Something I'd like to see in an RPG is the ability to fail. Even strategy games these days are loathe to challenge the player, because the game needs to know what to do if the player fails. One issue is that (a) RPGs rely on the player's character progressing through the story, (b) challenges are frequently in the form of combat, and (c) combat is usually lethal. So that means if a player fails a challenge, their character is dead and the story is over. Even in the case of a puzzle, the game has to be prepared for what happens if the player doesn't solve the puzzle. Imagine a door, with a clever locking mechanism that the character must decipher in order to get through the door. What happens if the player is unable to decipher the puzzle? In most games, the story cannot continue, and the frustrated player looks up the answer on Google. That's not a game, that's just homework. I would be interested in a game that had an actual answer to the question: What happens if the player is unable to decipher the puzzle? The character's inability to get through that door is now a plot-point, a crisis. So what happens next?
I played that (awful) game, but don't recall where that happens?
Skyrim's level scaling was terrible. It made bandits run around in some of the most expensive armor types that exist. Why are they even bandits at that point? And why is a group of Bandits still a problem for the girl who just killed a dragon all by herself? Makes no sense at all.Level scaling isn't inherently bad, and in open world games it's even necessary. I'll even go further and say that while the level scaling in Oblivion was gamebreakingly bad, the level scaling in Skyrim was pretty good.
I'm fine with some areas being gated off by very strong enemies. Exploring, running away and coming back later is fun, but alternating between trivial and overwhelming challenges because you didn't explore the locations in the right order is not. A game that allows you to go wherever you want needs some way to dynamically adjust the difficulty and a combat system with a good balance between character stats and player skill. Many games screw up the latter and make enemies that are two or three levels above you unbeatable.
That's the problem with Skyrim. The entire combat system is too dependent on stats and leaves very little room for timing or tactics which makes the scaling far too obvious.
Skyrim's level scaling was terrible. It made bandits run around in some of the most expensive armor types that exist. Why are they even bandits at that point? And why is a group of Bandits still a problem for the girl who just killed a dragon all by herself? Makes no sense at all.
Mages also become weaker and weaker as they level up, because spell damage does not scale with anything, so suddenly your average bandit begins to take 4 hits before dying instead of 3, and then eventually, it will take 5. He'll also kill you faster and faster, because your defense doesn't really increase on its own as you level. That's just silly.
Both of those problems are Skyrim-specific and can be solved by proper implementations, but generally, level scaling always comes at the cost of at least some immersion - and more often than not, at the cost of the feeling of actual progress and power gain. I think level-scaling IS inherently bad, and if it is "required", then only as a result of lazy world building (as in, the physical game world, not the "lore" of the world).
Whats the alternative though and who has successfully done it?
Hard mode: Who has successfully done it on the scale of a TES series map?
Skyrim's level scaling was terrible. It made bandits run around in some of the most expensive armor types that exist. Why are they even bandits at that point? And why is a group of Bandits still a problem for the girl who just killed a dragon all by herself? Makes no sense at all.
Mages also become weaker and weaker as they level up, because spell damage does not scale with anything, so suddenly your average bandit begins to take 4 hits before dying instead of 3, and then eventually, it will take 5. He'll also kill you faster and faster, because your defense doesn't really increase on its own as you level. That's just silly.
Both of those problems are Skyrim-specific and can be solved by proper implementations, but generally, level scaling always comes at the cost of at least some immersion - and more often than not, at the cost of the feeling of actual progress and power gain. I think level-scaling IS inherently bad, and if it is "required", then only as a result of lazy world building (as in, the physical game world, not the "lore" of the world).
Whats the alternative though and who has successfully done it?
Hard mode: Who has successfully done it on the scale of a TES series map?
TES modders.
Half a point - they're using someone elses world and saving gigantic quantities of work.
Yes but so is anyone on the dev team in charge of enemies and difficulty.Half a point - they're using someone elses world and saving gigantic quantities of work.
Daggerfall and Morrowind?.. Daggerfalls map is btw at least twice or thrice the size of skyrims![]()
Skyrim's level scaling was terrible. It made bandits run around in some of the most expensive armor types that exist. Why are they even bandits at that point? And why is a group of Bandits still a problem for the girl who just killed a dragon all by herself? Makes no sense at all.
Right, the presentation has to match the mechanics. An adversary who can fly above the player, shrug off most weapons, and shoot cones of flame should look like a dragon, not like a bandit. If you're being deliberately surreal, that needs to make sense to the player eventually, if not right away. (I once had a player in a D&D game decide to keep a "dragonscale shield" he'd found in the crypt of a legendary dragon-hunter; once word had gotten around, I had a dragon pursue the party, taking an innocuous shape before morphing back into her true form as part of an ambush. At the beginning of the fight, the players didn't know why the "old crone" was confronting them - one of them was wearing her friend.)I also agree that having "bandits" carry the most rare armor in the entire game is immersion breaking and kills any kind of enthusiasm from the players side to grow.
Yeah, I really don't think that development works that way. How about comparing apples to apples instead of hobbyists to professionals? (who have different audiences)