To scale or not to Scale

[Galaad]

This is copied from my post in CromCrom's road thread hence why the begining is talking of roads and trails.. But I felt like scaling was an important enough question to merit its own thread.

Hehe, building a road "solo" would probably be too much and too long...But movement on roads could maybe be safer or faster.

Depending on how the enemies are generated, this could be fairly important. In most indie community I've seen, players tend to really dislike level scaling from the mobs...But at the same time you don't want the adventure to be either too hard or to easy.

So roads, trails and such can end up playing an important role as the bigger/badder monsters tend to stay away from the more actively used paths. So without using scaling, a low skill/level player can stick to safer areas by following roads while the experienced adventurer can treck through dense forest and monsters dens.

Sorry to somewhat Hijack your thread, but that brings me to say that I like a mix of scaled and non scaled ...For example lets say the players can go up to level 40 in this game... A "mid game" bad bad monster that we'll name CromxCromx is balanced more or less against players level 20. So a player coming across CromxCromx at level 12 should get ready to run and fast...

But what happens if that same player spent time exploring a lot and comes across CromxCromx at level 27...The fight is over before it even begins and the Big mob ended up being as easy as common fodder. I think it may be a good idea to give above a certain point a bit of "upscaling" to important mobs/bosses to keep the fight entertaining.

That way, CromxCromx the bad monster will range from lvl 20-30 depending when you come across him. It kinda makes sense anyway. Why would our player be the only one using his time to improve and get stronger?. But I think its also important to put a limit on said scale, so CromxCromx can never go above lvl 30 (he's not our hero after all)...That way, if it is possible to do so, a player coming back around there at max level 40 will be able to trash him and feel like his character is really badass.

G.