Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Experience scaling?

From what I've seen before it seems like DD and D2 has enemy experience scaled to your level (namely the higher level you are, the less you'll get from the same enemy)...will this be in this game? Or all enemies now just give out set experience without the scaling? Because I don't really want to see exp scaling again if possible...

I have to agree: there's nothing worse than experience scaling. Takes the entire pleasure out of levelling up when everything levels up with you.

/yuck

Short answer: No.

Lycanthrope - You're talking about level-scaling, which is something different. Level-scaling is when all enemies are adjusted based on your level at the time you enter a zone. The effect is that the first time you enter an area, no matter where it is, you'll always encounter enemies at your level.

onyhow is talking about Experience scaling, which is where enemies can be at many different levels, and the difference between their level and yours determines how much XP you get for killing them. That system rewards you for killing enemies higher level than you are. The effect is that no matter how many optional things you do, you'll wind up at about the same level.

Divine Divinity had experience scaling for both quests and enemies, Divinity 2 had experience scaling for enemies, but fixed experience for quests.

I can agree with the idea of a fixed-experience system for enemies. What about using experience scaling for quests, because of the open-world system that lets you wander around and forget about quests until later?

xp scaling = YES
level scaling - shut the front door -.-

Ah yes. You're quite right. Sorry, I misinterpreted that one rather badly

But please don't make such ridiculous high XP counts like in Flames of Vengeance (with the even more ridiculous XP gap between the main game and the expansion of D2).....

What is wrong with xp scaling. It stupid to expect getting exp from killing a rat with one blow at level gazzilion. If a enemy is hard to beat, you get lots of exp, can you squish it with your thumb, no exp.

@Dexyd: Because the system implemented in DD and D2 means that you're scaling it TWICE!

In all Divinity game thus far, every level need more experience than the last...basically for example lv1-lv2 need 100, lv2-lv3 need 200, lv3-lv4 need 300, etc...if you kill a rat and get 5 exp per kill, at lv1 that account to 5% of exp needed to level,then at, say, lv100, which need 10000 exp to progress, the percentage is now at .05%...much less, so it's already scaled there...the old Divinity system also applies scaling with exp gain based on enemy level AND exp needed to go to new level, which is just...crazy.

There's also the fact that exp scaling as implemented interact BADLY with fixed quest exp...just go read all the walkthroughs...ALL of them will recommend that you kill monsters then do the quest, because it will result in you getting better exp...that compound with the fact that there's only limited enemies is just bad...for example, there's 100 enemies that give 100 exp when killed, and a quest that give 5500 exp when done (no combat)...if we use the last scaling as example, and make it so that each level up cut exp gained by 5 per level difference...

1. In the no scaling system, you do the quest before or after killing all enemies it will make no difference, you'll get 15500 exp total anyway...

2. In scaling system, if I kill all enemies first I'll get 14000<x<15500 exp (because I'll be a few levels in already)...but If I do the quest first, THEN kill enemies then I'll get 5500 exp immediately, but since I'm lv 10 already, exp per monster is now only 50...and if I kill all and account for scaling, I'll be getting the total of LESS THAN around 11000 exp...

This makes quite a bit of difference, AND it will encourage the "optimum" playstyle (which already happened by the way), which is bad because in a game as big as D:OS you want the player to be able to set their own pace and don't need to worry about THAT much detail in the needing to do optimum exp gaining...if you want to permit twink, let them do with skill build and not trying to get something like this...

I get your point, but if you keep getting exp for killing low level stuff, you could level yourself up, without really "learning" antything. And since succesfully finishing a quest is actually something unique it should be rewarded as so.
And for the need of more exp from level to level. Thats quite logical aswell. See it as perfecting your running skills, the first day's/weeks you gain great improvement, but you gonna have to train more and harder to keep gaining progress.

The problem is that this game will most likely have finite enemies like older games...and exp double scaling is just bad there...

And as I said, since the amount of exp needed per level is already increasing, you don't need to do another scaling...scaling^2 is bad BAD idea, bad since the first game...

This was actually confirmed. Maybe there will be a few instances where things respawn but as a rule they won't.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO and again nooooooooooooo; what's wrong with xp scaling -> go play Oblivion/Diablo if u like anyway devs already said that enemies wont lvl scale so...

Other than the Oblivion style level scaling that we already know is out, I don't really know enough to have a firm opinion on what will work and what won't, so I'll put my trust in Larian to handle it. They've got experience with it.

The only thing that worries me slightly is the experience splitting between party members, summons and companions. Larian has said clearly that only those who participate in a fight get XP (I don't know if a character who dies in battle gets XP for enemies killed after they are.)

My worry about XP splitting is that if you make too much use of multiple henchmen/companions and keep swapping them out, they'll all end up under-levelled. That's only really an issue because I don't know how much XP is available in the world. Is there a generous enough amount to get a party of 4 to hit the XP cap well before the end-game, or will things be tight enough that a party of 4 - even the same party of 4 used all game will just barely hit the level cap in the Definitely Very Final Dungeon?

I remember the 2004 Bard's Tale with its Level cap of 21. It had respawning enemies in places, random encounters on the world map and some re-enterable dungeons, and even then if you did basically everything, but didn't do a lot of world map random encounters, you could fall short of hitting the level cap.

Well i dont want to reach lvl cap, except if is so planned so precisely that u cant reach it until u do everything (kill everything and do every quest for max xp) in the world, because if it not planned good it kills exploration and what is not necessary to end the story since everything that u could do after reaching lvl cap becomes more or less pointless. For example this happened to me in Fallout 3 when i reached lvl cap halfway through the main quest since i was just exploring the wastelands killing everything i could, do many various sidequests, and when i reached lvl cap game more or less became just another FPS.

Now to solve xp distribution for companions and henchmen there could be simple Baldurs Gate like system where companions have different lvls depending on your lvl when u meet them.

It's tricky.

There's no level scaling in the game, right, so how to handle the end-game in cases where someone does: 1)everything they can find, 2)a beeline for the main quest, doing few side-quests, or 3)a few quests, but they miss out on most of the secrets and extras?

That does make the idea of enemies giving out a variable amount of XP based on your level seem like a reasonable idea. I think I should fire up Divinity 2 again and just speed through the main quest stuff and see how that works. If I'm right, I should finish Sentinel Island about level 20, Orobas Fjords at about level 35, and FoV at about 45.


Variable levels based on your level when meeting companions is probably a good idea so that they're useful even if you don't meet them at the time the designers intended.

I agree with Fanest, level cap should be reach when you've done everything in the game (or almost).


I would prefer a fixed amount by type of enemy (and the same amount for each member of the team that fight). The exploration bases mean (to me) that it's the player who should find a challenge. The game should'nt be adapted to the level of characters : You win against a great enemy you'll have a great amount of XP, you win against a lower you'll have a lower amount of XP. That's all. The difficulty in setting this, is for the developpers (ouch). Or maybe, I misunderstood everything *whistle*

I don't mind it; it seems reasonable to me that a low-level player should get a greater reward for managing to kill a high-level enemy. Also, it seemed to work OK in DD. Level-scaling, on the other hand, is a complete no-no.

Yes i agree with you Doublefreud i remember in Gothic 2 a big troll guy somewhere at the edge of map which was impossible to defeat face to face at that time when i discovered it but it just happened so that i had shrink spell and i used it on him and wow i killed it and got tons of xp and i really felt good :P. Ofc this spell was very rare and u couldn't do this to every enemy but still u "outsmarted" it at low lvl and that shouldn't be punished with less XP just because u are low lvl and u aren't supposed to kill such enemies.

Thats why i think enemies should have fixed amount of XP. Also when u are exploring some area u might overlook some dungeon or smt and when u figure this out at some higher lvl and come back u will feel that u been robed of that xp cuz u didn't do it back then.

Another thing that scaling XP u get from enemies is doing is forcing u in linear gameplay and that is smt i really hate in RPGs especially RPGs that are build open world like but arent cuz of this.
For example lets say in Baldurs Gate u forgot to go to Firewine Bridge (a big labyrinth at the bottom of the map) and when u get in the city Baldurs Gate (late ingame) u decide to go down to that map and u figure out whats going on. U find out that its full of low lvl creatures but its hard as hell because of all the traps big numbers of enemies from everywhere and now wouldn't u fell stupid to not get xp from killing those pesky little creatures even at high lvl when killing such creatures should be easy? If xp scaling would be implemented and u knew what to expect would u even consider doing it?

^This!

And also, I'd love to have D:OS without a fixed level cap. However, it should be designed so that the end level will fluctuate within like 2-4 levels, no more, and the final levels shouldn't be too different in power from the highest level to the penultimate ones.