KiteGr
Member
I love leveling in RPGs. I love how you become stronger with every victory and kick the assess of enemies who gave you trouble before.
In the recent years however I've come across plenty of games where in an attempt perhaps to keep content relevant introduce scaling that make leveling pointless.
Lets discuss the worst offenders here.
Final Fantasy 8.
The original Sin of counterproductive leveling, this game introduced enemies and bosses that scale with your level, making it mostly work against you. It's better to focus on gaining magic to junction them into your attributes with endgame buffs while staying lvl1 and watch everything melt.
The Saga games.
These games pride them selfs for giving freedom, but with the ability to visit an area any time you want, comes the enemy scaling that makes all battles equally difficult, even if you are on early or late game. Some bosses have fixed or less liquid stats to prevent players from beating them to early on, but that creates the even bigger issue of crawling through a dungeon with enemies at your level, only to hit a brick wall with a boss intended to be fought way later. Thankfully, the later games made certain areas have less liquid enemies, so if you come later you'll make a difference. The worst offender is the very first Romancing Saga (ps2 remake) where the battles count also as the passage of time and once you've done a set number of them you'll get booted to the final chapter. Also it's super hard to avoid them.
Diablo 3 (after patch).
The leveling procedure shouldn't exist in this game. If the world scales with you, then there is no point to it other than forcing you to change gear every few levels and unlocking your skills slowly that could had been done through other means.
Kingdoms of Amalur: The reckoning.
Another game where leveling appears to make you stronger by making you watch bigger numbers, but in the long run it works against you. Like Diablo, the only benefit here is the skill points you gain, as the areas, the gear you find or craft, all scale to your level. Leveling only helps at making your old gear useless. The good news here are that the zones have a level cap, so you can eventually outlevel them if you come back much later.
What's your opinion on games with level scaling?
Should these games even have leveling?
What other games can you think of where leveling works against you.
In the recent years however I've come across plenty of games where in an attempt perhaps to keep content relevant introduce scaling that make leveling pointless.
Lets discuss the worst offenders here.
Final Fantasy 8.
The original Sin of counterproductive leveling, this game introduced enemies and bosses that scale with your level, making it mostly work against you. It's better to focus on gaining magic to junction them into your attributes with endgame buffs while staying lvl1 and watch everything melt.
The Saga games.
These games pride them selfs for giving freedom, but with the ability to visit an area any time you want, comes the enemy scaling that makes all battles equally difficult, even if you are on early or late game. Some bosses have fixed or less liquid stats to prevent players from beating them to early on, but that creates the even bigger issue of crawling through a dungeon with enemies at your level, only to hit a brick wall with a boss intended to be fought way later. Thankfully, the later games made certain areas have less liquid enemies, so if you come later you'll make a difference. The worst offender is the very first Romancing Saga (ps2 remake) where the battles count also as the passage of time and once you've done a set number of them you'll get booted to the final chapter. Also it's super hard to avoid them.
Diablo 3 (after patch).
The leveling procedure shouldn't exist in this game. If the world scales with you, then there is no point to it other than forcing you to change gear every few levels and unlocking your skills slowly that could had been done through other means.
Kingdoms of Amalur: The reckoning.
Another game where leveling appears to make you stronger by making you watch bigger numbers, but in the long run it works against you. Like Diablo, the only benefit here is the skill points you gain, as the areas, the gear you find or craft, all scale to your level. Leveling only helps at making your old gear useless. The good news here are that the zones have a level cap, so you can eventually outlevel them if you come back much later.
What's your opinion on games with level scaling?
Should these games even have leveling?
What other games can you think of where leveling works against you.