Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game principles in non-game contexts.
I see no sense in progress in killing the same npc every level, because he increases in level at par with me.
I have a sense of progress when I am at par with kobolts at level 1, goblins at level 3, orcs at level 5, ogres at level 8... and dragons at level 20.
Or did I misunderstood your post?
well doing kobolts at lvl1 and dragons at lvl20 is easy, but solving this issue with humans would be probably just fighting 5year olds at lvl1 and fighting demigods at lvl20, which sounds rather unoptimal. Or have lvl15 human guards all over the world, which would then break the main premise of this game - total freedom. Because half of the encounters with NPCs in fort joy ends up with battle, and guards are often near, it would be very hard to impossible to get out of fort joy the way I did - kill everything
So human levels and power are gamified - they are not like real humans with their constant strength, but their strength is scaling according to to game needs to always pose appropriate challenge. If they stayed the same, you would be at one point too weak, for few minutes would be the same power and rest of the game they will be just nuissance, which is not fun, nor realistic. So in order to have sense of progression (you gain levels, equipment etc.) AND some challenge, you need scaling guards.
Which is fully rational, because you in real life also don´t start as skinny twat with stick and end up as dragon killing demigod swimming in money and bitches just 3 months later, do you...
If that bothers you, RPG is not the right genre for you maybe?
