Crit-Path Encounter Scaling - Do you want it?

[Sensuki]

Statements released by the devs is that while they are thinking of doing some Crit Path encounter scaling (or "level scaling") that they have not looked into it yet.

 

Yes, the game should be beatable without reaching max level. We're unlikely to tune the ending up for higher level characters, but we do have side content that is going to be tuned for characters at the upper limit of advancement and gear.

It’s all pretty much set from the beginning. We may—we haven’t really looked into it a lot but we might do specific encounter scaling on crit-path stuff, but we haven’t so far done anything like that.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2071423/deep-dive-with-pillars-of-eternity-project-lead-josh-sawyer-the-full-interview.html?page=3

 

The game is also quoted to be "bigger than Icewind Dale, but not quite as big as Baldur's Gate 2, but close enough" or something along those lines.

 

So the game is apparently going to be pretty big. This could create some problems for completionists (like myself) who will be over-leveled going into crit-path quests. If the encounters aren't scaled then they might be just too easy, and ultimately not very rewarding combat challenge wise.

 

This shouldn't be too much of an issue for those who don't really care for difficulty or encounter challenge, but for the upper tiers of players who are playing for that reason, among others, it probably will be. Personally I have had this problem with other games as well. Even Baldur's Gate 2.

 

I personally don't think it's needed as long as crit-path encounters on HARD are designed assuming you've done a fair bit of side content (and as a result are on par with optional side content). For other difficulties I don't really care as I'll likely never play them, so my opinion on those is not valid.

 

There've been topics on this before, but as the team is now going into the tuning phase, do you want encounter scaling? To answer that question you really need to ask yourself what you want out of those encounters relative to the difficulty setting you're going to be playing on.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Sensuki

[PrimeJunta]

That's impossible to answer without knowing a lot more about the game than we do. How big is the level difference near the endgame between a completionist and someone who mostly just followed the crit path? How big is the power difference between an optimally-tuned party and a merely somewhat sanely built one?

 

I'm not opposed to encounter scaling on principle. It worked well enough in BG2, and I trust Obs won't be ham-fisted about it. Then again an overly easy endgame won't ruin my enjoyment either; I'd rather have that frankly than an artficially inflated boss fight.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I would only want it if it's in a difficulty slider option. eg. Heart of Fury mode. Otherwise, No.

[Silent Winter]

In principle:  Depends on how they'd do it (No to 200% hp and 200% damage, but yes to adding a fampyr to the dargul horde or whatever)

 

In PoE practice:  As Prima Junta said - difficult to know how much it's needed.

There's already a level-cap (if an expansion increases that TOTSC style then the late-game encounters may also need scaling up in that style).

 

I'm likely to wander off and do optional content whenever the mood strikes me or if it's a good idea to 'check something out' rp-wise too (ultimately I want to do as much optional content as possible in a single playthrough but it's possible I'll miss something - either way I'll be reaching the level cap I think).  If I'm underlevelled for the first optional encounters but beat them and end up a little overlevelled for the next crit-path encounters, will it be a 'cakewalk' or simply 'not quite as tough' to beat?

If it's going to be merely 'not quite as tough' , then I'm fine without the need for level-scaling.  If it's going to be a 'cakewalk' , then I'd prefer some scaling.

[curryinahurry]

Leveling by chapters/ game area can be controlled by amount of content available at any one time.  We've already been told by Josh Sawyer that; a) he didn't like the BG-2 quest dumps and that b) the largest xp mine in the game, the Endless Paths, is going to outpace the leveling ability of the PC & party.  This leads me to believe that Obsidian is likely to keep quests 'level relevant' by controlling access; both in terms of when and where within the game.  I'm not sure if this is the best solution, and it may be a bummer for the people who want to take on large chunks of the Endless Paths (if not the whole thing) at one time), but it certainly helps to control over-leveling.  

 

If you add to the above, the possibility that leveling in PoE is likely to be less exponential than in the IE games, being one level above the intended crit-path encounter may not be that much of a big deal.

 

That said, there a couple of other factors to consider in this discussion that go beyond the level of the PC & party along the critical path.  the primary issue is that completionists (like myself) have a tendency to not only be over-leveled, but also to have the best loot in the game, because we've done every single quest and overturned every single rock , and rifled every single house in a given area.  Another issue comes from the fact that most completionists are likely to also take advantage of the crafting system and the stronghold system.  Once you start factoring these variable into the game, the potential for party strength of a fully optimized party could be considerably greater than for another party at the same level that isn't so outfitted.

 

In other words, power gamers and completionists tend to have an easier time, and it isn't always going to be about the relative level about the encounters.  Hopefully, playing on Hard will make for a suitable challenge.

Edited June 3, 2014 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

This leads me to believe that Obsidian is likely to keep quests 'level relevant' by controlling access; both in terms of when and where within the game.

Me too. I believe there will be a bit of Act Gating regarding optional content. But then again I also believe that access to different parts of the world are going to be act gated, such as entrance to Defiance Bay and Twin Elms.

 

The game will have acts instead of chapters, which looks like there'll be less of them overall. The game will likely be more of a controlled experience than the Baldur's Gates.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Sensuki

[Urthor]

The problem is, even if level scaling the vast majority of questing is seen as a taboo because it takes away the entire point of levelling up and improving your character, Baldur's had a big problem with a reverse difficulty curve at the end of the day. You'd definitely have to look at the structure of the game before saying "you need this," but fundamentally you need to do something to stop the endgame getting very badly tilted just because of how RPGs work.  

 

Whilst its a very classic feeling running through content in BG2 that was designed for pre chapter 2 with Chapter 6 characters, and certainly with the Dragons they designed around that phenomenon by setting you up for a revisit, the fact is it did lead to some very patchy experiences.  Even tho it's a general trend that Western RPGs don't follow the more Eastern path of providing defined "post game content," and instead let leave the hardest content to optional boss fights n dungeons that are off the critical path, it'd be much better if scaling was used along the critical path to smooth out the experience for people who went down the completionist line, and not just take the easy way out and say "you should increase the difficulty here."  

 

What'd be potentially better way to handle scenarios (in theory, obviously this isn't something that can be thrown at this stage of development) is if the critical path incorporated "stretch" goals/enemies/paths that demanded more highly geared characters.  

If you have a critical path quest that everyone does, so there's potential plot an optional way to do the quest that requires a highly leveled party, and can be shorter than a dungeon crawl or say provide the best outcome possible, that'd work.  

 

But yes on some level there should be some scaling, the critical path needs to cope with people who took the completionist line, as well as for the people who went straight to it.  I'd draw a line between saying that level content outside of it is a good and necessary thing, because that isn't true, but for the critical path yes there needs to be some leveled experiences.  

 

Preferably not just end loaded as well, its not uncommon to say "oh we'll have difficult content in the main quest for the players who've done everything, look we've got all these difficult fights," then have all those in the last 20% of the quest line.  The impact of your levelling and character improvement on your experience of the main quest has to be noticeable, but the main quest needs to juggle a balance between scaled and unscaled content, and it has to be more flexible than the rest of the game might be.     

Edited June 3, 2014 by Urthor

[Sad Panda]

Optimal design would IMO be no scaling, with critical path such that for the best outcome you do need to be very strong party by the end. Allowances should instead made in story, so that you would have to choose between doing things the easy way or doing them the right way. For example, you could avoid a difficult fight by sacrificing one of your companions. Sell out the villagers you were supposed to protect. Forego a large reward to sneak by the enemy instead. The first two examples should highlight the large bonus in terms of roleplay to this approach, as it would give the player a tangible reason to choose evil, which is how I think it should be: Those who betray and think only of themselves should have an easier time than those who try to do right by everyone.

 

Such allowances could also be imposed, similar to what Bioware did in Mass Effect 2: You can forego a lot of the content, but that will result in you being unprepapred to face what comes, and there will be casualties. ME2 was absolutely perfect for playing an over-confident would-be-hero who rushed into danger, with those who (foolishly) trusted Shepard ending up paying the price.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Sad Panda

[IndiraLightfoot]

No. I'd love to see it without any level scaling whatsoever, and preferably with no act gates either. In this regard, I much preferred BG1 to BG2 (since the former really captured that PnP D&D freedom that I love to see translated at least a bit in a CRPG format. I reckon BG2 was far too linear for my taste, and sometimes I feel nothing but disdain for cities as tiresome quest hubs as well. In BG1, the city, Baldur's Gate, was the finale. The rest was lots and lots of exciting countryside with ruins, mines and dungeons disguised as outhouses (well, often those landscapes were a bit too empty and content just stretched too thin, but still excitingly unknown and therefore something I could choose to explore in whatever order I preferred - and I am a compulsive explorer).

[Valorian]

  Of course not. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

If anything, scale it by time passed or quests completed. If the party takes the time to pull cats out of trees or delving into random dungeons, then the bandit camp they have to raid should have better equipped bandits, more recruits, and better trained personnel than if the party made a b-line for the camp right after receiving the quest.

[Infinitron]

The problem that Sensuki describes is real, and anything that makes the game harder is good in my book.

 

That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place.

 

The geometrically increasing level-up experience thresholds in AD&D were conducive to this; if most sidequests gave you relatively paltry amounts of experience, the payoff from being a completionist simply wasn't that high - their main benefit was in loot, not in experience.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Infinitron

[Linkamus]

No, I'd be very disappointed if the crit path was level scaled to any degree. Just make the abilities used by enemies dangerous to any party, regardless of their level. While levels should make your character more powerful, strategy and tactics is what should be the main deciding factor on whether or not you win or lose a battle. 

[Lephys]

If it helps the design in particular context, then yes.

[nipsen]

Coming from the perspective people tend to have when playing games such as Skyrim and Mass Effect - I think it's very easy to have the approach that level scaling is never perfect anyway (or the level system is extremely flawed, skills aren't really balanced in the first place, and never designed to be so, etc.). So you settle for either one of three options:

1. Scaling each individual encounter in such a way that it will be challenging regardless of level, where strategy and some critical event decides the battle rather than the actual combat system. Ensuring that the game is so linear that level progression and strength is always predictable makes this easier. And the game then becomes "enjoyable" and possible to complete with some challenge.

2. Letting the strength of the enemies follow a scale depending on player level, that doesn't follow the player's level system, with the escape switch that you can lower the difficulty whenever you'd like.

3. Making basic attacks powerful enough to always be effective, while adding powers and splash damage options along with bigger crowds.

 

In either case you're skipping past the idea of having a level system that was intended to make it possible for a smart player to avoid critical hits, and complete all but the most difficult and complex boss-battles without taking much damage at all. Take Dungeon Siege 3, for example. It could be played on the hardest difficulty if your party played well together, using the options in battle that you were given. And there was scaling on the encounters depending on the amount of players in the group, which I thought was a really good idea. And the difficulty worked in the way that if you played well, it didn't matter all that much how laughably underleveled or underequipped you were.

 

Basically because it wasn't based on a battle of attrition, where the enemies would be just as strong as you, but didn't have health potions. This is something you run into in d&d based games, because you're not meant to create scenarios in paper-book format where you constantly face enemy wave after enemy wave without resting or breaking up the pace. Time flows differently, and there's just not as many encounters. You skip past the things you import in certain games where the defense wears down before you actually take hit-point damage. To create that sense of fatigue that might be critical if you overextend yourself.

 

So I think that if the way the combat system in PoE works allows well rounded parties to use "cool-down" abilities and the actual combat system to deal with encounters without taking much permanent damage (they've talked about crippling and falling in battle making people injured and their abilities less effective, so they're more vulnerable and do less damage, etc.), then level-scaling isn't such a huge deal. Which meshes perfectly with how they're saying they only considered making the boss-encounters scale up for high-level players.

 

Instead the composition of the encounters and the AI is much more important.

[rjshae]

I really don't care; encounter scaling is just not a critical issue for me. There are far more important factors that determine how much I will enjoy a game.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

The problem that Sensuki describes is real, and anything that makes the game harder is good in my book.

 

That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place.

 

The geometrically increasing level-up experience thresholds in AD&D were conducive to this; if most sidequests gave you relatively paltry amounts of experience, the payoff from being a completionist simply wasn't that high - their main benefit was in loot, not in experience.

 

I like this idea. If you have side quests with paltry amounts of xp, then completionists won't be that much more powerful as people who do the crit-path. The main benefit will be loot and not xp as you've said. And with PoE being quest based and no kill xp, this makes more sense to me.

[Stun]

That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place.

In other words, minimize the rewards for people who take the time to do everything.

 

No thanks. There's already a level cap. They should just design end-game battles to be challenging for those who've reached the cap, and very difficult for those who haven't. And that's it. No need to scale anything.

 

 

The geometrically increasing level-up experience thresholds in AD&D were conducive to this; if most sidequests gave you relatively paltry amounts of experience, the payoff from being a completionist simply wasn't that high - their main benefit was in loot, not in experience.

What? The "Geometrically increasing" nature of AD&D's EXP system (whatever that means) really has nothing to do with anything. And IF or not, the video games that spawned from AD&D most certainly did NOT choose to lessen the xp payoffs of side-questing, or any other payoffs. Try playing BG2 and doing only the main questline. Your Party will be less than half as high in levels as a party who did everything. And powerwise, it won't even be that close. Edited June 4, 2014 by Stun

[Hiro Protagonist II]

In other words, minimize the rewards for people who take the time to do everything.

 

Pretty much. But you get loot! We need out loot!

 

It does seem odd though you would get great loot and hardly any xp though. You would have to get great loot to offset the paltry xp you receive. Otherwise if the loot rewards are paltry as well as the xp, then there's not much point in doing the side quests. It would be a drag.

 

examples:

 

100xp and a +1 Dagger going through all these dungeons? Boring. Not doing that again.

100xp and a +3 Sword? Okay nice loot but still a bit tedious with the paltry amount of xp.

 

We needs our Diablo loot side quests.

[Karkarov]

That's odd cause I know for a fact I have seen developer posts on this forum stating the main story would scale based on your level so it was completable even if you only do the main story.  Unless they make the really weird decision of only making things scale down and not up I am pretty sure we already have "Crit Path Scaling".  If someone is a completionist and does absolutely everything they can, has all the best gear, is max level with all characters, and has all the best abilites....  Well you are probably going to beat the game handily regardless of how the final encounters scale.

 

If you don't want the final battle to be easy try not doing absolutely everything possible before you get there I guess.  i mean the reward for doing all that work is sort of being a bad ass.  Or at least that is a good chunk of it.

[Fezvez]

I think that scaling difficulty is something necessary in games today. For me, the best example is Guild Wars 2, where doing low level content is actually relevant. It's still challenging, a bit less than if you were underleveled. And the rewards scale in proportion

 

This simple allows 90% of the content to not just be useless.

[Infinitron]

 

That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place.

In other words, minimize the rewards for people who take the time to do everything.

 

No thanks. There's already a level cap. They should just design end-game battles to be challenging for those who've reached the cap, and very difficult for those who haven't. And that's it. No need to scale anything.

 

 

So you're demanding that the game be designed for completionists, and screw the non-completionists.

 

OK, that's a legitimate demand, but prepare yourself for possible disappointment.

 

What? The "Geometrically increasing" nature of AD&D's EXP system (whatever that means) really has nothing to do with anything. 

 

 

Uh, yes it does. If it takes you twice as much experience to go from level 3 to level 4 than it does to go from level 2 to level 3, and so on for the rest of the levels, then the experience value of sidequests becomes ever more diminished as you progress through the game.

 

If I'm not mistaken, high level AD&D eventually switches to constant level-up thresholds, which is why BG2 sidequests are more valuable, as you stated. But (regardless of what experience system it will use) Pillars of Eternity isn't being modeled after the BG2 high-level experience, as you've discovered to your frustration.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Infinitron

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I'd like the end boss battle to be set in stone. Not level scaled. Maybe scale it around a level 11 character party. 

 

For instance, if you do the crit-path only and hit the boss at level 10, then it's going to be difficult but not overly difficult. If you do quite a few side quests and hit the boss at level 11, then it's the same level as you and still going to be challenging. If you're a completionist and hit at level 12 cap, then you're party is not OP. You may be slightly tougher than the boss but it's still going to be challenging.

[Sensuki]

Actually the scaling pretty much comes down to:

 

+3 per level to defenses

"+3 per level" to Accuracy (which is actually Level-1 x3) but essentially 3 per level.

 

The differences being starting bonuses, level and gear between your party and encounters.

 

Abilities and Spells do not scale at all.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Sensuki

[Valorian]

 

 

That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place.

In other words, minimize the rewards for people who take the time to do everything.

 

No thanks. There's already a level cap. They should just design end-game battles to be challenging for those who've reached the cap, and very difficult for those who haven't. And that's it. No need to scale anything.

 

 

 and screw the non-completionists.

 

 

 

Why would they be screwed if the possibility to turn down difficulty exists?

I expect 'easy' to be relatively easy even for "non-completionists".