Why do designers choose to scale enemies with the player?

[Ouro]

I think in it's theoretical 'best form', scaling can be used in open world games to help preserve some of the fun. Since the player has a lot of freedom in where to go, it's possible to skip some areas by accident and only to discover them later, at the point where you are far too levelled for anything in it to be fun. In that case, a rubber-band effect that pulls the enemies levels up a little is perfectly fine, as long as it isn't too extreme (and has say, a set cap that they can't scale beyond).
In it's best case, the area is still enough levels below me that I can tell that I was supposed to come here earlier and it's still pretty easy but it's just challenging enough to hold my attention.

That's only scaling up, mind you. Nothing should ever scale down unless it's a difficulty select option.

I didn't actually believe in scaling as being an effective tool for this until I recently played Cassette Beasts, an open world RPG that does gentle 'catch-up scaling' in the way that I described very well and clearly with a lot of attention paid to the particulars of it. And that's the rub, I think. if you implement scaling lazily, with the goal of avoiding further work, it's not going to be very good. If you're not going to devote the rigour you should just avoid doing it.

 

[Tai_MT]

Personally, I think in an "open world" design, you're better off without the "scaling" and instead adopting a design philosophy for combat of "stats don't matter, only player skill matters". As in, you could beat any creature at any level, and be killed by any creature at any level, if you played well enough, or played poorly enough.

At such a point, "scaling" becomes unnecessary and only "gimmicks" matter.

 

[ZombieKidzRule]

@Tai_MT I’m not sure how that would work if you wanted to include higher level enemies in the game because the party would not be able to defeat that enemy at just any level.

For instance, say the game was going to have a ruined castle of the undead that is loaded with high level enemies. Normally I would say it is up to the player not to try to explore that location unless they are appropriately prepared and at a higher level.

But saying that any enemy should be able to be beaten by a player of any level seems problematic in that regard. Of course you could do a whole god level equipment makes it possible, but if the game doesn’t do equipment like that, then I wonder how you would structure that system with the higher level enemies.

Just curious.

 

[NamEtag]

@Tai_MT I’m not sure how that would work if you wanted to include higher level enemies in the game because the party would not be able to defeat that enemy at just any level.

For instance, say the game was going to have a ruined castle of the undead that is loaded with high level enemies. Normally I would say it is up to the player not to try to explore that location unless they are appropriately prepared and at a higher level.

But saying that any enemy should be able to be beaten by a player of any level seems problematic in that regard. Of course you could do a whole god level equipment makes it possible, but if the game doesn’t do equipment like that, then I wonder how you would structure that system with the higher level enemies.

Just curious.

That depends on how much levels scale up durability and lethality.

With the obvious example of dark souls, even a fully kitted fighter can die to a horde of beginner enemies if you stood still for a full minute. That's not even accounting for death by gravity.

The things that a player needs to feel confident about challenging a higher level area aren't necessarily raw stats. It can be understanding of mechanics, special gimmick counters, or they just had a beer and are ready to yolo. And that's fine. It's fine enough to have a very profitable market, anyway.

 

[BubblegumPatty]

It also depends on the type of game I think. in a more traditional turned based game No matter what strategy you have, a level 1 party won't have the damage output needed nor the defense/dodge ability to take down a level 99 superboss without dying turn 1 . but it can be plenty doable in a more action rpg setting like The Elder scrolls or dark souls where part of the player's survivability is based on their dodge skills.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

A lot of my friends are complaining about Diablo 4, saying that the game is so well-made but it is ruined by some very poor design decisions, such as the enemies scaling with player level. They feel like they're "making no progress." I wanted to say, like, I guess the designers at blizzard should have read the rpg maker game design forums.

But in all seriousness, what do you think is the intent of this design decision? This isn't even just some random indie dev from the rpg maker community, this is a team at one of the biggest game design companies in the world coming to this conclusion. What were they thinking?! How does such a design choice enhance player experience? I suppose one way of looking at it would be that in a game like Dark Souls, you always want the combat to feel challenging and that results are more a matter of player skill than time investment - but then why even have levels? Anyway, just thought I would throw this topic up for discussion.

Scaling enemies is an invention by Bethesda, and a seriously good one too. When I first found out that enemies scale in Skyrim, I was like: "What? Then why would I even level?"

But over time, it all made sense: It is an open world. Meaning you can encounter monsters like bandits and other creatures at low level and at high level, anywhere in the game. Bandits, silverhand, vampires etc need to be defeatable when you're low level, but they also need to be challenging when you are powerful, otherwise the game is no fun.

In Skyrim, when your enemies grow, they also drop better loot. A low level enemy will most likely drop fur or leather armor, while a high level enemy might wear nordic armor or better. So you don't actually encounter the same enemies, but a stronger version of that enemy. They wear better gear, so they also drop better gear too.

There are still enemies that are always high level (like dragon priests) or low level (like wolves), though.

Then what do you gain by leveling? Well, you develop your character. You choose which part you grow. Do you want to be an amazing sword fighter, or a destruction mage? Do you want to be able to make strong armor, or put great enchantments on them?

To grow any of your skills, you need to level up. This is why leveling in skyrim is still very much a desired feature, even though enemies level up with you.

Another thing is that you can only find certain gear, NPC's and quests, when you reach a certain level. The ebony warrior, for example, won't show up unless you're lvl 80. And then it will still be a tough cookie to crack. Even on easy difficulty.

This needs to be done well, though. If this is not done well, your whole game is out of balance.

---

All with all, I think it is pretty much impossible to make a well balanced open world game, if the enemies are not leveled. It would mean you have low level area's and high level area's, which kind of beats the whole open world dynamics into oblivion. It is not truely an open world game, if you have to beat the area's in a given order.

(Edit: I notice that my examples are so often based on skyrim, yet none of my games have anything based on anything skyrim did. Isn't that funny?)

 

[Tai_MT]

@Tai_MT I’m not sure how that would work if you wanted to include higher level enemies in the game because the party would not be able to defeat that enemy at just any level.

For instance, say the game was going to have a ruined castle of the undead that is loaded with high level enemies. Normally I would say it is up to the player not to try to explore that location unless they are appropriately prepared and at a higher level.

But saying that any enemy should be able to be beaten by a player of any level seems problematic in that regard. Of course you could do a whole god level equipment makes it possible, but if the game doesn’t do equipment like that, then I wonder how you would structure that system with the higher level enemies.

Just curious.

You're talking about a "Standard Progression Model" and not "Enemy Scaling". Enemy Scaling means the enemies are basically always within your range to kill. Strong enemies eat nerfs to at about your level (or, rather, takeable at your level, even if they're more powerful) and weak enemies pump buffs to remain a challenge.

If you're talking a system where every creature has a "minimum strength" they can be at, and to overpower them, you need to be at that strength, then it's a "combination" of standard progression and enemy scaling.

The point I'm making is that "scaling" can be problematic. Especially if a player doesn't find all the equipment they were meant to find, doesn't have the skills they were meant to have, or whatever the heck else, by the time they reach "the new enemies". In an Open World, this becomes triply problematic.

It's why I prefer, if you've got an "open world" that a game does not "scale". It's just better if "everything is takeable at every level" and "anything can kill you", so that it doesn't matter where the player goes and what they do, they'll be viable so long as they know the gimmick and how to counter it.

If you consider "Breath of the Wild", it did a pretty decent job of just that. You can absolutely destroy Guardians and Lynels at Heart level 3 and no stamina. Granted, to kill the Lynels, you will need to have found stronger equipment (because of the way damage works in the game), or judiciously use your Cellphone Powers (BOMBS! BOMB EVERYTHING! NOTHING IS RESISTANT TO THEM!). The game tries to point you in the right direction for how to "easier" take all the enemies, but a player who is skilled can do it without those things. Granted, it also does "scaling" of the enemies to an extent as well... But, if you can beat a regular Lynel, you can beat a Silver/Gold Lynel. The only difference between them is in how much damage they need to eat to die and how much damage they can dish out to you. Their defense never actually goes up.

With an open world, it's often just better and easier to make your combat revolve around "gimmicks", rather than "stats", because it'd be too easy to soft lock players or completely destroy their progression. Meanwhile, if all it takes to beat the enemy is "figure it out", then they can beat it at any point. They can brute force it with a bajillion HP, or they can beat it with 1 and clever tactics.

 

[FirestormNeos]

Because when your game needs to be a 10,000-Years-Worth-of-Playtime Action Game to sell, you don't care that "non-linear gameplay structure" and "incremental character progression system" go together like...

actually, i can't think of an example of two otherwise harmless things mixing into something catastrophically insufferable.

 

[M.I.A.]

I didn't know this about Diablo4.. if there were any chance of me picking it up, it's gone now.
Level/Enemy Scaling (or scaling in general) is one of my least favorite features in RPGs.
Level Scaling, although people make many good points about, simply just negates my motivation to level up a little harder or explore all the content. It's a punishment system, not a reward system.
And if I wanted to participate in a punishment system, I'd spend more time in real life and less time gaming.

-MIA

 

[pawsplay]

If you apply level scaling, to everything, fairly evenly, you're just better off not having leveling at all. Scaling can be a useful tool in some situations, but you you don't want to give away the trick.

 

[Seacliff]

I really don't care for level scaling in most games because it's like there is no wrong answer in what's supposed to be player-driven progression. It's an illusion of a choice, a system that only exists to keep the surface-level dopamine rush of "bigger numbers good" rather than making that a meaningful aspect of the gameplay.

 

[JeuneDanielSoleil]

It's mostly meant to keep the play engaged but can make progression a bit useless feeling. The best way to add scaling is to make it a sort of difficulty select. A lot of open world games use it as well so that when the player goes back to explore an area of the map they don't just stomp everything, and it makes it so they can pretty much go anywhere they want right of the bat.

Having a harder difficulty with this scaling effect so the player can select it when they've mastered the game or have gotten bored.

I'm surprised to hear that Diablo 4 has scaling because those games usually have a massive selection of difficulty. Diablo 3 had a total of 16 iirc.

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

A problem of level scaling for Diablo 4 is that this mechanic is in conflict with both immersion and the joy of building up a character. The feeling of progression can be fully experienced only by being able to 1-shot enemies that were once threats to your character, and half the joy of the Diablo series has been about that experience. A smarmy minion being just as hard at level 100 as it was at level 1 can feel super awkward too.

 

[Iron_Brew]

The reason is incredibly simple: Multiplayer.

If you want to play with a friend, the friction is massively reduced if you can play together regardless of things like avatar level. WoW made the change, and it makes sense that D4 did the same thing.

 

[Tai_MT]

@Iron_Brew

If it's for Multiplayer, I actually prefer the way Final Fantasy 14 has handled the "scaling", compared to what other systems I've played so far. Namely, I get to keep my equipment and most of its stats are scaled down to "the maximum" for the level of the content being run, and my own level is reduced. You know, so I don't "ruin" the experience for newbies, but I'm also not severely "gimped" for playing with the newbies, either.

I also like that "unsync'd" is a thing and counts toward completion for most things. Namely, the ability to bring in my full level and equipment into a low level area and just stomp it, to get it over with.

But, that's just my own preferences.

 

[NamEtag]

@Iron_Brew

If it's for Multiplayer, I actually prefer the way Final Fantasy 14 has handled the "scaling", compared to what other systems I've played so far. Namely, I get to keep my equipment and most of its stats are scaled down to "the maximum" for the level of the content being run, and my own level is reduced. You know, so I don't "ruin" the experience for newbies, but I'm also not severely "gimped" for playing with the newbies, either.

I also like that "unsync'd" is a thing and counts toward completion for most things. Namely, the ability to bring in my full level and equipment into a low level area and just stomp it, to get it over with.

But, that's just my own preferences.

Capping levels to the actual intended power level for those mechanics is soooo much better as an implementation of scaling.

It takes less work since you're not scaling things up or down beyond their intended design, there's a clear communication of power tiers, and you even have the option to make lower level gear a useful part of the economy for fringe sidegrades.

And some players find it fun to respec different builds for smaller and larger skillpoint content.