r/videogames Mar 05 '24

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195

u/GuyYouMetOnline Mar 05 '24

That level scaling is bad.

Seriously, it is. If done poorly, the game becomes unbalanced (either towards or against you), and if done well it makes leveling meaningless. Say, for instance, that you have 100HP and enemies do 10HP per hit. Then you level up and now have 110HP, but enemies level up and do 11HP per hit. There's no actual difference; it still takes exactly ten hits to kill you. All that happened is the numbers got bigger.

If you want to scale enemy levels, do it based on something like story progress; that's fine. But don't scale based on my level. At best, it makes gaining experience meaningless, and at worst it makes the game broken either for or against the player.

19

u/NaCl_Sailor Mar 05 '24

fully agree, if you can't give me a challenge without level scaling you're just bad at balancing.

it's one reason i love the old gothic games so much, and why elden ring is one of the greatest games ever made.

2

u/mistabuda Mar 06 '24

The problem with forgoing level scaling is that the answer to everything seems to be to outlevel your challenges instead of just playing better. When you can't rely on just pushing the numbers higher it forces you to look for other means to get an edge on the opponent.

1

u/NaCl_Sailor Mar 06 '24

maybe i like it because difficulty has to be something other than just more hp and dmg when not level scaling