Well?

But they have better loot!

Promotes laziness when it comes to enemy design since you can just scale enemies and recycle them over and over

>level 99 rats
>level 99 bats

>Be lvl 5
>Pick a fight with a lvl 99 Thundercock monster
>WWHHHHAAAT I DIED?
Its for fags like this.

Because it robs you of any sense of progress

If the system is scaled right, then your growth still exceeds the rate of their growth. You should be killing faster, as you have more abilities then when you were at level 1. The problem is mostly that instead of new enemies appearing that have new things to deal with and thus have a need for new abilities, you get the same 10 enemies. It's boring, as you go from maybe 3 hits to kill, to 1 and this is only if you have built your character right. If you haven't figured out how to build your character, then shit takes longer for little reason.

1:1 level scaling is bad, but the general concept of scaling is fine.

Part of what makes a leveling system fun is the idea of your character getting demonstrably stronger over time. If all the enemies scale up to your level, though, the sense of progression is negated. You can mitigate this a bit by giving new abilities and options over time that change the feel of combat, but you should never be in a situation where there aren’t any weak enemies left in the world

>robs you of the sense of progression
>gives you nothing in return

All of this
And especially this

niggers

It isn't.
It can be poorly done though..looking at you Oblivion.

Artificial difficulty, it's like if i fought a level 125 goblin on runescape

Depends on how it is implemented.
I didn't like it in Oblivion because it was immersion breaking to have basic bandits having daedric armor and weapons. Though Sword Coast Legends had probably the worst implementation of because it felt like you were never progressing throughout the game even when getting the highest tier versions of spells you were still doing the same ratio of damage to enemies as you did at level 1.

>make my argument/do my homework for me
fuck off

Why even have levels if it doesnt matter within the context of the game?

Because Oblivion

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ESO is incredibly bad as well. Rather than things becoming more powerful, you get weaker each level and have to get higher level items to keep your current level of power. It's a constant uphill battle and feels fucking terrible.

>entire point of an rpg is progression
>remove the point of progressing
>????

>if you want a constant level of difficulty
But aren't games supposed to get harder as you progress?

The only enemies that should scale are bosses, and it shouldn't be 1:1.

Level scaling is the singleplayer equivalent of MMR based matchmaking
Why get good if the experience is the same?

Honestly should be made into law. But its surprisingly rare.

Level scaling is just for bad developers who can't balance and pace their games properly

Level scaling is fine, just make leveling and scaling relate only to combat stats. I think I remember Oblivion scaled your level when you leveled up swimming and running. Stupid as hell, and the only game I ever played where the level scaling was bad.

>level up
>enemies get way stronger
>overall you actually end up weaker

Bad level scaling is bad.

Attached: Borderlands 2 scaling.png (770x410, 14K)

Leveling is an artificial grind. Scaling makes that more apparent and takes away the reward of getting stronger.

because it often kills any sense of progression in a game
Wow is extremely guilty of this and because they applied it to EK/Kalimdor it's quite glaring
>some defias bandit is now just as hard to kill as undead in the plaguelands/burning legion demons in the blasted lands/etc.
They also gutted leveling so that 105-120 gives you basically nothing but some stat increases, and your "power" comes from gear you grab which makes levelling pointless

then have harder enemies track the player down and weaker enemies flee or surrender.

that's WAY too much work to make work though.

Sounds like a problem with the online grind to me

This shouldnt be a thing either.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen's_race

destiny has something like this. your gear levels up, and new content expands the gear level to force you to chase it and do the content. but you can never exceed the level of old content by more than 50 or something levels.

Why? You think enemies should be scaled down to the player's level?

Ruins the point of learning the game and raising your skills. I've noticed when a game has scaling, you basically can't lose since the enemies are tailored to you and you're supposed to win.

It makes the difficulty too predictable and consistent. If we take relative level between the player and enemies as a function of game progression, a level scaling design will lead to a linear curve which is quite boring. In traditional area by area design, the player would enter a new area feeling underleveled, rise up to the area level while progressing, and then be overleveled for that area by the time they're ready to leave for the next area. If we take the relative level between player and enemy as a function of game progression for this design, we end up with a much more jagged curve where the player will sometimes be over leveled, under leveled, or at average level compared to the enemy. This has much more variety compared to always being one level behind the enemy.

The ability to grind levels throws everything off balance because your players will enter areas with potentially vast power differences.

this

I prefer having an event that makes all creatures stronger

This. Seriously. Skyrim and Fallout 3&4 would have unironically been way better if they just replaced all the RPG stuff with straight up action gameplay. Their RPG mechanics implementation is so downright terrible that it does the games more harm than good and I say that as someone who would absolutely love them to be good RPGs. But if you can't do it properly, just don't do it at all.

you do get more powerful since you usually get better skills

Play oblivion and find out

It cheapens progression in many, many ways.

Because when you're exploring the world if every enemy is tied to your level, it doesn't feel like there's "dangerous" areas and ruins exploration. Might as well fight rats for xp forever.
I knew this when I was fucking 10

Part of the appeal of leveling is to outgrow all the threats you faced at low levels. If I'm level 30 and still being two-shotted by garden variety mooks, what was the point?

>But the challenge

Yeah, the game is supposed to drive you towards NEW threats, which are MORE dangerous.

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It should be up to the player what kind of experence they want with their choice of level grinding; casuals will like to grind more to power though a tough boss/location, other players will like to underlevel for a challange. Throwing a poor scaling system just kills the replay value like that.

Laziness, no sense of growth.
You can't come back to starter region and wreck everything.

My favorite part of Path of Exile is that the enemy level cap is 83, but the player level cap is 100, and even the endgame bosses have set levels and HP values, so players can scale their build and survivability or damage way, way beyond the point at which enemies hit. You can still die, there are still tons of challenges and things that can easily kill you, but you also get to actually feel yourself outscaling everything in the game, provided you put the work in.

Whereas the enemy is also getting better HP, damage points and equipment. It's cheap and lazy.

The game should lock you out of certain places with ridiculously high level enemies until you've leveled enough to take them on, not have every location be open with the same old enemies but with a different name and comparable stats depending on your level.

Oblivion was the absolute worst for this. You'd have a simple low level dungeon but with enemies equipped in Glass equipment for fuck knows what reason.

>OP opened up his phone just to type this "reply"

It's a mechanic to keep you playing, just like unskippable cut scenes, long craft/build time, unnecessarily slow travel time are.

This does two things...

1 - create the illusion of a game being much bigger than it really is

2 - increase micro-transactions

Most mmos are like that, your character itself gets weaker as you progress and you have to rely more and more on gear and items to get the same effects you got at lower levels

>The game should lock you out of certain places with ridiculously high level enemies until you've leveled enough to take them on, not have every location be open with the same old enemies but with a different name and comparable stats depending on your level.
Morrowind had it down fine. Unnamed npc enemies were leveled relatively, but you could still meet level 20 shit at level 1. All named NPCs which included all bandits had set levels and gear. You can go anywhere you want at any time, but you'll probably get killed in a bunch of places if you don't have good combat skills. But, unlike locking everything down, keeping it open means you have more opportunities to use non-combat skills. No you can't kill a level 20 dremora at level 2, but maybe you found an invisibility scroll so you can sneak right past him and loot some shit and teleport out.

Retard
>If you don't agree with me you must agree with the exact opposite of my position!
I clearly said "either".
And it just should be a thing. rpg should be gone as a genre replaced with action or fps with rpg elements.
Because that's what you get when you remove level scaling.

It’s not bad if it’s done right, as the alternative is to have the same thing but cordoned by map areas. It becomes a problem when you upgrade items and equipment and the damage value proportions don’t change, like 3 hits to kill at level 1, 3 hits to kill at level 50. It’s also a problem when it’s done in a way that your damage is capped or scaled on weaker enemies to where you don’t gain any time on killing weaker enemies. If done correctly it can keep you from becoming overpowered for most or all of the game world, and can give the player freedom to explorer and quest areas in their own order. On the other hand, I don’t care for scaled loot at all. I want the 1% chance to find something stupid overpowered for my level that I can wear all game or most of it.

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Oblivion was uniquely and exquisitely bad, at least in the gameplay department. That doesn't necessarily damn the very concept of level scaling. After all, we don't say that NPCs shouldn't have faces or that RPGs shouldn't have dungeons "because Oblivion", do we?

It takes away the sense of progression and power from the player.

It removes or at least reduces the feeling of progress. Even if it's done in a way where it's non-linear and you still end up more powerful, having that feeling that you can absolutely curb-stomp enemies that you fought in the beginning of the game is important. I've never played a game with level scaling where I didn't wish it was removed.

Follow Up: Fix the Combat System.
GO!

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You raise an interesting point.
What are some games with well implemented level scaling?

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now that OP got BTFO you should tell a reason why scaling is good

There's nothing wrong with the combat; its functionally the same as every other entry. You could make an argument about the Junction system, but even that's fine.

SaGa series in general.

So that you can't just poke enemies to death if you just breath on them and to prevent fucking low level ganking
Fuck wpvp, bullshit cancer

Damn it I was afraid of that move. You've checkmated me.

>junction system
>good

You think having every character be a blank slate where the gamer is free to invoke their creative freedom of choice is a good thing?

I think the Junction system is pretty shit, but in terms of actual combat mechanics I'd make it so that you can no longer reroll for Limit Breaks by mashing Triangle.

I like level scaling present in say, Skyrim (although it needs mods to stay relevant past a certain point) where higher level enemies start to appear, who are visually different, wear higher armor that you can loot, etc. I don't like the Oblivion mode where your basic rat becomes level 100

If there is never anything stronger than you, then there is never a sense of hesitation or uncertainty when engaging in an encounter. You no longer have to think because you know you’re capable of defeating everything in the game

its artificial difficulty

Get rid of card mod and magic draw. Lower maximum values of junctioned stats

Replace it with triple tiad.

Shut the fuck up, Oblivion was amazing.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Because it removes any sense of RPG progression (gear, skills etc) as any enemy encounter is the same.

Aura was a mistake.

No sense of progression.
Overcoming increasingly difficult challenges is fun, especially when you can do content out of order for a challenge or an easier time
Killing a reskinned bandit+50 is boring.

But devs are lazy and retards get +1 to dopamine every time they level up so this shit isn't going anywhere.

>Fix the Combat System.
I give up.
I'd need to make a new game from scratch since nothing fucking works in this piece of shit.

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This.

What about games like Risk of Rain where the whole difficulty is based around level-scaling?

Not really, it's almost always a half-assed hack most of the time.

In theory you could have a time-based or turn-based game where you are legitimately racing opponents that are leveling on their own, independently of you. See classic 4X game "Master of Magic" for an example where this is balanced well. Most RPGs really don't want to put that kind of pressure on a player especially if they don't know it's happening.

Games like Baldur's Gate 2 do "encounter scaling" where a higher level party will wind up facing additional enemies. Instead of two clay golems you'll have two clays and an Adamantite, for example. This still feels hackish but is a slightly better way to accommodate non-linear progression. They also tend to be either-or scenarios rather than a gradual curve pegged to your level. The encounter is either X and Y, or it's X, Y, and Z. It's never X + Y * (your level).

1. Depending on how min/maxed your character is, you likely either outscale enemies so hard the mechanic basically doesn't matter anyway, or gaining levels actually makes the game harder. It's difficult to hit the sweet spot of just the right amount of scaling, and since non-scaling enemies are fine as it is, you can basically only lose.
2. It removes identity from the enemies and areas that contain them.
3. It's bad for the worldbuilding. Some enemies should be substantially tougher than the others rather than being normalized to some smaller range of power. Moreover, enemies magically growing powerful simply doesn't make sense in virtually any setting.
4. It removes structure from the game: Some structure can be and often is good. I don't think games should be railroaded, but some enemies being tougher than the others nudges the player towards path the developers might have planned, in a very organic and unintrusive manner no less.
5. It takes away emergent narrative potential. Perhaps you decide to defy said structure and venture to high-level areas anyway. Either you triumph against overwhelming odds, or get your ass kicked but come back for revenge when you're more powerful. Either way, this makes for a satisfying experience.

In a lot of counts, it's not the same, though. For example, whether we're talking about Chess, Starcraft or Dota, strategy games very commonly don't involve strategic component to any meaningful degree unless you're already pretty good. For example, it's not just pointless but harmful to your play to worry about strategic concepts like how a certain pawn structure will play out in an endgame if at the same time you miss a tactic like a hanging piece.

retard.jpg

Something like in AI War: Fleet Command? At first everything but one star system is controlled by AI, but it's completely passive. But with time and by doing certain actions its level increases, and it'll become more aggressive and will use more tactics, so you have to choose what and when to attack.

Because the strong enemies should stay strong and the weak should stay weak. That way if I'm ever going to a beginner area for whatever reason I can just wipe everything around me and continue on my merry way without wasting my time.

The Boomer reason
>If I cant grind and one shot everything then its a shit game

The zoomer reason:
>It means that gear is useless because its all the same.

The chad reason:
>Leveling up is a shit mechanic

Well, RoR is an action game so it's kind of a different matter.
Moreover you can stack an absurd amount of artifacts so the only way enemies will ever have a hope at killing you is through stat scaling.

>Something like in AI War: Fleet Command?

Mah nigga.

It is not inherently bad, it depends on how extremely it is implemented

The worst possible way you can implement it is like in Oblivion, where EVERYTHING is level scaled, including random bandits. This makes the game feel completely absurd because a random bandit in the middle of bumfuck nowhere can go toe-to-toe with a guy who closed down oblivion gates and killed daedra

Other than that it destroys any feelings of progression, you never feel like your character is actually getting stronger.

Level scaling is OK when done for select encounters, to a limited extent, and within a certain range. It is not OK for EVERY encounter

Then you shouldn't have a level 99 monster you can agro anywhere on the map in the level 5 area
Xenoblade

Why have a scaling system
Usually two reasons, coming from both sides of the difficulty spectrum:
A. Enemies of an area are no longer difficult, and therefore become filler
B. Enemies of an area are too difficult and are too frustrating
Let's assume the devs have the ability to balance a game (if they can't, level scaling will not fix that).
It's often considered ideal for difficultly to have a mix of peaks, valleys, and flat plains so that the difficulty gives a kind of dramatic flow which is engaging.
Level scaling's purpose is to flatten the difficulty curve, which poses a risk of making it less engaging. So why even implement it.
The REAL reason devs use level scaling is:
C. They have no time or resources to balance everything, so they make the game do it for itself
It's a last resort for a common problem. The benefits of level scaling are mostly reaped by the makers of the game, not the consumers. Their hope is that what they were able to develop and implement in the game, e.g. mechanics, writing, art, or etc., will be enough to make the game worthwhile to the consumer.

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There is a stats cap on different enemies in final fantasy 8. Like one enemies hp wouldn't surpass 2000hp even if you are level 70, something like that. Level scaling is great when done properly. I have more important things to do then grind.

For oldfags, level is something that is represented in the world and has meaning and most stuff simply wouldn't exist beyond a certain level. Like a level 20 rat would be some kind of insane rat god terror to humanity.

That reminded me of a related point: the absence of level scaling actually allows the game automatically adjusts to the combination of player's skill and character power. An elite player pursuing greater rewards can go straight to high-level areas that can still challenge his underleveled character, while a trash player can spend more time in low-level areas to prepare for the next ones. This doesn't work for all playstyles all the time (a completionist elite player, say), but challenge at least at some point is assured. Level scaling doesn't have such assurance and it can go wrong in entirely new ways, too (game getting increasingly difficult if you don't use strong enough builds).

That's actually another feather for the cap of absence of level scaling: you have greater freedom experimenting with novel builds or playstyles that you like even if you know them to be weak. You just have to put more work into your character.

Level scaling is a lot like CG. When it's done right most people don't notice it's even there, and when it's done wrong it sticks out like a sore thumb. A lot of RPGs use level scaling to great effect. Bethesda has made level scaling a meme, because they're incompetent and don't know how to implement it properly.

It's not always bad, but when it is it can ruin otherwise decent games.
Dead Island is probably the most preeminent example for me. The game starts off enjoyable with the zombies starting off extremely tanky but the skills make you think you'll be handling hoards much easier later on, But then the level scaling kicks in and every encounter is just slow and miserable no matter how much "stronger" you get. There's no real feeling of progression.
On the flip side you have Fallout 3, and while people complain about the level scaling there, you can at least feel progress as you level up thanks to the perks and skills giving you steady progression and abilities to handle stronger and larger mobs while still being able to outright merk some of the weaker ones

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In something like Oblivion it bogs the whole game down because you might as well speed run the game for all the difference getting stronger makes. You can be a master warrior and shit still takes a hundred hits to bring down.

But on the flipside something like risk of rain needs level scaling otherwise enemies would be either too tanky at the start or complete jokes after a few items

fuck off

>See classic 4X game "Master of Magic"
Master of Magic is a strategy game, so it's a bit of a different environment, and it mostly makes sense in there because as you said, it's balanced extremely well for the most part.

Level scaling is not a bad idea but it's mostly implemented in an unoptimal way, either because the scaling is too fast or slow or because it lacks something as simple as proper floor or ceiling for scaling, let alone trash like bethesda where they just slap some universal and ill designed scaling model where thugs end up having Daedric Armor for some unknown reason.
In theory, well crafted level scaling also allows for the most balanced exploration in a game with free roam, good level scaling will not stop you from exploring freely but will also pose a meaningful challenge in doing so, which is great, in theory, problem is hardly anyone can do it.
The only "scaling" I've seen that actually works is the Battle Rank mechanic in SaGa games, but that's not really scaling since you have no levels and encounters are scaled on their own standard, being totally disconnected from the way you become stronger, which is absolutely the main reason why it works so well, it's not real scaling.

Morrowind
Baldur's Gate 2
F:NV (only the main game, the way level scaling works in the expansions is fucking broken)
Icewind Dale
A handful of Final Fantasy games
Dragon Age

The best way to do it is to either set the scaling within a certain level range, and/or limit level scaling to specific encounters, like bosses or important NPCs.

>The game should lock you out of certain places with ridiculously high level enemies until you've leveled enough to take them on

I liked how in the witcher you could explore everything and suddenly find yourself in way over your head getting stomped because you are way underlevelled.

It's the procedural generation of player progression, and just like a hand crafted map is generally better than a computer generated map, handcrafted stats are generally better than computer generated stats

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/thread

> risk of rain needs level scaling
risk of rain does not have level scaling, it has time scaling.
you can be level1 and enemies will still grow stronger at the same pace.
risk of rain is interesting because much of the gameplay is trying to get ahead of the curve that level scaling would be, you are trying to make the game as broken as possible in your favor, the struggle to achieve that is what is the enjoyment factor.
level scaling would remove all that, since all enemies would alays take 10 commando double taps, no matter your level or items.

its anathema to leveling

That's not actually level-scaling. The monsters in Risk of Rain get stronger independent of the player's strength. In addition to getting stronger as you go through more stages(normal progress scaling), they also scale through time which isn't the same as level scaling. You can idle in Skyrim and Oblivion doing nothing and keep the game on for several days and it wouldn't do anything, but in Risk of Rain, the enemies would slaughter you in the next level unless it's so long you the game bugs out. Alternatively, you could cheat in Risk of Rain, somehow give yourself a thousand items on stage 1, but the enemies wouldn't be any stronger due to it while supergrinding in Oblivion or Skyrim would also boost your enemies significantly.

The level of the enemies is the bad thing here...
What is the point of having levels in general foes?
Yes, i understand that flying bug is lvl 3 and Mohamed, the sword master is lvl 87, but then you will implement flying bad lvl 88 and Eduardo, the master of the dark magic lvl 2,
Then is fucking stupid, just get rid of it

ff8

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why add scaling when you can just remove levels completely

Because it requires you to stop and kill every single little early game enemy that has turned into a damage sponge that will chip your life away if you don't fight it.

It's as bad as rubber banding in racing games
>fully upgrade your super fast Porsche
>enemy with worse car overtakes you near the finish line

Kills sense of progression.

Level scaling is the cheap alternative to actually creating enemies that are separate from the base enemy groups and higher level for mid to end-game content.

Because it's more fun to get your shit stomped early on in harder areas, only to be able to go back when overleveled to easily wreck shit.

Fake sense of progression. Stats scale to astronomically high levels as time goes on to the point where leveling up is a waste of time.

>where higher level enemies start to appear, who are visually different, wear higher armor that you can loot, etc.

That's bullshit past certain point, you start getting the same pattern of enemis but with BADASS in their name.

> I have more important things to do then grind

If that's really how your thought process went, you wouldn't be playing a video game in the first place.

it's lazy, they might as well just design a game without level progression

I played through Oblivion at level 1. Easily. What motivation was there to level up? It was fucking stupid. In the latest Assassin's Creeds it's just forced garbage.

In AC:Odyssey, it's fucking rat race to gather resources to upgrade your gear. It's pathetic.

I want a challenge to overcome and then be presented with a new, harder challenge. Not the same goalposts that are moved endlessly.

The only place in game that happens is dungeoneering anyway but thats not scaling so much as the enemies being randomized so you can be level 130 or so and encounter a room of level 5 knights abd shit but the next room is a level 100+ ghost

It destroys all sense of progression. A big part of RPGs is the sense you are getting stronger especially if you go back and fight weaker enemies. It's just an excuse for lazy game design because developers don't need to make a proper difficulty curve. You end up with ridiculous scenarios such as a commonly used example with Oblivion where random bandits will be wearing full glass armor late game.

In the defense of it though it makes more sense in a game like Oblivion because it allows more open exploration without locking it behind certain levels of progression.

the problem is eventually enemies just turn into bullet sponges

Level scaling can be done well, it's just that too many people are quick to jump on Bethesda's lazy ass way of level scaling.

For a good example of level scaling, take Elona.
>Most of the world scales, but there are tons of unique NPCs and dungeons which are always fixed, so you always have things to compare your power level to
>Enemies are always the same level, so you won't go from fighting a level 1 snail to a level 10 snail, the snail is always going to be level 1
>Instead of enemies just scaling up, enemies get replaced by other, newer enemies which have completely different abilities and AI, which means that you constantly have to change your strategy going through dungeons.
>If the game does "Reuse" an enemy, it will have new abilities and moves. So for example you'll stop seeing level 1 snails after a while, but then suddenly they'll come back as "magic" snails that will now cast darkness magic on you 50 levels later, turning the junky level 1 mob into a slow but tanky mage that tries to blind you so its friends can beat you up, completely changing how the enemy fights.

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Progression is fine in a game with a definite end.
If a game has no definite end scaling is mandatory.
Without scaling the game will lose all sense of danger at some point. See Morrowind as an example of that.

fpbp

Level scaling shouldn't be 1:1 with your progress. It should keep enemies a threat, but without them being a chore to kill. For example:

>be level 5 adventurer
>fight level 5 rats

>be level 20 adventurer
>fight level 10 rats

it would be cool if they could still pose a threat, but were still easily beaten in terms of HP. But I'm not a video game designer, so I couldn't think of a way to do it.

lets you say you level in stealth or something thats doesn't deal damage well the game is going to make everyone else a sponge since it doesn't matter what you leveled up. this was the biggest problem with oblivion

Disable stats gains upon leveling up. Gear, player skill and perks should the only progression. An "end game" character should be as vulnerable to an early game mob when not properly equipped.

>be told a place is very dangerous
>go in at level 2
>clear it out
this shouldn't be a thing either

That's not level scaling either. Enemies aren't based off your stats in Elona. There's scaling off Fame, but that can be lowered and also isn't directly correlated to your stats. Procedural dungeons can generate at higher levels due to it, but those dungeons can still spawn at level 1. All story dungeons besides the main multi-floor procedural ones are fixed with exactly fixed spawns. Those main dungeons that are procedural are also static in their levels being tailored to each continent.

Those magic snails you're talking about are also just completely separate mob types that simply have the same sprite. There's actual level-scaled mobs in the special void dungeon and a level 100+ Snail is still trivially easy to kill by even a moderately developed character.

lol. maybe you shouldnt suck at driving then.

not necessarily. it's actually not that unusual for games to get easier as you progress because the stronger enemies are out-paced by the power the character gains. there's actually nothing wrong with this paradigm in gaming, noticeably getting more powerful is fun after all.

But what's the point of getting stronger if all you are going to do is flex on some crappy mobs?
I like it Wizardry 7 style, early game is kinda hard, mid game is moderately difficult and then BAM the final dungeon is like 5 different levels with 61 teleporters and mechas everywhere.

>number of GFs you can junction is limited by your weapon level
As it stands, upgrading your weapon is not that important except for Squall's.

>all normal attacks get action commands like Squall's gunblade
Choose which basic attack to do as Zell, choose which body part to hit as Irivine etc..

>draw no longer gives you the option to stock spells, only to cast them right away
>all GFs that were drawn are now acquired in a different manner
This is just to protect idiots from themselves.

>10 charges of a given magic can be condensed into a crystal
For example, using GF Siren you can condense 10 charges of cure into a level 1 cure crystal

>these crystals can be leveled up by adding more charges to them
For example, adding 20 charges of cure to a new cure crystal turns it into a level 3 cure crystal

>these crystals allow you to use the spell in each battle relative to its level
A level 1 crystal allows one use per battle while a level 6 allows 6 uses. At level 10, all crystals allow unlimited use

>you equip these crystals to your stats instead of charges
Basically this whole process is to deal with the autismos that won't cast a spell because it will drop their attack from 255 to 254.

>characters no longer level up but level scaling is now based on GF level
There's no reason to ever level your characters so you might as well link the scaling to GF level

>more GF abilities are now locked behind levels
In the original game the only ability that's worth leveling your a GF for is Ammo-RF on Ifrit (level 10). If Brother's STR-J was locked behind level 10 for example then you have a reason to bother with leveling.

>You might as well not have levels.
Levels are for perks

>muh open world
you might as well not have any progression at all since everything else is meaningless. you may as well not have locations too.

that's why difficulty (ie strategy, utility, etc) is better than spamming the same shit each time for a longer period of time

You lose the feel of getting stronger, fighting the same "level 1" boars with your level 999 Galaxy Destroyer full enchanted character and still need exactly the same amount of attacks to kill those boars instead of blasting them into oblivion

>the more quests you do, the more powerful endboss becomes
>also despite enemies are scaling with you, if you upgrade your weapons accordingly, you still can own them
I loved this in Last Remant, always kept me on toes during the whole game.
Except the whole wiki shit if you wanna do side stuff.

>Master of Magic is a strategy game, so it's a bit of a different environment
I guess what I was saying was that conceptually, you could have an RPG where bad guys leveled up over time the same way you did. But, if you were to implement that, the game becomes a more of a race than a grind, where the player will have an incentive to optimize his "levels per ___" where that unit of time is something like turns, real time, or step count, in order to gain an advantage against bosses who are leveling at their own rate.

It could present interesting dynamics and be a challenge to balance. But you're no longer directly punishing the player for leveling. You're indirectly punishing the player for not leveling efficiently enough.

This would solve the problem that level scaling is tries to solve, without actually being level scaling.

You shouldn't be facing the same enemies with increased difficulty unless it's a main character who has made a second appearance.
Imagine if in WOW you had the same difficulty killing mobs in the starter area as you did when you first started the game.

>The game should lock you out of certain places with ridiculously high level enemies
You are retarded, High level enemies should be the wall keeping you from progressing.
In Pokemon you don't continue on until your Pokemon are strong enough to fight the Pokemon in the next area.
In MMOs the same is relevant.
The game shouldn't have to tell you a place is too hard for your player level, you dying should be enough indication.

because it's usually up to the PLAYER how strong they get due to their effort involved. if you get so powerful you can't help but flex on everyone because you put the work in, why shouldn't that show? if you put the work in and everything is just as difficult, or in most cases just takes fucking longer to kill enemies because of giant HP bars, then whats the point of even becoming stronger in the game? you could just as easily just beat everyone the same way in less time by NOT putting in more effort.

Makes it feel like I'm not progressing at all.

Use 7's limit system instead. The game basically encourages you to stay at critical health and shit out Renzokukens, which breaks it even more.

>Oblivion
>Amazing
It's a game world filled with autistic NPCs, where dungeons are almost always elven or oblivion gates, and enemy scaling is so messed that low levels are a boring cake walk but at high levels they're boring damage sponges (and you better get used to fighting the same guys again and again and again). It's a VERY flawed, but still fun, game.

just mod it lol

having this is precisely what makes xenoblade good

Because leveling up doesn't matter, so you might as well toss the whole rpg mechanic out the window.
Furthermore it's cool to have enemies that are too powerful until you train and also it's fun to go back to low level zones to complete wipe the floor with the enemies that previously gave you trouble.

But how else are they going to "hook" mindless drones to their shitty games?

Second post best post.

The entire point of levels is becoming stronger than the enemy and feeling the satisfaction of raining death and fire upon everything that used to bully you five hours ago. Scaling enemies to your level eliminates the entire point of having levels in the first place.

I don't think it has to be bad, but it can certainly be done very badly.
Oblivion did level scaling pretty badly IMO.

Which sometimes make precious little sense.
If this guy can afford to dress himself in a full set of Demonic Murderlord Armor, why is he still a highwayman shaking down travelers for pocketchange? You could sell that shit and then not have to work a day for the rest of your life.

I think some people put undue weight on the value of immersion in a game, but that's one of those things which I think bends immersion over the table and breaks off a wine bottle in its asshole.

Because sois want to train their character and trivialise all challenge, instead of getting better themselves

Morrowind, because it generally only scales a few things.

Shut the fuck up redditor, you aren't mentally superior because you play other shitty games.

Oblivion was not amazing, it could be fun, but there's a lot of problems with the stock game which seriously drags the quality down.
You can fix a bunch of it with mods, which is recommended, but that doesn't make the base game amazing.

Yeah. If you're good, you can do an encounter which is technically meant for a higher level player, and that shit is really fun.

Because the fireball spell I upgraded; spending all my experience points to max out, over the course of the game, the power and damage of the spell, is still doing the same amount of damage to the same enemy.

Something that really chaps my ass with Oblivion is how quest rewards are leveled, so if you do a quest early, you get the weak version of the reward, and then you outlevel that reward and it becomes shit, and you can't do anything to fix this in the stock game. It's punishing you for doing quests early, what's supposed to be a particularly legendary sword that rocks your cock can become actually completely mundane in just a couple hours of gameplay.

In a game with linear progression, like Diablo, where you would first get to do the quest at a certain point, and the quest is built around being a low level quest and low level reward, this isn't a problem, because there's higher level stuff later.

>congratulations you are now level 10
>but so is the wolf in the starting area
>getting higher levels means getting better gear
>getting better gear means nothing if the enemies scale with you
>your new cool weapons don't feel new and cool since the damage is still balanced
>you went through the whole game in full mediocrity

might as well keep everything at level one and have levels just unlock weapon skins if that's what you want

>Without scaling the game will lose all sense of danger at some point
The main quest of that game is you fulfilling a prophecy to become a demi-god, so that's kind of fitting.
The expansions were made mostly under the premise of you being higher level and weren't really accessible if you went there early.

Because the player never gets to experience their power growth. One of the best feelings in a game is going back and crubstomping lower level fucks that gave you problems in the early game.

As an example in Dragons Dogma the first cyclops was an hour long fight that I felt proud as fuck beating. Then I came back later on and wrecked the fucker in just a few minutes.

This.

Give me a system where rather than level scaling, the longer you spend in the game, the higher level everything else becomes while you're slouching on keeping up with your own leveling.

it skips over the proper way of doing enemies
>make an ai (no cheating) that is literally unbeatable by humans
>dilute it to an acceptable starting level
>slowly have it get better with time
that first step is hard but not that hard

This
The point of levels is to give a sense of progress. If you're just scaling everything up to match, then that's gone. Why bother, at that point?

*with mods
vanilla oblivion was a terrible experience

>the first cyclops was an hour long fight that I felt proud as fuck beating.
How can you be that bad at fighting the tutorial cyclops?

I'm gonna be honest with you user: that sounds fucking dreadful. It'd also require an extremely contrived in-universe explanation.

Finally someone says it, the man, the myth, the legend

It's a different take on the limited-time shit other games do, just rather than an arbitrary deadline, it's now keeping up with the rest of the world and picking/choosing where you spend your time in the world to benefit you the most.

Here's another (you). Level scaling sucks. Take a game like Skyrim. On top of the other issues the game had the scaled leveling made it even more dull to explore. There is no "fix" for it either. Just don't put that shit in there.

What does this add to the game, though?

The world doesn't have to be static, it can change somewhat with time. But it shouldn't revolve around the player character either, that's horrible for immersion

>ideal
>some stuff scales but only with min/max levels.
>reality
>fuck it, everything scales with no caps.

Ultima

Impending feel of falling behind and having to work extra to get back up to speed/ahead since you now have to use more player skill to get ahead of the level penalty.

> maybe you found an invisibility scroll so you can sneak right past
You want our players to stop and THINK about the situation they are faced up against? That would keep the action folks from playing our game! Add a broken gun everyone should use instead and put the bullet type behind a pay wall somehow. Make sure the review copy also gives the reviewers infinite ammo. That should bring in the 10 outta 10s.

With level scaling, there's generally no feeling that you're getting more powerful, and sub-optimal builds can even get relatively weaker as they level.
Without scaling, a leveled-up character can still whoop ass in low-level areas and get slapped up in high-level ones, giving you both a sense of growth and a goal to strive for. It helps give you a feeling of your current place in the world.

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What the fuck does this even mean?
If there's no levels then there's nothing to scale off of.

See: Oblivion. You can seriously fuck yourself over if you level too fast, or don't level enough skills that give you the right stats.

Because it's a cheap excuse for a lazy dev to not have to create more enemy types. Also completely invalidates the point of levels to begin with.

The rats in Witcher 3 on Death March.

This, at least that's the short story of it.

I can't think of anything that should scale with player level/power except maybe for something like the final boss. If you take the time to grind, you should be able to mow down encounters that you were "supposed to" face already. And on the other hand, you should be able to run into something you absolutely can't beat (yet).

Scaling is bad because I enjoy finding ways to kill things I shouldn't be able to.

In regular action games without levels, you can plan entirely around the player having a specific damage, health, etc, and the enemies having a specific amount as well. It allows you to fine tune the difficulty because the player can't be overwhelmed or cheese it through sheer numbers.
Scaling can fuck you over in the long term, because while you leveled non-combat skills, enemies can continually get stronger without a way for you to catch up.
Having certain level enemies in certain areas means the player will understand he's expected to do areas in a certain order, and can't fuck himself over because he wanted to grind lockpicking.

>other shitty games
So you admit Bethesda games are shit. Congrats. You just player yourself.

Because it provides absolutely nothing other than enticing the player that theyre growing when theyre really not, they're simply being rewarded with values for putting time in and doing the same task over and over.

True growth comes from considering your tools and options and formulating better strategies with your skills/options.

Levels and EXP serve absolutely nothing than drug the person playing with the illusion that the time theyre spending is fulfilling. It's no different than giving them a fix for their craving.

Level scaling is simply the way of hiding that the game really isnt changing and that numbers are getting bigger on both the player and the game's side.

If you enjoy EXP and level scaling youre no different than a fucking druggie.

Games dont need to be more than 10/20 hours.

If youre going up to 70Hours that filler better be skippable cutscenes

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>Not using the best example to date, Star Wars KOTOR
Albeit Dragon Age made level scaling work in the exact same way; different areas with their own small self contained story lines and enemies, that you can do in any order. When the order is set then progression feels meaningless with level scaling, with different areas you can choose at different times there should be slight differences in difficulty but not huge ones, and DA / KOTOR did it perfectly

A game which shows turnbased/tactical/strategic play without level/grinding controlling the progression exists

All games need to get rid of levels and base their progression around tools and strategy/build/riskreward instead of this stat-scaling bullshit.

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The latest Assassin's Creed was criminally bad in this regard.

Some things can be done with limited scaling, like say a certain kind of random encounter simply doesn't happen on lower levels, it only happens later in the game when you're a higher level, because it's designed around a certain kind of difficulty which just wouldn't be suitable for the early game. Rather than just dumbing the encounter down, you make it later game content.

Or maybe if you become a criminal, if you did a particularly high profile crime that puts a high price on your head, and they know that you're strong, they're not gonna send just a couple of generic guardsmen or one noob bounty hunter, they would send a platoon of soldiers and a deathsquad of experienced bountyhunters who are capable of taking on more serious threats.

Likewise, you can scale so that certain weak encounters only happen at lower levels, like if you walk around dressed as the Death Dealer straight outta the Frazetta painting, you wouldn't have literally lowest common denominator street trash run up to you and slap you in the back of the head like in New Vegas (a game I otherwise do like, mind). They wouldn't be so abjectly stupid to take on someone who genuinely looks like, and has a rumor for being, Mr. Kill

There's ways to do things like level scaling without doing it the Oblivion way.

retail WoW suffered tremendously from this

>Scaling can fuck you over in the long term

Dead Island got really fucking carried away with its scaling. When you first get to the city area you can down an zambino in a couple shots but you have low ammo so you think "I will hold onto this ammo and use it in bad situations" but after you gain about 10 levels you need like 100 bullets to kill one dude. The same enemies in the same location with the same weapon.

This

OP on suicide watch

>the general concept of scaling is fine
>not really, here are examples that prove your right though
lol

>leveling up is a shit mechanic

Then why are you playing an RPG?

Damn straight. This is why Morrowind will forever be better than Oblivion. Skyrim is more forgiveable because the scaling isn't as severe, there was a cap to most enemies' level ups.

Heres something to consider

Pokemon, without levels (Like the Battle towers and multiplayer where youre all stuck at 50)
Each pokemon you get has different stats that can be utilized for their strengths and weaknesses like a proper strategy, forcing you to consider the way you approach battle with your team without having to worry about the level youre at.

I can assume that many will say
"This is bad, because I need the feeling of getting stronger"
"What about the battles what reward will you get"
"Theres no point to increasing your stats for a gym, making battles pointless"

This would simply show how much levels drug the player into loving the grind, It doesnt aid or help anything nor does it put them in challenging situations but it fulfills an intrinsic animal need to see numbers grow and rise

So while level scaling isnt BAD as in "unwanted" but its definately bad in that its a very predatory and exploitative way to design a game because so many people absolutely RELY and NEED such a facet to be in a game just to ENJOY it.

It's the human experience, like how we need sexual relief, we need this feeling of fulfillment and growth, no matter how artificial.

Level scaling is trash but it can not leave.

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>kill rats and leave my starting town
>kill dragons and werewolves and get crazy magical armor
>come back to starting town
>rats are still on par with my skills and equipment

Basically ass rapes world building

I don't understand why people who clearly have never played an RPG and clearly don't care about RPGs feel the need to give their opinion on how RPGs should be designed

But then you can't underlevel and the game will be easy no matter what. You'll have to do stuff like limit how many pokemon you use to add challenge but that just limits your options which isn't fun. If there was a difficulty setting then this would be good.

leveling is bad in and of itself. it's an analog for improving player skill, without the gameplay having anything you can improve upon. overlevel and everything becomes too easy, underlevel and everything becomes too hard.

level-scaling is meant to address this, but the end result is a game where you're the same relative level against your enemies throughout. fuck this rpg mechanics being a part of every fucking game as of late.

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There's an easier and much older way: stats are set in character creation, when leveling up you get to allocate points into skills, but not stats.
It's the system CRPGs used for the longest time, that way characters can become stronger, but not become good at everything because their initial stats can not be changed and there's a limited number of points to allocate.

What, like SPECIAL?
I really like SPECIAL and I want more RPGs to use it, or something like it.

Because it's used as a design shortcut 99% of the time.

Someone should use it now that Fallout stopped using it. It's a good system.

AHHHH I WANNA SUCK RINOA'S CUNNY JUICES

no but really all it needs is to fix limit breaks, GF calls, and Magic not being depleted when you use it, I was always afraid to cast magic since my stats would lower.

level scaling only exists in open worlds because open world is a faulty and retarded concept.
multiple hub systems get a pass since it ensures a sensible progression curve

Did you just say cunny?

the core issue here is that the enemy has a massive lack in options he can utilize versus the player in what should be an equal battle.
the best approach would be to fucking wipe the current dumpstertrash tier system and start from scratch but a band aid solution would be to have all battles be 2+ mons on each team active at once so that both the player and the enemy have more skills and weaknesses to work with

Nothing is inherently bad. Scaling can be well designed like in Diablo. It can also be shittily designed like in Oblivion, where you're better off not leveling.

With level scaling:
At Level 1 in skyrim, you fight bandits.
At level 40 in skyrim, you fight bandits.

Without level scaling:
At level 1 in Baldur's Gate, you fight bandits.
At level 40 in Baldur's Gate, you fight dragons, liches, demon gods, eldritch horrors, etc.

Are you trying to say Oblivion's level scaling was good?
Pretend I posted a picture of a land dreugh.

Underrail.

>if you were to implement that, the game becomes a more of a race than a grind, where the player will have an incentive to optimize his "levels per ___" where that unit of time is something like turns, real time, or step count
That is literally what how battle rank works in SaGa games.
Enemies "level" at their own rate based on a "clock" system of sort that is generally gauged by the number of fights you trigger, counterbalanced by their own growth mechanic that reward you for taking risks by adding growth multipliers related to the disparity of power between you and the enemy, their numbers and various other factors, you're encouraged to always fight stronger opponents to get better gains and not wasting times on things weaker than what you currently are, which also prevents mindless grind since weak opponents give you growth maluses and enemies "level up" faster than you do.

It's pretty much exactly what you described, you'll probably really like those games.

I don't remember oblivion because it was a forgettable game from a long time ago, but I think it was just as bad as skyrim.

I've never played Baldur's Gate, but your post implies level scaling should replace enemies with more EPIC ones, which is what Oblivion does.

>Shock and awe at majestic lvl 99 mob
>Get my shit pushed in
>focus on playing game to get stronger so I can get my revenge
Yep

Because the player doesn't feel a sense of progression

A player can't go out of their way to challenge themselves to get better shit at the beginning

In oblivion I was forced to cheese low level fireball spells at standard enemies in the late game with my max level redguard with maxed longsword and strength

My maxed out stats redguard warrior was forced to resort to running away and casting fireballs on standard enemies

In a linear game there needs to be a way to challenge players but in an open world game certain locations should have more difficult enemies based on the harshness of the location

The difference then would be that simply replacing enemies with epic ones like in oblivion is unbelievable because to do that they would have to place epic enemies in the same locations that the regular enemies used to spawn.

In baldur's gate, you fight enemies in appropriate locations, like a dragon in a dragons lair.

This is both a criticism of level scaling and open world games though. Although you can have epic enemies in appropriate locations in open world games too like how fallout new vegas has deathclaws in the quarry.

How to fix Oblivion level scaling:
1. Cap the player at level 25-30 and actually force them to make decisions about their stats and role-play a little instead of trying to become a god only to get rekt by level scaled enemies at 45.
2. Make the difficulty slider a hidden offset the player's actual level for the purposes of level scaling. At 0% the game is fully level scaled (+0 offset and nothing but imps and wolves at the start). At 100% you get a +MAXLEVEL offset and the toughest enemies (and leveled items) spawn from the beginning.