24 réponses à ce sujet

[SACanuckin Oz]

Just wondering if others are also finding this an issue. I find that it is very easy to get over-levelled for the MQ if you actually spend the time thoroughly exploring an area, and completing all the side quests while there (incl. rifts). I play on hard, and after Haven, Hinterlands, Fallow Mire, Storm Coast, Crestwood, Hissing Wastes (partially), Forbidden Oasis (partially), I went to the Western Approach - to meet Stroud et al, and find myself level 18 already! 2 dragons down (Ferelden Frostback, Northern Strider), but at this rate I will get no experience for the level 14 dragon in WA, or the level 13 one later on.... The ONLY thing I did a bit of farming for was crafting stuff (metal, cloth) for crafted armor. I feel like a boss, but should it be this way? And might I just add, that while the Ferelden Frostback encounter was really special with the way the dragon behaved, it seems later dragons are just rinse and repeat jump around a small encounter area. You'd think they would fly away to regroup or recover, or strafe you, or something! I even miss the Skyrim hovering crew, and definitely the Dark Souls DLC dragon!

[thats1evildude]

Yes, becoming over-levelled is very easy in Inquisition. You have to be somewhat conservative in your playstyle.

[devSin]

It's a problem, yes. You can't fully explore the game without over-leveling a lot of the content, especially on the critical path.

As far as I'm aware, you always get experience for killing dragons. And their behaviors are quite varied (the dragon in the Exalted Plains even behaves as you describe BTW).

[Fireheart]

Well you're certainly doing better than me. On my second playthrough, I stopped at arbor wilds and decided to complete all the maps because why not. Only just got to lv 20(hard), only maps left are emprise and the oasis. My first playthrough, I finished at 18 on normal. I really wonder how some people "over level", though. Playing the game normally, you will easily reach 18 in no time, so obviously if you put in extra work, of course you'll end up over leveled..

[SACanuckin Oz]

Thanks for the feedback.

I guess what I'm trying to convey is that there is really no natural "flow" to the storyline that will take you in the correct zone for the level range you (should) be.

 

After Hinterlands/Haven, all these zones just pop up on the war table, with no compelling reason to actually visit the area. To me it looks like you can pretty much choose to skip Forbidden Oasis and Hissing Wastes, if you don't want the (somewhat) useful items you get through the (completely) boring exploration it involves. I particularly hate the oasis, which I find impossible to navigate.

 

In DA:O, I felt I had a reason to visit areas (recruit allies), and there seemed a flow (Redcliffe > Circle > Denerim > Urn > etc). And DA II had those three chapters.

 

Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but after doing Hissing Wastes and Forbidden Oasis twice, I still don't see their relevance to the main plot. Sure, those Venatori and Red Templars,...but, so what? What do they actually do that affect the story?

[RMP _]

I would've preferred a system where some enemies scale with you and some don't. So you don't go to an area where every battle is way too easy. I wouldn't want all enemies to scale to my level though.

[DanteYoda]

Yes i was about three levels above the requirement the whole game.

 

+1 on the scaled enemies i don't get why people hate it tbh.

[devSin]

I'm actually fine with the scaling for random encounters, but I do wish that there wasn't an upper limit for story missions (or that it was a much greater range). I think it's a good thing that you can eventually out-level particular regions in an exploration area, but I really hate that you can so easily trivialize the game's critical path.
 

Thanks for the feedback.
I guess what I'm trying to convey is that there is really no natural "flow" to the storyline that will take you in the correct zone for the level range you (should) be.
 
After Hinterlands/Haven, all these zones just pop up on the war table, with no compelling reason to actually visit the area. To me it looks like you can pretty much choose to skip Forbidden Oasis and Hissing Wastes, if you don't want the (somewhat) useful items you get through the (completely) boring exploration it involves. I particularly hate the oasis, which I find impossible to navigate.
 
In DA:O, I felt I had a reason to visit areas (recruit allies), and there seemed a flow (Redcliffe > Circle > Denerim > Urn > etc). And DA II had those three chapters.
 
Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but after doing Hissing Wastes and Forbidden Oasis twice, I still don't see their relevance to the main plot. Sure, those Venatori and Red Templars,...but, so what? What do they actually do that affect the story?

That's because it's two games in one.

There's a BioWare story-driven RPG, and an open-world adventure RPG. They come in the same package, but they really don't have much to do with each other, and they don't work all that well together for the most part.

[Dubya75]

Bioware apparently forgot to play-test their game.

 

Fixed enemy levels, as it turns out, was a bad design choice for this game.

[PhroXenGold]

Fixed enemy levels, as it turns out, was a bad design choice for this game.

 

On the contrary, it's an excellent design choice. It makes the world much more believable and immersive.

[Dubya75]

On the contrary, it's an excellent design choice. It makes the world much more believable and immersive.

 

Well done for jumping in with your irrelevant argument.

 

If instead, you took the time to read the OP, you would have been in a position to come up with something more plausible. But alas...

 

This is a fantasy RPG GAME, not a medieval reality simulation.

 

Pertaining to GAMEPLAY therefore, it actually BREAKS immersion when you land in an entire area for which you are over-levelled. It is near game-breaking.

 

If instead, you had enemies gradually levelling up with your player (as is traditionally done in many games for good reason) you would have a consistent gameplay challenge, resulting in a much more rewarding experience.

 

Seeing dragons and indeed, the main antagonist, go down with not much of a challenge, is underwhelming to say the least. Not a very successful gaming experience, in my mind.

[PhroXenGold]

Well done for jumping in with your irrelevant argument.

 

If instead, you took the time to read the OP, you would have been in a position to come up with something more plausible. But alas...

 

This is a fantasy RPG GAME, not a medieval reality simulation.

 

Pertaining to GAMEPLAY therefore, it actually BREAKS immersion when you land in an entire area for which you are over-levelled. It is near game-breaking.

 

If instead, you had enemies gradually levelling up with your player (as is traditionally done in many games for good reason) you would have a consistent gameplay challenge, resulting in a much more rewarding experience.

 

Seeing dragons and indeed, the main antagonist, go down with not much of a challenge, is underwhelming to say the least. Not a very successful gaming experience, in my mind.

 

There is a challenge to beat dragons with ease. The challenge come from increasing your power beforehand. And the reward for undertaking that challenge is that you become a badass who can kick peoples ass. This is good design. Making everying "just challenging enough" is simply boring. there's no chance to test your abilites beyond the norm by fighting things that are higher level that you, and there's no reward for becoming stronger.

 

And immersion is a huge part of gameplay. And how is it in any way immersive for everyone in the world to be exactly the right strength to be challenging but not impossible for you to defeat?

[AlexMBrennan]

And immersion is a huge part of gameplay. And how is it in any way immersive for everyone in the world to be exactly the right strength to be challenging but not impossible for you to defeat?

Even if you weren't wrong about immersion (which you are, of course), the question is not whether it's a huge part (absolute) but whether it is the biggest part (relative) because we are looking at a trade off here: either make gameplay utterly boring (e.g. Cass wants you to go back to ****** lvl 5 zone for her personal quest when you are level 15), or make the game a bit less immersive.

If you want a non-linear game with optional side quests, then level scaling is the only option. If you think that your immersion is important enough to make an utterly boring game, or a completely linear game then, well, you are pretty much on your own.

Now to address the huge elegant in the room: your entire argument is based in the false assertion that level scaling breaks immersion when reality the opposite is true - the longer you waste time on irrelevant side quests, the longer the enemy will go unopposed and the harder it will be for you.
Realistically speaking, the game should give you, say, 3h timer after you seal the breach, and automatically fail here lies the abyss (wardens completed the ritual, nothing more for you to do and you will now encounter a massive demon army everywhere you go) and wicked hearts (you failed to stop the assignation, Orlais is in chaos and you have to beat the rest of the game without any additional support). Since this is rather impractical, I'll settle with tougher demons appearing instead of lower level variants as a proxy for Cory getting stronger if ignored for too long.
That is what realistically should happen if you go delivering flowers instead of dealing with the demon invasion. What should not happen is the Inqusition becoming a god by delivering millions of flowers while Cory sits around twiddling his thumbs until you can be bothered to do a critical path quest.

[Dubya75]

There is a challenge to beat dragons with ease. The challenge come from increasing your power beforehand. And the reward for undertaking that challenge is that you become a badass who can kick peoples ass. This is good design. Making everying "just challenging enough" is simply boring. there's no chance to test your abilites beyond the norm by fighting things that are higher level that you, and there's no reward for becoming stronger.

 

And immersion is a huge part of gameplay. And how is it in any way immersive for everyone in the world to be exactly the right strength to be challenging but not impossible for you to defeat?

 

You mentioned the word "boring" in there somewhere. Good! Let's talk about that...

 

DAI (and we can take a vote on this) is by far the most boring game in the series. And that is WITHOUT your immersive non-levelled enemies. 

So on top of the already-tedious gameplay, you say it is immersive to fight enemies well below your own level? And that it makes you feel....bad-ass? What, like beating up little kids?

 

Right. 

[Inex]

Yes, becoming over-levelled is very easy in Inquisition. You have to be somewhat conservative in your playstyle.

 

Exactly, too much low/mid level content with little to no level scaling, so if the player wants to not over level enemies he needs to skip A LOT of quests.

 

Pre-skyhold difficulty and enemy level is fine. After skyhold you have access to a bunch of mid level areas with about the same difficulty level.

 

The player usually goes go to crestwood and do some quests there. Then to the western approach and he finds the difficulty is pretty much the same as crestwood. Then the player decides to explore the exalted plains and surprise! Difficulty is still about the same as crestwood/the approach, except you are a lot stronger by now. The same happens if the player decides to go to hallamshiral or emerald graves.

 

It's even worse if higher level areas are explored early. Sure, it will be really hard at first but the player will level up very fast and have access T3 materials and schematics. So now he will not only be over-leveled but also overpowered.

 

Of course every area has high level rifts/dragons/quests but the player doesn't even need to try to over-level most of the content. This is in my experience anyway. So for my new playthroughs i try to skip a lot of quests.

[AlanC9]

Wasn't that the design intent? I remember reading something to the effect that they expected players to pick and choose among those missions rather than do all of them.

[SACanuckin Oz]

"pick and choose" which zones/quests to do? What a strange decision to make by a design team, given that (many, if not most) players will like to get the best gaming experience by exploring ALL the content.

 

I can still understand that type of decision in a game as vast as Skyrim, where you might choose the Thieves Guild vs the Dark Brotherhood vs the College of Winterhold, but Inquisition is a much more linear game (imo), so it does not have the same appeal to do multiple play-throughs. Your only choice really (in terms of variety), is what class you play, since you get locked in to the class, and Hushed Whispers vs Champions of the Just (since the seem to affect the rest of the storyline the most).

 

That seems quite a myopic decision by the design team, if you ask me. The game really has quite a lot of shortcomings

[Inex]

Wasn't that the design intent? I remember reading something to the effect that they expected players to pick and choose among those missions rather than do all of them.

 

This may be true, but it is a design choice i disagree with. This is a good game and i like it a lot, but there are several design decisions that i simply don't like, and this is one of them because i'm skipping quests for a more fun/challenging experience, instead of enjoying more of the content the game has to offer AND still enjoy the challenge.

 

It's not like DA needs a demon's souls difficulty level, it simply needs to be more balanced IMO. And i believe a better level scaling system is needed for a more balanced gameplay. I recently did Cassandra's inner circle quest and to my surprise the enemies were way too weak! I think this quest would be easy even if i did it pre-skyhold. I could even say this breaks immersion because i simply stomped every enemy... and they were supposed to be strong!

 

I understand why some people might like being a lot stronger than your enemies, but this is why a game like DA should give the option to change difficulty at any time. At this point, i believe we need a nightmare+ difficulty or something.

 

I didn't play the DLC yet but i'm looking forward to it because i heard the difficulty is pretty good, plus i want to know more about the avvars.

[GreyWarden_Smith]

I ran into the same issue as this on my first PT due to fact that I 100% an area before going onto the next and completed all the areas before doing the Arbor Wild but this due to fact that BioWare said they was "end-game" content after to story that I assumed would unlocked after the completion of the story. What I didn't realise was that I had already did the "end-game" content.

 

I do enjoy becoming OP for the story elements of a RPG but that's why IMO the side-content should have the true-hardest quests and fights but with the best rewards and loot.

 

I think BioWare assumed that players would use power as an indicator to when they should go to the main-story after they completed that would go back finish up the rest of the side-content and go the Emprise Du Lion & The Hissing Wastes last in their PTs.

 

I think the new DLC has fixed issue slightly with tough battles but that's end-game too and if 100% everything you will hit the max level of 27 at the end of the DLC and wonder what BioWare are going to do about with new DLC content as I don't really want to stay at level 27 for the rest of DLCs.

[AlanC9]

"pick and choose" which zones/quests to do? What a strange decision to make by a design team, given that (many, if not most) players will like to get the best gaming experience by exploring ALL the content.

 

That's precisely the issue. Is doing all the content in a single run really the best experience? My impression is that this isn't true for DAI, just as it isn't for Skyrim.( I'd rather be shot in the face than do a completionist Skyrim run.)

 

Part of the problem here, I think, is that Bio games are generally pretty easy to beat, especially at the higher levels.

[Terodil]

There's another thread, still on the front page, with an extensive discussion of the subject: http://forum.bioware...designe-choice/

 

TL;DR summary of my position: Simple level-scaling is horrible. Dire Rats don't level up from raiding larders, so coming back into an old zone where suddenly all rats are as powerful as the faction boss you just beat two levels ago is terrible. It also kills any sense of progression. A run-of-the-mill bandit should fall instantly to the well-oiled fighting machine that the Inquisitor is after killing several dragons. An acceptable compromise would be level clamping where the lower floor of the level of an entire zone is clamped to the level you have when you come in for the first time. That way content will remain challenging without nonsensical changes to areas you have already visited. The only problem that this does not solve is what happens if people love to jump around between zones too much.

[SACanuckin Oz]

A huge distinction between DAI and Skyrim though is the story/plot in relation to areas. If I choose to avoid certain areas (so that I can stay low enough level for challenge), it means I am the kind of inquisitor that decides to ignore the Venatori threat in the Hissing Wastes, or the Red Templar threat in Storm Coast, or etc. etc. Not much of a "Herald of Andraste" if I do that.

 

In Skyrim the choices has more to do with the side stories (mage vs thief vs assassin vs warrior guilds), and then it totally makes sense not to pursue every avenue, as it actually detracts from the experience.

 

I posted elsewhere that a 'simple' solution to the boringness of zones might be for Bioware to drop in the occasional really high level enemy in every zone (like the rift in the Hinterlands by the farms), which should remain challenging to the very end. And make dragons start at level 20... the Abyssal HD was no challenge at all (hard) being level 18 with tier 3 crafted armour and weapons for the team. Sigh

[Terodil]

A huge distinction between DAI and Skyrim though is the story/plot in relation to areas. If I choose to avoid certain areas (so that I can stay low enough level for challenge), it means I am the kind of inquisitor that decides to ignore the Venatori threat in the Hissing Wastes, or the Red Templar threat in Storm Coast, or etc. etc. Not much of a "Herald of Andraste" if I do that.

Eh. The Inquisition is a fledgling organisation, barely able to hold Haven at the start. And you want to stroll into the HQ of the main big baddie right out of the gate? Without any reinforcements, without any supply lines? While you barely have two gold pieces to your name and nobody even knows about your organisation's existence? And then, when you've wiped out that HQ, come back and face just as big a challenge with that rag-tag band of highway robbers on the bridge trying to extort money from travellers?

[SACanuckin Oz]

Terodil, you might have misunderstood me. I don't hope to jump ahead in the story

 

As I posted (as OP), I more find that I am strolling through the content, because I helped EVERY person in the Hinterlands, closed EVERY rift in the Fallow Mire/Storm Coast/Forbidden Oasis, etc., and saved EVERY patrol in the Fallow Mire, etc.

 

So, no, I have built a solid reputation as an Inquisitor, and have a lot of power to spend.

 

Maybe I should enjoy thumping high dragons in the Western Approach and Hissing Wastes.... Or maybe I should fight naked, with a low level staff? Or those would make encounters harder for sure.

 

BTW, I have tried to follow a recommended game progression (dragonage3.wiki.fextralife), but find that I am typically much higher level than their guide suggests you would be. The content just scales you faster than the story somehow.

[Terodil]

BTW, I have tried to follow a recommended game progression (dragonage3.wiki.fextralife), but find that I am typically much higher level than their guide suggests you would be. The content just scales you faster than the story somehow.

<Mordin voice> *sniff* Problematic. </Mordin voice>

Yeah, I experienced that too. The DA quest designers must have expected their players not to be completionists (with good reason, actually, it's brain-deadening, you can only skin so many goats before going insane!).

I also get what you're saying about a lacking sense of urgency. That is an issue with writing and pacing though, and a good example of where DA:I fell short of what it could / should have been. Again, though, it's not easily fixed with level scaling. It doesn't help that levels themselves are a kludgy game mechanic, and that DA:I sports a semi-open world that introduces a myriad of problems.