Now that is a very good point, and could be easily remedied by having some internal rule such as "A spell must burn at least ??% of total magicka before it contributes to levelling". Players can still train if they like (I always RP this when I'm a mage), but it's not as cheap now.



Me likey. If I'm following you correctly, this damage system could be 'diseases by another name'. That would certainly be interesting, especially if area damage was incorporated. Being hit hard in the arms could affect your ability to wield weapons or block effectively, for example... :thumbsup:



I still feel that my argument here stands; if you feel the need to grind in order to survive, then you are not making Smart Combat Choices. Let's not make the game pander to poor gamers, instead let's empower the gamer to be able to become a tank if they wish.

Yea though i'd say "if you use so much magica you gain so much progress", that way doing on "one point spell" (actually don't like phrasing things in points as i try t oget away from that system) you get a very, VERY small improvement, however it's pretty much so minor it might as well don't count. Still you got a slight improvement, you just get it more effectively if you use stronger spells. Instead of pounding a enemy with 1point fireballs for 10 minutes blow him away with a 50 points fireball.


Yea you could say it like that, it would include a actual injure system for single body parts and differ between the severty of wounds, broken bones or internal injures (organ damage) and if a wound bleeds or not. It would also take stamina into account a lot more as it dropping too low can mean you pass out or even die from exhaustion (again this would mean drastically overworking how that system works but that counts for pretty much all improvment ideas).


A little addition, i'd LOVE to see the game go AWAY from "soak up damage" and more "try to avoid getting injured" either by averting hits or using good armoring. So far you're a damage sponge and it shows. However think of this, what if few hits are enough for a kill, instead of your hit points deciding it's if you're really hit in a way that can kill you. Your hit points themselves would pretty much represent blood loss meaning if they ticker down you slowly bleed to death. But all other damages count too, if your lungs are damaged you can't breathe and can't regenerate your stamina too well anymore, if your limbs are crippled you can't attack, defend or run to well and so on.
This would all mean that your total health actually becomes LESS important as there are still enough ways you can die fast, what the hitpoints would do is prolong you from simply dying from your injures but you can still be killed BY a injure. That way the need to grind would actually be reduced but still pays off to gain a bit more as it can prevent you from dropping dead a little bit longer.

PS: Though i said hitpoints would become less important they DO still have a importance, for example getting a strong internal injure can mean you bleed heavily on a spot where you can't bandage or a slit throat meanign death within seconds since the blood loss can only hardly be stopped.
But on the system i still think it would hold up as, getting injured does give you more total health but there is a big risk of dying... a two edged sword.

But then people would just get themselves hurt, and bring along a poopload of restore health potions. If you want to make a game unrealistic for yourself, you shoulfd be ble to, because people ill always find a way.

You may have missed that part here... and what i wrote down just before. Plus how is that system more unrealistic than the current one? You can more health per level (levels are not realistic at all) based on your endurance... sorry but that sounds FAR more unrealistic than what i suggested. Plus now it's "don't make it so unrealistic", usually it's the other way around.

Yep, it svcks, I like the system a lot I think it's the best system I have seen in an RPG game, but how it's executed is just horrible, but it's easy to fix. If attributes were leveled directly from skills trained instead of the level-up screen, there would be no such problem.

The game should offer a challenge by default. If someone wants to break the game and make it ezmode, it should at least take effort so that people who want to play the game normally won't have to be constantly watching out for accidental godmode.

And I've looked deepr into the leveling for Oblivion. The facts still side with almost every single complaint being directly related to the lists.

Really. The whole "level scaling" idea as it appears on the forums is overblown and wrong. The Construction Set even gives an idea what the probability of a given item is for a given number of instances of an NPC is. So not every Marauder will wear Ebony or Daedric boots at level 20. (Of 7, three would be expected to wear Orcish boots on one run, and two the next) but this isn't a direct function of "scaling". it's a direct function of "the lists as implemented". With different lists, the results would be different. It's clear to anyone who uses the data instead of forum consensus. Change the lists and possibly the templates the lists refer to (say, make a bandit that draws on new leveled lists to wear a true hodgepodge of armor and could have a glass shortsword, an iron mace, or an Elven Claymore) and you'll get more or less what you want. All without scrapping a system that is apparently to be demonized rather than understood.

Want a list of actual scaled creatures that appear in game (random spawns only)?

Goblin Shamans. Goblin Warlords. Imps. Lich and Nether Lich. Minotaur Lords. Ogres. Gloom Wraiths. Xivilai. And the only point where people have a legitimate point: "human" random NPCs, including Dremora (although I have a feeling without scaling here, we'd see a rash of "game far too easy" posts)

Now, individual quest spawns were NOT checked, as I'm quite sure UESP lists a few Clannfear as scaled (I think the Arkved's Tower?). But a random Clannfear? will be the exact same Clannfear as any other.

The only exception here is the Imp. That's not a top-tier enemy. The rest of the scaled creatures are pretty much at the top of their lists. Meaning there's nothing harder. They are scaled to make the game somewhat dangerous.


Now, as for the NPCs... doesn't it still come down to "there's really nothing harder than a Bandit Boss in the Bandit category"? You can argue that maybe there should be alternate spawns (say, three l. 10 Bandits instead of one l.30 Bandit). But can you reasonably deny people would be complaining if the Bandits just continually got progressively easier as the game went on? To the point where you could kill a whole camp wearing nothing (and without the unarmored skill) and lose less than 5% of your HP?

It's a compromise, and the data suggests that it's likely a better situation than static bandits and Dremora would have provided. Because at least this way, the game retains some challenge.

I've said it before, and each time I go back to the data, it's more true: The problem is and will continue to be "The lists are too similar and have low diversity".

"Level scaling" refers to encounters being determined with the character's level as a factor. The entire game is SATURATED with level scaling. The character's level is the SOLE factor.

A little comment on the system i suggested rewarding incompetence too much.
Well with the current one you could say the same, to get your health up you have to raise your endurance, the earlier the better, so you could very well spend the first few levels just raising your endurance and giving the remaining points to luck and whatever.
And what skills level endurance, heavy armor, block and armorer, so just stand there in heavy armor and let yourself get clobbered, block attacks and then just repair your damaged gear. Just do that over and over again and quickly you got endurance on max and gain a enourmus amount of health per level, all just for getting hit and then repairing your stuff.

Plus this actually encourages you to take a lot of mini damages rather than actually taking big hits as it means the MORE hits you take the more you gain rather than the actual total damage you take counting.

Tieing back into the original topic question, I think that the eventual similarity of all characters when they max out was the second biggest issue, after the excessive levelling/scaling problem. Perks were a bad thing, especially since EVERYONE got them when they hit a certain skill level, so there was no diversity between a character with Blades as a Major skill and one with similar skill, but taken as a minor, and none between two different Blade majors.

The best answer, in my opinion, would be to dump "perks", or have them as special rewards for specific quests or situations where you have a one-time option (such as at character creation) to choose ONE of several.

Regarding levelling and scaling, the point is that they were drastically overdone. The only examples of "static" creatures that I recall from OB were to prevent them from going extinct, so there would be a source of Alchemy ingredients at higher levels.

Me:

With Critical Strike skill and Dodge, plus Agility's bonus to dodge, a thief would do well in one on one combat. Sneaking and instant kills, if skillful enough. The whole point of thieving is to stay hidden.

Mages on the other hand. Depend what sort of mages they are, can they blast the enemies away before they can even reach them with a weapon? Maybe you can heal yourself faster than they harm you. Or you go invisible or behind a strong enough shield barrier.

Fighter is the only one that goes forward and takes punishment AS he deals it, and then counts the bodies and finds himself the alive one. If lucky. (yes, luck could give you more critical strikes as in FO3)

The problem with the system is that every single character in the game will eventually become a jack of all trades. Or rather, a mary sue character that can do absolutely everything perfectly. Considering that the only way to get the best stats is to take the time to level up every single skill, thereby getting the best attribute bonuses, you will probably end up with 100 in all skills sooner rather than later.

Now, you can say that there is nothing forcing you to do so, but that's sort of a weak point. It's like saying that if you find a game too easy then you should try playing it after you've smashed all your fingers with a hammer. A game should be designed with the belief that the player will put 100% effort into succeeding, if the player has to handicap himself to get the best experience out of the game then it's not really a game. It's more like a little kid having a tea party with stuffed animals.

I never thought powerleveling in Oblivion was hard. Of course, this is coming from someone who plays RuneScape. And the system made a tradeoff; leveling was made more tricky to do efficiently, but one could no longer just buy their way to lvl 60.

This!

Thats true for Fast Travel too. Sure you dont HAVE to use it, but who wouldnt.

Variance - Everyone ends up at 100, no feats/talents

So this seems to bother people fine easy fix.

You pick a class either melee, stealth, or magic, then you can only max out in what class you are, any skills not associated with your class can never get above 50.

Bada bing bada bang fixed!

the only think i dont like about elder scrolls level up system is the way the +5 to attribute thing works. it makes it so that in order to level up most efficiently you have to level up a skill 3 different skills with different master attributes 10 times. so i have to level up a skill 30 [censored] times before i can level once or else i dont get the most out of it.

in the next elder scrolls i think they should just have the level system work the same way it does in fallout3.

That's horrible and I hope it never happens. Best thing about Elder scrolls is the extreme amount of freedom of customization you have. Why can't I have an unarmored warrior/mage who's good with a lockpick?

First, let me say that in the general sense, I agree with you and have been agreeing with you regarding leveled lists. They are very important to the game, they must be diversified, and all that.
Now, what I think our hang-up is on leveled lists is my saying that leveled lists need to be limited and that their level ranges have to be miniscule. Let me elaborate on that:

I want the raw number of leveled lists in the game to exponentially increase. I want more leveled lists. And because I want more leveled lists, I naturally want what each list covers to be smaller. As an example, let's take one big leveled list and call it a leveled list of books to be found in containers. Since it's the only hypothetical book list, it covers a lot of ground by itself.

Let's take that list, then, and shatter it into multiple levled lists. General books. Profane books. Magical books. Necromancer books. War books. History books. Etc, etc. We now have a lot more leveled lists, but what those lists are covering is naturally a lot smaller. Let's take one of those new lists and shatter it further. Necromancer books can get divided into books that a ncromancer might read to pass the time, books that a necromancer might read to study, books that only certain factions of necromancers might have, books that only necromancers of a certain location might have, etc, etc. With each next division, what the list covers gets smaller and smaller. And with these divided leveled lists, you can now control the leveled lists more effectively and more efficiently. You can plan out dungeons whose loot makes a lot more sense for factors within the dungeon itself (providing randomness with a lot more guided direction to that randomness).

What also needs to happen is two things. First, the amount of things that leveled lists cover (including equipment, loot, creatures, etc) needs to be reduced to about 1/2 to 2/3 of the game. So 1/2 to 1/3 of the time, you'll be facing an enemy whose armor and/or weapon is the same no matter what level you encounter them. 1/2 to 1/3 of the time, you'll be facing creatures that would be there no matter what level. Etc, etc. Second, for leveled lists that remain (for leveled loot), they either need to reimplement Morrowind's %-chance to find nothing (which should also be used in conjunction with putting both static and leveled items in a container, instead of just making a whole accursed container leveled and thus being lazy), or they need to implement a percent-chance system by which higher items might get replaced by lower ones. This will prevent the artificiality of getting an item simply because your level corresponds to it on the list. Say you're lv20, and the highest item in the leveled loot list corresponds to your level. However, it has a 60% chance to not appear, as it's pretty powerful and rare. So the game rolls (perhaps modified by luck), and if it passes, you get the item. If not, then it backtracks to the item previous. And if that item has a % to not appear, it rolls there as well, and so on and so forth until you either get something or get nothing. This will all be happening instantaneously, of course, so you'd never know what you might have had.

Oh, and one more HUGE IMPORTANT THING regarding leveled lists: A significant majority of creature leveled lists should not have a level 1 option. So if the player walks in at level 1, they might be facing something they 5 or 6 levels higher than them. If they walk in at level 6 or 7, then the leveled lists will start kicking in.

Now, for the first one, see below for why making 1/3 or 1/2 the world static would not bring challenge crashing down upon our heads.


This seems to be the root of the disagreement here, mechanics aside. Very well; challenge.
Challenge as represented by authoritarian use of leveled lists and, yes, level scaling, is not actual challenge. It is the simulation of challenge. You ask whether people will flood these forums complaining about difficulty if we remove level scaling on NPCs, make a third to half the world static, and don't make creatures on top of their leveled lists scale? I say, no, they will not.

You seem to assume, in your picturing of a scale-less world, that everything will be like in Oblivion at level one, where the player can bash anything they want? You seem to assume that people want to have the carrot of "challenge" dangled precisely in front of them, like a horse eternally running after a reward. Ah, but now we must define what I mean by "reward." I don't mean "reward" as in higher equipment, better loot, etc, because in a world where NPCs and top-tier creatures employ level scaling as thoroughly as they do, and in a world where leveled lists are designed to make sure the player gets the good loot just by reaching level [X] (which, even with your leveled list suggestions, is what it will end up doing), getting a new, shinier thing is rather irrelevant, just as gaining levels is rather irrelevant. Why? Because true character progress is measured relative to NPCs and creatures. The reward I am seeking is the over-arching reward of finally mastering my skills. But the skills are numbers. The armor is numbers. The phat loot is numbers. And all of those numbers are vastly irrelevant if, thanks to scaling, my new and improved numbers are still relatively standing still compared to their new and improved numbers.

The method of challenge dispersal as compared to level that RPGs traditionally follow (aka the DnD progression model):
Early levels: Struggle to survive.
Mid levels: Moderate difficulty.
Late levels: Struggle to die.

You can call removing NPC level scaling boring or too easy if you want, but let me tell you now that the early levels are very difficult, the mid levels are only slightly abated, and the late levels are where all the epic demi-god status bosses can be tried. Since the world would be made up of a decent portion of static creatures and a 100% portion of static NPCs, their levels would already be ranging from low to high when the game started. They wouldn't all be level 1, nor would they all be level 15, nor would they all be level 30. Therefore, when you start out out level one, the vast majority of NPCs and a decent chunk of creatures are going to be able to cut you from your navel to your throat with ease. You then have to play it careful (because, after all, you're a weakling lv1 noob with a starting-out stat sheet; does it really make sense to own everything right off the bat?) and look for challenges that you can handle. It's also significantly harder to level when starting out, because finding things to pratice skills on at level 1 is a touch-and-go business.

As you start moving up, people and places and things that were far too difficult for you before get closer and closer to being tackle-able. Creatures that you fought during your early levels still largely remain, but it's OK, because since everything is done with diversified leveled lists, they were only a fraction of what the world had to offer anyway. And because they remain, you have your first TANGIBLE relative evidence of your growing skills, because here is a fraction of the game's creatures that you can handle no problem. You keep moving up the mid-range levels, and more and more people and creatures either become easier for you (while remaining in the game), become just right for you to try to take care of, or become just part of the threshold of things you might try if you wanted to be daring.

At late levels, you've risen above most of the world's petty to moderate threats. However, that doesn't mean the world is devoid of challenge. There are still handfuls of really immense people and things for you to try to take down; you would just have to go out and seek them, and they aren't going to be everywhere (quite the opposite, in fact; they'd be the to percentage fo the game and therefore a fraction of the game). And further, even though the late levels may be relatively free of mundane difficulty, I don't see that as a problem at all. Achieving such status is what I have earned. I fought and bled and struggled through all of the low- and mid-level difficulties to reach the point where I could look down at a significant portion of the world and say, "Ha! You're no longer a threat to me!"

Now, you might read this and see no major difference between this and a world with level scaling and full use of leveled lists. The difference is: At level 1, I can see how far the road extends ahead of me, and I can experience my total lack of skills as relative to the world firsthand by stumbling into the vast majority of places that are too dangerous for me to handle at level 1. At level 30, I can see how far the road extends behind me, and I can experience the massive improvement of my skills as relative to the world firsthand by being attacked by all those things that were once a major challenge (not counting, of course, that small upper-percent fraction of really difficult things that even a high-level character might have trouble with). THAT is what I mean by over-arching reward. It's being able to witness my growth as relative to the world I am dwelling in; it's being able to experience challenge, fight against challenge, and in the end, OVERCOME challenge. That's what Oblivion's "carrot on a stick" level scaling and leveled list system does; it makes it to where I will have the same relative challenge no matter what and robs me of true over-arching satisfaction by not giving me any large-scale reference by which to judge the numbers on my stat sheet.


Umm... No. Not at all. That's throwing a giant wrench in one of the allures of TES: The ability to not be conformed rigidly by class and to advance what you do - whatever you do - by using it.


For Oblivion, efficient leveling might be more of a necessity. But for Morrowind or a future title that uses better leveled lists and doesn't use scaling nearly as much, efficvient leveling was never necessary, and it used the exact same multiplier system. So unless you'd be compulsively striving for a 5/5/5 or 5/5/1 just to get it (because by doing so, you'd be making yourself more powerful than most things in the world a lot quicker), there would be no real survivability reason to efficiently level.


... Ick?

Exactly MY point: the implementation is more to blame for whatever gripes people have. Oblivion contains something like 9 book lists. Three for combat/magic/stealth skill books, one that selects a random skill book by having a 100% chance of getting one of three items (the previous three lists, actually). Cheap, Valuable, and Rare book lists, and TWO lists for "common" books. Oddly enough, the "Religious" list is unreferenced. That's what we have NOW.

Yet, as you can see, it would entirely be possible to have a "necromancer fun book" list that would contain a single item that would be "necromancer fun book, obscene humor". And your local list could either refer to this master list, or not. This is already done. The problem for you is definitely exactly what you say: the lists are bulk lists. The same is effectively true of the enemy lists. There's a lot more than 9 of those, but it's very literally "one per terrain type, plus an additional list for each where there's a road". Besides that, each of these lists typically points to a specific, static creature. I'd call that "room for variation".



Are you counting this as "this enemy will always be a Level 12 Land Dreugh", or "this will always be a level 1 Mudcrab or rat (2 chances rat. 1 mudcrab)"? I don't consider either "scaled", but as a technical matter, the leveled lists do cover the latter. (A simple randomize list is a leveled list where every entry has a min level of 1).

The % chance for nothing is built into the list. Bethesda didn't use it much, but it's there. I think it actually takes precedence over the drop specifics. As for the distribution %, they don't have a direct field for that. It typically goes "about equal" for everything in whatever range it considers. Or whatever it exactly does. I can't nail down whether it's limited to three items (although I've seen it do only two for extreme sample sizes before), or four drops (I've gotten three items where it would span four, but I sometimes get two items instead of a fourth range...?) or "PC Level -7" is as far back as it goes as long as it's not at the end of the list. It does seem to count how many valid entries for a given item there are: when Steel holds what I suspect to be two of the valid slots, it accounts for about 50% of all drops, compared to 25 and 25 for the other two items that can drop.

Perhaps a per-item chance field is something you'd like to suggest they add?



Well, every list HAS to have a level 1 option. That could be a PC-relative -3 Bandit, a static level 20 Ogre, a separate list to choose from, or a PC+10 leveled Dremora. But, well, something has to live at the L1 spot just so something shows up. (I should check that in-game sometime. See what happens if nothing is set to spawn until Lv 7.). This is what I mean by it being a CONTENT issue, not the idea of scaling: Suppose you want a cave to be pure HELL at L. 1. You could pack it full of Lv. 15 Ogres and be done with it (static world). But with the scaling, you can make it so that the Ogres are always 15 levels above the PC (which doesn't help the Ogres much in the end). Or, you can spawn Ogres that are way ahead of the player to start with, and much less ahead later on. Say, at level 8, the Ogres are PC+12. At 15, they're +10. and so forth. It's enough to give them a bit more staying power while letting the player feel like they aren't spending forever beating up a hapless Ogre that's been cursed with a lot of HP, but not enough skill to do anything more than delay the inevitable. That's where the lists can come in.



You mean all of the "Oblivion is too easy" complaints would go away if Bethesda had made the creatures along the road static, and Minotaur Lords and Ogres and such were just as static? You sure could have fooled me. I'll even agree that after about level 25 in Oblivion, roadside combat can best be described as "annoying", rather than challenging. But it's better than Morrowind, In my opinion, where the only way enemies stand a chance after you can afford a Silver whatever-you-use is for you to nerf yourself by using a something-else or by being a Daedra (a scaled enemy!) Essentially, I'd rather at least pummel something that can attempt to fight back, rather than hack away at a rat with an axe (I never use axes) for a minute and a half because long swords are already maxed. Takes just about as long, unless I get really lucky...



You are very off on that one. My problem here is that a large part of the community seems to be into the "take one wrong step and die. Your fault." approach. I don't. If you want to make half of the caves, ruins, crypts, what have you "high level only" areas, that's not precisely a problem (when "high level" is 20 to 25, that IS a bit of a problem, and I hope Bethesda corrects it). What is a problem for me is this:
Completely remove leve scaling from Oblivion. One of two things can happen: either mountain lions can appear near the Imperial City, or they cannot. If they do, a lot of new players will die shortly after the sewers. If they don't, you're manually doing exactly what level scaling did for you at low levels. Granted, you won't have harder enemies, as the current scale gives you. But does killing a rat in one hit really feel like an accomplishment? Ever? Whereas I feel pretty good about myself when I can be surprised by two mountain lions, and calmly focus on taking one out, then making short work of the other methodically. Or when I could keep up a sword flurry that kept a Knight of Order or Valkynaz from attacking. But... beating up a mudcrab? No big deal. What I really want is to know that I'll be well into the game before Adrenaline Rush becomes an afterthought.

To sum it up:
At level 1, I want to at least have a chance to run.
At level 40, I want something that I still don't take for granted.
If at level 45, I can even dominate whatever challenged me at 40, that's fine. I just don't like playing half of the game where the only challenge the toughest enemies pose is "can I beat them against the wall rapidly enough to redwash the wall?"



In TES, it's traditionally been more like:

Early Levels: too broke to do anything except miniquests
Mid: Explore, now that you've actually got equipment that's better than the average TES housewife
Late: Can bankroll entire armies for the Emperor. And still be filthy rich.

And your survival is directly related to finding a Silver weapon in your style and some second or third tier armor. Which means it's directly related to income. Sad thing is, as much as level scaling is maligned for making the game too easy, without it, it'd be even easier... once you find the staticly placed good stuff. Doesn't even have to be the best or near-best. Just not the worst.



Here's the problem: I come across a cave. Is it a level 1 cave, or a level 35 cave? How should I know? I finished the intro 10 minutes ago and started wandering around. Oops. Open wrong door. Minotaur killed me. No save yet. Must start over. Ok, Wander elsewhere. Open Door. Oops. Trolls. Back to intro. Not fun.

OK. Let's tone everything within x distance units of the start down to where you don't have that happen.

Now I missed a cave to the west of where I started. And I find it at level 32. It's not only extremely easy, but it's extremely wasteful of my time now. All because I happened to think something was behind me and backed past the cave mouth. So it's no longer a rewarding experience either.

Ok. Now let's try something different: Everything is scaled, but it's nothing close to 1-1. This cave over here is hard to reach and off the beaten track. We'll start it off at level 15 bandits, but keep them more than 10 levels ahead through level 20. By Level 40, it'll be 1-1 scaled because the gap narrows after level 20. So if I stumble across it at level 1, I've put in a lot of effort just to get here, and someone should have said something about this being a bad place. Or there were five bandits on watch and I got lucky and snuck through. Now that's MY fault. But by making the gap 14 levels initially instead of 29, newb has a better chance to be as brave as Sir Robin. Or, we can decide reloading is the way to resolve all bad choices...

Caves close in to the heart of the action and on the main roads? Keep them relatively in line with the "on-road" difficulty. Stuff that's on a footpath in the mountains, but near a city? Maybe that starts out as a level 8 cave, and by level 8, it's a level 12 cave. Something a level 8 CAN handle, but with extensive preparation. At Level 20, it's still at level 15. Harder than a Lv. 8 cave, but hardly a serious danger. And supposing it tops out with a normally PC-relative enemy? Make a static version.

What this does is extends the life of each location so that it's not so quick to go from impossible to doable to cakewalk in 5 levels, and it makes just finding the hard places an effort. You still get to have the last laugh, whether it's taking a cave before it reaches a "linear" mode, or finding that spot where you can clear a cave that scales past lv. 40 without excessive healing, there are rewards that say "I've earned it" without making the game into "save every time you make a decision, you might regret it"-fest.




I don't recall ever saying Oblivion used the scaling properly
It is, however, better than having half an island where "getting out of trouble" has, for more than half of a very incomplete game, consisted of "stop using weapons I'm not good at" and "don't pick on the Daedra without extra healing potions". The important thing for me is that areas shouldn't be "fixed level" for where the challenge is between "not too bad" and "difficult". It needs a bigger range. I'm probably not going to find every "beginner" cave as a beginner. I'll find some as "slayer of ten thousand beasts". I don't mind if they are easy then, but something designed for level 1 is going to be nothing at 5. And I might find it at 15. Somewhat better is to scale it. So it stays in a decent challenge range longer. Likewise, the hard places can remain "too tough for you" for a long time. But scale them back just enough that it's not "instadeath". I'm not asking for "you can win with 'mad skillz'". I'm asking "give me a chance to crap my pants and run".

Yes, they need to use the flexcibility they have more. They need to diversify the lists more. But scaling things is not inherently bad, nor does it inherently fix the game at a uniform difficulty. I don't think I need to convince YOU of that. I know I'm not going to convince most of the scaling haters of it, either. But someone needs to provide a voice for the flexibility and general utility of the system. Unless we'd all rather have the old JRPG spawn regions (no thanks).



Someone who understands (besides Bethesda)! I've never understood the "Nooooooo! Can be Arch-Mage, Listener of the Black Hand, and Grey Fox all at once. Immersion breakdown!!!!" posts. I want to beat the crap out of legendary stuff (and I want legendary stuff to be tough enough to BE legendary, not something I can beat silly with 25 levels left in my character). I want to "do it all".

I personally could do without the Fighter's Guild entirely (hate them in Morrowind almost as much as in Oblivion), but still... is it so hard to understand that if I needed more realism, I'd play Real Life 1.0 instead of a video game?

At least it isn't a D&D-styule system
It isn't perfect and could be improved but I prefer a system where skills are increased through using them to an XP system

I love the leveling system used in the ES games; it's simply the most logical and interesting system I've ever seen used in a game. That said, I think that increasing your skills should increase your stats naturally, without the need for a level up screen, e.g. increasing the athletics (or any other speed based stat) 4 times will increase your speed by 1 point.

In regards to the 'spamming' nature of magic, I think Bethesda should return to Morrowind's system of magic, where you could fail the casting of spells. A system could be implemented in which spells that have a high chance of failure would yield a greater increase in that skill. This seems logical to me, as continuously practicing only the basics of any skill/talent would have the effect of only being proficient at the basics, and not at the more complex parts. To use an anology: one won't learn how to do calculus by only ever doing basic arithmetic. Not that this system wouldn't have it's flaws; it would potentially penalise players for not using difficult or complex spells when an simple one might suffice, but I still think it's a better system than the one we have now.

No levels would be nice.

I agree, the levels are pointless, you don't need them if you want to fix the powerleveling issue, and world leveling isn't needed.

The 'beauty" of levelled lists in the game is that they can be "nested": you can add a levelled list within another list. By creating levelled sub-lists of specific creatures, you can then add those sub-lists as possibilities within any local list, levelled or unlevelled. That means, you can have a "water edge" list, with a couple of "species" of water rats and Mudcrabs (several entries of the basic ones, to increase the likelihood that you'll see them, a single entry for a slightly stronger variant species (which MAY appear at any level), and a couple of "staggered" levelled entries which call that same slightly stronger variant more frequently as your level increases, and a tough "old timer" version that won't appear at all until you've reached a moderate level. By adjusting the number of entries at each "strength" and level requirement, you can control the chance of finding each "version" at any given character level. While the "basic" types will never vanish, and you MIGHT run into a tougher than ususal variant at a lower level, the porportion of the tougher versions will increase and you'll eventually begin to see the occasional "boss" version every so often. That sub-list can then be "called" by any other list that adds water-edge creatures, either along shorelines, in wet caves, or in swampy areas, with all of the "levelling" already taken care of within the sub-list. By having a sub-list with "unlikely" creatures that "could" spawn once or twice in a game, as a further sub-list called by some sub-lists, there would be a REMOTE chance of seeing something really unusual for a particular area, but it might never happen in your game.

The next most important feature of the lists is the "Chance None" box. By having twice as many spawn points, but AT LEAST a 50% "Chance None", you'll see nearly the same number of creatures, on average, but there will be more of a chance for "unexpected" encounters. As it stands now, you can glance at any area you've seen before and say "there's the creature, so the rest is safe". With more spawn points, including a few with a REALLY high "Chance None", you'll never know if/when something else will spawn where you've never seen anything before. The POSSIBILITY of danger is far more frightening than a known threat.

By placing "benign" creatures or "beginning" creatures into a couple of lists, and using those in the "starting" areas of the game, players won't be faced with things like "deathclaws" right out of the Vault at level 1 in FO3, or right outside the front gate of Megaton as the game progressed. Get a little ways off the beaten path and you should start seeing more "unlevelled" and dangerous content, with the truly "scary" stuff much more prominent in areas that are "known" to be hazardous to your health. Morrowind handled that well in having the areas around Seyda Neen and the Ascadian Isles in general being at least "semi-safe" at any level, with a few scary (and sometimes fatal) exceptions if you poked your nose into places you knew were potentially threatening, and the Ashlands and Red Mountain being more dangerous regardless of level.

Levelling and Scaling aren't "inherently" bad, but indiscriminate use of them certainly is.

Some good ideas. I'd like having stats increase on their own from use. I'd have gains for actions not tied to one attribute only - like maybe someone that spends a long time fighting with a heavy weapon has gained +7 strength and +2 agility while someone that used a light weapon got +2 strength and +7 agility over the same time, for example.

About the magic, I'd prefer to avoid making people do things they don't want to or are a poor strategy in order to increase skills. Spells with a high chance of failure would probably also have a high casting cost for your current level; you'd have a good chance of wasting most of your magic - I think it wouldn't end up much fun to act that way. Maybe have the system encourage casting spells matched at your level, like in the 90 - 110% chance range with the skill gains decreasing in both directions. That could also make sense enough; giving someone a calculus book when they're still struggling with algebra wouldn't help them much either.