The Illusion of Progress
There is a specific kind of frustration unique to modern gaming: the "treadmill" effect. You spend forty hours navigating steep power curves and grinding for legendary gear, only to find that the starting-area wolves have undergone enough stat inflation to match your every attribute point. While many developers utilize aggressive level scaling to ensure an entire sandbox remains "viable" at any stage, this often comes at the cost of a true sense of growth.
The alternative, a world without level scaling, offers a far more profound reward. These are worlds that refuse to bend to the player’s presence, opting instead to let the environment gradually open up only as players become more skilled and tactically aware. By analyzing the history of the genre, we can see why a static world creates a more meaningful journey from a vulnerable novice to an unstoppable force.
The "Rat" Principle: Why Weak Enemies Must Stay Weak
In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the world operates on what can be described as a "primitive" style of scaling. Unlike its successor, Oblivion, which famously scaled nearly every encounter to the player's level, Morrowind exists as a landscape largely indifferent to your arrival. This design choice is essential for the satisfaction of "overpowered fantasies."
Crucially, "primitive scaling" doesn't mean the world is entirely frozen. As you level up, Morrowind gradually expands the enemy pool that spawns in the wild, increasing the variety of threats. However, the base stats of individual creatures remain fixed. If you wander into a Daedric ruin at level one, the game will not adjust its math to accommodate you; it will simply end your journey. Conversely, when you return as a high-level archmage, the world respects your investment. As the records of Vvardenfell history note:
"A Nix-Hound will not become a walking deity just because players reach level 78; it will remain its helpless self."
By allowing a "rat to stay a rat," the game provides a tangible metric for your progress. You don't just feel stronger because a UI element says so; you feel it because the creature that once hunted you is now a triviality.
Difficulty as a Natural Border
Modern masterpieces like Elden Ring and genre staples like Xenoblade Chronicles use high-level enemies as organic signposts rather than invisible walls. In these titles, the "difficulty spike" is a vital piece of communication.
In Xenoblade Chronicles, the progression is famously rigid. If your party is even a few levels below an enemy, the mechanical gap makes victory nearly impossible. Conversely, being a few levels above allows you to steamroll the opposition, though the game punishes this with a "pittance of experience" that effectively halts your progress. While this leaves little room for experimenting or "breaking" the game, it provides clear, functional boundaries for a massive world.
Elden Ring evolves this concept by prioritizing player agency. It avoids cluttering the map with automatic markers, instead forcing players to mark points of interest themselves. When a basic foe in a new region proves too intense, it isn't a design flaw, it’s a prompt to leave, explore a different path, and return later. Knowing an area is "too intense" isn't a limitation; it’s an invitation to engage with the wider sandbox.
Progression Through Knowledge, Not Just Numbers
The RPG Outward provides a "pure implementation" of the no-level-scaling philosophy by subverting the traditional "chosen hero" trope. You are simply an adventurer tasked with clearing a personal debt. In this sandbox, you don't watch a traditional experience bar fill up. Instead, your growth is measured by:
- Gear & Skills: Acquiring specific weapons and learning specialized abilities from trainers.
- World Wisdom: Gaining a deeper understanding of monster patterns and environmental hazards.
In Outward, exploration is a high-stakes risk. An area that starts as "destructively dangerous" eventually becomes "satisfyingly safe," not because the game adjusted its internal math, but because you, the player, gained the literal tools and wisdom to survive it. It turns the sandbox into a true survival test where knowledge is more valuable than any stat point.
The Brutality of Learning Through Failure
Games like Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance (KCD) embrace a "skill-based" progression that leans heavily into ludo-narrative resonance, the idea that the gameplay mechanics mirror the character's story. In KCD, you play as Henry, a blacksmith’s son who can barely hold a sword. His journey to become a soldier is slow and arduous, mirroring the player's own struggle to master the game's complex combat.
In these titles, failure is a learning opportunity. By forcing players to struggle through the first 15 hours, the eventual mastery feels earned. However, these games are careful not to let the player become too comfortable. Dragon’s Dogma 2, for instance, introduces endgame quests that provide a fresh, surprise challenge for even the most prepared explorers. This ensures that even when you've achieved your "OP fantasy," the world still has the teeth to bite back.
The Luxury of Choice in Modern RPGs
Today’s developers are finding a middle ground by offering players a choice in how they experience world balance. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth demonstrate how to cater to different player philosophies without sacrificing the fixed-world feel.
In FF7 Rebirth, players who clear every side quest will naturally outpace the main story's power curve. To remedy this for those who crave a constant struggle, the developers included "Dynamic Mode." This optional feature scales enemies to the party's level, while leaving the traditional fixed difficulty as the standard for everyone else.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth offers a similarly smooth progression that avoids the feeling of a "grind" through its three open-world maps. However, a veteran's eye will spot the "DLC Sting": while the journey to the credits is balanced beautifully, much of the true endgame content and the path to the absolute max level is locked behind launch DLC. It is a reminder that even in a well-balanced world, the "vanilla" experience often has a hard ceiling.
The Future of the Static World
The critical and commercial success of titles like Elden Ring and Dragon’s Dogma 2, both pulling near-perfect 9/10 scores, proves that the industry is shifting. There is a profound sense of immersion in a world that doesn't wait for you to catch up, and players are increasingly willing to adapt to the environment rather than demanding the environment be catered to them.
As we move into a new era of open-world design, the "treadmill" is losing its luster. The most memorable journeys are those where the world stands its ground, forcing us to ask: Do you prefer a world that adapts to your presence, or a world you must adapt to in order to survive?
Post a Comment