Game Scaling

[Blessed Heretic]

So after playing a bit, I've noticed a little bit of a issue with regard to renown.

Enemies become progressively harder as you gain renown, which is gained from doing contracts and winning fights.

However, most contracts will never pay out enough in comparison to the increase to the difficulty of the world in comparison to the 5 battles you'd be able to have prior to the same gain. You can gain equipment, experience and oddly earn more crowns by simply hunting down camps and such.

I did a test where i did mostly just contracts and didn't fight unless forced, in the end i barely had crowns despite having extremely high renown. Bandit thugs disappeared and those were about what my party was capable of fighting near the end, hilariously due to the lack of any experience and thus poor stats and worse yet the gear difference. Raiders simply out preformed my band because we had gamb and leather as our high end , and their default was generally light mails and such. Combine that with better weapons, that particular group of mercs simply were awful.

Then I ran a party with no contracts unless we desperately needed to, often this never happened however. In partice i had more crowns, superior armor and more troops and much more experience. Raiders became farm rather than threat.

I thought about this and i kind of figured out what really bugged me.

It was simply the numbers game that I managed to beat.

Since the amount of enemies that spawn are based on renown, not taking contracts keeps the original reveal of raiders and such on the low with smaller bands, effectively making them extremely easy to pick off and get equipment off.


This kind of scaling seems a bit poorly designed and i'm curious if anyone else noticed the same thing. Personally I think they should remove troop number scaling based on renown and instead make that purely random. It'd be interesting to take a contract to purge a raider camp and find 50 bandit thugs or maybe just 6 raiders.

I'm more confused as to why scaling is even a thing when you could just start spawning orc warlords and bandit leaders from the get go and the players would have to tactically retreat.

Removing weaker bandits also left me pretty confused as i don't see why bigger bandit groups wouldn't use them as chumps or like us, be trying to get better equipment for them.

Worse yet is if you don't play flawlessly you can end up being unable to compete at all! Because the lower tier bandits effectively are removed, if you lose most of your effective fighting force you now have to train with higher tier undead, bandits and orcs. That's more suicidial than risky.

Dunno.

[Aramazon]

I agree about the concern with renown scaling. I'm more and more hesitant to take missions and I'm actually doing pretty dang well. I'm around day 100 on veteran ironman and I just spent big money on fancy 200+ armor and helmet for my 2 handed sword guy. My renown is sitting around 3000 or so and the enemy parties frequently outnumber me now or consist of equal but tougher units. I'm really starting to miss the good old days and call me crazy, but I agree with other folks who say that there should always be weak folks and weak missions for you to grind. It just doesn't make sense story wise that in a mere month or two all of the enemy parties are super strong.

And because of the scaling I doubt I'll ever take orc or goblin missions since those are scaling up too! It's just not worth the risk for the same amount of coin that I would get paid for hunting thieves down. Though even the last thieves fight gave me pause with some 24 enemies. Mostly thugs, so that was fun, but the marksmen were potentially dangerous.

[Pringles™]

Three big words for the developers: TONE DOWN SCALING. There's a very good reason players end up removing it with mods in other RPG games that support modding: It breaks immersion, presents problems with grind and challenge and overall feels weird.

Im seeing this as a growing problem and arising concern in the community. Hopefully they will notice this, and keep bandit thugs and smaller enemy groups more abundant in the upcoming big update! Otherwise this problem might heavily affect the opinion on the game. Its always fun to occasionally be able to steamroll the enemy. Not every single opponent in mid- and late-game can match your strength, that doesnt make sense :c It's artificial scaling and capping at it's ugliest.

Enemy scaling removal was a big whoop when it was mentioned in Elder Scrolls games back in the day. It could be that here, as well, if left unfixed :p

[Teut]

TBF, this world scaling isn't nearly as stupid as it is in the "The Elder Srolls" series. At least in BB fighting 5 bandit raiders will always be the same, regardless of difficulty or progress.

You also get better gear and money fighting better enemies and I think that makes sense.

But several people seem to have a problem with this, so maybe they can look into it. What difficulty setting are you guys playing on?

[Love Gun]

Originally posted by Rick Sanchez:

But several people seem to have a problem with this, so maybe they can look into it. What difficulty setting are you guys playing on?

Yes, that would be good to know. On what difficulty level did you do these tests, Blessed Heretic?

[Aramazon]

That's another weird thing about missions. If you fight 25 thugs, it can be just as lethal as fighting 7 raiders, but the rewards are much better for the 7 raiders because you also get nicer equipment. I would feel better taking on thugs as a lower risk/lower reward situation if the numbers didn't scale up so much. 25 thugs stops feeling like lower risk. Especially with marksmen support. Lucky arrows suck.

Again, all of this is on veteran iron man for me. I'm at glorious renown ~3000 near day 100 .

[Blessed Heretic]

Originally posted by Love Gun:

Originally posted by Rick Sanchez:

But several people seem to have a problem with this, so maybe they can look into it. What difficulty setting are you guys playing on?

Yes, that would be good to know. On what difficulty level did you do these tests, Blessed Heretic?

All games since my purchase have been on normal difficulty. I tend not to offer opinions on games o harder or easy simply because both tend to offer handicaps. That said, Normal.

[Pringles™]

Ive played both on Normal and Veteran in the update prior to the Injury Update, and witnessed this effect take place in both, although I think it was more severe on Veteran :p

[Night]

I said something similar on these boards and got super flamed.

This kind of scaling can make it impossible to catch back up if a mission goes horribly wrong (and sense everything is based on chance that is always entirely possible).

I'm in a similar situation where there are basically contracts to take out dozens of enemies.

Now I am curious as to how renown de-scaling works.

If I lose all my guys and go back to fighting with 6 guys in tunics will my renown go back to how it was in the beginning?


I also understand the enemy group scaling is supposed to balance out the renown pricing bonuses.

However the scaling is so rampant that it actually deters you from building renown.

The bonus prices simply are not worth taking on a minimum of 25 thugs or like 6 orc warriors on a 1 skull contract.

[Aramazon]

I can only assume that failing a bunch of contracts in a row would de-escalate your renown somewhat. I couldn't tell you. I've never failed a contract. :P

My concern would be the mad reputation loss that would bring with the various towns or great houses. I think they might turn hostile.

On the other hand, reputation with towns and factions seems to go back to 0 fairly quickly.

[Teut]

Originally posted by Night:

I said something similar on these boards and got super flamed.

This kind of scaling can make it impossible to catch back up if a mission goes horribly wrong (and sense everything is based on chance that is always entirely possible).

You got 'flamed' for telling people not to do something - 'Don't play Veteran Ironman - that many really enjoy, using rather condescending language ('We all like togh games, but this is too hard...' etc.)

People don't like beeing told what they can and can not do and they also have a problem when someone speaks for them.

The always nice and helpful Muscarine wrote an essay to answer your post.

I'm not dismissing your concerns but a lot of players:

a) Don't have a problem coming back from almost party whipes on Vet Iron

and/or

b) Don't think it always has to be possible to come back from every situation, because if there is no losing, there's also no winning.

[Pringles™]

Rick, do you think scaling should still exist in a simulation game with randomness plastered all over it? I think youre losing the point here :D

[Love Gun]

I just remembered that renown is supposed to be working differently with the next update, so maybe this imbalance in renown gain between fulfilling contracts and (just) killing enemy parties has already been taken care of:
" renown (which works differently now – more on that in a future dev blog!)"
http://battlebrothersgame.com/dev-blog-89-ambitions/

[Aramazon]

I think the game will be fine with some scaling, but limited in the way the Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul did it. Set enemies won't appear until you are X level high, but even so lower level units have caps so they stop scaling with you after a point. This resulted in a happy balance between not being overwhelmed right away and still having a sense of accomplishment when you encountered sadly weak enemies later on. The Battle Brothers equivalent would be to place a more stringent cap on some of the unit troops so that they stop scaling up into such high numbers. Their individual strength doesn't change, but with numbers going up into the 20+ it doesn't matter.

Of course, the balance comes in that they don't want too many weak parties strolling around because then players will complain that there just isn't any challenge or anything their own level anywhere.

I feel like their new factions overhaul could potentially help with that. If the various tribes grow and shift and what not then make it so the larger tribes provide the far tougher fights, but you can always go and pick on smaller tribes if you want far less risk/reward.

Someone else seemed to say it, and the best gameplay would probably be one with less scaling and more common sense some places are bloody hard and some aren't right from the get go.

Lords of Magic did this really well by levelling up the amount and level of enemies in dungeons the further away you got from the capital building. This way you quickly knew how to judge the difficulty of a place without even entering. Is it close to civilization? Easy. Middle of nowhere? Expect dragons, demons, and max level spellcasters.

If they could find a way to keep the more civilized areas less dangerous and the wilder areas a bit tougher, I think that would be their best bet in terms of game balance :)

[Pringles™]

Originally posted by Aramazon:

I think the game will be fine with some scaling, but limited in the way the Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul did it. Set enemies won't appear until you are X level high, but even so lower level units have caps so they stop scaling with you after a point. This resulted in a happy balance between not being overwhelmed right away and still having a sense of accomplishment when you encountered sadly weak enemies later on. The Battle Brothers equivalent would be to place a more stringent cap on some of the unit troops so that they stop scaling up into such high numbers. Their individual strength doesn't change, but with numbers going up into the 20+ it doesn't matter.

Of course, the balance comes in that they don't want too many weak parties strolling around because then players will complain that there just isn't any challenge or anything their own level anywhere.

I feel like their new factions overhaul could potentially help with that. If the various tribes grow and shift and what not then make it so the larger tribes provide the far tougher fights, but you can always go and pick on smaller tribes if you want far less risk/reward.

Someone else seemed to say it, and the best gameplay would probably be one with less scaling and more common sense some places are bloody hard and some aren't right from the get go.

Lords of Magic did this really well by levelling up the amount and level of enemies in dungeons the further away you got from the capital building. This way you quickly knew how to judge the difficulty of a place without even entering. Is it close to civilization? Easy. Middle of nowhere? Expect dragons, demons, and max level spellcasters.

If they could find a way to keep the more civilized areas less dangerous and the wilder areas a bit tougher, I think that would be their best bet in terms of game balance :)

+1 this.

But I hope the scaling once again isnt as linear as you described it working in Lords of Magic. I hope there is still lots of randomness included. Sometimes a really adventurous big orc raiding party could end up in the middle of human territory for an exciting encounter with the player or the lords' men, or a huge horde of wiedergangers strolling across the less-guarded countryside ravaging the peasantfolk.

A little bit of scaling to maintain the balance and constant possibilities is good, but the scaling's lower limits can be left down to 2-4 enemies even on veteran, and it could go as far up as 30-40 enemies on the maximum side. A slider like this, slowly increasing the maximum size of enemy parties as player reaches thousands of renown, could work! This, of course, needs to leave enemy types alone. Variety should always remain at 100%, no tampering included :)

[Teut]

Originally posted by Puttiis:

Rick, do you think scaling should still exist in a simulation game with randomness plastered all over it? I think youre losing the point here :D

My 'point' was responding to Night's claim he was 'flamed' for merely suggesting a change, painting the community as small minded 'Fanbois' wich was not the case and had to be contradicted.

But yes, on topic:

I'm against level scaling in any form.

That said level scaling for me is the nonsense that happened in Oblivion (I, for example, fought a goblin at the start, could only beat him with some trouble so I decided to come back later, leveled up and with better gear only to find out I couldn't touch a goblin AT ALL anymore).

If you, as in BB get more difficult - and rewarding - missions because you're renown and now are fighting tougher enemies (not the same ones just buffed up) that's ok.

Now, the real question here was if the world should just get increasingly difficult by the day, almost regardless of your companies skill.
I say no to that as well, unless the new scenarios give a reason for it - houses fight each other so they can't send out armies to keep the bandits in check, etc. - so you all have a point - I just don't think it's as bad as portrayed, certainly not an unwinnable situation.