[Ares]

Bethesda Casts Away Level Scaling Woes In Skyrim
01/09/2011 Written by Joseph Peterson

Anyone who has played a traditional RPG knows that as you level up your characters, typically, enemies will become easier (at least until you move to a new area). This was not the case with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion — instead, enemies leveled alongside players, often leaving them frustrated at how difficult the game was at times. Recently, information was released regarding the upcoming Elder Scrolls title, Skyrim, that pointed to level scaling being included. Many assumed that it would be the same as it was in the previous titles from the series, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case according to Bethesda.

Over at the official Bethesda community forums, a community manager had this to say on the matter of level scaling in the game:

Since people are asking, wanted to briefly touch on level scaling. All our games have had some amount of randomness/leveling based on player level. Skyrim’s is similar to Fallout 3’s, not Oblivion’s.
​

This may just be what was needed to keep gamers from being overly frustrated with Skyrim.
For those of you who have played both Oblivion and Fallout 3, which leveling system did you prefer? And did you even notice a difference?

Source: PSLS

 

[Moonfly]

I must say the Fallout didnt seem to have quite as much increase in the enemies levelling as your character increased. I did prefer this over Oblivion.

For me personally though, I hate the levelling system all together. I think the majority of enemies should have fixed skill. The various skill levels should be a good match for your characters abilities at several stages of progression. This would mean the easiest enemies would be a match for you to begin with, while the hardest ones would simply have to be avoided at all costs till you could handle them. I would much prefer this and I think it would make for a better experience. Your character would go from one that is lacking skills and has to stay out of trouble and or yield to survive. As the game progressed your stature would increase, and I think you would feel the benefit of levelling much more. With uniform enemy levelling across the game, it really makes the character levelling system pointless for me personally. This is one area I think Oblivion was poor, but F3 was better, although still not great.

I would however have a few special character enemies, that did level up. These would not be generic enemies, but unique ones, that learn and essentially level up as you do. It would make you feel like your part of an evolving world that is more lifelike. These special characters could also appear from time to time to present unique challenges, or the game could even be built so these meetings are turning points based on decision making choices.

We shall see how this new game turns out though, but I dont expect to be mega impressed if the levelling system is like F3, although that is preferable over Oblivion.

 

[Ares]

I'm incline to agree with you, it always bothered me that you could take on goblins from a couple levels ago which you could dispatch with a couple of arrows but once you leveled up a couple times same goblins take five arrows to be killed. If they want to level certain characters along side your character it needs to make sense. (IE Bosses, Minotaurs, Ogres...ETC)

 

[Moonfly]

There are certain cases where levelling makes sense. If your on a mission, you dont want it to be filled with enemies you just toss aside. I'm sure they could just populate such missions with comparable enemies though, or simply level just those specific ones and identify them with another colour etc.

With Oblivion, I ended up to putting the difficulty right down, which only selects the enemy health anyway, because I got tired of random enemies popping and getting in my way, and as you progress they take long and longer to defeat, despite you increased ability, and I find that entirely frustrating.

This is their third outing now though, so hopefully its the best system yet.