Editorial The Elder Scrolls V: What We Want to See

[Damned Registrations]

I found the most annoying part of the level scaling to be the demons. In particular, the clannfear.

You see, they had the damage reflection property. This didn't work by simply dealing a portion of damage they suffered back to you, but rather NULLIFIED that portion of damage and sent it back to you, piercing armor. And of course, they had way more hp than you possibly could have had, since their level scaled with you and they gained tons of hp each level. So every fucking clannfear you run across, even if you never let it scratch you, would still kill you purely through reflected damage.

You could get around this through using ranged attacks, but all the other demons tended to reflect or absorb shit like crazy, so if you were a spell caster you'd have that issue instead. And if you tried to have both you'd be too piss weak to kill either in less than 100 blows. God forbid you'd spent your levels increase sneaking and lockpicking, since enemies' detection abilities scaled too.

Well, there was plenty of to go around in that game anyways. I've more faith that dwarf fortress will get amazing 3d graphics than that elder scrolls will ever have decent play mechanics.

 

[Turjan]

Now that I think about it, the only place that Oblivion's scaling bothered me was out in world, generally-- the bandits. That was a problem, since of course the bandits always seemed to be upgrading their gear to be exactly as good as mine. I don't really remember it being as egregious on the missions or in the dungeons.

The problem with missions was that your opponents scaled, but the people on your side didn't. Keeping level 6 NPCs alive when all opponents are level 26 was nearly impossible.

 

[Turjan]

I found the most annoying part of the level scaling to be the demons. In particular, the clannfear.

You see, they had the damage reflection property. This didn't work by simply dealing a portion of damage they suffered back to you, but rather NULLIFIED that portion of damage and sent it back to you, piercing armor. And of course, they had way more hp than you possibly could have had, since their level scaled with you and they gained tons of hp each level. So every fucking clannfear you run across, even if you never let it scratch you, would still kill you purely through reflected damage.

Well, you had the possiblity to enchant stuff in a way that completely turned the table. That wasn't exactly the best solution, because, in the end, it was up to you to decide what was balanced and what wasn't.

 

[DragoFireheart]

As a couple others have said, the level-scaling was shit because:

1. It removed the incentive to explore caves since you would only find shit scaled to your level: no exploring the dragon cave to find Sword of Epic + 10 early on and the risk of getting killed. Banal shit boring.

2. Due to the odd way you level based on how you leveled your skills, leveling could actually make you weaker unless you do stupid shit like jump in place for 20 mins or let rats beat you up for 15 mins. Leveling correctly to get a good level up made the game tedious.

 

[SlavemasterT]

Elder Scrolls will never be as good as its earlier parts, its now all about getting the XCOCKS and PIECEofSHIT3 kids to buy the games to fill the coffers so Todd can make bigger explosions and brighter bloom in the next game.

That said, Gamesradar itself is a pretty big joke, and consistently posts inflammatory and/or downright stupid articles for the hits rather than for the content of those articles. I mean fuck, right now on the front page they have this:

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/18-video-ga ... 6521219022

Classy!

feeder fetishism has come to the gaming media.

Link duly e-mailed to Pooperscooper, thanks.

 

[mike73]

Fuckin remove the encumbrance or carry weight or whatever the fuck it's called. Plain inventory space squares thingy is fine by me.

Don't scale to losers and unwashed hobos.

Hire new storytellers, scriptwriters and hang Toad Howtard for a "+5 better script" bonus.

Make a reliable skill system and improve the combat mechanics for god's sake.

Ah, what am I saying, you can just leave an empty worldspace in PC version for modders to make use of it as you are more than likely to flush vanilla down the shitter anyhow.

 

[Zeus]

Sharp axes. Flight spells. Overhauled advancement system which actually gives you incentives for leveling up. Skyrim!

 

[Azrael the cat]

Whilst I cut my teeth on dungeon crawlers for a couple of decades, I'm now and truly a story whore and I don't think there's any going back (at least for new games). So I see absolutely nothing that the next TES game can offer me.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

I found the most annoying part of the level scaling to be the demons. In particular, the clannfear.

You see, they had the damage reflection property. This didn't work by simply dealing a portion of damage they suffered back to you, but rather NULLIFIED that portion of damage and sent it back to you, piercing armor. And of course, they had way more hp than you possibly could have had, since their level scaled with you and they gained tons of hp each level. So every fucking clannfear you run across, even if you never let it scratch you, would still kill you purely through reflected damage.

You could get around this through using ranged attacks, but all the other demons tended to reflect or absorb shit like crazy, so if you were a spell caster you'd have that issue instead. And if you tried to have both you'd be too piss weak to kill either in less than 100 blows. God forbid you'd spent your levels increase sneaking and lockpicking, since enemies' detection abilities scaled too.

Well, there was plenty of to go around in that game anyways. I've more faith that dwarf fortress will get amazing 3d graphics than that elder scrolls will ever have decent play mechanics.

Trying to outspell Daedra in Morrowind was a fool's game as well. More often than not you'd end up eating your own multi-element doom.

 

[JarlFrank]

Make TES5 a mix of Morrowind and Daggerfall with some Gothic thrown in, and you got lots of win.

Of course, considering what Bethesda has become, they'll probably combine the empty landscapes and deja-vu dungeons of Daggerfall with the crappy animations and lifeless NPCs of Morrowind while adding all the bugs of Gothic 3 to the mix and leaving out any of the positive features of all these games.

 

[CommunistCam]

I personally would like to see the character creation system from Daggerfall, the removal of "Scale-to-your-level" enemies, and no red or green arrow (made the quests too easy)

 

[DraQ]

Whilst I cut my teeth on dungeon crawlers for a couple of decades, I'm now and truly a story whore and I don't think there's any going back (at least for new games). So I see absolutely nothing that the next TES game can offer me.

Earlier TES games were a pinnacle of setting and lore crafting.

Not just dungeon crawlers.

Mostly what JF said, but they have already perverted this with Oblivion, combining the absolutely worst aspects of DF and MW into one compact package.

Now that I think about it, the only place that Oblivion's scaling bothered me was out in world, generally-- the bandits. That was a problem, since of course the bandits always seemed to be upgrading their gear to be exactly as good as mine. I don't really remember it being as egregious on the missions or in the dungeons.

What about scaled quest rewards? Or lack of possibility that you will ever encounter something that will rape you by just looking at you if you are not prepared to escape instantly? Or lack of those "muahaha! you wiped the floor with me levels ago, but now PH34R ME!!!1" moments indicating your progress?

Level scaling is shit. It can have some use as a grease of sorts for the imperfect mechanism of the game, smoothing out little bumps hampering the gameplay, like player being two levels above or below expectations, but trying to build a mechanism entirely out of grease is an exercise in epic failure.