Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Level Scaling in Skyrim: Post Your Stories

Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
Patron
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
20,317
Location
DiNMRK
Mastermind said:
Dicksmoker said:
So how soon in the main quest does it force you to face a dragon?

Second major quest once you're out I think, but you have a lot of back-up so it's not a big deal.

You have your on-rails tutorial escape. Go to the city. Go through one dungeon filled with zombies to pick up a mcguffin. Then go off to fight a dragon alongside a bunch of guards. The dragon has presumably been wounded beforehand considering it was attacking a manned watchtower.

You proceed to kill the dragon, learn your first shout, heal up, take a wrong turn, meet a lone wolf who slaughters you.
 

Monocause

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2008
Messages
3,656
I'm rather pleased with the way LS works, though some additional tweaking would be nice. There's some handplaced loot to be found, if you work hard at smithing you can get 1-2 tiers above the best equipment available at vendors. The random quests from bartenders seemingly point you to places appropriate to your level so if you find you're stuck here or there you can always try something else. Currently in the business of killing all bandits around Whiterun, only other town/region I visited was Winterhold (had to retreat because ice wolves are apparently more dangerous than heavily armored rogues)

I'm checking UESP periodically to find out how exactly does it work. I hope different regions have level ranges too. One thing of note is that the Companions seem to be balanced for a higher level character or the randomisation can get too unforgiving. Joined them twice at levels 5-10. First got a mission to wipe out some vampires from Farkas, got murdered, after a reroll got to kill some trolls. Murdered too.
 

Metro

Arcane
Beg Auditor
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
27,792
Ulminati said:
Level-scaling is an integral part of RPG adventure design. If you've ever picked up a published D&D adventure - eg. anything published in Dungeon magazine - you'll usually find sidebars with notes for scaling the difficulty upwards/down according to character level. Shadowrun 2E, 3E and 4E all had guidelines on how to adjust encounters to player average karma in the core rulebook. The whole point of challenge ratings in 3E d&d was to help GMs level-scale encounters to provide a suitable challenge for the players.

Yes but that's in the context of people using persistent characters from scenario to scenario over the course of months (possibly years). Bob has played through modules A and B whereas module C is more attuned for players who only have the approximate experience level after beating module A alone. The 'scaling' information you mention is just to adjust a module so Bob can still experience the content and still have it be challenging. It isn't that analogous to a self-contained video game which is essentially just one module on its own.

In Pool of Radiance (both the module and/or the cRPG) if Bob said, 'oh I'm going straight to Yaresh's pyramid and split some wigs' you don't look at the side packet to fiddle with anything you say: 'bad news, Bob, the lizardmen mutants raped your ass.' Still, I appreciate that Skrim does have certain instances where that is the case.
 

Forest Dweller

Smoking Dicks
Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
12,196
Ulminati said:
Mastermind said:
Dicksmoker said:
So how soon in the main quest does it force you to face a dragon?

Second major quest once you're out I think, but you have a lot of back-up so it's not a big deal.

You have your on-rails tutorial escape. Go to the city. Go through one dungeon filled with zombies to pick up a mcguffin. Then go off to fight a dragon alongside a bunch of guards. The dragon has presumably been wounded beforehand considering it was attacking a manned watchtower.

You proceed to kill the dragon, learn your first shout, heal up, take a wrong turn, meet a lone wolf who slaughters you.
Okay. That's not too bad at least just considering the dragon part. I'm assuming that after this the random dragons start spawning, and these are scaled to your level? Or do they spawn even before this?

The real question I'm asking is: is it possible to larp this shit and hold off on the main quest until you're a reasonably high level, so that by that time the dragons will actually be formidable opponents? You could do this in Oblivion.
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Monocause said:
I'm rather pleased with the way LS works, though some additional tweaking would be nice. There's some handplaced loot to be found, if you work hard at smithing you can get 1-2 tiers above the best equipment available at vendors. The random quests from bartenders seemingly point you to places appropriate to your level so if you find you're stuck here or there you can always try something else. Currently in the business of killing all bandits around Whiterun, only other town/region I visited was Winterhold (had to retreat because ice wolves are apparently more dangerous than heavily armored rogues)

I'm checking UESP periodically to find out how exactly does it work. I hope different regions have level ranges too. One thing of note is that the Companions seem to be balanced for a higher level character or the randomisation can get too unforgiving. Joined them twice at levels 5-10. First got a mission to wipe out some vampires from Farkas, got murdered, after a reroll got to kill some trolls. Murdered too.

I got murdered looking for shouts myself earlier in the game. Now that I'm level 20 or so it's much easier, but since i'm a pure mage with almost all points going to magicka i still get one-shotted occasionally.
 

Monocause

Arcane
Joined
Aug 15, 2008
Messages
3,656
Dicksmoker said:
The real question I'm asking is: is it possible to larp this shit and hold off on the main quest until you're a reasonably high level, so that by that time the dragons will actually be formidable opponents? You could do this in Oblivion.

Yes. Don't know which point of MQ exactly starts dragonspawning - either talking with the Jarl for the first time or killing the first dragon - but everything I've read so far indicates it's possible. Didn't try it myself though.

Remember that you're gimping yourself a bit as the shouts are pretty darn useful, even the first one is for stunning enemy mages. If you're going to larp you can just kill the first MQ dragon and avoid the rest until you feel sufficiently strong. That's what I've been doing on master difficulty anyway as while killing a random dragon at a low level is possible it's just tedious and you have to resort to abusing the AI, fe. standing in a shielded area and pelting the dragon with a shitload of arrows while it's circling above.
 

Giauz Ragnacock

Scholar
Joined
Jul 16, 2011
Messages
502
Ulminati wrote:
When I am badass enough to kill a dragon I don't want to be mauled by a brown bear or oneshotted by a random highwayman 5 minutes later. If they can kill me, there's no way I should've been able to handle a dragon.

Not saying the level scaling can't get wierd, but just because you're a pseudo-medieval one-man army Sergeant York-wannabe shouldn't mean you're any more immune to (hypothetically):
A small street urchin putting a knife in your gut (where the armor doesn't cover) and stealing your money as you bleed to death.

After all, just because you have become deadlier shouldn't mean other deadly things are now just annoyances. I know we're talk'n RPG statistical battles, but still, why not discourage the ego boosting? Doesn't mean the game has to be super hard, but humbling the player a little can make them get their head in the game.

Anyway, for whatever reason that quote made me :x
 

Forest Dweller

Smoking Dicks
Joined
Oct 29, 2008
Messages
12,196
You're missing his point.

He's not complaining about the hard shit. He's complaining about the dragons being retardedly easy in comparison.
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,609
Location
Winter
So I have been playing on the master difficulty level and the dragons are a bit of a challenge if you face them without backup. I think I have killed about 6 of them so far and each time I have had random people (guards/farmers) helping out with the fight. That being said I do enjoy having to hide behind objects so not to get fried by dragon fire.

Anyway playing as your typical derpy fighter/mage (Heavy Armor/One Handed/Destruction/Conjuration) the number of enemies that can one or two shot you is a bit irritating. I assume had I gone with the pure mage or pure warrior it would not be such a pain in the ass.

And screw the bears. The only good thing about them is that they change the name of the bear that rapes you as you level up. Currently getting sodomized by Cave Bears I think.
 

baronjohn

Cipher
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
2,383
Location
USA
I hate the item scaling in stores. It's so fucking blatant too. OH SHIT A NEW LEVEL TIME TO CHECK ALL THE STORES TO SEE IF THEY MAGICALLY STOCK ANY COOL NEW ITEMS.
 

meh

Educated
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
349
This thread is now about kobolds!

copypasta said:
This particular anecdote is called "Princessesssss" locally (spoken
in a particularly squeaky reptilian voice), because role playing Princess-obsessed kobolds for what became eight hours straight really gets to a guy after a while.

We ended up with a party of Kobolds when the group was exploring the concept of Level Adjustment, a D&D thing that fills the same niche as paying points to play a kewl race (only you pay character levels). One player was flipping idly through the Monster Manual hoping for inspiration when he stopped and asked if Kobolds get *bonus* levels. The DM quickly ruled "no", but everyone was so tickled by the idea of Kobolds with class levels that suddenly we had a party of four kobolds.

Kobolds with class levels are dangerous things.

We ended up with a Rogue trap smith, a Ranger specializing in anti-elf warfare, a Sorcerer with a charisma high enough he had the whole party thinking he was half-dragon, and the Barbarian, called Humanslayer. He had the kobold equivalent of an 18 strength and had stolen a dwarven waraxe from somewhere; the ax weighed twenty pounds, Humanslayer barely reached forty. He fought by getting *very* angry, and then struggling to get the ax spinning around in circles. After that he just focused on keeping it moving (in circles) and let everyone else worry about where he was going.

The kobolds are acting as troubleshooters for a very very very big black dragon, and are informed that a unicorn has moved into the Boss' territory; it's killing honest goblins, reclaiming blightland for woods, and curing the rampant malaria and swamp-fever the dragon was using to drive out the pesky humans. This Just Won't Do, and the PCs get dispatched to put a stop to it.

From here we have the famous brainstorming session, in which they determine the following:

a) unicorns are hard to find, because they run fast.
b) unicorns are attracted to virgins for some unexplainable reason.
c) virgins are hard to find, possibly because unicorns run fast and are attracted to virgins.
d) princesses are supposed to be virgins (at least, princesses locked in towers should be).
e) princesses are easy to find, because they are locked in towers, and therefore can't run very far.

The obvious solution is not to find the unicorn, but to find the nearest princess. This has the added benefit that princesses rarely weigh 1500+ pounds and even more rarely have six foot spears grafted to their foreheads.

The Kobolds go overland, leaving a swathe of kobold-scaled destruction in their wake, until they find a castle. They're not very clear on who lives in the castle, other than a lot of humans, but there's a tower on it, and towers are the natural habitat of princesses. Of course, towers and castles and the like are challenging to get into, so we end up with another brainstorming session.

This time they think in a relatively straight line, and come up with a plan that castle invaders have used for generations. It works a little better when the invaders are small and overpowered for their size, however.

The sorcerer enchants the trap smith, giving him a supernatural boost to climbing skill. The trap smith then swims across the moat in the dead of night and clings to the castle wall like a particularly damp spider. He climbs up the wall and through the opening of the nearest guarde-a-robe. For the viewers at home, guarde-a-robes are the 13th century equivalent of luxury indoor plumbing: it's an outhouse in a castle, using a chute in the wall to take the waste away and dump it outside where the nobles don't have to worry about it.

Guarde-a-robe shafts are narrow, stinky, slippery, steep, and usually equipped with downward-projecting spikes to prevent just this kind of thing. Kobolds, on the other hand, are narrow, stinky, slippery, and good climbers (especially when enchanted). The trap smith makes it up the shaft no problem, "back stabs" the poor guy who was using it at the time, and then sends a rope back down for the others.

The invasion of Castle Princess had begun!

The Kobold Kommandos made straight for the tower, filling every human encountered with a volley of quarrels and "hiding" the bodies behind tapestries and under chairs. This was essentially a dungeon-crawl with the serial numbers filed off and all the orks replaced with poorly trained humans. There was a beautiful assault on the tower, in which Humanslayer had Spider-Climb cast on him and did his blender-of-doom routine at human-head-height along the wall and (eventually) ceiling.

The last thing Fred the Guard ever saw was an upside down kobold with a battle-ax.

At the top of the tower they find a 10x10 room with a human female in a dress and a pointy hat. Finally presented with something that could be a princess, an immediate debate broke out over whether she was, in fact, a princess, and how could they be sure?

Kobold 1: Princesses are pretty, right?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 nod.
Kobold 1: So if she's pretty, she's a princess, right?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 nod.
Kobold 1: Anyone know what a pretty human looks like?
Kobolds 2, 3, and 4 shrug.

The consensus was that she was probably pretty enough, and besides she was locked in a tower so there was no way a unicorn could have gotten at her. They promptly /charmed/ her until she thought blood-spattered kobolds were nice, trustworthy people.

Another brainstorming session was called to figure out how to get her out of the castle. Various plans were raised and rejected (including stuffing her down the guarde-a-robe, sectioning her for easy transport in bags, and just tossing her over the ramparts into the moat and fishing her out later). They eventually settled on the charmed girl sneaking out dressed as a servant and the kobolds going out by way of the guarde-a-robe. The GM let the plan work, desperate to get the kobolds out of the castle and back on track with the unicorn.

What do a gang of kobolds do with "irresistible" bait and a known target? Bait a trap, of course! They managed to press-gang a bunch of regular, class-level-less kobolds into digging a big, ring-shaped pit, filling it with pungi spikes, and covering it over. They then tied the girl to a stake on the island in the pit, and ordered her to sing "real pretty like" to get the unicorn to show up sooner.

This led to an impromptu Kobold sing-along that is best left to the imagination.

The unicorn eventually showed up to rescue the princess, and this is where the flaw in their information was revealed: as decades of fantasy art shows us, some unicorns have wings. It flew in and landed next to the princess, bypassing the pit entirely. The kobolds - forced to fight it directly - pounce. Or rather, Humanslayer pounces, and everyone else fires his or her crossbows. The unicorn retreats to the air with Humanslayer hanging off a hind leg, trying to swing an ax that really is far too big to use in one hand.

And rolls a critical hit, fatally wounding the unicorn.

Try and picture the scene: the players are jumping up and down and congratulating Humanslayer's player on his good fortune and ridiculously overpowered combat character, when the GM points out that Humanslayer was hanging off the unicorns leg and ergo was underneath the unicorn.

About 40' above ground level.

Over a 10' deep, spiky pit of doom.

And he just scored an instant kill.

Humanslayer crashed through the covered pit with a unicorn on top of him, right onto the envenomed stakes.

The GM got to use the falling damage rules, the falling object rules, the spiked pit rules, the massive damage rules, and the disease rules, all because a PC successfully killed the "end-boss" for the session.

Humanslayer survived the experience, although he needed urgent medical attention, and was a bit shy about spiked pits for a while afterward. The party delivered a dead unicorn to the Boss, and for extra effort marks, delivered a Princess as well. The PCs got a token payment and the right not to be eaten.

End.
 

Korgan

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 13, 2008
Messages
4,238
Location
Fahrfromjuden
It's fucking annoying that you still have to control your levelling with regards to improving combat skills at a good rate, or the level scaling will make every damn wolf overtake your thievery/illusion/whatever-based PC. I just ran into this when doing the first Imperial Legion quest at level 30 with only the light armor/one-handed/destruction/restoration among my combat skills, all at 50, and excellent sneaking/pickpocket, in fully upgraded elven armor. I got SLAUGHTERED, had to resort to werewolf form whenever there was 2-3 enemies I couldn't sneak up on.
The frost dragon 10 minutes before that was much easier, I just took cover behind rocks and showered it with arrows.
:retarded:
 

Surf Solar

cannot into womynz
Joined
Jan 8, 2011
Messages
8,828
Scaling is screwed in my game. I mainly focussed on smithing so I could craft glass armor and later on that dragonscale armor (I have 84 in smithing at the moment on level 30) and put the rest of my points in destruction magic and light armor. Enemies one shot kill me wherever I go, even on the easiest difficulty it becomes a pain in the ass. I can't progress in any of the main guild questlines because the monsters in there (especially the bossmonsters) are impossible to kill.

The worst is

going into azuras stone to kill that fucker in there. There are Daedra mages in there who kill me from afar whithout me even seeing them, even with all protection spells up. Or the final boss in the labyrinthian (the quest to retrieve magus' staff) onehit kills me even on very easy - I can't even scratch him.

It's pretty derpy and I consider starting up all over again.
 

Data4

Arcane
Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Messages
5,529
Location
Over there.
Metro said:
Considering they would probably never go the Gothic route and totally abandon level scaling I think Skyrim delivers the best that you can expect. I've never understood the concept. One of the core mechanics of an RPG is increasing in power to tackle bigger and better challenges. Unfortunately some people need to do anything and everything at level one.

Well, for TES games, you have to understand Bethesda's philosophy. Essentially, it's to allow the player to go wherever he wants from the outset, rather than follow a more linear path that ramps up difficulty the further along you go. On paper, it makes sense and allows the player to experience challenges from whatever he faces wherever he goes as his own abilities get more powerful. In execution, you get the oft-cited bandits in Daedric armor and rats that can only be killed with Tsar Bomba derp.

Not defending or bashing it. It is what it is.
 

draexem

Novice
Joined
Oct 13, 2006
Messages
75
Surf Solar said:
Scaling is screwed in my game. I mainly focussed on smithing so I could craft glass armor and later on that dragonscale armor (I have 84 in smithing at the moment on level 30) and put the rest of my points in destruction magic and light armor. Enemies one shot kill me wherever I go, even on the easiest difficulty it becomes a pain in the ass. I can't progress in any of the main guild questlines because the monsters in there (especially the bossmonsters) are impossible to kill.

Yeah it's absolutely stupid. Level scaling as a concept is rubbish. If the denizens of the world have to level with you to keep the game interesting then you may as well ditch levelling from the game. The whole idea of 'levelling up' is a dated and clumsy concept anyway that just reminds me of bad shounen manga. Everytime I hit another level I feel like having my character perform some weird Goku charging up sequence. Rpgs will probably ditch levelling up in the future in favour of more subtle techniques which they are already starting to implement (like opening up new skills or becoming more proficient with your weapon). Maybe then, because you are growing more powerful in subtler ways, they will stop level scaling the damn game (a concept which neutralises the whole point of levelling up).
 

crufty

Arcane
Joined
Jun 29, 2004
Messages
6,383
Location
Glassworks
I really am not sure how level scaling works. Went into a tomb...lots of low level creatures and weak loot. Then, a hard boss.


Don't mind scaled bosses.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
Patron
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
20,317
Location
DiNMRK
Speaking of shooting dragons.

In the first town to get to (Riverwood or whatevs) there's a wood elf that can train you in archery. If you do his 3-second fedex quest to let him get his sleazy hands on someone elses girl, you can get him as a companion. You can them have him train you in archery 5 times, "adjust" his equipment, reclaim your gold and ditch him until next time you level up.

It's a handy way to salvage your character if you rolled melee and want to kill dragons.
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
1,611
Dicksmoker said:
The real question I'm asking is: is it possible to larp this shit and hold off on the main quest until you're a reasonably high level, so that by that time the dragons will actually be formidable opponents? You could do this in Oblivion.

Yes, I restarted the game after killing a dragon at lv5. Now I'm lv36, finished two factions' questlines, been to every city and have yet to see a dragon since the intro sequence, stopped following the main quest at the point where you're told to talk to the jarl of whiterun.
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
From my experience so far (lvl 14 or such) the system is still working relatively well, which seems to be in line with most other low-level players' experiences. So I guess that it's really getting unbalanced on high-ish levels.
Not sure if it's due to bugs or just the usual bad balancing by Bethesda.

Anyway, as I said, till now it's ok: In ~12 hours of playing I've killed only one dragon (the one form the MQ near Whiterun) and spotted two 2 circling a bit away, which I avoided. The common trash-mobs like Draugr, skeevers or wolves seem to get only easier so far, so I guess they are not scaled. However, more higher-level Draugr (don't remember how they are called) show up now, but I still get lots of low-level ones.
My nemesis so far are sabre-toothed cats and bears. I really have to play the strengths of my character to survive them (i.e. sneak shots from afar, playing a thief). Reaching High Hrothgar was pretty challenging thanks to some deviously hidden animals...

For what it's worth, playing on difficulty 3/4 the challenge seems about right till now - especially some dungeon- and quest-bosses can pose a serious threat that forces you to use all your ressources (or run away at times - I was exploring some cave with witches when I suddenly encountered some strange witch-thing that really kicked my ass. As I was low on pretty much everything all I could do was flee)

As always I think mods will have to fix the problems in the end...
 

Mastermind

Cognito Elite Material
Patron
Bethestard
Joined
Apr 15, 2010
Messages
21,144
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Surf Solar said:
Scaling is screwed in my game. I mainly focussed on smithing so I could craft glass armor and later on that dragonscale armor (I have 84 in smithing at the moment on level 30) and put the rest of my points in destruction magic and light armor. Enemies one shot kill me wherever I go, even on the easiest difficulty it becomes a pain in the ass. I can't progress in any of the main guild questlines because the monsters in there (especially the bossmonsters) are impossible to kill.

The worst is

going into azuras stone to kill that fucker in there. There are Daedra mages in there who kill me from afar whithout me even seeing them, even with all protection spells up. Or the final boss in the labyrinthian (the quest to retrieve magus' staff) onehit kills me even on very easy - I can't even scratch him.

It's pretty derpy and I consider starting up all over again.

Scaling isn't the problem, I think they're just really tough by default. Also, not sure what "all protection spells" you have up, since there's just 2 of them and only wards protect against magic.
 

torpid

Liturgist
Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
1,099
Location
Isma's Grove
Seems like Bethesda is simply using the level scaling system from Oblivion's OOO mod, where the level scaling is still obvious but less obnoxious; didn't they hire that Oscuro guy, anyway? Or was it Obsidian for New Vegas?

The larger problem though is the combination of level scaling and the improve-by-use leveling system, which forces you to ration your actions in order to not gimp yourself.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

Kamelåså!
Patron
Joined
Jun 18, 2010
Messages
20,317
Location
DiNMRK
torpid said:
The larger problem though is the combination of level scaling and the improve-by-use leveling system, which forces you to ration your actions in order to not gimp yourself.

This. I'm really regretting dabbling in restoration and smithing early on, since the skills are not immediately beneficial to my sneaky archer in any way, yet have resulted in tougher enemies. If I were to start over again, I'd probably also ditch alchemy and enchanting so all my skills were combat-related. It's also vaguely annoying to click a book and suddenly get a skill point in a skill you know you're never going to use.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom