84 réponses à ce sujet

[Lavitage]

Enemy levels keep up with yours to a degree, but you also get better equipment and a leg up in skills, talents and spells in the form of tomes while they... don't. Hell, enemies don't even use skills, so the fact that you gain them at all puts you at an advantage. And if you know or figure out which spells are good, that's another advantage over the enemy mages who spend their scaled up levels on crap.



All in all, your progression leaves enemy scaling choking on dust. When the open ended part starts, whichever area you do first will be the hardest and they get progressively easier, just as if there were no scaling at all.



The back alley bandits are a strange case. No matter what level you are those guys are quite a bit more dangerous than most enemies of the same level. I've never had more trouble with any darkspawn encounter than those guys, even the bridge battle in the deep roads where you face like 30 - and I fought those battles at the same level (14ish.) It's a lapse of logic and balance that doesn't have anything to do with scaling.

[just_frank]

Just_frank, could rebump's idea be what you were looking for when you said "scaling could use more variability"?

That Idea is certainly one way to increase variability and I really dont suggest that I have the ultimaote solution. I just think it could be better. It's wonky at times right now, somewhat monotonus for a rather large chunk of the game, but still pretty good. That doesnt mean it couldnt be better, and I think adding variability is certainly an avenue worth exploring (variability in quantity and quality)... the other is removing the wonkiness.

So.....  pretty good for scaling, yeah, can it be made better, certainly.

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

I understand the point of scaling, but rather than scale based on what level the party (or PC) is, I'd suggest that narrative cohesion could be maintained better by scaling based on the status of the main plot.

So, if you've finished 8 central plot areas, you'll face tougher monsters than if you've only finished 4. However, those monsters should not get stronger just because you've done some non-plot sidequests; that seems like punishment. If I do sidequests and grow stronger, then my character should be more powerful relative to his  opponents. Otherwise, what's the point of doing the sidequests? If they don't benefit my character in any way, he can't reasonably choose to do them.

That's an interesting way of doing it...  in fact something like this was done semi-successfully just recently in Risen. I think the way it was done in Risen was to leave the weak creatures you hadnt trounced yet and the nsimply add the tougher encounters in their different spawn locations. However, risen was a free-roaming world and running away was an option, not so in DAO.

Which brings us to...

rebump wrote...

Say a 2d10 (aka 1d100) roll before each encounter in an area:
- 1 to 80 -> the original MOB(s) level range for the area
- 81 to 95 -> a equal MOB(s) encounter
- 95 to 99 -> a harder than expected MOB(s) encounter
-
100 -> elite/name MOB encounter (although "named" would likely be more rare...maybe 1d200 roll...heh heh...200 sided die...would like to see that thing roll...literally)

 
and

hannahb wrote...

ummmm ... you cant transition while in combat .. so you are suggestion we kite the wolves around inside the
combat instance until when?  We fall over from boredom or fatigue?

Randomy dropping an elite/named mob is interesting however a a couple things should be in place for it to work well. For one, chances are that that elite MOB will trounce you... you'd need a way to re-find it to go get your reveng some time (narrative, marked location, something....). You'd also need a way to actually survive the encounter which means either lamely making the game not end when you get killed by this encounter (as opposed to every other) removing the sence of "fear"....  Or, you need to work in a way for your party to strategically retreat from an encounter (perhaps at great loss?). Right now you cant runaway in DAO, at least not from the random encounters.

However.... introducing random named/elite encounters introduces could an aspect of encounter grinding that I truly dont care for.

Lavitage wrote...

Enemy levels keep up with yours to a degree, but you also get better equipment and a leg up in skills, talents and spells in the form of tomes while they... don't. Hell, enemies don't even use skills, so the fact that you gain them at all puts you at an advantage.

Enemies use plenty of skills against me, and they've been getting more skills as they scale. Of that I'm fiarly certain.

Modifié par just_frank, 13 novembre 2009 - 02:10 .

[anonygoose]

Yep, I get shield-bashed by skeletons and the like. Mages certainly love casting chain-lightning on me.

[TJRlz86]

One interesting thing that the difficulty in random encounters has helped me 'experience' is more of a sense of mortality, which is something I don't generally get when I play other RPG's. Yeah I kill the super tough bosses with strategy, but in most other games you walk over the bandits. I think part of the value of finding high number mob encounters difficult is that it makes you realize your character can die of more normal causes as well. It doesn't have to a dragon that takes you down, it can be an ambush of 1 or 2 dozen thugs and archers. You may be the only one that can save the land from the darkspawn, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other, less exotic, creatures that can still take you down. Adapting my playstyle and strategy to effectively counter high number mobs has been something I've really enjoyed with DA:O.



I'm not saying this has to be your experience or that the OP's point is a valid concern, this is just my experience that is all.

[Haexpane]

It's flat out silly tho that a Grey Warden and an experienced party that has felled blood mages, revenants and dragons would have trouble w/ a few wolves and some street thugs.



It needs a patch

[lordhugorune]

I think the issue is that gameplay is *so* non-linear that if they didn't have scaling in some form, once you'd completed a couple of the main quest hubs, the remainder would become trivial in terms of difficulty, loot, and rewards.

The last RPG I really played the hell out of was NWN2 and its expansions - NWN2 in particular didn't seem to have this problem, because the main campaign was clearly delimited into main chapters. If DAO had taken this path, the scaling might not have been needed to keep the challenge constant and fun, however then some of (not all of) the same people complaining about the scaling would then be complaining about non-linearity You can't win as a game designer.

[just_frank]

lordhugorune wrote...

I think the issue is that gameplay is *so* non-linear that if they didn't have scaling in some form, once you'd completed a couple of the main quest hubs, the remainder would become trivial in terms of difficulty, loot, and rewards.
The last RPG I really played the hell out of was NWN2 and its expansions - NWN2 in particular didn't seem to have this problem, because the main campaign was clearly delimited into main chapters. If DAO had taken this path, the scaling might not have been needed to keep the challenge constant and fun, however then some of (not all of) the same people complaining about the scaling would then be complaining about non-linearity You can't win as a game designer.

Without having looked at the toolset, I could see how it might be feasible in this game to implement some kind of chapter-based scaling. Thought you'd have toi relinquis some of the linearity to avoid a different kind of oddball situation. For example the game has a clear prologue, and 4-5 main chapters (main story quest arcs) and then some kind of denoument (which I'm not finished, which is great for letting you pound weak mobs.... though I think the game could have used a bit of that earilier as I've already stated multiple times).

You'd probably have to lock otehr main quests out once players get past a certain point in the active quest to avoid situations where players avoid completing quests to keep the world "easy" and then finish them all at once... Thery could be gimping themselves for good gear and resources etc...

[TheBlueHerring]

Well, I'm not a fan of level-scaling at all. It feels like players are being punished for doing extra quests and actually working at the game. I remember on my first playthrough it was difficult for me (mostly on account of not knowing which skills, spells, strategies and talents are good) and doing all of the main and side bits (like quests, equipment harvesting and Dragon slaying).

Then I did a second game and I felt I was getting better (I had a good grasp of the mechanics and skills/talents), but did the game in a different order and skipped bits. Curious, I thought...

Started a new character and just ran past everything, skipping the optional stuff and- I felt disappointed, it wasn't actually tough, it was the same sort of problems I had encountered before, just with more auto-attack and less talents. Now, I had less options, but at the same time I wasn't hit with annoying chain-lightnings, misdirection hexes and the like.

To further test my hypothesis, I used the console commands to test how it would scale (and feel). I flew through the early parts/tutorials/linear areas (as a mage) and 'upped' to varying levels saving each time to a new slot and doing a little bit on each (Dwarf areas). Each time, it took approximately the same amount of time to kill the mobs almost to the dot. What a bummer that was. I failed to reject the null hypothesis. The linear progression of the sense of power is breaking the game for me. As a powerful Grey Warden, singled out by Fate and destined to stop the Blight, being almost on par with a bunch of villagers (and yes I tried it) it is disheartening, to say the least.

Now, scaling does keep it "fair" but as there is only the pc to entertain and it isn't a competition, scaling makes the game feel more of a time-sink than the epic I thought it would be. Being the "spiritual successor" of the Baldur's Gate series, it was a little sobering.

Modifié par TheBlueHerring, 19 novembre 2009 - 03:55 .

[Akka le Vil]

Level scaling was already quite visible when I first played the game, but it has simply killed my subsequent walkthrough.



I already had the boring feeling of all fights being the same difficulty. All enemies taking roughly the same time to kill, whatever they are and whatever my own levels. But playing the game a second time, it just completely destroyed any feeling of progression.

Regardless where I go, regardless what kind of enemies I fight, the difficulty is the same. I went from lvl 18+ (previous walkthrough) to lvl 1 to lvl 8, and there was no change in how the enemies felt compared to me. Darkspanw at lvl 4 fall just as fast than at lvl 14, and they do comparatively the same damage.



This is already quite boring in itself, it defeats any feeling of progression, and it makes any place feel the same than another. But even worse, it completely remove any feeling of world's consistency. Save for the bosses, any enemy is basically the same. Be it an undead, a spider, a darkspawn, a sylvan, they are all just about as strong as any other. There is no "benign" enemies and "dangerous" ones save for the color of their name. A random thug represents about the same threat than a fantastical creature, and the threat is the same wether you're a green beginner or a veteran of countless battles.



Yawn...

[Skellimancer]

Devs took the lazy way out with scaling.



Nothing should scale.