Originally Posted by Hassat Hunter
Respawning foes.

Both the cause and result of using level scaling.
But if you have no respawning foes, you can allow more control, ie. not need levelscaling to do the job for you.


...?

You can have respawning foes without level scaling. That's how, for example, most MMOs work. The decision to offer respawning or finite challenges has nothing to do with level scaling.

There are some odd impressions of level scaling in this thread. Level scaling sets your opponent's level to match your level (there's a bit more happening behind the scenes than that, but that's the most important part of it). The result is that an encounter is always challenging regardless of when you run into it during your adventure. What's so awful about guaranteed challenges? I'd like to think nobody sets off on an adventure thinking "I hope I can just win fights by rolling my face on the keyboard..".

Now, that doesn't mean an orc and a dragon have the same stats and end up feeling like exactly the same fight. Huge variations in difficulty between opponents can still exist, to the extent that (despite being the same level) an epic opponent can outclass you until you've advanced to the point where you have enough tools at your disposal to get on equal footing. The best part is this hypothetical epic encounter remains challenging even if you don't run into it until you've advanced well beyond that point.

People tend to point out how (due to level scaling) it's odd to run into a rat that can challenge your max level character. But the flip side of that is not having level scaling and then one-shotting a dragon encounter that had the misfortune of being half your level. Between the possibility of being plagued by super vermin or ridiculously easy dragons, I think I'd rather be faced with the former dilemma. That said, if your designers are up to snuff they're aware odd scenario like this can exist, and so they avoid using things like rats as opponents in the game. Then you just have to worry about running into, say, super orcs instead of super rats.. which doesn't seem nearly as odd.

How any of that makes level scaling "one of the worst things that happened to RPG's" is beyond me.