Obviously most systems are going to have some mix of static/dynamic/regional leveling and using one method exclusively wouldn't be a very popular option, but the original poster was clearly just trying to get an idea of which method, in general, people lean more towards. Start simple and then you get an idea of where people stand.

The one thing that really derails every discussion of this type is the "these options are far too simplistic, here's my excessively detailed and complex outline of what I'd like..." post. These posts are all well and good, but it's hard to find out what the general opinion of people on the forum is if you take the discussion in that direction.

Personally, I prefer a system that leans more towards static leveling.

I'd say what makes this particular instance "derailed" is the OP has Morrowind's system dead wrong: encounters level with you, loot sometimes does (mainly on the top daedric spawns), and a few encounters are static. Instead, it is presented as if Morrowind were primarily static, which is directly counter to what the game data indicates.

In short, it's hard to get a proper opinion when the "static" example is largely "dynamic"...

Ok, but Morrowind is more static than Oblivion. It isn't entirely static, indeed it's not even mostly static, but the way it plays is more static than Oblivion. Hence if you wanted a more static leveling system you'd prefer the one in Morrowind than Oblivion.

I thought OOO struck a good balance with a blend of regional ranges with elements of scaling. You had regions that were more or less difficult, some caves and ruins would have you running back out after the first room, there was a good amount of randomization. (edit: OOO is http://www.oscurogamedesign.com/oscurosoblivionoverhaul-desc-high.html for any users unfamiliar with this excellent mod)

From the OOO FAQ:

14- Q. Are there random dangerous areas, or "static"? For instance will an area always contain high level creatures/loot?

OOO 1.3 is more static than default Oblivion, but not completely static. Some creatures and NPCs still level with you, but only within constraints. These have now minimum and maximum levels, so you will frequently run into places where the residents have a minimum level that's way above your own, making them too difficult for you to beat. By the same token, once you reach a medium level you'll start to find areas where the maximum is lower than you, making the residents much easier to beat than in vanilla. For example, at a high level you will find that common bandits no longer pose much of a threat (but they may have a boss who is still a threat).

Also, within their possible level range, creatures and actors tend to vary in level. Some could be as low as 16 levels as their next “equal” type. For example, encountering bandits at level 10 may result in some bandits in the group being level 16, while others could be as low as level 2. This effect really increases variety and feel for each enemy as if they were unique.

In effect this worked out great, taking the training wheels off of Obliv's default scaling without making the game static (which tends to force a specific path on the player through soft difficulty gates).

If you say "nothing levels except the player", as the poll states, you are not describing Morrowind in any reasonable capacity.

That's all that matters here. The poll lumps "lots of regional leveled lists that contain > 5 distinct levels of creatures" with "nothing levels except the player.

How can you reasonably say that this in some way is leading to a valid community census? A largely dynamic system is used as the poster child for "static". There's no RATIONAL way to conclude the results will not be tainted by the endemic forum-wide misconceptions of how Morrowind works being utilized as a hard data point for the poll.

Simply put, Morrowind is obviously and inherently dynamic regardless what your perception tells you, and the poll either should reset and reflect that, or throw out any pretense of validity of results.

Voted other

I can't select the Morrowind option as it is incorrect - as numerous posters have pointed out - though at least in Morrowind I appreciated the place as more dangerous and felt I wasn't being treated to an on-rails experience.

Having enemies level with you makes me wonder why I should bother upgrading skills at all - not a game play I enjoy

Regional leveling games are interesting but can have a flaw if you return to your point of origin later in the game and now you are near invincible and the regional enemies are as weak as dishwater. This doesn't help with immersion for me personally.

I want an incentive to level as well as a story which explains why I am becoming stronger and more skillful than those around me.

Guess I'd be happy for Bethesda to just surprise me with a new leveling system - they've seen enough fan mods and been in the business long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

I've been a big fan of TES since i first played morrowind, and i created an account here solely to post on this.

As obvious with poll results, a leveled system is terrible. The (fairly) static system of Morrowind gave us something that no one has mentioned. The "epicness". I want to see an ogre at level one if i travel far from where i should, and i would like him to smash my face in for doing so. I would also like to come back in say 10 levels, and smash his face in and get my revenge. I would like to get those 10 levels in fear of that area and in hopes of smashing his face in some day. Replace ogre with goblin and replace 10 levels with 37, the numbers and enemy names dont matter. The point is that in oblivion there is literally nothing to be afraid of. I know that at all times, wherever i go, im pretty much safe and can handle what comes my way. Theres nothing epic about that. In morrowind i was slightly worried about that large fenced in area at the center just because of how it looked on the map, and when i went there at i think level 6 my slight worry became extreme panic and i knew i had a very long journey ahead before going back there.

This applys to much more then the challenges enemys present. Does anyone really remember morrowind? Did you ever break into a house vault? It felt like a house vault. It felt epic. Wether you went in at level 1 or level 50, you were going to see a plethora of treasure that would make you say "wow". Has anyone broken into the imperial city vault? My first thoughts when hearing oblivion would take place in the imperial city were "if the houses on a fairly unexplored and recently populated island were that epic, then this is going to blow my mind". Nope, they dont have one, in fact they have nothing worth taking at all that isnt quest related anywhere in the imperial city. Sure, nearly every shop keeper has a static epic item, but the actually palace has nothing more then an oversized hourglass. And while its size makes it epic, its just not the same as morrowind. The only epic part of oblivion is in the bottom of the ocean (i dont like umbra) and that really isnt what you want as a highlight and fond memory of your game.

I voted for static, that is what makes the game feel epic. However i agree that a mix of the systems is the best option, but being that this poll is designed to get a general starting point, static got my vote.

Too bad Morrowind is heavily NOT static, as the game data will show. Well, there are the "relatively static" cliff racers that are still leveled (Blighted ones don't appear until PC Level = 8, for example)

So the (fairly) static system of Morrowind didn't give us ANYTHING, on account of it never existed.

Yes, there ARE more static spawns in Morrowind than there are in Oblivion, but a heavily dynamic system is a heavily dynamic system. Morrowind is and will always be primarily spawns from large leveled lists, which sounds astonishingly like... OBLIVION. Go figure.

I agree, OOO has a great leveling system, better than both Morrowind and Oblivion in my opinion. Something similar would be great for TES V.

Actually, morrowind is fairly static. Quoted directly from a site explaining the differences in morrowind for oblivion players: "There is no scaling and much more limited leveling. Many caves and ruins have fixed-level inhabitants. The creatures that spawn and the loot you find in crates depend on your level, but all creatures and attributes have a static level and higher level creatures never completely replace the low level ones. As a result, low level characters will have a much harder time, but high level characters will actually have it easier. No NPCs have leveled armor or weapons -- what they have is what they will always have. Caves and ruins become less profitable as you level up, except for randomly-generated treasure.

All rewards in form of gold, Artifacts and Items are level-independent, and therefore fixed."

I fail to see how that is NOT fairly static. While there are certainly some dynamic parts in morrowind, the difference isnt close, at all, in any shape or form, to being anything like oblivion.

Quoted from what site?

To clarify on what Keg wrote, here is how scaling and leveling breaks down. There are two systems at work in Morrowind and four in Oblivion.

Loot Leveling - controls when loot appears
Enemy Leveling - controls when enemies appear
Loot Scaling - controls the strength of loot once it has appeared
Enemy Scaling - controls the strength of enemies once they have appeared


There is no such thing as "level scaling". Players who don't like bandits in Daedric armor are referring to Loot Leveling. Players who put off a Daedric quest to get the best version of a weapon are responding to Loot Scaling. When they complain about Minotaurs that weren't there a half hour ago they are talking about Enemy Leveling. When they say they don't like level 50 rats they are talking about Enemy Scaling.

The unofficial elder scrolls pages.

And yes Pseron is exactly right. The parts of morrowind that are dynamic only use the first two of those. Which is fairly more static then oblivion and create a much more realistic and challenging experience until you become too powerfull.

MW made extensive use of both static and levelled content, with different levels of difficulty in different regions: all three of the poll choices. The only real problem with it was that the character too quickly advanced well beyond even the most difficult things on the hardest lists. The sheer magnitude of character improvement made extreme demands on the levelling system to provide greater and greater challenges, which it eventually was unable to deliver.

I liked in MW how certain tamer regions around the towns would eventually become "safe" as you improved, since you quickly outpaced even the most powerful things on the lists. It made sense that the towns weren't regularly being assaulted by monsters on a constant basis, but that the "wilds" really were "wild". You eventually had to go looking for any "real" challenge, and keep going farther to find it, which, along with the absence of respawning dungeons, made exploration absolutely essential to the game. Unfortunately, there were relatively low limits as to how dangerous the game could get, and the player too soon found himself with an overpowered character, "all dressed up and nowhere to go".

The problem with MW's system might have been alleviated (not completely solved, but close enough) by having "limited" scaling of certain opponents (and occasionally their equipment), without resorting to the blatant and excessive "across-the-board" scaling used in OB, and by using occasional "somewhat tougher" versions of some creatures. It made sense that a Rat was a low-level adversary, and that the marginally tougher (and much underused) Cave Rats, and the Diseased and Blighted rat variations, were still "low level" creatures. The fact that the basic Rat would still occasionally appear in MW, even at high levels, kept it believable, whereas the various tougher Gore Rates, Wererats, and other nasty "mid-level" versions that totaly replaced the "common" species in OB and its overhaul mods just felt absurd. I haven't played OB in a while, and I used "overhauls" after about the first couple of weeks, so I'm not even sure anymore what was "vanilla" and what was added by the mods.

The total lack of respawning dungeons in MW, on the one hand, was nearly as bad as the automatic and constant 3 day respawns in OB, at the other extreme.

This poll really doesn't make a lot of sense, because no single system is adequate, just as asking someone whether they feel that food, water, or sleep is more vital. A proper combination of all of them, each at the proper times and places, is the only sensible choice.

I believe Todd Howard and his disciples know very well what worked and what didn't work in the last two games in the series. The engine powering Oblivion was more matured than Morrowinds. And one of the greatest improvements you can make to a role playing game engine is add a system that manages the loot and leveling in a fairly autonomous fashion. This reduces design complexity and manual labor.

This was achieved with the Oblivion engine to some extent.

Then again, the system can be improved even further. I can see how TES: V will have an even more matured engine that will provide our leveling needs in a much better way.

Personally I think a regional leveling system would definitely work better than overly static or overly dynamic system. But there should be creatures/ characters that are static. Some of the beasts should die forever to give you a feeling of achievement and selective re-spawning could possibly be handled by a dynamic story engine that would generate a similar adversary in an intelligent way.

I liked Morrowind's leveling system. I hate how in Oblivion, after a certain level, average bandits have glass and daedric weapons and armor. It makes the game lose a lot of its immersiveness. In Morrowind, when you're on a low level, you have crappy weapons and you feel intimidated by strong enemies. Reaching a high level and getting good weapons and armor was a challenge, and that added greatly to the game. You should feel accomplished when you finally max out your main skills or get that last piece of glass or daedric armor. That's what Morrowind had and Oblivion lacked.

Right. It wasn't so much the fact of getting that last piece of Daedric or Glass armor that mattered; what was important was that you had it and nobody else did (well, aside from Divayth Fyr, at least). It was RARE, which was the whole point of it. Making it "common" in Oblivion took away any sense of accomplishment when you finally got it. The combination of levelling, scaling, and lack of failure at tasks in OB took away all sense of accomplishment in the game, in my opinion. As for immersiveness, when anything better than the starting "garbage" doesn't even exist in the game until you reach the required level, and then it's suddenly available everywhere in quantity, that broke the sense of reality completely.

I REALLY hope that Bethesda learned something from the outcry about the heavy-handed levelling and scaling in OB, otherwise I'll guarantee at least one less sale: mine.

Playing a purist thief was extremely disappointing in Oblivion, yes. No point to it whatsoever. They simply forgot about that whole aspect of gameplay in design.

Refresh my memory though. What was epic at the bottom of the ocean?

Nothing, as far as I was concerned. Oblivion's rivers and sea were one of the most disappointing aspects of Cyrodiil's landscape.

I think he is talking about http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fin_Gleam#Fin_Gleam.

They may take inspiration from the leveling mods.

i hope they do it like TIE did. im frankly not fond of either morrowind or oblivions levelling systems. granted id take morrowinds if i had to choose. the biggest problem with becoming godlike in a game is that it doesnt make any sense. how exactly does a prisoner within a couple of ingame months become more powerful than mages, warriors, assassins that have been practicing their respective skills for decades. it doesnt make any sense whatsoever. once in a while i would like to encounter an old mage with spells that i cannot attain since i havent practiced magicka nearly as long as he did. i want to encounter a warrior with devestating special attacks that i dont have cause ive only been using weapons for a few months. id like an experienced assassin to have some super powerful poison that they have spent years perfecting and kept to themselves. i want to encounter other npcs that will make me think twice about picking a fight with them. i HATE feeling invincilbe, it completely kills the game for me. i might as well just console godmode while im at it. course i dont like the other extreme of epic battles with glass armor clad bandits either.

in tribunal there was a lich that you had to battle, think his name started with a b or something. he had a spell that was a combination of poison, frost and fire. it was devestating. he was probably my favority bad guy to fight cause he had a spell that the player couldnt get cause he was a 1000 year old lich. it makes complete sense that he should have powerful spells that a new adventurer wouldnt dream of having.

as for the gameworld, having a static regional system while not as bad as level scaling has the major issue of replayability. everyone whos played morrowind knows pretty much which monsters are going to show up where and at what level, it takes any replayability out of the game. by unlevelling everything every game is different. keep the roads and noob areas low level so that people arent getting butt-molested every new start but make everything else potentially deadly or a cakewalk.

I disagree. It makes perfect sense, if my character has also been practicing his respective skills for decades before landing in prison. There is an incorrect assumption by many players that all player characters have been in prison for months or years or even that, weirdly, they were somehow born in the Imperial prison without any skills at all. Now there may be players who roleplay that way. But it's not a generalization you can extend to all characters.

A couple of of my characters have been in jail for only one day. One was thrown in jail mere hours before the Emperor came through his cell. Most of the rest of my characters have been in jail less than a week. All of my characters have possessed significant skills before landing in prison.

That doesn't explain why you svck so much at the start, though. I would also like to play a normal person for once.

If we're talking about vanilla Oblivion (I assume we are) all I can say is, thanks to Oblivion's implementation of leveling and scaling, none of my characters ever svcked. Nearly everything in the world was level 1 when my character was level 1, level 5 when my character was level 5...and on and on. It's because my character didn't svck at the start that I was forced to install mods like Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul to make the game world revolve a little less around my character.