MWaser
Arbiter
I initially intended to make this thread only for the 2nd half of what I intend to post (and just to name the thread "Level Scaling in Gothic 3" but I decided to practice my clickbait proficieny instead), but I noticed that nobody has talked about Gothic 3 here in a while so I reckon some people who might have some interest in it might have missed something vaguely new, so I'll mention it. The fan modders recently released an engine patch for Gothic 3, called the Parallel Universe patch. I was coincidentally playing it right around the time it released, so I gave it a try. I can safely say that its advertisements are not in vain, for it does make the game run far, far better, essentially cuts loading times by 50+% and reduces stuttering to unnoticeable levels for majority of the time. The changelog contained therein also mentions some pretty fancy-sounding improvements to pathfinding, but I can pretty safely declare that this is not to be trusted: NPCs still get stuck on invisible walls, walk through real walls/terrain and all kinds of other nonsense. Nonetheless, cutting the loading times in half makes the game way less annoying in of itself, so that's something.
And, in completely unrelated mention, that I will contain within the same thread because I see no point in making another thread: in occasion of having played G3 again recently, and with my personal newfound wisdom of being able to now read and comprehend German, I've read up about the damage formulas in Gothic 3 (which I've never seen described in any english-speaking community). Turns out, the damage formulas and enemy protection are all uniform and based solely on "enemy level" and "enemy max level". But the current level, responsible for enemy damage, scales with the Player Character level, up until it hits the enemy max level. I found that strange, since in spite of having played the game a few times, I never actually noticed the level scaling, so I decided to experiment a bit with the help of the console to check some NPC templates, and here are my recorded results for damage dealt to the PC by enemies at various levels:
So, yeah. Level scaling. I never noticed, but it's definitely there, and the difference is actually pretty staggering. It makes it so that you're better off doing combat-related quests early on at the start, otherwise trying to fight bandits and wolves will destroy you if you started off levelling up on non-combat quests and getting non-combat skills since everything will do 2-3x more damage than it would if you started doing these quests early, which makes for incredibly counter-intuitive game design. But it's not like Gothic 3 was ever known for having particularly good game design, was it?
And, in completely unrelated mention, that I will contain within the same thread because I see no point in making another thread: in occasion of having played G3 again recently, and with my personal newfound wisdom of being able to now read and comprehend German, I've read up about the damage formulas in Gothic 3 (which I've never seen described in any english-speaking community). Turns out, the damage formulas and enemy protection are all uniform and based solely on "enemy level" and "enemy max level". But the current level, responsible for enemy damage, scales with the Player Character level, up until it hits the enemy max level. I found that strange, since in spite of having played the game a few times, I never actually noticed the level scaling, so I decided to experiment a bit with the help of the console to check some NPC templates, and here are my recorded results for damage dealt to the PC by enemies at various levels:
Base enemy stats templates:
Wolf quick attack damage:
Light bandit - bow, arrow projectile damage:
Light bandit - melee regular attack:
Snapper:
Wolf: starting level 0, max level 20
Light bandit: starting level 0, max level 20
Bandit: starting level 10, max level 30
Heavy bandit: starting level 15, max level 35
Snapper: starting level 15, max level 25
Light bandit: starting level 0, max level 20
Bandit: starting level 10, max level 30
Heavy bandit: starting level 15, max level 35
Snapper: starting level 15, max level 25
Wolf quick attack damage:
PC level 0: 11 damage
PC level 5: 19 damage
PC level 10: 26 damage
PC level 15: 32 damage
PC level 20: 38 damage
PC level 5: 19 damage
PC level 10: 26 damage
PC level 15: 32 damage
PC level 20: 38 damage
Light bandit - bow, arrow projectile damage:
PC level 0: 11 damage
PC level 20: 39 damage
PC level 20: 39 damage
Light bandit - melee regular attack:
PC level 0: 9 damage
PC level 20: 39 damage
PC level 20: 39 damage
Snapper:
PC level 0: 18 damage quick attack, 60 damage strong attack
PC level 20: 22 damage quick attack, 90 damage strong attack
PC level 20: 22 damage quick attack, 90 damage strong attack
So, yeah. Level scaling. I never noticed, but it's definitely there, and the difference is actually pretty staggering. It makes it so that you're better off doing combat-related quests early on at the start, otherwise trying to fight bandits and wolves will destroy you if you started off levelling up on non-combat quests and getting non-combat skills since everything will do 2-3x more damage than it would if you started doing these quests early, which makes for incredibly counter-intuitive game design. But it's not like Gothic 3 was ever known for having particularly good game design, was it?
