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Acleacius
King of the Realms
Joined: 24 Dec 2002
Posts: 453
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Ok it is clear at least to me after reading this and the EA forum thread, fans and potential fans/customers of Gothic do NOT want scaling, especially like Oblivion.
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13031
So what can we do about it?
Are there any German speaking Gothic fans here on the thread, that can communicate the seemly universal feeling, we do NOT want Gothic bastardized, on the German boards?
As much as I enjoy and admire RPGDot (I do very much), I do NOT get the impression that PB pays attention to English speaking boards.
I hope I am wrong and probably get that impression due to the lack of communication on G1 and G2.
I am not blaming just trying to state facts to help change what I see as a flaw. 
Or is it possible this is all a translation issue again?
I mean most of the post seem very much on the same note (of course not the trolls), could PB possibly not know how important it is to the fans NOT to have to have scaling, if it is similar to Oblivion's or did all the fans misunderstand to post? |
Tue May 23, 2006 2:27 am |
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xSamhainx
Paws of Doom
Joined: 11 Sep 2002
Posts: 2192
Location: San Diego |
scaling can be done the right way and the wrong way, it matters to what degree it is applied, and to what. I think Morowind vs Oblivion is a good example of this.
There was still a good deal of trouble you could get into in Morrowind, yet the very hard creatures in most cases that would mop the floor with you with no chance of victory whatsoever were held back a while. With a free-roaming game this is good if done well and almost necessary, as opposed to the more linear where only certain baddies will be encountered. Oblivion went berserk with this and a good example of overkill.
I'm having problems with Gothic II because I dont like dying, quite frankly, and you cant help but die over and over again. Having no real gauge of how strong anything is can be a problem. You have to pretty much just save and go for it, and more times than none die. Again. A con system would be great in my opinion, or something to let you know the relative difficulty or something youre going up against.
I wouldnt decide too hastily to condemn a game made by the same people who made your last two marvels of gaming, give it a chance, and read a few reviews before you go nuts and start condemning it.
I dont know, in a way I kinda hope for full-on Oblivion style scaling, just so that it would piss so many people off so dramatically. Sounds like great fun to me, imagine the nerdstorm! 
_________________
“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”-Mark Twain |
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Tue May 23, 2006 2:28 am |
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Merz
Protector of the Realm
Joined: 22 Oct 2002
Posts: 260
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I would prefer a system similar to what was done with mining skill in NOTR:
There was a mining expert, whom the hero would consult about hero's level of expertise.
Translating this to G3:
I case of common creatures, hunters could be giving a player advice about his chances to take down a tough creature.
For uncommon creatures, legends could provide indirect consideration system (the hero was strong as 10 men, stood in fire, etc..)
Basicly, use NPCs as much as possible instead of downscaling, icons, markers, barriers, etc..
Of cause it is a slow system and would not help players that want to charge for action.
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- Merz |
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Tue May 23, 2006 7:35 am |
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Wulf
The Shepherd
Joined: 20 Sep 2003
Posts: 2312
Location: North/West.England |
It's so easy to go overboard on this issue, i prefer NOT to know of my opponents stats, it would make the game (and the player) "moronic" - i would rather learn by "encounter" in the true gothic gaming tradition, weighing-up the opponent is an intuitive thing and has great interactive "variance" between players, knowing of opponents stat's pre-encounter would be an overkill surely.
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Forever aches my wretched soul, for Chromanin locked in that dark hole, though crypted key i've yet to learn, he knows one day i will return. |
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Tue May 23, 2006 8:52 am |
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Gorath
Mostly Harmless
Joined: 03 Sep 2001
Posts: 6327
Location: NRW, Germany |
Whiners! 
1) Gothic 2 already had level scaling.
2) Level scaling in G3 is only confirmed for NPCs and this was months ago. So why the uproar now?
3) How else do you want to spawn stronger monsters or level up NPCs after a chapter change if there are no chapters ?!
_________________
Webmaster GothicDot |
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Tue May 23, 2006 11:16 am |
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JDR13
Magister of the Light
Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 376
Location: Michigan, United States |
quote:
Originally posted by Wulf
It's so easy to go overboard on this issue, i prefer NOT to know of my opponents stats, it would make the game (and the player) "moronic" - i would rather learn by "encounter" in the true gothic gaming tradition, weighing-up the opponent is an intuitive thing and has great interactive "variance" between players, knowing of opponents stat's pre-encounter would be an overkill surely.
I agree 100%! I could not have said it better. |
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Tue May 23, 2006 4:18 pm |
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Guest
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I don't remember Gothic 2 having any level scaling, infact I'm pretty much positive it didn't. Unless you mean that certain things would only spawn after certain chapters because of the storyline? Like those mage type people after chapter 3 or 4?
And I don't think you should be able to beat up NPC's from level 1 (except for some weak ones) - it makes more sense that way |
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Tue May 23, 2006 5:35 pm |
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Guest
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Everybody ends up the same "tactics" of luring out a creature from the group in Gothic II. If we have a group of creatures, we need to do the same thing repeatedly and re-load when we accidentally let creatures more than our characters could handle at the same time. This reminded me of Heart of Fury mode in Icewind Dale series. In the mode, the hostile creatures i.e. "monsters" are outrageously powerful, which allowed only the same tactics of making a wall against "monsters" with summons and use projectiles to avoid direct contact. Once you found this tactics, it is the rest time for your brains. You need to re-load the game till you get the desirable result. I saw no point in repeating this.
Ideally, when the player adapted a tactics to deal with the current threats in order to keep his/her interest, a game should offer new threats, which should be dealt in a different way. Also, at the introduction of new threat, it should give a chance for players to observe and think of tactics. However, frankly speaking, con-system most likely breaks the immersion which has been one of fortes of Gothic series. Mertz showed an in-game way to give the player information and I think it is natural for NPCs to know the possible threats around them although it depends on the circumstances if they tell the player the info. Also, as Samanthainx wrote, one slash or bite by NPC could be enough to "teach" the player the sense of danger. Then again, depending on player's taste and skills, hopefully the newly introduced difficulty slider will work for increasing the sense of danger and thrill. |
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Tue May 23, 2006 5:41 pm |
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ghola
City Guard
Joined: 08 Oct 2002
Posts: 146
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quote:
Originally posted by Gorath
Whiners!
Hah! If you are not part of the solution you are part of the the problem! :p
quote:
1) Gothic 2 already had level scaling.
No, I don't think so.
quote:
2) Level scaling in G3 is only confirmed for NPCs and this was months ago. So why the uproar now?
I think something oblivious happened in between. :p
quote:
3) How else do you want to spawn stronger monsters or level up NPCs after a chapter change if there are no chapters ?!
And you presume that we would agree on your self-inspired premise that removing chapters is a worthwhile goal in itself? |
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Tue May 23, 2006 10:53 pm |
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Acleacius
King of the Realms
Joined: 24 Dec 2002
Posts: 453
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I like the ideas Merz and Wulf mentioned.
Yeah, I think the enemies just changed class at each chapter in G2, not dependent on your current level, such as when they spawned in a new chapter we would get Orc Elites instead of just plain Orcs.
I think it is very important to try to communicate what seems to be an overwhelming view when you part of a community, even if you get ignored or sound like whinny baby Goblin farts, we at least know we tried to do the right thing. 
I think what happened is that Oblivion came out and everyone found out autoscaling was crap, so we don't want our favorite game to make the same mistake.
Besides if they put autoscaling in G3 like Oblivion, Gorath will be knocking on PB's door trying to strangle them, and we are just looking out for our PB brothers and sisters. |
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Wed May 24, 2006 7:04 am |
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lilithn
Eager Tradesman
Joined: 29 Aug 2005
Posts: 28
Location: Budapest, Hungary |
Oh please no!!!  I hate this auto-scaling in Oblivion (and how a waited for that game, and now I'm soooo bloody bored with it....) I've enjoyed the ass-kicking in Gothic 1 and 2. So much running away screaming, climbing up things and luring out goblins one-by-one from the pack at level 5. And then after level 30-40 just tearing through armies of ...ehhem...groups of orks. It was so enjoyable! And the story and the quests and the characters and the atmosphere and everything was so wonderful, so immersive. If they ruin Gothic 3 with an Oblivion like auto-scaling probably I'm going to jump out the window...or not if the story and the feeling will be like that in the first two game. At the same time I'm most certain that PB would never do this auto-scaling sh*t.  |
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Wed May 24, 2006 9:11 am |
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Guest
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Oblivion failed in auto-scaling. miserably. this is obvious. and i can't believe PB are so stupid to do the same mistakes. i mean they just can't ... |
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Wed May 24, 2006 11:05 am |
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Guest
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The main issue about Oblivion level-scaling is that the designers made an inexcusable and incredibly idiotic mistake obvious even in the designing stage. While they made the scale based on the level of the characters, they didn’t design the levels as a good indicator of the strength of the characters. I cannot believe a professional game-designer cannot spot this obvious contradiction at a glance. I have other complaints about the character advancement system but this is the worst - so unbelievably bad.
About treasure-leveling, if a game gives a player character a better item, it makes him stronger. So, the designers need to make the system scale both the strength of the character and his items. This is not an easy task and it is obvious that Oblivion team wasn't successful even in character level-scaling, even worse, they didn't even try to make the levels as the measure of the strength of characters, as I wrote above. In any case, if you are kind of treasure collector and unhappy with not being able to find powerful items, I'll tell you a big secret: you may rather be interested in making them…at Arcane University. Also, if you have the item called Azur... - Now we really don't know why the team designed the system like this. No idea at all. They may say that they did it for the game-balance but, actually, where is such a thing like the game-balance?
Well, although I have many more things I can write down about the basic design of Oblivion, I feel I am wasting my time. In fact, I think I spent less time on the game itself than some people here seem to have done. Some may say level-scaling is bad but I think there are many more problems in the design of Oblivion... |
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Wed May 24, 2006 4:41 pm |
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