Level scaling and its misuse

[Sacred_Path]

And what would we call side quests you do becuase you are a completionist or perhaps just becuase they are offered and seem interesting to your character?

 

 

I don't expect that there's the danger of becoming overpowered by doing a hundred fetch quests because you found them all so compelling and interesting. Not taking a jab here (I actually think fetch quests won't be frequent). Still I'd be in favor of limiting quests in such ways that you can't reap the benefits of every single one in one playthrough.

[wanderon]

I'm not against some quests being limited by faction association I just think calling questing "grinding" is an inappropriate label for a non-MMO CRPG where the devs have already taken exp for kills off the table.

[jivex5k]

I'm confused. How is having fun with playing in your own unique way(low level play) a trap? How is it preferable to go out of your way to prevent low level play?

 

Very simple. It's not "having fun playing in your own way." It's playing in a way that's not fun only because the game system rewards you for playing that way.

 

That's the problem with all degenerate mechanics, whether we're talking savegame abuse, grinding, farming, or whatever. A well-designed game should not reward such gameplay.

 

An exploitable level scaling mechanic that makes the game easier by avoiding becoming more powerful is a variant of this. It rewards degenerate gaming. Therefore it should be avoided.

 

It would be doubly Not Fun in a game like P:E where you get all or most of your experience by completing things rather than killing things, since it would reward people for avoiding content. All it would do is make speed runs easier. This would be Not Fun, because in order to be Fun, a speed run has to be a special challenge, not the easiest way to play a game.

But....you don't have to play that way if you don't like it.

No one wants the game to be super easy, except the people who will play it on super easy mode.

For the rest of us there will be a lot of difficulty options it seems.

 

Anyways... I think I know where your coming from.

I'm a bit disappointed to see the story will have level scaling, I always enjoyed not being able to kill a certain boss without going out of my way to explore and gain more experience first. The Butcher comes to mind, he would utterly destroy you, and that was truly awesome.

 

But I can see why they would do it so other players who don't like things that hard can just focus on the story.

 

Hopefully we can turn off level scaling for the story and get some truly terrifying enemies.

Edited December 18, 2012 by jivex5k

[Tamerlane]

I'm confused. How is having fun with playing in your own unique way(low level play) a trap? How is it preferable to go out of your way to prevent low level play?

 

Very simple. It's not "having fun playing in your own way." It's playing in a way that's not fun only because the game system rewards you for playing that way.

 

That's the problem with all degenerate mechanics, whether we're talking savegame abuse, grinding, farming, or whatever. A well-designed game should not reward such gameplay.

 

An exploitable level scaling mechanic that makes the game easier by avoiding becoming more powerful is a variant of this. It rewards degenerate gaming. Therefore it should be avoided.

 

It would be doubly Not Fun in a game like P:E where you get all or most of your experience by completing things rather than killing things, since it would reward people for avoiding content. All it would do is make speed runs easier. This would be Not Fun, because in order to be Fun, a speed run has to be a special challenge, not the easiest way to play a game.

But....you don't have to play that way if you don't like it.

No one wants the game to be super easy, except the people who will play it on super easy mode.

For the rest of us there will be a lot of difficulty options it seems.

 

Anyways... I think I know where your coming from.

I'm a bit disappointed to see the story will have level scaling, I always enjoyed not being able to kill a certain boss without going out of my way to explore and gain more experience first. The Butcher comes to mind, he would utterly destroy you, and that was truly awesome.

 

But I can see why they would do it so other players who don't like things that hard can just focus on the story.

 

Hopefully we can turn off level scaling for the story and get some truly terrifying enemies.

Unenjoyable and Skinner box-esque mechanics can act like angler fish for a lot of players.

 

And yeah, they've said that level scaling is mostly just for the main quest.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Tamerlane

[mstark]

I believe they've said they won't scale monster levels, but if you're higher level, an archer might become a mage, or an encounter with 4 enemies might become one with 5.

 

Can't remember where/when this was said, correct me if I'm wrong .

[Lephys]

But....you don't have to play that way if you don't like it.

 

You are absolutely correct, but actual exploitable design flaws aren't inherently known to everyone who plays the game. It's really the same principle as a bug. The developers design a system a certain way, for a certain range of challenge, or with certain limitations in place, and it just so happens that something else in the game contradicts this design. Well, maybe a player says "I have discovered this, and now I intentionally want to use it." However, it doesn't ONLY affect the people who discover it and intentionally exploit it. Just like a bug. Bugs affect those who accidentally bump into them, regardless of whether or not SOME players enjoy the effects, the effects were still not intended to be caused by the method.

 

Think of it like this: If you try to pick a difficult lock, and you break all 40 of your lockpicks (which are limited in number, and therefore finite), and you decide to reload the game from a save before you started attempting to pick the lock and try again with another 40, that's hardly any different from going out and grinding up some more gold to buy 40 more lockpicks and continue picking the lock. Sure, it's a shortcut, but some other player is never going to be affected by the fact that you CAN reload the game and reroll all 40 of those lockpick attempts. However, if backing out of lockpicking a certain way caused all your broken lockpicks to be restored to your inventory, this would completely negate the established system of finite, breakable lockpicks, which is part of the design of the game that numerous players enjoy.

 

If you want to reload all day, or set your game to Easy instead of Normal to "play your own way," then by all means, do that all day long. That doesn't affect me. But if the game suddenly switches to Easy on me when I'm trying to play on Normal, you can't say that's not a problem because some people might like the lower difficulty. It's not a matter of preventing people from playing the way they want (within the established design of the game, i.e. difficulty modes, settings, provided methods of avoiding combat, etc.). It's a matter of the game functioning according to its design and not contradicting itself.

[jivex5k]

So basically your asking for good QA, I agree.

[Sacred_Path]

I believe they've said they won't scale monster levels, but if you're higher level, an archer might become a mage, or an encounter with 4 enemies might become one with 5.

 

Can't remember where/when this was said, correct me if I'm wrong .

 

This is what will happen on a higher difficulty level.

 

Which makes me wonder why they need level scaling at all; if someone plays on easy, let him be higher in level if he grinds for it and let him kick all bosses' asses (or still get pwned - they might not be very good at the game anyway). On expert difficulty, hard fights should become very hard anyway, even if you did all side quests you could.

[ShadowTiger]

I don't think level scaling has much to do with grinding or pacing... I think those are level cap issues, see my post in that thread.

 

Level scaling is really only covers the difference between an encounter at level 1 and an encounter at level 10. Are the enemies the same, is the challenge the same, are the rewards the same?

 

I think this is really easy to figure out. It would not be the end of the world if everything was static, that is pretty much how BG 1 was (afik) and it worked great. The reason it worked great is because there were lots of challenging enemies. So if you accidentally walk into an ankheg's nest or a den of basilisk, you die horribly, you reload, and you come back leveled up with the necessary gear to survive.

 

Encounter scaling to a small degree is fine, but it does dampen the feeling of your character improving. In most RPGs, your characters are extraordinary. You are the child of Baal or one destined to save the world, save an entire plane of existence perhaps. You should be able to go back and kill people who pissed you off now that you are all high and mighty.

 

Good difficulty options helps greatly here. I would love to have a little level scaling slider, an encounter scaling slider, as well as the raw damage and health bonus sliders so that I can tweak the battles to just the right level.

 

Also, there are some creative ways to do encounter scaling. It could be simple things like, if you don't complete a certain quest, then all the bandit encounters start getting tougher. If you don't go fight the boss of a certain main story quest right away, maybe he starts recruiting body guards, or starts setting traps in his lair. It would be cool to have a little sense of urgency when we decide what order to do quests in.

 

In baldur's gate 2 there are many NPCs who claim to have urgent missions but you can wait months to do them with no penalty. This system could be a nice way to balance things out without punishing the player for managing his time badly.

Edited December 19, 2012 by ShadowTiger

[Jarrakul]

I am in favor of level scaling on nearly everything. Well, more accurately, I'm in favor of encounter scaling most of the time and level scaling on bosses. Note, here, that this doesn't mean that everything in the game has to scale to every possible level. I think everything should have a certain range of power that it varies within based on PC level (sort of like what New Vegas did, but on an encounter level rather than a per-monster level). This is especially important for bosses (which is the one area where I support individual monster scaling), who absolutely need to be scaled to maintain tension. Basically, a boss should never be easy unless you've gone massively beyond its level range (like taking on an early-game boss right before charging into the final dungeon of the game). In particular, the end boss should never, ever be easy, no matter how much you've leveled.

 

So, for example, let's say we expect people to finish the game around level 15, but some of them get to level 20. Instead of just making our final boss level 23 and calling it a day, we have him start at level 23, but if the PCs level beyond 15, he gets more powerful roughly in proportion. So, for example, if the PCs get to level 20, the boss is now level 30. Either way, he's hard. That said, it would be a mistake to make him level 15 if the PCs are level 10. The final boss is what the game builds up to, so you need for actual building up to occur.

 

Basically what I'm saying is this: bounded upscaling is good, downscaling is not.

[Valorian]

If we put on a scale the positive effects of level scaling on one side and the negative effects on the other to weight them against each other, the positive effects would be catapulted into outer space.

 

Therefore, level scaling when used, is always misused. Even if it's just sprinkled across the "main quest".

[Lephys]

If we put on a scale the positive effects of level scaling on one side and the negative effects on the other to weight them against each other, the positive effects would be catapulted into outer space.

 

Therefore, level scaling when used, is always misused. Even if it's just sprinkled across the "main quest".

 

Well, it's just one facet of the maintenance of challenge in an RPG. I agree with you, in a way, because there's not really anything mandating a situation in which level-scaling would be necessary. If you're buying lumber to build a structure, you often have to buy it in a certain size, then cut it down to the size needed. An adjustment is necessary in the length of the lumber. But, in a video game, you're creating the virtual lumber from scratch. The developers create the relation between the difficulty of the enemies and the capability of the player characters.

 

Put simply, if you want a hostile creature not to become ridiculously weak (warranting either scaling, or mandatory retirement from the rest of the progression of the game), you prevent the player from becoming "too powerful," and the enemy remains relatively powerful. It's not even a matter of "Should we really limit the player's power like that?," because it's limited no matter what. The leveling/progression system itself does that. How many hit points you get, how much damage you deal, what kinds of attacks you gain access to, how many party members you can have, how much experience you gain for things, how many tasks are available that actually grant you experience...

 

Every time you add one of these things to the scale, it's going to slump to one side or the other. So, once you get them all on there, you figure out how to shift what around, and adjust their weight to get the best balance you can. It's obviously not easy, but a balance achieved at that stage negates the need for scaling.

 

That being said, certain game design decisions prevent a good enough balance from being achieved. In a game, sometimes the figurative weight of certain gameplay elements and mathematical systems fluctuates from situation to situation, causing the scale to lurch and sway. It may stabilize itself after some time, but intelligently-implemented scaling of certain values can be used to hold that scale steadier when the things upon it fluctuate in weight between various situations.

 

The only situation that comes to mind, which I've mentioned before, is one in which an enemy plays an important part in a greater portion of your game's story than a static level rating allows them to. This forces you to either limit something like bandits to ONLY level-appropriate little chunks of your game world/story, OR introduce a "new enemy" (i.e. a different group of bandits who are magically 10 levels higher than the previous bandits you fought, whom you'll never see again), which is basically the same thing as scaling, just with prettier wrapping.

[Karkarov]

NO.

 

Deja-Vu time.

 

In a well balanced and properly made RPG the devs should know at any given moment how powerful the player is likely to be at each point in the story or when each area is first available. Thus they should tailor those encounters and those areas to that level of strength. If the player should somehow skip an area and not come back until they are much stronger so be it. They get the benefit of being able to steam roll it while feeling like bosses but realize the exp and loot was probably a little mediocre at best. Should they arrive early and decide to proceed so be it. They get to face added challenge with higher risk but the potential for greater rewards and bragging rights. If they show up at just the right time when they were intended to so be it. They get a good challenge but nothing crazy plus loot and exp that is relevant but not too high or too low.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Karkarov

[Lephys]

NO.

 

Deja-Vu time.

 

In a well balanced and properly made RPG the devs should know at any given moment how powerful the player is likely to be at each point in the story or when each area is first available. Thus they should tailor those encounters and those areas to that level of strength.

 

That's absolutely correct, but you still run into a problem when you have wide branching options. If you have 5 optional quests open up at once (as opposed to a much more linear restriction on quest/story progression), how do you make sure they're all tailored to the player's level (as they could be done in any order) without forcibly keeping the player from progressing past that level for the duration of all 5 quests OR implementing some form of scaling to some degree?

 

And if you never have multiple options like that, how do you keep the game from being too linear?

 

I don't disagree that there shouldn't be much focus on making sure it's completely and utterly impossible for the player to EVER affect the relative difficulty of a quest or challenge by going out of their way to do extra stuff and level up more. And in the case of the naturally-linear progression of the main quest (branch-possibilities included... I just mean the sequence of things, i.e. you can't battle the last boss before you deal with the bandits blocking the road to the 2nd city), you're absolutely right that those should be appropriately balanced based on the average rate that the player should have/could have progressed at the point that each subsequent section becomes accessible.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Lephys

[Gatt9]

I'm sorry I just don't get this - why in the nine hells should the devs be worried about individual gamers intentionally staying low level to make their games easier or to facilitate speed runs or for whatever other reason they choose to play THEIR game in their own manner? Why should the devs intentionally force them to play otherwise?

 

The devs -- especially JE Sawyer -- have discussed degenerate gaming at length and on multiple occasions. They do want to make it a design goal to make a game that discourages it. I agree with them. Degenerate gaming is symptomatic of a design flaw.

 

Why? Because degenerate tactics are not fun. They're repetitive, compulsive behavior. It's characterized by Skinner box mechanics: pull a lever and sometimes -- but not always -- a pellet comes out. It's quite easy to design a Skinner box that traps people. Some do it on purpose, in order to squeeze as much money out of you as possible (slot machines, MMO's). Degenerate behavior in cRPG's is accidental and benefits no-one, not the player, not the maker of the game. It's just an accidental trap that captures the player and makes him waste his time stuck in a loop.

 

Therefore, a game should be designed in a way that does not promote degenerate gaming, as far as it's feasible or possible. It may not be possible to completely eliminate it, but it is certainly possible to push it to the margins. I hope the P:E team succeeds in their effort to marginalize it.

 

This is a very problematic arguement.

 

First and foremost, it's not symptomatic of a design flaw. It's a player behavior. People who enjoy degenerate gameplay look for degenerate gameplay (And they will find it, no matter what you do, there'll be a loophole), people who enjoy "Normal" gameplay, don't look for degenerate gameplay. It's a Player Behavior, and attempting to manage the behavior of Players is a major problem.

 

Because Player's can exploit myriad things. Players can exploit experience rewards, they can exploit character creation, they can exploit vendors, etc, etc. At some point, in attempting to manage the behavior of a subset of players in a single player game, you start making sacrifices in the entertainment factor of the game trying to "Design out" any possible loophole.

 

To what gain?

 

What is the end result of doing this? If players enjoy degenerate gameplay, they're not going to find a game that strives to manage their behavior appealing, quite the opposite. The people who don't enjoy degenerate gameplay aren't going to be thrilled that a loophole they never would have seen isn't there. There's no award for the game that best manages the player's behavior, no bonus for it.

 

Sure, in a multiplayer game this is a necessary goal. In a single player game you end up comprimising fun for "Must prevent someone from exploiting in a single player game".

 

There's no positive yield from trying to design behavior management, the focus should be on designing a fun game and if someone chooses to exploit, let them. That's how they have their fun in their single player game.

 

I seriously do not understand this campaign to prevent someone from "Playing the game wrong" when it has no effect on anyone else.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Gatt9

[PrimeJunta]

This is a very problematic arguement.

 

First and foremost, it's not symptomatic of a design flaw. It's a player behavior.

 

I contend that you are wrong, and degenerate player behavior is always indicative of a design flaw in the game.

 

People who enjoy degenerate gameplay look for degenerate gameplay (And they will find it, no matter what you do, there'll be a loophole), people who enjoy "Normal" gameplay, don't look for degenerate gameplay.

 

It may not be possible to completely eliminate it in a more-than-trivial game system, but it is very possible to push it to the margins. Consider NetHack played on a server. It is possible to play degenerately, but the ways are either relatively low-impact (e.g. start-scumming), extremely labor-intensive (pudding farming), or so late-game that you've basically won the game anyway by the point you're able to do it (Death farming). By far the most enjoyable ways to play the game do not involve degenerate tactics, and the game, in general, does not reward such attempts -- i.e., there are enjoyable and "legit" ways to get the same results quicker.

 

It's a Player Behavior, and attempting to manage the behavior of Players is a major problem.

 

On the contrary, I contend that "attempting to manage the behavior of players" is implicit in the very definition of game design. An well-designed game manipulates the player into doing enjoyable things. A poorly-designed game manipulates the player into doing repetitive, unenjoyable chores. Therefore, degenerate play is always indicative of a design flaw.

 

Because Player's can exploit myriad things. Players can exploit experience rewards, they can exploit character creation, they can exploit vendors, etc, etc. At some point, in attempting to manage the behavior of a subset of players in a single player game, you start making sacrifices in the entertainment factor of the game trying to "Design out" any possible loophole.

 

You're approaching this from the wrong direction. It would probably be pointless to try to design out exploits that are deeply embedded in an existing system -- for example, any attempt at making AD&D 2e un-exploitable is probably doomed to failure. However, when designing a new game, the decision to put in any mechanic should always be accompanied with questioning, "Is this mechanic or feature exploitable for degenerate gaming? If so, how could we change it to avoid that? If we can't, does the mechanic really add so much enjoyment that it's worth paying the price in exploitability?"

[PrimeJunta]

NO.

 

Deja-Vu time.

 

In a well balanced and properly made RPG the devs should know at any given moment how powerful the player is likely to be at each point in the story or when each area is first available. Thus they should tailor those encounters and those areas to that level of strength. If the player should somehow skip an area and not come back until they are much stronger so be it. They get the benefit of being able to steam roll it while feeling like bosses but realize the exp and loot was probably a little mediocre at best. Should they arrive early and decide to proceed so be it. They get to face added challenge with higher risk but the potential for greater rewards and bragging rights. If they show up at just the right time when they were intended to so be it. They get a good challenge but nothing crazy plus loot and exp that is relevant but not too high or too low.

 

This implies a linear area progression. One of the nice things about e.g. the Fallouts and BG2 was that the early to mid-game was not linear; all areas were accessible from the get-go. This means that the dev can't know how powerful the party is when they first enter an area. I for one prefer Fallout-type worlds to, say, Witcher type worlds, and would be a bit disappointed if P:E ended up linear.

[jivex5k]

What the heck is degenerate gaming?

[PrimeJunta]

A degenerate strategy is a way of playing a game that takes advantage of a weakness in the game design, so that the play strategy guarantees success.

 

"Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals," Page 271 and on.

[Somna]

I think level scaling is potentially good when you mix it in with other things.

 

For example, let's say you have to gather three parts to create an item to advance the plot and they can be done in any order. It could be implemented like this:

 

The first choice should be business as usual, you go to the location and get the part you need.

 

The second choice can throw in the fact that there is an opposing faction who is ALSO gathering these parts, and introduces the party to an opposing party that is level scaled to you (because they're overcoming the same challenges the party is). This would probably change the general layout as I'd expect either the opposing party (or you!) to be setting traps to slow down the others.

 

The remaining choice then depends on the result of the 2nd choice. If you failed to get the 2nd part, it has you going to that opposing (level scaled) party's base instead of the third item's normal location -- because the opposing party already cleared the original 3rd part area out while you picked your first part. On the other hand, if you were successful in getting the last part, the opposing (level scaled) party actually assaults the location where your parts are stored instead and they fight on your turf instead.

[Adhin]

TES level scaling in Morrowind and Oblivion was an issue not because of the actual level scaling per-say. Though bandits in glass armor was an immersion breaker. The real issue, and Skyrim has this issue to some extent but in reverse was you could stay lvl 1-2 or whatever in Oblivion by taking skills you weren't going to actually use. Plan to play a Warrior? Take a bunch of magic skills you wont actually use, you can still max out all the warrior skills, it'll take a bit longer, but your level wont go up but you'll be a super crazy master with your chosen combat style. Then you could use the magic stuff to train lvls at your own pace and ultimately it just let you exploit there horrible lvl scaling system.

 

Encounters changing with numbers and/or harder variants isn't the same thing, and ultimately I don't feel is to bad. Bosses generally don't count for that and the boss wont be a super low lvl. Probably be made a good challenge if all you did was the main story and add helpers beyond that if your a higher level. The main quest can also account for 60-70% of the XP thus controlling the general level of players through out the overall story and allow a lot of side stuff not to interfere to much, but still allow that few bonus levels to show for your extra work.

 

Ultimately, BG2 and the infinity engine games did this to a small extent and it worked great. The real issue with TES, vs infinity engine games was TES had to free roam of a leveling system that 'still' used a leveling system along with it. That was one of the major changes with Skyrim and, for the most part, fixes those issues. It has other failings, generally not sticking to 1 thing till your 20-ish will lead you to sucking hard with difficult enemies later on. It really kills you for being a jack of all trades early but allows it as later growth if your careful. But there's no real way to 'game' the system to allow you to be low lvl but be functionally a master badass at it all like Oblivions poorly thought out system did.

 

I highly doubt PE will have this issue, none of there games really have had that issue in the past, and while they never had the issues they've noted them being an issue in said other games and worked well on that in New Vegas as there most recent example.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Adhin

[Utukka]

If I remember correctly, they're controlling the encounters you face hence they control the XP you get hence they WILL know roughly what level you will be at by the time you reach "x" area. For example

 

Boss 1 = Level 5. If you don't do sidequests, you reach him at lvl 4, if you do sidequests, you reach him at level 5. Now that might make some feel the "need" to do the sidequests as to godforbid, not have a "disadvantage". The question then becomes, is the loot from the sidequests and the potential lore worth enough of a reward for sidequests or is exp ontop of the spoils too much?

 

"Grinding" or "overleveling" is only an "issue" in a game like Diablo 2 where you can just repeatably do the same area over and over and over. Again, IF I remember correctly, Obsidian will not be supporting endless tristram/arcane sanctuary runs so level "scaling" etc will not even be an issue because the level of power is already hand placed and paced.

 

As for this:

That's absolutely correct, but you still run into a problem when you have wide branching options. If you have 5 optional quests open up at once (as opposed to a much more linear restriction on quest/story progression), how do you make sure they're all tailored to the player's level (as they could be done in any order) without forcibly keeping the player from progressing past that level for the duration of all 5 quests OR implementing some form of scaling to some degree?

 

And if you never have multiple options like that, how do you keep the game from being too linear?

 

Who says you have to gain a level at each quest or none at all? Perhaps they place this at a point in the game where you only gain 1 or 2 levels by the end of them but the creatures strength is roughly equivalent throughout with varied abilities where the point of this part of the game is focused more on lore, loot, environmental challenges, and challenging the abilities in which you've selected thus far rather than going from lvl 15 to lvl 25. For example:

 

Quest 1 you might be fighting hordes of undead so it might be easier for a cleric or priest or someone specialized in blunt weapons.

Quest 2 might be against a thieves guild so it would be more beneficial to have someone good at detecting/removing traps.

Quest 3 could be settling a dispute between 2 military powers so it would be easier for someone who excels in diplomacy.

Quest 4 could be having to fight in narrow corridors where it's more 1 on 1/hand to hand combat so your party needs to be stronger individually

Quest 5 could be against "swarm" creatures where you have to fight larger numbers and have to fight tactically to not be surrounded/overwhelmed

 

Levels start to become less consequential when they factor in skillsets and "environmental challenges" further. The question then becomes, is their multiple ways to complete the quest and what's the impact of the choices you've made?

Edited December 24, 2012 by Utukka

[Karkarov]

NO.

 

Deja-Vu time.

 

In a well balanced and properly made RPG the devs should know at any given moment how powerful the player is likely to be at each point in the story or when each area is first available. Thus they should tailor those encounters and those areas to that level of strength. If the player should somehow skip an area and not come back until they are much stronger so be it. They get the benefit of being able to steam roll it while feeling like bosses but realize the exp and loot was probably a little mediocre at best. Should they arrive early and decide to proceed so be it. They get to face added challenge with higher risk but the potential for greater rewards and bragging rights. If they show up at just the right time when they were intended to so be it. They get a good challenge but nothing crazy plus loot and exp that is relevant but not too high or too low.

 

This implies a linear area progression. One of the nice things about e.g. the Fallouts and BG2 was that the early to mid-game was not linear; all areas were accessible from the get-go. This means that the dev can't know how powerful the party is when they first enter an area. I for one prefer Fallout-type worlds to, say, Witcher type worlds, and would be a bit disappointed if P:E ended up linear.

 

Junta you say this like BG2 wasn't designed just how I described? There was no scaling in that game. You guys seem to be mistaking good game design for linearity. Being linear means you have to go from point A to point B and there are few to no options on how to travel that route. What I am suggesting is "Make encounters in area X this strong, and no matter when the player shows up this is what you get in area X". You should show up before you are ready, you could show up after, you could show up at the perfect time, you might not show up at all.

 

Fallout New Vegas on the other hand is this.... no matter what I do or where I go the enemies will always be based on how strong I am with a few exceptions. That pretty much sucks. It prevents me from ever really walking into an un-winnable encounter. It prevents me from ever having a truly hard fight that I can beat with good play. It prevents me from ever just going back to that old bandit fort that spanked me like a monkey way back when and absolutely laying waste to the place and getting bloody revenge. In short. It isn't as fun and it isn't believable.

[Adhin]

New Vegas had generally little scaling. It has encounter scaling like BG, though bit more broad and some areas where completely cut off at early lvls due to monster lvls.

 

-edit-

Last game I can think of that had heavy level scaling was Oblivion. Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas didn't have any and used encounter scaling in some areas. NV had an extremely small amount of it comparatively.

Edited December 25, 2012 by Adhin

[PrimeJunta]

Junta you say this like BG2 wasn't designed just how I described? There was no scaling in that game.

 

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.