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[LoSboccacc]

maybe that's is not a good game to cite, but I remember getting stuck in icewind dale because I was just playing for kicks and suddenly four golems none of the party could damage because I didn't single mindedly focus each one of them in their specialty like 6 little obsessive compulsive psychopaths.

also see, the draugr are training http://i.imgur.com/8M1cj3Q.jpg

[94dima94]

also see, the draugr are training http://i.imgur.com/8M1cj3Q.jpg

Thank you for this.

Also, that's a main issue I have with that game. in many other games you get different places with different creatures of various strenght. It's weird, but it has its logic. Here, enemies are magically powered up for no reason if your level changes. And the game NEEDS that.
I tried playing with the mod Requiem, which basically removes that aspect, and it's HARD. You can't really know if you can win something or not unless you try and reload if you fail, and you will spend a lot of time losing fights before you can reach a decent level. It's better, but it shows that the game really doesn't make sense in his normal form.

[Darkmere]

My issue is the same as always - if nothing levels up, it's guaranteed that 90% of the game world no longer matches your level and is arbitrarily impossibly hard or so easy to not be worth doing. The sandbox element disappears, there's now an optimal path through the game that you just don't know. What mystifies me is people have some mysterious boner for the "challenge" of sneak-attack critting a regular enemy 30 times to kill it, or 15-minute boss fights.

Rant, rant, rant - I generalize my hatred.

[Shadowlord]

And yet Morrowind is fun.

[Neonivek]

The thing is it isn't like auto-scaling or leveling can't be done right.

It is just that... well you get a situation like say

-Fallout 3 which had the greatest scaling ever created for a videogame where while enemies got stronger you outpaced them and soon you would fight hoards of them as quickly as you used to dispatch one.
Compared to
-Fallout 3 with expansions which was one of the worst scaling ever created for a videogame with enemies becoming nearly invincible due to poorly implemented features.

Which New Vegas fixed by... having terrible scaling.

[Sergarr]

My issue is the same as always - if nothing levels up, it's guaranteed that 90% of the game world no longer matches your level and is arbitrarily impossibly hard or so easy to not be worth doing. The sandbox element disappears, there's now an optimal path through the game that you just don't know. What mystifies me is people have some mysterious boner for the "challenge" of sneak-attack critting a regular enemy 30 times to kill it, or 15-minute boss fights.

Rant, rant, rant - I generalize my hatred.

The problem is that if everything levels up, there's still an optimal path through the game, and straying from that path could make progress completely impossible (as in, you level up non-combat skills, you get one-shotted by everyone). If there's no "level up enemies" and the game has a reasonably soft enemy level progression, you can always find area with an appropriate difficulty level for yourself and thus continue playing the game.

So actually you're objectively wrong, lack of levelling up makes a game much more sand-box friendly, in a sense that you could develop character any way you want and still be able to play the game, unlike in the opposite case, where you could very well screw yourself completely with no chance to recover.

[USEC_OFFICER]

-Fallout 3 which had the greatest scaling ever created for a videogame where while enemies got stronger you outpaced them and soon you would fight hoards of them as quickly as you used to dispatch one.

If I remember correctly, Fallout 3's level scaling was actually smarter than that. Every area had a range of levels that would determine the enemies you found in it and their equipment. Undiscovered areas would increase in level as you did too, until you encountered them and 'locked in' their level. This meant that you could stumble into an area, run away from powerful enemies, and then come back when you're at a higher level to destroy them. Additionally every area was set to scale at the different rates or start at the different levels, so some areas would be piss easy if you stumbled upon them at high levels while others would completely destroy you if you encountered them at level 1. The idea is obviously to have some kind of level progression moving across the map, but the game tweaks the areas so that you're likely to encounter something that's balanced for your level.

...

Mind you I haven't found much on Fallout 3's scaling system besides some vague info based on Bethesda's press releases so take this with a grain of salt. But I'm reminded of my experiences where I stumbled upon an area that I was vastly overleveled for. As such the game used the most difficult encounters and enemies for that area which were little more than fodder for my character. So some kind of smart level-scaling was used. I'm pretty sure that the DLCs had this form of scaling too, except they used stupidly tanky and annoying monsters for their encounters which ruined the entire purpose of it.

[Sergius]

-Fallout 3 which had the greatest scaling ever created for a videogame where while enemies got stronger you outpaced them and soon you would fight hoards of them as quickly as you used to dispatch one.

If I remember correctly, Fallout 3's level scaling was actually smarter than that. Every area had a range of levels that would determine the enemies you found in it and their equipment. Undiscovered areas would increase in level as you did too, until you encountered them and 'locked in' their level. This meant that you could stumble into an area, run away from powerful enemies, and then come back when you're at a higher level to destroy them. Additionally every area was set to scale at the different rates or start at the different levels, so some areas would be piss easy if you stumbled upon them at high levels while others would completely destroy you if you encountered them at level 1. The idea is obviously to have some kind of level progression moving across the map, but the game tweaks the areas so that you're likely to encounter something that's balanced for your level.

...

Mind you I haven't found much on Fallout 3's scaling system besides some vague info based on Bethesda's press releases so take this with a grain of salt. But I'm reminded of my experiences where I stumbled upon an area that I was vastly overleveled for. As such the game used the most difficult encounters and enemies for that area which were little more than fodder for my character. So some kind of smart level-scaling was used. I'm pretty sure that the DLCs had this form of scaling too, except they used stupidly tanky and annoying monsters for their encounters which ruined the entire purpose of it.

What they said about "locking" doesn't seem to reflect reality. This "level lock" also doesn't seem to be stored anywhere and modders make no mention of it, or how to reset it. I'm inclined to believe that this never happens.

What Fallout 3 (and NV) does seem to have is a range of levels that enemies scale to. So, for example, if you go to the areas with the gangs that use laser weapons, they're minimum level 10 if you're lower than that, and match your level up to let's say level 15. And even if you're level 50, they're still at level 15. And so on.

So instead of finding bandits in power armor and fat mans (fat men?) there's a sweet spot where they're an even match for you. And areas do have a difficulty level, but it bends slightly.

That is until the DLC adds Albino Radscorpions which just don't give a fuck.

EDIT: The DLC that add new areas seem to have the full scaling because the game has no idea at which level you're going to travel there. You can beat OWB at level 5 or at level 30. You'll probably get crappy loot if you do it earlier, and some bosses could turn out to be REALLY hard, but the respawning enemies seem to match your level pretty closely.

[Rolan7]

Did you just say Never-Ending Story is trite

Ohh no, I meant to say that FFTA was using a trope popularized in Never-Ending Story.

In principle, the idea is that Ivalice is basically supposed to be construed as an escapist fantasy for the four of them (Marche, Mewt, Ritz, and Doned); Marche's idée fixe is that everyone needs to face up to reality, no matter how harsh it may be, and that drives him to shatter the underpinnings of the world.  Mind you, when his "harsh" is "my parents are divorced" and the others' "harsh" range from "I'm teased for being phenotypically different," "my mum is dead and my dad a deadbeat drowning his sorrows in alcohol," and "not only are my parents divorced, but I also suffer from a chronic indeterminate illness and am bound to a wheelchair," it does start to feel a bit...disproportionate, shall we say?  When Ivalice is also, as far as the audience can tell, demonstrably "real" beyond the confines of the quartet's experiences (witness the rest of the games of the Ivalice Project), the idea of it purely being a fantastical construct of the Grimoire must suddenly also vie with the possibility that they were genuinely teleported to another world, the world of Ivalice that we've seen in Tactics, Vagrant Story, and later XII and FFTA2 as well.

Basically, my favorite thing about FFTA's story is how hilariously easy it is to reconstrue it as the tale of an evil omnicidal maniac who goes on a rampage after falling into a solipsistic delusion.

Haha, yeah!  Thanks for the recap.  That's pretty how I remember it, that Marche's friends had really serious problems and he's deciding for them.  In his defense, I guess the Totemas do grant his group ~phenomenal cosmic power~ on being defeated.  But my takeaway from FF5 was "destroying crystals is AWESOME, it gives rad abilities".
also Buttz lol
Well and Faris, actually...  I hadn't even heard of cross-dressing when I first played.

Personally I liked the point system.

Me and my sister used to compete with each other with those in wolfenstein and blake stone.

I mean, who doesn't measure their self worth via accumulated nazi treasure

To keep this at all on topic, I hate games that force you to optimize your characters and are full of trap choices that make it hard to even complete the game.  Might And Magic VI was really bad about this, full of skills that are either wastes, or wastes past a certain point.  And I'm pretty sure you can render the game unwinnable on character *selection*.  Didn't take anyone who can cast dark magic?  Enjoy the bad ending!

...You can win a game (with good ending) with a 4 Knights party, which has zero magic casters. There are no challenges in that game that requires your characters to be able to cast spells, it just makes it easier. Ritual of the Void scroll can be used by any character in the game (just like any other scroll), and that's the only requirement for getting the good ending.

Also, as far as I know there was one skill that was a waste (Diplomacy), and every other one was either very useful (all magic skills, sword, dagger, plate, disarm traps), or moderately useful (perception, spear/axe, leather, mail, shield) to level up.

So, uh. You're wrong.

Oh, I didn't realize that it was possible to find a scroll of it.  So yeah I was wrong, thanks!

As for the skills, ehhh sorta?  Some of them are wasted on multiple characters (repair item, mercantile) but maybe that's too obvious to be a trap.  Some are useless with the right magic (mercantile, perception) but that's not so bad either.

I think it's more that the game is very frustrating and slow unless you really pump up your offensive magic or attack skills...  Mostly the magic really, knights exist to tank hits not deal damage.  And the Mind magic school is just awful and bugged.  Body's not much better.

In the game's defense, though, the magic horseshoes eventually respawn.  Which means it's possible to get infinite skill points if you pass enough time (like at the inn) and go recollect them.  Maybe Diablo 2 would be a better example of "You put points in *that*"??  Haha you're screwed".  Particularly before synergies were implemented, so putting more than one point in an early skill made your character walking dead.  And I guess they added an absurdly limited way to respec, eventually.

[Darkmere]

And yet Morrowind is fun. is extremely unbalanced in favor of metagaming your preferred skillset.

FTFY

-snip-

The problem is that if everything levels up, there's still an optimal path through the game, and straying from that path could make progress completely impossible (as in, you level up non-combat skills, you get one-shotted by everyone). If there's no "level up enemies" and the game has a reasonably soft enemy level progression, you can always find area with an appropriate difficulty level for yourself and thus continue playing the game.

So actually you're objectively wrong, lack of levelling up makes a game much more sand-box friendly, in a sense that you could develop character any way you want and still be able to play the game, unlike in the opposite case, where you could very well screw yourself completely with no chance to recover.

That's some big if's to make me "objectively wrong" and an absurd degree of faffing about with suspension of disbelief. Yeah, if you're wandering around the wasteland full of radscorpions supermuties but you can't even defend yourself, you should die or at least have an extremely rough time. Bandits don't give a shit about your persuasive arguments, they want your stuff and a new corpse to decorate their hideout. Pacifist is a challenge run and should continue to be so.

To be fair, NV was much better about this kind of thing and let you talk/science/barter your way through most of the game, provided you stuck to safer areas or thought to bring a bodyguard in lieu of your pitiful combat ineptitude. Skyrim was less so due to frustration at summons/companion vs... you know, dragons.

All said, I do prefer a wide range of level scaling per zone as a happy medium, but I'd take global scaling over a linear path every time.

[Sergarr]

Oh, I didn't realize that it was possible to find a scroll of it.  So yeah I was wrong, thanks!

I have no idea how you can find Ritual of the Void that is not a scroll. It's not a spell that you can actually learn - it's a quest item, Archibald gives it to you when you de-stone him (with another quest item).

As for the skills, ehhh sorta?  Some of them are wasted on multiple characters (repair item, mercantile) but maybe that's too obvious to be a trap.  Some are useless with the right magic (mercantile, perception) but that's not so bad either.

Perception is actually a sorta mandatory skill I think, you can't open some doors in Supreme/Superior (forgot which one) Temple of Baa without it, and you need to go through them for the main questline. Only an expert is needed, though.

I think it's more that the game is very frustrating and slow unless you really pump up your offensive magic or attack skills...  Mostly the magic really, knights exist to tank hits not deal damage.  And the Mind magic school is just awful and bugged.  Body's not much better.

There's also the dagger way. Daggers have a very low recovery time, can be used by anyone except Clerics, and with expert, you can dual-wield them and (with GrayFace patch) deal double damage without slowing down. You can dish out surprisingly high amounts of damage with two daggers, especially if you use that one artefact dagger from an early quest (Mordred, it has vampirism) in conjunction with Heroism (adds 5+(spirit skill) damage to every attack), Bless (same, but for hit chance) and Haste (decreases recovery time) to turn your characters into blending machines. You don't even need all that high of a dagger skill for it to work effectively, if you have good buff magic.

In the game's defense, though, the magic horseshoes eventually respawn.  Which means it's possible to get infinite skill points if you pass enough time (like at the inn) and go recollect them.  Maybe Diablo 2 would be a better example of "You put points in *that*"??  Haha you're screwed".  Particularly before synergies were implemented, so putting more than one point in an early skill made your character walking dead.  And I guess they added an absurdly limited way to respec, eventually.

In Might and Magic 6 (and in all other games in M&M 6-8 series), everything respawns after a while, actually, including monsters, chests and everything, so you can theoretically level up indefinitely. Different areas have a different respawn time, but the longest is 2 years.

In M&M 7, there's also a pretty good exploit that allows you to get unlimited number of skill points very very quickly, too. It involves a certain well that gives out random things, including death, stoning, eradication, gold, and skill points. Grandmaster magic protection (from super-powered Cleric) neutralizes all bad things that could happen, so all you have to do is periodically renew it, while getting completely absurd amounts of power. 60 light magic, anyone?

[Rolan7]

Ah, I confused Dark Containment with the Ritual of the Void, which as you say is just a quest item.  I never actually got Dark Containment, but apparently it's not great anyway.

I don't seem to be far past that point...  I have the ritual, and the ancient weapons, but I don't really remember what was next.  I remember wandering around in the pyramid for a long time...  I think I finished it, but maybe not.  I think the pyramid is why I took a break a few months back

It's a fun game, though.  I had fun with it as a kid too, even though I never completed the council quests back then.  The dungeons can be frustrating when they're especially maze-like, but most of them have a lot of clever scripting, too.  I'll never forget the skeleton hall, that's for sure!

[Neonivek]

Game Tie Ins are never Canon... Even when they are outright stated to be canonical

I know that this is so common that there is no use being bothered by it yet it still bugs me.

Worse yet is even when developers or the original property owners STATE that the game is canonical... it rarely ever is... Examples? The Force Unleashed series AND one of the Naruto games in which both had the original creators of the property state they are canon only for them not to be.

Yet why does it bug me? Because it is not only such a waste but it is meaningless to even make it non-canon.

[Egan_BW]

There is no canon, only interpretations.

[Sergius]

Game Tie Ins are never Canon... Even when they are outright stated to be canonical

I know that this is so common that there is no use being bothered by it yet it still bugs me.

Worse yet is even when developers or the original property owners STATE that the game is canonical... it rarely ever is... Examples? The Force Unleashed series AND one of the Naruto games in which both had the original creators of the property state they are canon only for them not to be.

I know that most people don't know this, but the Force Unleashed like any pre-Episode 7 games belong to a subclass of "canonicity" that only needs to acknowledged between other members of that same subclass (also known as the Expanded Universe or whatever name it has now... legends or whatevs). This has been a thing as early as 1978.