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[Ironman_Isomer]

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[Hacksaw]

Adventure mode scales with your level, I'm not sure about story mode (it feels static though).

[Geotarrr]

In the previous trilogy games, the monsters in Story didn't scale with your character's level, now in Final Cut they do scale.

[DMRN]

Are you kidding me? Part of their definitive vision of an action RPG is to make the biggest mistake Bethesda did with Oblivion?! To remove all sense of progression?

Damn. Good thing I learned this before trying Final Cut.

Level scaling should be a Steam tag.

[✪ megapull]

The scaling had to be done because of the addition of the Adventure mode. Simply because there are two game modes that players can hop in and out of, scaling is a must, or one game mode would become trivial after spending time in the other.

[DMRN]

Radically changing the core gameplay does not seem like a reasonable tradeoff for such an addition. Without knowing what you are really even talking about, I would have hoped such a thing were separate from the story or otherwise implemented in such a way as to maintain the gameplay of the original game.

It also sounds odd that any additional mode would increase XP gain to such a degree that it would break story mode like that. Presumably leveling is leveling.

Speaking just for myself, I would have been happy to stay away from other modes if I knew they would powerlevel me, just so story mode could be played normally. It would have been nice to have the choice to break balance in story mode only if I chose to, rather than having the choice made for me, with the added punishment of never feeling like I have made progress.

[datguy13]

Originally posted by DMRN:

Radically changing the core gameplay does not seem like a reasonable tradeoff for such an addition. Without knowing what you are really even talking about, I would have hoped such a thing were separate from the story or otherwise implemented in such a way as to maintain the gameplay of the original game.

It also sounds odd that any additional mode would increase XP gain to such a degree that it would break story mode like that. Presumably leveling is leveling.

Speaking just for myself, I would have been happy to stay away from other modes if I knew they would powerlevel me, just so story mode could be played normally. It would have been nice to have the choice to break balance in story mode only if I chose to, rather than having the choice made for me, with the added punishment of never feeling like I have made progress.

Progression is measured in equipment, Skill selection and actual Story progress. You don't need an abusable fixed-level system to prove you're powerful, and out-leveling content isn't actually an intentional "core mechanic" choice of any RPG ever made. It's a side-product of using linear advancement and basic addition-subtraction mathematics.

Adventure Mode is separate, voluntary content, but it has to remain connected to the overall game so that players can use it to advance their characters once the Story is complete or when they want a break from the extremely long narrative. You may have been happy "staying away from other modes", but a significant number of consumers prefer to get their money's worth out of a product by experiencing all the content. As they do so, most fo them enjoy a challenge, and do not wish to have one set of content trivialized just so they can play with another set of content.

Lots of assumptions made, with no actual hard facts or experience to back them. At least you admitted you don't know what he's talking about when he refers to Adventure Mode, and frankly speaking, that's where you should have left it.

[DMRN]

Haha, nice try acting like level scaling isn't the single greatest pox on RPGs ever, and avoided for a very good reason. For example by the very games that made this franchise in the first place! Or that my not knowing the details of adventure mode is in any way relevant to that question. I can recognize fanboyism when I see it. Come back when you have something of substance to add to the discussion.

See, while the reasons for scaling are fairly obvious for a game like this (three games suddenly merged into one, side-content that will level a character besides normal story progression) they are not actually an excuse to revert to that cop-out of a solution. Bethesda already saw the error of this way, and found a solution for it: Let the monsters scale to the player when they first reach an area and remain that way permanently. That way all advantages of scaling are retained, while players can still feel progression when returning to earlier areas and overcome challenges through grinding.
Hell, it is kinda baffling that adventure mode would not be treated like simply a different way to grind in the first place, and that indeed this was considered enough of a problem to upend the core systems like this.

You may have missed how leaving all progression to player skill and gear removes the point in there being character levels at all. Just choosing your specialization has no meaning if staying on level one forever is just as viable. In D&D levels exist to differentiate hero and peasant, dragon and gnoll, not for whatever silly reasons you imagine.

[lalala]

Enemy scaling is great. Speaking for myself, I rather face enemies that reward xp/loot/challenge according to my level, instead of having to worry if I outlevel the content of an area or can just breeze through it (both scenarios are bad).

This could be a problem in games where limits are reached fairly quick, but in big/long games like this or Bethesdas? No worries. Its a bit more problematic there when facing enemies that need equipment to be strong, but here its one less worry.

The difference is (or should be) in the type of enemies you face and their combinations, as one progresses through the game he/she meets enemies that are more capable than the ones in earlier areas, thus needing more skillful play or better equip/char build.

[DMRN]

They have games catering to your preference. They are not called aRPGs but action or adventure games, and the games this is supposed to be a final cut of would not have been your cup of tea in the first place. ARPGs on the other hand, are characterised by tangible progression, mostly in combat, where continued challenge is created by letting you face more and more dangerous kinds of enemy, or simply more of weaker kinds, but still letting you appreciate how a change has taken place. The empahsis is big on proper balance, in other words.

While I agree that grinding is not a good thing, using scaling to fix the problem is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are much better solutions out there. Besides, as I said, if adventure mode has to be part of the same continuity as story mode, that sounds like a mechanic made for grinding, as if story mode depended upon it. If the opposite is true and it only breaks story mode, letting them share continuity is a giant design blunder if I ever saw one.
That is on top of how nonsensical it is to worry so much about story mode balance in a game designed for multiplayer, where that will be broken in ten different ways anyway.

Oblivion was even worse, cause there you had options to specialize in non-combat, even as monsters leveled up to counter combat builds, making the mainquest unwinnable. That is besides the narrative problem of no monster or character type being noticeably more dangerous than another, when you'd think demon knight of hell would outclass bandits by a significant marigin.

[datguy13]

Originally posted by DMRN:

Haha, nice try acting like level scaling isn't the single greatest pox on RPGs ever, and avoided for a very good reason. For example by the very games that made this franchise in the first place! Or that my not knowing the details of adventure mode is in any way relevant to that question. I can recognize fanboyism when I see it. Come back when you have something of substance to add to the discussion.

See, while the reasons for scaling are fairly obvious for a game like this (three games suddenly merged into one, side-content that will level a character besides normal story progression) they are not actually an excuse to revert to that cop-out of a solution. Bethesda already saw the error of this way, and found a solution for it: Let the monsters scale to the player when they first reach an area and remain that way permanently. That way all advantages of scaling are retained, while players can still feel progression when returning to earlier areas and overcome challenges through grinding.
Hell, it is kinda baffling that adventure mode would not be treated like simply a different way to grind in the first place, and that indeed this was considered enough of a problem to upend the core systems like this.

You may have missed how leaving all progression to player skill and gear removes the point in there being character levels at all. Just choosing your specialization has no meaning if staying on level one forever is just as viable. In D&D levels exist to differentiate hero and peasant, dragon and gnoll, not for whatever silly reasons you imagine.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. This entire diatribe is fallacious, popularist bluster miixed with emotional pleas.

Bethesda monsters in Skyrim and Fallout 3/4/Vegas don't scale to initial zone-in. They're level-capped per cell. You can see it that action by using crafting in Skyrim to power-level in one zone, then moving into a new cell/area and spanking everything in it first time through. You also forgot that Bethesda advancement is actually done using Equipment in their later games, as stats come down to the over-simplified health/mana/stamina. Levels are actually quite meaningless in most newer Bethesda games.

Bethesda is also well known for taking the lazy way out on all development. Their Modder community fixes everything in their games from optimization to textures to bugs to mechanics. Very bad choice of examples if you were looking for a "good" developer of RPGs... especially since Bethesda made an entire franchise of "RPGs" which are just glorified third-person shooters.

And then of course you throw in the "fanboy" trope. That right there shows you don't really have a legitimate argument, since you resort to stupid name-calling.

On top of that, throwing in the Dungeons and Dragons "hero-peasant" argument as some kind of emotional appeal is complete joke. Are we talking pen-and-paper or video games? Because if you're talking tabletop D&D, then the thing which sets the players apart is action, not numbers. It's the Role-play which makes them the heroes, and levels are just a means to an end. In the video game, it's the levels that make the character because all of the D&D video games actually do take the lazy way out and do basic linear scaling. Not exactly ambitious programming there to build a game in basic addition-subtraction mathematics.

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with level-scaling unless you're just hung up on big numbers and think that out-leveling content is the only way to feel important. That speaks more of your own character than any developer. There is plenty of subjective opinion that level-scaling "ruins" games, but no real hard facts that prove it's an inferior system.

[lalala]

Even old school D&D had scaling, I remember the Monsters Compendium where some creatures had many different variants, but borderline was always the Dungeonmaster that had to scale the challenge (dices) for the players.

Since we don't have a dungeonmaster in games we have to rely on the code/system measuring, I agree its gotta be very hard for the developer to gauge it.

But it can also be very fun and surprising because of (good developer creates) variations from the same monsters (color/animation/movement/etc) and add new attacks/skills/abilities so that the same basic creature from a previous area now has new tricks.
Granted theres no better substitute to good AI, altough its rare I get excited when an enemy tries to outsmart by using cool tactics instead of the same old piled up stats increase.

Old games that I recall having this kind of monster design were FF8 in playstation 1, or Diablo 2 as a more recent/known ARPG example.

[DMRN]

Ye gods how much nonsense you spout there, dataguy.

For one, I specifically referred to Oblivion. Bethesda learned their lesson and fixed things for their later RPGs, as I believe I said they did, had you bothered reading before having fanboy knee-jerk reactions. Also, funny how you don't notice that your own argument regarding them, namely that they aren't the pinnacle of aRPGs, only supports my position, that falling so far short of them as this Final Cut does, really is unacceptable.

You earned the fanboy label for making no points of substance, and still feeling like you had a reason to speak up. You still do. And no, my use of that well-justified accusation proves nothing, for my arguments stand tall and unopposed on the side still, needing no emotional appeal:

This sort of level scaling objectively ruins most sense of progression. How can I be so sure? Because that is what it's designed to do in this case! To maintain challenge regardless of what is fought or where, a feat possible only by nullifying whatever power gains has been made. What makes me even more sure is that the game wasn't built from the ground up with this leveling system in mind, so there is no chance the devs included some clever design to work around this apparent power standstill, however hypothetical. This type of scaling was tacked onto a game that used to have regular Diablo clone scaling, and presumably was designed for that.

Just saying I don't know what I'm talking about or is making empty appeals to emotion, when arguments of substance are staring you in the face, makes you look real bad. Like a fanboy.

And I have no idea what your blabber about D&D is supposed to demonstrate. What I said was that the system used as model for this sort of video game used levels, and the reason it did so was to differentiate power between different things in the setting while still allowing them to compete, primarily though fighting. Just like the Van Helsing does, except it has such a system without using to for that purpose, making its presence nonsensical. Which is just another way of saying what I already said: That a leveling system where everything scales equally is pointless and redundant.

It's only still there cause this is a Final Cut of a game that had it as its primary mechanic, and thus it would be unthinkable to remove it. Which is why a change that makes it redundant is so baffling. Only once have I heard of a patch/update doing this much damage to a game, and that was the overhaul that killed Star Wars Galaxies.


Look, I get it. A game devoid of challenge loses much of its appeal, there is no dispute of that. Nor is mandatory grinding ideal either. But when either of those happen to a regular Diablo clone in the first place, the problem is one of how it was designed to begin with. Bethesda found a perfectly decent solution to the problem, while masterpieces like Diablo and Torchlight managed it through careful balance of ascending enemies instead. There are ways of handling it. But this linear scaling? It is such a non-solution, such a lazy, destructive "fix" that it deserves no defense. And certainly not on the grounds I've heard so far, that it technically maintains challenge, when it's the lowest form of solution to that problem imaginable.

It's like taking Doom and filling all levels with nothing but Imps, and then giving you only the base pistol throughout to maintain the challenge. Rather than doing what the game actually did, namely stay salient throughout by introducing more and more dangerous enemies in accordance with ever more potent player weapons. And still maintainging a sense of progression by letting those advanced weapons tear through earlier enemies with ease.

[Psojed]

Originally posted by DMRN:

To remove all sense of progression?

It doesn't remove any sense of progression. You have an epic storyline to progress through.

Originally posted by DMRN:

Radically changing the core gameplay does not seem like a reasonable tradeoff for such an addition. Without knowing what you are really even talking about, I would have hoped such a thing were separate from the story or otherwise implemented in such a way as to maintain the gameplay of the original game.

You are the one who is talking nonsense here. The gameplay of the original game didn't change. There's no "punishment" in level scaling the monsters in Final Cut, you still gain new skills as you progress, you open new story parts and sidequests, and this game is focused on the story. If you have a need to feel "impactful", you can do so too. It's a very visible change when you switch from Tier 1 skill into Tier 3 skill, same thing when you switch from Rares to Epics, Epics to Sets and Sets to Godlike gear.

Originally posted by DMRN:

While I agree that grinding is not a good thing, using scaling to fix the problem is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are much better solutions out there.

While I agree there are better solutions to balance monsters, it doesn't change the fact that the end result in Final Cut is not as black as you painted it.

Originally posted by DMRN:

This sort of level scaling objectively ruins most sense of progression. How can I be so sure? Because that is what it's designed to do in this case! To maintain challenge regardless of what is fought or where, a feat possible only by nullifying whatever power gains has been made.

As you said yourself, level scaling is made to maintain challenge, regardless of what is fought or where. However, it does NOT automatically nullify your character's power or gains made by equipping better items, learning new skills or simply disovering a new gameplay method.

I would suggest you to play the game first before judging how a game mechanic impacts the game.

[DMRN]

Don't be daft. We clearly aren't talking about story progression, which you'll find in any game of any genre, without those including redundant leveling systems.

The dev told us in this very thread that something has changed, that indeed this was the point of the new system. And even if he hadn't, it would be beyond obvious what the difference between one system and the other is: Namely the later ability to face earlier enemy types and trouncing them this time. Can this be done through gear and improved player skill? Sure. But that is the case for any action game as well. It does not justify the presence of a skill system whose only function is making the player character weaker or stronger than his enemies.
Or the removal of it from a game that used to have it as its primary mechanic, for that matter.

If what you said was true, if the right level of skills would give a noticeable boost in power, then the devs would have failed at their stated goal of maintaining challenge. I may not be experienced with the game, but I expect they are. It still boils down to you trying to sell me on a logical impossibility: Continued challenge regardless of context + the ability to advance past the enemy in a meaningful way. They are mutually exclusive, which is why you have to be wrong.

As far as my lack of experience goes, I also accepted the hypothetical possibility of the devs having come up with som brilliant system for maintaining a sense of progression in spite of the scaling. But as I said, that is no longer credible when considering that the game wasn't designed from the ground up with this in mind.
Besides, that isn't how the customer-salesman relationship works. The game has to sell itself to me first, then I'll buy it. I'm not gonna buy it to discover whether I'm right that it has to be devoid of the progression expected from the genre, when plenty of prior experience, and no reason for benefit of the doubt, inform my decision not to.

So I'm afraid you are the one talking nonsense here, and is trying to sneak the leveling system into evaluations of other, actually meaningful game systems (gear, player skill, story progression), cause you know on its own it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

[Psojed]

Originally posted by DMRN:

The dev told us in this very thread that something has changed, that indeed this was the point of the new system.

The dev told us the reason for using said game mechanic. He did NOT say, that implementing this mechanic changed the gameplay.

Originally posted by DMRN:

And even if he hadn't, it would be beyond obvious what the difference between one system and the other is: Namely the later ability to face earlier enemy types and trouncing them this time. Can this be done through gear and improved player skill? Sure. But that is the case for any action game as well. It does not justify the presence of a skill system whose only function is making the player character weaker or stronger than his enemies.
Or the removal of it from a game that used to have it as its primary mechanic, for that matter.

Maybe you didn't notice, but this game re-uses earlier monster types in endgame scenarios. This was a game mechanic since Van Helsing 1, search for some Scenario or Neverending Story gameplay. Final Cut continued to use this mechanic and it amplifies this by the fact that it no longer throws static monster types at you, instead it throws random monster types. Since Adventure mode can be accessed at ANY level (while previously in VH1 it was limited to levels 27+, level cap was 30), therefore the need to have all monster types challenging at any given level, instead of only the later ones. Level scaling them to player's level sounds like a good solution to me.
Finally, as we both acknowledged, you can still trounce them with proper skill and gear, so even players who demand the trouncing part won't be robbed of it.

Originally posted by DMRN:

It still boils down to you trying to sell me on a logical impossibility: Continued challenge regardless of context + the ability to advance past the enemy in a meaningful way. They are mutually exclusive, which is why you have to be wrong.

This is where you are wrong.
You base your replies on the assumption that an ARPG cannot be challenging AND let you advance through the game in a timely manner both at the same time. Or perhaps you assume the above only in conjunction with the term "level scaling". But balancing on an ideal line between challenge and non-boring gameplay is exactly what this system tries to do. I have no reason to believe that level scaling in itself is detrimental to that balance. Yes, it might be and the balance in this game is definitely not perfect (some classes feel really good and some don't), but given the fact that this is first time Neocore implemented level scaling, I'd say they did pretty well.

Originally posted by DMRN:

The game has to sell itself to me first, then I'll buy it. I'm not gonna buy it to discover whether I'm right that it has to be devoid of the progression expected from the genre, when plenty of prior experience, and no reason for benefit of the doubt, inform my decision not to.

I agree with that, however for now, it seems to me you are just finding "flaws" on the game based on your assumptions. I say, don't put the same sticker on Final Cut just because Oblivion or some other game didn't work out.

Also, this game is a special case to your model, because you can get it FREE if you own the previous games 1+2+3. There are tons of gameplay videos and reviews. I didn't check them, but you can check how many of them noted the level scaling as a negative before you buy anything.

Originally posted by DMRN:

So I'm afraid you are the one talking nonsense here, and is trying to sneak the leveling system into evaluations of other, actually meaningful game systems (gear, player skill, story progression), cause you know on its own it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Rather I feel the levelling system is interconnected with those other systems, and working interconnection is what I want in my games.