I''m pretty sure this has been discussed before, but... I just posted this at the interplay forums and I figure I should here too. Lionheart uses a system I believe they call Mojo. The idea is that if you visit an enemy camp or well any time you''re fighting, the enemies'' skills and number depends on your level. In other words, if you''re level 1, you meet maybe three sucky goblins when you try to destroy their camp, and when you kill them you find 3 gold and a knife. If you instead were level 20 and came to the same camp for the first time, you would meet 15 really good goblins, and when you kill them you get 5 gold / goblin and a Magic Sword Of UberKill. I hope something like this will NOT be in FO3... I mean Van Buren. I like to think "I thínk I''ll try to take on the raiders now", go there and realize that "D*mn, these were too tough for me! Maybe I should try to kill some radscorpions first." Of course it would be cool if things changed as time goes, but to have enemies scale to your level defeats most joys you get from getting better. If I am level 20 and are just returning to some city I''ve been at when I was level 1, I want to be able to think "Heheh.. I remember the last time I tried to take out the raiders. This time, I''m gonna kick some ###!", and be able to do just that. ------------------ "Kaka e gott" - Me Current project: An RPG with tactical, real-time combat with a realistic damage system, and randomly generated world and dialogue.

I personally hate auto scaling of enimies, wizardry gold used this kind of system and it was extremely frustating. You go into a room and there would be tough battle so you ran, gained a few levels and came back only to find there are more enimies and they are stronger then before and you still can''t beat them.

I much prefer being able to clean out an entire area and never having enimies their come back. It could be interesting if you clear out a raider camp and come back later to discover that Super mutants have moved in.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
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If you think about it, scaling is essentially the same thing as levelling up, only in the opposite direction. If you''re going to scale everything to keep the difficulty roughly constant, then the only point in levelling up is to watch the numbers get bigger (Progress Quest anyone?)

On the other hand, you still need some answer to the good old "Goblin Genocide" problem that was getting discussed vigorously about 8 months ago - if you can return to your starting point and spend a couple of days committing genocide on the weenie creatures that you started out against without getting a scratch and then go off and breeze through the rest of the game (a couple of friends of mine played Final Fantasy 8 non-stop in shifts for a couple of days to get the starting characters up to level 100 before taking on the first quest...)
then the game loses something. Trouble is, apart from advocating non combat-based character improvement, the only solutions I''ve heard of are to make experience curves even steeper, so goblin bashing would take a couple of years to get you up one level at high level (meaning that the guy who manages to take out something rated way above his level gets skipped a dozen levels... so enemy difficulty curve better be pretty steep as well) or to stop rewarding goblin kills beyond a certain point (if the encounter rating is too far below your rating, you get nothing from it) or to toughen up your opponents across the board whether by scaling the monsters directly or by replacing encounters with tougher ones.

Scaling enemies is silly, it beats the point of an RPG, once you leveled up enough you *should* be able to enter that goblin camp and kill all three hundred of them for the handfull of coins that you needed to buy that really important silver firebox.

Ow, and goblin camps should always have more then 3 goblins, just use reality(as far as it applies) and not scalability, the camp should have 300 goblins regardless.

Instead have your hero silently kill of some patrol group of 4 or something - keep the game fun!

Heres the Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter example again. God that game was good.

Anyways, what Capcom did was have the enemy positions static accross a single play (which were taken from sets randomly). Of course the enemies moved about, but when defeated, the enemies were just gone. Since the progression of the game was linear, each area just had harder enemies, no need for an autoscale. However, there was not enough experience on a play through to reach a level that would be safe in taking on the hardest enemies at the "Top" of the game. Do gain that needed exp, the game''s replay value systems came into play, which I guess doesn''t apply here.

A related game, Final Fantasy Tactics, did have Auto-scaling however, and was hard as hell when you decided to go fight random battles rather then just following the plot back and forth. I remember losing a fight against 11 high level Monks. Try as hard as I wanted, but they kept forming lines and using Chakra to heal away the damage I''ve done.

My recomendation, if you do Auto-scaling, have it in a fractioned proportion. Player gains 2 levels, enemies gain 1 or something to that effect. That way the weakest enemies will still remain weak in comparison (just be a bit more of a hassle then before), and the Harder enemies will be passed by the player''s levels at a specified point that corresponds to the game''s progression.

I think it's better to have areas that have creatures of set level ranges and quantities. That way, when you get to a given level, you will only go to certain areas to level up. When you enter unknown areas and get your butt kicked, you'll know to stay away from those areas until you are of sufficient power. The downside is that you have to travel to other places to level up. The upside is you know what to expect and can prepare for it. Within each area you can have weak and strong creatures at both ends of a reasonable scale with an occasional huge boss, like EverQuest does.

There is a level of realism that is lost when the game adjusts itself to the level of the player without a reasonable explanation. Yes, games aren't real, but they are supposed to be a proper imitation of reality.

I didn't play Wizardry 8 for very long, but I did encounter a sorceress with a bunch of death demons. She cast a spell and it backfired on her, and she blew into pieces and damaged all of her minions with it I would have lost that battle huge otherwise.

I played Morrowind enough to realize that the wandering monster list changes as you level up, too. This, also, I do not like. I shouldn't be allowed to run into a high level area as a low level player. If I see huge and dangerous creatures there, I should know the whole area in general is too rough for me.


[edited by - Waverider on August 21, 2003 2:53:07 PM]

I personally agree with most everyone else in this thread that auto-scaling is not the way to go. My preferred method of combatting the "slaughter 1 hundred billion goblins to gain 100 levels" is to do the old experience scaling trick. Rob the Level 100 Death Mage shouldn''t get so much as a single point for slaughtering even 300 Weenie Goblin Hatchlings.

The reverse should also be true-- experience penalties should apply so that Flinders the Level 5 Wet Dishrag should not get full experience for (somehow) managing to kill Blood-Drenched the Level 5000 Ultimate Badass. SOME experience, yes. But not the full 90 gajillion XP that would instantly turn him into a Level 300 Slightly Limp Pot Scrubber.

I''ve never liked auto-scaling, and I''ve never played a game that does this for more than a few hours.


Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem at:
My cheapass website

Auto-scaling makes me think of someone trying to swim through quicksand. No matter how much effort you take in trying to get through, it''s going to be slow going, and you may not get anywhere.

But the "goblin massacre" possibility also has its problems. While the players who engage in it are usually ultimately satisfied by having an uber-party to blow through the game with, anyone who doesn''t feel like doing that work at the outset are at the mercy of the game''s designers and might just get annoyed by the thought of "building levels," preferring to just see the story through to its end.

Of course, this raises the question of why the constructions used in an RPG exist in the first place, when their ultimate conclusion is to have the player sit there zombified for a few hours beating on monsters until he feels powerful enough to tackle the next set.

Maybe it''s like a sort of exercise, but without any real benefits?

Or maybe someone should make the "exercise RPG?"

quote: Original post by RTF

But the "goblin massacre" possibility also has its problems. While the players who engage in it are usually ultimately satisfied by having an uber-party to blow through the game with, anyone who doesn''t feel like doing that work at the outset are at the mercy of the game''s designers and might just get annoyed by the thought of "building levels," preferring to just see the story through to its end.

Of course, this raises the question of why the constructions used in an RPG exist in the first place, when their ultimate conclusion is to have the player sit there zombified for a few hours beating on monsters until he feels powerful enough to tackle the next set.

Good points. This seems to me like trying to cater to 2 different kinds of players. Player (A) plays for the story, and derives his satisfaction from uncovering the plot-line for the most part. He is irritated if he gets to a section he can not complete, and is angry that he must sit somewhere and "level up" before he can go on. Player (B) derives his satisfaction from the act of gaining in power. To him, the story is incidental to the real task at hand. He can happily "zombify" for a few hours, gleefully pounding the snot out of endless hordes of goblins in search of that ever-elusive Sword of Goblin Slaying that will make him that much more powerful.

Now, you can construct your game progression to cater toward Player (A), by balancing each section so that little or no extraneous "levelling up" is required. Each preceding section was sufficient to increase your power to the level required to beat the current section, and progress is largely uninterrupted through the course of the game. In this situation, Player (B) may become frustrated that the game is "too easy". He has no reason to linger anywhere doing what he enjoys--levelling up--as his current level is sufficient for whatever section he happens to be in. His levelling up serves only to make a "too easy" game even easier, and can vampirically suck any enjoyment right out of the game experience.

Or, you can construct your game progression and bias it toward Player (B)''s style. Each successive "area" is considerably more challenging than the preceding one, and requires that the player spend some time farting around in the preceding area, levelling up in order to be equal to the task. This is great for Player (B), as he is allowed to see visible gains in his progress due to his levelling up sessions. Difficult areas become easier as he gains in power, and he is given that sense of satisfaction he is looking for. Player (A), however, is pissed off because the game is "way too hard". He can not progress immediately from one section to the next, and so he complains that the next section is too difficult. He does not want to waste time levelling up, so eventually he gets frustrated enough to quit playing.

What is the right way? I have no idea.

Perhaps, you could construct the main stem of the story in favor of the rapid linear progression, and toss in a healthy dose of uber-difficult side quests. Player (A) can ignore the difficult side quests, and progress along as he wants from start to finish. Player (B) can derive his satisfaction in rooting out every little side quest and secret, emptying out every little hidden dungeon and subplot.

Or you could have selectable difficulty levels at game start. Player (A) can choose the normal setting, and be given the story-telling experience he is looking for. Player (B) can choose the "Are you outta your cursed mind" setting, and be granted the levelling-up extravaganza he craves.

At any rate, auto-scaling is likely to piss of both Player A AND Player B. So I recommend against it.






Josh
vertexnormal AT linuxmail DOT org

Check out Golem at:
My cheapass website

quote: Original post by VertexNormal
Good points. This seems to me like trying to cater to 2 different kinds of players. Player (A) plays for the story, and derives his satisfaction from uncovering the plot-line for the most part. He is irritated if he gets to a section he can not complete, and is angry that he must sit somewhere and "level up" before he can go on. Player (B) derives his satisfaction from the act of gaining in power. To him, the story is incidental to the real task at hand. He can happily "zombify" for a few hours, gleefully pounding the snot out of endless hordes of goblins in search of that ever-elusive Sword of Goblin Slaying that will make him that much more powerful.

[...]

Perhaps, you could construct the main stem of the story in favor of the rapid linear progression, and toss in a healthy dose of uber-difficult side quests. Player (A) can ignore the difficult side quests, and progress along as he wants from start to finish. Player (B) can derive his satisfaction in rooting out every little side quest and secret, emptying out every little hidden dungeon and subplot.

Final Fantasy has been tending towards this solution for quite a while - though the pure ''A'' type still gets bogged down from time to time. I sometimes play as ''A'', sometimes as ''B'', but what really annoys me in Final Fantasy games (and I suspect most related games may suffer from this too) is the existence situations where the plot is "Hurry, we must rush to this place to save the world before a big rock hits us" (FF7) but the game mechanics are set up so that if you try doing that, you not only miss out all the ''B'' stuff, but also get smacked down by the first opponent you encounter and realise you have to go away and level up for a couple of hours first... By which time, including all your nights spent in inns/tents, a month of game time should have passed and the rock should have turned the world into low grade gravel...

Wrenching myself back on topic, yeah, directly scaling monsters still sounds like the designers saying "whoops, we made it a little too easy to become all powerful, but rather than toning down the levelling up, we''ll make the monsters tougher instead" and, in its purest form, makes high levels just an excuse for bigger numbers and more impressive light shows (high level spells).