Level Scaling: All, crit path only or none? Thoughts?

[Gregorovitch]

So my first PoE run I was L12 by the time I arrived at Twin Elms and just finished the game ASAP at that point. White March run was the same really except higher level. So I never really did everything there was to do in Twin Elms 'cos no point really.

 

So now I see a picture on game options offering level scaling at none/crit path/all. I am undecided as to which option will play the best. With Deadfire advertised as being both bigger and more open world/exploration driven that PoE I can see this deecisionm might be quite important. But I don't have much info on how level scaling works so I am unsure what to do.

 

Any more detailed info on level scaling available?

 

What level scaling option are you considering?

[Tigranes]

My vote is for better balance design, and minimal level scaling.

[Sedrefilos]

Although I don't like level scaling in games, I don't like easy critical paths either. So my take will be Scaling the critical path only. The rest of the game I want to be as difficult as the reward it's gonna give me so I don't mind if I go to level 2 area as a level 10 party if the loot doesen't scale as well. It'll be just a waste of time.

 

Also, I second Tigranes for better design over scaling.

[George_Truman]

They said there would be an upscale-only option right? I would pick upscale for "all" if thats an option

[draego]

I think we know level scaling will be in a range. It not going to scale forever like oblivion. It has a cap that once reached the creature cant get any higher. Seems fine to me.

[Daled]

Pretty sure that there is the "scale only upward" option, I'll probably upscale crit path.

[PhroX]

I'll probably go for crtical path, upsacle only. I'm not a fan of everything in the game being the right level for my charatcers - it's fun to have some stuff more difficult and some easier, it make the world feel more immersive - but I'd rather the major plot combats weren't trivialised just because I actually did all the content. I guess I can rationalise it by thinking that the big bad has been doing things that earn him experience while I've been off exploring instead of rushing to beat him ASAP....

[Sedrefilos]

Scale up only is confirmed long ago.

[Yosharian]

Never scale!  Why should I make the game more difficult when I level up?  Levelling up is supposed to make me stronger.  Part of the enjoyment for me is gaining power over my enemy by progressing in levels.

[Madscientist]

Every time i hear "level scaling" I get traumatic memories of Oblivion. After killing tons of demons I have epic battles against immortal goblins. This and the terrible german translation made me quit this game forever.

Tyranny had level scaling and it was better than Oblivion (well, its hard to get worse). But Tyranny had a strange difficulty curve. The hardest battle was end of act 1 and from then on it got easier and the bosses at the end of the game were a piece of cace.

 

For open world games I prefer the aproach of Gothic1+2 and Risen1: You can go whereever you want but most things can kill you right away. As you get stronger you can travel more and more parts of the world. Enemies do not get stronger. You get stronger and this allows you to enter areas with stronger enemies.

[SonicMage117]

Level scaling was the best thing that happened to rpg's at one point... then something happened and it got ruined (casuals intervened perhaps).

 

Glad to hear that it will only support upwards scaling... I never knew this til now.

[Wormerine]

There is:

 

1) no scaling

2) scale everything

3) scale critical path only

+

Scale up only.

 

For my first play through I am leaning towards no scaling or critical path up only. Without expansions the critical path hopefully won’t become trivial, though it all depends how sidecontent is spread.

[Night Stalker]

I am leaning towards either Scale critical path only + Scale up only or No scaling. I do like a challenge, but I also like to perform curb-stomp battles now and again if I feel I have "earned it".

[Gregorovitch]

Every time i hear "level scaling" I get traumatic memories of Oblivion. After killing tons of demons I have epic battles against immortal goblins. This and the terrible german translation made me quit this game forever.

Tyranny had level scaling and it was better than Oblivion (well, its hard to get worse). But Tyranny had a strange difficulty curve. The hardest battle was end of act 1 and from then on it got easier and the bosses at the end of the game were a piece of cace.

 

For open world games I prefer the aproach of Gothic1+2 and Risen1: You can go whereever you want but most things can kill you right away. As you get stronger you can travel more and more parts of the world. Enemies do not get stronger. You get stronger and this allows you to enter areas with stronger enemies.

 

I agree with every word of that. Except I found out about Obscuro's mod for Oblivion which fixed monster levels throughout the game, made it epic at the beginning.

 

I especially agree with Gothic 2's approach. IIRC the further you got from a road and the further that road was was from a village, town or settlement, the nastier the mosters got. That worked really well for me.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Gregorovitch

[JerekKruger]

My vote is for better balance design, and minimal level scaling.

This would be my vote too (and I imagine most people's preference) but failing that I'll do what I did on my latter PoE runs and avoid leveling until I need to. I really don't like scaling of any sort.

[wahmann1]

I favor critical path scaling. Better balance design in a game where you advance levels feels like railroading. Sometimes the "feels like" railroading is worse than being railroaded, but not feeling like it.

 

Better design is by definition better, though.

[Wormerine]

Better design is by definition better, though.

What can I say? When you are right: you are right. And you are right.

[Elkor_Alish]

The only balance I want is for villains to be made with the same system PCs are, and actually equipped with the gear they are using. No invisible buffs, no hidden enhancements, no ridiculous stat allocations or abilities not open to the PC (unless it is somehow justified and explained contextually in the game). That to me would be perfect. Don't balance their forces because of my arbitrary party restrictions, position and populate NPCs in a way which makes sense. Ideally, if I see a badass NPC, I would love to know I could copy everything about them to do it myself.

 

And no scaling. No tiered zones. High risk, high reward. Just have everything make sense. I like an element of risk in exploration, makes the game exciting, so if I decide to pillage NPC apartments and steal their poorly tended wealth and stumble upon a high level vampire sleeping through his day in a basement, that is perfectly fine by me even if losing the encounter wipes hours of progress.

[rjshae]

Completely random; some level scaling, some not. Let the player explore and find out, rather than following some heuristic.

[Tattyblue]

I never upscale anything because their is no rewards to do so, except the "challenge" which does not move me. They should have up scaling for all or none because this would be the easy way to handle it, but they really need to include some form of benefit for selecting upscale. Not xp though that just shortens the progression path, money, items, or an upscale perk would be best.

[Sedrefilos]

Completely random; some level scaling, some not. Let the player explore and find out, rather than following some heuristic.

Well, this would be the same as no level scaling since the player doesen't know the area levels beforehand

It could be an interesting option though for a second playthrough.

[Bionick]

Completely random; some level scaling, some not. Let the player explore and find out, rather than following some heuristic.

That doesn’t sound prudent to me. You could end up with paper-dragons or impossible, godlike early game encounters.

[Guest 4ward]

 

whether side quests or main quest, am hoping that only battles designed as boss battles get scale-effect, leaving the fights that lead to the tougher battles feel more like trash fights where you don‘t need most of your abilities and can beat opponents by moving/repositioning and changing targets. Boss battles IMO should be well separated from mobs, so in addition to the above you‘re dealing with changing weapons, immunities, countering, invisibility etc. I do like it how in BG2 the difficulty level is about how much damage the enemies do (with lowest difficulty being that the player party doesn‘t die). Scale-effect could have additional opponents in boss battles, with type of those opponents randomly appearing as already suggested.

[Clawdius_Talonious]

I'll be taking level scaling everywhere my first playthrough. I like to go on jaunts and explore, and will tend to be overleveled for things after bashing my face into ridiculously difficult content. Since the level scaling will only scale things up, I don't have any problem with it. I may wind up plowing through trickier fights to get worse loot, but I usually enjoy that more than smashing a significant amount of enemies to death with single hits and watching them explode into gibs.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

Encounters can also be adjusted without level scaling by adding more and/or higher tier monsters. There was a game that did it by i can't remember the name. There you had Elite monsters added to encounters besides the common weak versions to spice things up for over-leveled parties. In this way your common goblin did not suddenly reach god tier by the end of the game while encounters stayed interesting. 

Honestly, the way scaling was implemented with the White March DLC's was extremely uninspired. A text box that asks me if i want my enemies scaled ? That is very poor design in my opinion. I play RPG's mostly for immersion and that certainly did not help. I hope this is handled better in PoE 2. They should at least try to keep up appearances.