• Malix
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    It’s quite divisive subject. While I’m more in the camp indifferent about it, I do get the arguments for and against it.

    To me curbstomping lowlevels is just pointless, and legendary godslayer gigathug lvl 99 is silly. Occasionally I end up putting a quest/mission/whetever on hold and later I realize it’s now “gray”. Walking through enemies that can’t hurt me, to get a magguffin to get an (at that point) insignificant reward feels dumb. Sure, I could just not do the mission at that point, but… I’m compelled to do all. Always. :D

    Fairly consistent difficulty and growing arsenal of player’s tools without making me op sounds all good to me. But, remains to be seen how the scaling feels later on.

    Each to their own, but admittedly it seems odd change to the game at this point. I don’t mind it, but… eh. Odd.

    • rastilin@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      True, but at that point why even have levels? Which, I’m not being sarcastic, levels are purely design theory inherited from taking D&D electronic, if they don’t want levels they can just make a game without them. It’s strange to have levels and stats and all the things around that and then just make all of it not matter secretly in the background.

      This philosophy seems to be trending, from WoW and Anthem scaling where Anthem’s beginner weapons doing more damage to endgame enemies than endgame weapons do, to Uber’s “ghost” cars that don’t really exist. There’s this idea of giving you all this data and all of it being “fake”, just to distract people.

      Also, as mentioned before. It’s very easy to mess up your leveling and be weaker than expected, possibly due to taking non-combat or non-applicable skills. At that point the scaling will just make the rest of the game a slog.

      • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        From my understanding of table-top cyberpunk RPG, when using level scaling, levels still matter, but they don’t play the only major factor during encounters. You can still steam roll weaker enemies, but you can also die if you make some major mistakes. I think it makes the gameplay more engaging and interesting.

        Scaling rewards the player’s engagement and skills, while no-scaling rewards time and effort put into levelling your character. Both have their ups and downs, and most games use a hybrid implementation with some leeway for the scaling (skyrim for example).

        • rastilin@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Scaling rewards the player’s engagement and skills, while no-scaling rewards time and effort put into levelling your character. Both have their ups and downs, and most games use a hybrid implementation with some leeway for the scaling (skyrim for example).

          In my opinion Skyrim is one example of it being done badly. Partly because not seeing weaker enemies anymore breaks immersion, but mostly because any attempt to engage with the non-combat systems will break your power curve. If you take Smithing from 10 to 80 for example, that’s 8 levels the enemies now have on you. So you have to be using Smithing a lot to make up for that. It’s worse if it’s something like 150 points over Lockpicking / Speech and Pickpocket which have no benefit in combat. That’s another 15 levels the enemies get, and it’s even worse if you switch from one handed weapons to two handed, or change armor types at any point.

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Levels allow scaling for other things like weapons, to also scale, making the user switch weapons enough to stay relevant.

        When you have fixed weapons, you have situations like in Horizon Zero series where people make fun of getting a quest where you would receive the passed down family weapon ober the ages and was cherished, only to find out after that the weapon is trash and whatever your using ends up staying thr strongest.

        • rastilin@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          When you have fixed weapons, you have situations like in Horizon Zero series where people make fun of getting a quest where you would receive the passed down family weapon ober the ages and was cherished, only to find out after that the weapon is trash and whatever your using ends up staying thr strongest.

          I mean, there’s a reason they gave that weapon away. Maybe it really was trash and that’s all they had.