Discussion of the Week(ish) 2: Scaling Levels

Link to the previous Discussion of the Week(ish): HMs


Alright so new discussion topic for everyone. Scaling levels.
What are scaling levels? To put it simply, this means that levels of the opposing team's Pokémon are dynamically changing in response to a player matching a certain criteria, or just in opposition to the player's own team. For example, levels of the opposing team might be scaled to be the average of your team plus or minus a certain amount, depending on the trainer.
So say your team consists of five level 25 Pokémon. With level scaling, this would mean all trainers could also have Pokémon within your level range, say 23-27ish (obvious approximation). This would mean that if done well, the player would never be able to outlevel or trivialize the content. There are a lot of games that have some form of level scaling, a popular one being Skyrim. In fact, it seems common in a lot of open-world games. And lately, it's becoming a more and more popular thing among ROM hacks and fangames.
Now, my question to all of you is how you feel about it. Do you think it has any place in a Pokémon game? Why or why not?

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My response to get the ball rolling:
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of it if it's done poorly. I like that with enough grinding, you could theoretically trivialize the content. It's rewarding your effort as a player. If you feel like dedicating the time to be able to stomp through the game, I want that to be an option. If you feel like turning Gameshark on and maxing out all your Pokemon so that you're a level 100 Dragonite fighting a level 5 Rattata, you should be able to do that.
Now, I also want to point out that if you were to make a fangame or a ROM hack with an open world, level scaling is probably something you'd want to play around with, at least a little bit. When you open up the ability to take multiple different paths, choosing one path shouldn't end up trivializing the others. An example of this happening is in Gen 2 (and HGSS) - if you do Mahogany Town after doing Cianwood/Olivine, chances are, your team will be well into either late 20s or early 30s, and if you recall, most of the regular trainers had Pokémon under level 20, despite you just facing a gym leader with a level 35 Steelix. The reason these trainers are all so underleveled is because you could go to Mahogany Town right after Ecruteak. Now, while I loved the option of being able to choose which direction you wanted to go first, I think with scaling levels, it could have been handled better.
I also want to say, if you were to scale levels, do it creatively. Don't just set it to scale enemy teams after beating a gym, or base it on your team's levels. If you're able to, have a couple variables going in and make them as hidden as possible. Hide the trigger so it can't be easily manipulated or abused.

Anyways. Apologies for the rambling. I'd love to hear your opinions on this subject now. As I said with the previous thread: Keep this civil. There are no wrong answers.

actually to make matters even worse, pryce the mahogany gym leader is barely on par with chuck, jasmine whoops both of them by sheer levels, in fact jasmine is only 2 levels off Clair's dragonairs so i'd argue she's overlevelled more than the rest are underlevelled.

anyway, if done right it could be a good idea in a pokemon game forcing creativity and strategy rather than simply grinding out levels, some fangames like rejuvination and reborn impose an obedience cap similar to the "traded pokemon wont obey you without the right badges" thing only for every pokemon and it certainly provides challenge and forces creativity, but Scaling levels could do something similar if implemented well.

Disobedience seems like a good alternative, though a Happy Pokemon to also disobey you lacks sense imo.

Level scaling I haven't seen in any hacks though, can you name me some that have it implemented?

I messed around with it and came up with a pretty good system. I think level scaling is a good way to not have to bother to manually play test every scenario in your game. It can also be made flexible and include "Pokemon Scaling" as well. In the system I developed if you're at a high enough level you can meet the evolutions of wild pokemon in the grass. So back tracking through old routes isn't as much of a bother. Same with trainers, dynamically updating their parties and levels is pretty cool!

I've never gone to Mahogany Town first until this latest playthrough, but that was because I was farming rage candy bars for arbitrary code execution. If it were me, I would've roadblocked Mahogany in some fashion, so you could increase the levels and maybe make the game not SUPER BORING to play. Grinding in GSC is the most frustrating thing.

As for a dynamic level curve, I'm not sure if I would go in that direction. I'm not sure I like the concept of making Pokemon fully open-world. There's a certain degree of gating that makes sense in a game, if you're trying to keep the player in-line with a storyline that takes place across different areas. I think an official game would be hard-pressed to have a scenario that wasn't at least in some way linear or had a defined path--and much less likely to actually keep levels of opponent trainers/mons relative to yours.

But should a fan game/hack consider this? I think it's possible that someone could craft a scenario that allows for free exploring, ala Zelda NES, and simply lets you wander around the region at your leisure. In such a case, I think the level curve would absolutely need to be dynamic.

I do have to wonder, though, if that could be exploited somehow by using fast-growth Pokemon to grind to a higher level quickly, and use that to catch low-growth Pokemon in the wild without having to put in the effort to actually train them. Something to think about...

FBI said:

Level scaling I haven't seen in any hacks though, can you name me some that have it implemented?

Click to expand...

It's less prominent in hacks than it is in games, that much is for sure, but the ones in hacks that immediately come to mind would be Dyskinesia's Axiom and TSK's Roaming Red