Poll of the Day > Open world overworld difficulty, which do you prefer?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I personally prefer the areas are level set. It's always nice running into a lvl100 dragon when you're lvl5.

It didn't make sense that the lvl 1 mini goblin should all the sudden become a lvl 85 mini goblin that can smash you. It kinda takes away from the authentic feel of the game world.

It is kind of like if Anakin waited until he became Darth Vader and did order 66 then.....and all of the Padawans were somehow Jedi masters..... But still Padawans.

I kind of prefer a combination of the two.

Sort of how Dragon Age: Origins handles it (even though that's admittedly not an open world game). Basically, each area has a specific level rating scale, and the game auto-adjusts difficulty to match your current level, but it can never go lower than the area's rating, nor higher.

So you have a little bit of flexibility and keeping enemies somewhat dangerous, but you'll also eventually reach a point where you're overleveled and can wipe enemies in that area out with minor effort.

A mix of both

Set level. Oblivion was god awful with leveling everything to you.
Why is this bandit shaking me down for a hundred gold when he could sell his full suit of glass armor and retire in a nice house somewhere?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I kind of prefer a combination of the two.

Sort of how Dragon Age: Origins handles it (even though that's admittedly not an open world game). Basically, each area has a specific level rating scale, and the game auto-adjusts difficulty to match your current level, but it can never go lower than the area's rating, nor higher.

So you have a little bit of flexibility and keeping enemies somewhat dangerous, but you'll also eventually reach a point where you're overleveled and can wipe enemies in that area out with minor effort.

Skyrim did this. Every area had a minimum level.

I ... don't like the concept of levels in open world games

Combo of both, but more on the side of set area levels

Other: Xenoblade difficulty

Enemies are maybe 60% level appropriate, some are lower level, and a whole bunch are higher level and will wreck your shit if you're not careful (but you can come back later and get revenge)

Set levels

set levels but not arranged linearly. there should be things in the world that you're afraid of, and you should want to avoid those things but hope to be able to deal with them later.

Area level scales with the character. That way, you can farm the areas you like without worrying about an experience penalty.

streamofthesky posted...

Other: Xenoblade difficulty

Enemies are maybe 60% level appropriate, some are lower level, and a whole bunch are higher level and will wreck your shit if you're not careful (but you can come back later and get revenge)

This, but not quite to the same extent as X did, especially where X had the added size modifier and other hidden stats that basically amounted to "this is only level-appropriate in a skell." That was somewhat intuitive, but still resulted in a lot of borderline cases where I'd be fighting something slightly under my level and still getting wrecked (before setting up various infinite Overdrive abuses, of course), and there were a ton of cases of having something much more powerful than its neighbours show up and force me to run away. I'm fine with the occasional Territorial Rotbart forcing me to pay attention, but having to do that constantly got a little annoying (albeit very consistent with the "exploring a dangerous uncharted wilderness" theme).

Done right, that means there's still a sense of danger and a need to avoid certain areas within a region even when most of it isn't terribly challenging, plus it keeps the area relevant throughout the whole game because you can revisit it and accomplish new things (plus it's super satisfying to finally take down Rotbart or the Fel Reaver or whatever after running for so long).

I actually like the feeling of turning into a god as you level up. The reverse difficulty curve.

Set levels. Leveling with you is almost never done correctly. Dead Island for example was fucking horrible and all the enemies were always far stronger than you.

They should be regionally leveled as makes sense for lore, and the game should direct you to a path of growth that will take you through all areas of the overworld.

SinisterSlay posted...

I actually like the feeling of turning into a god as you level up. The reverse difficulty curve.

I like that so long as there's more than just levelling up involved in achieving godhood. I like having other mechanics to play around with to create broken combinations, as opposed to the game just becoming easy once I hit a certain level.

Revelation34 posted...

Set levels. Leveling with you is almost never done correctly. Dead Island for example was fucking horrible and all the enemies were always far stronger than you.

Level scaling always makes me think of Oblivion and its "levelling up will make you weaker unless leveled up skills that you explicitly identified as not being your main ones so you get better stat bonuses" system, which was hideously unintuitive.

adjl posted...

I like that so long as there's more than just levelling up involved in achieving godhood. I like having other mechanics to play around with to create broken combinations, as opposed to the game just becoming easy once I hit a certain level.

Level scaling always makes me think of Oblivion and its "levelling up will make you weaker unless leveled up skills that you explicitly identified as not being your main ones so you get better stat bonuses" system, which was hideously unintuitive.

I just kept jumping around in Oblivion to level up stats. I miss that system.

Even though it sounds more restrictive, level set areas.

I usually go into the higher leveled areas early and see how well I can hang anyway.

adjl posted...

I like that so long as there's more than just levelling up involved in achieving godhood. I like having other mechanics to play around with to create broken combinations, as opposed to the game just becoming easy once I hit a certain level.

That's true. God level because you understand the game. But totally cool with the game being balanced around players not understanding the game.

Revelation34 posted...

I just kept jumping around in Oblivion to level up stats. I miss that system.

It was interesting in that you could, with sufficient knowledge of the game, manipulate the levelling system to make your character totally broken, but that manipulation was so blatantly counterintuitive and flew in the face of anything that could be considered "normal gameplay" that I can't call it a good system. When the fundamental piece of advice any levelling system guide will give you is "pick Main Skills that your character will rarely use," that's a little too obscure for my liking.

SinisterSlay posted...

That's true. God level because you understand the game. But totally cool with the game being balanced around players not understanding the game.

Indeed, or at least balancing it so you only need to pay a little bit of attention (like reading tutorials/manuals) to succeed. If the game's balanced so nobody needs to pay any attention, that's a little too easy for my liking, but min/maxing should only be necessary to really break the game.

Kinda like skyrim but it works be nice is garbage bandits stayed garbage bandits and only serious threats grew with you

Also I wish wild Pokmon didn't cap out so low, it's always a bitch to grind to 100 because, iirc, you never find wild Pokmon higher than like 60s

Muscles posted...

Also I wish wild Pokmon didn't cap out so low, it's always a bitch to grind to 100 because, iirc, you never find wild Pokmon higher than like 60s

Honestly I wish pokemon didn't have "levels" but rather combat stages where they get access to other moves at each stage. The idea of HP and all that is sorta stupid to me. Logically a level 100 weedle shouldn't be able to OHKO a level 10 onyx in my mind.

hypnox posted...

Honestly I wish pokemon didn't have "levels" but rather combat stages where they get access to other moves at each stage. The idea of HP and all that is sorta stupid to me. Logically a level 100 weedle shouldn't be able to OHKO a level 10 onyx in my mind.

Agreed

Speaking of open world... the ultimate open world game, Metal Max, has a new iteration up on Steam now...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637230/METAL_MAX_Xeno_Reborn/

But I'm worried cuz, yaknow, as an old series it's bound to have problems... IDK why but devs can't seem to recapture the classics.