Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Game is to hard!

But how can leveling feel meaningless when it opens up access to more skills and talents, new and better looking equipment, sets you against new types of foes, can open up new quests, new storyline, and even new areas? In a game that doesn't use level scaling, becoming one level higher than the last monster you faced is still of little consequence if there are a plethora of same-level monsters waiting for you right around the next corner.


Isn't this the case even if a game doesn't use level scaling? Even in Divinity : OS. You exit Cyseal's gate as a level 3 character and encounter carefully placed level 3 opponents. Eventually you run out of level 3 opponents, and if design has done its job properly you've accumulated enough experience to advance to level 4. Off to the next area we go.. where it just so happens level 4 opponents await us. Eventually we kill all of those encounters off and now we're level 5. What's over that next hill? Oh look.. level 5 opponents - even without level scaling.

This isn't the type of game with respawning MOBs where someone can decide they're just going to grind out the same low-level area for a while with their high-level hero. Unless you're the type to go mass-murderer in towns, the combat opportunities in this game are fairly finite, and there's just enough of it to make sure you can advance alongside it.

Hoo boy, I shouldn't have stirred up this old hornets' nest, LOL. I've heard all these pro-scaling arguments before and still (and will probably always) strongly disagree with them for reasons I don't have the energy to rehash/further develop here, so I'm just going to agree to disagree. It's all moot for D:OS anyway, thanks to the good folks at Larian choosing a development path that allows players to attempt (and in my case, at least) beat opponents who are (gasp) actually not at my same level, whenever I feel the need to try.

So back to the current beta difficulty - now the hotfix has allowed me to explore around the NE area without CTDs, I really had fun with the I guess it wasn't too difficult the second time around, but was a good time. Well done, Larian.

I read this thread and started daydreaming a bit.
Regarding level scaling I can think of a system based on dice rolls. The system could make a roll for example with d4 or d6 for all enemies, result-1 or -2 to be added to the PC actual level = enemy level. After that adding skills and abilities from a preset pool for them. So there would be differences in a group depending on 'luck' and a combat can be different by playing it again (loading older savegame). The game difficulty level could give a modifier to this roll.
I simply wouldn't show the level of the foes until the battle starts (or never for maniacs, hehe), so it could be also fun as player not to know how strong exactly the enemy is. This could avoid to get bored (but maybe also go on the nerves after some time, hehe).
However there are huge problems with this, this can unbalance the game quickly, devs have work a lot to be able to handle this right and the KI has to be very good to be able to handle such a random group most effectively.
Dream off: I don't think this would be implemented in a game, since this may be too much work for a not too big feature...

That's pretty much how Oblivion's level scaling worked for the most part: PC level offset was the standard for many if not most encounters. Although the types of enemies changed, the difficulty never really progressed except in the teens where if the player's own levelling wasn't ideal it got quite tough, and the mid-high 20s where the enemy level began to level off.

Equipment types as found both on enemies and in random loot also scaled with the player's level, so again, though its appearance changed, everyone even the most hopeless highwayman ended up using top-class equipment and the stuff from earlier in the game was functionally useless. It eventually got to the point where I just felt "why am I doing this?"

Although I've generally found the smug "Morrowind did it better" crowd to be quite insufferable, Morrowind's approach to enemy levels and general diversity did make for more interesting gameplay and certainly a more varied range of encounters. For a lot of players, overhauls that threw away Oblivion's vanilla levelling in favour of something that was a lot less smoothed out and influenced by the player's progress was a big improvement.

Indeed, especially in an open world like the Elder Scrolls, the point of exploring is totally ruined if there's nothing to explore since instead of finding easy areas and hard areas, and exiting new dungeons, all was hand-tailored for your level.
No exiting "what's in this lair" when you already know anyway.

Gone went the exploration fun, motivation, and then entire game with that. And I bougth the CE based on Morrowind. What a loss of money that turned out to be...

I also know another example. KOTOR1 has a finite 20 levels, and used pre-set enemies. They could be replaced by a higher type of the same enemy (including other name of course) if you were high (to allow you to do 4 levels in your own order), but only very few distinct enemies had that, most were fixed. But quite obviously the first was harder than your 4th. And that's good.
The game was easy.
Then came along KOTOR2, who stretched it to lvl 50 (even though one only reaches 30 realistically), and instead of handcrafted NPC's used levelscaling.
There is no challenge in the game, at all. The enemies are completely underpowered to the player simply cause the "add this based on level" isn't enough to compensate for the progression of the players power.

Dragon Age: Origins uses level scaling too. This resulted in aforementioned super-HP-bloated enemies to 'compensate' for the player. Again; No fun in combat was to be had.

The Old Republic introduced some events, encounters and such which scale, so all players could join said event. The result is usually;
* It scales to highest level of your party. Are you below it; feel free to twidle your thumbs as you cannot damage it.
* If equal level, it's not terribly challenging but boy, does it take a long time before enemies go down. Fun, it's not there.
* Let a lower level player spawn it, then kill it. Definitely the most fun, since you're not spending who-knows-how-long on repetitive content.

Now I have to say TOR's combat and system in general is horrible anyway (it's a MMO, what do you expect), but atleast finite levels was a lot more fun. The scaled content is just horribly, finding teams a nightmare since you get all level people there, and most low-level people just use a high-level friend to get them along. And they can, since it's horrible designed.
The designers say 'allow everyone to play this content due to level scaling' and I said 'you know what, forget this game' since everything that came out after that decision was just so mind-dumbing bad I didn't feel like playing no more. I suppose I should be glad they freed me from the clutches of MMO exactly by making me think 'what the hell am I doing, really?' something tht wasn't even daunting me by grinding max level content, but definitely hit home then...

A bit off, but
I think the main thing with this concept is the size of the game world. This can work good with a realistic size, like D:OS, where the devs can fine tune it more effective, but an Oblivion or Skyrim is simply tooo large. Now I read that The Witcher 3 will be 3 times bigger than Skyrim. In my eyes was Oblivion and Skyrim too big, and now this. Now they will have an impossibly large area with a load of work and the foe difficulty fine tuning is a very very small one of them.
So this may got failed by Bethesda for many other reason, but a smaller game can use it more effectively.

One additional opinion in favor of non-scaled foes. Others have raised solid points in favor, namely that constant scaling removes much of the sense of power progression throughout the game, which for some roleplayers like myself, is part of the fun of the experience (and certainly much of the fun of leveling.) If enemies always scale equally, then there is never any evidence that my PCs have gotten stronger in anything, only that they learned a few new skills. That's better than nothing, but not the same as seeing some lowbie quake in their boots as you stroll back through an early area with your hard-won experience and gear.

The flipside (also mentioned previously), is that you can occasionally risk more than the devs expected you to, and navigate a higher-level area via stealth, cunning, or just packing a lot of supplies! These experiences feel like you're "getting away with something," and are inherently exciting. Often this means a big reward in either items or XP, prizes that may be disproportionately great for your level, which feels awesome! But failing that, it is still satisfying to feel like your character went in search of greater challenges and was successful in the face of stacked odds.

These are all points in favor of unscaled enemies for the sake of fun. But I also feel like enemy scaling is just "weird" in context of the game world. It doesn't feel accurate to find that all entities within the world are advancing in power and expertise at the exact same rate as your PCs. It stretches suspension of disbelief, damages credibility of the world.

The trick is balancing the pre-set enemy levels so that you can sense additional challenge coming, and not just get slaughtered if you step a few feet off the preset path. The greater the power steps between levels, the harder that is to get right. If a baddie one or two levels above you is already an impossible foe, well, then, that does suck the fun out of the system. Borderlands is an example of a game that offered unscaled enemies, but got really aggressive with the stat bonuses/penalties between levels. The same weapon that would ravage an enemy one level below you would hardly scratch one above. So even though the was some illusion of varying challenges for the PC, in truth they were railroading the experience pretty hard. That's un-scaled foes done poorly.

The more info I get about The Witcher 3, the less interested I get in playing it.
I don't think that's how hyping a game is supposed to work.

I agree with Jake, eh, Juke. Plenty of levelbased games use level as balancing, and offer damage bonusses for lower leveled and damage reductions against higher leveled. It really doesn't matter what your gear is, it just magically does more damage if you level up even if the 43 and 44 enemy might be similar statwise.
That as a system is pretty bad, and I am glad to see it doesn't seem Original Sin goes that path, and levels are powerful because the power they give you instead of being part of the damage calculation system.

Thing is, that complaint has nothing to do with level scaling. Encounters can be made more or less difficult without changing the amount of levels between you and your opponent to create ridiculous situations where all your attacks are doing 1 point of damage or everything is being one-shotted by the swing of your sword because of obscene bonuses being applied to either the opponent or player due to the difference in level between them.

One would not expect a level 30 guard to possess the same skills, abilities, and challenge of a level 30 vampire or a level 30 dragon, regardless of them being all the same level. All level scaling does is put the opponent at your level, allowing you to run into it at any point during your adventure and not feel like you're wasting your time because a span of umpteen levels exist between you and it.


How is that any different than the setup in Divinity : OS (which does not use level scaling)? We fight low level undead and they drop low level gear. We fight high level undead and they drop high level gear which makes the previous gear obsolete.


Yes.. the answer to that question is "Monsters". There are monsters in the lair. Do they have to have a level number tagged next to their name to make that answer exciting?

With the new updates to Diablo 3, they don't even display level numbers next to monsters anymore. You just see a pack of demons bounding towards you, and they have a real chance of killing you. That's all the player needs to know. Their level is just a hidden number and in the end seeing it doesn't even matter. The fact that they represent a real threat and are about to swarm you is all that matters.

And yet, leveling is still exciting as it grants the player access to more abilities and more options - changes which are also happening to the monsters - meaning your fights when you were level 5 are nothing like your fights when you are level 30 (even though the game is using level scaling).

Thus, this suggestion you continue to make that all fights are the same regardless of level is completely false - for that to happen the designer would only be adding health and damage modifiers based on the monster's level - and that's a horribly lazy way to design monsters, one which has absolutely nothing to do with using level scaling or not. You can run into that same boring setup even in a game that doesn't use level scaling.

Level scaling simply makes the monster your level to remove obscene level-difference based bonuses and resistances between the two opponents. It doesn't magically do all the other awful things you're trying to pin on it.. a bad designer does that.

Really, I'm just stunned that people are claiming level scaling removes all challenge from a game, when in reality a challenge is the main thing level scaling aims to maintain. If you're playing a game and constantly having to seek out higher level encounters because the monsters at your level are a joke.. sure, giving you the option of facing higher level monsters is one way to fix that. A much better way of fixing that is doing a better job of designing the encounters so that they aren't a joke at their intended level. However, even when that is done, outside of level scaling there's little a designer can do to maintain the intended level of challenge if you happen upon an encounter that is well below your level.

And I love how everyone is continuing to just pretend concerns weren't raised (repeatedly) about how expansions and user created content would be handled without level scaling. I guess we're all excited about creating brand new characters each and every time someone designs a new adventure with the toolset? I must be the only one who wishes he could continue playing with his favorite characters.

Seriously, go play Oblivion. Experience the horrors of level scaling on exploration.
Just "monsters" isn't enough, I can exactly say which one. In EVERY SINGLE DUNGEON. Unless I go to level for the next monsters, who then again are also in EVERY SINGLE DUNGEON.
Fun, there ain't none.

You can obliterate all challenge by getting super-gear at lvl 1 (heck, the best strategy and advised tactic is staying 1 ALL GAME. Any RPG where the experts advise you to do that... I have no words). Of course, by the time you get 20 every single enemy wears super-gear too, and any and all "proudness" of getting good gear is gone seeing it being as common as rocks or trees.
"This armor is rare"
"Really? I saw a highwaymen asking me 5 gold wear the whole set, worth 9000 gold. Rare indeed."

It may be good for a hack&slash like Diablo, but seriously, what exploration or plot or believe of a world is there in Diablo. It's all about loot. That's, fortunately, not the case here. And I am glad for it.

Yes, a bad designer does that. And I am glad the designers of D:OS don't. Despite the apparent claims we now get they should get this, and the game's too hard and should simply allow you to go anywhere you want and addapt itself to that. I am very VERY glad they decide to say 'no' to that.

Okay, here's you anwer;
* Expansion will raise level cap (there's a shocker).
* Mods will add appropriate content for the environment it's added to (if it's good that is). Unless someone intentially wants to make a lvl 20 encounter area in Cyseal. More power to them. They got all the freedom they want designing. I absolutely see no issue there myself. Why would there be issues?
(Not to mention total conversions do indeed generally force you to restart. It doesn't make much sense bringing your full character into a total conversion mod, most of the times. I'm sure there will be 'arena' mods that will allow your character to test it's maxxed out metal)

Maybe if you actually raise concerns I can answer them. Because as far as I see, there are none, just like with the current fixed enemies approach. What's wrong?

I like hard games. As long as there's a way to beat the enemy without resorting to exploiting or excessive grinding, bring it on.

I dislike games where you can adjust the slider on the fly (like Diablo 3). Let the player choose a difficulty right at the start, and then they're stuck with their choice for the entire campaign. The problem with sliders is that players encounter a boss they couldn't beat, and they turn down the difficulty instead of thinking of ways to overcome the encounter. It's lazy. It's also their prerogative to do so, but playing like that wastes the developer's effort in designing an encounter.

Diablo(III) is not a RPG, it is an ARPG. ARPGs (such as Torchlight II) are designed for repetition, grinding of content / bosses / loot tables and often use algo's to level 'fix' mobs to present a player with challenge: they aren't RPGs, they're essentially skinner boxes. Fun skinner boxes with more depth than Zynga, but they're essentially putting a RNG in a pretty GUI and getting the player to pull the handle. Borderlands I / II fit in here (despite the FPS hybrid RPG later on) and so forth.

Then we hit JRPGs, the Final Fantasy series being the most famous, which feature level scaling and respawning and lots and lots of grinding. As an aside, an interesting mix of these two is Dark Souls, with NG+(>+++++++), that although featuring respawn & grinding have set levels / loot tables (which just aren't revealed to the player, but trust me, all the mobs are a set level/HP, chest loot is fixed and so forth). You'll note that DSI+II make you replay the entire set content at the same fixed pace, bumping on NG+. I count DS as a JRPG in disguise, really.

Many posters in this thread seem to hanker after a DS design.

This is a bad idea, especially in open world RPGs, as shown by Oblivion / Legends of Amalur. DS works because their level designers (esp. in the first) were making linear maps linked in clever ways - the grinding is there, really, to off-set the difficulty.

Then you have old-school RPGs, Ultima IV-VII etc etc. By Ultima VI-VII-Serpent, Origin had the pacing down to a tee, although they often enforced content themed locks [e.g. not getting magic until mages isle in Serpent; limiting reagents in U5 etc]. Ask any old-time player about magic axes in Ultima V and you'll get some fond remembrance of power-leveling parties. This category is vast, but the story / quests were more important than levels. You have FPS hybrids such as System Shock 1/2, Deus Ex and so forth. Content is fixed, and respawn is very limited (e.g. SS2 had a couple of mobs respawn, infected humans but never higher level mobs), and as such, you can control the progression of the player much easier. These are much more RPGs than Diablo and co.

D:OS is an old-style RPG and has permanent spawns [i.e. once removed, stay removed]. However, it does feature level scaling gear [chests] as well as permanent fixed gear [quest rewards, e.g. orc's armor from the beach]. However (and this is the important part): the # of chests is fixed, and they don't respawn. With fixed mobs you can estimate, to a high precision, exactly how much XP is available to a player. Obviously, completionists who find all the sub-quests will be at an advantage - however, this is a price they pay for allowing their lesser 'casual' friends to play along. As such, there is no grinding in D:OS, nor is there loot farming, nor is there even the potential to really out-level content.

The alpha certainly had a difficulty issue in that the end-sections were ~level 5, whereas the party would be level 7-9. I've not had time to see the changes (D:OS update d/ling now). Whether or not it would be desirable for D:OS to have a NG+ is a separate matter - I'd think not, given the quest repetition, but you never know.




TL;DR

The mechanics of designing the three are vastly separate; I'm not getting into a pointless internet debate, but Gyson (despite typing a lot) clearly doesn't understand the difference, nor does he have much useful input. For the record, Gyson complained that Skyrim had no scaling: this is entirely false, it had a more tinkered version of Oblivion's - he was one-shotting dragons because it's a terribly easy game designed for consoles / casual players, and the entire series (from Morrowind onwards) purposely make the spectrum of bonuses / multipliers (*cough*enchantabuse*cough*) allow power-players to run wild.

Not because of lack of scaling.



Even quicker synopsis: fixed content / spawns cannot have level scaling, if you want to design a proper system.




This entire thread was a pointless /derail. Difficulty, I'll see: although I did tell people that there would be tears over the light house

Why in the world would I do that? Your entire argument against level scaling seems to be entirely based on how badly it was implemented in Oblivion. As with any tool, using it wrong or poorly is going to lead to undesirable results. Exploring badly designed games for some kind of insight into a particular mechanic is pointless when I can turn to numerous well designed games and see level scaling at its best.

The problem is you, for what I hope are obvious reasons, are determined to go on pretending that Oblivion is the only example to look at when judging level scaling. I can list a half dozen examples of games where level scaling worked very well, but you will just continue falling back to Oblivion's bad design.


You seem to be responding to questions I never actually asked.

Although I've repeated this twice now, let's go for a third time. Since Divinity : OS allows players to progress in different ways, it stands to reason that players might end up with characters at varying levels by the time they reach the end of the game. You might, for example, wind up with level 20 characters, where as I wind up with level 23 characters because I'm a completionist and have participated in every quest the original campaign has to offer. Someone else may have level 26 characters because they kill all NPCs, friend and foe alike.

If we get an expansion, or if players use the editor to create additional modules/adventures, what level should the starting monster in those expanded adventures be? 20? 23? 26? What's the "right" magic number when all our characters can end up at wildly different levels (in a large part due to the freedoms allowed in this game)?

How would *you* make your module for the public? How are you going to balance a starting point for multiple character levels since the game doesn't automatically scale opponents to the character's level? If I release a module where the battles start at level 25 and you only have level 20 characters.. what good is that module to you? If I instead make the battles start at level 20 and someone has level 25 characters, how can I hope to keep them entertained when all the fights will be trivial due to the level difference?

For that reason, I suspect most new adventures will require players to create new characters each time (since having opponents starting at level ~1 is the safest bet), which is too bad for people that want to continue developing their favorite characters. Level scaling would have helped avoid a lot of issues here.

Yes, and that's a big problem for players like me who aren't having fun with trivial battles.


The only thing that is completely false is your summary of my statement. I did not say Skyrim didn't have level scaling. What I said was:


If you're going to base your entire point on something I said, make sure it's something I actually said. Don't just throw words into my mouth and then attack that. That you linked that statement to a complaint about "not understanding the difference" or "not having useful input" is all the more amusing coming from you when you're falling back on straw man tactics.

There's two answers to this:

1) Create the module with varying starting levels. e.g. Periwinkles of DOOOM - starting level 20 / 30 / 40 and simply scale the encounters accordingly [much less work than you'd think if the editor is any good]. Tabletop RPGs have been doing this for yonks.

2) Create the module with a specific level in mind, and bad luck to anyone else. Tabletop RPGs have also been doing this for yonks, the Temple of Elemental Evil waves its boney hand at you.







That was on page 2: I then skim-read your ill-informed and rather dull entries.

I'm glad you revised your initial statement, but you did, indeed, claim that Skyrim had a lack of level scaling. That you then claim "strawman", when you typed it, then revised your incorrect assumption / lack of knowledge, then are defending it by going on the attack...


Well boys, I think that's:



/thread






I'd suggest looking under the hood at what Skyrim does visa-vie scaling, but you clearly don't understand the issues.


D:OS cannot have level scaling. Case closed.

I'm not revising anything. What is written there was always written there. It's nice to know you're coming to conclusions about me based on your "skimming" of my posts. How thorough!

Maybe you should take the time to read more carefully before jumping to conclusions in the future, as it might help you avoid making this mistake again. I always find it strange when someone can't take the time to read what someone else wrote, but expects everyone else to read their own response. You'll forgive me if I start "skimming" your posts from now on.

You one-shot dragons in Skyrim because of broken mechanics, not because there's no scaling.

Skyrim is tightly scaled, it just tapers out a lot quicker than the player's own power. The reason for this is that there's an exponential power curve in Skyrim due to % modifiers, and the game doesn't calc DPS etc very well.

This is due to the way Bethesda design the mechanics; you are largely ignorant of this, and have not played Oblivion, where scaling as a design concept was really pushed hard, which is why the more knowledgeable in the thread keep referencing it.

You spent 3+ pages defending not knowing this. You continue to do so.




You also heavily suggested you knew what was involved with level scaling "under the hood" despite this.




/thread




If you're still in the dark: you one-shot dragons :: if they scaled correctly, they'd also one-shot you. DPS <> HP is that broken in Skyrim, especially over level 25 or so.

I guess each player has his/her own preference for spawn / non-respawn and scaling / non-scaling mechanics depending on his/her personal play style. Fortunately, there are enough games out there which cater to different tastes.

The point is: D:OS has no respawns and it has no level scaling. This has been known for a long time and people who pledged or bought the game did it because they liked this approach. The no-respawn and no-scaling mechanics are not going to change anymore.

And although the discussion in this thread has many interesting insights into arguments of both sides, it is pretty much useless since the debate about personal preferences can go forever.

I, for example, would be very disappointed if D:OS would get level scaling. I like wandering into a high-level area with a low-level character and take on the challenge to defeat the enemies there. There is a feeling of achievement in it which would be lost if there were level-scaling. I also like to come back to the original low-level area and one-shoot all the foes.

You must have overlooked me taking a few other examples in posts, like Knights of the Old Republic or Dragon Age?
And your entire argument was revolved around how Diablo III, a hack & slasher pur sang did it. But considering you now claim you can give 6+ examples of games with good levelscaling, let me have it!
I just point to Oblivion to show just how level scaling on exploration can have extreme negative consequences to a game.
Kind of important since your whole argument was about levelscaling to make exploration anywhere possible. Maybe if you simply stated "Level scaling will make games challenging throughout" I would have offered to keep looking at KOTOR2 instead... one of the easiest games in existance (and still one of the most awesome RPG's ever! Which would shock you too I guess)

No, they don't... that's what level caps are for.
Despite what some people may think and say that they are 'outdated' and should be banished, they do infact are included for a reason, and the reason is, well, this. There's no 'We have to guess the level of the player on continue' if the level is just simply known. And if the player isn't max level they can simply get there by doing more content they missed out on, which you know there is since we know with finite XP just how far you can get.
So it's not me answering questions you didn't ask, you're asking questions which wont even be part of the equation when the game is done.

Also, I find it very humerous the answer to "That map is lvl 25, I am 20" is according to you "better restart from lvl 1"...

Modmakers will make the levels whatever level they want. You want to add to Cyseal. Check. Want to add stuff for people there right now, or make returning better. Makes the set level different.
Sure, modmakers could put their stuff at the end, but seeing usual RPG gameplay and mods I suspect;
* They will be additions for the maingame (weapons etc)
* Modifications of the maingame (hate repair, change it!)
* Additions to the maingame, usually around the middle.
* Total conversion. Which by design require you to make a new character anyway since a lot of the time everything has changed.
Not everything needs to be added once you finish the game, and only there.

So; still; sollutions to non-existant issues.

(Sigh) This is why debating something with someone who doesn't understand the mechanics being referred to is frustrating.

Level scaling in Skyrim is not implemented in a way where everything matches perfectly to your your level. There are adjustments based on your location (higher elevations, for example, are typically more dangerous than lower). Then there are opponents which cap at certain levels, yet still show up in encounters. Dungeons lock to the level you were when you first entered them. And dragons have *fixed* levels, with certain types of dragons only appearing at certain level ranges. For example, if you're level 26 you are going to be encountering level 20 Blood Dragons. When you reach level 27, you will can start encountering level 30 Frost Dragons.

So, yes, I was easily killing dragons because, in their specific case, scaling was implemented in way of being almost non-existent and completely ineffective.

Make sure you know what you're talking about before you look silly going off on a nonsensical rant like the following...



Oh.. and stop /threading already. That's your third time, isn't it? What are you, 12?

The thread doesn't end because you think it's time to wrap everything up. If you want to leave the discussion, leave the discussion. Between the fact that you hopped into it and immediately started insulting me, and all the nonstop mistakes you're making, it's not like you're adding anything useful to it anyway.

Or stick around. It's up to you. But at least get your fact straight and your manners in check.