Is there really a difference between having leveled areas and the Gothic/Elex system? They've got the same stats, the latter just doesn't have a 10 or 40 floating above the monster.
But yea Oblivion's scaling sucked. I barely made it out of the starting area and random bandits were already wearing some of the best armor in the game. Needed a ton of balancing mods to fix that nonsense.
Having areas more dangerous then others are not the same as having a leveled areas. For instance you can go in gothic 1 at the edges of the forest and kill some blood flies or a lone wolf, later you can kill the packs of wolves but if you go in center a shadowbeast will kill you. So the area does not have a particular level.
For other areas that are cut off via high level monsters like a golem in a pass or orcs near a bridge is a much more organic way of setting up an area level then having this open areas for level 20-22 and this area for level 10-14 that do not give xp anymore. Even in this dangerous areas you will still find wolves or scavengers or other easier monsters but the segmentation of the dangerous area is to make the world seem bigger and for story. And then there are caves or mini-dungeons to explore and you expect those to be harder.
For instance Witcher 3 allowed you to explore everything and when you got to the main quest you were so overpowered that it was meaningless and boring. Gothic 2 hinders you by armor, training and limited areas to explore to avoid that.
In a way Gothic 2 has a much better progression then Witcher 3.
Where this system fails is that it assumes a lot that the player knows to avoid fighting monsters or what monsters he can kill and at what level . This is something that should be very intuitive but is the fact that we played so many games where you just see monster you kill monster that makes it counter-intuitive. Even in games like Neverwinter, Witcher, Dragon Age you kill every monster in every area, there is no ok that monster is tough I need to avoid it, I'll return later, despite this being what progression means. Baldurs Gate did that in both 1 and 2 and it did a good job. As an example, in BG1 you had the tower expansion and you had this animated armor dudes with big swords, it has been more then a decade since last I replayed this game so I do not remember details. This were very thought to deal with, harder then most levels inside, the point of those were to make the player know that the tower was a hard area and you should avoid it until you are strong enough to deal with it.
Is not much different then having leveled areas but it does make it kind of natural rather then artificial.
I also hate as I said leveled monsters. You do not need to have a level on a creature to know that a giant rat is easier then a wolf, the wolf is easier to deal then a snapper etc. Having a level on a monster is artificial. Technically having level on your character is artificial but I'm not sure how you can work around that. Leveled monsters allow for things like 10 level lion and then 20 level giant rat, is stupid.
Is there really a difference between having leveled areas and the Gothic/Elex system? They've got the same stats, the latter just doesn't have a 10 or 40 floating above the monster.
But yea Oblivion's scaling sucked. I barely made it out of the starting area and random bandits were already wearing some of the best armor in the game. Needed a ton of balancing mods to fix that nonsense.
Having areas more dangerous then others are not the same as having a leveled areas. For instance you can go in gothic 1 at the edges of the forest and kill some blood flies or a lone wolf, later you can kill the packs of wolves but if you go in center a shadowbeast will kill you. So the area does not have a particular level. For other areas that are cut off via high level monsters like a golem in a pass or orcs near a bridge is a much more organic way of setting up an area level then having this open areas for level 20-22 and this area for level 10-14 that do not give xp anymore. Even in this dangerous areas you will still find wolves or scavengers or other easier monsters but the segmentation of the dangerous area is to make the world seem bigger and for story. And then there are caves or mini-dungeons to explore and you expect those to be harder.
For instance Witcher 3 allowed you to explore everything and when you got to the main quest you were so overpowered that it was meaningless and boring. Gothic 2 hinders you by armor, training and limited areas to explore to avoid that. In a way Gothic 2 has a much better progression then Witcher 3.
Where this system fails is that it assumes a lot that the player knows to avoid fighting monsters or what monsters he can kill and at what level . This is something that should be very intuitive but is the fact that we played so many games where you just see monster you kill monster that makes it counter-intuitive. Even in games like Neverwinter, Witcher, Dragon Age you kill every monster in every area, there is no ok that monster is tough I need to avoid it, I'll return later, despite this being what progression means. Baldurs Gate did that in both 1 and 2 and it did a good job. As an example, in BG1 you had the tower expansion and you had this animated armor dudes with big swords, it has been more then a decade since last I replayed this game so I do not remember details. This were very thought to deal with, harder then most levels inside, the point of those were to make the player know that the tower was a hard area and you should avoid it until you are strong enough to deal with it. Is not much different then having leveled areas but it does make it kind of natural rather then artificial.
I also hate as I said leveled monsters. You do not need to have a level on a creature to know that a giant rat is easier then a wolf, the wolf is easier to deal then a snapper etc. Having a level on a monster is artificial. Technically having level on your character is artificial but I'm not sure how you can work around that. Leveled monsters allow for things like 10 level lion and then 20 level giant rat, is stupid.