Should the player char be able to become more powerful than the most powerful NPCs?

[DraQ]

Most elegant would of course be to have the enemies gain strength as the gameworld time passes. Then you've got a real challenge, to gain power as fast as possible.

That would be as shitty as oblivious and as unrealistic. For one, the power structure in the gameworld will generally not change much - there is only as much power character can achieve, and people retire or buy the farm all the time.

No, when you look at the plots of different RPGs, you'll notice that a common trend is that the villain is supposedly doing something all the time, building up forces to take over the world. Like in Oblivion, I don't know the exact plot but aren't there demon gate thingies an actual threat that would be a big problem if left unchecked for a long time?

They should. Instead you can rush through the MQ at lvl2, thwarting plans of daedric prince of destruction by slaughtering his "menacing" "horde" of stunted scamps, while if you gain enough levels even unaffiliated common bandits will be fully outfitted with legendary quality armour and weapons despite their lack of organization, cutthroat economy (har har), and the fact that power structure of your common ruffians should be at equilibrium, because they were murdering, stealing and pillaging long before the PC came along and will continue doing so long after he will be gone (and after their numbers replenish).

That's pretty much the problem with band-aid scaling solutions, whether they're time or level based:

1. It offers no justification for scaling anything but Big Bad's faction and sometimes a limited list of unaffiliated enemies (for example blighted wildlife in Morrowind).

2. Even in regards to Big Bad's faction it makes no sense - take the Empire in Star Wars - it growing in power wouldn't mean every stormtrooper becoming as powerful as Darth Vader, while Vader's and Palpatine's power would rise even further. No, you could expect that stormtroopers' power would remain roughly the same, but their numbers would grow, just as with numbers of more powerful units, resource and industrial base, all at the expense of opposition. The problem with scaling is that it tries to lift Big Bad's faction's power pyramid off the baseline, rather than expand it proportionally.

 

[Johannes]

Most elegant would of course be to have the enemies gain strength as the gameworld time passes. Then you've got a real challenge, to gain power as fast as possible.

That would be as shitty as oblivious and as unrealistic. For one, the power structure in the gameworld will generally not change much - there is only as much power character can achieve, and people retire or buy the farm all the time.

No, when you look at the plots of different RPGs, you'll notice that a common trend is that the villain is supposedly doing something all the time, building up forces to take over the world. Like in Oblivion, I don't know the exact plot but aren't there demon gate thingies an actual threat that would be a big problem if left unchecked for a long time?

They should. Instead you can rush through the MQ at lvl2, thwarting plans of daedric prince of destruction by slaughtering his "menacing" "horde" of stunted scamps, while if you gain enough levels even unaffiliated common bandits will be fully outfitted with legendary quality armour and weapons despite their lack of organization, cutthroat economy (har har), and the fact that power structure of your common ruffians should be at equilibrium, because they were murdering, stealing and pillaging long before the PC came along and will continue doing so long after he will be gone (and after their numbers replenish).

That's pretty much the problem with band-aid scaling solutions, whether they're time or level based:

1. It offers no justification for scaling anything but Big Bad's faction and sometimes a limited list of unaffiliated enemies (for example blighted wildlife in Morrowind).

2. Even in regards to Big Bad's faction it makes no sense - take the Empire in Star Wars - it growing in power wouldn't mean every stormtrooper becoming as powerful as Darth Vader, while Vader's and Palpatine's power would rise even further. No, you could expect that stormtroopers' power would remain roughly the same, but their numbers would grow, just as with numbers of more powerful units, resource and industrial base, all at the expense of opposition. The problem with scaling is that it tries to lift Big Bad's faction's power pyramid off the baseline, rather than expand it proportionally.

Or you could just implement it sensibly, instead of following all the assumptions you put out. Take a hint from strategy games, which tend to have something happening outside of direct reaction to the player. Things always staying static is neither realistic nor challenging.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Well, you wouldn't necessarily get more storm troopers. You'd get storm troopers with better equipment. And I'd argue a storm trooper piloting an AT-AT is just as powerful as darth vader for most intents and purposes in combat.

Level scaling is like anything else- it needs to be thought through, not slapped on. What the upper/lower bounds are, what it scales with, which things scale, and how they scale all have to be handled properly. If you go down that checklist in elder scrolls 3/4/5, almost everything is done wrong, especially in 4.

The fact that bandits become millionaires and bears become stronger than dragons isn't a fault of level scaling, it's a fault of stupid shitty design. The bandits and bears shouldn't scale at all, except possibly by being displaced by another growing faction.

And for some things, it doesn't matter if the scaling is justified, because you'll never see it. If the final boss of a game scales with time played or xp gained or whatever, how the fuck would you know? You don't get to fight him a second time. Or if you do, you're already metagaming shit anyways. It's not the same as fighting a bandit camp at level 5, coming back and fighting the same bandits 20 levels later and they're decked out in artifacts.

 

[DraQ]

Or you could just implement it sensibly, instead of following all the assumptions you put out. Take a hint from strategy games, which tend to have something happening outside of direct reaction to the player. Things always staying static is neither realistic nor challenging.

You mean strategy games that use proper mechanics to govern faction power and balance (indeed, it's their core gameplay) that very explicitly isn't level scaling?

Well, you wouldn't necessarily get more storm troopers. You'd get storm troopers with better equipment. And I'd argue a storm trooper piloting an AT-AT is just as powerful as darth vader for most intents and purposes in combat.

You wouldn't replace your troopers with troopers with AT-AT either.

And for some things, it doesn't matter if the scaling is justified, because you'll never see it. If the final boss of a game scales with time played or xp gained or whatever, how the fuck would you know?

Simple - if I abuse every known trick, every grinding tactics, optimize my builds to absolute perfection, find all artifacts of power that matter, and face the boss confidently with my lvl >9000 character/party, then:

a) I steamroll the boss before he can even start his villain speech and there was no scaling.

b) I find out that the boss is now lvl 1337 and watch in disbelief as he casually uses my demigod character/party as toilet paper, which means there was scaling in game.

Besides, it applies to pretty much all meta-mechanical features and crutches - if you can see them at work, then they have already failed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you're doing all of that, then why would seeing the level scaling bother you? OH NOES. After I exploited the mechanics of the game I had a mechanic revealed to me! My precious immersion is gone after 300 hours of grinding boars for the ultra rare drop I read about on gamefaqs!

 

[DraQ]

If you're doing all of that, then why would seeing the level scaling bother you? OH NOES. After I exploited the mechanics of the game I had a mechanic revealed to me! My precious immersion is gone after 300 hours of grinding boars for the ultra rare drop I read about on gamefaqs!

I was referring to not seeing it. Some mechanics are not intended for player's eyes, not seeing them means they're working as intended.

Level scaling is one of them and if it's bad (and it's almost always bad), then it becomes readily apparent and glaringly obvious.
For example by making local bandit ringleader more powerful than universe unravelling demigod you defeated earlier on.

 

[SCO]

That's the main problem for me with the Piranha Bytes games: in order to become powerful, you have to genocide every living life everywhere except for those in cities. It's weird. I even slaughtered fucking turkeys and chicken in Risen 2 to grab a few XP points: where your "hero" passes, all life does trespass. It's funny at the same time but dumb nevertheless. But then, it's part of their charm, I DO love Piranha Bytes weirdness.

Don't forget punching them in the face after doing their quests!

Actually a inspired and liberating mechanic i wish more games did it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If you're doing all of that, then why would seeing the level scaling bother you? OH NOES. After I exploited the mechanics of the game I had a mechanic revealed to me! My precious immersion is gone after 300 hours of grinding boars for the ultra rare drop I read about on gamefaqs!

I was referring to not seeing it. Some mechanics are not intended for player's eyes, not seeing them means they're working as intended.

Level scaling is one of them and if it's bad (and it's almost always bad), then it becomes readily apparent and glaringly obvious.
For example by making local bandit ringleader more powerful than universe unravelling demigod you defeated earlier on.

And my point was that a mechanic you can only see by metagaming and looking directly at the mechanics isn't a flaw. It's like bitching about a mechanic being obvious when you look at the fucking code.

If you play through a game without reading shit about it online or playing through multiple times, when you get to the end boss, you have no fucking idea how powerful he is supposed to be, aside from probably stronger than the other enemies you've fought already. Having him be on par with the strength of your current party (or at least closer to par than default) isn't going to raise any suspicion. If you grind to level 9999 and you three shot him when you would have one shot him without any scaling, then A: You obviously don't give a fuck about seeing the mechanics since you went out of your way to hit the level cap and B: You still fucking steamrolled him like you expected.

OTOH, if you got lost in the final dungeon because it was a bit mazelike or whatever and ended up fighting a lot of extra enemies so you're ~20% ahead of the curve, then you reach the boss, would you rather it be a fucking cakewalk because it was balanced for someone precisely level X, or still a decent challenge? Are you going to immediately assume it was level scaled because you felt pretty powerful in the rest of the dungeon?

 

[DraQ]

Sigh.

To clarify things up a bit:

1. The boss example was actually a rare example of legitimate use of scaling and this kind of use is necessarily not broadly applicable.

2. Most of the time scaling is glaringly obvious without any sort of abuse, because it drastically violates power structure you can infer from the gameworld itself because you can usually estimate how powerful most enemies should be in relation to each other fairly easily.

3. As for your dungeon example I'd rather have system that's better balanced and in which fighting the very end boss isn't made easy by levelling up a lot, merely possible, assumed you have made extensive preparations and are very good tactician. Failing that I'd rather have a progression-less system where you build your character(s) and roll with that, the only advancement being accumulated loot, spells and special abilities gained from various in-game sources (not level ups).
Sort of like STALKER with stats.

 

[Johannes]

Or you could just implement it sensibly, instead of following all the assumptions you put out. Take a hint from strategy games, which tend to have something happening outside of direct reaction to the player. Things always staying static is neither realistic nor challenging.

You mean strategy games that use proper mechanics to govern faction power and balance (indeed, it's their core gameplay) that very explicitly isn't level scaling?

Well, there's usually no real need to construct full mechanics for assessing the strength of different factions, unless the player is actually managing more than a usual band of RPG adventurers. When you look at the usual RPG scenarios, it usually involves the players' side being on the receiving end. So instead of making a strategy game to run behind the RPG, you mostly need to up the power of the antagonist(s faction) in a setting-appropriate manner. Or have the player involved more on the strategic layer like in JA(2) for example.

And I don't really care how you define level scaling, it's not even a term I ever used in this thread. As long as there'd be some mechanics that make the world or at least the antagonist active, instead of purely reactive like in most RPGs.

 

[DraQ]

As long as there'd be some mechanics that make the world or at least the antagonist active, instead of purely reactive like in most RPGs.

Such a mechanics would be neat, but ordinary level scaling is both insufficient and plain wrong approach here.

 

[Mrowak]

The only instance I saw monsters scaling to player's level right was in Baldur's Gate 2 - instead of encountering the same monsters, only with better items and stats you got completely new sets of enemies with new arsenal of deadly abilities. Maps that were easy at level 7-11 became much harder on levels 12-x when you have to fight Liches, Wolfwares and Bone Golems as your standard enemies. Best of all it made the game "seemless" i.e. you didn't get impression that it was scalled at all - in fact the scalling only became apparent if you visited same locations eariler in the second playthrough. The only reason why this didn't catch on is laziness of devs who cannot be bothered to prepare different enemies with different models - using the same repainted, resized shit with uber stats/items is way easier.

Regarding the title question: My personal preference is character being more down-to-earth: no uber strengths, no super guns, no majestic armour of kickarse. Sure, at the end of the game he should be able to take on a poorly armoured guy, naked (1-2 more if he has comparable equipment), but nothing beyond that. If the heroe has to defeat the big bad guy:

1) he should use some sort of trickery (e.g. ingenious combination of spells / technological effects)
2) he shouldn't do this alone (more people involved - party based games)

Generally the character should do only what's achieveable to a common man with the given set of abilities - so no shrugging off bullets, because your hp pool is skyhigh for some magical reason.

Special note about equipment: how I long a game where there's no uber majestic magical shit of kickarse that let's you pummel whole kingdoms at the end of the day. I would rather my char had only access to "standard" equipment and would have to creatively make do with that. Sure, he should find new stuff, but these things ought to be better to a degree: bazooka is all cool but 1) it's unwieldy, 2) the ammo is difficult to get 3) it's a very circumstantial weapon - so it's better to stick to a trusty pistol for short range, and a sniper rifle for long range combat, because it's logical.

 

[Volourn]

WTF is this shit? people want to put normalcy into my fantasy!?! FUCK!

Might as well force everyone to play humans and be done with it. FFS

Seriiously, don't need 'uber power' but trying to make the PC as crappy as possible does not make a game better. Period.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'd rather have system that's better balanced and in which fighting the very end boss isn't made easy by levelling up a lot, merely possible, assumed you have made extensive preparations and are very good tactician.

Why the fuck do you assume everyone has the same definition of 'extensive preparations' and 'very good tactician'? What about the other 90% of the people playing the game that prepared more or less than you did, and are better or worse tacticians?

What you're asking for is what EVERY FUCKING GAME EVER MADE WITHOUT LEVEL SCALING ALREADY TRIES TO DO.

Protip: It didn't work.

Also

Failing that I'd rather have a progression-less system

(If the difference between mario and luigi isn't enough character generation for you, I can scrounge up a picture of SMB 2 instead, where there's several characters with significant differences.)

 

[Johannes]

As long as there'd be some mechanics that make the world or at least the antagonist active, instead of purely reactive like in most RPGs.

Such a mechanics would be neat, but ordinary level scaling is both insufficient and plain wrong approach here.

Ok. It's just that... If my original post of

Most elegant would of course be to have the enemies gain strength as the gameworld time passes. Then you've got a real challenge, to gain power as fast as possible.

is automatically read as a call for ordinary level scaling (however that is defined exactly), you're either not very good at English or at thinking.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

In Eschalon 2 you have no chance of killing the guards in Port Kuudad, my level 12 character has like 2% chances to hit one of them. One of them started getting hostile at me for no reason at all, and he stalks me continuously whenever I go there for shopping.

 

[sea]

The only instance I saw monsters scaling to player's level right was in Baldur's Gate 2 - instead of encountering the same monsters, only with better items and stats you got completely new sets of enemies with new arsenal of deadly abilities. Maps that were easy at level 7-11 became much harder on levels 12-x when you have to fight Liches, Wolfwares and Bone Golems as your standard enemies. Best of all it made the game "seemless" i.e. you didn't get impression that it was scalled at all - in fact the scalling only became apparent if you visited same locations eariler in the second playthrough. The only reason why this didn't catch on is laziness of devs who cannot be bothered to prepare different enemies with different models - using the same repainted, resized shit with uber stats/items is way easier.

True, but you have to remember that for narrative or lore reasons it might not make sense to have vampires inhabiting X or Y location. I don't really like games that give enemies better gear, but if the plot says you have to fight cultists, you're going to have to fight cultists - and frankly, the only way to handle that is to level them up and give them access to more weapons/armor/spells/etc. Most games aren't designed so seamlessly and perfectly such that all this stuff can sync up every time.

 

[Damned Registrations]

In such cases I think it's best to just bite the bullet and let the player roflstomp the enemies. If you have to choose between super powered cultists that shouldn't exist, or a lack of challenge because the player wanted to to a side trip dragon slaying before he went on with his quest, the later is probably better.

But there are a lot of scenarios where there's no problem making enemies arbitrarily powerful. Enemies the player only encounters once and who have little or no interaction with the rest of the world can't really be made nonsensical by any level of power. Whether the ghost haunting the ruins can kill dragons or not doesn't matter if all it ever does is haunt the ruins nobody (except stupid PCs) ever goes to. It doesn't have any of the problems associated with levelling up random humans who are going to interact with other factions and use their power to accomplish various goals.

Note that nonsensical power levels happen even without scaling; townsfolk thanking you for saving them from the lizardman tribe to the east, despite the town guards being so strong a single one could have committed a lizardfolk genocide on his lunchbreak is a frequent example.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Dev's shouldn't also be afraid of letting the player bask in his power every now and then. Sure, game with no challenge is boring but games don't need a constant, linearly-evolving difficulty either - that's in fact boring as well. So yes, having player roflstomp some enemies/areas every now and then is both fun and makes for a different experience. Level scaling can easily remove such experiences, yet another flaw with it.

 

[mondblut]

The only instance I saw monsters scaling to player's level right was in Baldur's Gate 2 - instead of encountering the same monsters, only with better items and stats you got completely new sets of enemies with new arsenal of deadly abilities.

Local wild life made of liches and wolfweres is "right" exactly how?

Come fucking on, any attempt to rationalize a situation where the protagonist fights armed enemies and bestial monsters several thousands times and survives pretty much unscathed is retarded, level-scaling or not. Our units kill shit and get more powerful doing that, the shit being killed has to get more powerful to meet the challenge, that's what the game is about, end of story. You want the process of killing shit to make sense, play ArmA or Combat Mission, enjoy your headshots.

I brofisted Pretty Princess. Hell grew cold.

 

[Mrowak]

The only instance I saw monsters scaling to player's level right was in Baldur's Gate 2 - instead of encountering the same monsters, only with better items and stats you got completely new sets of enemies with new arsenal of deadly abilities. Maps that were easy at level 7-11 became much harder on levels 12-x when you have to fight Liches, Wolfwares and Bone Golems as your standard enemies. Best of all it made the game "seemless" i.e. you didn't get impression that it was scalled at all - in fact the scalling only became apparent if you visited same locations eariler in the second playthrough. The only reason why this didn't catch on is laziness of devs who cannot be bothered to prepare different enemies with different models - using the same repainted, resized shit with uber stats/items is way easier.

True, but you have to remember that for narrative or lore reasons it might not make sense to have vampires inhabiting X or Y location. I don't really like games that give enemies better gear, but if the plot says you have to fight cultists, you're going to have to fight cultists - and frankly, the only way to handle that is to level them up and give them access to more weapons/armor/spells/etc. Most games aren't designed so seamlessly and perfectly such that all this stuff can sync up every time.

Actually, in BG2 there was always implied reason for enemies becoming better - which admittedly had to do more with time going than your level. Simply put your enemies, bosses became more powerful with time as their influence grow (e.g. the narrative says that that Shadow Master becomes more powerful with every passing moment, so it makes sense he can summon more powerful creatures to aid his cause - note, that those monster types fit the lore of the place you were visiting). In BG2 there's always sense that because time passed, your foes are going to be more of a challenge - it just makes sense.

I don't see how this cannot be extrapolated into other games/scenarios: e.g. if you you take your time stopping the cultists they are going to be more powerful - summon demons to help them, become possessed by demons and thus more powerful, learn better spells, etc. Granted, from narrative standpoint there's also the question of such creatures influencing the world around. BG2 avoids the issue by placing most quests in very remote locations.

Local wild life made of liches and wolfweres is "right" exactly how?

How exactly it is "wrong" when it fits the setting and location e.g. 2 liches instead of 20 shadows in an old desolate tomb, 3 wolfwares instead of 10 werewolves in a deep forest/cave, 4 bone golems instead of 15 skeleton warriors in a crypt?

Come fucking on, any attempt to rationalize a situation where the protagonist fights armed enemies and bestial monsters several thousands times and survives pretty much unscathed is retarded, level-scaling or not.

My point exactly. Hence we should take away any toys that render the PC invoulnerable to lesser threats and introduce more and more new types of enemies in new situations if only to alleviate player metagaming and recycling the same tactics against same enemies over and over, because this brings nothing but tedium to the table.

Our units kill shit and get more powerful doing that, the shit being killed has to get more powerful to meet the challenge, that's what the game is about, end of story.

I agree, but the question is not to prevent enemies becoming more powerful - in fact I argue that they should become like that. The problem we have we are discussing is enemies becoming more threatening in a boring, artificial way: enemies just get more HP, STR, CON, different skin colour and that's it. Oh the excitement of whacking a golem for half an hour because it magically got bajillion HP. Oh the tension when you meet random bandit in deadric diamond armour of kickarse. Truly, gripping stuff out there. Level-scalling by raising just the numbers means nothing but pointless grind - it's MMO design for you.

 

[mondblut]

How exactly it is "wrong" when it fits the setting and location e.g. 2 liches instead of 20 shadows in an old desolate tomb, 3 wolfwares instead of 10 werewolves in a deep forest/cave, 4 bone golems instead of 15 skeleton warriors in a crypt?

You said "standart enemies". So who does replace gangs of kobolds and gibberlings pestering a farmer on the outskirts of town? Ogre tribes and hill giant clans? The farmer must be mighty annoyed indeed.

My point exactly. Hence we should take away any toys that render the PC invoulnerable to lesser threats

To roll a new character after every second enemy? There is ArmA for that, I told. I am perfectly content roflstomping lesser threats. That's why I was levelling up in the first place.

The only issue that bothers me a bit is, why wouldn't they trample one another in a desperate flight in a general direction of as far away from me as possible. After the local troublemaker-smiting entity has reached level X, the surviving troublemakers must actively avoid it at all costs. After it has reached level Y, the troublemakers are better off evacuating the area altogether.

The problem we have we are discussing is enemies becoming more threatening in a boring, artificial way: enemies just get more HP, STR, CON, different skin colour and that's it. Oh the excitement of whacking a golem for half an hour because it magically got bajillion HP. Oh the tension when you meet random bandit in deadric diamond armour of kickarse. Truly, gripping stuff out there.

Enemies getting stronger the farther the distance from the game's starting point in any direction worked just fine ever since Proving Grounds. We have no need to accomodate to the whims of those wishing to go hiking all over the world at level 1.

 

[Mrowak]

In such cases I think it's best to just bite the bullet and let the player roflstomp the enemies. If you have to choose between super powered cultists that shouldn't exist, or a lack of challenge because the player wanted to to a side trip dragon slaying before he went on with his quest, the later is probably better.

To me both scenarios scream "boring" - in all the cases there will be tedious, contrived content: either super powered cultists, or weak, feeble sheep waiting for slaughter (in this case, the PC himself is contrived).

Both the fight with the cultists and the encounter with dragon should prove challenging, but in a different way. In case of the cultists, a single cultist should be weak - perhaps weaker than a party member, but a group of them ought to pose much greater challenge e.g. they could cast more spells per round, they could use "cooperative" spells requiring a tandem of 2-3 magicians, which would be more powerful than what they could do on their own etc. An example of that would be the battle with 'The Six' in Betrayal at Krondor - unless you metagamed it was hell of a fight. BaK was great as far as fighting groups of foes is concerned. I would say VD's AoD does group combat right as well (at least the computer-controlled side of it).

Fighting a dragon ought to look differently - a singular target that should have an edge over any single PC in every respect and it can be only defeated:

1) By party teaming up against it (and taking advantage of similar group abilities as cultists in the previous scenario)
2) By non-metagaming trickery (so no kiting a dragon for 2 hours, just because it is too slow/stupid) e.g. collapsing a cave ceiling on his head with a bomb.

Ironically, Infinity Engine games did it the best, IMO.

 

[DraQ]

Why the fuck do you assume everyone has the same definition of 'extensive preparations' and 'very good tactician'? What about the other 90% of the people playing the game that prepared more or less than you did, and are better or worse tacticians?

Difficulty settings.

Also


View attachment 668

(If the difference between mario and luigi isn't enough character generation for you, I can scrounge up a picture of SMB 2 instead, where there's several characters with significant differences.)

Damned Registration uses Strawman!

It's not effective.

Note that nonsensical power levels happen even without scaling; townsfolk thanking you for saving them from the lizardman tribe to the east, despite the town guards being so strong a single one could have committed a lizardfolk genocide on his lunchbreak is a frequent example.

Shitty combat systems are shitty, news at eleven.

Brotip: If your combat system allows high level character to slaughter arbitrary number of low level combatants attacking simultaneously, then it's shitty. If not, then you don't need godmode guards.

Edit:
Or godmode cultists.

Level should matter a lot when fighting equally numerous force of playable race or similar characters, it should matter little when swamped by bazillion of foes, or when fighting something completely different (like a giant, demon or dragon). In the latter case level might be crucial to have hopes of survival, but merely charging forth with sword in your hand, even buffed to absurd level, should reduce to "you die".

 

[Mrowak]

How exactly it is "wrong" when it fits the setting and location e.g. 2 liches instead of 20 shadows in an old desolate tomb, 3 wolfwares instead of 10 werewolves in a deep forest/cave, 4 bone golems instead of 15 skeleton warriors in a crypt?

You said "standart enemies". So who does replace gangs of kobolds and gibberlings pestering a farmer on the outskirts of town?

If you are talking about some minor fetch&kill quest there's no need to scale it in any way. There's the possibility of someone else doing that quest instead of you - if you take your time and level up somewhere else you just won't get to slaughter the goblins. You could also fail it if you don't act quickly enough: if you take your time with the quest, the farmer's cottage should be burned to the ground, because you ignored the goblin threat. It makes sense and saves you tedium of doing boring shit when you are so levelled up you can't be bothered with nonsense.

Ogre tribes and hill giant clans? The farmer must be mighty annoyed indeed.

No, setting wise that would be as artificial as raising random stats. Again, creatures should fit the setting/quest in whose context they appeared.

The scenario you describe could only work in major quests (like the ones's I talked about in BG2): In your case the quest could start as something trivial - goblins stealing milk and pissing into a well and end up with something more substantial - the goblins scouting party of a larger force - composed of hordes of goblins and orcs, their shamans, gedgeteers and so on. It would be easy to implemented level scalling based on the number of monsters and their power here. Plus, if we stick to the idea the the player should have only standard equipment and that even low level creatures should pose at lease *some* threat, this could work quite well - the sheer numbers and variety of enemies ought to present challenge.

My point exactly. Hence we should take away any toys that render the PC invoulnerable to lesser threats

To roll a new character after every second enemy? There is ArmA for that, I told. I am perfectly content roflstomping lesser threats. That's why I was levelling up in the first place.

Who says anything about rolling a new character? Just load the game and try again - it's already a cheat mode of sorts.

Also, trampling threats is boring - threats are supposed to be threatening. What's the point of steamrolling opposition? Where's the challenge/game in that? Therefore, the threats should be adjusted so they remain threatening.

The problem we have we are discussing is enemies becoming more threatening in a boring, artificial way: enemies just get more HP, STR, CON, different skin colour and that's it. Oh the excitement of whacking a golem for half an hour because it magically got bajillion HP. Oh the tension when you meet random bandit in deadric diamond armour of kickarse. Truly, gripping stuff out there.

Enemies getting stronger the farther the distance from the game's starting point in any direction worked just fine ever since Proving Grounds.

I agree that it can work, but not in the way you described. Meeting new enemies, with new abilities that can constituted new kinds of threats and require new tactical approaches is indeed the best thing in RPGs. Meeting the same enemies, with the same abilities that require run-of-the-mill strategy, who just happen to have shitloads of HP and hit harder, all that over and over is fun only so long.

We have no need to accomodate to the whims of those wishing to go hiking all over the world at level 1.

Who said anything about hiking all over the world at lvl 1? I think locations should have some level threshold e.g. you need to be at least level 9 to have fair chance of defeating a Liche King - nothing stops you from attempting that at level 6, however - in fact if you know the game inside out you might even succeed!. Note that when you are level 13, the Liche king is going to be much more powerful, and have more varied minions (the narrative could simply explain that he regained much of his power with time). What's wrong with that?