PrimeJunta

And it does. Thing is, end users -- including game players -- very often have extremely strong opinions about what {features} they want, or don't want, in a product {game}. They're usually completely wrong. Most of that 94% is wrong about level scaling. They think they want it, but they would whine like Burgundy if P:E didn't have it. Not about level scaling, naturally -- they'd never admit they were wrong about it -- but about the negative secondary consequences of not having it. The trick to software design is to observe what users do, not listen to what they say. Speaking from rather a lot of professional experience here. Indeed, I can even think of an example right here on this very thread! Edit: 10 internets sez Valorian can't stick the flounce. Any takers?

Er, Karkarov. NetHack has dedicated towns, merchants, and [safe] rest areas. Minetown has a guaranteed set of shops, a co-aligned temple with a priest is a guaranteed safe rest area, as is your quest's starting level. So by your excluding criterion, NetHack is not a roguelike.

Of course we know the majority is always right. Now, how many copies did Oblivion sell, again?

What defines a true "rogue-like." Hur. Blood has been spilled over matters less weighty than this. Speaking as an aficionado of roguelikes rather than someone with an authoritative dictionary, roguelike-ness includes features like - dungeon crawler - procedurally generated dungeon that's different on every playthrough (some fixed areas and fixed loot allowed) - single character - single player - fully turn-based - permadeath - swords & sorcery - keyboard controlled - ASCII graphics based (optional tilesets replacing characters are allowed) - open-source Purists will require all of the above. Others may feel that a game qualifies as roguelike even if it compromises on a couple of them. IMO Diablo has enough roguelike features that it can be meaningfully classified as one, although I can certainly understand why somebody might object. I think it depends partly on where you're coming from. If you're approaching it from the roguelike direction, as it were, its roguelike features are pretty obvious; OTOH if you're approaching it from the "isometric graphical cRPG" direction, maybe less so. Have you tried the Falcon's Eye mod for NetHack? You might be surprised at how "Diablo-like" it feels, although all it does is switch to tiled isometric POV and add a mouse-driven interface, with all other gameplay features intact.

Walp, we'll see when we'll see, won't we? I did find the crit path encounters in BG2 to be too easy towards the end of the game (and occasionally frustratingly hard in the early part of the game, before I figured out which ones were best to do first, i.e., NOT Firkraag), which detracted significantly from my experience. OTOH much of the optional content made up for it. Loved those liches. I do hope P:E will manage to do better, and provide interesting gameplay challenges even for later "optimized" playthroughs. I think MotB is a pretty good example of how to do it right in terms of level of combat challenge. That makes me feel pretty good about the prospects for P:E. (Of course epic-level D&D is ridiculous in many ways as it is, but that's a different matter.)

You do realize, Valorian, that I just explicitly stated that I would not like to see level scaling in optional areas? Crit-path level scaling is all I'm asking for, really. And I'm asking for it because I expect to be on a higher level than the design default once well into the game, due to my powergaming/completionist proclivities. Like it or not, they are not going to design the crit path with the assumption that you will have completed every bit of optional content all the time. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that I'm a casual gamer who can't handle the challenge and complexities of a tough cRPG. Well, you would be wrong about that. I've ascended most of the classes in NetHack {with no save-scumming or pudding farming} for crying out loud. The difference between you and me is that you appear to hold gamers who play games in other ways than you do in great disdain, whereas I believe there are many perfectly enjoyable and legit ways of enjoying the game and would like to see designers make an effort to accomodate as many of them as they can without compromising their overall vision. Why, other than general humanitarianism? Because I, just like you, am a minority of one, and I, just like you, will benefit if designers make an effort to accomodate such minorities.

Woah, what was that about stamina again, Val? Anyway, let me try to recap this discussion one more time, as compactly as I'm able: You appear to be saying that a game should be designed so that there's only one enjoyable way to play it, viz. complete all sidequests and make as effective a party as the system allows. Level scaling is bad because it accommodates players who, for whatever reason, do not play in this way. I disagree this position. It strikes me as contrary to the goals of a game explicitly designed to provide a variety of different experiences and significant replayability potential through open areas, large swathes of optional content, a large base of party members to draw from, and a complex and open character development system. What I'm sayin' is that a well-designed game -- especially a game designed to provide a variety of experiences etc. -- should accommodate multiple styles of players, and for such a game, especially if it is combat-heavy, well applied level scaling can help achieve this. I'm also saying that any style of player will benefit from this design approach: people who enjoy a combat challenge but ignore the lore will still find the deeper lore written for people who don't care for combat but love story makes a difference. I sincerely apologize if I've said something to upset you. That's not my intention. And since I only seem to be making you more upset as I go, I think it's best I drop this for now; in any case, I've said everything I have to say on the topic. Finally, what you're looking for would certainly be easy to mod in. All you'd have to do is set a switch that would scale all encounters to their maximum level, regardless of party strength.

Yes, dear. That's exactly what I'm saying. I commend you for your reading-comprehension skills.

Quite. Indubitably. I would add: neither is it a God-given right to expect that a game is designed, by default, for completionist, powergamer knerds, while making it nigh-on unplayable by knights and knoobs. What makes you more entitled to this type of design than the knoob to his easy-peasy waltz-through? Uh-huh. That's your pet strawman rearing up its golden head again. Looks like you caught yourself with your next message though. I commend you for that. Perhaps next time you'll take a deep breath before posting, hmm? Not really in a computer game without permadeath, though. You can abandon a character for whatever reason and start another or dump the whole game, naturally, but you can't really lose since dying and reloading from a save is more or less an expected part of gameplay. (From your other post:) You're still taking examples of level scaling done wrong. I.e., scaling an encounter to the precise level of your character/party. I agree, that would be boring, as it would eliminate all variability in challenge, and would make everything the same. It's precisely the kind of ham-handed brute-force thing Oblivion is infamous for, and I'm quite sure the P:E devs aren't dumb enough to do it that way. I repeat: I am totally opposed to brute-force level scaling where all encounters are scaled precisely to your level. However, there are many other ways to do it, many of which have been explored in this thread. Since you appear to have missed them and don't appear to be very interested in hearing what I have to say about them, though, I won't waste your time by exploring them more here. Anyhoo, since you didn't address any of the points I raised, I'll take that as a concession. Whatever your feelings about level scaling -- and, yes, it will be in the game -- I hope both of us will enjoy it anyway.

TLDR: Valorian: "Games should be balanced for knerds. Anyone not playing to maximize his power must suffer. Therefore, the crit path must be scaled assuming that the player has completed all optional content and carefully leveled up and optimized his party. Level scaling detracts from this and is therefore of Satan." PrimeJunta: "Games should be balanced for knights, under the assumption that they haven't been able to fully optimize their character and party and have completed a reasonable number of sidequests, but are not completionists. Judiciously used, level scaling is a tool that can be used to balance the experience even allowing for different party strength in different parts of the game. Knerds should be accommodated through higher difficulty levels." Strawman much? How is it a strawman when you said this yourself: "That without level scaling, the main quest would be so easy it's boring for the most enthusiastic players. Why wouldn't you want it scaled up to your level?" I think what you're saying I'm saying is that the crit path should be designed to be ridiculously easy no matter what. Whereas I'm actually saying that it should be designed for knights, in which case it would be ridiculously easy for knerds. If that is indeed what you're saying I'm saying, you are misrepresenting my position in order to make it easier to argue against it. Strawman. And I think that that is indeed more or less what you're saying I'm saying, based on what you're saying next. Where's the problem? Respec is confirmed. Easy difficulty is confirmed. Adventurer's Hall is confirmed. Awww, poor player - he chose a (much) less than optimal build and missed side quests because he didn't bother to explore or tried a bit harder. Let's scale the crit path to his level so he can finish this BOOK without any inconveniences. Oh, but it's not a book, it's a GAME. A game where choices matter, where you need to level-up your party to be good combatants or diplomats or sneakers or good at something. If you fail to do so you have: Respec is confirmed. Easy difficulty is confirmed. Adventurer's Hall is confirmed. And you can always backtrack and try to finish more side quests. Yup, that's the strawman again, right there. Please re-read my post defining knights and knerds, and then come back to this if you're so inclined. It would also help if you calmed down a little; things get unnecessarily complicated if you get too emotional. There you go, the same strawman again. Once again: I'm not arguing for scaling things down. I'm arguing for scaling them up. Once again: design for knights, accommodate knerds through judicious use of level scaling in selected areas of the game plus harder difficulty levels for repeat play-throughs, accomodate knoobs through easy difficulty levels. Not what you're saying I'm saying. Not talking about the main quest anymore, eh? If so, that ain't quite so either. The trouble with areas scaled to a level is that you level up when going through them. So there isn't much point in having "zones" with many more similarly leveled areas than it takes to level you up through them. Otherwise you'll have a couple of levels with approriate challenge and reward, and then many more that are boringly easy and bring no rewards. Or if you make the level spread bigger, that inverted difficulty curve again, depending on which area you stumble upon first. In other words, you want to frustrate players who aren't knerds, right? The fools must suffer! If they're not as knerdy as ME! Ooookay. And you're strongly opposed to level scaling of any form, but totally cool with the option of changing difficulty level on the fly? Oookay again, I guess. I disagree strongly. Yes, that would mean that the level scaling was done poorly. Just like it would be a slap in the face if the final boss died in one hit because you were overpowered. Either way I'd feel cheated. Doing sidequests should absolutely have an effect on the crit path, but the effect should not push it out of the band of enjoyable gaming, into frustratingly difficult or boringly easy territory. Yup, that, again, would be an example of level scaling done wrong. That does not mean it should not be done at all. The level scaling rules of thumb are pretty simple really: (1) If doing lots of sidequests makes the crit path harder to complete relative to the actual power of your party, then you've overdone it. (2) If doing lots of sidequests makes the crit path so easy the game loses its challenge, then you haven't done it enough.

Strawman much? I'm only assuming that the game is designed for players who have not played the game through yet, and therefore will inevitably make less than optimal choices through it. They'll pick less effective skill/feat/class combinations, spend their gold on less than optimal items, miss or fail sidequests. This applies to knights and first-playthrough knerds equally. In the real world, though, good game designers design games for knights, and accommodate knerds through harder difficulty levels. And, once again, in a game with a significant amount of optional content and a significant amount of openness, you will either have to have a very, very creative design, or some form of level scaling, or frustrate everybody but the small minority who happen to do stuff in the order the designer intended it -- in which case the design isn't really open at all; it's a linear design masquerading as open. Those would be "knoobs." I didn't even include them in my little parable. And I agree, designing for knoobs primarily is usually a bad idea, and that is exactly the reason behind the famous decline of cRPG's since the golden age. Good game devs do want to accommodate knoobs too, though, even ones designing primarily for knights. Difficulty levels again. "Easy" for knoobs, "Hard" for knerds, "Normal" for knights. Tell me, if you have to complete all or most of the optional content to become powerful enough to complete the main quest, in what way is the optional content optional anymore? Those would be the knoobs, yes. I agree, I don't as a general rule enjoy games designed for knoobs much either. I think devs should accomodate knoobs by putting in easy difficulty levels. It's usually pretty easy to scale down a game's difficulty so they can be happy too.

Quite. In fact, that makes the knight/knerd divide even broader, even allowing that knerds will probably play at higher difficulty. So not scaling at least some encounters up to knerd level will bore the knerds even more. I'm sure there's no way to please everybody. In a reasonably complex, partially non-linear game with some optional content and lots of character and party build options, it will always be possible to make stronger or weaker parties, and level certainly isn't all of it. However, I feel pretty strongly that not adjusting to player level at all in any way is a bit of a dead end. The game will only play really well if you happen to play it in more or less the same way whoever did the balancing played it. In which case making it open and with lots of options is kind of pointless. Just be perfectly clear, I am absolutely opposed to the braindead way Oblivion did level scaling. However, I'm quite sure the devs on P:E are smart enough not to make that mistake. There are many other ways to do it, many of which have been discussed in this very thread. Level scaling is like sugar; if you have none, your cooking options are kind of limited, but use too much, and you give everyone diabetes.

Hur. Semantics. Fun. NetHack is also only semirandom, has a finite number of levels, and has lots of constant locations, some constant objects, and two constant quests. Yet I don't think I've ever heard anyone dispute its status as roguelike. And yeah, I agree that not having permadeath is a significant point against its roguelikeness, which is why they put in Hardcore mode, I suppose. (Also, lots of people save-scum when playing roguelikes. I certainly did before I got the hang of it. Haven't in years though.)

What was wrong with the spirit eater? I loved the mechanic. Played through a few times, including one where I suppressed it as much as possible and another where I ate evvvvverything. That had me doing some truly disgustingly evil stuff. I still feel dirty thinking about it. Either way, I didn't find it hard to manage at all, on the contrary, I thought it added a lot to the game, not least a sense of urgency.

Maybe you can dual-wield two grimoires.

Erm. Merikir. I remember when Diablo came out. The buzz was all about "Dude, this is NetHack with cool graphics 'n shiznit." I played it. It was, sort of. I was a little disappointed because in terms of gameplay I thought it was actually closer to rogue than NetHack. It had scads of items, of course, but none of the really intricate and deep interactions with and between items, monsters, and the environment that make NetHack still one hell of a cool game to play.

Nah. I think it's more the opposite. That without level scaling, the main quest would be so easy it's boring for the most enthusiastic players. Why wouldn't you want it scaled up to your level? Seriously, think about it. Suppose you're trying to accommodate two types of players. Let's call them "knights" and "knerds." A "knight" will probably play the game through once. He'll make an effort at understanding the game system and making educated guesses about character building. He'll follow leads he stumbles across if they seem relevant to his interests at the time. Maybe he'll role-play a particular type of character, and choose dialog options accordingly. The knight wants an experience, perhaps an escape from the daily grind. A "knerd" will start the game maybe a dozen times to get a feel for the mechanics. Once comfortable with them, he'll try to make the most effective character and party he can. He'll meticulously scour the game for sidequests, secrets, and hidden treasures. He'll grab every optional area he can as soon as he's able. He'll manage his resources with care, in order to be able to equip the best, most situationally appropriate gear every time. Sometimes he'll even backtrack to a previous save if he feels he's made a mistake. This is because the knerd wants a challenge, to his dedication, intelligence, and endurance. Now, without level scaling, either the knerd will find the later parts of the main quest laughably easy, or the knight will find them impossibly difficult, or some unhappy compromise between the two. This is the exact opposite of what the knight and the knerd are looking for. This does not make sense to me. All you'd have is knights ragequitting because it's too hard, and/or knerds boredomquitting because it's nerfville. Granted, there is another way to approach this. You could roll level scaling into difficulty levels. "Easy" = encounters scaled to the assumption that you'll only play the main quest + 25% of optional content. "Normal," 50% of optional content. "Hard," 100% of optional content. All content scaled to match. Otherwise everything is the same. The beginning of the game would play the same way at all difficulties, but the challenge would ramp up differently from them. You might more options that let you push up or pull down the difficulty curve without affecting the angle, natch. Don't think they'd go for it this way, though; it's probably too different.

@Osvir, do you have any idea how hard it would be to write any kind of story arc that would adapt to the protagonist dying anywhere during it? Insanely hard. There are going to be enough weird story hiccups anyway in a game with free-form parts. Hell, there often are even if it's not so free-form; The Witcher's Chapter 2 for example became almost impossible to follow if you didn't do things in the "right" order. And that's a near-linear game, albeit with branches to the narrative. Most importantly, all that effort is removed from making the story with the protagonist alive richer and better. So I'd bin this idea with the roguelike dungeon and the dynamic world economy in the '...and the kitchen sink' bin. Make a great game with an exciting, branching story arc with choices and consequences and a real sense of agency, then get rid of every last bug, and then consider this kind of stuff.

The devs have stated that there will be no resurrection magic, and that the story will be centered around the main character who survives a tragic supernatural event. IOW, if the main character dies, game over. They've also stated that the main character -- or indeed any party member -- won't die in combat at normal difficulty. Instead, they'll be "maimed" if health hits zero, which is presumably a Bad Thing (due to the low availability of healing magic). Presumably only if the entire party is knocked out will it be game over. As far as I've gathered, the consequences of less than complete success in combat are something like: If the party wins the encounter anyway (last one standing is a party member): Stamina 0, health > 0: knocked out, recovery with no ill effects. Health ≤ 0: Normal difficulty: maimed. Not good. I would expect that there's some way to heal but it's not going to be easy. Expert mode: killed. Party member removed from the game. If it's the main character, game over. If the party loses (everybody knocked out/maimed/killed), I would expect that it's game over. In Trial of Iron mode, it's game really over, as you can't backtrack to a previous save. Start a new one and try again. I for one will probably start with normal (or easier, depending) difficulty and Trial of Iron, to stop myself from abusing savegames.

If they do make Forton the mentor, I hope he's more Iggy Pop than Mr. Miyagi. Looks the part too.

Sorry, Karkarov, but you're mistaken about this. There was level scaling in BG2, and it was there for the reason I stated -- the designers couldn't know how strong the party was at each quest because they could do it in any order, and had to allow for it. It was subtle, though. The fact that you didn't notice is a testament to how well it was done. They did it not by making individual enemies stronger, but by changing the composition of mobs. JES has said they intend to do it the same way in P:E. There are two opposite poles to the way you can structure a game: open-world and linear. In an open-world game, you can't know how strong the party is when it gets to a given area, but you get a sense of freedom and emergent narrative that can be really cool. In a linear game, you do know the strength of the party, but you lose that sense of freedom; the player is more like an actor following a script than a truly free agent. What you get for that loss of freedom is better-tuned combat challenges and the possibility to write richer narratives, since area progression maps to narrative progression. You can also have a hybrid design -- a linear game where the rails aren't really rails, but areas of varying difficulty. The problem with this is that if the player wanders off the rails, he'll get squashed very quick, and if he misses a low-level area early on and arrives at it at high level, neither the risks nor the rewards are going to be very exciting. This is very hard to pull off well. IMO Gothic 2 did it well, but it had a brutal early-game learning curve. You do learn if you get eaten by a shadowbeast the minute you step off the road to explore a little. So if we're talking an open design, you have basically two options: either scale the areas to the party level, or do it Gothic 2 style by designing the game as linear but without any "hard" walls, and instead railroading the player by placing appropriately scary monsters to push him where you want, and then including enough hints to keep the player from carelessly wandering into areas that'll kill him in one blow. And if you do want to make it genuinely open, then, yeah, you will need some kind of level scaling to keep things interesting. I get the feeling that when you say 'well-designed game,' you may have in mind something like Gothic 2 -- no level scaling, possibility of getting et by a shadowbeast by stepping off the path for a whizz, open world, enough hints to stop a player from accidentaly going where he shouldn't be going. If so, I'll have to disagree a bit: in my opinion, that's not 'well designed' as such; it's just one type of design among others, which comes with its own set of trade-offs. Any of these three basic types (linear, open, hybrid) can be designed well or badly. I've played good open-world games (Fallout, Fallout 2), bad open-world games (Oblivion), good linear games (Deus Ex, PS:T, The Witchers, VtM:Bloodlines), bad linear games (Neverwinter Nights, yech), good hybrids (Gothic 2), and bad hybrids (Gothic 3). I don't even have a huge preference for any of these types; they're all good if they're well designed. Each gives you a different experience.

Thanks, that's what I thought. I have some very limited martial arts experience with staves and swords, and just couldn't figure out how you could use anything like that effectively in combat.

^ What he said. It's not a horrible idea by any means, but very much in the "...and the kitchen sink" category, right with a dynamic world economy and Dwarf Fortress type free-form stronghold management. I.e., if you've done the best combat AI evar, the richest, most varied, most engaging quests in any game hitherto seen, the most beautiful, exotic, exciting, and amazing environments, the deepest, richest, most varied companion interactions, and the most perfectly animated chainmail-bikinied elf chicks, and wrung every last bug out of the thing for good measure, then yeah, sure, knock yerself out. But as it is, please use those assets for making the core game better.

Question for the weapons geeks here (out of pure curiosity), are there any real-life counterparts to those D&D double-sided weapons, or are they a pure fantasy conceit?

More like this, which is already at the point where there's gameplay footage. (Yup, backer.)