Poll: Level scaling, yes or no?

[Guitarmasterx7]

I don't like level scaling ever. The game should start throwing bigger and harder stuff at you but I think the requirement for that should be game progress, not leveling up. For example, you do a quest that should be average difficulty for a level 20 character and piss off a clan of assassins, so now periodically you will be ambushed by level 20 assassins.

 

[zzkill]

The most obvious situation of level scaling I encountered is in Guild Wars 2 even thought it's reversed, and I don't like it. How the hell does it make sense that I, Uber-Badass Archmage of the Universe, Lord of the Multiverse, Killer of Dragons and Gods, can't kill by myself some giant worm that I hunted in a group when I began my journey some years back? Sure, I have all the skillz, but where is my powah and supremacy?

 

[Evonisia]

Level Scaling is where enemies get stronger as you level, isn't it?

If so, then it depends on how it's implemented. In Oblivion, for example, you need to watch how you level because going physical (melee or ranged) will result in you just being unable to progress through the game because of the ridiculous amounts of health the enemies get. The enemies also do far too much damage to you, forcing you to store about 50 healing potions for the average dungeons.

 

[Hawkeye21]

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 think Guild Wars 2 is not a very good example of level scaling, because its done TOO WELL. Any other game that comes to mind screws it up (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim), so in a sense its an exception that proves the rule. There should be areas in the game where you get your face torn off in a matter of seconds, while if you go to that area 10 hours later you can curb stomp those same enemies that gave you trouble before. It gives you an appropriate feeling of badassitude, because you took time to develop your skills and find some better weapons.

While in Oblivion you can spend 20 hours of finding and enchanting full daedric armor, only to encounter 5 bandits in full daedric demanding 12 coins to leave you alone. I simply NOPEd that game for about a year, until I found a fan-made mod that removed level scaling completely.

In Fallout 3 it manifested in enemies becoming tremendous bullet sponges, I remember needing 3 mini-nuke charges to kill a supermutant brute. Even though Fallout NV was slightly better at this, the endgame was still bonkers sometimes, with deathclaws killing my char at lev 50 (with something like 500 hp) in advanced power armor with one strike, while taking 10 consequitive shots to the face with anti-materiel rifle.

And good luck playing Skyrim if you took 20 levels by raising pickpocket, blacksmithing and enchanting. I think there was a comic-strip on this site ridiculing the very same thing.

edit: yep, found it

Spoiler

 

[DocHarley]

No. Level scaling is immersion shattering--at least for me--and while it might not exactly penalize players for exploring the world, doing side quests, and generally faffing about, it certainly diminishes one's returns when you go back to the main quest line and all the bad guys somehow advanced with you.

 

[Rack]

If you have an open world game in which levels have in impact on the power of the character then you want good level scaling, it will just flat out make the game better, much better.

It's fallen out of favour with gamers down to the myriad of ugly, overbearing, overplayed and just plain bad interpretations we've seen of late.

The thing is if it's working well you'll barely notice it at all, it took years after Oblivion brought level scaling into the limelight before people generally accepted it was even implemented in Morrowind.

Good level scaling is subtle enough that it brings all the benefits people associate with no level scaling, with the added benefit that the game isn't linear in that there's a path through the world that you have to take, but the player isn't informed what that path is.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

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.

Kerching!

Your summary is perfect and i back it 100%! Level scaling is just a cheap way of making games easier for people who shouldn't be playing games at all...and makes games boring for anyone else with skill or talent.

 

[deathzero021]

NO. i feel it's important to the concept of what the role-playing game is. The reason a leveling system exists is to gain a sense of accomplishment over the course of the game. Players want to feel real growth and the best way to express this is not with a number, but with challenge. The player should be able some freedom to roam into uncharted territory and to be torn apart limb-from-limb to experience death by a powerful foe. At the same time, they should be able to backtrack to an early area and wreak havoc upon the feeble minions. This is how the player feels powerful, "wow i really got stronger since i was last here!" and than coming back to that more difficult area later on and managing to defeat those powerful foes. This is the basics to role-playing games and any game that doesn't utilize this play style isn't much of an RPG.

Games with level-scaling defeat the purpose of leveling, they use it simply as an illusion to trick the player into thinking their level matters, they laugh in your face about all the accomplishments you have made and don't allow you the feeling of becoming powerful despite all your hard work.

I also feel it's a cheap tactic to get out of having to masterfully craft your game's world. Enemy placement and level design is very important in an RPG, it takes a lot of time and tweaking to get right, however if you use level-scaling you can completely skip that by making all areas of the game have the same enemies and simply swapping the sets from time to time. This also undermines exploration as you won't be seeing any new enemies through travel.

 

[scorptatious]

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

Agreed. The latest one in particular allows you to use the Cheat Shop to change the levels of your enemies very easily. It also allows you to adjust how much EXP, Mana, ect. you get during battle, so the Cheat Shop is great for challenge runs.

OT: I'm probably one of the few people that liked level scaling in Oblivion. The enemies remained strong but I still felt somewhat powerful. Although, it's been years since I last played that game, so maybe my tastes have changed.

 

[mirage202]

I dislike level scaling, more so in games that require backtracking or passing through the same areas constantly.

The way Borderlands does it works quite well imo. When you are in an area it's level appropriate, when you have to pass through that same area again then you can just mow down anything and be on your way. I personally hate it when passing through an area if you are constantly forced to stop and deal with the same threat you have dealt with 20 times already.

Frustrating and pointless.

 

[Someone Depressing]

The fact that Oblivion took the fun out of increasing your capabilities... it made the game so much lesser.

On the other hand, it can be done well. It can also help give you an image of a constantly growing world, and make everything more challenging and rewarding in the long run.

It's a very delicate balance. Or, lower leveled monsters scale up to match you, but higher level monsters stay the same. For example, in Oblivion, everything scaled with you. So, while gaurds are around ~30 at the start of the game, they get 1.5-ish levels when you level up. So eventually, they'll be able to murder pretty much any monster in a matter of seconds. That's a bad choice. That's a very bad design choice. It's hilarious, spawning a gaurd into a really tough boss's room and watching the boss being slaughtered while the gaurd in question is yelling its one or two pre-recorded lines.

But seriously, it's never done well, it seems.

 

[MammothBlade]

I like the enemies to get more challenging and more dangerous over the course of the game. At the same time, the player character should gain more 'powerful' items, abilities, and skills to counteract tougher monsters. A skilled or creative player can use these to their advantage, and will indeed improve. Those incapable of adapting will find themselves unable to continue on normal difficulty. I like difficulty scaling to be 100% skill-based, and not depending on how much time a player has spent grinding.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

I liked the system Morrowind used: NPCs have fixed levels, while monsters generated in dungeons scale according to your level when you enter (dungeons reset every 3 days IIRC).

However, linear scaling like the one used in its sequel, Oblivion, is horrible and should never be used in another game.

So it depends on the game and how exactly it's implemented.

Winning comment here. Scaling just penalizes the gamer. Morrorwind is tough to begin with but you soon become super powerful. An that feels great. In Oblivion there was no reason to level, it didnt benefit you. Could complete the whole game at level 1.

 

[Vivi22]

Level scaling is fine if you don't really care about game balance. I guess it's okay in open world RPG's some of the time, but even then I think it's more of a band-aid on the issue of game balance rather than an actual solution to the question of what to do when the player can do anything in any order.

 

[ShrimpMania]

I hated level scaling in any game I noticed it in. Oblivion and Guild Wars 2 come to mind. I just don't like some noob wolf ripping my leg off in elder scrolls games.

And about GW2 which scales you instead of the enemy, I didn't like it too much. It didn't seem to scale too evenly. It felt like my hp and def was scaled waaay down maybe even lower than the area level and my attack was pretty much unaffected. Kinda ruins helping a low level friend experience(for the low level person at least).

I guess it just seems like people aren't good at making level scaling so I figure they shouldn't even try.

I just got kingdoms of amalur for my Bday a few days ago. It wasn't as fun as I remembered from the demo when I ran around in my underwear, smacking things with a giant sword but I'm still enjoying it a lot. I guess it feels a bit too easy but that's just because the monsters are all around weak, not because they need to level with you.

More games seem to fail at level scaling than ones that fail at placing strong monsters in the right places, but either one can fail. I don't really like to expect people to do a good job at things so I prefer the safer route of no scaling.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

The thing that bothers me about level scaling is that the most fun part of an rpg is building up your power and showing it off. level scaling means you never get any stronger except through new controller type abilities. things that make you do more effects or buffs or debuffs are new and fun toys to play with. but the new mega FU power bomb crater making attack you get is no better than the basic non-crater making variety. grinding up and playing with new toys is kind of the pay off. sure with level scaling there's no need to grind but there's also no ultimate goal. reaching max level is not an achievement it's a chore. most if not all the level scaled games I've played become absolute slog fests once you max out. the part that is supposed to be the most fun, breaking everything that can't become max level like you, is now a chore.

Too human I think is a perfect example of this. I know a lot of people didn't like it but for all its flaws it was pretty fun... until you maxed out. there was an enemy type that fired rockets, the number of rockets was level scaled. and once you hit max level the number of rockets and damage they did was enough to kill you outright and the spread was such that dodging wasn't really an option. and you fought 3-8 of those guys at a time. imagine fighting 8 enemies that can one hit KO you at once. now add in a buncha little miniony type enemies and at least one massive golem. it just became no fun. i'm all for taking on a zerg rush and feeling like a bad ass when that last enemy drops but once you hit max level the game became so not fun that I stopped playing.

Oblivion also had pretty crappy level scaling. one of the best things about TES games is wandering and finding random stuff. but in Oblivion the gear you came across was level scaled. so if you accidentally ran into the dungeon containing the big mega super awesome one of a kind deadric weapon/armor/spell when you were lvl 5. by the time you were level 10 that super epic rare item was useless. however if you waited until you maxed out your level and found it, you had one of the best items in the game. however, in order to max out your level it meant completing a ton of content. meaning you got a super epic rare weapon, but almost nothing to use it on.

now level scaling to a point is not such a bad thing. if you have a starting area where the guys are lvl 1-3 when you first go through, kicking them up to lvl 10 when you come back is not so bad, but being level 50 and fighting lvl 50 starting area enemies feels so frickin empty. it kinda invalidates the whole "chosen one" uniqueness of the player character

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I've been DMing Pathfinder and D&D for a couple decades now, and I tend to do non-scaling monsters and areas. Sure, I'll point players at level appropriate encounters and areas with plot hooks, but if they decide to go north to the Mountains of Madness despite being only 2nd level, they deserve to get crushed by some unspeakable horror from beyond the stars.

Similarly, I prefer video games that do the same thing. Occasionally scaling monsters up does work in games, but I feel like it kind of robs me of a sense of progression, since the monsters that were moderately challenging when I was first level continue to be a moderate challenge at level 100, which is stupid.

EDIT: Another thought is that level scaling is basically a way to allow players to do or go wherever they want in a game (video or tabletop), which can be fun, I suppose, but I find it far more rewarding as a player to have to go level up in order to be able to pass a certain area where really powerful enemies live. It means players have to actually strategize and plan things instead of mindlessly bulling through everything.