I wasn't concerned with level scaling till I played the game. In a lot of instances devs said we will be able to play the main story in however order we want and the order we play them could change things Then in the game there is suggested levels for main story goes like 5-5-6-10-14 etc for the first half of the story; so unless we intentionally ignore the main story missions near areas for our level, we'd never get to see how it would be like f.i. if we start the main story from Skellige, from there to Novigrad then Velen or some other order. I'm certain 99.9999% of the players did the main quests first in Velen, then Novigrad, then Skellige.
So my point is I'd rather have had level scaled enemies and quests instead of that sense of achievement when we reach its level or overlevel and kill that monster and kill low level enemies without any fun. With level scaling we may have had an option to start the story from 3 different parts of the game world after we first visited Vizima. Think about the replayability value. And if the enemies could gain new skills/abilities and even change in appearance with levelling also, it woulda been a unique experience any time we'd change our direction in a new playthrough. And unlevelled enemies could still be included depending where we'd started.
So my point is I'd rather have had level scaled enemies and quests instead of that sense of achievement when we reach its level or overlevel and kill that monster and kill low level enemies without any fun. With level scaling we may have had an option to start the story from 3 different parts of the game world after we first visited Vizima. Think about the replayability value. And if the enemies could gain new skills/abilities and even change in appearance with levelling also, it woulda been a unique experience any time we'd change our direction in a new playthrough. And unlevelled enemies could still be included depending where we'd started.
Level scaling is unneeded. What makes it look "a good idea" is over-scaling level progression. Eliminate the "cliff", make it more a gentle incline, and get back 'serious challenge from 'tougher monsters'', being able to reasonably choose a 'slightly less good' set of equipment that has higher buffs (when not so over-developed that equipment ceases to be important - which currently does happen).
Reducing the stats bloat (both for the character, his bonus skills and the equipment, also brings improvements to the economy (junk swords start at 6-10 crowns or so selling price, and slowly increases... in the end game the equivalent "junk swords" are now shifting for 60-300 crowns each, with a high proportion being relics, mastercrafted etc, making our own progress in unlocking this "unknown" technique look stupid).
Same for armour. The NPC armour ranges from 10-50, while ours can easily exceed 400+ (for ostensibly the same stuff ~ as a result "dangerous monsters" start hitting with 1000s of points of damage, making them unapproachable at "the wrong level", and slightly silly at any level...
I've no problem with 'degree of threat' within an enemy type, nor different degrees of threat between different classes of enemy. For this 'levels' make some sense, but I dislike the extreme "slope" of the scaling curve, it is too extreme, making a mockery of early game "seriously dangerous monsters" ~ they could trivially be taken on by most mid-game bandit camps.
Reducing the stats bloat (both for the character, his bonus skills and the equipment, also brings improvements to the economy (junk swords start at 6-10 crowns or so selling price, and slowly increases... in the end game the equivalent "junk swords" are now shifting for 60-300 crowns each, with a high proportion being relics, mastercrafted etc, making our own progress in unlocking this "unknown" technique look stupid).
Same for armour. The NPC armour ranges from 10-50, while ours can easily exceed 400+ (for ostensibly the same stuff ~ as a result "dangerous monsters" start hitting with 1000s of points of damage, making them unapproachable at "the wrong level", and slightly silly at any level...
I've no problem with 'degree of threat' within an enemy type, nor different degrees of threat between different classes of enemy. For this 'levels' make some sense, but I dislike the extreme "slope" of the scaling curve, it is too extreme, making a mockery of early game "seriously dangerous monsters" ~ they could trivially be taken on by most mid-game bandit camps.
the current system would be perfect if the regular monster mobs were bigger in numbers/members, and if the bigger monsters were more aggressive, aka attacked more often, leaving you less room for error, this way quen protects me from everything, and I don't wanna hinder myself by not using a game mechanic that's pretty cool as a concept, just turns out to be way too OP, if the 1st thing I've mentioned would get addressed, it'd be perfect, as well as the combat in general
Great thread, with a lot of interesting ideas.
The first thing to say is that no one is stating what game difficulty you're playing on. I'm doing my first run thru on Sword & Story, which I took to be 'Normal', & assume that's how they imagine most players will approach it. I'm Lvl 26 now & starting to feel like it's getting a bit easy for me.
I'm not sure I fully understand the whole scaling thing, or how & where it might apply. I think that the problem lies elsewhere.
Much as I like & admire CDPR, & believe them to be about the best story tellers in gaming, I think it's the plot of the game that's at fault.
We start as a mature Geralt, with his memory restored, so we shouldn't really have any trouble dispatching bandits, drowners etc., especially as there's no plot reason for him not having good gear equipped. There, it should be their numbers, tactics & equipment that make the difficulty.
The whole 'open world' thing is part of the problem too. If, by wandering around, you can encounter non boss monsters that 1 hit kill you, that's a game design fault.
It would make more sense if you couldn't access certain areas until you'd done certain main story quests, thus being the appropriate Lvl for the upcoming encounters. On the side quest/non boss enemies front, a similar trick could be used, whereby you can't get through a heavily defended/gated pass, for instance, until you earn the locals favour by doing enough side quests for them & gaining a friendly/admired status with them so they let you thru.
I agree with the Skyrim style skills upgrade by use, just needs to be carefully calibrated. The current 12 skill slots limit is good I think.
Lastly, the worst element of W3 is the treasure gear. When you've invested a lot of time & effort into getting a treasure hoard, it should be pretty good gear & stay pretty good gear! I like the weapon/armor diagram thing, coz this means that the game could control it's leveling by restricting access to various smiths of differing skills by either of the methods I've previously mentioned. They've really missed a trick there I feel. Example, we go thru 2 pretty high level quest to afford/allow 'master' status to 2 smiths, only to find that when they craft a diagram, there's no stat difference in it to a 'journeyman' crafting it! If they controlled access to various areas, they could have allowed for Dwarven & Elven smiths to be encountered later, to further boost weapon/armor stats.
The first thing to say is that no one is stating what game difficulty you're playing on. I'm doing my first run thru on Sword & Story, which I took to be 'Normal', & assume that's how they imagine most players will approach it. I'm Lvl 26 now & starting to feel like it's getting a bit easy for me.
I'm not sure I fully understand the whole scaling thing, or how & where it might apply. I think that the problem lies elsewhere.
Much as I like & admire CDPR, & believe them to be about the best story tellers in gaming, I think it's the plot of the game that's at fault.
We start as a mature Geralt, with his memory restored, so we shouldn't really have any trouble dispatching bandits, drowners etc., especially as there's no plot reason for him not having good gear equipped. There, it should be their numbers, tactics & equipment that make the difficulty.
The whole 'open world' thing is part of the problem too. If, by wandering around, you can encounter non boss monsters that 1 hit kill you, that's a game design fault.
It would make more sense if you couldn't access certain areas until you'd done certain main story quests, thus being the appropriate Lvl for the upcoming encounters. On the side quest/non boss enemies front, a similar trick could be used, whereby you can't get through a heavily defended/gated pass, for instance, until you earn the locals favour by doing enough side quests for them & gaining a friendly/admired status with them so they let you thru.
I agree with the Skyrim style skills upgrade by use, just needs to be carefully calibrated. The current 12 skill slots limit is good I think.
Lastly, the worst element of W3 is the treasure gear. When you've invested a lot of time & effort into getting a treasure hoard, it should be pretty good gear & stay pretty good gear! I like the weapon/armor diagram thing, coz this means that the game could control it's leveling by restricting access to various smiths of differing skills by either of the methods I've previously mentioned. They've really missed a trick there I feel. Example, we go thru 2 pretty high level quest to afford/allow 'master' status to 2 smiths, only to find that when they craft a diagram, there's no stat difference in it to a 'journeyman' crafting it! If they controlled access to various areas, they could have allowed for Dwarven & Elven smiths to be encountered later, to further boost weapon/armor stats.