I didn't think Morrowind really got easier to higher levels, just felt that way since you wouldn't miss your attacks all the time when you got your skill level up. Personally out of the start of the game on a new character already having a feel for the game with a fresh character I could find a certain claymore wielding orc in the mountains and kill him with just a bow and a lot of chitin arrows.
I never really stacked a couple hundred points of strength enchantment though, that would probably make things too easy so I avoided it.

I really did like how stuff was just brutally strong when you started it added a sense of danger to me and having to carefully sneak around when outside town till I packed a couple of levels on and could really hold my own.

That sounds a lot like Umbra.

:lmao: . Now there's one sentence that's bound to become a meme, or an aphorizm. At least between me and my buddies :goodjob: .


A no no bigger than life itself. :banghead:


I'm with you 100%. I know a friend of mine who didn't level up at all on his first playthrough of Oblivion for the very same reason. He just never slept with his character and everything was locked at lvl 1 - when you are "at your strongest" relative to everything else :down: .

Here's my opinion on the whole level scaling issue. Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion were perfect here, but If I had to pick, I'd take the Morrowind leveling system anyday!

Oblivion's level scaling system was atrocious! A previous poster made an excellent point. There is no point in leveling in Oblivion. So, if there is no point in leveling, then why have it? And if there is no leveling, then it isn't much of an RPG...It then becomes an action game...pretty much.

Morrowind, on the other hand, was much more tolerable. When you start out, there is a sense of mystery about what's out there. And there is this sense of fear of going out there because you may not be strong enough yet. But there is also this reward for going into some random dungeon because of the hand placed loot. The complaints about Morrowind come from higher level characters because you became too powerful, but I think there is a pretty simple solution for this. The game world just needs to be a bit more balanced. There should be more variety of different level enemies. That way, even high level characters can still find themselves in a dangerous situation. Creating a level cap would also help. That way the player will never be at a higher level then the most challenging enemies in the game. If done correctly, there would be no need for level scaling except in rare situations.

No one is denying MW handled the low end well.No one is saying OB did it perfect.FO3 improved the lvl scaling.

The problem with trying to tweak/ fix MW style lvl scaling works against an open world game.To limit the need FONV set up the Deathclaw road block and invisible wall method and herded the player thru the story.Bioware goes the unlocked area route to limit the need for it(But they seem to like making hook up sims with crap combat where you can be a treehugger or a D Bag so maybe not the best example)

Another consideration is how people play the game.Group A likes to try multiple chars and use multiple playthroughs to experience a game.Group B likes to stick to a favored Char almost exclusively.

Group A would not experience the shortcomings of MW the way Group B would.

No truer words have ever been spoken.
Morrowinds level scaling system was amazing. I loved having regions and places that I couldn't go yet because I wasn't high enough level.
And Tharkin, I'm pretty sure Morrowind was just about as open ended as you can get.

It fell apart sooner than that. With the exception of the expansions, everything was a cakewalk from level 15 on.

Yes, I loved that too! They just needed to balance it a bit more so you still had that feeling at higher levels. Then it would have been amazing!

Morrowind's problem was being extremely difficult for the first maybe 5 levels, then right at about level 20 it all went down easy lane. Which never really bothered me because I never played Morrowind for the "gameplay" really. But it was certainly broken.
In Oblivion they took the opposite direction. Everything was easy all the time except with enemies leveling with you fights became ridiculously tedious. At least with some enemies. Though it never reached cliffracer level of annoying.
In Fallout 3 I never even noticed the level scaling and actually died quite a few times by taking on a fight that was too big for me. It brought back the exploration of Morrowind, the fun quests and writing from both and hit a lot closer to the mark in terms of scaling. It's only problem was at level 20 the game became too easy. But of course you can just kick up the difficulty like I did. Considering Skyrim is going to be similar to Fo3 in terms of that, I think it's safe to say we won't even notice the scaling and we'll be blown away.

I love it how you put Chuck Norris over God! :rofl:

Morrowind's levelling was a nicer progression than Oblivion's up untl the end. I honestly scrapped one of my level 20 characters, just because I felt he was too good at some things. Of course in theory with the new, more tactical combat system, the game should be more difficult overall regardless of which approach Bethesda takes. Which gives them more of an excuse to use something more than Fallout 3's.

Chuck Norris "is" God! You've seen that video, right? "Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups. He pushes the earth down." :bowdown:

Well I have a problem with MW scaling,

When I first played Oblivion I had to mod it as I did not like the scaling, I thought MW static approach was much better. But after playing Fallout 3, I realized that scaling was good if used properly. OB overdid. In MW after level 20 something the challenge ended.

These are my main reasons for liking some scaling:

-Surprise factor during replay, if all chest are static you learn whats in them and you lose a lot of the fun factor in finding them.

-better challenge curve, things don't become lame when you reach x level. Even the best combat system is lame if everything is a pushover.

-better loot curve, as you get better you get better stuff, long ago when I was a console player I was really into the Final Fantasy games, and it was great the steady progression of better and better stuff. This was lost in MW, great more crap, oh whats this, more crap,etc

Now with that said I also like hand placed items and more static enemy's also. For these reasons:

-Sense of getting more powerful, its always a lot of fun squashing some beast that a few hours earlier you had to run for you life from.

-It adds a great dynamic of risk/reward, you take a risk and get reward appropriately. Like in MW were you manage to sneak past tons of powerful beast, then found a cool new sword for all your trouble.

-Realism/immersion makes me feel more like this is a living world that would function whether I am there or not.

So I think a mix of both is best, Fallout 3's balance was a little bit too much towards scaling, but was overall a good way of showing how scaling/static can be used together for best results.

I would like in a game say 2/3 scale containers, 1/3 static/hand placed

Npcs/beast in a similar ratio but with a bit more use of range scales i.e x thing can be level 6-11, if you level 1 its still 6 and will be quite hard, if you 8, its 8 and if you 19 its 11. FO3 made use of this a lot. So perhaps it would feel more like 2/3 static, 1/3 scaled. When you replace one creature type for another stronger type would be a good example of scaling were the scaling is not so noticeable were 'feels' more static.

And no scaled unique items!! If it suppose to be a cool rare artifact, make it be guarded by high level static(or high scale range ie 38-55) npc.

Ha ha, no I'll have to Google that up if I can.

Don't let nostalgia blind you. The scaling in morrowind was a joke because it made the game too easy at high levels.

You need to be able to feel the power as you level up!
There's absolutely no point in struggling at level 50 as if you were a newbie out of the boat...
After defeating multiple gods,killing the whole army of a daedric plane called Oblivion,are you suggesting that someone who has accomplished these have hard time taking down the some bandits or guards?

Did the thought of people already doing that ever cross your mind? Even at maximum difficulty, MW was easy on high levels.

Exactly!

Exactly! All that is needed to fix this is to have quite a few super amazingly high levelled enemies about the place. This way, when you are a high level, instead of being challenged by a simple cave crawl, you have to actively SEEK OUT the greater chellenges, as a mighty warrior/mage would.
The renownd hero would surely go out of his way to take on greater foes, as opposed to becoming pissed off that all the places he used to find a challenge are now a walk in the park. If not, then he is simply a bit of an idiot (perhaps a not to inept anology of certain breeds of gamers? : P)

That's mainly because the lists "topped out" at around level 20 or so. The expansions added some harder content, but the basic game was never designed to be played at Level 30 and up. The developers apparently were surprised at the reaction. They "solved" the problem in FO3 by capping the player character at level 20, then the outcry over that caused them to uncap it in the expansions.

If there were a few entries of even higher level spawns, the lists might have worked for another 5-10 levels in MW, but even there, the variation from character to character meant that what was too difficult for one was too easy for another. This is the same problem as we saw in OB, depending on whether you "powergamed" or "role-played" your character, and how you abused levelling multipliers or didn't.

Levelling has inherent problems. Static spawns have limitations. The only sensible answer is a mix of each.

What MW did RIGHT was to allow the earlier entries in the lists to still spawn on occasion, rather than having them be replaced by stronger "variants". In MW, the basic Rats, Scribs, and Kwama Foragers were supplemented by Nix Hounds and Cliffracers as your level increased, and eventually to diseased and blighted variants, as well as occasonal wild Guar or other creatures, but the original Rats and Kwama definitely didn't vanish from the world; they just got a bit less common. In OB and FO3, the basic creatures mysteriously became either extinct or at least so rare that I can't recall dealing with one at higher levels.

Ugh. bliviongate:


It's going to be along the lines of Fallout 3.

Part of the problem with Oblivion was the rapid increase in the health pools of scaled creatures, which, combined with limitations on player damage, led to progressively longer fights. High-level battles were tedious, and not necessarily challenging unless you were facing an opponent capable of stun-locking you (like the infamous goblin warlords).

Honestly its not the level scaling that made Oblivion easy, it was the [censored] AI in combination with it. Morrowind got just as easy once you were on par with most NPCs, and it just got worse and worse as you leveled more. The only thing that made it more challenging and requiring more brain power was that for the first part of the game most things outleveled you.

Level scaling itself is fine, and perhaps even a good system, but they need to provide challenge in other ways. Im not saying if you go back and do the Fighters Guild intro quest to kill a couple bandits that those bandits should be toting around in full Daedric gear ala Oblivion, because you are a renowned adventurer and you should be able to smack around a couple of lowly bandits. But I dont really have fun when I can go back and /faceroll half the game because I didnt decide to do those quests at a lower level.

Of course I think character levels are an archaic system altogether

I couldn t agree more....

To be quite honest, I loved Oblivion's level scaling. It was hillarious, didn't make any sense, but it was entertaining. I like Morrowinds too, but something about Oblivion's made that game great. It wouldn't be the same game without it. It didn't make sense, but I can see why they tried what they did. They may have fallen down a pit onto spikes, but by the divines I had fun freefalling down.

Anyway, its going to be more like Fallout 3, which was more realistic. And I'm fine with that too, along with the people who didn't like Oblivion style. Works for me.