Level scaling ruins the game

[LeKill3rFou]

Why would you think that npc scaling made the game harder? It didnt, quite the contrary.

NPC scaling made the weak enemies a bit stronger (but they are still pretty weak) and it made the strong enemies weaker (they are now also pretty weak).
I made two full playthroughs before 2.00 (so before NPC scaling was added) and two after, and with NPC scaling the game is noticable easier.

It depend on "when" (at which level) you're looking at
At the beginning of the game until level 30, level scalling make the game easier, sure.
But after level 30, it make the game a bit more difficult (I say a bit, because it still rather easy). Before, there isn't any enemy at higher level than 30/35 on the map. So after reaching level 30, you over-leveled all enemies on the map without any exception and the game turned out to be damn easy, even in "very hard".

I mean before level scaling, beating max level enemies (i.e level 30) at level 40/50 was just a formality... (CDPR had to divide the armor value by almost 10 and remove clothe mods to try to add a bit of difficulty in 1.5/1.6)

 

[MaxiTB]

Character progression is a very important element of the RPG genre. It's the journey of your character going from total rookie to master, and traditionally this reflects on the difficulty curve. You start the game with an incompetent character and everything is difficult, then you character become more and more competent and things become increasingly easier. The pre 2.0 Cyberpunk was like this. Your V starts low level and combat and stealth and netrunning are hard, and then V increases in experience, buys more and more cyberware, and everything become easier. There's a very good sense of progression in there.

There's nothing to add here. The point of level progression as an mechanic since the classic pen&paper days is to progress.

But level scaling ruins it. Now every enemy is as competent as V regardless if it makes sense for them to be (gonks like Valentinos can stand their own against a level 50 super augmented V). It completely removes the sense of progression, it makes V's abilities feel weaker and the enemies become bullet sponges. As a result the game feel samey and it flattens the difficulty curve. It's a dirty way of bringing balacing to the game, regardless if the game actually needs it.

Level scaling means there is not direct benefits of having better levels and not only make this type of progression redundant but can also introduce a huge amount of balancing issues (theoretical example: you gain levels by doing non-combat activities which reward non-combat gear and now all the enemies are combat wise stronger while as player you stay behind and actually get weaker). BTW "dirty balance" is correct technical term in this context, as in contrast to "clean progression".

It's an horrible decision and I hope it will be made optional in the near future.

I doubt this will happen, because it is a architectural change. You can't simply switch this on or off like a feature sadly, well, at least not by having proper item domains set up and balancing the whole game basically twice on every level. Considering that they said this game done content wise, I don't think they will rewrite basically their whole game to implement data domains for different progression models.

 

[Tarille]

Level scaling is... A tricky scenario to deal with.

The base level of it is freedom vs "Progression" but it's much more nuanced than that.

Since you have to break down the game into its pieces to see the impact of dynamic vs static scaling.

For example, the original scaling where Pacifica is the high level zone you get a progression as you move through the districts. But you can encounter dissonace in the form of "Why don't the VDB's simple take over NC if they're so much stronger than everyone else?"

While the counterside is your level 1 V can go beat up on Animals just the same as Maelstrommers and the overall feeling of leveling up is rendered moot (Outside of additional benefits beyond mere level based stats, like getting more Cyberware capacity and Attribute points which provide bonuses on top of the base health and damage increases from levels and tiered up weapons)

In my opinion, Cyberpunk could do away with "Levels" and "Level scaling" and all that nonsense and instead utilize an entirely reputation based system;

So instead of levels, you gain attributes/skills based on your overall reputation. This can be functionally the same as experience/levels it just ties in with reputation instead of the 2 being independent systems like they are in CP2077. Further, this system will also gate out gigs and story missions, you have to have enough reputation for people to offer such things to you (I.e. You need enough levels to do this higher scaled content) - Allowing things to make more sense with less "Level 1 V takes on entire Arasaka ninja army alone"

Overall reputation will have a slight effect on overall difficulty. Meaning pleb enemies somewhat scale with you so they're not completely irrelevant at max "Level" (But still significantly weaker than the PC).

While each faction will have its own reputation with the PC. With higher notoriety (AKA lower reputation) meaning they start bringing out tougher gonks (Because they are aware some tough MFer is going around taking out their people). This can allow them to scale into the later game if you keep fighting them (While some sort of pacifist PC would face more pleb enemies even late game). Further, this can transition into bonus things like extra car chases, assassin squads, reinforcements and elite troops being called into missions increasing difficulty as one progresses within that region (Which may or may not end up requiring overall reputation to continue as gigs might get tough enough to gate behind having enough "Levels").

 

[ExSteam]

"So instead of levels, you gain attributes/skills based on your overall reputation. This can be functionally the same as experience/levels it just ties in with reputation instead of the 2 being independent systems like they are in CP2077. Further, this system will also gate out gigs and story missions, you have to have enough reputation for people to offer such things to you (I.e. You need enough levels to do this higher scaled content) - Allowing things to make more sense with less "Level 1 V takes on entire Arasaka ninja army alone""

They do have gated content based on reputation. You are only offered a few gigs and cant get more till you do them. Even though its not a numerical gate the comments from the fixers is "V, you are building a rep and people are talking etc", so they offer more gigs.

If you read the forums people are mad that ability checks stop them from opening a door (they feel they are missing out on something important), gating content based on street cred may do the same.

I have seen streams where people have completed the game with 20 or more points unspent in both attributes and perks with no issues, the game is just not difficult overall. Specially if you grab Sir John, so many streams of people just walking through content with that in hand.
Me personally I think they need to add more mini boss fights and make very hard.....very hard.

At the beginning of the game Jackie and V go into Arasaka tower to steal from the Arasaka's. To me that implies they are already pretty tough and accomplished and just this one heist away from being legends or close to. And in the beginning we only fight security guards, we run from Adam Smasher and Oda would have wiped the floor with us.

In summary, level scaling for me was better because walking through everything at the end was a let down. At least the npcs being a little more beefy meant if they swarmed me I just couldn't stand in the open and had to dash for cover just in case a lucky crit took me out.

 

[Tarille]

They do have gated content based on reputation.

Sure, they gate some vehicles behind street cred. Not that it matters because you can literally have maxed out street cred before even leaving Act 1...

If you read the forums people are mad that ability checks stop them from opening a door (they feel they are missing out on something important), gating content based on street cred may do the same.

It's not really the same thing.

Firstly, people are mad about the change to how ability checks scale. They used to be able to get through every check with only a handful of point and now things scale to require almost complete investment.

Secondly, unlike attributes of which you get a limited amount, reputation can always be maxed out on any character as the only requirement is doing content.

Thirdly, unlike ability checks which gate off side paths or additional dialogue options and are in your face... Gated off gigs simply won't show up until a later point in time. Much like how some gigs already don't show up until you do certain things and get a call about them. Also, unlike how fixer gigs are complained about because of their arbitrary "You must do these 2 gigs before the next ones are available" these lockouts can be justified due to their increased difficulty meaning you go against higher level enemies within them.

 

[Nixilos]

Don't even want to do all the checks, I intentionally skip the ones that don't make sense for the theme of my character. Stuff like this just FEELS passive aggressive at best, and lazy at worst on the part of the devs though.

I don't care whether I meet the requirements to move the piece of sheet metal roofing material that's just sitting there. I care that they thought it was funny to make it require 10 body for any reason. Speaks to the quality of the whole redesign for me but I'm in a minority opinion there I'm aware.

It's scuffed.

 

[louthelou]

“You’re not allowed to post new topics as a new member, so go ahead and necro any old thread that looks like it might be relevant to what you want to talk about.”

Kinda figures that this undesirable policy came from the same minds that think scaling in games is a good thing.

Level scaling is the worst. It removes all sense of progression. Yeah, I have a tier 2 quickhack now instead of a tier 1 quickhack, but the bad guys leveled up with me, so it’s the *same thing*. Yes, I can do more, but I feel no more powerful than I did 10 levels ago.

Oh, it takes 8 Cool to pass that conversation check? Ok, I’ll come back in a couple levels when I have that - aaaaand it’s 9 now for some idiotic, inexplicable reason. Great. Same conversation, same people, but for some reason, I have to be more capable. Just.. dumb.

You didn’t have level scaling originally, then you jury-rigged the entire game to have it, completely removing any incentive to find new weapons or increase my abilities. Weapons apparently scale with you (*sigh*), and leveling quickhacks/cyberware/etc. feels more like a requirement to keep up with enemies that are mysteriously more capable, rather than an advancement in character ability.

More to the point, why would I play a game like this that doesn’t allow me to play out a cyberpunk power fantasy? Why are the bad guys increasing in level as I do? They’re not the ones running around town gaining experience/abilities/etc. They’re not the hero of the story.

Nevermind the near complete removal of the stealth netrunner playstyle, pushed all the way to Tier 4 quickhacks. So stupid.

You ruined your own game. Just like Elder Scrolls Online - but at least they had a legitimate reason (allowing people to play together). Near-total loss of faith in CDPR to make good game design decisions.

 

[Tarille]

“You’re not allowed to post new topics as a new member, so go ahead and necro any old thread that looks like it might be relevant to what you want to talk about.”

Kinda figures that this undesirable policy came from the same minds that think scaling in games is a good thing.

It's a way to combat spam.

Both in terms of repeat threads being made over and over (Which they also do work themselves merging similar threads into singular megathreads) as well as spambots who love to plague online forums (They still occasionally get some posting some spam threads even with this requirement)

In terms of policy, it's pretty sensible.

Level scaling is the worst. It removes all sense of progression. Yeah, I have a tier 2 quickhack now instead of a tier 1 quickhack, but the bad guys leveled up with me, so it’s the *same thing*. Yes, I can do more, but I feel no more powerful than I did 10 levels ago.

There is still a sense of progression. Since the player scales far more quickly than enemies. Meaning your overall powerlevel does increase, even if enemies level up with you. Since enemies merely gain levels and upgraded weapon tiers. You gain levels, upgraded weapon tiers, cyberware capacity, cyberware tiers, skill levels, attribute points and attribute skills.

Especially Quickhacks, which are the things that most tangibly scale better, with longer durations and bonus effects as you tier them up.

Oh, it takes 8 Cool to pass that conversation check? Ok, I’ll come back in a couple levels when I have that - aaaaand it’s 9 now for some idiotic, inexplicable reason. Great. Same conversation, same people, but for some reason, I have to be more capable. Just.. dumb.

Yeah, skill checks scaling with level is a design choice that is universally disliked. Though it is separate from level scaling itself (Bethesda games often utilize level scaling, but have things like lockpicking and other skill checks that are static)

Nevermind the near complete removal of the stealth netrunner playstyle, pushed all the way to Tier 4 quickhacks. So stupid.

Honestly... I've never had a problem with stealth netrunner playstyle. If anything, it's vastly improved over what it used to be since now Quickhacks actually deal damage (I remember before, running around with 20 Intelligence and the highest tier quickhacks I could get, it took me a solid 10 minutes of spamming Overheat and Short Circuit to kill a SINGLE enemy)

The playstyle merely changes over time. Initially you start out targeting enemy netrunners to take them out before they ping you and alert everyone then you blow everyone up from your little hidey hole. Later with various abilities and quickhacks, you can just blow through everyone off the bat because you have ways to stall out the ping upload.

 

[Trejan]

"Level Scaling RUINS the game"? Really...does it really ruin the entire game? Come on mates, lets do better.

Yes, really ruin the entire game. Level scaling in game RPG it's tragic.

 

[deathmolor]

Character progression is a very important element of the RPG genre. It's the journey of your character going from total rookie to master, and traditionally this reflects on the difficulty curve. You start the game with an incompetent character and everything is difficult, then you character become more and more competent and things become increasingly easier. The pre 2.0 Cyberpunk was like this. Your V starts low level and combat and stealth and netrunning are hard, and then V increases in experience, buys more and more cyberware, and everything become easier. There's a very good sense of progression in there.

But level scaling ruins it. Now every enemy is as competent as V regardless if it makes sense for them to be (gonks like Valentinos can stand their own against a level 50 super augmented V). It completely removes the sense of progression, it makes V's abilities feel weaker and the enemies become bullet sponges. As a result the game feel samey and it flattens the difficulty curve. It's a dirty way of bringing balacing to the game, regardless if the game actually needs it.

It's an horrible decision and I hope it will be made optional in the near future.

I completely agree 2.0 makes no sense to me, ya the story is ok. It's nice having more story but nothing makes sense anymore building a character and working on skills and min/max yourself and in general lots of very specific character building is lost. I can't see any gear or character building at all. I don't know how to make my character better, nothing makes sense. All the changes just made monowire the only weapon to use. You can't work on different types of shooting or all the cool game play elements, its just monowire combat now all the way through the game, because shooting sucks entirely. I really have no interest in completing this expansion. It's waste of my time. Whatever nonsense you did to the game you just took a big dump on it and made it pointless to me.

Post automatically merged: Aug 28, 2024

The more I look into 2.0 the more i question all the positive reviews. Something is very fishy about this. Everyone i know hates 2.0 gameplay and the scaling. The story could not possibly be so good as to cause people to ignore the unusable game play.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

The more I look into 2.0 the more i question all the positive reviews. Something is very fishy about this. Everyone i know hates 2.0 gameplay and the scaling.

We shouldn't know the same people, because overall, it seem to me that people mostly enjoy the changes CDPR brought to the game in 2.0. After if you only seek for people who share your opinion, sure, all of those you will find hate the 2.0

 

[GrimReaper801]

The more I look into 2.0 the more i question all the positive reviews. Something is very fishy about this. Everyone i know hates 2.0 gameplay and the scaling. The story could not possibly be so good as to cause people to ignore the unusable game play.

So what are you trying to say here? That there is some grand conspiracy and just every positive review is some kind of bot from CDPR? Cause that is some tin foil hat stuff.

Keep in mind we all have a tendency to surround ourselves with people who we like and we generally like people we share similar opinions, thoughts, etc with. There are clearly far more people who enjoy the changes than people who don't.

It sucks you don't like the changes in 2.0 and attribute scaling certainly is ridiculous but every build is still extremely viable. Just because you can't figure out a way of doing it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

[Tarille]

All the changes just made monowire the only weapon to use. You can't work on different types of shooting or all the cool game play elements, its just monowire combat now all the way through the game, because shooting sucks entirely

Shooting doesn't suck. Shooting is just fine. This goes for all types of weapons (I'm not a fan of SMG's though, especially their perk path with the whole "Weapon swap" focus for its ultimate perk)

In fact, they made some weapons actually usable with changes, like Tech Snipers which before were horrendous because they HAD to be charged to fire and during the charge-up the shook more than a fat guy on a trampolene during an earthquake so it was nigh impossible to aim the damn thing. Now they not only don't shake while charging, but also don't need to be charged to fire so you can pick off weak enemies quickly.

The only thing they took away from shooting, is the ability to stack damage upon damage upon damage to get so strong you'd literally just one-shot everything. Which hardly takes away from "Cool game play elements" when you actually can't bypass them all by just one shotting everything.

Everyone i know hates 2.0 gameplay and the scaling. The story could not possibly be so good as to cause people to ignore the unusable game play.

2.0 gameplay is much improved over 1.0. Most people tend to agree with that.

Scaling... Is less positively received. But for the most part it's not that big an issue (Except ability checks which does cause a lot of frustration)

 

[PillowEgg3]

I just play the game in story mode. There is no point bothering playing the game on higher difficulties where enemies become a bullet sponge. I just want to enjoy the story, shoot some gonks and move on to the next form of entertainment. Difficulty is all about unlocking new A.I tactics not increasing enemy health pool, lowering your health pool, and making consumables appear less frequent. I don't have the time to do retries over and over again.

 

[Trejan]

Please provide arguments for using level scaling. I see only disadvantages.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Please provide arguments for using level scaling. I see only disadvantages.

Just one :
If you complete the main story first and so, level up pretty quickly, it prevent the fact that you will encounter on the map, GIGs, quests only (very) low level enemies which offer absolutely no challenge nor interest to fight against (I mean, fighting level 5 dudes while you're level 50 is not what I would qualify entertaining^^)
But yes, there downsides, like you might feel a bit less* the evolution of your character.

Edit:
*I said "a bit less" because unless you do not unlock any perk or do not install any cyberwares, by leveling up, you have access to "superpowers" to always keep a serious advantage against the enemies even if they level up along you.

And I can also provide another one, just in case:
You are able to do all quests and GIGs at any level. It's no longer dependant to your level. You want to complete Dino GIG to unlock your favorite car early game, you can. Or complete Wakako's GIGs to earn one of the best katana right at the beginning of Act 2, you can.

 

[devivre]

Please provide arguments for using level scaling. I see only disadvantages.

For me personally, the only time I like level scaling is in games like Elder Scrolls Online, where it gives you the option to start a new expansion with a fresh character and still complete it without grind.

That being said, adding a story expansion oft really does mess with the progression and with the usual type of character progression I don't see many good alternatives to level scaling in open world gaming.

 

[Tarille]

Please provide arguments for using level scaling. I see only disadvantages.

- Freedom of content progression. You're not locked into doing things in a set order based on some arbitrary level scaling, you can go and do whatever you want, whenever you want. (Which is significant for open world games that are trying to promote an "Explore the world and find cool things" type gameplay rather than a linear progression in an large, empty space)

- ALWAYS having relevant combat (This can be seen by some as a disadvantage because "I want to feel powerful and murk on some level 1 gonks as a level 100" viewpoints. But in terms of gameplay, it provides more longevity in which you have actively engaging content)

- Mission rewards and loot are always relevant. There's never going to be any missions/areas where items just are useless to you because you've outleveled them.

Literally, the only disadvantage inherent to level scaling is the inability to "Feel stronger" by going into a low level zone and utterly decimating enemies (Ignoring the fact that this feeling instantly disappears when you go fight level appropriate things and lo and behold, you're back to feeling as strong as if things were level scaled and not an iota more powerful)

The main disadvantages from level scaling are simply fruits of the way the scaling was implemented. Either the power curves of enemies or the way power is granted.

For example, in Skyrim level scaling (And difficulty scaling) is simply making everything a massive damage sponge. Nothing is dangerous, it's just tedious as you sit there for 5 minutes hacking away with your overmaxxed upgraded weapons on a basic pleb Draugr (With dozens more to go in that single tomb alone...). This is horrendously bad and makes the game boring and often made you feel WEAKER when leveling up because things took so much longer to kill...

But in the same vein there's examples of where no level scaling is bad. For example, when I played Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, I missed out on 95% of the game because clearing the first 2 zones had me so overleveled that everything in the game was meaningless so all that mattered was simply rushing through the story to get to the last boss who I promptly 2 shot (With all items I received from the main story also being meaningless because I could craft way stronger items due to being so high level). So I experienced 2 zones out of 27 in the game and even then most of those 2 zones was me fighting enemies way below my level for quests that gave useless rewards...

Meaning that at the end of the day, it's not really about the system of level scaling vs no scaling. But rather the implementation. Both styles can function well or poorly depending on implementation.

 

[Trejan]

Scaling levels is tragically bad for RPGs and strategies because it kills the satisfaction of development and advantage that is the reward for patience, sacrifice and good planning. Scaling is good for MMOs, for action games and arcade games. When scaling, distributing points is ... a formality. Don't assign points and enemies will adapt to the weaker one anyway. Distribute them and the weakest opponent will be a challenge - and he shouldn't. If the argument is used that too strong progress makes weaker regions irrelevant - it means that the game is poorly planned. To sum up: scaling levels moves the game from RPG to adventure game, action game, arcade game. Cyberpunk 2077 is described as an RPG. Scaling excludes RPG, the essence of which is features, indicators and their growth. If everything is scaled, this progress is illusory. A game with scaling should be described as: adventure action game with RPG elements. I don't understand why games with choices and a plot are described as RPGs. Adventure and action games also have plots and choices. I hope that the new Cyberpunk 2 will be a true RPG game through and through. A weakling enters the wrong place and messes with the wrong people without preparation, gets a beating and suffers the consequences. But after some time he comes back at a higher level and makes a mess. And not like he always looks there and everywhere and it will always be the same. A developed character appears in a location where he meets weak opponents and is a terminator for them (because he is, he figured it out himself) is a real story. And not that the "terminator" fights in an even duel with a local hooligan. So how do you understand that? That this local hooligan also made money, implanted it and is also a terminator? And what's wrong with having an advantage and as a terminator after some time you crush such weaklings who used to be a challenge (when you were also "thin" and weak). The plot and does not explain scaling. Scaling is "taking the easy way out" by the producers. What kind of explanation is that - if you are strong, you will not have a fan of fighting in districts you have not visited before. I will have it when I "walk" through them without effort.

In short, there should be a parameter in the game settings: SCALING: YES/NO and the choice should be up to the player. More work for the producer - but the game would satisfy everyone. Both those who want a real RPG and those who want an action-adventure game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game. But its level scaling is a mistake.

 

[jeancastex]

The plot and does not explain scaling.

Because it's just a gameplay mechanic. Like Difficulty Adjustment in Resident Evil, nothing in the lore says that zombies become stronger because you have a lot of ammo and healing items in your inventory.