Did Level Scaling Break Games? - Leveling in Open World Design - Extra Credits

With whole new worlds open for exploring, game designers ran into a quick problem: how do you make sure new players don't run into a difficulty brick wall, and experienced players don't have to wade through trash mobs? Games like Oblivion and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey tried to fix this problem by simply scaling enemy difficulty to grow along with the player. But is that really the best solution? Or does level scaling doom open worlds to a same-y slog? Subscribe to Extra Credits for more episodes every Wednesday! http://bit.ly/SubToEC Get info about all our shows at http://becausegamesmatter.com ___________ Get your Extra Credits gear at the store! http://bit.ly/ExtraStore Thanks for participating in this week's discussion! We want you to be aware of our community posting guidelines so that we can have high-quality conversations: https://becausegamesmatter.com/extra-... Contribute community subtitles to Extra Credits: http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_p... Talk to us on Twitter (@ExtraCreditz): http://bit.ly/ECTweet Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/ECFBPage Watch us play games and have fun on http://bit.ly/ECtwitch Listen to our podcast: http://becausegamesmatter.com/podcast Follow us on Instagram: http://bit.ly/ECisonInstagram Follow us on Tumblr: http://bit.ly/EConTumblr ___________ Would you like James to speak at your school or organization? For info, contact us at: http://james-portnow.com ___________ ♪ Intro Music: "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM http://bit.ly/1eIHTDS ♪ Outro Music: "Sound of the Dogfish" By: halc https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01780