Fast Jimmy wrote...
Allen, to your comment and point... I don't think determining the difficulty of the Critical Path to match up with the lowest common denominator of experience of not doing any side quests is a wise idea. While it does make the side quests more enjoyable by making them difficult, it has two major flaws.
I wasn't necessarily thinking that
all side quests are more difficult, just that (without level scaling) that seems to be a safer place to put side quests. So
SOME side quests will be particularly challenging. At it's core though, what I'm saying is that without level scaling, we still need to be mindful of the game experience of those that tend to only do the crit path because they like the stories we present.
One, for a completionist such as myself, it makes the main quest, which should be the true struggle and where you would want a greater level of difficulty in order to feel a sense of accomplishment, a cake walk. This is not a reward. While I do not want untold, horrific difficulty at every turn (at least on my first playthrough, I'll go back and muck around with Nightmare later), I feel like a super easy main quest experience cheapens the entire journey. Case in point is ME3 - the new way of doing their Reputation system (while not a true level up mechanic, is based on how many side quests you do and less on staying true to a particular style of behavior) let me do everything in the main quest with the best possible outcome, hands down. No challenge or sense of loss or choice, I can just select "Auto-Win" every time because I did side quests. That detracts from the meaning of choice and, while there should be a best case scenario that can be achieved, it shouldn't be as simple as beating someone over the head with my High Level Hammer.
Two, if you make all side quests harder, then that penalizes my ability to pick and choose what side quests I do. For instance, if, at the beginning of the game, I want to skip all the side quests about saving kittens from trees because they sound like time killers, but then late in the game, I want to tackle really interesting side quests, such as "Forging the Armor of The PROTAGONIST!" will I not have a high enough level to this without countless reloads or starting over, because I skipped the kitten saving?
My solution is that you make the game progressively hard, regardless of if you are doing the main quest or a side quest. You make the end of the main quest the hardest part of the game, not make it a footnote (hello, Skyrim). And then you give a way for the player to level grind. After all, are we REALLY to believe that the only enemies you can fight in all of Thedas just HAPPEN to be the ones we run into in our quests?
Keep the necessity of level grinding at a minimum, if possible. And give multiple approaches to situations OTHER than just strict combat, so that a player with the right skills and some creative problem solving could get past an area, despite being a lower level than what one would think would be required if they were doing the combat route.
Its not an easy task, and I don't want to pretend it is not. But there is a fine line between making the game incredibly easy for anyone who is a completionist and then making every fight the same difficulty throughout the game, which alternates between boring and infuriating.
Based on your expectations of the game getting progressively more difficult, it almost sounds like you'd be in favor of a level scaling system that does scale, but gradually tips itself to scaling against the player to provide an ever increasing challenge. I'm pretty sure this is not what you're trying to say though.
How do you reconcile the idea of the main plot line being increasingly more difficult for the player, when the player can presumably do any number of sidequests to make himself more powerful, while at the same time not
forcing players to do optional sidequests. It seems like you're suggesting that all side quests be equal in terms of difficulty (to prevent forcing you from doing the quest to save the cats in order to forge the armor of the protagonist).
Wouldn't your solution of allowing players to grind require those that are only interested in the story to paradoxically do a larger share of the grinding in order to proceed through the main story?
Maybe side quests shouldn't be scaled but the crit path should be, to ensure the crit path continuously provides additional challenge? But then people that do all the side quests feel like the extra time they put in was unproductive, or worse, counter productive. I agree it's not a simple problem.
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