General Gaming Level scaling in Assassin's Creed Odyssey :|

[Kal-El814]

38 minutes ago, legend said:

If leveling from all the other content is required, I think the game and mission structure has been poorly designed. Whether it's a hard game as a baseline or not, doing other things ahead of when you play a main encounter should make it easier, not make it possible.

 

Also, I'm not sure I would use the word grinding, or if you're using the same meaning I attribute to it, I wouldn't want that because I dislike grinding. I define grinding as doing rote unchallenging and uninteresting material in an effort to increase your character's level. If side quests are grinding, then they're shitty side quests. A good game would make the means to increase your level interesting optional activities in their own right.

In this context I mean “grinding” in that I don’t think you’d be appropriately leveled for story questions on Nightmare if you ONLY did story or “Odyssey” missions. I don’t mean it in the classic RPG sense of farming battles or grinding dumb mobs.

 

So it feels like the implementation of Nightmare is at best suboptimal if you wanna mainline the story... it’s not a problem for my play style specifically though I could see it being a grind for other people.

 

18 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Origins had the option to turn level scaling off or on... I'm assuming they took this out for Odyssey?

 

If I recall the difficulty level selection specifically, it’s just tied to that. On Nightmare you’ll never have an area below your level.

[legend]

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Origins had the option to turn level scaling off or on... I'm assuming they took this out for Odyssey?

 

In Odyssey, there is no option, but they've apparently said it's in the post-launch content plan. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

 

45 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

In this context I mean “grinding” in that I don’t think you’d be appropriately leveled for story questions on Nightmare if you ONLY did story or “Odyssey” missions. I don’t mean it in the classic RPG sense of farming battles or grinding dumb mobs.

 

So it feels like the implementation of Nightmare is at best suboptimal if you wanna mainline the story... it’s not a problem for my play style specifically though I could see it being a grind for other people.

 

Even then though, I feel like a "nightmare" difficulty isn't tuned right if it's virtually impossible to do mainline unless you also maximally level from other content. Auxiliary leveling should make something easier, but not be so great a change that it's the difference between virtually impossible or not, and that property should hold regardless of what difficulty you choose or how hard the game is.

 

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, legend said:

Even then though, I feel like a "nightmare" difficulty isn't tuned right if it's virtually impossible to do mainline unless you also maximally level from other content. Auxiliary leveling should make something easier, but not be so great a change that it's the difference between virtually impossible or not, and that property should hold regardless of what difficulty you choose or how hard the game is.

 

Oh yeah. I don’t have a problem with enemy scaling on Nightmare since the game explicitly says it’s doing that. The level pacing is a problem on that difficulty regardless. 

[The def star]

I hate level scaling. It defeats the purpose of trying to be more powerful. I like the way they did it in origins. They sectioned off the map depending on your level. So that way once you went through certain areas to build up your character coming back and cleaning house felt good. And going back to lower level areas you felt like a god. 

[best3444]

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

@legend - check this mod out that might help your experience with the game.

[legend]

45 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

@legend - check this mod out that might help your experience with the game.

 

I'm actually playing this PS4 since I was deeply disappointed in the performance and crashing I was getting when I tried Origins on PC.

 

And now that decision comes back to bite me  

[jaethos]

On 11/28/2018 at 12:17 PM, SFLUFAN said:

@legend - check this mod out that might help your experience with the game.

I haven't started the game yet, as I just got it in the black Friday sale, but that mod looks perfect. I'm not a big fan of enemy level scaling.

[legend]

Just because I know you're all dying to know my feelings:

 

I finished the game this last weekend. I still really dislike the leveling system and how it interacts with loot, and it absolutely still had jank, but it does seem I had a really unlucky start with an abnormally high level of jank expressing itself. And getting a lot of jank early game is probably the worst time to get it.

 

So ultimately, I enjoyed it a good deal. Not GOTY quality, but easily better than RDR2 and a solid game!

[Kal-El814]

Just now, legend said:

So ultimately, I enjoyed it a good deal. Not GOTY quality, but easily better than RDR2 and a solid game!

Good... good...

 

[number305]

The one thing I can say in defense of this games level scaling... It is almost impossible to fight someone more than a couple levels above you.  So imagine if you walked into an area that was leveled for say level 5 when you were a level 40 character.  It would not be any fun.  You could let everyone hit you for 10 minutes and not take any damage, and when you swung your sword you would kill 5 enemies per swing.

[legend]

20 minutes ago, number305 said:

The one thing I can say in defense of this games level scaling... It is almost impossible to fight someone more than a couple levels above you. 

 

Early levels I think this was true. Not so much for later levels. I took out the top ranked mercenary (level 50) when I was level 43 on a whim just to see how absurdly hard it was, which it turned out it wasn't  

 

Then realizing that I could handle it so easily, I proceeded to target level 50 cult members and other higher-level mercenaries without any problem. I ultimately took out

Spoiler

Medusa

 

at level 47 on my first try, even though that was supposed to be the hardest fight in the game. I think I could have done it earlier, but I was already working through all the high-level stuff and by the time I got to it, I was 47.

 

 

It's conceivable I happened to do an OP build and that isn't the norm though. Specifically, I used the venom armor set which boosts your poison, and then had my weapons engraved so they always did poison damage.

 

Quote

So imagine if you walked into an area that was leveled for say level 5 when you were a level 40 character.  It would not be any fun.  You could let everyone hit you for 10 minutes and not take any damage, and when you swung your sword you would kill 5 enemies per swing.

 

This can be pretty fun at times  but I think it's reasonable to have a soft upward level scaling that kept the differential from being too large. The game does eventually have that--eventually if you get far enough they'll lag no more than 2 levels rather than matching. But that lag seems to wait for a gulf. It should work the other way (you out-level as you increase your level, but they eventually start to get pulled up elastically) so you're not punished for having leveled your character, but not your gear.

 

 

Ultimately, other than gaining new abilities, the whole leveling system seemed poorly designed and at times irritating. I would have preferred a different system.

[eggydoo]

16 hours ago, legend said:

at level 47 on my first try, even though that was supposed to be the hardest fight in the game.

 

It is?  My vote goes towards the damn boar you fight in the beginning of the game when you have no skills and shitty armor.

[number305]

16 hours ago, legend said:

 

Early levels I think this was true. Not so much for later levels. I took out the top ranked mercenary (level 50) when I was level 43 on a whim just to see how absurdly hard it was, which it turned out it wasn't  

 

Then realizing that I could handle it so easily, I proceeded to target level 50 cult members and other higher-level mercenaries without any problem. I ultimately took out

  Reveal hidden contents

Medusa

 

at level 47 on my first try, even though that was supposed to be the hardest fight in the game. I think I could have done it earlier, but I was already working through all the high-level stuff and by the time I got to it, I was 47.

 

 

It's conceivable I happened to do an OP build and that isn't the norm though. Specifically, I used the venom armor set which boosts your poison, and then had my weapons engraved so they always did poison damage.

 

 

This can be pretty fun at times  but I think it's reasonable to have a soft upward level scaling that kept the differential from being too large. The game does eventually have that--eventually if you get far enough they'll lag no more than 2 levels rather than matching. But that lag seems to wait for a gulf. It should work the other way (you out-level as you increase your level, but they eventually start to get pulled up elastically) so you're not punished for having leveled your character, but not your gear.

 

 

Ultimately, other than gaining new abilities, the whole leveling system seemed poorly designed and at times irritating. I would have preferred a different system.

Fighting up levels is a ton more manageable later in the game.  I think your ideas about a softer level scaling might work well.  Just can't have no level scaling with the way the game works.  Like  you said fighting a bunch of level 2 guys might be funny once... but after that there would be no 'fun' in enemies that had zero chance of even hurting you.

 

12 minutes ago, eggydoo said:

 

It is?  My vote goes towards the damn boar you fight in the beginning of the game when you have no skills and shitty armor.

I still remember that damn boar fight.  I tried beating it for an hour straight.  Then I left and leveled up five times and came back and it still took me several tries.

[legend]

25 minutes ago, eggydoo said:

 

It is?  My vote goes towards the damn boar you fight in the beginning of the game when you have no skills and shitty armor.

 

I don't recall any of the legendary animal fights being hard. But I also don't recall doing any of them that early. Was it required for an early main quest?

 

8 minutes ago, number305 said:

Fighting up levels is a ton more manageable later in the game.  I think your ideas about a softer level scaling might work well.  Just can't have no level scaling with the way the game works.  Like  you said fighting a bunch of level 2 guys might be funny once... but after that there would be no 'fun' in enemies that had zero chance of even hurting you.

 

Yeah I'm not entirely opposed to all forms of level-scaling. I just think their system and the leveling in general sucks  It's feels like they adding a leveling system to say they had a leveling system.

[eggydoo]

Just now, legend said:

 

I don't recall any of the legendary animal fights being hard. But I also don't recall doing any of them that early. Was it required for a early main quest?

 

 

Yeah I'm not entirely opposed to all forms of level-scaling. I just think their system and the leveling in general sucks  It's feels like they adding a leveling system to say they had a leveling system.

If you did it at a later level and have proper gear at your level, it didn't end up being too bad.  But I think I walked in at lvl14-15? and I got destroyed.  I went back at like lvl 20 i think and was much easier that I had additional skills and proper armor.

[AndyD]

I think I was ok with level scaling until fighitng the legendary boar.  I think it's assanine to have to spend over 30 minutes (not including number of retries) to kill it because the boar and it's children are all at the same level as you

 

That also has made me wonder whether I want to continue with the game because it was ridiculous. When I finally was done with it, there were like 16 child boars dead.  Don't think it makes sense to keep spawning them and at the same level

[eggydoo]

@legend

https://assassinscreed.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/news-updates/342412/this-month-in-assassins-creed-odyssey-january2019

 

ENEMY SCALING

One of the most community-requested features since launch is coming this month. With the next update you will be able to adapt enemy scaling settings to your preferences.

As soon as the update hits on January 10, visit the options menu and find the Level Scaling setting. From there you'll be able to customize how drastically the enemies will scale to your level.

• Heavy – All enemies remain at your level.
• Normal – No change in the difficulty settings.
• Light – Content is around two levels below your level.
• Very Light – Content is around four levels below your level.

Please bear in mind that this option won't be available in Nightmare Difficulty Mode in order to maintain that mode's challenging nature.

 

Edit: nvm, i saw it got posted on the other one.