Unleveled world

Talk about the mods you'd like to see in Daggerfall Unity. Give mod creators some ideas!
GethN7
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Re: Unleveled world

Post by GethN7 »

biz633 wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2019 2:48 pm What if the main quest would level with you as normal, but the random encounters had a 1 or 2 level range higher and lower.
The Guild quest givers would give you an option to ask for an easy, moderate, or difficult job and the rewards as well as reputation would go up or down accordingly.
I do like that idea, actually. Would give the player basically the same incentive to play that Morrowind did without being grossly unfair. The tiered jobs also makes sense given how some tasks are really simple ones and some involve epic dungeon crawls in the stock game.

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Ralzar
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Re: Unleveled world

Post by Ralzar »

Of all the mods discussed on this forum, this is the one I would want the most.
The level scaling has allways been the worst part of the Elder Scrolls games. I didn't really think about it when I originally played Daggerfall, but after having it ruin Oblivion for me I've started noticing it in Daggerfall as well.
Some of my best experiences in Daggerfall has been when quests or the RNG for Daggerfall has suddenly pitted me against a monster way out of my league and I had to figure out some way to get past. Like kiting a Deadroth out of the quest room onto an elevator to lower him into another part of the dungeon, or running around a Lich to avoid his alpha-strike of spells. Or pulling a vampire into a bunch of other enemies to make them tire him out.
These are the sort of situations the game is intentionally designed to avoid. Which is unfortunate, allthough it would obviously be a bit much if all dungeons were packed with these kinds of situations.

Making this mod would problably be quite an undertaking though. As it needs to mod so many parts of the game. Dungeons, Loot tables, Shops, Quest-mechanics... it's a lot.

Firebrand
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Re: Unleveled world

Post by Firebrand »

Ralzar wrote: Tue Oct 15, 2019 12:01 pm The level scaling has allways been the worst part of the Elder Scrolls games. I didn't really think about it when I originally played Daggerfall, but after having it ruin Oblivion for me I've started noticing it in Daggerfall as well.
A little OT but I've been playing Oblivion for 8 months, and I've been not at all experiencing enemies getting too stronger when leveling up. That's probably because:
  • I' m using Realistic Leveling mod, which completely replace Oblivion broken leveling system
  • I've created a MOD to max cap the level of enemies (varying from 24 to 32), this way getting rid of nonsense like goblin and troll with 700hp :lol: :roll: which takes 10 minutes to get rid off
WIth these simple fix, I've to say that Oblivion leveling is really good, IMHO. :)

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gulags
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Repost: Static leveled world

Post by gulags »

Something I always thought was way out of place in Daggerfall was the fact that even though the RPG mechanics were so in-depth, the game's world still heavily relies on a level scaled world. which isn't uncommon in an elder scrolls game. but if you look at games like Gothic 2 or Morrowind you'll know how superior static enemy placement and leveled off areas are, in comparison to classic Daggerfall scaling. I think the level scaling is a hindrance to an overall good roleplaying experience. I have three ideas that could potentially fix this problem.

One is that you could have the chances of items, enemies, and events happen completely independently of the player's level and the more difficult/stronger that item, enemy, or event is the less likely it is going to happen. unfortunately, there is a couple of problems with this. In causation of the dungeons not being persistent if you ever get put into a dungeon that is to you might be tempted to leave and wait for the dungeon to reset so that you can retry your luck. this bad for obvious reasons.

the second idea is that each region can have a set difficulty that determines the difficulty of random encounters, dungeons, item drop chances, store quality and quest difficulty among other things. the problem with this idea though is that a wolf cave might be within the same region as a dark crypt of an evil wizard. Obviously that is a problem because now they are somehow the same level. another example of this might be some general store in a country hick village has the same quality of materials as the emporium of a major city on the other side of the region.

That brings me to my third idea which is vastly superior to the other two. The third idea entails having each individual map entity( by that I mean town, dungeon, temple, landmark, etc) has its own set level. this would by far be the best course of action as it solves the major problems of the other two. The problem is it might not be logistically possible or reasonable. This is because of the fact that Daggerfall is a big place with a lot of things occupying its land. It would be draining to go to each place on the map and decide what level it should be.

Oh well, a man can dream I suppose. Guess im gonna go back to Skyrim requiem now.

Narf the Mouse
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Re: Repost: Static leveled world

Post by Narf the Mouse »

So, in order:

1. The mod Persistent Dungeons fixes this problem.
2. No disagreement.
3. Dungeons already have data that could be used for a leveling mechanic built-in; the brighter the dot, the larger the dungeon. If, instead, brighter dots had more dangerous enemies, and combining this with the optional smaller dungeons; this presents a possible solution. And, this can work in a comparable way for settlements - The brighter the dot, the bigger the settlement. In this case, no resizing need be done; a town will have, in general, larger and more dangerous criminal elements than a village, and more so for a city. If we combine this with 2), then we get two options:
3a. Additive danger: A large dungeon near a large city is even more dangerous than usual, due to the hostile element's need to survive so close to a settlement.
3b. Subtractive danger: A large dungeon near a large city is partially suppressed, thereby being less dangerous than normal.
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

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Jay_H
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Re: Repost: Static leveled world

Post by Jay_H »

Since the idea is quite similar to the unleveled world topic, I'm going to merge this in with it ;)

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gulags
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Re: Repost: Static leveled world

Post by gulags »

Narf the Mouse wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2019 11:24 pm So, in order:

1. The mod Persistent Dungeons fixes this problem.
2. No disagreement.
3. Dungeons already have data that could be used for a leveling mechanic built-in; the brighter the dot, the larger the dungeon. If, instead, brighter dots had more dangerous enemies, and combining this with the optional smaller dungeons; this presents a possible solution. And, this can work in a comparable way for settlements - The brighter the dot, the bigger the settlement. In this case, no resizing need be done; a town will have, in general, larger and more dangerous criminal elements than a village, and more so for a city. If we combine this with 2), then we get two options:
3a. Additive danger: A large dungeon near a large city is even more dangerous than usual, due to the hostile element's need to survive so close to a settlement.
3b. Subtractive danger: A large dungeon near a large city is partially suppressed, thereby being less dangerous than normal.
I definitely think you're on to something. it's probably a little bit more complex than that but im certain that there could be a formula to easily determine the level of a map entity.

Narf the Mouse
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Re: Repost: Static leveled world

Post by Narf the Mouse »

gulags wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2019 11:35 pmI definitely think you're on to something. it's probably a little bit more complex than that but im certain that there could be a formula to easily determine the level of a map entity.
Definitely more complex than that. This is just some preliminary vague thoughts. :)

Something could probably be done with a squared distance sum and a red/green danger/safety bitmap. (255, 0, 0) could mean Daedra Lords, while (0, 255, 0) could mean nothing worse than rats and bats, while (255, 255) could be the equivalent of (127, 0, 0), or monsters around level 10, I guess?
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

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Ralzar
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Re: Unleveled world

Post by Ralzar »

One thing I think has been mentioned before: is to give the dungeon names a prefix. Som adjective that hints at the difficulty level. For example "Desolate", "Crumbling" or "Infested".

However, there is allready a naming convention that might be possible to use. You have "Ruins of", "Castle", "Laboratory" and some more I think? What if these defined the diffictuly level? So Ruins were easy, Laboratory were medium and Castle were hard.

Edit: Wow, there was more diversity than I thought: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Dungeons


Having only the largest dungeons be the hardest could be an unfortunate combination. It would mean that late-game you would only trudge through the biggest dungeon and that early game you would only go into the smallest dungeons. I'm not sure if that is good or bad, but it would be the result and I feel it would make the actual play experience less random.

Edit: and while we're on this thread again: Man, I wish the loot tables were a bit more stingy. Deadric weapons appear WAY too early. And I would have really liked it if the shops generally did not have any of the top 4 material types. Give a man some chance to collect an adamantium or ebony armour set before dropping deadric items left and right.
The natural alternative would be to define monster types as only dropping certain materials (if this isn't allready in effect) So only deadras drop deadric items.

Narf the Mouse
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Re: Unleveled world

Post by Narf the Mouse »

Ralzar wrote: Tue Oct 29, 2019 8:09 amHaving only the largest dungeons be the hardest could be an unfortunate combination. It would mean that late-game you would only trudge through the biggest dungeon and that early game you would only go into the smallest dungeons. I'm not sure if that is good or bad, but it would be the result and I feel it would make the actual play experience less random.
Yeah, I did not put that clearly, but to clarify, the dungeons would only get harder, not larger; just that the "larger" value would be switched to a "harder" value.

...Still not sure I put that clearly.
Previous experience tells me it's very easy to misunderstand the tone, intent, or meaning of what I've posted. If you have questions, ask.

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