so do you suggest that because it hasnt been implemented to a satisfying effect devs should abandon it? If they do, they will never improve the scaling system. If they keep working on it then it will get to a very satisfying point.
What I'm saying is that they put their money where their mouth is.
Just like "We're not going F2P or B2P" and "We won't add P2W items to item shops" has been repeatedly shown. Just because it hasn't been implemented... etc,etc.
Every VERSION of scaled content so far is broken and lame. Therefore banking on this one to be different is silly in the extreme. Could they prove me wrong? Maybe. Will they? Doubt it.
Its all talk right now, but if the man lives up to his words, you will have a returning ESO player. Levels and the leveling experience are an relic of old MMO design that I think the majority of players no longer care for. It's silly. If they can find a way to create meaningful and engaging game systems that you can use right out of the gate, or at least strive for and not obsess about doing 5000 quests to get there, count me in.
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
I always said if you want a more TES experience in terms of game play... stay in cyrodill. I did it from 30-50... snuck in enemy territories, fought enemy guards and players, left some lowbies alone ny choice, killed players higher level than myself, sieged, quested, explored, hung out.
Always thought it possible to scale players up in any zone if the devs wanted to.
That is the lamest way to make a buck and they know it and i hope MOST gamer's know it.
Sadly i think my fave game FFXI was the first to do this and it really angered not only me but a LOT of gamer's.FFXI is a very old game and a very hard game or it was,so to entice NEW players and try to sell them level 75 content was an IMPOSSIBLE chore.So what they did is change the game so that players could level super fast,what took years of work and effort was dumbed down to mere days and that was really sad.
Then the stupidity really sinks in when a NEW class is introduced to games.Since the INSTANT leveling experience makes levels so fast,the experience and enjoyment of playing the character is totally lost or done in a matter of days,how fun is that ../not.
Scaling was an idea SOE started with EQ2 at least i am sure of it.It looked great on paper but was a terrible idea.This of course was obvious as SOE abandoned that idea in the future.It completely removes the immersion of the game.Oh your group was able to beat said BOSS?Oh yes we scaled it to level 1 and killed in 20 seconds was real easy,we didn't even have a full party.
That kind of stuff makes me shutter at how lame a developer can be to totally ruin a game and it's assets for sake of a quick buck.What bothers me just as much is that even after such a lame move,players will continue to support said game because the usual,we already invested time in this game ,we don't want to throw it away.
The SMART gamer speaks with actions,leave the game send a message,empty servers and no money coming in sends a loud message.
Way to try to turn this into a money grab lol... simply amazing.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
In the end, this is just developer laziness, an artificial way of trying to prolong the amount and accessibility of content (and lessen the amount of content they need to create) by dumbing down the game, while trying to sell it off as an "improvement".
I would urge people to try games like Morrowind and find what is good about levels, and why they are necessary, instead of basing all their experiences on games like Oblivion & Skyrim, which most of the long term Elder Scrolls fans viewed with disdain due to level scaling (and multiple other dumbed down elements).
I would urge people to try games like Morrowind and find what is good about level scaling, and why it is necessary,
There was NO LEVEL SCALING in Morrowind. Period. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Morrowind had areas where you'd get trounced if you weren't levelled enough. Which is the POINT most of us are making.
Oblivion introduced level scaling and people hated it. If you didn't do the Oblivion questline first, level scaling made it retarded to do so later on.
Skyrim scaled that back giving enemies a range of levels they could be but still had minimums and maximums.
The core of an RPG is progression and story. Leveling isn't really a core, it's just been so overused we've come to expect it. There are RPGs that are fairly level independant, indeed some of the best don't have levels. But the tradeoff is as such:
Leveling allows players to feel powerful with minimal effort. You just need to play a lot to grind up the exp. Everyone likes to feel powerful, especially in an RPG. Games with more horizontal progression tend to leave more of the responsibility on the player to figure things out. You can't simply just grind your way through the game, at some point you need to figure out how to proceed. And for a lot of people, this can be off-putting. Because no one wants to feel stupid while playing a game, or that they themselves aren't good enough. They want to be the hero of the story, they want to feel strong / powerful.
Leveling gives people that feeling for basically nothing. Horizontal progression works, but that type of feeling is more earned rather than given.
No one can feel strong and powerful, when everyone is strong and powerful - Players need to be able to distance and compare themselves from others. Lock out is one way to do this, and it can come in many forms, for example by level/skill mechanics, progression, keying, trials, questlines, achievements, level, etc. Inequality is a good thing because it makes players have something to look forward to and to strive for, and lock out is one way to do this.
I am not particularly fond of level mechanics, all I say is skill point mechanics is fundamentally the same. Lock out by level is a really simple mechanic, and only one of many ways to do it, but as I said it is outdated to lock out by level, however lock or gating as a feature is very much needed.
Ah, but there is most definitely a difference.
Personally, I prefer skill-based progression mechanics (think megaman / zelda). However I also understand the appeal of Final Fantasy for example (which is one of the basis' of the level progression). For example, it's hard to say that people didn't feel badass the first time they summoned knights of the round in FF7. It's a skill that nearly every player acquired, and yet almost every one of them felt like a total badass when using it. It took zero skill, and little effort outside of a dull grind. And yet, everyone felt powerful for having it. Because the game made them powerful for having it.
Now by contrast look at megaman, castlevania, zelda, metroid, etc. Unlocking a new area, or getting a skill that might help make certain bosses easier to handle doesn't give you the same feeling as summoning a football team of legendary heroes to absolutely annihilate your enemy. However, it does give you more of a sense of personal accomplishment.
However, these again appeal to two different types of players. There are the RPGs that do everything in their power to convey that you are the most powerful dude in the room. Regardless of if it's true, or if you've even earned it. Then there are RPGs that go, 'so you're the badass in the room? Prove it.' And that's a tougher pill to swallow for some gamers. Because if they can't prove it, then that's frustrating instead of fun.
Keep inmind there are also different types of lockouts. There are hard lockouts (most of level-based lockouts are hard lockouts) and then there are soft ones. Areas that are significantly harder to complete without a certain ability (again, think of megaman, you can basically beat whomever you want right out the gate, but certain bosses become easier after acquiring certain powers).
- To bring this back to my original point: Leveling is the easier method for regulating content. It makes people feel good, and isn't too tough to design around. Skill-based content regulation is significantly harder to design, but neither are essential to a good RPG. The only thing that's needed is a good story for players to progress THROUGH. Whatever the mechanic dev's use, as long as players are progressing through some kind of plot, you have yourself an RPG. That said, in today's climate, many people are getting tired of levels. Because they have diminishing returns (and skill-based gameplay doesn't really have that problem, because you are essentially competing with yourself).
I would urge people to try games like Morrowind and find what is good about level scaling, and why it is necessary,
There was NO LEVEL SCALING in Morrowind. Period. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Morrowind had areas where you'd get trounced if you weren't levelled enough. Which is the POINT most of us are making.
Oblivion introduced level scaling and people hated it. If you didn't do the Oblivion questline first, level scaling made it retarded to do so later on.
Skyrim scaled that back giving enemies a range of levels they could be but still had minimums and maximums.
During the reddit AuA someone asked ZoS if there are any plans to bring this scaling mechanism to the 1-50 content aswell. Matt Firor's answer was that they talk about it a lot but it's on the back burner right now.
Level scaling is one the reasons why Oblivion and Skyrim were such a big hits. You know, something something exploration. Go anywhere you want from the very beginning. In ESO when an NPC wants to give you a quest, you can't really say "Sry but I'm uninterested". Because in your head you will be thinking, I have to do this otherwise I won't be able to advance to the next zone. Honestly this is as anti-TES as it can get. In a level scaling system you can just ignore the dude and go visit the zone you actually want to explore. Then maybe once you're level 50 and stumble upon him again while exploring you can say, "Ok now I'm in the mood to do this".
What I'm trying to say is that there are dozens of players who keep replaying vanilla Skyrim with different alts. They're literally playing the same content over and over again, just to experience it in a different order. If ZoS can grab the interest of these players...then that's a jackpot. Would this alianate some of the hardcore MMO players? Most likely yes. However there are plenty of other MMOs with vertical progression and "on rails" quest design. There's only one online Elder Scrolls game.
The point of leveling, even in games where it doesn't matter what level you are, is to level. If you look at Skyrim, you could complete the entire storyline at level 1, if you didn't level. You didn't care about your level as much as in MMOs, however, you still felt like you wanted to level, so you went and did other quests to level up. I'm happy they're doing this, as before I got into beta, I thought this was how the game was going to be at launch. Scaling content has been a TES thing for a long time now. It's one of the minor gripes I've had about ESO. I still enjoy the game either way though
I watch a Dev interview on Youtube the other day and one of the most interesting things is when they ask if players ideas for content would be used one day the Dev said basically he was to busy trying to get his own ideas implemented.
On the forums they are saying, with update 6 there will be no more major updates until after consoles have launched. So it looks like the Champion system is it. Which could mean the vet system is still in the process of be phased out so the consoles will get the veteran/champion hybrid system until vet is fully phased out. Sounds like the update 6 will launch and just be bug fixes and re-balance issues, working on console launch, and working on DLC content which they want to start pumping out as soon as possible.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Level scaling is one the reasons why Oblivion and Skyrim were such a big hits.
Are ------ YOU ------ kidding ----- me?
Oblivion FAILED MISERABLY because of Level Scaling.
So much so they didn't DO IT in Skyrim.
What pink glasses are you knuckleheads viewing the world through?
Please, for the love of everything holy, read up on the topic before you decide to share an FLAWED opinion based on facts you've conjured out of thin air.
State sources. Facts. Like we have.
Here's just one example of the 80000 mods out there that repairs the idiocy that was Oblivion's level scaling.
All the excellent review scores? You can see those on the Wiki page. Sold copies? Same. You've missed the point I'm trying to make. Despite the flawed level scaling mechanism in Oblivion, most casual players loved the game. Many of them on the consoles (no mod support there) Why? Because of the open world feeling. It was all because of the level scaling.
Level scaling is one the reasons why Oblivion and Skyrim were such a big hits.
Are ------ YOU ------ kidding ----- me?
Oblivion FAILED MISERABLY because of Level Scaling.
So much so they didn't DO IT in Skyrim.
What pink glasses are you knuckleheads viewing the world through?
Please, for the love of everything holy, read up on the topic before you decide to share an FLAWED opinion based on facts you've conjured out of thin air.
State sources. Facts. Like we have.
Here's just one example of the 80000 mods out there that repairs the idiocy that was Oblivion's level scaling.
Not quite true-- and I don't mean the "failed miserably" crap, that's just forum hyperbole, I mean the scaling. Skyrim uses a hybrid system. Not 100% scaling but a lot of the content, especially in instances, IS generated according to the level when you first enter it.
"Various aspects of the game are leveled. This means that as your character increases in level, some enemies become more challenging, but also the quality of the items you find becomes better. However, the leveling system in Skyrim has been altered from that used in Oblivion, in response to criticisms of Oblivion's leveling system.
Different locations in Skyrim have different inherent difficulties. In other words, some dungeons are designed to be too difficult for low-level characters to enter. More challenging dungeons are generally located at higher elevations, meaning that early in the game, players may want to avoid mountainous regions. However, more difficult dungeons contain better rewards. In addition, some high-quality items can be randomly found even early in the game.
The level of a given dungeon is fixed the first time you enter it. Therefore, places that you enter early in the game will always contain relatively weak enemies, even if you return to the same dungeon later in the game. If you increase primarily non-combat skills such as Smithing or Pickpocket too early, your character will level up from those skills, causing you to meet tougher enemies without you having the combat skills you need to beat them. Because of this, it is generally better to wait to level secondary skills until after your primary combat skills are built up.
In addition, all leveled enemies are generated more like leveled creatures in Fallout. For example, Bandit NPCs are always a fixed level for their name (Bandits are level 1, Bandit Thugs are level 9, Bandit Highwaymen are level 14, etc). The player's level affects the range of possible bandit types generated within a bandit dungeon, and probably the frequency, but does not seem to affect the resulting stats except in a few rare cases. Lower variant bandits remain reasonably common even when more dangerous bandits are available.
Enemy types also seem to reach a plateau where they stop getting stronger. The strongest bandits (non-boss) are mid-20s. The strongest generic vampire is 54, and guards seem to stop scaling at 50. This implies that the difficulty of many areas will not increase beyond certain levels, except perhaps in frequency of difficult encounters. In other words, dungeons have a level range, where if you do not meet the level requirement, you will face the lowest range of the dungeon. For instance, if a dungeon is ranged from level 15 to 25, and you are level 10, you will face creatures in the dungeon scaled at level 15."
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
All the excellent review scores? You can see those on the Wiki page. Sold copies? Same. You've missed the point I'm trying to make. Despite the flawed level scaling mechanism in Oblivion, most casual players loved the game. Many of them on the consoles (no mod support there) Why? Because of the open world feeling. It was all because of the level scaling.
And you're missing MY point... Oblivion was love DESPITE the issues with level scaling:
The Dev's themselves distancing themselves from Oblivion "Skyrim's is similar to Fallout 3's, not Oblivion's."
Originally posted by Iselin
Not quite true-- and I don't mean the "failed miserably" crap, that's just forum hyperbole, I mean the scaling. Skyrim uses a hybrid system. Not 100% scaling but a lot of the content, especially in instances, IS generated according to the level when you first enter it.
If you read above.. I pointed out the minimum and maximum of the levelling in a previous post. There is a minimum for certain dungeons and there is also a maximum. I'm not arguing that it exists.
Originally posted by Ikeda
Skyrim scaled that back giving enemies a range of levels they could be but still had minimums and maximums.
Level scaling sounds great. I don't want to spend a million hours leveling some arbitrary number up. Hopefully the combat relies more on player skill...
Originally posted by Bidwood Level scaling sounds great. I don't want to spend a million hours leveling some arbitrary number up. Hopefully the combat relies more on player skill...
(face palm) Do you not understand what you just said?
Do away with levels and then your combat relies on skill.
Doing LEVEL scaling INCREASES the millions of hours it takes to level some arbitrary level because a lvl 50 person is fighting a level 50 crab just to get the one claw they need to craft. Do you see?
I hope to see more MMO devs do this. Level scaling is a great feature. I remember EQ2 had a mentor system which worked quite well. GW2's scaling feature is good too, but it's not perfect. I"m guessing here, but i think City of Heroes had something similar too, and i've always heard nothing but praise for it.
I find it amusing that some people are trying to dismiss the entire scaling concept due to Bethesda's mishandling of it in Oblivion. That's a singleplayer game, and trying to compare it with an MMO doesn't work.
I would urge people to try games like Morrowind and find what is good about level scaling, and why it is necessary,
There was NO LEVEL SCALING in Morrowind. Period. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Morrowind had areas where you'd get trounced if you weren't levelled enough. Which is the POINT most of us are making.
Oblivion introduced level scaling and people hated it. If you didn't do the Oblivion questline first, level scaling made it retarded to do so later on.
Skyrim scaled that back giving enemies a range of levels they could be but still had minimums and maximums.
Not quite true-- and I don't mean the "failed miserably" crap, that's just forum hyperbole, I mean the scaling. Skyrim uses a hybrid system. Not 100% scaling but a lot of the content, especially in instances, IS generated according to the level when you first enter it.
If you read above.. I pointed out the minimum and maximum of the levelling in a previous post. There is a minimum for certain dungeons and there is also a maximum. I'm not arguing that it exists.
Good. So then you understand that there are a number of ways to accomplish scaling limited only by the imagination and creativity of a development team.
So it's silly to say "scaling sucks." All you can really say is "the type of scaling I saw in that particular game over there, had this or that problem"
The level bolstering system they're talking about implementing (and so far it's just DLC and, I assume, Craglorn and all other current VR content, when VR goes away - 1-50 is staying the same for now) is creating zones that can still contain a wide range of difficulties but all fall under the general "level 50" umbrella.
Mob types of the same level already have different difficulties in ESO with wolves being pretty wimpy and trolls, giants and some daedra (like Storm Atronachs) being much tougher. You can have different concentrations in different areas to provide variety and increased difficulty within a zone even if the whole thing is one level. And then you can jack up the difficulty even more for areas within the zone designed for groups.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Good. So then you understand that there are a number of ways to accomplish scaling limited only by the imagination and creativity of a development team.
So it's silly to say "scaling sucks." All you can really say is "the type of scaling I saw in that particular game over there, had this or that problem"
Originally posted by Ikeda
What I'm saying is that they put their money where their mouth is.
Just like "We're not going F2P or B2P" and "We won't add P2W items to item shops" has been repeatedly shown. Just because it hasn't been implemented... etc,etc.
Every VERSION of scaled content so far is broken and lame. Therefore banking on this one to be different is silly in the extreme. Could they prove me wrong? Maybe. Will they? Doubt it.
I'm not going to get into this cyclical arguing over topics I've already covered in my OWN POSTS within the last couple of pages. So I'll just let you soapbox this, I've made my points. I've also learned how many people have opinions on things they have no idea about.
Good. So then you understand that there are a number of ways to accomplish scaling limited only by the imagination and creativity of a development team.
So it's silly to say "scaling sucks." All you can really say is "the type of scaling I saw in that particular game over there, had this or that problem"
Originally posted by Ikeda
What I'm saying is that they put their money where their mouth is.
Just like "We're not going F2P or B2P" and "We won't add P2W items to item shops" has been repeatedly shown. Just because it hasn't been implemented... etc,etc.
Every VERSION of scaled content so far is broken and lame. Therefore banking on this one to be different is silly in the extreme. Could they prove me wrong? Maybe. Will they? Doubt it.
I'm not going to get into this cyclical arguing over topics I've already covered in my OWN POSTS within the last couple of pages. So I'll just let you soapbox this, I've made my points. I've also learned how many people have opinions on things they have no idea about.
Oh, OK. Since you've played it and experienced the bolstering in Cyrodiil first hand with respect to all the PVE there, I guess your opinions are about things you do have an idea about.
This is the way PVE in Cyrodiil has existed for 10 months. But what do I know, I've only just played it.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
This is the way PVE in Cyrodiil has existed for 10 months. But what do I know, I've only just played it.
Scan through my post history. I am an Imperial Edition (statue) owner. I was hoping/banking that it was going to be better than it was. I defended it. And then I got stuck multiple times with broken quests. I resubbed a month or two ago. It was better, but they still have many things that need to be looked at. Frankly it wasn't worth $15 even in it's current conditions. It'll go B2P and I'll try it again but I have experienced said issues and while they are better, they aren't the permanent solution.
You having played it should want for better for your games.
Level scaling isn't it. And while I'm not saying they won't find a good way to do it.. like the post above clearly stated, I'm not going to bank on it. ZOS' issues are fundamental to the system. For the same reason they put factions together that shouldn't be together and they've just done whatever they wanted with the Elder Scrolls IP.
Comments
What I'm saying is that they put their money where their mouth is.
Just like "We're not going F2P or B2P" and "We won't add P2W items to item shops" has been repeatedly shown. Just because it hasn't been implemented... etc,etc.
Every VERSION of scaled content so far is broken and lame. Therefore banking on this one to be different is silly in the extreme. Could they prove me wrong? Maybe. Will they? Doubt it.
Please visit my youtube channel for some H1Z1/DayZ casual roleplay videos!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQoK5VZlwBBzpsksmXtjMQ
I always said if you want a more TES experience in terms of game play... stay in cyrodill. I did it from 30-50... snuck in enemy territories, fought enemy guards and players, left some lowbies alone ny choice, killed players higher level than myself, sieged, quested, explored, hung out.
Always thought it possible to scale players up in any zone if the devs wanted to.
Way to try to turn this into a money grab lol... simply amazing.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
In the end, this is just developer laziness, an artificial way of trying to prolong the amount and accessibility of content (and lessen the amount of content they need to create) by dumbing down the game, while trying to sell it off as an "improvement".
I would urge people to try games like Morrowind and find what is good about levels, and why they are necessary, instead of basing all their experiences on games like Oblivion & Skyrim, which most of the long term Elder Scrolls fans viewed with disdain due to level scaling (and multiple other dumbed down elements).
There was NO LEVEL SCALING in Morrowind. Period. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Morrowind had areas where you'd get trounced if you weren't levelled enough. Which is the POINT most of us are making.
Oblivion introduced level scaling and people hated it. If you didn't do the Oblivion questline first, level scaling made it retarded to do so later on.
Skyrim scaled that back giving enemies a range of levels they could be but still had minimums and maximums.
Sources:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion_for_Morrowind_players
Ah, but there is most definitely a difference.
Personally, I prefer skill-based progression mechanics (think megaman / zelda). However I also understand the appeal of Final Fantasy for example (which is one of the basis' of the level progression). For example, it's hard to say that people didn't feel badass the first time they summoned knights of the round in FF7. It's a skill that nearly every player acquired, and yet almost every one of them felt like a total badass when using it. It took zero skill, and little effort outside of a dull grind. And yet, everyone felt powerful for having it. Because the game made them powerful for having it.
Now by contrast look at megaman, castlevania, zelda, metroid, etc. Unlocking a new area, or getting a skill that might help make certain bosses easier to handle doesn't give you the same feeling as summoning a football team of legendary heroes to absolutely annihilate your enemy. However, it does give you more of a sense of personal accomplishment.
However, these again appeal to two different types of players. There are the RPGs that do everything in their power to convey that you are the most powerful dude in the room. Regardless of if it's true, or if you've even earned it. Then there are RPGs that go, 'so you're the badass in the room? Prove it.' And that's a tougher pill to swallow for some gamers. Because if they can't prove it, then that's frustrating instead of fun.
Keep inmind there are also different types of lockouts. There are hard lockouts (most of level-based lockouts are hard lockouts) and then there are soft ones. Areas that are significantly harder to complete without a certain ability (again, think of megaman, you can basically beat whomever you want right out the gate, but certain bosses become easier after acquiring certain powers).
- To bring this back to my original point: Leveling is the easier method for regulating content. It makes people feel good, and isn't too tough to design around. Skill-based content regulation is significantly harder to design, but neither are essential to a good RPG. The only thing that's needed is a good story for players to progress THROUGH. Whatever the mechanic dev's use, as long as players are progressing through some kind of plot, you have yourself an RPG. That said, in today's climate, many people are getting tired of levels. Because they have diminishing returns (and skill-based gameplay doesn't really have that problem, because you are essentially competing with yourself).
Oops, sorry that was what I tried to say
Fixed my post.
This site needs bigger fonts *grumble*
During the reddit AuA someone asked ZoS if there are any plans to bring this scaling mechanism to the 1-50 content aswell. Matt Firor's answer was that they talk about it a lot but it's on the back burner right now.
Level scaling is one the reasons why Oblivion and Skyrim were such a big hits. You know, something something exploration. Go anywhere you want from the very beginning. In ESO when an NPC wants to give you a quest, you can't really say "Sry but I'm uninterested". Because in your head you will be thinking, I have to do this otherwise I won't be able to advance to the next zone. Honestly this is as anti-TES as it can get. In a level scaling system you can just ignore the dude and go visit the zone you actually want to explore. Then maybe once you're level 50 and stumble upon him again while exploring you can say, "Ok now I'm in the mood to do this".
What I'm trying to say is that there are dozens of players who keep replaying vanilla Skyrim with different alts. They're literally playing the same content over and over again, just to experience it in a different order. If ZoS can grab the interest of these players...then that's a jackpot. Would this alianate some of the hardcore MMO players? Most likely yes. However there are plenty of other MMOs with vertical progression and "on rails" quest design. There's only one online Elder Scrolls game.
I watch a Dev interview on Youtube the other day and one of the most interesting things is when they ask if players ideas for content would be used one day the Dev said basically he was to busy trying to get his own ideas implemented.
On the forums they are saying, with update 6 there will be no more major updates until after consoles have launched. So it looks like the Champion system is it. Which could mean the vet system is still in the process of be phased out so the consoles will get the veteran/champion hybrid system until vet is fully phased out. Sounds like the update 6 will launch and just be bug fixes and re-balance issues, working on console launch, and working on DLC content which they want to start pumping out as soon as possible.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Are ------ YOU ------ kidding ----- me?
Oblivion FAILED MISERABLY because of Level Scaling.
So much so they didn't DO IT in Skyrim.
What pink glasses are you knuckleheads viewing the world through?
Please, for the love of everything holy, read up on the topic before you decide to share an FLAWED opinion based on facts you've conjured out of thin air.
State sources. Facts. Like we have.
Here's just one example of the 80000 mods out there that repairs the idiocy that was Oblivion's level scaling.
http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45534/?
Facts? Source? For what exactly?
All the excellent review scores? You can see those on the Wiki page. Sold copies? Same. You've missed the point I'm trying to make. Despite the flawed level scaling mechanism in Oblivion, most casual players loved the game. Many of them on the consoles (no mod support there) Why? Because of the open world feeling. It was all because of the level scaling.
Not quite true-- and I don't mean the "failed miserably" crap, that's just forum hyperbole, I mean the scaling. Skyrim uses a hybrid system. Not 100% scaling but a lot of the content, especially in instances, IS generated according to the level when you first enter it.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Leveling
"Various aspects of the game are leveled. This means that as your character increases in level, some enemies become more challenging, but also the quality of the items you find becomes better. However, the leveling system in Skyrim has been altered from that used in Oblivion, in response to criticisms of Oblivion's leveling system.
Different locations in Skyrim have different inherent difficulties. In other words, some dungeons are designed to be too difficult for low-level characters to enter. More challenging dungeons are generally located at higher elevations, meaning that early in the game, players may want to avoid mountainous regions. However, more difficult dungeons contain better rewards. In addition, some high-quality items can be randomly found even early in the game.
The level of a given dungeon is fixed the first time you enter it. Therefore, places that you enter early in the game will always contain relatively weak enemies, even if you return to the same dungeon later in the game. If you increase primarily non-combat skills such as Smithing or Pickpocket too early, your character will level up from those skills, causing you to meet tougher enemies without you having the combat skills you need to beat them. Because of this, it is generally better to wait to level secondary skills until after your primary combat skills are built up.
In addition, all leveled enemies are generated more like leveled creatures in Fallout. For example, Bandit NPCs are always a fixed level for their name (Bandits are level 1, Bandit Thugs are level 9, Bandit Highwaymen are level 14, etc). The player's level affects the range of possible bandit types generated within a bandit dungeon, and probably the frequency, but does not seem to affect the resulting stats except in a few rare cases. Lower variant bandits remain reasonably common even when more dangerous bandits are available.
Enemy types also seem to reach a plateau where they stop getting stronger. The strongest bandits (non-boss) are mid-20s. The strongest generic vampire is 54, and guards seem to stop scaling at 50. This implies that the difficulty of many areas will not increase beyond certain levels, except perhaps in frequency of difficult encounters. In other words, dungeons have a level range, where if you do not meet the level requirement, you will face the lowest range of the dungeon. For instance, if a dungeon is ranged from level 15 to 25, and you are level 10, you will face creatures in the dungeon scaled at level 15."
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
And you're missing MY point... Oblivion was love DESPITE the issues with level scaling:
http://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-leveling-fallout-tao-60364/
"After a less than successful leveling system in Oblivion, one that was a black mark amidst a great game"
http://theshortgamer.com/2013/07/05/the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-game-review/
"One of the biggest complaints I have with Oblivion is how the enemies scale levels with you"
http://www.greenmangaming.com/customer-reviews/?for=4061 (just skim through and see all the people that hated the scaling)
"My largest criticism, besides the terrible main story, was level/gear-scaling"
"-Since enemies level-up with you, it's possible for them to become much stronger than you"
http://elder-scrolls.alteredgamer.com/tes-5-skyrim/110381-leaked-gameplay-changes-in-bethesdas-elder-scrolls-v/
"Bethesda has taken note of its past criticism and eliminated Oblivion's static level scaling system in Skyrim"
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/75-Oblivion
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1156332-is-level-scaling-backnoooooooooooo/page-2#entry16933097
The Dev's themselves distancing themselves from Oblivion "Skyrim's is similar to Fallout 3's, not Oblivion's."
If you read above.. I pointed out the minimum and maximum of the levelling in a previous post. There is a minimum for certain dungeons and there is also a maximum. I'm not arguing that it exists.
(face palm) Do you not understand what you just said?
Do away with levels and then your combat relies on skill.
Doing LEVEL scaling INCREASES the millions of hours it takes to level some arbitrary level because a lvl 50 person is fighting a level 50 crab just to get the one claw they need to craft. Do you see?
I hope to see more MMO devs do this. Level scaling is a great feature. I remember EQ2 had a mentor system which worked quite well. GW2's scaling feature is good too, but it's not perfect. I"m guessing here, but i think City of Heroes had something similar too, and i've always heard nothing but praise for it.
I find it amusing that some people are trying to dismiss the entire scaling concept due to Bethesda's mishandling of it in Oblivion. That's a singleplayer game, and trying to compare it with an MMO doesn't work.
can't wait for march!
The scaling in GW2 is done so well, I hope they can achieve the same smooooooooth
new mmorpg.com layout has been promises "Soon"TM
Good. So then you understand that there are a number of ways to accomplish scaling limited only by the imagination and creativity of a development team.
So it's silly to say "scaling sucks." All you can really say is "the type of scaling I saw in that particular game over there, had this or that problem"
The level bolstering system they're talking about implementing (and so far it's just DLC and, I assume, Craglorn and all other current VR content, when VR goes away - 1-50 is staying the same for now) is creating zones that can still contain a wide range of difficulties but all fall under the general "level 50" umbrella.
Mob types of the same level already have different difficulties in ESO with wolves being pretty wimpy and trolls, giants and some daedra (like Storm Atronachs) being much tougher. You can have different concentrations in different areas to provide variety and increased difficulty within a zone even if the whole thing is one level. And then you can jack up the difficulty even more for areas within the zone designed for groups.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I'm not going to get into this cyclical arguing over topics I've already covered in my OWN POSTS within the last couple of pages. So I'll just let you soapbox this, I've made my points. I've also learned how many people have opinions on things they have no idea about.
Oh, OK. Since you've played it and experienced the bolstering in Cyrodiil first hand with respect to all the PVE there, I guess your opinions are about things you do have an idea about.
This is the way PVE in Cyrodiil has existed for 10 months. But what do I know, I've only just played it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Scan through my post history. I am an Imperial Edition (statue) owner. I was hoping/banking that it was going to be better than it was. I defended it. And then I got stuck multiple times with broken quests. I resubbed a month or two ago. It was better, but they still have many things that need to be looked at. Frankly it wasn't worth $15 even in it's current conditions. It'll go B2P and I'll try it again but I have experienced said issues and while they are better, they aren't the permanent solution.
You having played it should want for better for your games.
Level scaling isn't it. And while I'm not saying they won't find a good way to do it.. like the post above clearly stated, I'm not going to bank on it. ZOS' issues are fundamental to the system. For the same reason they put factions together that shouldn't be together and they've just done whatever they wanted with the Elder Scrolls IP.