444 réponses à ce sujet

[Vicious]

I am against it because I am reminded of Oblivion where at level 20 every lowly bandit was running around in full Daedric.



Problem is this game throws large numbers at you to try and challenge you, and then it has some abilities which are overpowered [whirlwind] and everyone has access to it.



That said i'm all about a challenge, as long as it makes sense. The bandit ambushes in Denerim remind me of the Bandit ambushes in Amn in BG2: They've ALL got magic armor and have a couple Mages, not exactly 'bandit in the middle of a city' material, more like 'mercenary company' material. But nope, the game calls em bandits.

[DragonRageGT]

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: im·mer·sion
Pronunciation: \\i-ˈmər-zhən, -shən\\Function: noun Date: 15th century : the act of immersing or the state of being immersed: as
a : baptism by complete submersion of the person in water
b : absorbing involvement <immersion in politics>
c : instruction based on extensive exposure to surroundings or conditions that are native or pertinent to the object of study; especially : foreign language instruction in which only the language being taught is used <learned French through immersion>

My understanding: b : absorbing involvement <immersion in a computer game> (which I already discussed in other post)

Sorry if the thugs seem Superman to you. To me they are just lousy thugs that I can beat quite easily! (with the right tactics of course. What works on a Dragon don't usually works on a gang of thugs. Expecting to be a superman because you drank poisoned blood? You're more likely to die from the taint! You can rather claim that game is broken because no one is actually supposed to kill a Dragon. Reign of Fire proves it. They would devastate the Earth! Unless you were the one there in the "magic hour"!

And I am also a huge Fanboy of: Diablo1, D2-LOD (Hardcore only-#1 USEast classic HC Ladder in 2002), BG, Starcraft (where the GT's were born), NWN online, Morrowind, Oblivion, Warcraft II & III, RISEN and GOTHICs !!!, BF1942, Dungeon Siege 1 (mplayer), Lineage II (pvt servers), Grand Prix 3&4, LotR-TheBattle for Middle Earth I & II, The Witcher, Assassin's Creed, Jedi Knight I and II, X-Wing vs Tie-fighter, X-Wing Alliance (Jedi Master on boths, if you know what that means), Riddick's Butcher's Bay, FIFA 2006, heck,, even Fable 1 TLC! Prolly a few others too.

Want to talk about me? How I know nothing about immersion or what a good game is like? How come I do love all those games? Thanks the Maker for diversity!

[DragonRageGT]

DJ0000 wrote...

Personally, I think scaling is good so the game doesn't get too easy e.g. i loved Oblivion but it did get really easy after level 20, but it doesn't make sense that sometimes a pack of wolves is really hard to kill but the a boss demon takes almost no effort.

P.s we aren't all pirates, some of us just too lazy to walk the 10 feet to where the game box is to register it. LOL

I know DJ, I know... just like I know I played a T copy (can't say the T word here) from release to nov/18 when fraking EA released the game here and I finally got my pre-order C.E.! First thing I did was rush and register my copy so I could enjoy the whole forum, post suff on the right forums and enjoy the same account I created back in 2002!

[Kimberly Shaw]

Its time to propose Thugs or even Mabari breed encounters to scale accordingly. Like level one thugs to be like Level 1 Thugs and Level seventeen Thugs to be Level 17 Thugs so its not gonna be immersion breaking since its a Level 17 Thug. Hey , could have stolen stuff since 6. Crepe happens in backalleys.

If someone is disciplined enough and skilled enough to reach level 17, why would they be working in the dirty back alley ways living in scum unless they are the leader of a major crime syndicate? I guess I read too much RA Salvatore, where someone like Artemis Entreri would rise above the thugs because of his skill and become a legend if they were truly good. The "thugs" should remain in dirty leather, rusty swords, living in poverty and picking on hapless people because they are cowards with no discipline or true skills. *shrug*



Everyone has opinions on the matter, but as someone else said I did like games where the scaling was less immersion breaking because they changed the type of monster/npc you faced as you leveled up rather than changing the level of the monster/npc. If I see a common bully street thug, he shouldn't be level 17 (to me). If I see a high dragon, she shouldn't be level 10, even if I run into her at a low level. And I know the game doesn't have level 10 high dragons, thank the maker ;-)

[Sericenthe]

You want no level scaling, linear, and a great story play The Witcher. Awesome.



As for Dragon Age, I'm fine with the scaling. I've had some level scaling battles already but I always figure them out. The Ogre at the beginning was still the biggest pain for me. This game isn't hard, just build your character right. Remember, jack of all trades characters get owned. Specialists of any kind can take advantage of their specialties if used correctly. Common sense, really.

[F-C]

Kimberly Shaw wrote...

So, you believe your hero should be unbeatable at a certain point? No thugs should be able to gang bang you?

I don't think the OP is saying this at all, nor are any of us "anti-scaling" people. Everyone wants the game to be challenging, but it IS immersion breaking when the poor thugs are suddenly supermen. The thugs, if randomly there, shouldn't level up so massively; they should be a walk in the park because yes, I can take down a dragon and a tower full of demons. If the scaling is to be there, replace the thugs with blood mages or abominations or dark spawn elites. Not super-thugs, because it doesn't really make any sense that they would be so good and still be thugs. To me.

If you do have thugs, then okay, I will mow them down and teach them to pick a fight with the Grey Warden who can solo the Arch Demon.

i just think you have the wrong train of thought about things.

to me the reason you can beat these said bosses while a normal thug couldnt shouldnt be because you are just all powerful and godlike, its because you are more intelligent, more skilled, and more tactically minded.

said thugs may be of equal level and have the same abilities, but they lack the one thing you have, the intelligence and skill to put it together so you can win. thats what separates you from a normal thug.

seems like most the anti-scaling people just want to reach a certain level and all of a sudden become superman unless they are facing a dragon or arch-demon which honestly is really unrealistic and boring.

if you run into a large group of high level thugs it should be a challenging fight. its many against one, and the reason you win should be superior intelligence, skill, and tactics.

if you are winning soley based on level then any child can pwn face, how boring is that.

Modifié par F-C, 29 décembre 2009 - 08:28 .

[Kimberly Shaw]

Actually, F-C, I just want a non immersion breaking reason why common street thugs are highly skilled and well equipped Dragonbone wearing fighters, which is not supplied by the game and one of the reasons why people hated Oblivion's tent living bandits wearing Glass/Deadric armor.



I think scaling may be a necessary evil, but it should come by changing the type of NPCs/monsters faced rather than simply leveling up the wolves and common bandits. We can agree to disagree this point, if you view that common gutter thugs should be well equipped and superbly trained. I see that as silly.

[XOGHunter246]

Ok now I am kind of understanding bit more about what most of you are on about. I agree yes maybe change the bandits to like maybe bandit elites or assassins when they scale. Same could go with thugs instead of normal everyday thugs they could be elite thugs. Wolves could have pack leaders if they leveled or something.

Modifié par XOGHunter246, 29 décembre 2009 - 08:40 .

[F-C]

the reason is actually rather simple if you bother to think about it. you spent the time to level up to 20+ and get good equipment. what were those thugs doing that entire time? hiding in a hole in the ground hoping not to be noticed? no, they were being thugs, robbing and killing people, leveling up and getting better gear. they are very successful until you come along to fight them.



i think its rather irrational to think everyone in the world just sits still and never improves except you and your group, like you are the only supreme beings in the universe capable of advancing to a better position.

[IRMcGhee]

It'd be a pretty boring game (without level scaling) if your characters could wipe the floor with pretty much everything that crossed their paths once they'd reached a certain level.

[XOGHunter246]

To make level scaling better they could at least put a different version of the same enemy like an elite instead of critter thugs.

[F-C]

i guess they could have renamed the same mobs to make you feel better about it if you wanted.

instead of always being labeled thug it could be like:

1-6 = thug
7-13 = improved thug
14-20 = elite thug
21-25 = super thug

or some such naming system, but it wouldnt really change anything and i really doubt your player character would view them as more than just high level thugs.

Modifié par F-C, 29 décembre 2009 - 08:50 .

[F-C]

Fandango9641 wrote...

F-C wrote...

seems like most the anti-scaling people just want to reach a certain level and all of a sudden become superman unless they are facing a dragon or arch-demon which honestly is really unrealistic and boring.

if you run into a large group of high level thugs it should be a challenging fight. its many against one, and the reason you win should be superior intelligence, skill, and tactics.

if you are winning soley based on level then any child can pwn face, how boring is that.

Sorry but you're exactly wrong. Misrepresenting the opinions put forth by others and myself in this thread adds less than nothing to the debate. I have already conceded ground on the issue of scaling because people had the good grace to listen and respond rationally. How sad it is that so many on the other side of the fence refuse to acknowledge that DA:O is not a game without reproach. Choose your wickets a little more carefully before making generalisations about a point of view you so clearly misapprehend.

you have no arguement so you just attack me.

neat.

[XOGHunter246]

I know the naming thing is minor but it make people not see them as the thug you would of met a few levels earlier. Then them having better armor would make more sense.

[Kimberly Shaw]

the reason is actually rather simple if you bother to think about it. you spent the time to level up to 20+ and get good equipment. what were those thugs doing that entire time? hiding in a hole in the ground hoping not to be noticed? no, they were being thugs, robbing and killing people, leveling up and getting better gear. they are very successful until you come along to fight them.







i think its rather irrational to think everyone in the world just sits still and never improves except you and your group, like you are the only supreme beings in the universe capable of advancing to a better position.

So, standing around Denerim's back alleys robbing old ladies is somehow going to prepare them the same way that say, marching to the bottom of the deep roads and killing an army of darkspawn led by a brood mother or facing a tower filled with demons or battling a high dragon would? Really? Sorry, I disagree with your assessment 100%. Petty back alley thugs are in every RPG I have ever played pretty much, and unless they give a really good reason for it (elite mercenary band pretending to be thugs) they shouldn't be decked out in dragonbone and level 17+.



But like I said, I view scaling as a necessary evil, I would just have incorporated it differently and tossed a few places to fight low level thugs to flex your muscles a bit...which they did at the end of the game with the darkspawn grunts.

[F-C]

Fandango9641 wrote...

F-C wrote...

i guess they could have renamed the same mobs to make you feel better about it if you wanted.

instead of always being labeled thug it could be like:

1-6 = thug
7-13 = improved thug
14-20 = elite thug
21-25 = super thug

or some such naming system, but it wouldnt really change anything and i really doubt your player character would view them as more than just high level thugs.

I would advocate a system that used some level of scaling for main quest related tasks, with the potential to embark on optional quests capped at a set level. I would also like to see a more diverse portfolio of adversaries; many belonging to a family, each capped at a certain level, to be deployed in game depending on player level. Something in the manner of:

Wild dog < Wolf < Blight Wolf < Brown Bear < Black Bear < Blight Bear

Thug < Outlaw < Brigand < Bandit < Mercenary < Assassin

Character models wouldn’t need a great deal of development time but this change in particular would make all the difference in the world (to me at least).

well what you are asking for now is to have the same thing we already have just with some different names and slight graphic changes tacked on to it so you feel better about it.

thats development time taken away from other things you know. to get all these little details like this that dont really matter to most people you have to spend more and more hours on it that is being taken away from something else.

sure in a perfect world with unlimited development time and funding it would be cool i guess, but in reality it wouldnt change the game, at all.

it would just make you personally feel a little better about leveling scaling.

[F-C]

Kimberly Shaw wrote...

So, standing around Denerim's back alleys robbing old ladies is somehow going to prepare them the same way that say, marching to the bottom of the deep roads and killing an army of darkspawn led by a brood mother or facing a tower filled with demons or battling a high dragon would? Really? Sorry, I disagree with your assessment 100%. Petty back alley thugs are in every RPG I have ever played pretty much, and unless they give a really good reason for it (elite mercenary band pretending to be thugs) they shouldn't be decked out in dragonbone and level 17+.

But like I said, I view scaling as a necessary evil, I would just have incorporated it differently and tossed a few places to fight low level thugs to flex your muscles a bit...which they did at the end of the game with the darkspawn grunts.

well obviously these thugs were quite successful in their thug carreers.

you seem to be stuck on the idea because they are named 'thug' then that means are worthless trash incapable of making profits or improving their ability.

just because they arnt named 'artemis entreri' doesnt mean that they didnt work as hard to become that good while you were off having your little adventures.

people seem entirely too stuck on names.

[Kimberly Shaw]

I guess I am stuck on names, I'd rather the game use different models and names for higher tiered enemies that are scaled up, but I recognize the limitation on resources prevent this.



That said, I just would like a reason why a highly skilled and well equipped fighter would still be hanging out in the dingy gross back alleys, when as others have said, it seems like the group of them could take out the arch demon and an army of darkspawn themselves. If they were so successful, shouldn't they own a castle? In non scaling games you wouldn't fight back alley thugs at higher levels, they were a low level foes traditionally. You might face the same type of NPCs at higher levels if you had to raid the thieves guild and kill its guild leader with his henchmen though, which I guess is akin to the scenario in Denerim. *shrug*



Level scaling "bandits" were the biggest complaints for scaling in both Oblivion and now in DA:O with the Denerim thugs. Just a note of caution for future developers I guess, a lot of people have no problem with the darkspawn that appear in the dalish elf origin being level 1 and the same named/modelled creatures being level 17+ later on in the game.

[Sidney]

F-C wrote...
well obviously these thugs were quite successful in their thug carreers.

you seem to be stuck on the idea because they are named 'thug' then that means are worthless trash incapable of making profits or improving their ability.

just because they arnt named 'artemis entreri' doesnt mean that they didnt work as hard to become that good while you were off having your little adventures.

people seem entirely too stuck on names.

No, we're stuck on reality. Flip this game to be a war simulator. This game scales in a way that means that no matter how skilled you become the average grunt you encounter goes from being a guy who can't figure out what end of the rifle to point at you to the level where Arl Howe's basement guards are all members of the Delta Force and SEAL teams.

No matter how good that might be in game terms of achive a consistent level of challenge it isn't close to anything real. The game has to be internally logical and so despite elves, dragons and mages the idea that everyone is as ridiculously powerful as you still doesn't wash,

It is less about naming and more about disctribution. If encounter X has 30 levels of baddies for us to fight for a party of 4 level 12 characters (making up numbers here) then rather than fighting 5 10th level characters, adjust it so we fight 4 4th level characters and and one 14th level character. I might buy the bandit leader is a supreme warlord type but not everyone is a killing machine par excellence. The difference is subtle.

[Fluffykeith]

Sighs. I reckon I've said it about twice now...



The thugs are not super elite pwn machines. They are individually weak no matter your level. They're strength is in that they outnumber you a lot. I personally don't think it's comparable to a dragon fight.



And as has been said before, even the most uber hero in the world can be beaten if they are overpowered by superior numbers. As with Duncan, hell, look at the Jedi in the end of Attack of the Clones. Slaughtered by weight of numbers.

[CBGB]

 I like the level scaling in DAO. It's far less intrusive than in Oblivion (which often rewarded ploys to avoid leveling), and the battles feel appropriately challenging.

I also like that there is a SPOILER forum, clearly marked.

[Fluffykeith]

Other thing about those Denerim thugs..they were pretty damn organised it seemed. Sort of like Mafia. Not exactly the sort to be beating up grannies...more the sort to control whole districts and organising protection rackets and being too tough for the cops to deal with

[Sylixe]

So it's gone to 15 pages and nobody yet understands why the scaling is the way it is? The answer lies in the younger generation of gamers that REQUIRE their cheat codes and everything handed to them without any effort. The MMO genre is the best example of what happened to challenging gaming. Unless the game is easy to win with a drooling monkey it will not sell the units the corporate guys have it targeted for.



However the developers have provided the community with the tools to make the game more challenging if they want. This to me is a total scam but at least it's possible to make the game a lot harder than it is with enough time.



The difficulty scaling in games has been slipping for many years now and doesn't appear to have any takers in changing that philosophy. I have been setting newly released games on the hardest setting for the past few years. The end result is utter disappointment at what a developer calls "Nightmare" or "Hard".



If you want to correct the scaling issue you are going to have to break the game up into chapters so that anything you previously met can be replaced with something new and more powerful. It keeps the integrity of the game while at the same time making it believable. However many players don't really like that option as it makes it appear you have less freedom in game. The alternative is making areas inaccesible until you reach a certain level or complete a certain part of the storyline. Again though people see less freedom in that option and reject it.

[Fluffykeith]

So, Fandango9641, is it now wrong for me to use examples to try to illustrate my point? Sorry.

[Eisberg1977]

Sylixe wrote...

So it's gone to 15 pages and nobody yet understands why the scaling is the way it is? The answer lies in the younger generation of gamers that REQUIRE their cheat codes and everything handed to them without any effort. The MMO genre is the best example of what happened to challenging gaming. Unless the game is easy to win with a drooling monkey it will not sell the units the corporate guys have it targeted for.

However the developers have provided the community with the tools to make the game more challenging if they want. This to me is a total scam but at least it's possible to make the game a lot harder than it is with enough time.

The difficulty scaling in games has been slipping for many years now and doesn't appear to have any takers in changing that philosophy. I have been setting newly released games on the hardest setting for the past few years. The end result is utter disappointment at what a developer calls "Nightmare" or "Hard".

If you want to correct the scaling issue you are going to have to break the game up into chapters so that anything you previously met can be replaced with something new and more powerful. It keeps the integrity of the game while at the same time making it believable. However many players don't really like that option as it makes it appear you have less freedom in game. The alternative is making areas inaccesible until you reach a certain level or complete a certain part of the storyline. Again though people see less freedom in that option and reject it.

What? everything you said is not the answer at all.  It has been 15 pages of people saying they don't like the Constant challenge of the game, they want times where they wipe the floor against thugs, want times where they feel powerful.

The scaling in this game keeps it a challenge for every fight, Dragon Age is already known as one of the more difficult games out right now.  Granted there are some gamers who are just really good at games and they feel that the challenge in this game is lacking, but generally this game is a real challanging for people on Normal difficulty.