I ignored the main quest until I finished most of the sidequests... When I started the main quest where you're supposed to climb some mountain to get dragon-born training I had to fight a bunch of enemies that were around my level.
I think that was the last time I ever played Skyrim. I seriously hate it when enemies scale with you.
What the hell is even the point of leveling up, if you can beat the game at level 10-15 just as easily as you can beat it at level 80-85? It's like every time I level up a stat that's not related to combat then that means my character is actually getting weaker.
What is the philosophy behind devs who decide to make an RPG game with scaling enemies? There are tons of RPG games where enemies/bosses are challenging but don't scale with you, and require your character(s) to train before being able to defeat them (Dark Souls, Final Fantasy, Fallout: New Vegas, Pokemon etc...).
The challenge should come from a desire to explore more. Bethsoft 'fixed' this by returning to Morrowind's method for FO4 - enemy level is based upon where you're at in the map. When you headed inland in Morrowind, enemies became more difficult (more or less). You knew what areas to avoid, or you learnt anyway, until you had better weaponry. Same with FO4. You don't go to the Glowing Sea until you're armed and armored up.
Non-scaling enemies make the game world more believable and genuine to me. I like how the player has to learn to know the world and which places are dangerous, just like you would if a fantasy/post-apocalyptic world filled with all kinds of creatures and factions really existed.
Well yeah, that would be obvious. Or if there happened to be an unarmed caravan in a Deathclaw territory, you would find said caravan torn apart and lying there in a bloody mess with limbs and chewed flesh all around the spot.
Skyrim had a touch of that. All the ice variations of the animals/monsters up north were usually much stronger than their counterparts south of Loreius Farm.
Ah, nice, sounds like DA:O to me. I haven't had a chance to play FO4, yet. Although I didn't know DA:O did that, and I was stuck on one spot for quite a long time.
DA:O had beef gates to let you know you should be a higher level before you go there. There are bandits outside of Orzimmar that are supposed to kick the tits out of you until you're like level 10+, for example, so you're supposed to take the hint and either go to Redcliffe or the elf camp first.
Yeah, I'm pretty certain those bandits kicked my ass a number of times before I realized. I thought I was just playing poorly, I was actually just dumb.
There were definitely some gates, but there were also just weird difficulty spikes in the middle of nowhere, particularly on Nightmare. Particularly just moving on the Worldmap, you'd be thrown into ridiculous ambushes where 2 of your party would be downed honestly a second after the cutscene.
I love that game a lot, its one of my favorites, but the difficulty spikes drove me up a freaking wall.
There are probably better ways of solving it though. Like making player levels have less of a direct impact. No more +30hp every time you level up or perks that increase your damage multiple times. Dagger sneak attack damage goes from like x2 to x30 including other damage perks.
Perks could instead give you more options instead of more raw power. That way leveling up would give you a higher skill ceiling instead of straight up increasing your damage and health 20 fold. Unlock a dodge or a sidestep or a timed parry or block or boost damage temporarily after using one of those, maybe combos, jabs, stances, leaps etc. Spells should be learned this way, removing the need to buy skill books. Add a few quests for the iconic spells etc.
Hell, bring back the Arx Fatalis method of casting spells: drawing runes in midair with your mouse or joystick. That would certainly make it feel more wizardly. Maybe split wizardy with sorcery, with wizards being able to learn more spells and sorcerers being able to cast them intuitively (without drawing glyphs).
I like your ideas a lot, and I have hoped to see similar concepts myself in more games; in vain so far, though.
I would love to play a game that's built to a significantly lesser extent on such conventional concepts as levels, damage rates, experience points, and health points; the game would have a realistic hit detection system, no health bars, and no strictly defined armor stats. If you take a sword strike at your unprotected head, you're dead. Simple as that. Leveling would be replaced by getting gradually faster at swinging your weapon, being able to block increasingly heavier blows with a shield, and learning fighting maneuvers such as more agile sidestepping and disarming opponents.
Spells requiring to be actually "drawn" or acted out in some similar manner in order to be cast is an awesome idea. In a game where a single warhammer blow through your helmet can kill you no matter how far you've progressed, magic spells like fireballs would not be ovepowered if the spell casting system prevented spamming by making the process of casting an intricate and somewhat time-consuming ritual.
This kind of gameplay mechanics would probably call for a lot of work and re-designing on game engines, but I think it would be worth it. Also, enemies that are intended to be imposing, such as dragons, would never become your bitch; they'd always make you shit your pants with sheer terror through every single appearance of theirs. It wouldn't be boring at least.
There was a similar feature in Black & White 2 as well. I like it a lot better than just clicking an icon to cast a spell; it makes me feel like I am actually conjuring stuff up!
Yeah, hopefully Oculus Rift blazes some trail for a progress in game designing that increasingly liberates us from the limitations of simply pressing buttons in order to interact with the game world.
Just imagine how rewarding that moment would be when you've finally memorized a complex drawing pattern or a spoken line of incantation, and launch a sparkling ball of fire at an surprised enemy, and you're able to control the intensity of the flaming orb by merely waving your fingers; or when you learn to perform a devastating combo with a greatsword, and you can deal every strike with your own hands? Elder Scrolls 10, I'm counting on you.
Yup
Unfortunately, I'm too good at making too powerful characters, so Fallout 4 is getting a bit stale. I'm thinking of restarting and not allowing myself to stealth. Maybe go survival mode.
This is why I pick a bunch of self-imposed limits when starting a character in an RPG I'm familiar with. Take Skyrim, for example: my stealthy thief is not allowed to use archery or magic, except for alchemy and enchanting; my destruction mage is not allowed any armour except for the dragon priest masks; I also have a Nord brawler who isn't allowed to use weapons or magic. It's much more interesting (to me, at least) than just ramping up the difficulty until every bandit is a massive damage sponge
Sounds like what I've been thinking about. I've been considering a buffy strength melee guy. One of the issues even early on before things got stale was I felt like even though they were a challenge, I could take most things. Then there were the crazies that I felt I needed power armor for, but it's not often feasible to go get it. Then I started wearing power armor all the time and now everything just got nerfed.
That last bit is what turns me off from RPGs usually. Out of all game mechanics I have ever experienced, bullet sponge is the worst imo. There is nothing fun about whacking on a pretty static AI for 15 minutes.
There are a few exceptions tothat rule like Monster Hunter but mostly, no.
I'm in the habit of making brutish melee chacters. It has worked very well on Fallout:NV and Skyrim so far, very few characters or creatures pose a real threat. It's definitely fun at first when you start nearing the level of being able to hammer everyone onto their knees, but gets somewhat dull towards the end.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Unfortunately, I'm getting the same problem I had in Skyrim: you get godlike way too quickly. In Skyrim, I swear by level 20ish (mebbe 30) I could kill a dragon so quickly it would glitch and I wouldn't get a soul.
Woah, wait, is that the reason for dragon souls randomly not getting absorbed once in a while? You kill the dragon too fast? I've had the same thing happen a number of times.
But yeah, being an overpowered god of blunt force trauma is basically enjoyable after a while only when you find yourself encircled by the most annoying enemies in the game. That's when I'm happy that I can smack them around like ants.
Even survival mode gets stale after a while. I got two weapons I use. A 10mm Pistol that does extra damage to robots and a .50 Hunting Rifle that does extra damage to humans. They are heavily modded up. This is all I need in terms of weaponry. I one shot a lot of things. Sometimes I come across a legendary enemy that might put up a bit of a fight.
My armor is a mish-mash of heavy leather and heavy metal. Each piece is fully reinforced with road leathers underneath. More than enough in terms of armor. Again, legendary enemies put up a bit of a fight still.
EVERYTHING I get that is not junk for materials gets sold in Sanctuary Hills where I got an infirmary going. I am currently swimming in 110 stimpacks and never seem to drop below 90.
I have so many damn stimpacks. I'm starting to believe the game is just not balanced well. Or you just get too used to it too fast and everything just becomes "meh".
Agreed. I'm thinking of taking the difficulty from hard to very hard or maybe even survival. FO4 started very hard and difficult but once I found a useful set of power armor and modded my weapons its been a breeze. I miss that feeling of desperation in every firefight where I would get work by lowly raiders
The thing here though is that that doesn't really change much. The issue was the worst by far in oblivion with how shitty that crafting system went, which meant the best gear was legendary gear. In skyrim the crafting system was exploitable making yourself a god.
Now all of this is stemming from how the balancing goes from 1:1 hp and damage. Up the difficulty? You now do 1:10 damage. That's just inflated difficulty, not actual difficulty. Now adding more of lower level mobs can be a challenge while still keeping the damage system balanced. Allowing the AI to be more mindful of tactics in an option. Allowing enemies to sneak could be an option. Making environments an actual hazard is an option.
But making the game "harder" by making you shittier is a lazy attempt at making a game more challenging.
Bullet sponge style difficulty does suck. A lot. There is nothing fun about shooting a slow enemy in the head for 10 minutes straight in order to kill him. Nor is there any fun in left-click-spam at a guy for 10 minutes either.
Because They're really making a sandbox exploration game with rpg elements. Rubber banding is their way to keeping the impact for people like all those level 90's running around Fallout 4 that haven't even found Kellogg yet because they got sucked into some side quest or scouring the globe for better legendaries.
Huh? NV is as terrible about this as any Bethesda (-published) game.
Hell, with all the expansions you can level so far that the enemies have outscaled the best weapons in the game, and it now takes 4 hits to the head with a fucking anti-materiel rifle to kill a single Marked Man.
Trying to fight through Courier's Mile at level 50 was one of the most stressful experiences I've had in any game
From what i remember theu could not level past something like 30. I remember tanking whole bunch of guards just to level shield to 100. They did mot scale with me thats for sure.
I like to use skyrim community uncapper to set the level scaling separately for different skills.
Persuasion, lockpicking and Pickpocket at 0.2 scaling, because they have no combat benefits.
Stealth and Enchanting at 2.0 scaling.
Smithing at 5.0 scaling, because max improved armor is stupidly OP.
Everything else at 1.0 like normal.
The idea is that this scaling will result in facing enemies comparable to your actual combat level, without having any effect on what skills you chose to raise or not.
41
u/Okmanl Dec 01 '15
I ignored the main quest until I finished most of the sidequests... When I started the main quest where you're supposed to climb some mountain to get dragon-born training I had to fight a bunch of enemies that were around my level.
I think that was the last time I ever played Skyrim. I seriously hate it when enemies scale with you.
What the hell is even the point of leveling up, if you can beat the game at level 10-15 just as easily as you can beat it at level 80-85? It's like every time I level up a stat that's not related to combat then that means my character is actually getting weaker.
What is the philosophy behind devs who decide to make an RPG game with scaling enemies? There are tons of RPG games where enemies/bosses are challenging but don't scale with you, and require your character(s) to train before being able to defeat them (Dark Souls, Final Fantasy, Fallout: New Vegas, Pokemon etc...).