What are some games that do level scaling very well/disastrously poorly?

[That1GoodHunter]

Bad (more like horrid) examples being Oblivion where past a certain level enemies become massive sponges without a way to catch up to their health pool.

Or the Assassin's Creed RPGs on the opposite side where you can fine tune the scaling to whatever you like.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

Diablo 4 is a disaster.

A power fantasy RPG where you never get to experience a power fantasy.

 

[Daddy JeanPi]

FF VIII sucks when it comes to level scaling.

 

[Blue_Toad507]

Pokemon Gold and Silver and Final Fantasy III are the biggest examples of level scaling done poorly that I've personally experienced. You pretty have to stop and grind for hours just to stand a chance at certain points.

The Trails series usually does level scaling brilliantly, so you never have to worry about party members being left behind.

 

[Zemoco]

Devil Survivor was pretty great in that you absolutely don't really need to grind, and you'd only really do the free battles to get skills or money.

Oblivion's level scaling makes it an objectively bad game, since if you do it wrong (which it's easy to do), leveling up will technically make you weaker. It also removes enemies from the games ion it's entirety so you could end up missing certain foes if you happen to not travel near an area while leveling.
Also, leveled quest rewards, "Bandits" with Daedric armor and Glass swords, townspeople who funnily enough are capable of killing monsters easier than the guards and soldier, it's just awful.

 

[Jolkien]

Diablo 4 is a disaster.

A power fantasy RPG where you never get to experience a power fantasy.

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This was fixed a long time ago.

 

[antitrop]

FFVIII's scaling is based on Squall's level in tiers of 10. Hate it. Some people love it for that, but "Find the best magic to Junction early and then try to keep Squall as low level as possible" doesn't do it for me. Grinding and out-powering all the enemies is like the primary reason I play RPGs.

I thought FFVIII was fine. Then again I power leveled hard. I was busted by like the second dungeon.

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Well that is the very problem. There is no satisfying power curve, you start the game busted and end the game busted. As soon as you can play Triple Triad, you can get OP magic to Junction. Might as well turn off the battles and play it as a visual novel.

 

[Astral]

FF VIII sucks when it comes to level scaling.

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I thought FFVIII was fine. Then again I power leveled hard. I was busted by like the second dungeon.

 

[SirNinja]

Diablo 4 is a disaster.

A power fantasy RPG where you never get to experience a power fantasy.

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...When did you last play D4? Ever since at least season 2 it's gotten quite a bit better in that department. Gigantic loot overhaul on Wednesday as well, if you decide to come back.

 

[NefariousDragon]

Borderlands 3 was pretty bad in this. If you do all the side missions as they come, you'll end up wildly over leveled by end game, making it all a breeze.

 

[headfallsoff]

FF8 doesn't even rank I gotta defend it. I get not liking it but it's an intentionally kinda weird system that provides its own challenge that can be approached and experimented with in various ways, and also can screw you over and lead to an annoying impossible endgame if you're not careful. Something like diablo won't even give you the pleasure of pissing you off, so finely tuned it is to turn the entire game into a monotonous sludge in the exact engagement zone.

That's my big problem with modern level scaling, it flattens all the game design and erases any hard and interesting work the game designers may have done to sand off all the friction points, progression, power spikes and valleys. FF8 is too fucking weird to be put in that box. The bethesda mode is the one that sucks catching on. You can go anywhere but it's all the same to you.

 

[julia crawford]

FFVIII's scaling is based on Squall's level in tiers of 10. Hate it. Some people love it for that, but "Find the best magic to Junction early and then try to keep Squall as low level as possible" doesn't do it for me. Grinding and out-powering all the enemies is like the primary reason I play RPGs.

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You can just play the game normally without abusing these systems...

 

[Lilification]

Yeah Oblivion is really bad with this, I still kinda enjoy it though.

I think a good example are most of the Disgaea games since you can control enemy levels easily. Trails into Reverie is also another good one.

 

[moustascheman]

Skyrim handles it extremely well and very differently than oblivion.

Rather than changing the stats of most enemies, higher level variants are instead spawned in to give the player more of a challenge if they're going back to "low-level" dungeons at high levels. It also helps keeps certain areas dangerous for low leveled characters, especially when paired with how certain encounter zones have minimum levels.

Trying to do something dwemer dungeon or a dungeon in Solstheim will be very difficult in the early game and would get easier as you progress later, but would still remain a decent challenge until you reach extremely high levels.

 

[AuthenticM]

FF8 doesn't even rank I gotta defend it. I get not liking it but it's an intentionally kinda weird system that provides its own challenge that can be approached and experimented with in various ways, and also can screw you over and lead to an annoying impossible endgame if you're not careful. Something like diablo won't even give you the pleasure of pissing you off, so finely tuned it is to turn the entire game into a monotonous sludge in the exact engagement zone.

That's my big problem with modern level scaling, it flattens all the game design and erases any hard and interesting work the game designers may have done to sand off all the friction points, progression, power spikes and valleys. FF8 is too fucking weird to be put in that box. The bethesda mode is the one that sucks catching on. You can go anywhere but it's all the same to you.

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yeah, gotta agree with this. FF8 was only a problem the first time I played it when I hit puberty. Its level scaling is really not bad enough to hang with these other games.

 

[Sinople]

The first time I played FFVIII I had no idea it was using level scaling (I didn't even know that was a thing), played it like any prior FF and had a perfectly good time with it, never thinking something's off with enemies' strength. I genuinely believe people are overreacting with it.

I'd say bad level scaling is when it's tuned so much that enemies are always on par with you, wherever you are in the game, whatever level you are, to the point there's no reason for levels to exist anymore.

 

[Mediking]

Baldur's Gate 3 scaling is hilariously bad. Explorer mode still has enemies hitting like a truck. No indication that you're underleveled until you realize you're too weak to win

 

[Soulflarz]

im strong enough to kill the final boss in unicorn overlord by the second area, so this is probably the inverse.

Baldur's Gate 3 scaling is hilariously bad. Explorer mode still has enemies hitting like a truck. No indication that you're underleveled until you realize you're too weak to win

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??

BG3 scales pretty solidly across the board, wym.

 

[Omanisat]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey's level scaling combined with it's gear score system felt fucking terrible.

 

[ClearMetal]

Skyrim handles it extremely well and very differently than oblivion.

Rather than changing the stats of most enemies, higher level variants are instead spawned in to give the player more of a challenge if they're going back to "low-level" dungeons at high levels. It also helps keeps certain areas dangerous for low leveled characters, especially when paired with how certain encounter zones have minimum levels.

Trying to do something dwemer dungeon or a dungeon in Solstheim will be very difficult in the early game and would get easier as you progress later, but would still remain a decent challenge until you reach extremely high levels.

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Came to mention Skyrim as well.

What also helps is that the lower level variants never entirely go away. They will become fewer in number the higher you level, but even at level 50 you will still be able to flaunt your power by one-shotting level 1 variants, while also getting a decent challenge from the higher ones.

 

[Trisc]

New Vegas and Enderal both handled leveled lists quite well in my book, segmenting off different regions of their respective world maps into leveled zones that will meet you at their level, rather than yours. The infamous Deathclaw-laden quarry along Interstate 15 and Cazadore-infested farmlands north of Goodsprings go without saying. If I weren't familiar with the concept of a "Beef Gate" in 2010, New Vegas would've learned me real quick.

Conversely in Enderal, if you're confident in your abilities as the Prophet, it's quite possible to take on the undead inhabitants of the Whisperwood or Dark Valley early on (with XP rewards that more than make up for the uphill battles you'll encounter). It's far from easy, but considering the value of the loot found there, it can pragmatic to "dip your toes" into the borders of higher-level regions, so to speak.

 

[That1GoodHunter]

Assassin's Creed Odyssey's level scaling combined with it's gear score system felt fucking terrible.

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I'm not sure about Odyssey, but Valhalla lets you turn off scaling all together and force the enemy levels to stay at the original map zone level

 

[naff]

The first time I played FFVIII I had no idea it was using level scaling (I didn't even know that was a thing), played it like any prior FF and had a perfectly good time with it, never thinking something's off with enemies' strength. I genuinely believe people are overreacting with it.

I'd say bad level scaling is when it's tuned so much that enemies are always on par with you, wherever you are in the game, whatever level you are, to the point there's no reason for levels to exist anymore.

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I only learnt about the level scaling in 8 a few years ago. Played it a few times as a kid, never worried about junctioning the best magic nor did I ever get stuck.

Oblivion's is almost objectively bad but I would be lying if I said I didn't find overcoming the scaling with efficient levelling fun, but it's one of those systems where if you don't improve relevant combat skills you do get out levelled and it breaks the game, either you break the game or it breaks you lol. Bethesda skill systems have generally been bad since Oblivion imo with Starfield being one of the worst skill systems I have ever encoutered and Skyrim just being very average. Still enjoyable games, just weirdly flawed.

Other examples of bad level scaling like D4 and even BG3 in this thread I simply do not agree with. D4 is a little dull, but it would be even worse without the level scaling, BG3 is perfectly balanced, but yes you do need to engage with a complex role playing system to not get rolled.

 

[SupersonicHypertonic]

Oblivion is broken and unfun. You could get stronger armour and spells but then get fucked a random bandit who somehow matches you in power.

 

[Astral]

Well that is the very problem. There is no satisfying power curve, you start the game busted and end the game busted. As soon as you can play Triple Triad, you can get OP magic to Junction. Might as well turn off the battles and play it as a visual novel.

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That was the best part for me lol. I've always liked getting overpowered in RPGs so the Junction system and Triple Triad was great to me once I actually messed around with it.

 

[That1GoodHunter]

The Dragons Dogma games do it well in my opinion. You start seeing more dangerous subspecies of enemies the higher your level is, but once you start seeing the most difficult subspecies, you can still keep levelling without worrying about enemies scaling to your level.

 

[moustascheman]

Came to mention Skyrim as well.

What also helps is that the lower level variants never entirely go away. They will become fewer in number the higher you level, but even at level 50 you will still be able to flaunt your power by one-shotting level 1 variants, while also getting a decent challenge from the higher ones.

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Yeah, it's still not uncommon to run into regular draugr or restless draugr, even at high levels. It also helps that the level scaling has a limit as there's only a finite amount of variants for each enemy. You can't, for example, run into a non-boss bandit higher than level 25.

 

[naff]

Oblivion is broken and unfun. You could get stronger armour and spells but then get fucked a random bandit who somehow matches you in power.

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It is crazy, if you get the noti to sleep and increase your level but you haven't actually increased your ability in that skill enough to get the maximum or close to the maximum amount of points possible for that level increase, eventually enemies will outscale you and you'll be screwed. If you engage in the tedious skill system and level efficiently you will eventually just crush everything no matter what level (though there is a point where you should just stop levelling). Honestly one of the most bizarre levelling systems ever

 

[Derbel McDillet]

Gonna Pokemon Gold / Silver for "does it well" for being such an oddity in the traditional sense since it always makes sense for the story. Instead of going the Black / White 2 Route of having pre schoolers on route 1 stronger than the League.

The World Ends With You and the sequel have that dynamic leveling system where you can lower your level / health to get better rewards from fights.

 

[Kurt Russell]

Diablo 4 is a disaster.

A power fantasy RPG where you never get to experience a power fantasy.

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Hasn't been the case for a while now. There's obviously still content that outlevels the player (in endgame stuff) but the overworld is no longer doing what it did at launch.

 

[antitrop]

You can just play the game normally without abusing these systems...

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And that's how people come to dislike the game because they find Drawing tedious. It's a lose/lose to me.

 

[Beelzebufo]

Oblivion's gotta be the worst implementation of level scaling of all time

 

[ClearMetal]

Gonna Pokemon Gold / Silver for "does it well" for being such an oddity in the traditional sense since it always makes sense for the story. Instead of going the Black / White 2 Route of having pre schoolers on route 1 stronger than the League.

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Gold/Silver are terrible because wild pokémon are consistently way below the level you and other trainers are supposed to be at. Victory Road, which is supposed to be the final gauntlet before the League, features pokémon in their low 30s.

Hell, even rival trainers are pretty low level; for example the E4 starts at level 40. Compare that to Red/Blue where they started at level 54.

And those B2W2 pre-schoolers were obviously meant as a joke because of the way the routing is set up in those games compared to BW.

 

[Boopers]

Oblivion's gotta be the worst implementation of level scaling of all time

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Agreed lol

Not only do more powerful enemies spawn, but you can also really screw yourself by not leveling your attributes and skills properly.

 

[moustascheman]

Baldur's Gate 3 scaling is hilariously bad. Explorer mode still has enemies hitting like a truck. No indication that you're underleveled until you realize you're too weak to win

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BG3 doesn't really have scaling though. AFAIK enemy stats are completely static and don't change (since the game is linear and the math for 5e is already so flat that actual scaling is unnecessary). Hell, being underleveled isn't really a big deal in BG3 either unless you're extremely underleveled or trying to do fights meant for level 5+ characters at level 4 or lower. Once you hit level 5 you'll be strong enough to handle most fights in the game.

Enemies can hit hard, but that doesn't change if you're level 5 or if you're level 10.

 

[Mediking]

??

BG3 scales pretty solidly across the board, wym.

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I disagree. I've been playing Explorer mode and whenever I do a "sidequest" and it involves combat... it quickly turns into a disaster. Every battle turns into this nail-biting thing and it shouldn't be like that. I just wanna knock enemies over and learn mechanics and experience the story and characters.

 

[Mediking]

BG3 doesn't really have scaling though. AFAIK enemy stats are completely static and don't change (since the game is linear and the math for 5e is already so flat that actual scaling is unnecessary). Hell, being underleveled isn't really a big deal in BG3 either unless you're extremely underleveled or trying to do fights meant for level 5+ characters at level 4 or lower. Once you hit level 5 you'll be strong enough to handle most fights in the game.

Enemies can hit hard, but that doesn't change if you're level 5 or if you're level 10.

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I'm still level 2 lol I'm looking for this Haslin guy? I'm at this goblin camp or whatever and its brutal

 

[Valkerion]

Pokemon Gold and Silver

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this one geeze. Endgame and the last gym area has lv 24 pokemon while the gym battle is in the 40s … wild oversight

I'd say Scarlet and Violet is similar. Gotta nerf yourself so many times in that game. But I can give it a pass kinda with the sheer variety of Mons now

 

[moustascheman]

I'm still level 2 lol I'm looking for this Haslin guy? I'm at this goblin camp or whatever and its brutal

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That's just you being a low level DnD PC then. A stiff breeze can kill a level 1/2 5e character. It's not until level 3 that you'll feel a lot more capable (and even then you'll still feel relatively fragile until you hit level 4/5).

You'll want to be at least level 3 before tackling the goblin camp (preferably even higher if you want to do it easily). Go and do the crypt near the starting area if you haven't done so already and explore some other first before you go back to the goblin camp.

 

[SofNascimento]

Baldur's Gate 3 scaling is hilariously bad. Explorer mode still has enemies hitting like a truck. No indication that you're underleveled until you realize you're too weak to win

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Funny because I do think BG3 has dreadful scaling but for opposite reasons. After 10 hours or so you're so ridiculously overpowered that any challenge the game has to offer is gone. Combat becomes simply busywork.

 

[Manmademan]

7th Saga SNES version is the all time champ for fucking up level scaling.

When they ported that game to the US, Enix (like many other JP companies) was paranoid about people just renting the game through video stores instead of buying it.
So they lowered the stat growth for your character at level up compared to the JP version, which made the game anywhere from kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda difficult to totally ballbusting depending on who you picked compared to the JP version when fighting regular enemies.

The problem? It's in the name of the game (sorta). There are 7 characters in the game, you pick one and the remaining 6 are either partners or antagonists as you make your way through the narrative. The other six when you run into them will always be your level and DO NOT have the lowered stat growth restriction you do and the *mandatory* fights you must have against them are absolute nightmares. They will beat your ass to high heaven and you have no idea why that is. Grinding only makes this worse, as the higher your level for these fights (except one in the town of patrof) the bigger the stat advantage your opponent will have over you. So you are in a bizarre position of needing to grind heavily to get past regular enemies while grinding heavily penalizes you when you run into an apprentice fight.

Some of these fights come as a surprise (they can be random) and a loss means they will steal some pretty significant equipment from you, handicapping you farther and requiring you to fight them a second time in a worse position unless you save scum.

The most reliable way around this issue is to recruit a partner, kill yourself, and have your partner fight these battles instead of your MC.

 

[Cort]

Oblivion's gotta be the worst implementation of level scaling of all time

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This is the answer. The attribute leveling system was not great and didn't help either.

 

[Burly]

Tears of The Kingdom was pretty bad. After you clear a couple of dungeons there are so many black and silver goblins around, that take like 2-3 weapons to kill because of how bullet spongey they are, I pretty much just ran past content because it wasn't worth it.

 

[Derbel McDillet]

Gold/Silver are terrible because wild pokémon are consistently way below the level you and other trainers are supposed to be at. Victory Road, which is supposed to be the final gauntlet before the League, features pokémon in their low 30s.

Hell, even rival trainers are pretty low level; for example the E4 starts at level 40. Compare that to Red/Blue where they started at level 54.

And those B2W2 pre-schoolers were obviously meant as a joke because of the way the routing is set up in those games compared to BW.

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I like it because its it's own world without revolving around and scaling to you. Also showed me that I don't need to be at the level of something to compete with it. A much weaker Lapras is still stronger than mons 10-15 levels higher than it. Same for Espeon.

 

[moustascheman]

Funny because I do think BG3 has dreadful scaling but for opposite reasons. After 10 hours or so you're so ridiculously overpowered that any challenge the game has to offer is gone. Combat becomes simply busywork.

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I think that's partially due to the fact that it gets increasingly difficult to balance fights in DnD the higher level you go, especially when you can just nova every fight and LR whenever you want like you can in BG3. Larian's broken magic item design and the lack of attunement also certainly doesn't help either (it's trivially easy to stack bonuses until you're basically impossible to hit).

 

[JumbiePrime]

Worst is Oblivion like others said. If you pick your skills the way the devs intended you to you're screwed. If you put athletics as a major you are quadruplely screwed

Best I dunno...

 

[Arithmetician]

Tears of The Kingdom was pretty bad. After you clear a couple of dungeons there are so many black and silver goblins around, that take like 2-3 weapons to kill because of how bullet spongey they are, I pretty much just ran past content because it wasn't worth it.

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I thought Tears of the Kingdom was a huge improvement over Breath of the Wild in this regard. The Black/silver enemies drop black/silver, horns, which can be fused with your weapons to make them much stronger. A Black Bokoblin horn kills more than 1 black bokoblin (I think it can kill several), so you're never losing resources.

On the other hand, BotW was just awful. It is my favorite game of all time but the scaling is the worst part of that game. Scaling the enemies didn't give you any extra resources other than making rare weapons more common, but the weapons grew in power and durability at a slower rate than enemy HP, making the endgame a huge drag on resources when fighting against bullet sponge enemies, as you describe.

 

[Loud Wrong]

Kingdoms of Amalur was comically bad. If you strayed into the later areas, it would set those enemies to always be the level you were when you accidentally went into those areas.

 

[jotun?]

Kingdoms of Amalur is a bit of both, but mostly a disaster

Each area would scale to your level when you enter, then stay that way. So you start an area, it's a challenge, then by the time you're finishing it up you can feel that you've gotten stronger. Sounds great, right?

But two things went really wrong with it.

1. If you weren't aware of how it worked, or didn't pay enough attention, you could lock the level of an area just by passing through it briefly. Then when you go there again 5 levels later to actually do the quests, it would all be super trivial and boring.

2. There were caps to how high each area would scale, and it was really easy to blow way past them just by doing a majority of the content.

Result was that if you wanted to do most of the content and didn't want things to get too easy, you had to put an unreasonable amount of effort into not out-leveling everything

 

[Bengraven]

Borderlands 3 was pretty bad in this. If you do all the side missions as they come, you'll end up wildly over leveled by end game, making it all a breeze.

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In fairness that was Borderlands 1 and 2 as well.