I can't think of a single game that manages to have enemies correspond to your level rather than area or story progression actually contribute to the game. It just makes trying to get better gear ultimately a pointless task because the enemies get strong at the same rate so you might as well stay weak.
It's just pure laziness on the part of game devs so they don't have to balance shit or care about level progression.
It's not lazy though, they have to make all the enemies still, and they have to figure out what level activates which ones. That's just as much work, simply used waaaaaaay less effectively.
I wouldn't say it's lazy (few things in gamedev are), but it's certainly less effort to do level scaling than it is to repeatedly test an incredibly long experience to make sure players never get too over leveled or under leveled. Level scaling is a pretty simple concept. Most units have their stats automatically distributed according to their level (this will allow you to use the same unit in multiple regions and still have it "work"). So, when a player enters a region, you loop over the monsters in the are and go "is this monster less than the player's level? if so, bump it up".
Level scaling is easier than not level scaling if you're trying to make a game where the player has a similar experience for most of the game. Especially in an RPG where players could choose to do or not do side quests or where players could grind levels. When you reach the next main story beat, the player could be any number of levels. I think for the vast majority of people (who want a relatively casual game experience), level scaling ends up being a huge benefit, even if it's frustrating to people like us that care a bit more deeply about the systems in a game.
It's lazy from a design perspective, the coding is just as hard and crunched either way. Not to be a treat defender, but I'd prefer we get no games, shorter games, or less coherently playable games(either due to bizarre mechanics or frequent bugs) than less fun games.
One of the best satisfactions I've ever had in games was going back to an area I've struggled in and just mopping the floor of the enemies there. I don't like becoming a god at the end of a game and still have to worry about a normal enemy being a bullet sponge and being able to kill me.
Exactly. I love the moment in metroidvania games where I have to pick up something from like the first area and the strong enemy from the early game just gets shredded instantly
i thought it worked well in morrowind
enemies do scale to your level but only within a range (e.g. level 10-20 enemies might be spawned in a particular dungeon), so youre tending to get a more even challenge throughout but some areas are still only going to have really low levels enemies, and theres plenty of areas you cant realistically cant go until youre levelled up
but it works pretty well for a non-linear game so that you can dick around and do a range of questlines in varying orders, and not have almost everything over- or underlevelled while still having places that are appropriately scary and off-limits until later in the game (without physically barring the player from them)
and then they went and did the very worst fucking level scaling system anyone has ever seen in oblivion, with the bandits suddenly showing up in priceless daedric armour and everywhere just the same as everywhere else
Which also works on a storytelling level because the more you play the game the stronger the main threat becomes.
Fun system and another example of why patents suck. It's a system that should be in hundreds of games but isn't in anything because the bastards patented it.
Why the fuck are you even able to patent a vague concept for a mechanic in a game? If you change any numbers in a thing patents shouldn’t apply anymore. If you made an internal combustion engine but the pistons are a half centimeter larger in comparison to the rest of it than in the patent, that’s not covered by the patent.
Going to have to disagree with your example. If you only marginally change an engine, then it's still the same principles at work and the same design only slightly modified. If I started the Tord company and sold slightly larger doored fords they would easily best me in court. However, the game design thing is a problem because they have to build the mechanic from the ground up inside of their game. It's like copyrighting the idea of a car.
I took it a bit too far, but I don’t think you should be able to patent the concept of “blowing up fuel inside a small chamber and using a piston to collect that energy to power a mechanical device” (or a better description of how an internal combustion engine works)
I’m not sure where to draw the line between those two though. Well aside from abolishing capitalism and removing any need for IP protections and having all patents be open knowledge.
I think the line is an implementation, not a concept. Like, if the code from the lord of the rings game was put directly into another game that's obviously a problem, but if you work from the concept it should be different. like how if I build the same engine as someone else that would be a problem, but building an engine isn't.
Yeah. You basically get to control the scaling of your enemies. That was fun. Helping an orc climb the ranks so you could get epic loot once he was the big boss.
I think Breath of the Wild handled this well. Not perfectly, but well. The enemies don't scale at all, The red bokoblins are always red bokoblins, and the gold lionels are always gold lionels. There is a wide range from the weakest ones to the strongest ones though. Aside from the tutorial plateau, there are no hard barriers to going anywhere. Once you unlock the glide ability, you can travel anywhere, including straight to the castle to fight Ganon. The only thing holding you back are the enemies, which stronger weapons and increased health/stamina genuinely help you dispatch. It can be fun to venture into dangerous terrain and grab a weapon that is stronger than what you're supposed to have, and since they break it isn't something you get to use to cheese your way through the rest of the game.
The combat itself can be kind of repetitive, and some of the strongest enemies are basically just damage sponges, but you do get a strong sense of growth as the game develops. I think the fact that leveling isn't even required to win the game helps a lot with it. You don't go to all the shrines and invest in upgraded health/stamina because it is necessary for progression. You do it because it is useful, but it is just as exciting to take the minimalist route as it is to take the completionist one.
There is actually a subtle enemy scaling in BOTW that iirc is based on how many enemies you kill (counted by each first enemy defeat, so farming the same bokoblin camp over and over doesn't increase the number). Beating the bosses in the Divine Beasts gives the progression tracker a huge boost, hence why it's associated with them but engaging with the Divine Beasts isn't necessary to progress the enemy tiers.
Some enemies will always be fixed encounters but others will increment through the enemy color tiers as you progress through the game and defeat more of the area encounters. This is why you can actually miss an entire tier of Lynel weaponry if you progress too fast.
I believe the ratio of enemies and the quality of drops increases as you beat the divine beasts
Sorry if i phrased it poorly, but I don't count this as enemy scaling. Scaling requires the enemy to change based on your strength. Enemies having different strength based on area isn't scaled to you, it's just level design.
I enjoy it in Elder Scrolls Online. After "One Tamriel" the player can wander anywhere and complete content, both main and side stories, and the enemies and the gear they drop scale as the player goes.
I enjoy exploring that way and seeing what's out there. If I want to be challenged, there's trials and harder instanced content.
I literally came here to mention ESO. It feels nice to be able to take a level 1 or 200 character around and be able to complete the same number of questlines. I think it works for this game in particular because the worldbuilding details and the writing are superb and are the main reason I'm playing, so the game doesn't need any tedious grind and progression to make me keep playing. Those are just a bonus on top so you feel like your character is growing for all the work they're putting in.
loved ESO for the ~60 hours i played it. half of that time was spent in morrowind, i loved it so much. it just sucks how expensive it is. you either pay monthly or pay hundreds up front :(
I've been playing both Oblivion and Skyrim recently, and I kind of prefer how Skyrim does it. As you level up, more advanced versions of the enemy spawn. However, I get the odd overleveled enemy a good amount, like the nightmaster vampire the companions assigned to me in the very beginning. My level 3 ass got obliterated until I just said fuck it and did some grinding. However, now that I am much higher and have a game-breaking build, I like a nice mix of enemies that I can go full bugs bunny on and then some I need to take seriously.
I don't like how Oblivion handles it, where it feels like everyone literally levels with you. Maybe I just need to get good, but the same goblins and zombies I fought in the tutorial are still able to take one hell of a beating. Am I supposed to expect that the mountain lions are out there doing jaw training while I'm trying to get my athletics up? I'm trying to get into the arcane university now so I can make some spells better tailored for my needs. But hey, I'm not complaining about getting a staff that's worth more than the amulet of kings as a reward for a long, hard fought battle.
Do not ignore endurance when playing Oblivion, worst mistake of my life.
Do not ignore endurance when playing Oblivion
just play morrowind and keep spamming fortify fatigue and restore fatigue potions and you can go on forever
I remember when i figured out (on my own!) how to absolutely break Morrowind on Xbox with fortify alchemy potions
I would spam those until my alchemy skill was at a ridiculous level, and then make the actually useful fortify whatever potions. Shit turned you into an UNKILLABLE GOD, and they would last forever too
I don't recall the recipe but i remember that ash yams were super important so i stole them from people's houses constantly lol
yeah oblivion did it very badly, you had to level "efficiently" or turn down the difficulty, or else some fucking minotaurs or a bandit with daedric or glass armour would show up and thrash you lmao
See I hate how skyrim does it. No matter how good my gear is, a dungeon will take about as long because all I have to do is deal draugrs more damage than they deal me. Once I got over the threshold of being able to take down a deathlord without strategically using certain shouts(like slow time so I can dodge them or frost breath so I can move in and out) and could just beat them to death, there's nothing interesting left. The most challenging things are poorly designed, like a ghost that keeps teleporting around the chamber and using fos ro dah on me so I can't tell where he is.
i rated skyrim a 5/10 game until i installed requiem
a leveling world is just anti-rpg tbh
Skyrim is either the best game ever or trash to me, depending on my mood. I drowned my last character in guilt and anger about the cannibalism quest and haven't picked it back up since
Skyrim scaling is only painful if you are a destruction mage, because for some reason the only way to boost destruction damage is through potions, so you will be stuck just stunlocking enemies with impact perk until you run out of mana or they die, meanwhile sneak builds 1 shot everything and warrior builds 3 shot most enemies lategame.
Then again destruction magic in elder scrolls game is never really good? Even in morrowind where magic was "king" there are mobs that reflects your spell damage and kills you that way.
I think it worked really well in Rift because there were world events that happened everywhere, which were really fun, so high level players could participate no matter what zone they were in but wouldn't ruin it for low level players, and it also allowed them to help their lower level friends in questing.
This shit would be dope IRL, though. You walk out of the gym and suddenly everyone in the world's biceps are a little bit bigger.
that would suck. Why even exercise? someone else who wants to do it will do it and make you stronger. also that would mean every single person is your enemy.
Why exercise? For all of us. You aren't just building your own muscles - you're building our muscles.
borderlands 2 was fine in that way for while, i think you should stop playing it over and over again before you get to the point where it breaks anyway so it's no a big deal unless you obsess
It did have the opposite design where if you fought enemies that were higher level than you, not only did they have more health and do more damage, but you were arbitrarily limited in how much damage you could do.
oh yeah.. they could've made that dropoff less harsh i think, let us struggle to beat an enemy that's over-leveled and then schlep around some gear we can't use for 10 levels if we want, dammit. I guess they didn't because that breaks their gameplay loop but you'd still re-engage with it along the way and it would make some challenge runs more feasible.
Cyrodiil's high level bandits are wealthy gentrifier hobbyists who do it for the cottagecore bandit culture of sitting around in ruined forts with your friends drinking wine and eating giant hunks of cheese rather than for monetary gain.
Agree with the clause of evwry game should also have a way to let you do hard stuff early if you're really really good
Downloaded a mod for a divinity original sin 2 that makes every enemy I encounter 1 level above me, because tactician mode is too easy. Works out pretty well for the most part.
Guild Wars 2 did a relatively decent job where you'd scale to the area, but having good gear did make a notable difference so you didn't stomp around new areas like a god, but you were also still noticing an improvement.
