bethesda: If it only requires some actual thought and playtesting, and fan mods proved it was possible, scrap it. Rule #2: If it gets in the way of lazy game design, IE auto-scaling, scrap it. Leveling up in Skyrim is a bit of a joke really. With the extremely limited level up options (2/3 of which are largely useless) that don't affect character play-style or progression at all really, combined with the auto-scaling, they might as well have not bothered including auto-scaling and leveling-anything together.

My opinions on auto-scaling:

First off: what Fallout had with auto scaling an entire region and leaving it at that I almost liked. I don't COMPLETELY hate ALL forms of auto-scaling. I just hate it when it makes things pointless or feel pointless. Like running into chuck-norris bandits both everywhere and consistently, or making the Skinner's box so blantantly obvious it ruined the game for me like with Borderlands. Before auto-scaling, good RPG game design tended to have regions at certain levels, but they were fixed. Regions you "unlocked" with higher skill were always in the same order. Auto-scaling regions can break up the monotony of replays by changing the order of progression of regions. What I didn't like about Fallout was it set when you entered the region, which generally speaking you visiting regions more or less in the same order between replays. I honestly think if the regions should be more randomized from the start, but that's more difficult to program when a single quest has you across the map and back. Bethesda tends to avoid things that require playtesting, so the best they'll ever do is probably what they already did in Fallout.

The important thing to note is that each region had not different level content, but new unique content as well. The biggest cardinal sin of auto-scaling is using it as a substitute for content. I want to believe there is a circle in hell just for game devs that do that. Ever play an old RPG and run into the same enemy but with a recolored sprite and higher stats? You remember that dissapointment? That. EVERY time I run into chuck-norris-bandits (wearing no armor nonetheless) I die a little inside. Leveled content should change as it goes, else it's compeltely pointless. I mean: the areas should look and FEEL different, the enemies between regions should require the player to change up strategies, and the loot between regions should look, act, and function differently. Variety. That was the whole point in the first place.
Otherwise it's just a crappy skinner's box.

As for Grinding:

I was getting hammered by some Draugr, "blocking" (Phhh, Skyrim doesnt actually have blocking, just a damage reduction bonus), and my block skill is shoots up from 63 to 64 to 65 pretty fast. I intentionally squeeze out a few more levels in block while I'm there. Later, back at town, I finish grinding smithing to max and realize I'm an idiot for not just using the console commands to save myself the time and max out smithing at the start. There's a few things wrong with grinding in the TES series.

Elona I think had the best grinding system I've ever seen in an RPG. On top of that it actually makes realistic sense, which is the cherry on top.

Here's how it worked:
Each skill and stat had a "potential". The potential modifies the skill/stat specific XP gains. When you increase a skill or stat, the potential drops. This makes higher skilles and stats exponentially slower to gain. Potential dropped pretty fast. To raise up potential again you paid a trainer who would raise your potential in that skill. They didn't directly raise the skill itself.

This: Broke up grinding, added a money-sink which TES games still need, AND actually makes realistic sense. Your character gets 2% better at something, then hits a brick wall in his skill progression. No more gaining 10 skill levels by milking out enemies. You go to someone who has been doing that skill for MUCH longer than you. They critique your technique and show you some tricks that would take you a long time to figure out on your own. Then you go out and use the skill, make use of the critique you recieved and refine whatever little trick they showed you, get 2% better and hit another wall. Rinse and repeat. Not only did it not make sense that you could grind any skill to infinity in a day, but it broke the game balance too. Especially when you could double your armor and weapon damage at the start of the game and there was no reason not to with crafting.

Speaking of which, I think crafting skills need to be addressed specifically regarding grinding. As smithing is now: you abuse it or dont use it at all. I'd rather fix it, such that you can't break the game balance using it normally. I svck at modding. I'm too lazy to do this because Bethesda is full of sadists who didn't include batch-editing in the Creation Kit. But if I could: I'd remove XP gains for smithing altogether. Getting better things from smithing needs to tie in with you doing more things at places that are more dangerous. Generally speaking in an RPG, money is a good indicator. All recipies should cost gold just as though you custom ordered it from the smith, such that you can't pull ebony equipment out of your ass whenever. As it is there's no point to loot besides to sell it as you can make EVERYTHING you ever need for a tiny fraction of what it should cost and double it's stats. If you want to be able to improve gear more, you'd make an expensive investment in the smith. Or easier to mod option: the only way to increase smithing skill is by paying for expensive training and still no XP gains by actually smithing.
The point to all that being there's actually a tradeoff for having a +5 mace, in that you couldn't afford a keg sized IV drip of consumables at the same time. Or at least that you couldn't have a +5 bow AND +5 mace. AND robes of completely unbalanced enchanments. AND - oh wait, yeah, enchanting is a bit broke too.

Alchemy is not completely terrible in Skyrim actually. Ingredients are more expensive and limited than ever. The only way to seriously abuse alchemy is with alchemy skill boosters. They removed most of the skill boosting from previous games, but there's still a feed-back loop for alchemy and enchanting. Here's where enchanting is still broken, they didn't completely removed all of the readily abused effects AND it suffers from the same probem as smithing where you can make equipment better than all randomized loot. A simple nerf such that at least half of enchanted loot is more powerful than what the player can create, combined with no XP gains such that significantly boosting player enchantments requires $$$.

The point of all this is such that there's actually a trade-off to grinding crafting and crafting stuff. In that the player can't afford EVERYTHING, and break the game by doing so.

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Hmmm... there's more I could go on about, but not off the top of my head right now.

Anyway, discuss relevant leveling/scaling/grinding game design and the TES series!

My God. I thought I was the first to come up with a "potential" system. I use it for Oblivion (potential increases with awake hours passed, from completing quests, training with NPCs, and reading skill books) and it works very well. Characters that spam skills will still get an advantage - but that advantage is only short- and medium-term, not longterm. Diminishing returns come into effect and so "spamming" skills is a good idea only if you need a temporary surge of power to take on something difficult or if you're really close to Journeyman and the Journeyman spell vendor for that magic class is RIGHT THERE. I love the system. It keeps the charm of improve-by-use and has some subtle interactions with your behavior, but doesn't encourage spamming except in limited scenarios.

Potential doesn't DROP as you gain skills, in my system, though. Basically, the total accumulated skill gain of your character is compared to the level of your "potential", and the skill points you get are multiplied by ((your potential) / (accumulated skills)). What this works out to is that a character that uses skills x times more than another character will end up with sqrt(x) more skills - so given equal potential, if Bob uses skills 4 times more than Amy he'll end up with 2 times as much gain. This is an extreme example, though.. in my experience the ratios have never gone beyond the range of 0.6-1.4 or so.



As for level scaling.. here is the issue that comes up if you ditch level scaling completely: unless the power scaling is low, 80% of fights are going to be either too easy or too hard. That is, if I can easily beat something 5 levels below me, and get clobbered by something 5 levels above me, there is only a 10-level range (out of 50!) that put up a good fight. Two possible solutions are..

1. Lower the power gained from leveling up, both for NPCs and the player. That is, make it so that anything within TEN levels of me is a doable challenge, so I've got a 20-level range out of 50 to get a good fight.

2. Make enemies scale, but only to half your level, and give them a "static" level on top of that. That is, a raider camp could be level 10, plus half my level. That way they'll be lvl 15 when I'm 10, 20 when I'm 20, 25 when I'm 30. See how that works - it's effectively the same as the first solution, but the console kiddies can have their DBZ-like power progression without breaking the game. This is the solution I favor.

For Oblivion, I use a "time scaling" system on top of OOO - that is, the level the world is set to depends on how many days have passed, not how strong YOU are. It works really well, and does put a slight time pressure on (though OOO has caps to levels - bandits never get above 17, for example, so if you fall behind you're not doomed forever). Still, this probably goes against the open-ended, leisurely spirit of TES so I don't think it's the right choice for this series.

Which mod now? I haven't touched Oblivion in a LONG time. I would totally pick up Oblivion again for skill potentials.

Gods, I hate this new forum software. Please ignore this post.

I believe he's describing a personal set of rules, but I could be wrong.

First of my contribution to the random [censored]ing about Beth is. Why do they feel the need to reinvent the game every time? They never seem to want to build upon past success and instead reinvent the game, leveling is the best example.

My leveling solution would be a refined Oblivion system. For stats I generally like the way they function but instead of the current system of raising them, it would work better if you got a preset increase to the stats linked to your primary skills plus a few extra points you can self assign. This prevents you from having to grind skills to raise attributes and allows for more character specialization based on primary skills. Then just create pools of skill related perks, all special abilities not generic +whatevers, you can choose from at the journeyman expert etc levels. All standard +damage +accuracy improvements should be included in skill ups and the special enhancements, zoom slow-mo etc, picked by the player from a pool of available perks. Then set some restrictions on what perks are available based on primary skills to further enhance unique character designs.

When it comes to scaling I think a mix of scaled and leveled content is best. The previous long post had a great idea for scaling with the set level plus half the players level, and would be perfect for the regular outside world. Allows being outside city walls to be dangerous at first and get progressively easier, which is how being outdoors should be and can be applied to some of the non important dungeons like bear caves and such. The dungeon system needs changed tho, imo there definitely needs to be leveled content. Some dungeons need to be level 40 or 50 or whatever the instituted leveling system decides is the high end of player combat effectiveness. Me and many players like me enjoy the achievements associated with accomplishing something I was too weak to do before and this is lost in TES. To preserving the freedom a majority of content should be scaled, but not all.

More importantly the way scaling works needs addressed badly. It can't just be +health +damage. Higher level enemies should use more effective AIs, more advanced abilities and take advantage of the same damage mitigation the player can. A higher level bandit group should be more difficult because the banding chief is shield bashing me in the face while his bow using friends flank me to get clear shots, not because they use super powered npc only iron arrows and hunting bows that share stats with my ebony gear. Also fighting smarter allows an enemy to get harder while avoiding Daedric bandits from OB.

When it comes to grinding I think the solution is simpler. For one, it doesn't need to be eliminated entirely as long as the game doesn't require me to do it I don't care if someone else wants too. The solution I see tho is adjusting how much skill increases with every action. Blocking as an example, blocking should increase based on the amount of damage mitigated. A crab hits me for 10 and I block 2 of that the increase should be minuscule, if Alduin hits me for 1000 and I block 200 I should get a decenct bump. This forces you to fight things that can kill you to raise your block which all but eliminates grinding on mudcrabs. Then level weapons based on what you're hitting, a mob too low nets no increase a mob higher then you nets a big increase. Combine that with proper scaling of skills, i.e. every level requires more then the last and you should have a decent system.

I think a combination of these two factors would go a long way toward making an RPG "supergame". Use a bit of regional variation in the starting static portion of the level, and some random spawn lists that always include the original entries, so things don't go "extinct" just because you levelled up, and it's got my money for a copy of it.

Alchemy could be "unbroken" by going back to a heavily modified "success/failure" system, with preset results. Instead of making variable strength and duration potions, limit it to the "standard" varieties of "Novice", "Apprentice", "Journeyman", etc. Have the ability to select any version up to and including that of your apparatus, and have the difficulty set by both your skill and the quality grade of potion you select. At absoute rock bottom starting skill (5), the best you can hope for is to make Novice potions, with about a 50% rate of success, and 0% chance of making a better Apprentice level potion. By skill 20, Novice potions are at 100%, and you've now got a shot (about 25%) of making Apprentice-level potions. A few more points of skill, and that chance grows to 30%, 50%, etc., until you finally master it and unlock the next level. That contunues with each "grade" of potions, where reaching 100% proficiency with your current level of expertise gives you a slim but real shot at the next stage. You can VOLUNTARILY make the standard strength potion that you're 100% capable of producing every time without fail, OR you can push your luck and try for something one step better, with the possibility of failing and wasting the ingredients. You can't make "uber" potions at low level, but CAN make slightly better ones than in a "guaranteed" system, so you can't pump up your skills and attributes too far. It's a compromise between a frustrating "risk/reward" system (DF, MW) and a "guaranteed" system with no real risks or worthwhile rewards (OB, SR). Bonus is, all of the potions would stack neatly in inventory along with the "store bought" ones.

Irish Cannibals?!
I challenge you to drinking contest!

Actually, I see two solutions:
1) All crafting/cost-reducing skills could be removed and it's function taken up by NPCs.

You pay smiths for custom armor/weapons and improvements.
You pay for weapon/armor repairs.
You pay for potions, and can custom order.
You pay for custom enchantments.
You must provide the items required or pay for them.
Bam! Problem solved.

However actually removing and replacing everything would be a pain. Given the existing player-made-items system, you can incorperate the same effect with the no XP gains from crafting, and you can only get skill by expensive training. Now consider how that would work with the existing training cap per levelup. You not only couldn't afford to max any crafting from the start, but can't train much even if you did have the money. Your crafting skills would be directly tied to the player level. No more absurd lvl 100 smithing on a lvl 10 character. It would be a resource consuming long term payoff for lategame, where lvl 100 crafting belongs.

It just doesn't make sense that there were even be alchemy shops if every schmuck could be cranking out max quality potions in a month, or the same with weapons/armor/enchantment. I don't like feeling pressured to grind it because its so abusable, easy to level, and CHEAP to do so. It doesn't seem to belong/fit in with the focus of the rest of the game. If they're going to "Streamline it further" this is the logical solution.

2) Now granted, on the other hand, It is nice that you could RP a smith/enchanter/alchemist in that you can make money off it as though it were your job AND base your adventuring around your skill advantage. I'd rather the series took a step in the RP direction by putting a bit more depth into the RP potential of having a crafting job. But there's still the balance issue of the guy who has maxxed potions, enchantments, weapons, AND armor. I also happen to hate games that give the player everything or allow them to easily get everything in one playthrough. There needs to be a tradeoff such that while you can master one, or maybe one and a half, but not all of them.

Come to think of it... the no XP gains from crafting, crafting can only be leveled with expensive training would provide that if money wasn't so damn plentiful. Should late game characters be able to dump it all into expensive [censored]-and-giggles overpowered crafting skills for the sake of it?

OR we could limit crafting skills by using perks.
I think perks are going to stay in the TES series. While they were meant to replace attributes, they didn't replace all the functions of attributes, and are clunky and chunky as opposed to the fan-made automated leveing: +skill->+governingattribute[s]->+easewithaffectedskills that provided what the perks do but gradually with time and diretly proportional to the skills AND without multiplier worries. Perks should never have completely replaced attributes. However I DO think they could work together.

You have no crafting "skills". You get some "perk" points every level that you can put into the crafting skills. This would represent what your character grinded or apprenticed with in his "off time". No more actually having to grind. No more being able to grind immediately to high skill levels.
Kind of like the attribute points in DF or MW:MADD that you could put into things irrelevant to what the player was doing, for the sake of a more custom character.

OR guilds. YES! GUILDS. Why didn't I think of this earlier? A LOT of people are complaining about the lack of guilds and factions. Join a union, become an apprentice. You can't join all the unions, and the unions that have skill boosters that both affect each other (IE +enchanting potions to make +alchemy enchantments and repeat until the game breaks) HATEeach other. So you can't apprentice in two disciplines that would allow you to break the game BUT we still can keep skill boosters because now you can't create a feedback loop!
It would: add RP value with the job aspect, add more guilds with relations that people missed, AND prevent the game breaking over-poweredness of mastering all crafting and stop skillboosting loops without actually removing skillboosters AND add in a ton of replay value with the conflicting guilds and incompatible character skills.

I'm afraid the "mod" is on my TI-83 calculator. Every 10 hours of gameplay or so I enter the values of my skills, days passed, skill books read, and quests done on a TI-83 program I wrote, and it spits out the ratio of my (skill progress)/(skill potential)

Then I multiply that by 1.25 and set it as the game's fSkillUseMinorMulti value, and by 0.75 and set that as fSkillUseMajorMulti.

So I don't have a mod, although I can at least give the values for the formula I use if anyone wants to make it.

"Skill Progress" and "Skill Potential" both start at 0.

Every time a skill goes up, I use the "Base" column (if it's a minor skill) or the "Major" column (if it's a major skill) on this chart: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Increasing_Skills

So, if since the start of the game I've increased Athletics from 5 to 10, I've gained (2.89 + 3.8 + 4.79 + 5.86 + 6.99) = 24.33 Skill Progress in Athletics

If I increase a Major skill from 30 to 31 I get 25.51 points of Skill Progress, etc.

Note that specialization is NOT factored in. So it counts as the same amount of Skill Progress to increase a skill regardless of whether it's in my character's combat/magic/thief specialization.

This is all calculated retroactively by my TI-83 when I run the program. I just "register" my character when I create it by giving initial skill values, and it subtracts the Progress from the total I get by inputting an updated character.

As for Potential:
210 points awarded for completing a quest.
78.75 points awarded for each day that passes (assuming 16 hours of wakefulness a day)
55.84 points awarded for reading a skill book (regardless of the skill gained from it)
x points awarded for training, where x is the amount of Skill Progress gained from the training (so training is essentially "free" from a potential standpoint)


Note that this is balanced for OOO-Full, in which skill progress is 3-4 times slower than in vanilla, and training costs are like 10x pricier!