A huge pet-peeve of mine in the current TES games is the fact enemies gain levels as you do. It creates a balance. Personally, I believe such a balance ruins the reward factor of the game. If I work my way to being a level 81, with 100 in one-handed, it ruins the experience if it still takes me more than one hit to kill a spider! Or if I'm fighting a Forsworn woman who's wearing next to nothing and I don't decimate her in two blows. The fact that enemies level as you do just means you never quite get the feeling of just being a god-like warrior, as if all your work is for nothing. The only element which works in your favour is the fact your health, magicka or stamina will be considerably higher than your enemies'. If I'm a master in the disciplines of magic or combat, very very few enemies in the game should give me a real challenge.

I feel that if enemies are set static levels, it means that working your way to a high level would be an invigorating challenge. It would also make the world more realistic in a sense that, when at a certain level, you know there are some enemies you shouldn't tangle with just yet. That should motivate you to be a worthy adversary for that enemy in question, whilst eventually looking back and saying "I used to get decimated by that type of enemy, now I own it!". The 'controversial' change I'd then ask for is to set level requirements for quests, so that you don't have a Dark Souls like experience...

The spirit of an RPG is the dedication to building your character, working your way to achieving the strength necessary to undertaking a quest.

What do you think?

Honestly, I'd rather they keep most of the enemies scalable.

I was around when people built their characters to high levels in Morrowind, and there was a LOT of complaining about how there was no challenge any more. The devs listened. So in Tribunal there were a lot of powerful enemies that had most players leveling their characters up to higher levels. And there was a lot of complaining that there was no challenge anymore. The devs listened. So in Bloodmoon you had enemies that could take daedric armor down to zero in two hits, and people built their characters up to even higher levels, and went hunting for the level 99 werewolf, because there was no challenge anymore.

In Oblivion they went too far; although they used leveled lists, and you could still run into a tutorial level rat when you were a high level, after a certain point you mostly saw the higher leveled enemies, and those enemies only leveled so far, so you could and did out-level them, and there wasn't much of a challenge.

Leave some enemies static. That should give the "I beat it, finally" vibe, but keep some that scale, so there is always a chance that you're going to get killed.

I thought RPGs were supposed to be fun, not a ton of work?

Static levels and enemies that scale with the player can both be taken too far. One gripe with Oblivion was that all enemies scaled with the player, so you eventually had encounters with bandits who wore Glass Armour. Static levelling is already in the game in the form of level-locking, in particular in dungeons (there are exceptions) - once you enter a dungeon, it levels relative to yours and will remain at that level for the rest of the game, so if it's a little too hard at that moment, you can return later and decimate the denizens of that dungeon. I prefer a variety of enemies in the game world, so static levelling could end up providing insufficient challenge for the player if not handled right (and let's face it, more than a few players level and perk their characters and use loops and glitches in order to be gods, so we're bound to get a lot complaints).

The best system would be one where the enemies you face in any given area are across the range, so there's never a guarantee an enemy will be easy or hard at any level - you might get a nasty shock early on, or hit it big time with a group of enemies who bit off more than they could chew and underestimated you just a little too much.

I started a thread on this topic months ago in the series discussing thread basically the use of scaling in TES. http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1473932-level-scaling/ If you want to check it out

Morrowind...too static.

Oblivion...too scaled.

Skyrim...Goldilocks says just right.

I think I'm not going to agree with you. Skyrim's leveling is... broken. The leveling in this game comes at intervals, and within those intervals, you're going to be, as you say, god-like. Between the Alchemy, Smithing, and Enchanting, there should be no reason why you couldn't attain your desired power. After all, we can kill Legendary dragons with one shot because the game affords us the option to do so.

If you can't achieve this goal, then something's terribly wrong with your game. I suggest you read up on enchanting your weapons, because once you do this, I promise you there is no enemy in the game that'll be a threat.

I'm hoping TES VI brings back Oblivion's leveling system. I much enjoy working to earn my keep than playing for the sake of clearing areas and claim "I beat the game! Woots!"

Bethesda needs to work on fixing their horrid game engine. I'm only typing this now because Skyrim has once again frozen on me. That's 7 for the day.

Most enemies have a maximum level now. With the right gear you should be able to make short work of Forsworn Ravagers by level 81, and as for the regular Forsworn and Forsworn Pillagers it should be a one-shot deal.

The same goes for bandits and bandit outlaws, draugr and restless draugr, bears, wolves, sabre cats, etc.

Keep in mind that level only determines your stats - you need to use your skills effectively if you want to be overpowered, and for the greatest degree of power that means using alchemy, enchanting, and smithing for all they're worth.

You can also lower your difficulty level, that should make your progress "feel" more significant.

Let's not go that far; I didn't find Oblivion challenging at high levels, just annoying. Some good "extra strong" enemies would be nice, something like the optional bosses in JRPGs, but give them high damage and special abilities instead of just jacking their hp up to a billion. It seems like legendary dragons were supposed to be a special challenge for hardcoe players, but they aren't challenging enough.

All really interesting and constructive comments and I appreciate them! I probably should try to utilise the enchanting aspects a bit more, however, I do agree with the comment that maybe the better option is to have scaling for select elements.

Close, but I wouldn't say Skyrim is "just right".

Level scaling is one approach to maintaining a challenging game environment, but traditionally tabletop RPGs employed a technique that added more creatures to an encounter to raise the difficulty level. A purely static world is probably the more realistic, but it definitely ceases to be fun after a given point. By contrast, if everything goes up with you without stopping, it does completely destroy any sense of reward or achievement. I prefer a mix of these features, and some of Skyrim's current mechanics could be fine tuned to make things more appealing. The game tries to use a level range system which gives them a quasi-static feel while still allowing some movement for balance. For a game this size, this is one of those features I think is legitimately difficult to get "just right". At least, Bethesda seems to be trying.

I have to partially disagree with the OP. I absolutely agree that we need to be rewarded for exploring. Skyrim was a huge disappointment in that department. I disagree with needing more static enemies. Creating a world that has static enemies, makes the game easier not harder. I like how Skyrim did it although I would want more higher level enemies at the beginning of the game and more dungeons where the minimum level for looting is high so that you can get rewarded for exploring. However I would still want some scaling so that the game doesn't become a bore like New Vegas and Morrowind sometimes become due to the random scaling. I like both games but not having some form of level scaling makes both of those games easy.

I like the level scaling and don't want it changed back. static enemies make my games far to easy, far too quick.

Leveled loot on the other hand can go.

As the guy above mentioned briefly, a hugely under-utilized factor is the enemy number. Rather than always scaling bandit levels, why not keep the scaling very limited (obviously you'll get some good ones in decent armor as the occasional mini-boss, but nothing godly) and instead just ramp up the amount of enemies - which you could also tie into the story as evidence of whatever impending doom threatens Tamriel next. So as you play the game more, the countryside becomes increasingly overwhelmed by packs of vicious creatures, and bandits exploit the chaos by also coming out in bigger numbers. That way I don't have to deal with all these non-magical humanoids who can take ridiculous amounts of damage like some of the bandits in previous TES games (I swear some of them had more HP than dragons even in Skyrim), and it also spices up the gameplay by changing the tactics you need to use later against larger groups of enemies, then at level 1 when you're only able to take on 1 or 2 bandits.

I'd love it if by the end we were facing large packs of enemies whom we could only take on individually earlier on - it would make sense in terms of avoiding the "glass armor bandits" of Oblivion, and you would also avoid having to make Zone A the noob zone, and Zone B the high level zone. Obviously I want to see unique creatures coming in as well, but for the bread-and-butter enemies (humanoids, wolves etc) it makes perfect sense, and would help get rid of that dissonance between the main story telling us the world is in peril, and everything always looking exactly the same when we go exploring.

I like this idea. Increasing the amount of people going for you as you get stronger seems really good and nicely challenging, and it would also be satisfying in the sense knowing that if it were one versus one, I could absolutely destroy the enemy. It seems to be an idea that ticks many boxes for me, whilst hopefully pleasing other people's wishes. It seems logical too; the enemy knows you're strong, so they attack in hordes.