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The trick is to have the level scaling ratchet forward, such that lower level enemies get scaled up to the player's current level (or at least within a reasonable range) while anything higher level remains unaffected. Though I wouldn't be surprised if that approach had problems of its own. Prolly good enough for an open world game though; pretty sure that's how AC: Odyssey does it. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 12:44
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Yeah that’s a solid compromise because the problem of easy areas is way more boring especially when combined with uninteresting backtracking.
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Jan 5, 2024 12:47
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Or have story beat events which replace/add enemies in some areas with different more dangerous ones.
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Jan 5, 2024 12:51
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If there is a flaw, it's in the loss of the power fantasy of stomping all over enemies that once stymied you but you've surpassed, but I feel like that feeds into a much bigger, messier discussion about how games approach difficulty and challenge in general.
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Jan 5, 2024 12:52
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With one-direction scaling there's still the risk of character growth feeling stagnant. If it takes five hits to to kill a bandit at level 1 with a broken rusted sword, and it still takes five hits to kill a bandit at level 30 with an enchanted doom daedra evilsteel scimitar, then things just feel bad. A decent compromise I've seen here and there is adjusting enemy number and composition rather than their stats directly. So at level 1 your average enemy encounter would be five lovely bandits, and at level five you might be facing 10 lovely bandits backed up by a couple wardogs and a troll or something. That way you still feel like your character is improving by easily smashing your way through enemies that used to give you trouble, while still retaining a reasonable amount of challenge.
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Jan 5, 2024 12:56
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FishMcCool posted:Or have story beat events which replace/add enemies in some areas with different more dangerous ones. This is something all the Piranhabytes games do. Pretty ingenious eurojank trick to change the worldstate between chapters so they don't use up their budget on a barren overworld.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:07
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Yeah, increasing the number of enemies is a good way to keep adding challenge while preserving power fantasy. A master swordsman able to take out a dozen henchmen is a fiction staple more fun than a master swordsman that can just hit other master swordsman really hard. The most ideal solution is to minimize numerical power growth so this issue isn't as significant. I don't particularly enjoy the number inflation game of increasing your stats to keep up with enemy stat increases. It's more interesting when levels and equipment grant you more tactical options and gameplay styles. Souls does this to a degree except the equipment upgrade system ends up being an important but uninteresting number chasing element. D:OS 2 has a kinda gentle curve on power progression from leveling and has a fantastic skills/abilities system that does expand your options more than simply inflate your numbers. Unfortunately, they gently caress this up with an awful number chasing gear system. Your gear massively inflates your power and unless you are constantly upgrading your gear you fall way behind the enemies. If they ever return to the D:OS series I hope they keep tweaking the system because it was close to a great iteration on 4E ideas.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:23
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Level scaling is fine as long as the power level of the player character surpasses the linear growth of enemies. Maybe those formerly Level 1 bandits in tutorial town have more HP now, but you have telekinesis and the Twin Swords of GG so it hardly matters. It's better to me that world creatures can still put up a fight than experiencing the fleeting joy of going back to the starting village and blowing everything up in 1 hit. That's fun for maybe like 30 seconds at the cost of making everything in the world but the stuff that's directly at your level pointless.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:23
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FishMcCool posted:Or have story beat events which replace/add enemies in some areas with different more dangerous ones. Everspace 2 does this to an extent. The enemies don’t change too much but they do scale up at points in the story, and the game makes it very clear to you that old areas just scaled up so you don’t go and get surprised by suddenly tough enemies or ignore an old area because you figure it’ll be incredibly easy and boring now.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:23
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Antigravitas posted:The enemy levelling in the Gothic games is perfect.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:25
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the game scales up til you're playing Dynasty Warriors
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Jan 5, 2024 14:06
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Dynasty Warriors should have enemy scaling, so even the peasants will kick your rear end. Of course I'm talking about what happens when you play 3 and set the difficulty to max.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:07
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do not pursue Peasant Villager
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Jan 5, 2024 14:36
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e: wrong thread, how did I even get in here?
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Jan 5, 2024 14:50
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcoGXvtK0dc
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Jan 5, 2024 15:24
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Gabe took the joking about his yachts personally https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWUOa55s8Pw
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Jan 5, 2024 15:31
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excellent choice to lead off with Monopoly
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Jan 5, 2024 15:55
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Xenoblade series always had fun nightmares out of their depth roaming around in areas 20-50 levels lower than them. Kept you on your toes
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Jan 5, 2024 16:19
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Cross-Section posted:Gabe took the joking about his yachts personally Whoever does the marketing side of Steam needs to get a raise because this past year and a half has been a massive change for the better. My one single complaint is that the Winter and Summer sales seem to be less adventurous.
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Jan 5, 2024 16:40
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Antigravitas posted:The enemy levelling in the Gothic games is perfect. just played through G2 with DNDR again (no mods) and they really screwed the balance with the addon especially when you go for Mage char. Last time I played mage was still before the addon, and only the other guilds with the addon which works a bit better. Still an amazing game but last ~3 chapters draging along and there aren't enough fire rain scrolls. Mana balance kinda sucks too making you cheese the game a lot even when rank 4 or 5 mage which is too much for the amount of enemies. And you need so much LP for mana. Aged very well though in general and still creates amazing atmosphere. Always the superior choice to any Bethesda game.
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Jan 5, 2024 16:49
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Oxxidation posted:cyberpunk's story isn't about fixing the world, it's about surviving it Yeah, i don’t think you’re wrong to call cp’s setting nihilistic or to point out that it offers no vision of how to fix or prevent this outcome; instead it depicts a world where the bad guys have won so thoroughly that the only way for them to lose is to eventually consume themselves and implode, and then asks what it means for life to go on within that bleak reality. It’s not about raging against the machine, it’s about forming relationships and communities and finding things to live for in the shadow of the machine. And also doing cool matrix poo poo with guns and cybercars
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Jan 5, 2024 16:56
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I remember when valve made augmented reality events for sales and had bonus content and had only games where you shoot nazis
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Jan 5, 2024 17:02
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How good level scaling is depends on a number of factors. Like if you can build a character to be proficient in non-combat areas, and those skills factor into the character's level that the game uses for scaling, then any universal level scaling system is going to break real quick. Lookin at you Oblivion. Enemy level scaling first needs to be linked to a player system that can specifically and only track a player's combat abilities. If I'm playing Elder Scrolls and decide to make a character who specializes in running real fast and being able to get the best deals at vendors, then level scaling will break before it begins. Level scaling should only scale based on combat abilities. Another factor is the kind of game you're playing. If I'm playing Diablo and I can only build my character for different types of combat, and the entire point is infinite character power progression, then I want every enemy in the game to scale exactly to my level, OR I want to just be able to choose the exact level of enemy I fight. Greater Rifts in Diablo 3 were perfect for this. Otherwise, if I'm just out in the world with my level 10,000 character, then I want to see level level 10,000 mobs in the starting zone. And if I make a new character and get to the end boss at level 1, then I want to see the end boss scaled down to level 1. Those games are about lizard brain number go up, so that's what they need to be. However, if I'm playing an Elder Scrolls game where the whole thing is less about all combat all the time, and more about working through quest lines and exploring the people and places of the world, then I want zone-based level scaling where each zone's low level threshold equals the level of somebody who only touches the main quest, and the high level threshold set for characters who have done every side quest. Yes that means level scaling needs to be wider and wider with every zone you hit, but even so, this would still allow low level players to get the feeling of sneaking into high level zones and having to stay hidden or get stomped, and also high level characters could go back to low level zones and stomp enemies that used to give them trouble. But actual game progression would be smooth and accommodate all players so you'd never be gated into having to do side quests to progress, and you'd never totally over level yourself for the rest of the game. Best of all worlds. I'm still not convinced that an entirely open world that is universally level scaled works in Elder Scrolls style game at all. It's too open. I think the best that can be done for making a "forever game" like Elder Scrolls games want to be is to do one of two things. Either make a world with level scaled zones for the first playthrough, and then in New Game+ you scale the entire world up to the same high level so the player can meaningfully interact with the whole world. You could even let the player freely choose what level the entire world is scaled to at any time from a menu or something (again, like D3 Greater Rifts but more free form). Or you can simply make a world where the zones in one part of it are balanced around the leveling process, and the zones in another part are all balanced for max level characters. For that to work though, you'd need to make the "max level" part of the game big and interesting enough to hold the player's attention indefinitely when they get to it. GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 17:34
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Upsidads posted:Xenoblade series always had fun nightmares out of their depth roaming around in areas 20-50 levels lower than them.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:57
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How often does Steam recalculate the price suggestions for different currencies? Because it's been painful to look at the prices even during the sales for the last year or so.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:04
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The devs have to update them manually I think.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:06
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Upsidads posted:I remember when valve made augmented reality events for sales and had bonus content and had only games where you shoot nazis The 2011 summer and winter sales were fun because getting certain achievements had a chance to win you games. I actually booted up a lot of stuff that I bought to try to get the sale cheevos.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:07
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It's Friday night and I'm listening to John Cale. Stake your claim for one of these games if you're interested and I'll PM you a key. edit: Saturday afternoon, only this one left: - Blasphemous (region-locked, will only work if you're in one of these countries) Sway Grunt fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 19:36
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lol Pillars of Eternity 1 released an update today.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:38
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Steam Greenlight has a lot to answer for
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Jan 5, 2024 19:45
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Sway Grunt posted:It's Friday night and I'm listening to John Cale. Stake your claim for one of these games if you're interested and I'll PM you a key. I will stake my claim on grime
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Jan 5, 2024 19:45
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Quik review on Steel Assault: Seriously, the protagonist echoes my exact same thoughts during the ending. Beaten in just around an hour on normal difficulty, and it doesn't look like there are any branching paths, endings, or significant changes for higher difficulties. Don't get me wrong, I was looking for a short and sweet arcade experience, but this just felt incredibly insubstantial: levels and especially bosses ended before I could blink, and most of those levels weren't much to sneeze at, mostly just being filled with Ninja Gaiden-esque unfair traps. More so than that, I was really excited at what they might do with the whole zipline mechanic, but in the end it felt incredibly token, only used here and there for certain situations instead of being a core mechanic that you can get very skilled with. Shame because the game is gorgeous and cool, and clearly a lot of love went into it, but compared to other arcade games like Streets of Rage 4 and the like which I can come back to constantly, this feels paltry.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:46
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Wow didn't realize Dragon's Dogma 2 is going to be $69.99. I think only a few PC games did this like Diablo 4?
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Jan 5, 2024 19:49
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The 2011 summer and winter sales were fun because getting certain achievements had a chance to win you games. I actually booted up a lot of stuff that I bought to try to get the sale cheevos. Don't want that to happen again
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Jan 5, 2024 19:50
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Re: general PC gaming, does anyone have recommendations for foot pedals to use for push-to-talk? The price seems to vary wildly and I'm really not sure what I should be looking for as a basic but sturdy option.
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Jan 5, 2024 19:56
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Sway Grunt posted:It's Friday night and I'm listening to John Cale. Stake your claim for one of these games if you're interested and I'll PM you a key. I'll take Rain World please! edit: Thank you!! vogonity fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 19:56
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FutureCop posted:Quik review on Steel Assault: Does that dude's scar go up into his hair?
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Jan 5, 2024 20:07
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err posted:Wow didn't realize Dragon's Dogma 2 is going to be $69.99. I think only a few PC games did this like Diablo 4? It's supposed to be the new "standard" price for AAA productions, or at least that's what the publishers seem to be pushing. One of the first games to launch at that price point was Redfall which was clearly worth the extra $10.
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Jan 5, 2024 20:07
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I said come in! posted:lol Pillars of Eternity 1 released an update today.
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Jan 5, 2024 20:17
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err posted:Wow didn't realize Dragon's Dogma 2 is going to be $69.99. I think only a few PC games did this like Diablo 4? Pretty standard for AAA now unfortunately.
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Jan 5, 2024 20:19
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