Should the player char be able to become more powerful than the most powerful NPCs?

[Troller]

Currently playing Skyrim again, and it's not challenging in the least anymore because my character has reached level 69 and can kill even the most fearsome enemies in 3 hits. When I met a dwemer guardian mech, and killed him with two arrow shots, I was thinking: should games even allow the PC to become so powerful that enemies that were intended to be hard and fearsome can be killed as easily as a fly?

 

It's especially jarring in games where you start out as a mediocre fighter at best, but end up more powerful than the greatest archmage and the most ancient creatures.

 

Wouldn't it be better to make it incredibly hard (very high XP requirements or something) to reach a level that can even compare to these enemies/NPCs, and make it completely impossible to surpass them? This would make combat with such enemies a challenge for well-prepared adventurers. It would be even better in a party-based RPG, cause it means that tactics would really matter.

Edited September 29, 2012 by Troller

[Caerdon]

I think in most games you just progress way too fast, i.e. leveling up simply has too much effect. I doesn't make sense that in a couple of weeks you can grow from an average farmer's boy into a legendary warrior able to challenge gods.

 

Same thing applies for items. For example, in Witcher 2, an ordinary steel long sword deals 8-11 damage, while Caerne, one of the best weapons, deals 50-58 damage and gives you regeneration, 4% chance for instant kills and extends the duration of blade oils. Compare this to vanilla BG1, where an ordinary long sword deals 1-8 damage while Varscona, probably the best weapon in the game, deals 4-11.

 

Yes, it's gratifying when you gain a level, improve your skills and gain better equipment, but it shouldn't be too excessive.

[TrashMan]

No, I think the way most RPGs handle power is very trite and stupid. Maybe a better word would be CRUDE.

Just buffing all stats and inflating HP. It is a very shallow represenation of skill.

 

Frankly, I'd rather the PC doesn't relaly improve that much from the begining. He gets more skills, becomes better and more flexible. But he still remain just a human that is still very vulnerable.

 

In other words, those brigands at the start of hte game - by the end one-on-one you will domiante. But they wil lstill be very dangerous and if they outnumber you they can still MURDER you.

As far as I'm concerned, if when you reach max level you can wade trough a sea of lower-lvl enemies blindfolded, the balance is all wrong.

[Troller]

I think maybe it all depends on what the developers are looking to include as challenges in the game, level scaling kinda sucks though, like in oblivion seeing common bandits with daedric armor and stuff lol

[Gyges]

I liked DAO in this way, you are skilled and powerful, but you are still at the whim of fate and have to be tactical in order to survive. If you have to use tactics to survive, you can get away with near-godmode pc's. Skyrim is, like all other ES-games an ego-fest. Pick up some mods to make it harder. Tried one with deadlier dragons, was very satisfied unto a point i reached too high a level again.

[Umberlin]

I think Gothic II was the last game I played that started out difficult, and made you work for your experience, levels and abilities . . . but even that wasn't as well done as older games. For the above poster that mentioned DA:O I just can't agree, the game gave you very little reason to be tactical in my opinion. I'll admit it tried, but it paled terribly in comparison to the oldschool games that PE is supposed to be pulling from.

[Aedelric]

This is what difficulty levels are for.

 

Find normal too easy, try hard, find hard too easy, try extreme.

[metiman]

Why are you playing Skyrim in the first place? It sucks. A good first step may be just to avoid awful games from Bethesda and Bioware. If you must play a Bethesda game play Arena or Daggerfall. If you must play a Bioware game then play BG2 or NWN.

 

Balancing is part of game design 101 and those two companies are not particularly good at any part of game design, but are especially bad at balancing. Of course FONV was also way too easy even in the beginning. So I guess it is fair point to raise. Why Obsidian decided to make FONV so easy I don't know. I did find MotB to be challenging. It must have taken me more than 50 replays before I could finally beat Okku and his army and that wasn't even at a higher than normal difficulty setting. So Obsidian does know how to balance games properly and we'll just have to hope that they do so with project eternity.

[Theobeau]

I think it may depend on the direction of the underlying narrative.

 

Two OB examples:

 

By the end of PST, the TNO in PST was an incredibly powerful fighter/thief/mage (especially the latter) with made sense as he had, by then, regained most of/all of his lost memories and with the correct play through re-integrated the memories and skills of his original and very powerful persona.

 

The character progression of BG-BG2-ToB also makes quite a lot of narrative sense. By ToB, as one of the few remaining Bhaalspawns it was very believable that the PC could dismiss a pack of brigands with minimal effort.

 

However if PE is going to be part of a series of games as suggested by numerous OBS posts, I would hope that at the end of the first the protagonist doesn't yet have the powers of a demigod, has to work up a sweat to defeat a large group of low level enemies and if he makes a tactical error face some consequences.

[Keyrock]

In other words, those brigands at the start of hte game - by the end one-on-one you will domiante. But they wil lstill be very dangerous and if they outnumber you they can still MURDER you.

As far as I'm concerned, if when you reach max level you can wade trough a sea of lower-lvl enemies blindfolded, the balance is all wrong.

I think one way to handle this is to make penalties when fighting multiple opponents steeper. The penalties can change with difficulty setting so defensive penalties for multiple opponents, flanking, and such could be relatively soft on "Easy" and downright brutal on "Hard". That way if you're playing on "Hard" even at high level being outnumbered 5 to 1 by goblins would be a fight you would go into sweating bullets, as it should be.

[Anaeme]

The kind of people lamenting how easy a Skyrim is at high levels are the very same ones who blew a gasket when a high level rat could kill them in Oblivion...

 

Be careful what you ask for because if you work hard and level up only to have the butterfly you swatted at level 1 kick your butt at level 69 you will hate the game

 

The player has to feel he has grown stronger as the game progresses. Period

 

You should be asking for enough variety of monsters to keep the game challenging at high levels without losing the increase in power a player needs to have

[Longknife]

On par with. Not stronger, not weaker, but on par. Becoming as strong as them, however, shouldn't be a walk in the park and not something that EVERY character can pull off. It's not nearly as satisfying, fulfilling or special if every character is destined to become a demi-god. However it's also kind of disheartening if no matter how strong your character gets, they cannot be the strongest. Therefore, make it possible to be on par in the sense that maybe your character has the best defense in the game but the enemy has the best offense, and make this something that only some characters are capable of.

[motorizer]

They should just avoid having huge bloated amounts of hitpoints on anybody, be it friend foe or player, its no fun whacking away at something for ages, and the late game would still have the tension that you could die or get seriously hurt at any time

Make levelling up be about gaining skills and abilities rather than hitpoints

A lot of RPGs go the pointless route of having you start of fighting 10hp enemies with a 5 damage sword and end up fighting 100hp enemies with a 50 damage sword

[Revan91]

I don't like how in many modern rpgs why quickly become almost a god-like creature, so I'd prefer a slower leveling-up in Eternity.

How much strong can the char (and companions) become I think depends on the story chosen for the game, because in the usual "save the world from the greatest threat of all time" theme it would be odd if you would do it while being not that strong (in that case, if the world is filled with stronger NPCs why wouldn't they solve the problem themselves or at least help the pc in his quest?).

Since I believe and I hope that Eternity will have a less stereotyped and more personal story, I think there won't be the need to reach god-like powers at the end of the game. Also, if they want to make sequels as they said, it would be better to limit the power-growth of the characters, so that there will still be some challenge for future installments.

[pseudonymous]

The player has to feel he has grown stronger as the game progresses. Period

 

Why? Unless they've taken the game equivalent to steroids and hit the gym to lift things up and put them down, the player shouldn't get stronger at all. In most P&P role playing games you don't get stronger, your attack rolls just get easier to make.

[Longknife]

They should just avoid having huge bloated amounts of hitpoints on anybody, be it friend foe or player, its no fun whacking away at something for ages, and the late game would still have the tension that you could die or get seriously hurt at any time

Make levelling up be about gaining skills and abilities rather than hitpoints

A lot of RPGs go the pointless route of having you start of fighting 10hp enemies with a 5 damage sword and end up fighting 100hp enemies with a 50 damage sword

 

This too. Soooooo much this. Enemies (and the player) should have better offense than defense)

 

Holy balls, I cannot for the life of me play FO3 anymore because I'm sick of the "OMGWTFBBQ TWO GIANT ALBINO RADSCORPIONS AND THREE DEATHCLAWS PLUS THE ENTIRE A-TEAM ARMED TO THE TEETH WITH ROCKET LAUNCHERS SUDDENLY ATTACK YOU!!" ADHD Michael Bay bull****. I don't expect to die to this because I've fought 20,000 fights like this before. I KNOW I'm going to win, it's just a matter of time....an annoying matter of time, considering I've only got ~2 hours to sit and enjoy my game, I REALLY wanna get this quest done, but I have to spend 5 minutes killing these bullet sponges and breaking my shotgun and assault rifle that I -JUST- repaired to full 15 minutes ago.

 

 

This simple issue can literally ruin a game.

Edited September 29, 2012 by Longknife

[rjshae]

Another approach would be to role play a character, have him or her rise to a position of relative power and wealth, choose a mate, settle down and have some children. Time in the game then moves forward until the children become young adults and you start playing again as one of the offspring. At that point there may be some calamity that thrusts the young character into an adventuring career, leaving behind your old character.

 

This would give the game built-in level limiting while allowing the tale to continue onward with a whole new character. The actual character you get would be based on your original character intermixed with the mate you select, along with some optional choices.

[TrashMan]

In other words, those brigands at the start of hte game - by the end one-on-one you will domiante. But they wil lstill be very dangerous and if they outnumber you they can still MURDER you.

As far as I'm concerned, if when you reach max level you can wade trough a sea of lower-lvl enemies blindfolded, the balance is all wrong.

I think one way to handle this is to make penalties when fighting multiple opponents steeper. The penalties can change with difficulty setting so defensive penalties for multiple opponents, flanking, and such could be relatively soft on "Easy" and downright brutal on "Hard". That way if you're playing on "Hard" even at high level being outnumbered 5 to 1 by goblins would be a fight you would go into sweating bullets, as it should be.

 

If you just don't buff HP (and add bonuses for flanking) you basicly do the same thing.

 

If you have 100HP at start and 150HP at end, then those two 100HP bandits attacking you will be a problem. You suddenly don't have the HP safey net anymore. And if weapons and items also don't scale redicolously, you also dont' have that bigh of an edge.

[Luckmann]

Definitely not; at least not without significant abuse of the game system.

 

The overwhelmingly vast majority of opponents should never become trivial. Even a group of well-armed brigands could pose a challenge to a lone knight. While the lowest of the low in the game might quickly fall out of the scope of what the player faces, they shouldn't become so trivial that fighting them becomes an afterthought or annoyance. A group of wolves is still a group of wolves, a dire wolf can still tear your head off no matter what armour you are wearing, and a dragon should be a formidable opponent whether you face it at level 10 or 20, without having to artificially increase the power of dragons to accommodate player-power inflation.

 

When it comes to HP, just.. don't increase it by levels. Just don't. It's a terrible trope. You shouldn't be able to take multiple blows to the head just because you've gained a few more levels. It's ridiculous and it's just a plain bad mechanic. Even as abstraction, it's a bad measurement of punishment taken. From the start of the game to the end of it, at the very most, a character should have doubled or maybe tripled his HP, if he invests massive amounts of efforts, chooses the right gear, etc, to achieve that.

 

Going from 8 to 208 is just idiotic.

[Troller]

The player has to feel he has grown stronger as the game progresses. Period

 

Why? Unless they've taken the game equivalent to steroids and hit the gym to lift things up and put them down, the player shouldn't get stronger at all. In most P&P role playing games you don't get stronger, your attack rolls just get easier to make.

haha the guy from the vid probably injects more stuff into his bloodstream than lifting weights

[TrashMan]

I will just quote myself from another thread:

 

 

Like attributes points only having worth if 2 are invested. STR 10 and 11 were equal. That one point had no effect and that was IMHO bad. But at least the attribute point range made sense. Not like Dragon Age, where you start wiht 15 STR and end up with 80????? That huge attribute change never made sense to me. People don't change that much physicly.

 

Or like Armor Class...which made STR fighters in heavy armor and dex fighters in light armors effectively the same. It bothered me to the point I modded BG2 and put in damage reduction to armor. The feel was quite different and I loved it.

 

And lastly, the bane of almost every game out there - HP inflation. You start with 100 HP at lvl 1 and end up with 80000 at vlv 20/50/whatever.

HP is remenant from the old days, when procesing power was a problem and simplicity was key. HP was a representation of your abiltiy to survive - it was health, doge, block, defense, parry - all in one. Yet as games and technology moved on, we now have those distinct attributes as separate. What exactly is the point of inflating HP anymore?

To get the feeling of power or improvement? I hate it. It's a cheap and simple way to represent power, but ultimately rings hollow. Power comes in many shapes and forms, so why do game developers simply stick to linerar (or exponential) increase of numbers?

Here's an idea - SKILLS. FEATS. Become more powerfull in a more realistic and sensible way.

Plenty of games have proven that HP boosts are not necessary. Best of all, this makes balancing easier. If you HP is determined only by constitution (and nothing else) than those bandits early on will never turn to be a fight you can ignore. At high levels you will be be better of course, but your main advantage isn't that you can stand in the middle of a group of 10 of them and let them hit you knowing their they can't really damage you in a meaningfull way. You dont' have a HP shield to hind behind. You have more options and abilities. One-on-one you are a death machine. But even those early bandits will be the end of you if you take them too lightly. Likewise, now those impossible encounters that oyu had to avoid early on become possible to take on (evne if difficult), cause your enemies also don't have a HP shield. And at lvl 1 you won't be a frail flower with only 8 HP that gets trashed by a rat. Your HP would be concsistant, not chanign much (if at all) during the game.

At 10HP per CON point, that's 150HP for a CON15 fighter. No bad.

 

 

Lastly, this applies to items too. No items scaling. No daggers that to 10 damage followed by daggers that do 100, followed by dagger that do 1000. No daggers that out-damage a greatsword.

And no ARTIFICIAL limitions on equipment (and no escalating requirements either). If I can credibly use an item (even if clumsily) then I should be able to equip it. If I have enough STR to wear plate mail, then I should be able to wield ANY plate mail... and also any sword.

 

Freedom and realism. Those are the two things I want the most.

Edited September 29, 2012 by TrashMan

[Jasede]

No. Next!

Edited September 29, 2012 by Jasede

[Celsius]

Of course not, silly question

[nikolokolus]

I think the real issue with leveling feeling trite and kind of stupid boils down to a couple of things. 1) Is the progression curve linear, exponential or hyperbolic (a curve that gradually flattens)? and 2) how quickly do you gain levels?

 

One of the things I thought 1st ed AD&D did really well was flattening out the hit point gains after about level 10 or so, adding just a couple of points per level at a fixed rate with no modifiers. Thus a 10th level fighter compared to a 20th might only differ by 30 hit points, The skill of the higher level fellow would be greater but he wouldn't be at double the hit points and double the damage output. The other thing that sometimes sucks about modern games is that the rewards are too quick, I know part of that is to cater to an increasingly distracted and impatient category of gamers, but it can really cheapen a sense of accomplishment.

 

If Obsidian uses a hyperbolic or logarithmic progression curve for hit points, raw power etc. and makes successive levels a little bit longer/harder to achieve it could go a long way to changing the way we perceive "levels" and the power scale.

Edited September 29, 2012 by nikolokolus

[Wirdjos]

Don't completely discount level progression and early opponents becoming weaker. One of my more memorable moments in DAO was the encounter where the opponents directly states that normal people would be foolish to challenge me. It made me feel like I'd come a long way from getting kicked around by random stragglers, like I'd accomplised something and become force to be reckoned with. That said, I'm pretty sure my overinflated ego was roughly handed to me in the very next room, so the moment really worked. While DAO is certainly not a bastion of game balance (especially after all the DLC addons), I do think this is how character progression should be handled. Let the player utterly best some early opponents and then show him the next seemingly insurmountable challenge. For the people that disagree with me, increased difficulty usually solves that problem.