Open World Games Where You Don't Outlevel Things

Due to bouncing between Pathfinder and this it’s slowing me down on both fronts. Next up is Odyssey tonight, so I’ll just head back to my ship and get that checked off.

I’d love an update on how level scaling feels to you once you’ve unlocked it. It was bothering me far more prior, but since being able to rank up skills I’ve feel significantly more powerful against similarly leveled foes. It’s allowed me to deal with stuff like assassinations not quite finishing guys off of I was as little short on assassin gear modifiers.

I’ve read some frustration that the levelling system ruins assassin’s and archers in this game. Even if you sneak up effectively, you often can’t assissinate your target, and end up in melee, where your squishiness from that line becomes a problem. Likewise, as an Archer the leveled enemies take 3 headshots to take out, so you end up alarming everyone and fighting in melee underpowered.

Is warrior the only viable line?

I’ll say this (and this is just a feeling) the scaling works a little strange. I think it may be based a small bit on story quests. For example I had level 9 quests until I did a battle and then I was switched to level 11 quests scaling. The same quests in the same area.
I dislike scaling generally. One story quest had me move two levels up when I was just starting to kill stuff.

Dion1122 that seems to be a semi-valid complaint. I’ve been playing warrior and sometimes I do not assassinate on a stealth target. I prefer the warrior line.

That said I’ve heard that Hunter line is unbelievably good. Archery > melee. I don’t know if true but… even as a warrior I have had some great arrow shots.

If a game based on the same premise had been released for MS-DOS in the '80s-'90s, would you have played it?

I’ll echo @triggercut’s points in that the warrior tree seems the best tree. The heal is essential, if not actually required, and the armor/damage skills are just about required as well. Another really decent one is the charge skill which is kind of an AoE charge that will hit large groups of enemies, good for crowd control.

I’ve played on Hard the entire time and not had too many issues. Of course the way this works on Hard is that to assault a fort you’ve got to whittle down the horde with a lot of assassinations (so maybe the increased assassination damage is also required).

If you can’t afford to upgrade your favorite weapon, just buy one at your level, it will be just about as good. I will say i think this sort of punishes “fast travelers” since they’re not going to be collecting all the cartloads of metal and wood you’ll need to upgrade your stuff that another player gains by hotfooting it around.

Nah. As of L26, the bow is friggin’ ridiculous as long as you get gear with +Hunter damage on it. The assassination ability where you can do a ranged assassinate by throwing your spear is a bread and butter ability I use constantly. Not only is it fantastic damage and has great range, but it functions as a “teleport” as well. When clearing a fort, I can hop from guard tower to guard tower, slaughtering all the archers along the way with no one below having any idea I’m there.

I don’t think this game is set up to only go one tree. I think it’s why there’s not much in the way requirements like “Must invest 10 points into Hunter before you can get this ability”. I play with a mix of all three, but my main abilities are the ranged assassinate, the warrior heal, and the guided arrow, the devastator arrow, and the overcharge arrow. The latter is hilarious, I once blew up a Nation leader and his entourage of 8 or so soldiers before they could even draw their weapons with two of those well-placed howitzers.

My take on all of this, is that I’m in the middle. I like outleveling content, and being able to come back to it later and own it. I also like when a game is balanced and structured, so the game levels with me if I just follow the main quest line and don’t power level. In other words, I like to be in control of my experience. I actually hate, with a passion, games that auto level all content. What’s the point of getting more powerful, if that power doesn’t mean anything? Games that keep you on the same relative power level as mobs really tend to seem futile to me.

Give me a challenge when I’m following the story, but let me go back and own stuff in earlier chapters, especially if I can farm that stuff for loot for other characters.

This is ultimately my point.

I’m not literally saying you should outlevel nothing. I’m saying they should be better at creating game systems where the things you are currently working on keep pace with you, but you can still beat up mooks and older content with greater ease, because you’ve leveled up.

Ultimately, games are supposed to create narrative and challenge, I think. Neither is serviced by having the current mastermind/big bad villain you are going after be a chump pushover because you leveled up too much before you got to him.

The issue isn’t outleveling content you’ve already moved past. The issue is when the story becomes an unchallenging joke because you actually did the side quests they put in your way/killed things you found along the way.

Still haven’t figured out the leveling system in AC:Od. The range for areas seem to advance with the characters level, but it seems like other than main storyline missions, if you’re above the range for an area, they’re constantly 3-4 levels below you. Or they start out at your level exactly, then just stay where they area except for never getting more than 3 or 4 levels below. It’s just - inconsistent, and not expected base on the starting level ranges for the various areas.

Yeah plus it appears when you level the quests you have in your journal level or scale. I need to double check that. That is a minus in my opinion if true,

Wouldn’t the answer to this levelling issue be as follows:

Have limited levelling options for the PC in terms of stat increase, i.e. make it very marginal. So the start level to the highest level might only double HP overall.

Keep the enemies at the same level/power throughout the game, unless there is a nemesis system upon which they get more powerful or maybe take your equipment, if better, if they defeat you.

The PC instead gets more skills/abilities while levelling up.

The PC can also find/craft/use better equipment as they level up.

These are the things I would like to see in an open world game, dark souls is a bit like this but not really open world, anyone know of any other games like this?

JA2 was sort of like this. Aside from Marksmanship and Leadership, stats were really hard to advance. Doubling your starting stats was very unlikely to impossible. Equipment was also very (or more?) important compared to stats.

Enemies in JA2 did advance as you crossed the map, however. Stats and gear would both improve. I don’t recall by how much, or whether gear was more important than stats.

JA2 did a power curve very well in my opinion. Over time your early mercs did get better, you found or bought better gear, and you could hire mercs that were already good. Meanwhile the world had fixed difficulty on each tile plus some slow improvement based on time/your control.

I understand all the problems with overleveling but ultimately in almost all RPGs I’d rather risk overleveling than be forced to worry about spending my fixed resources poorly