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[Sergius]

As an example. I liked how Fable had point buy for skills, but you got the points in 3 broad categories by "doing".
At least that's how I remember it.

[Sensei]

I like Morrowind level scaling well enough. All the spawners were manually defined to spawn different creatures at different player levels, so usually an area would scale with you for a limited range of levels. There was definitely some of bandits becoming mysteriously wealthier as the game progressed, but most of the higher-level monsters were themed such that they made sense if you were progressing in the main story and the ash plague was getting worse. There was a good mix of things that scaled with you and things that didn't, so you still sometimes had to turn back from fights and early areas eventually became easy, but not right away and a lot of fights were coarsely scaled to your level. It didn't feel like everything else leveled up the moment you leveled up. Oh yeah, and harder enemies looked different and had different abilities, instead of just upping their attack and defense so they're hard-hitting sword sponges.

Of course, they screwed that one up too my making it possible to level up "wrong", if you leveled the wrong skills, or in the wrong order, you wouldn't be able to increase your attributes enough and level scaling could get the better of you. At least now, mods help with that.

[Damiac]

Morrowind's system was good in one way, in that it at least didn't feel like the enemies were scaling up to you the same way it did in oblivion.  But the attribute multiplier meant you have to game your skill gains anyway, or end up with a worse character.  But the difficulty of the game meant you didn't have to, so it wasn't so bad. 

Even outside of level scaling situations, look at stuff like unreal world, or cataclysm DDA.  Want to be good at throwing? Throw rocks at a building! That's fun for nobody, so why does the game reward it?  But you'll be more effective if you do this boring thing, so from a problem solving perspective, you should do the boring thing.

Games are generally two things.  They are puzzles to be solved, and they are entertainment.  If the puzzle is too easy, the entertainment can be lost.  If the puzzle isn't fun to solve, the entertainment is lost.  Part of the puzzle of RPGs is how to make your character the best you can.  If you add to your character by doing fun things with them, that's a fun puzzle to solve.  If you add to your character separately from doing fun things with them, it's not a fun puzzle to solve.  You find yourself trading effectiveness for entertainment, sure, you could be better at destruction magic, but who wants to shoot weak fireballs into the sky for 20 real life minutes? 

This gets into the territory of earning your fun, a mindset most often seen in MMOs.  Put in the "work" of grinding, then reap the "reward" of doing fun stuff with a good character.  A good game should be entertaining at all times,  at least in my opinion.

Fable's system was decent, but I still found myself playing to get the specific points I wanted, rather than just mixing up melee, ranged, and magic and using each where it was the most effective option.  Still, it worked pretty well, but I think it would have been even better with just a straight point buy system.

[Grim Portent]

Another example of learn by doing resulting in a lot of tedium is in Dwarf Fortress amusingly enough. I'm sure most of use are aware of the Adventure Mode practices of crab wrestling and throwing dirt at buildings until you're able to dodge arrows and snipe people with thrown pikes in the eye.

[Vendayn]

Oblivion's level scaling kinda broke main quest.

You either did it at level 1, without leveling up AT ALL. And pwn everything you meet

Wait till your a higher level, and then get pwned in main quest

At least speaking of vanilla without mods, that is how it worked.

[nenjin]

Another example of learn by doing resulting in a lot of tedium is in Dwarf Fortress amusingly enough. I'm sure most of use are aware of the Adventure Mode practices of crab wrestling and throwing dirt at buildings until you're able to dodge arrows and snipe people with thrown pikes in the eye.

Does it result in a lot of tedium, or make self-inflicted tedium possible? Because there is a difference.

[Grim Portent]

Another example of learn by doing resulting in a lot of tedium is in Dwarf Fortress amusingly enough. I'm sure most of use are aware of the Adventure Mode practices of crab wrestling and throwing dirt at buildings until you're able to dodge arrows and snipe people with thrown pikes in the eye.

Does it result in a lot of tedium, or make self-inflicted tedium possible? Because there is a difference.

The games difficulty, permanent injuries and the frequency of being outnumbered encourage making your character as powerful as possible before their first real fight. Since there are no low risk enemies to train on since even a sheep can kick your skull in or tear your throat out this means you have to grind in boring menial ways or die quickly.

Probably 1 in 20 characters will survive their first battle with bandits, if even that many, and many of them will die to something like bogeymen shortly after unless they're significantly above the average for warriors or doing the old fashioned throw pointy rocks from the bushes while sneaking method, which is fundamentally the same as the throw dirt at the wall training method, just with a more dangerous wall.

Granted death and injury being highly likely is an intended function of the games mechanics, but it does more or less invalidate say, grabbing the first shield you find and going toe to toe with your enemies like a knight on foot unless you either want a shortsword lobotomy or intend to grind on crabs first.

[nenjin]

Never really had an issue playing Heroes and speccing them to the kind of fights I wanted to have.

Now if you roll up a peasant then complain because you're getting your shit tossed and go wrestle sheep to make up the diff.....that's its own thing.

[Grim Portent]

Never really had an issue playing Heroes and speccing them to the kind of fights I wanted to have.

Now if you roll up a peasant then complain because you're getting your shit tossed and go wrestle sheep to make up the diff.....that's its own thing.

I usually found even demigods got their heads kicked in after a few bandits got killed due to numbers or exhaustion. Only times I survived much was when I pelted random stuff at them from the edges of vision range until they keeled over, then crept forward to grab more armour/weapons to throw at the rest.

[nenjin]

Well, I'd always avoid bandits and just stick to single targets where I could until I'd adventured enough to get my stats up. I found throttling sheep to be too boring to keep at for long.

[Krevsin]

Far Harbor trailer is out.

[umiman]

Far Harbor trailer is out.

That's one of those trailers that spoils everything.

[Ultimuh]

Far Harbor trailer is out.

That's one of those trailers that spoils everything.

Thanks for the heads-up.
I somehow knew avoiding that trailer would be wise.

[BigD145]

I continue to not have to buy any expansions, because the content is all revealed.

[umiman]

Far Harbor trailer is out.

That's one of those trailers that spoils everything.

Thanks for the heads-up.
I somehow knew avoiding that trailer would be wise.

I wish I could go back in time and not watch it. Also go back in time and avoid some of the spoilers for this game in this thread. I'm still extremely pissed off at MrWiggles for spoiling the entire game. Fuck you MrWiggles. Fuck you with a rake.

And don't give me any lip about how "oh it's so obvious" and "anyone could have seen it coming". Yeah, this may not be Game of Thrones but some of us still have expectations about the story. You fucking ruined the entire game and I hate you eternally.