I actually quite like there to be different areas on the world map that host higher-level or just innately more dangerous creatures. A deathclaw, for example, is a highly dangerous creature - in Fallout lore that's one of the most dangerous monsters in the Wastes. I certainly wouldn't expect to find all monsters at every location, spread evenly all over. And some creatures are just going to be more dangerous than others. It would seem odd to me if a molerat and a deathclaw were equally difficult to kill.

So given that - isn't it logical for there to be areas that contain more difficult enemies? I could, of course, be completely wrong about this - but I can't imagine many people would argue that I should be able to step out of the Vault at level 1 with basic gear and be able to straight-out tackle a deathclaw with no preparation. These deathclaws (or any higher-tier enemy, really) need to be found somewhere, so by it's very virtue you'll have places that are more difficult for the beginning adventurer.

Me, I run into a place on the map that's too dangerous for me currently, I don't see that as an arbitrary wall - I see that as a goal. When I tried to take a shortcut through New Vegas and wound up in deathclaw territory and had to limp right back out of there I didn't see that as limiting my exploration, I saw that as I place I knew I wanted to come back to when I was properly prepared to tackle those enemies. It was with some sense of accomplishment when I was able to go back there when I was ready and take out the Legendary Deathclaw found there, clear out the area, and reap higher-tier rewards for my diligence.

If no places were more or less dangerous than any others, then I'd have been lacking that sense of accomplishment, I think. As it happened, it gave weight to my character advancement and a purpose to strive for.

Id much rather have areas where there are known enemies that will rip my head off if I dare to enter rather than the whole world scaling with me.

IMO those areas are being guarded by some tough enemies because they (hopefully) hold some equipment or items that are quite powerful and would give the player an unfair advantage if we could get our hands on it asap. I also dont want it to be like one set path that I must travel in order to play the game wioth a sense of accomplishment. But im guessing this map will be large enough and hold enough in it to where the first few times I run through it I wouldnt know if I was being corraled in a certaiun direction or not.

But all in all I love knowing theres a deathclaw aropund the corner that I wont be able to defeat with a baseball bat 30 seconds after leaving the vault.

Well, I don['t mind a few caves or tunnels or such that presents an inability at low levels to enter. But part of what makes Bethesda games so attractive and fun for me is the ability to go where I desire from the start. It's something that I've not found in other games and what attracts me to Bethesda games really. I despised not being able to go but one direction in NV. It was my why of not liking the game. It did open up more later but it was too late to make it a fun game for me. I felt like I was being forced to follow a path they wanted me to follow. This is true in many games to be fair but it's the one thing I can point to and say, Yeah! I like that about Bethesda games. Can't do that without a lot of thought put into how the games are scaled. I realize that is what many don't like about Beth games. Just something I've grown to love.

I agree that Oblivion uses a few too many invisible walls in FONV to "guide" you along the paths they intended, but even with those in place, you had options on how to progress the game. Granted, the MQ line is rather linear, but I so is every cRPG main quest line ever made. Sure, they can branch and possibly have optional choices that may allow for a variety of endings, but this goes back to the games true intention....to tell a story that you (as the PC) can interact with. The majority of "freedoms" in these open world games are just very well crafted illusions.

I think that's a good point, Summer. We often think of "level design" in the small scale, but there's also something to be said for design on the macro scale, as well - the world map itself. New Vegas certainly was kind of a linear path up to a certain point, by design. I kind of see where they were going with that, and wanting the first arc of the game to be kind of "The Road to New Vegas," but I can see where that's a step away from Bethesda's design philosophy.

There were areas in Fallout 3 and Skyrim were you'd find yourself in a heap of trouble if you weren't prepared, but the world map and the locations of the quests and where they guided you through the world was a lot more open-ended and organic.

In Skyrim especially, I found you kind of had the "hub areas" around the major cities, and for the most part you were pretty free to explore the areas around those pretty. I found when I was just kind of organically exploring and solving quests without too much pre-planning or meta-gaming that I was naturally exploring by sort of spiraling around these hub areas - each time I'd leave a town I'd go a little bit further out from the city or in a direction I hadn't explored yet, and return to sell loot and resettle my inventory, and either go to a different city hub and being exploring the areas around there, or go even further afield the next time.

In Fallout 3 the game sort of naturally drew you gradually further and further across the map. If I started out at Vault 101 and tried to head straight through to the top of the map I was going to get into trouble - but I was free to go further and further into the DC ruins or further and further out into the Wasteland as I saw fit.

I would agree that placement of these more dangerous areas is pretty important. In Skyrim and Fallout 3 there were places I'd encounter higher-tiered enemies but where they were present they weren't completely blocking off my progress across half of the map, and more importantly they weren't places in a manner that restricted me to pretty much one direction of travel. In New Vegas you had that mountain range smack in the middle of the map, you couldn't go north at all because of the deathclaws, so that left only going around the mountains along the main highway until you came out the other end in New Vegas.

I can understand why that might not be the ideal level design for a game that's emphasizing open-world exploration.

I am 1000% against what the OP is saying.

It makes the world feel so much more authentic to know that there are dangers out there some green noob shouldn't approach.

Open worlds without consequence are not any better than games on rails.

I think Skyrim handled this... mostly fine. It was a little annoying only running into ancient, enormous dragons that put Alduin to shame. Further, Alduin should have been ridiculously powerful and functionally impossible for level five characters to kill. Scaling should exist to a degree, but only where it makes sense. MrMatty seems to be whining that he can't tackle Deathclaws from level one. Well, you shouldn't be able to do that - that would be stupid.

I believe you are reading what you want into what he is saying. I think you are wrong. He is talking about 2 different areas.

Your main argument is that he didnt include "this other area" but I can counter that because he didnt say "this same area"

He is talking about 1 area starting at lvl 5 and moving up and topping out at 10. But a different area starts at level 30. This explanation makes much more sense given the context of what he was explaining.

Having areas that randomly jump between lvl 5 and 30 makes no sense whatsoever.

I think that you both have good points. I fully agree that having areas with tougher enemies that you simply can't take on at a low level is both realistic and adds a sense of accomplishment when you can take them on. However these areas need to be implemented well, and if they aren't, they can actually detract from the game. Let's compare Skyrim to NV.

In Skyrim, you had a few caves and enemies in the open world that were very hard to tackle at a low level. Overall, the placement of these enemies and caves barely limited your ability to go where you pleased. They were never placed with the intention of trying to cut you off from exploring areas beyond them. This was not the case with NV.

From how they placed these tougher enemies in NV, it really felt like they were trying quite hard to force you down the path they wanted you to take. This diminished my enjoyment of NV to some extent.

I would be fine with having more of these tougher areas scattered about FO4 than there were in Skyrim, but only if they were truly scattered about. I don't want a repeat of NV where they were strategically placed to attempt to limit the players exploration options. If a town is full of deathclaws and I don't have a chance of exploring it until I'm a much higher level, that's fine. I'm more than happy to head into the town, spot a couple deathclaws from a distance (or bump into one and get shredded) and slowly back away (or reload) and not be able to explore that town until much later. But I do want to be able to carefully give that town a wide berth and explore the non-deathclaw areas around/beyond it.

EDIT: Basically what nu_clear_day posted after these quotes. I was typing this up while they were posting apparently

I don't have a problem with the scaling system so long as they don't use it to very obviously, and very artificially, block off the main road in some juvenile attempt to force the player to go a specific way like was done in NV. If your narrative can't expand naturally, then you should rethink the narrative.

Having areas with high level monsters just in general however in expected. Be it Olney, the Yao Guai tunnels, or the Deathclaw Sanctuary, in Fallout 3, or the named Dragon Priest tombs, and Falmer hives, in Skyrim. There has always been areas of NOPE! in Bethesda games.

In New Vegas, if you tried hard enough to scrounge in Goodsprings, you could get enough ordnance together to kill your way out of the northern passage by the Tribal Village by sniping the Cazadors from above and then taking out Bonnie Springs with a Varmint Rifle from the hills. It could be done at level 1, or 2 or 3 as the XP would take you there.

Yeah, the only drawback in the past was that the story didn't seem to use the same sort of level scaling as the rest of the world. For people who tend to ignore the story in favor of exploration it's rather strange to then return to the story and find that you are entirely over leveled. Hopefully they've taken that into account this time around and will have a scalable story as well.

But as for world scaling.. It really seemed to work well. Like you said, it was kind of annoying at higher levels fighting nothing but Deathlords.. but it seems a later patch fixed that because last time I played I noticed a larger mix of enemies. (still a lot of deathlords though.) But no matter what, you felt like you were progressing. Obviously F3 and Nv had the major problem of easily reaching the level cap... but we don't have to worry about that now. (hopefully)

With a ton of meta-gaming sure. But you shouldn't have to meta-game to get where you want to go in a game. If that's required, then it's poor game design IMO.

Exactly.

I didn't have to meta-game to travel north at all, I just paid attention to what was around, and was careful in where I went.

I like being completely cut off from areas because it's too difficult to progress down. It really makes you feel like you've come a long way once you are able to beat an enemy that you couldn't before. That being said, I also love figuring out how to explore an area that has enemies that I can't beat. Usually, stealth is the most simplest answer. Stealth and running away.

In New Vegas I made it through the deathclaw region many times without having to fire a shot.. Same with the cazador area and other supposedly 'blocked' paths. Really, all you had to do is run your ass off and maybe re-load once or twice if you failed. I made it to every single DLC area without gaining any xp simply by running. (as I wanted to try every dlc from level 1.) You can do them all at level 1 and they are actually quite a bit more fun that way. Anyway.. all I'm saying is that a blocked path isn't truly a blocked path and with some ingenuity you can usually get around it. If the enemies are really, really tough that simply creates a fun challenge that you can decide to take on or not.

Who said randomly jump? Much of Bethesda games spawn some number of enemies in the tables based on either the PCs current level (Skryim did this a lot) or the level the PC was when first entering the cell (Fallout 3 did this a bunch). The same cells can certainly spawn some number of more powerful enemies later in the game. Go look at the encounter spawn scripts in the Creation Kit for proof.

I seriously hope Mr. Howard is simply mistaken or over simplifying the system because specific enemy levels for areas with no scaling (or minor range scaling) would make for a very boring game. Note that NONE of their previous games have worked entirely that way. I certainly have no issue with overly difficult areas that require caution to traverse at low PC levels.

Why the hell does Todd Howard call it "rubber banding"? Enemies and areas are leveled now. Just say that.

I personally much prefer enemies and areas being leveled. It provides a sense of progression in the game as you run into highly difficult enemies that you cannot face, only to come back later more powerful and able to triumph that enemy. Whereas the alternative is everything scales with you and you're constantly running into overpowered damage sponges left and right like in Oblivion, which was quite annoying.

Although I can understand why some would have an issue with it. It can restrict player freedom which is an issue in Bethesda games that emphasize a lot on freedom and exploration. Or the complaint that by endgame enemies are no longer a challenge because you're such a high level. Although I would argue that's what endgame is all about in a RPG. You're suppose to feel powerful.

Regardless, if they found a way to implement both in a balanced manner like they have in previous games to some degree, that will work for me.

Perhaps random was not the best word to use, but I feel it still describes the effect sufficiently.

There is no reason that an area should spawn lvl 5-10 raiders initially then once you hit certain level it spawns lvl 75 Brotherhood knights with mini guns.


This is what I believe will happen. I will attempt to draw a picture with words.

There are areas A, B, C.

Area (A) Starts out with lvl 3 rad roaches. As the game progresses and you level up it begins to spawn level 10 Rad scorpions. But this beginning area will never spawn lvl 40 Fire Ants.

Area {B} Starts out with lvl 12 Raiders. As the game progresses and you level up it begins to spawn level 30 Brotherhood Rebels. But this beginning area will never spawn lvl 60 Super mutant behemoths.

Area {C}Starts out with lvl 35 super mutant. As the game progresses and you level up it begins to spawn level 60 Super mutant behemoths. But this beginning area will never spawn lvl 3 rad roaches.

Obviously this is crude but it is how I think the game will work.

I do like the idea of having foes be tougher in one area than another, and as I level the tougher foes get more beat-able and yet new foes arrive to challenge me, and the foes that I've always been able to beat become so weak as to be pointless to fight (in which case they should realize this and not TRY to fight me!).

I was always under the impression, though, that when Todd was talking about Rubber-Banding he meant that, for example, you might enter an area called Bobtown and see some level 5 - 10 raiders, have a good time thrashing them and then move on.... but then later in the game you would come back (like a rubber-band, "snap" back) to that same area but ~now~ there is a group of level 25 - 35 raiders who have taken over the area.

They can still have different leveled foes in different areas, but if I am interpreting things right, you would not have a level 5 - 10 raider camp ALL the time at that location ---- over time, as you 'rubber band' back to that same area you previously visited, the foes you face will be in a different level range. This would eliminate the problem of having valuable real estate hogged by level 5 - 10 foes that are clearly no threat to your level 30 player character.

EDIT: CnConrad appears to have the same idea - curse my slow fingers

What you're describing sounds exactly the same as Skyrim's level scaling system. There were encounter zones set to a minimum and maximum level range.

For example, if the player enters a level 15-25 dungeon at level 5, the NPC encounters will be balanced for a level 15 player. If the player is in between level 15-25, enemies are scaled to the player's level. If the player is above 25, the enemies still only scale up to 25.

Note that it wasn't a flat sort of scaling, some of the enemy types were always harder than others, especially the bosses. And some unique NPCs were set to very high static level. Some other, very challenging enemies scaled up to player level + "X" for example.

Worked very well for Skyrim IMO; however, it was a lot more fun after adding Increased Spawns mods like ASIS. In any case, this is very different from Oblivion's scaling system where everything just scaled up to match the player's level.

That's not meta-gaming, it's situational awareness of the map. You can see it on the Pip-Boy.

I don't mind this sort of leveling in the slightest, in fact I really enjoy it as it adds more immersion to the game and requires players to think on their toes and use other alternatives besides direct combat in order to solve problems where stronger monsters rampage. It's more realistic as well were the darkest, more dangerous areas may have the most powerful monsters, it wouldn't make sense if I walked into a heavily, irradiated and highly dangerous area just to fight weak, stupid enemies.

Whatever the system is under the hood, I hope it captures both the struggle AND the progression.
That's what killed oblivion. Get to glass/daedric? Big whoop. So did everyone else simultaneously.

I want to go back to the areas that first caused me concern, then wreck shop with top end armor, weapons, and skills/perks.

I'm not a fan of level-scaling enemies at all; things feel much more natural if enemies represent the area/etc, and any sort of level scaling can completely ruin that.

I'm also not a fan of leveling having a giant impact upon things like health or weapon damage; humans don't become more impervious to bullets the harder they train, and just because you're an excellent marksman doesn't mean your pistol can penetrate any more armor than it could when you hadn't known how to shoot at all.

Leveling up should present more options to the player or give incremental bonuses to things like reload speed, aiming capability, or movement speed - none of which make the player so much more capable at killing that they can suddenly do things that were previously completely blocked off from a skilled player. Equipment should be what determines combat capability, to a large extent, not pure level - and enemy equipment should have nothing whatsoever to do with the player's current level.

My opinions on this may be influenced in that I see Bethesda's games as FPSes first and RPGs second (because their RPG mechanics are significantly sub-standard).