Level scaling - a brilliant feature or a big mistake?

[mjorkerina]

The most important thing about BG2 "scaling" is that it didn't affect important creatures. Dragons didn't get weaker because you visit them in lowers levels while in oblivion there are absolutely no creatures ten times more powerful than you are which makes the world bland and uninteresting.

The necromancer you get to kill when doing the final mages guild quest is a pure laughing stock.

 

[Grindstone_82]

brilliant? No. It is a half-baked cure for bad game design. That means it can save a game from becoming a complete failure, and nothing more. It does take away from the atmosphere in any case

 

[DoppelG]

Levelscaling is a 100% problematic and paradoxial, sometimes a necesity though (read, extremely large freeroaming gameworlds) but anything that could eliminate that necesity is a million times superior to the use of levelscaling.

Also, jesie666?

http://community.lionhead.com/forums/1/2893231/ShowThread.aspx

 

[Amon Gesoto]

level scaling seems silly because it doesn't punish you for brash decisions. If you're going to have a game based on levels of prowess then it should go without saying there are some, if not a whole reservoir, of people and creatures that surpass you when you first begin.

If I'm playing a leveling based game and I went up against a dragon at level one, I should just die. The Dragon shouldn't even breathe fire on me, he should just step on my ass. And if I went up against some master assassin at level you-suck, I should lose.

And then there's the other side of the coin, if I'm a level fifty warrior or some such thing, rats should die when I look in their direction, there should be no fight; Or if there is it should consist of them hopelessly trying to fight me, waiting for that inevitable single-stroke of death.

 

[crufty]

NetHack has level scaling. The deeper in the dungeon you go, the harder the monsters get.

This form of scaling is good.

Having cliff racer, dire cliff racer, diseased cliff racer and dire diseased cliff racer is horrible.

In PnP land, the way to scale is to increase the number of monsters, not the power of them. Also, it is not unheard of to have monsters that DMs adjust key figure powers to match the party.

Level scaling completely and totally removes any drive I have to play a crpg--because what is the point?

 

[Dark Elf]

Level scaling is communism.