No Scaling In Skyrim Is BAD!

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:40 am

Although it may be too late to change how leveling works in Skyrim, I will share my thoughts anyway.

Enemy Level Scaling

The reason why leveling scaling was bad in Oblivion is because we had major and minor skills, and the ability to control if we ever wanted to level at all. People would stay at level 1 by purposely choosing to put their most used skills as their minor skills, and skills that they never used as their major skills, thus ceasing to level, breaking the game and just plowing through everything while having the best gear, while every other enemy stayed at level 1 with him. Level scaling in Oblivion was BAD because of the character leveling system.

BUT, in Skyrim the character leveling system will be completely different from Oblivion. In Skyrim, you will level no matter how you play the game, there are no more major and minor skills - which is a great move by Bethesda. With this new leveling system, there is no need to remove enemy level scaling, because you will level no matter what, and you will have to find ways to improve your character and make him stronger, no matter what, enemy level scaling should be kept WITH this new character leveling system!

Bethesda and people on the forums think enemy level scaling broke the game, it didn't - Major and Minor skills broke the game! Not enemy level scaling!

A single player RPG without level scaling is not a good idea. You will be able to walk through many areas of the game and just wack a lower leveled monster in one hit, and it would die because it wouldn't level up with you. I'm guessing by the time you reach the high levels (30-40+), maybe only about 30% of the game will pose a threat to you, while most of the game will stay level 20 and under, and not pose any harm to you, whereas if level scaling stayed, 100% of the game would pose a threat to you at all times, which is much better difficulty wise.

Now, my next point - ITEM SCALING.

This was another issue in Oblivion - weapons and armor from quests and unique weapons and armor did not level up with you. This was bad. My proposal in Skyrim would be to make unique items scale with your level - if you level up in Skyrim, your unique equipment should level up with you - thereby, increasing the damage of the weapon, the stats and defense of your armor, etc. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about what level you do a certain quest to get one of the best weapons in the game, you can do the quest whenever you want and the weapon would stay the best weapon in the game because its stats would grow with you.

On to the next issue I see in Skyrim - Dungeon Level Locking

Apparently in Skyrim, the one place where enemies will scale with your level are dungeons, BUT, they will lock at your level once you enter that dungeon, and stay at that level forever.

There is one HUGE issue with this... What if you happen to enter a dungeon at level 5... fight in that dungeon for let's say... 5 minutes, then you say "hmm, I'm leaving this dungeon to go do other stuff, I don't feel like finishing this dungeon."
What will happen if you don't come back to that same dungeon until you're let's say, level 15? All the enemies in there will still be level 5 because the first time you entered it was at level 5 - this means you will plow through that dungeon like nothing, essentially wasting a perfectly good dungeon.
So my suggestion for that is there should be no dungeon level lock... monsters inside dungeons should scale with your level just like how I think monsters outside of dungeons scale with your level.

Enemies should be getting stronger as you level. It's how single player RPGs should work.

Many people on these forums say "the game should be getting easier the further I get into it, because my character is stronger than he was at level 5."
I disagree with this.
Chunks of the game should be at an average difficulty, like random bandit encounters, or wild monster fights. Other chunks of the game should difficult, such as bosses or quest fights.

No part of the game should ever be "easy" and no part of the game should ever be "impossible", but that's the direction Skyrim is going in now, parts of the game will be super easy, average difficulty, or impossible. The difficulty spectrum will be ridiculously wide, the difficulty spectrum should be narrower... confusing, right?


What do you all think, if you actually happened to understand anything I'm trying to say, lol.
User avatar
sarah
 
Posts: 3430
Joined: Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:53 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:55 am

interesting post but you are wrong. skyrim will have scaling but it will be more comparable to fallout 3 and new vegas style leveling
User avatar
Matt Terry
 
Posts: 3453
Joined: Sun May 13, 2007 10:58 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:39 pm

interesting post but you are wrong. skyrim will have scaling but it will be more comparable to fallout 3 and new vegas style leveling


This. The devs already confirmed FO3 style leveling, which will ultimately feel much more natural and rewarding compared to Oblivion.
User avatar
x_JeNnY_x
 
Posts: 3493
Joined: Wed Jul 05, 2006 3:52 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:38 pm

They never said there won't be enemy level scaling at all, they said it would be like fallout. Which basically means that as you level, more kinds of enemies show up, but the other ones you already encountered stay about the same. That's what I understood of it anyway.
User avatar
jennie xhx
 
Posts: 3429
Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 10:28 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:15 am

Nice post, more than i expected, but sir, level scaling in OB was broken at best, I'm glad they're doing it FO style.
User avatar
CHANONE
 
Posts: 3377
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 10:04 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:13 am

interesting post but you are wrong. skyrim will have scaling but it will be more comparable to fallout 3 and new vegas style leveling

This. Now let's all move on.
User avatar
Jeneene Hunte
 
Posts: 3478
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2006 3:18 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:36 am

As said before, it's been confirmed for a long time that we have Fallout 3 level scaling.

Which is good.
User avatar
Abi Emily
 
Posts: 3435
Joined: Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:59 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:48 am

Well, what is Fallout 3 style supposed to mean? In Fallout 3 it seemed like some enemies scaled and some didn't, or did enemies not scale at all? I'm not sure.
User avatar
Rude Gurl
 
Posts: 3425
Joined: Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:17 am

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:53 pm

Yet another topic to round up my postcount, cheers :F

But srsly, level scaling? Oscuro knew what to do for both Oblivion and FNV ;)
User avatar
Dan Stevens
 
Posts: 3429
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2007 5:00 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:35 am

Oscuro knew what to do for both Oblivion and FNV ;)

Exactly.
User avatar
Brιonα Renae
 
Posts: 3430
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:10 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:17 am

They never said there won't be enemy level scaling at all, they said it would be like fallout. Which basically means that as you level, more kinds of enemies show up, but the other ones you already encountered stay about the same. That's what I understood of it anyway.

Ahh, so this is what Fallout did... I actually like this idea of different enemies showing up as you level, but there's still a big issue with dungeon level locking as I mentioned in my post, and how will item scaling work?
User avatar
Rusty Billiot
 
Posts: 3431
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:22 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:02 am

Level scaling in Oblivion was BAD because of the character leveling system.
.
.
.
Bethesda and people on the forums think enemy level scaling broke the game, it didn't - Major and Minor skills broke the game! Not enemy level scaling!


Actually, the main problem with leveling & enemy scaling wasn't the Major skills - it was stat bonuses. If you didn't "control" your leveling (which you say is bad), you might get crappy attribute bonuses as you leveled up. Meanwhile, the enemies were all scaling up at a consistent rate. Which meant that, it was quite possible for you to fall in power compared to the enemy - they got good attribute bonuses every level, and you might end up with +1/+2, depending on what skills happened to gain points each level. i.e, As you leveled, you got weaker.

And that's even ignoring the part where it got quite silly to see every Bandit / Merc / etc, wearing full glass/ebony/daedric as the whole world leveled up around you.



...but none of this is a problem since, as several have mentioned, they're using a scaling style similar to Fallout 3's.


edit: "Some enemies not scaling" is a good thing - it's nice, as you gain power, to be able to demonstrate that by squishing some trivial enemies that once gave you trouble. It's how they reinforce the fact that you're actually progressing. :)
User avatar
Shianne Donato
 
Posts: 3422
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 5:55 am

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:16 pm

About dungeon level locking. We don't know if they lock forever but even if they do it's not really an issue unless you visit every dungeon at a low level. Plus there's what like 150 dungeons? I would think it weird if there weren't any that contained lower level enemies. Wasnt that the issue in oblivion? That all the enemies ended up being the same high level ones.
User avatar
Cat
 
Posts: 3451
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:10 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:21 am

u should probably take Oblivion out of the poll and just have should there be enemy scaling

it worked out pretty well in Fallout and if that is what they are aiming for it will be pretty good

and if leveling stays the same forever then you have a linear game
User avatar
Kieren Thomson
 
Posts: 3454
Joined: Sat Jul 21, 2007 3:28 am

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:01 pm

oh hey a biased poll nice addition to an already unneeded topic :shrug: it was confirmed fairly early on that the scaling will be like fallout 3 and new vegas . shockingly enough not many people liked there bandits to eventually be clad in daedric or glass armor wielding some of the most powerful weapons in the game cant imagine why :glare:
User avatar
Kelly Tomlinson
 
Posts: 3503
Joined: Sat Jul 08, 2006 11:57 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:40 am

Word Wall.Voted no.
User avatar
Sammykins
 
Posts: 3330
Joined: Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:48 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:22 am

Let me get this straight then - in Skyrim more powerful enemies will appear as you level up? If so, this is good.

But, I was under the impression that in Skyrim, enemies will stay where they are meant to be, and difficult enemies would only be in certain areas of the game.
User avatar
Marcus Jordan
 
Posts: 3474
Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:16 am

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 11:30 pm

Word Wall.Voted no.

you shouldnt say that people might think that you are unhip, uncool, and unliterate
User avatar
Brad Johnson
 
Posts: 3361
Joined: Thu May 24, 2007 7:19 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:09 am

interesting post but you are wrong. skyrim will have scaling but it will be more comparable to fallout 3 and new vegas style leveling

Yup. I didn't mind OB style much, but it did lead to a lot of grinding :(
User avatar
Cheryl Rice
 
Posts: 3412
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 7:44 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:42 am

Let me get this straight then - in Skyrim more powerful enemies will appear as you level up? If so, this is good.

But, I was under the impression that in Skyrim, enemies will stay where they are meant to be, and difficult enemies would only be in certain areas of the game.



The way I heard it described - this is for dungeons, btw - is that, for example.... a dungeon might be rated "Level 20-30".

If you go into it at level 10, the enemies will spawn at lv20 (the dungeon's minimum).
If you go into it at level 24, they'll be level 24.
If you go into it at level 37, they'll be level 30. (the dungeon's maximum).

And, whatever level you go into it, they'll then be locked at that level - go in at level 24, level 24 enemies spawn. Decide it's too hard, and level for three levels. Come back at level 27, they're still level 24.

Now, this is based on some quick comments from an interview awhile ago, and may not be completely accurate. :)


- No clue how the open world works in that regard (but in previous cell-based Beth games, the enemies that spawned in an overworld cell would remain until the cell reset - some number of in-game days without you having that cell load into memory.)

-
User avatar
emma sweeney
 
Posts: 3396
Joined: Fri Sep 22, 2006 7:02 pm

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:32 pm

Let me get this straight then - in Skyrim more powerful enemies will appear as you level up? If so, this is good.

But, I was under the impression that in Skyrim, enemies will stay where they are meant to be, and difficult enemies would only be in certain areas of the game.

yep as you level up you will encounter powerful enemies a little more commonly but not so much to where you think oh lemme guess whats around the corner a troll oh look its a troll and enemies wont all be out to kill you some will just be indifferent but a few individuals from those species will be hostile and from what i have read creatures will have schedules for example things like wolves will hunt
User avatar
Alan Whiston
 
Posts: 3358
Joined: Sun May 06, 2007 4:07 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:44 am

Even though moving from Oblivion scaling to Fallout 3 style scaling is a good thing, I still think Beth should be more careful with it than with the new Fallouts. The scaling still felt a bit too obvious and linear in both of those games - imo.
User avatar
jason worrell
 
Posts: 3345
Joined: Sat May 19, 2007 12:26 am

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:21 pm

Even though moving from Oblivion scaling to Fallout 3 style scaling is a good thing, I still think Beth should be more careful with it than with the new Fallouts. The scaling still felt a bit too obvious and linear in both of those games - imo.

well it could be a little bit more subtle they said it was comparable to fallout 3 not exact
User avatar
tiffany Royal
 
Posts: 3340
Joined: Mon Dec 25, 2006 1:48 pm

Post » Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:07 am

no level scaling is the best way to have it. anyone who has played any mods that randomized enemies such as TIE or WAC can attest to that. every cave and ruin is different. you might get a low level bandit or a level 40 lich. it makes the game alot more exciting when you slowly go into a ruin and try and gauge what exactly is in there. with level scaling you can pretty much just run in willy nilly cause you know that any enemies will be roughly on you level. i hope that they at least borrow from NV and have some areas restricted to high level characters from the get go.
User avatar
Je suis
 
Posts: 3350
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2007 7:44 pm

Post » Tue Mar 29, 2011 10:26 pm

well it could be a little bit more subtle they said it was comparable to fallout 3 not exact


I don't know if "more subtle" is the right word (although, my vocalbulary is lacking so I also can't figure out a better one so I guess it'll have to do), but basically the system should be set out so, that it retains both, sense of progression and challenge throughout the game - and that the overall gameplaybalance supports this (there was none of that in Oblivion, and it was noticeable in the Fallouts only in the first 5 or so levels, after which the player was drowned in loot and aid and thus s/he went past the scaling - unless, one decided to knowingly gimp himself, which shouldn't be required from the player, at least not so soon).
User avatar
lexy
 
Posts: 3439
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:37 pm

Next

Return to V - Skyrim