To be fair, it's only upscaling. So easier monsters would be harder, but harder ones won't be easier.
To be fair, it does absolutely nothing to address the stupidity of the character level design. Even Bethesda learned from this by creating 'leveled zones' where places in northwest Boston wouldn't spawn high level enemies, but as you go further south and east, things got tougher. Logical progression and low level players eventually learn to avoid taking on dangerous places until they're ready, assuming they played in the revamped Survival difficulty. Or, you can even try be creative, take the risk against high level mobs and drop some frag mines, lure a few of them and score a few indirect kills.
But what do we see in Witcher 3? Try that against a skull-rated mob and they'd vaporize you in 2 hits or less. This is a game where you slaughter a lvl 10 Griffin, only to get destroyed by level 28 dwarf thugs in Novigrad because you didn't pay attention to recommended level in the quest log. And now I'm loaded into Heart of Stone at level 33, wondering what content can possibly challenge Geralt at that level after facing down a slew of beasts both lowly like Drowners, common bandits and epic ones, like Katakans, Dragons, and the Wild Hunt warband itself.
Guess what? I went into a sewer below Oxenfurt, and I encountered level 35 drowners.
I slaughtered a random thug in a side quest and got a lvl 35 sword, a pair of gloves and a random armor I want to try on. However, Geralt, the slayer of the Wild Hunt, can't equip it while a thug can. You know, the same Geralt who slaughtered Velen's Crones, and beat a dragon in Witcher 2?
WTF? This still is a CRPG forum, right?
A forum dedicated to the very genre where zero to world savior hero stories are the norm and where fighting intimidating early game bosses and then, a few days later, magnitudes more powerful trash mobs is a thing nearly every game expects you to do. So what the fuckidy fuck am I reading?
But this isn't a zero to hero story?
Who the fuck cares, this is a CRPG. So of course it features player character level progression and new challenges and obstacles for every new level you gain, and after a few level gains the first obstacles you overcame at the start of the game pale in comparison to what you have to do now. Basic 101 CRPG design really.
The same monster type might grow more powerful in later areas of the game but that's okay, then at least they don't get too boring. They still become pushovers thanks to better tools in your special ability toolbox.
And you still feel like that legendary dude all the way through because you are the one hunting down monsters while most of the civilians are just sitting there, quivering in fear. So if you don't tryhard to find reasons to hate then this is perfectly serviceable as your typical CRPG progression.
And never ever again mention these broken abominations of Bethestard games as shining examples when it comes to game balance. It makes you look very retarded.
The gameworld of Witcher 3 might have a few high level mobs in the middle of lower level territories (doesn't seem too frequent though) but usually the dangerous areas are the remote ones here too. And the fucking main quest even tells you which level you should have to go to the major areas. As does every single quest. Sure, putting the level requirements in the quest journal might not be the most elegant solution but I don't see a way around it since this is an open world game so if you decide to ignore the main quest and just go hiking then there should always be another, higher obstacle waiting for you. Even on the same map, because then you have a reason to revisit it later and feel the power gap to low level mobs there (and see how awesome Geralt became in the meantime).
And you can't just stop dealing with the rabble and fight bosses exclusively later in the game because now you became that special kind of snowflake, a true hero (TM).
Just like they can't just make all these later trash mobs boring to fight pushovers because why even waste the player's time with that shit then? So of course the guy that managed to beat a level 10 griffin will have problems with level 28 dwarven thugs later. Duh!
Either this fixed enemy level solution here or levelscaling, pick your poison.
Also, even in games with a flatter enemy progression curve (not meaning levels but overall combat power) like Fallout taking a shortcut to the endgame areas and the surrounding wasteland isn't good for your health and you have to game the system aka cheese to be able to do one of these speedruns. So even there you have that 101 carrot on a stick CRPG design principle. There's no avoiding it unless you get rid of character power progression completely.
So again, wtf did I read there?
Other possible solutions like slowing down the char progression (if they even change anything about the low level bosses vs high level trash mobs problem that's pretty much intrinsic to CRPGs) lead to a different problem, no real reward (because your char doesn't make enough progress) for your heroic deeds. Meaning they let all the content outside the mainquest feel superfluous if not for story reasons. Which might already be enough in this game but why not add an additional incentive in form of actually noticeable traditional CRPG char leveling? Doesn't hurt and it's always nice to see the numbers go up.
They even avoided the usual Bethesda mistake of rewarding combat action and chose a limited resource (quests) instead of respawning enemies for the bulk of XP available without grinding.
Sure, there might be better ways than DPS inflation and HP sponges, but they chose this traditional approach and unlike Skyrim and FO4 here it works. Because they didn't do the retarded thing to reward every kill (or better successful strike) in combat.
One solution that might have been more elegant is unlocking new areas or in general more content by gaining new abilities that can change your surroundings or increase your ability to traverse them. See Zelda or as it seems Voidspire Tactics. Which reminds me that I definitely have to try that game.
My only real gripe with all this is that combat is too hard to control precisely with all the silly whirling around which is definitely not cool.
And itemization. Itemization is shit.
It's like they were trying to prove that they were more influenced by Gothic than the last two TES games, but they ended up going so far into one direction that they eventually came out from the other. If they really wanted to lock the player out of a particular area, they could've easily done it through the alchemy system — just introduce enemies that require specific oils or potions to take down. It would've been a nice example of horizontal character growth that also would've been perfectly in line with the lore.
The special oils idea is neat and all but it undermines the character system.
They can't make enemies vulnerable to one damage type alone (oils meaning damage type: swords ... and alchemy of course) because that would either force all players to create jack of all trades so they can do well against most enemies or force the designers to make enemies easier so even the wannabe mage that never learned anything about oils except for the basics can beat the ones that are only vulnerable to a sword coated with some special oil.
Also how would that even work? Oil xy being unlocked on level 10 unlocking area z (because now you can kill the monsters there) in return?
Sounds as artificial as the shitty item requirement system. I'm sure I'd hate it.
Or one really tough boss protecting the recipe for that oil so after beating it you now can venture forth to the next area?
So one challenge to unlock each of these enemy types and close to zero power gains after that (because Geralt is already awesome, he can't possibly become more awesome)? Sounds pretty boring and pointless as far as CRPG systems go imo.
And I disagree that they went overboard with the Gothic-like enemy difficulty approach. You can beat enemies 10 levels higher than you here too. You just need mad skills at twitch combat, same like with Gothic.
I just wished controls were as precise as there.
