Level Scaling...

Anyone hate level scaling in American (Western) RPG games? It's when everything levels up with you (enemies, weapons, armor). I don't like level scaling at all.

Don't forget some JRPGs do that too!Yeah the mechanic is pretty dumb since if everyone levels up when you do then why even have a leveling system at all?

Depends on the game.  I find it silly in open-world games - just have some areas be very high levels and some areas not!

But more linear games like Diablo would be terrible without level scaling.  One wrong RNG drop or you spend just too long/too little time in an area and the rest of the game would be either unbeatably hard or mind-numbingly easy.

i like it in daggerfall and morrowind where it loads harder monsters from a list to suit your level, based on the area you're in, and those monsters are archetypes rather than dummy monsters with their levels, eq and stats boosted. then came oblivion and messed all that up lol

ideally rpg worlds would be concetrated enough that all the important encounters are hand placed by someone who has tested the game but yknow

Level scaling is turning a long and winding road into a hamster wheel.

I hated how it was done in Dead Island; every single zombie just went up to your level so it never felt like you were actually getting stronger, especially when some of the upgrades are just improving attack damage yet the enemies are just getting stronger anyways.

Level scaling just for the story related stuff but being set for secondary stuff is the perfect way to go IMO.

It depends on how it is executed. Better than the game devolving into afking simulator since your character doesn't just superior abilities now, even an auto-attack is serious shit for most foes too. 

I've always found level-scaling for enemies to be a lazy way of creating difficulty for the player. Rather than creating smarter or newer enemies to make that game fresh, some games just take former AIs and repurpose them to create a "stronger" enemy.

That being said, I think Diablo does a decent job, since enemies gain a bunch of abilities and shuffle things around as you level up.

I wonder if cues can be taken from Action Games, where enemies are quite smart but are balanced with fresh and maxed out builds in mind. They avoid first-order optimal strategies since you can't just get away with the same method over and over.

On Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 2:24 PM, Bauul said:

But more linear games like Diablo would be terrible without level scaling.  One wrong RNG drop or you spend just too long/too little time in an area and the rest of the game would be either unbeatably hard or mind-numbingly easy.

Which Diablo game had level scaling, if you'd like to tell me of course.

4 hours ago, SGS Man said:

I've always found level-scaling for enemies to be a lazy way of creating difficulty for the player. Rather than creating smarter or newer enemies to make that game fresh, some games just take former AIs and repurpose them to create a "stronger" enemy.

I think level scaling is part of the hand-holding in modern RPGs. Is it?

5 hours ago, The-Heretic-Assassin said:

I think level scaling is part of the hand-holding in modern RPGs. Is it?

I don’t think it’s part of the hand-holdy nature of modern RPGs. If anything, level scaling doesn’t work too well with open world, although that’s the most sensible option for enemy design.

Take Oblivion for instance. If I recall, you face ogres/trolls at level 20. However, they aren’t well balanced since you can play in so many different ways but some styles are better than others.

For open worlds in general, since the player can go anywhere they want, the enemies have to balanced in such a way so as to reduce frustration. So one solution is to use the fact that a player is assumed to level up, and scale enemies accordingly. This can have negative consequences since it is a double edged sword.

This is also the reason why lots of choice for levels / areas isn’t always a good idea, since every path has to balanced with fresh builds in mind, but the final path will always be the easiest. Open worlds by definition have several paths and RPGs have levelling systems. The two clash, so one of the viable solutions is level scaling, which has its own drawbacks.

Another solution used in games like Dragons Dogma and Breath of the Wild, is straight up difficulty / health walls. You will come across a moment where you simply cannot surpass an enemy. You barely deal damage, while the enemy kills you in a hit. This forces the player to explore / grind more to become stronger.

Diablo 3 uses both, since enemies become stronger, learn more attacks, but also become walls eventually.

I don’t consider any solution to objectively be the best, but all of them can work depending on the game.

Not a fan of level scaling. I feel it diminishes the value of a level-up, possibly to the point where you might as well get rid of the whole leveling system.

On 2/21/2018 at 2:16 PM, SOSU said:

Don't forget some JRPGs do that too!Yeah the mechanic is pretty dumb since if everyone levels up when you do then why even have a leveling system at all?

Most notably, Final Fantasy 8.

I don't hate it. I like the idea of a game being consistently challenging at all levels, and I always hated how powerful you get towards the end of any RPG. I don't really find much fun in running around and one-shotting everything, even if they used to be big bads at the beginning of the game. That's mostly cause I like to go back and clean up side content in big RPGs after I've finished the main story, and I hate when it's suddenly a cakewalk because I'm way too overleveled for that content.

With that said, it also comes across as pretty silly when enemies and the world scale their armor and weapons along with you as well. When everyone including random bandits and guards are running around in full elven and glass armors, it kinda takes away from their value and rarity a bit.

I definitely think that not every battle should be a big epic struggle, but I still like the idea that even a low level bandit could possibly kill you if you approach them too casually. I mean, in Bloodborne (which I've recently finished my first NG of), you could still die to the lowest level Yharnamites in Central Yharnam if you just stood there and didn't bother attacking, or if you were silly enough to let them gang up on you or something. By the end of that game, you are one-shotting the lowest level enemies...but I still never found myself getting too comfortable anywhere in that world.

I often see people say that with level scaling in place, you might as well just remove the leveling system altogether. Honestly I'd almost like to see an RPG without leveling, and you instead "leveled" through your adeptness at dealing with the world as you progress through it. I guess that is basically how Doom works. huh