Poll: Level scaling, yes or no?

[Bluestorm83]

Scaling enemies when I level is stupid. What's the benefit of leveling up if the enemies always keep pace? There are bosses in Final Fantasy 8 that are actually easier at a lower level than if you level up. I mean, what the hell? I get the idea that forcing a grind is boring... but if there's an equal challenge on the boss of the game at level 1 as there would be at level 100, then why does our character not just go there right away and kill him?

That said, if my actual world PROGRESS would provoke tougher enemies in earlier areas, that would be fine. I'd love to go back to a game's first area and have NPCs tell me that since I caused so much havok, a tougher gang of whatever moved into the area and is now on the roads, doing bad things that only my whoever I am can stop.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Level scaling is a pox on RPG's, what's the point in leveling at all if those random bandits/creatures are always going to be a huge threat to the epic hero of epicness? Just do what STALKER did and denote threat levels by different creatures and/or your enemy's gear, your ability being dictated by the same, scrap the leveling mechanic all together.

Well designed games allow the player to grow their skills, whether it's Metroid Prime or Morrowind (or the first Mass Effect) you begin as a weakling who scrapes by and by the end you match up to the legend as you tear through entire environments and armies as though they're made of paper, only the most terrifying of opponents being worthy of your attention.

One of the best moments in Morrowind is the first time you enter some Daedric ruins and survive, to a level one player such places are nothing but suicide pits, to an end-game player they're of mild interest for loot, to a player who's just found the Corpus cure they're little sirens of level design, go and explore them if you think you're good enough. That's how good RPG's should be, your character grows into the environment, facing level 99 bandits with epic gear is laziness on the dev's part, they couldn't be bothered to make a new challenge, so they just set the sliders to go up on all the basic ones.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I won't vote for either, because it's all a pile of "yeah, but on the other hand" arguments. It's all in implementation. Oblivion's was terrible, Skyrim's was much better. Borderlands 2 was in severe need of level scaling, because you leveled up so fast that at a certain point in the game like 50% of the quests became completely pointless.

I would guess it could work if certain enemies did level up with you, while the majority stayed the same. I mean, a wolf shouldn't be harder to kill for a level 45 Paladin than a level 2 just because the game needs to be balanced. More elite enemies, like the Draugr in Skyrim, should level up with the player to give them a sense of power.

As a side note, Oblivion's bandits sudednly carrying all Glass gear actually didn't bother me that much. I just handwaved it away by imagining it as a consequence of the Oblivion crisis getting worse, as demonic entities prowled the land in increasing numbers.

 

[MiskWisk]

Mostly no. I mean, it can be done well, but the problem is most devs don't seem to try to do it well. I personally have come to hate the things after FF VIII. It is the only FF I never finished and yes, I do know now that if you play in such a way then it isn't hard at all, but I don't particularly care about looking up the 'correct' way to play a game.

 

[aozgolo]

Like most people I have some mixed feelings about it. I recall a particular experience in Morrowind, when I first ventured into Red Mountain as a noob, knowing fully well I was not strong enough to fight anything there. It was a chilling experience, the atmosphere of the place felt wholly evil and knowing that lurking behind every rock could be some menacing powerful Ash Vampire that wishes to eat my face made me so paranoid and scared to be in this place.

Looking ahead though, in Oblivion I NEVER had this feeling, I was never in a single dungeon, a single plane of Oblivion, a single location on the map where I felt that I wasn't ready for it, that I could not possibly win.

As much as Skyrim improved on the concept of level scaling, it too felt vastly underwhelming, there were a few occasions that you could have those moments, like running across Dragon Priests early on but by and large even the terrifying dragons of the game soon became nothing more than an annoyance akin to Cliff Racers after a certain point. Fortunately since I own it on PC mods have largely solved the ease of difficulty problems.

I actually LIKE when games don't scale because it gives me a true sense of a lived in world and enemies where they make sense. Obviously nobody wants to fight a level 50 rat unless it's an Undead Rat God, so generally most intelligent level scaling just replaces weaker enemies with stronger ones, but then this means that what was a rat hole is suddenly an orc camp, or is suddenly a demon's nest. It break the immersion when you don't really tailor the environments to their hosts. It becomes particularly aggravating when suddenly you no longer have rats, wolves, or common leather wearing bandits anymore because they all suddenly got eaten by minotaurs and ogres, and all the leather wearing bandits became wealthy enough to afford Gold plated armor... but still want to toll you for a measly 100 coins.

I also hate item scaling with a passion, and this is something that carries over from MMOs, how you can do a massive quest chain that feels epic that takes a long time and you get rewarded with an awesome epic item that suddenly becomes obsolete in a few levels because it was scaled to your current level. I would be alright with this IF there were additional means of improving the item to 're-scale' it to your level. I'm surprised no MMO ever did this, instead of just replacing epic gear with epic gear, why not an option to give you some kind of magical orb that you can use on your existing gear that upscales it?

Enemies should be placed where they make sense. I don't have too much to complain about the level scaling in Skyrim to be honest, but it still doesn't feel quite right when every undead nord I wake up suddenly is an overlord who gets into a mass shouting match with me just because I saved their dungeon for much later.

I much prefer tiered content that makes sense, and preferably the kind that makes minimal use of reskins to challenge me or at least does so intelligently (Final Fantasy XII did it quite well in my opinion)

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I would prefer if developers simply just made everything scale to you

This is something I don't like as a concept at all. For me, if you have levels in your game, you shouldn't be levelling the enemies automatically too - it's sort of defeating the purpose of having levels in the first place. However, if you don't have levels in the game, but some other means of progression, then go ahead.

I wouldn't even mind if RPGs removed stat increases completely. To me, an RPG is about getting new abilities/skills/feats/spells/moves/etc. that allow for more options in combat and new strategies along with tailoring your character build properly to stack certain bonuses. I really hate when RPGs fall into the trap of just increasing stats as you level and you can't fight certain enemies just because your strength stat is too low and you can't deal enough damage and/or your defense stat is too low and you can't block or take any hits. Dark Souls falls into that trap for me. I understand wanting to go back to the first areas and be able to easily kill those first enemies you faced at the start so maybe pass that damage increase almost purely to the weapons instead of your character stats. RPGs just so oftenly piss me off because you really have to find a balance of doing a certain number of quests or else you end up underpowered or overpowered, that just shouldn't be part of the game. Both Borderlands are just a pain to play through to get a proper challenge for example. Any method that accomplishes giving a consistent challenge is fine with me, leveling scaling just seems like the simplest solution, probably not the best though.

 

[Denamic]

So in the big Kingdoms of Amalur thread there's loads of people bashing the fact they there is no level scaling in the game, forcing a grind

Wait, hold on. That's simply not true. The game is grindy as hell, that is true, but only if you do sidequests, which aremany, long as hell, requires a lot of running around, and killing a lot of enemies that barely give XP. But by no means does the game force a grind. You can just do the main quest without ever killing more enemies than the ones you encounter. Hell, sneak past them if you want to. It's not a very challenging game.

Personally, I enjoy SOME scaling, but it really depends on the game and how it's handled. I love the lack thereof in Dark Souls, but I also like the way it's handled in Skyrim, where initially weak enemies like bandits get stronger, but not to the point where they run around with Daedric gear, like in Oblivion. It's even better with mods like SkyRe along with Locational Damage where ALL enemies are actual threats if you're not careful, while you still get a sense of progression.

I also adore the Disgaea games and how it handles scaling. You actually have full control of how strong enemies are. You can make them so strong you couldn't possibly defeat them, or go for a cakewalk where nothing can possibly damage you. The system makes it fun to push your limits to the extreme. Like defeating this guy: http://i5.minus.com/iq4eiv8jHm6up.jpg

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I much prefer having enemies at fixed levels throughout the game (as in, first enemies are level one, then later you find enemies level 50 type of thing), because as someone said, scaling enemies defeat the purpose of levelling up (I'm looking at you Dead Island). For those saying you don't get enough of a challenge if enemies don't scale, there's always the possibility of not levelling up any more than necessary. If enemies are still too weak then, then it's the developers' fault.

I also adore the Disgaea games and how it handles scaling. You actually have full control of how strong enemies are. You can make them so strong you couldn't possibly defeat them, or go for a cakewalk where nothing can possibly damage you. The system makes it fun to push your limits to the extreme. Like defeating this guy: http://i5.minus.com/iq4eiv8jHm6up.jpg

And yes, the Disgaea games have the best scaling ever.

 

[Alssadar]

I beat the entire game of STALKER, SoC, and walked confidently into the Cordon, the starting area.
Feeling a bit arrogant with my accomplishments, I proudly walking into the small bandit village of 5 guys, the very first combat zone--I've easily taken on far more experienced foes with less cover.
And then I got shot in the head and died instantaneously. And I laughed for a few minutes.

Whilst there are no levels, you do gain new weapons, and IRL experience (Tactics, strategies, et cetera), but the difficulty never changes. You can always die to a few bullets, no matter how far in the game you are. In all matter of terms, I would call that scaling, and I am fine with that. As "experience" is determined on how smart you play, I am fine with scaling like that.
But for scaling when combat is only determined by specific stats, leveling up, and whose turn it is to attack: I don't like scaling. It makes the level up lose its edge.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Yes, so long as it is done correctly.
OP mentions Morrowind as not having level scaling.
This is incorrect, Morrowind does infact have level scaling, however it is done in such a way that doesn't stand out or interfere with the game.

Here is how level scaling in Morrowind works

First of all, Not all enemy spawns are level dependent. So some creatures will always be at the same spawn.
Second, Level dependent spawns do not change after their maximum level has been reached.

When a creature is level scaled, it's picked out of a short list of around 5 different creatures. Each creature is set to appear at the spawn point depending on what level the player character is.

You may encounter multiple versions of the same leveled list...

so if level list A is:
Creature 1 = level 0
Creature 2 = level 5
Creature 3 = level 10

And Level list B is:
Creature 1 = level 5
Creature 2 = level 10
Creature 3 = level 15

... so at level 10 you will encounter both Creature 2 & 3.

In Oblivion, they seemed to abandon this to the point where you will be attacked by hordes Minotaurs every time you leave town.

Oblivion's way of doing it basically says "oh your level 15? heres a level 15 enemy that seems fair"

With Morrowind, you can encounter pretty much any enemy from the get go, meaning that in order to progress you actually have to be good at the game. And because by the end of the game you will have left all the enemies in the dust in terms of stats, you will feel like the power house demigod that you are.

As convoluted and irrelevant as all my posts are, my two cents are in here... somewhere

 

[krazykidd]

I don't like level scaling . What i like is when the main story requires little grind , but allows you to if you want to , and extra content that require a little to a moderate amount of grind ( kind of like SMT games).

Heavy grind should be reserved for MMOs and blizzard games.

 

[Lawnmooer]

It depends...

If it's done right, then it's awesome - It allows you to have something good to fight against no matter what you do (If you do all the side quests, if you grind for a certain rare item etc that will end up with a higher than average level character) which stops games from becoming boring due to ease. It also means that you can keep practising combos and such without things becoming cannon fodder that die in one hit.

If it's done poorly, then it's frustrating and can make a game become dull - For example, Skyrim's level scaling seems to just equate to "Give everything a billion health" meaning things just take forever to kill, rather than actually being a challenge (Though that said, how hard can a game be when you can just chug like 50 health potions instantly, especially as they can be easily obtained en masse) on the other end of the spectrum, there's the issue that overleveling causes, namely that mobs become grey and give little to no rewards and are so mindnumbingly simple to kill that enemies just become an annoyance to get past rather than an actual foe to battle.

KoA, does have level scaling, but only in the instanced dungeons (Similar to some MMO's such as CoX) which means that the MANY quests you have in each area cause you to outlevel the open parts of a zone and thus means that a lot of the quests (Most quests didn't involve instanced areas and took place in the open world) became tedious. Which is different to Skyrim, as Skyrim had all enemies scale with levels but in a way where instead of offering a challenge, it just meant that you sat around forever whacking away at enemies (That is unless you maxed your Blacksmithing and made a Legendary weapon that does stupid amounts of damage and/or maxed stealth and have the x15 crits)

I do slightly prefer level scaling to linear progression where you are always the same level whenever you get to a point... But that tends to be because I favour the more free-roaming RPG's. I also detest the JRPG style linear, but requires large amounts of grinding systems (Except for Disgaea, which I ended up doing a lot of grinding in to experience the non-story content)

 

[Zen Bard]

In most RPGs, the player almost always is a "Chosen One" type character. So a well-designed RPG should give that character a sense of growth throughout the game.

Starting out, the player should feel the world is a menacing and dangerous place. Whereas once higher levels are obtained, the character should be epic and almost godlike. That is the typical path of the "Hero's Journey", which is usually the archetype of most RPGs.

As others have said, "Morrowind" did this extremely well.

I had a wonderful experience where, as a low level character, I stumbled into a Daedric shrine and narrowly escaped with my life. I depleted all my health and magicka potions just trying to get out the door and run.

Several game days and many levels later, I found that same shrine and dispatched the Daedra guarding it with single blow.

That was an incredibly satisfying feeling. And it made perfect sense in the context of the game universe.

Compare that to "Oblivion" where, after closing all the Oblivion gates and destroying Mehrunes Dagon, I encountered a Khajit Bandit with armor and weapons almost as good as mine. I mean, if the bandits are so tough...why didn't they stop the Oblivion Crisis?

 

[Snotnarok]

No, I don't like level scaling and it's not because it adds grind, it's because otherwise the world is babying you.
Really think about it a game that lets you go anywhere like Fallout 3 is NOT what the games goal is to be an oppressive survival RPG in a wasteland, the game babies you to the point where nothing is a challenge.
Play New Vegas and go north, you will die and after all the warnings it's your fault. New Vegas didn't baby you, if you wandered into an area and found a death claw at level 5 you knew you were screwed and your options were run or run. That's what made it fun, an area to explore but you had to work your way up to be able to do so. Otherwise there's no sense of scale it's just oh no, a new enemy, guess I'm ready for this guy!
No, you should run into people who can rip your face off and you need to learn to when to fight or run, or if you have the skills and the items you can work on wearing the enemy down yourself and man what a thrill that can be.

Level scaling just ensures the game is always at a sort of middle ground of difficulty and will never aim to challenge or put obstacles in the way and that makes it easy, boring and bland.

 

[laggyteabag]

Im a big fan of level scaling, in Guild Wars 2 for example if you go into a level 80 zone when you are level 1, all of the enemies will be level 80, but if you are level 80 and you go into a level 1 zone you will be scaled (but your gear will still carry over) to be able to fight the enemies and have them be a challenge instead of walking around instakilling everything. Its a pretty good system as it allows a high level character to be able to experience much lower level areas and still have it be a challenge.

I also feel like I'm the only one around here who actually likes the scaling system in Oblivion. Once again It seems fairly pointless to run around fighting enemies that are a much lower level than you which just you can just one-hit-kill. Its a waste of time. Sure there were some odd moments in it where you would come across a bandit wearing high quality armour, but at least it didn't waste your time with pointless enemies and it actually gave you some loot of value (Looking at you Skyrim).

I get why people would like to level up and feel like they are getting more powerful, but to me it only really results in useless enemies and grinding. It just seems silly to me that you can accept a quest where, for example, there is a mighty warrior who has never been defeated in battle and you can just walk up to him and take him down without so much as a real fight just because there is some arbitrary number that says that you should be able to do so.

TL;DR: The moral of this story is that lower level enemies scaling up = Yes, higher level enemies scaling down = Nope.

 

[BarkBarker]

I want the game to provide enemies that don't scale so I can go back and push around THAT ONE FUCKING BOSS that gave me trouble, nothing like revisiting the early mission in monster hunter tri and killing a great jaggi in perma lock under 5 minutes, HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NAWWWWWW!!!!! I want a progressive level of challenge, if people wanna sit around grinding shit enemies, that is them, the way they play is for THEIR experience, don't fuck with mine because you don't approve of their obsessive nature, of course if the game system isn't allowing me to break into harder level enemies because the system is too numerical rather than skill based, that is your fault as a designer, if I wanted to play a game purely on the calculator I would go play a game that is 100% NUMBERSSSSSS so that I know nothing that fucks up is my fault.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Level scaling is one of those mechanics that isn't inherently good or bad, it depends on the game and how it's used. However, most of the time, I like a sort of partially scaled system, such as the one used in Morrowind, where most enemies aren't scaled, but the generic monsters you encounter while just running around will slowly be replaced by more powerful ones.

Another system that could work is where most of the main story is level scaled, but the stuff outside the main story isn't. This would mean you would still get meaningful progression, because you would be able to tackle side quests that you couldn't before, but you wouldn't dramatically overlevel the main story, and the people that don't care about side content wouldn't be screwed over.

Overall, level scaling is a mechanic that can improve a game, but only if it's used very intelligently.

 

[karloss01]

I would go with a hybrid version where enemies are at a fixed state until you get like two levels close to theirs to a fixed point then they cap at a level.

for example an enemy is lvl 20 until you reach 19, then they move to 21 and keep going till 25 at which point you start to overcome them and then move on to a larger leveled enemies. Borderlands 2 has a similar leveling in Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (except instead of a single level difference it can go to 4/5)

 

[Gizmo1990]

I like the way Lost Odyssey did it. Enemies stay at the same difficulty in each area, each area has harder enemies but their is also a level cap in each area. For example one of the the first areas you cannot go past level 17. It makes boss abttles always fun as I tend to overlevel in is rpgs, jrpgs especially.

 

[sumanoskae]

Level scaling is unnecessary. There are many ways to ensure that a game remains challenging that are less contrived. One option is to simply make it clear which areas of the world are unsafe and make sure those areas are off the beaten path.

You could also refrain from just placing super monsters throughout the world and dream up some reason for the strongest enemies in the game to only become interested in you when you become strong.

Another thing more developers should do is pay more attention to the difference between "Scale" and "Kind". Instead of just making everybody's health and DPS higher, create encounters that involve different enemies who previously were never together, and in some way symbiotically interact. Example: Enemy A is fast but deals low damage against armor, and enemy B has an ability that weakens armor. This is not only more natural it's also more interesting.

One of the primary joys of RPG's is growing stronger, and if there's no evidence that you've improved outside of your character sheet, it undercuts that feeling. Simply scaling enemies upwards results in the player effectively engaging in the same encounter over and over again.