What kind of gear are you using? Downtown is meant to taken on only after you've maxed out your favourite combat perks (both offense and defense ones) and have farmed some good legendary weapons.
Combat wise, I am a split between rifleman and big leagues. I'm rocking a supersledge/ripper, a gauss rifle, legendary mighty assault rifle and a plasma rifle. All have the highest possible upgrades (and they've had them for a while, as I also got max perks in weapon crafting by level 45 or so).
I am essentially a wasteland death dealer and very little can stand up to me. Anything I add to my build now will be for novelty rather than necessity.
My point is that it took me 300 hours to reach this status. I think that having such a high zone level for these areas will make it so people will essentially finish their character progression, both perk and equipment wise, by the time they are an acceptable level to wander the city or - heck- even meet Piper or Strong.
That being said,I agree with the thought behind this mod. I think the game's balance needs to be entirely revised, as you can practically take a leisurely stroll through enemy infested areas that you have previously triggered to a set level. Because these zones retain that level, the enemies you will encounter in them will drop like flies if you have set foot in that area before.
Bethesda clearly didn't plan this out. The game is at its best when you are discovering a new area or when you trigger a random encounter in the wasteland (which tends to spawn enemies that take the player character's level into consideration). After a fun encounter against balanced enemies in a given area, however, the game actively goes out of its way to diminish your experience. Facing enemies in this area again will carry no challenge because their equipment, Hit Points and damage will always be the same. The player's equipment, Hit Points, damage output and utilities, on the other hand, will increase exponentially.
Then again, the game is constantly pushing you to revisit areas. I did a lot of backtracking to fulfill quest objectives, and what was a fun challenge the first time I visited an area becomes a total bore when I return for a quest objective.
The existence of an upper level limit in each zone is also a huge problem, and I'll give a practical example: - When I reached Jamaica plain to complete its associated quest, I was fairly high level (50 or so). Every enemy in the area was 10 or 20 levels below me (I assume, as I didn't have the perception perk required to check at the time). They all went down in one shot, and their attacks practically had no effect on me. All because they didn't scale to my own level, but rather to the set value that the developers arbitrarily determined would be right. For a game that actively advertises "GO ANYWHERE! DO ANYTHING!" and allows, even encourages you to stray off the beaten path, this is a terrible system.
The only solution I've found to this awful zone level issue is the "Higher Zone Levels" plugin that is included as an optional file in this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5406 . This makes it so there is no upper limit to each zone's level, thereby ensuring every new area you come across is always at least mildly engaging.
This STILL DOESN'T FIX subsequent passes through previously visited areas. The fact that the game locks the enemy level in an area to the level at which you first visited it is a massive flaw. Can this even be fixed with the current tools at our disposal?
To surmise: It seems to me that the ideal solution to provide an engaging difficulty throughout the game would be to take these 3 simple steps:
1- Keep the "minimum level" value field for Zone Levels, with the option to increase it if the player craves a higher difficulty. This guides the player to building up his character before undertaking certain areas that hold better loot. I know I ran into this when I first faced super mutant camps, and it makes perfect sense.
2- Remove the Zone Level "memory" mechanic, or set it up so that it copies the value of the "maximum level" field. So that after you clear out an area, it will NOT become "frozen in time", and instead will be populated by enemies that scale to the minimum value of the player character's level, so as to provide a challenge for subsequent runthroughs that occur often due to quest objectives.
3- Make the "maximum level" value field for Zone Levels infinite, in such a way that it scales with the player character's own level.
These 3 changes ensure that: - Some areas require levelling before you can visit them - Subsequent passes through previously cleared areas still allow the player to have balanced engagements - New areas may have enemies above the player character's own level, but never below.
Quite a lot of people, myself included, really dislike having enemies that always scale with the player. Although it has benefits, it undermines progression, and ultimately makes the gameworld feel more artificial.
Some other ways I personally adjust game balance, that may be useful to you:
- "Create your own survival rebalance mod" I use 250% normal damage to the player and 120% normal damage from the player. This setting I find makes the early game a ton harder and makes many areas just flat out impossible until you've collected good gear and some ballistic weave. - I use a console command to give myself the ballistic weave perk as soon as I exit the vault. Then I farm for a while until I have enough ballistic fiber to kit out. Far from making me OP, this is necessary just to get through Lexington. - I never VATS, but I use bullet time mod. Since you can't really spec into bullet time with perks, it increases overall challenge. - I play using the High version of my other mod More Spawns. This really turns up the challenge to the point where really good Legendaries are required to survive. - At level 70+, with 500+ life and armour, I actually remove the ballistic weave because it makes things too easy again.
This Encounter Zones mod is really the smallest piece of an overall game balance overhaul. Everything together amounts for a very harsh wasteland that does not tolerate carelessness, yet still provides meaningful progression, and a sense of accomplishment in the endgame. If this mod in combination with others helps you get what you want out of FO4, great. If not, no problem, I don't expect it to suit everyone.
Thanks for the well written reply . I won't be using this mod as I find the changes in minimum zone levels way too extreme, unreasonably so. But I'll certainly look into your other suggestions.
As a retort to your dislike of enemy scaling to the player's own level: you should consider that the amount of utility you get from damage and crafting perks far far outshine the stat increase enemies gain at higher levels. A testament to this is the fact that at level 60, I can easily take down a level 61 savage deathclaw with a few well placed shots. Even though the enemies are scaling to my level, they feel a lot more manageable than the first time I faced them due to all the utility I've acquired from perks and equipment.
The sense of progression is still present because of this, and I would argue that the game world feels LESS artificial because you're not one shotting low level enemies due to your higher weapon damage perks (those are artificial, as a bullet does not suddenly hit harder because you read a few books).
i also cant wait for a mod that changes the logic of scaling. i understand ppl who think that if the game scales with the player than there is no sense of progression, but there could be if the logic changes. if there could be a mod that makes enemies always range between the player's level and level 0 than if you are level 10 than enemies will be level 1 to 10, if the player is lvl 40 than enemies will be levels 1 to 40. this means that the higher level you are - the less likely you are to meet enemies around your level and more likely to meet weaker enemies.
personally i would go for a mod that makes enemies range from your own level down to 20 levels below you or 15 or something like that.
i am one of those who hat when weak enemies feel like paper and strong enemies are massive bullet sponges and that's the game with every static RPG - 35% of the enemies are so far below the players' level that they are no challenge and no fun, and 35% of the enemies are so far above the player so they feel like damage sponges and artificially hard and are also no fun, which leaves only about 30% of the enemies to be indeed - fun. i prefer 80% fun enemies but i am enjoying combat more than i enjoy the sense of progression that someone is too easy because i leveled up.
varx, correct me if im wrong - since this mod requires a new game, isnt there a way to reset all the zones you already visited using a console command? a command that might make all zones reset as if the player never stepped foot in them?
This is an (old) convo, I realize, but I wanted to add something to the discussion.
What some of you are after, is a change that exists, but only for Skyrim AFAIK. The file > Encounter Zones Unlocked SE, fixes the other side of the EZ equation. It is a simple matter to modify EZs. But, you are still left with the problem of the EZ being locked to your level when you 1st visit it, a mechanic I believe F4 has as well. EZ Unlocked is an SKSE plug-in, and from what I can see, there is no equivalent of that made for Fallout 4. Boosting EZ by themselves is an effective tool, but it is not the whole picture as it turns out.
Here is my comments on the file after looking at it
-A few ITMS. Maybe he wanted to change those, but forgot? -A few updates are needed in a small # of the of zones settings. -Some of the changes, are not well considered. For example RedRocketCaveZone is Level 76min and 80 max! This makes no sense at all. That cave, is supposed to be a starter\noob area. Not end game content. I changed this to 6 and 20. (vanilla is 4 and 9). I am going over this list and dialing it down in places, or boosting as case may be. I reduced downtown from 55 < 45 and set its max levels back to 99. Setting lowered max levels really makes no sense if you are want things to spawn at higher levels.
Returning to an area you cleared and expecting everything that returned to be higher level is actually counter-intuitive, since if you think about it in a biological sense, clearing out the apex beasties would make it easier for lower-level critters to move in and take over.
But if there was some sort of organized opposition that decided they need to send in stronger reinforcements in case I return, drafting a bunch of grunts exactly as strong as me wouldn't make much sense, either.
Why doesn't the enemies level rise with character level? So when you are level 50 they would be similar no matter where you go on the map. They could be 10% stronger or what ever the game says they are when you first enter an area.
Hey man awesome mod! Although there are some changes that you need to make to carry some modifications made to a couple of encounter zones made by the Automatron DLC. I already carried those changes myself for my personal use but I am letting you know just in case
Okay, so my character is stomping through the Wasteland on Very Hard difficulty and growing increasingly bored with Fallout 4. Why, you ask? Because there's no enemies to fight, except for the very limited in-game scripting occasions. The Wasteland itself is DEAD!
So along come a half dozen deliciously wicked mod specialists to stir the pot -- concepts to enable bored people like me to all of a sudden find themselves engaged in hard fights all across the map! Like what I was expecting from the game developer -- NOT!
Including this mod, these are the ones I'm using to make the Wasteland come ALIVE, and adding a lot of fun for my character with Dogmeat, Shei, and Ada tagging along:
"More Birds" by Karel2015 "Raider Overhaul" by MadMAX713 "Beautiful Female Enemies" by rbddc12 "Supermutants Shall Inherit the Earth" by SephDragon "Super Mutant Redux" by MadMAX713 "Adjusted Encounter Zones" (Medium) by varx "More Spawns" (Medium) by varx "Vertical Spawns - Aerial Assault" by coreyhooe
I have these mods loaded in the above order between Aesthetic Tweaks and Settlement Tweaks. Thank You!!
The "Zone Group Level Ranges" list is great, but it would be nice to get a picture map of the level zones. Could have sworn I saw that here before... Might have been thinking of another mod.
This mods works with more spawn right? Will this work with Commonwealth spawns extended mod? Its just like more spawns but adds more spawn zones throughout Commonwealth. Nice mod by the way, it adds new suprises in the Wasteland.
I really like this mod, without it the game feels just too easy. So fist of all, big thanks for your work. Unfortunately, when char reaches level 80 or higher, monsters are again no challenge. The granted XP are so high, i am mostly level 60 after conquering the north half of the map. So i would like to see the monsters level higher on the south half. Between level 50 and 120 or something, where 120 would be in the glowing sea. And maybe, make some random monsters (highest tier of each race or so) to be level 200, so there would be more "bosses", that you can only kill after a real fight.
is there any chance to make all enemies dynamically to be of the same or x+ lvls higher then protoganist? or several esps like "all lvl10" - "all lvl50" - "all lvl100"... smthn like this. it d be very nice. while playing i ve 148 lvl and i ve absolutely no challenging enemies even with ur encreased spawns mod(just i long session from 1-st days of fo4 without cheats or force exp) i guess, many ppl have the same problem =(
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Can I update levels for areas already visited somehow? Perhaps by waiting for a long time (30+ in-game days)in interior cell?
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/34107
I am essentially a wasteland death dealer and very little can stand up to me. Anything I add to my build now will be for novelty rather than necessity.
My point is that it took me 300 hours to reach this status. I think that having such a high zone level for these areas will make it so people will essentially finish their character progression, both perk and equipment wise, by the time they are an acceptable level to wander the city or - heck- even meet Piper or Strong.
Bethesda clearly didn't plan this out. The game is at its best when you are discovering a new area or when you trigger a random encounter in the wasteland (which tends to spawn enemies that take the player character's level into consideration). After a fun encounter against balanced enemies in a given area, however, the game actively goes out of its way to diminish your experience. Facing enemies in this area again will carry no challenge because their equipment, Hit Points and damage will always be the same. The player's equipment, Hit Points, damage output and utilities, on the other hand, will increase exponentially.
Then again, the game is constantly pushing you to revisit areas. I did a lot of backtracking to fulfill quest objectives, and what was a fun challenge the first time I visited an area becomes a total bore when I return for a quest objective.
The existence of an upper level limit in each zone is also a huge problem, and I'll give a practical example:
- When I reached Jamaica plain to complete its associated quest, I was fairly high level (50 or so). Every enemy in the area was 10 or 20 levels below me (I assume, as I didn't have the perception perk required to check at the time). They all went down in one shot, and their attacks practically had no effect on me. All because they didn't scale to my own level, but rather to the set value that the developers arbitrarily determined would be right. For a game that actively advertises "GO ANYWHERE! DO ANYTHING!" and allows, even encourages you to stray off the beaten path, this is a terrible system.
The only solution I've found to this awful zone level issue is the "Higher Zone Levels" plugin that is included as an optional file in this mod: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/5406 . This makes it so there is no upper limit to each zone's level, thereby ensuring every new area you come across is always at least mildly engaging.
This STILL DOESN'T FIX subsequent passes through previously visited areas. The fact that the game locks the enemy level in an area to the level at which you first visited it is a massive flaw. Can this even be fixed with the current tools at our disposal?
1- Keep the "minimum level" value field for Zone Levels, with the option to increase it if the player craves a higher difficulty. This guides the player to building up his character before undertaking certain areas that hold better loot. I know I ran into this when I first faced super mutant camps, and it makes perfect sense.
2- Remove the Zone Level "memory" mechanic, or set it up so that it copies the value of the "maximum level" field. So that after you clear out an area, it will NOT become "frozen in time", and instead will be populated by enemies that scale to the minimum value of the player character's level, so as to provide a challenge for subsequent runthroughs that occur often due to quest objectives.
3- Make the "maximum level" value field for Zone Levels infinite, in such a way that it scales with the player character's own level.
These 3 changes ensure that:
- Some areas require levelling before you can visit them
- Subsequent passes through previously cleared areas still allow the player to have balanced engagements
- New areas may have enemies above the player character's own level, but never below.
Some other ways I personally adjust game balance, that may be useful to you:
- "Create your own survival rebalance mod" I use 250% normal damage to the player and 120% normal damage from the player. This setting I find makes the early game a ton harder and makes many areas just flat out impossible until you've collected good gear and some ballistic weave.
- I use a console command to give myself the ballistic weave perk as soon as I exit the vault. Then I farm for a while until I have enough ballistic fiber to kit out. Far from making me OP, this is necessary just to get through Lexington.
- I never VATS, but I use bullet time mod. Since you can't really spec into bullet time with perks, it increases overall challenge.
- I play using the High version of my other mod More Spawns. This really turns up the challenge to the point where really good Legendaries are required to survive.
- At level 70+, with 500+ life and armour, I actually remove the ballistic weave because it makes things too easy again.
This Encounter Zones mod is really the smallest piece of an overall game balance overhaul. Everything together amounts for a very harsh wasteland that does not tolerate carelessness, yet still provides meaningful progression, and a sense of accomplishment in the endgame. If this mod in combination with others helps you get what you want out of FO4, great. If not, no problem, I don't expect it to suit everyone.
As a retort to your dislike of enemy scaling to the player's own level: you should consider that the amount of utility you get from damage and crafting perks far far outshine the stat increase enemies gain at higher levels. A testament to this is the fact that at level 60, I can easily take down a level 61 savage deathclaw with a few well placed shots. Even though the enemies are scaling to my level, they feel a lot more manageable than the first time I faced them due to all the utility I've acquired from perks and equipment.
The sense of progression is still present because of this, and I would argue that the game world feels LESS artificial because you're not one shotting low level enemies due to your higher weapon damage perks (those are artificial, as a bullet does not suddenly hit harder because you read a few books).
Thanks again.
i understand ppl who think that if the game scales with the player than there is no sense of progression, but there could be if the logic changes.
if there could be a mod that makes enemies always range between the player's level and level 0 than if you are level 10 than enemies will be level 1 to 10, if the player is lvl 40 than enemies will be levels 1 to 40. this means that the higher level you are - the less likely you are to meet enemies around your level and more likely to meet weaker enemies.
personally i would go for a mod that makes enemies range from your own level down to 20 levels below you or 15 or something like that.
i am one of those who hat when weak enemies feel like paper and strong enemies are massive bullet sponges and that's the game with every static RPG - 35% of the enemies are so far below the players' level that they are no challenge and no fun, and 35% of the enemies are so far above the player so they feel like damage sponges and artificially hard and are also no fun, which leaves only about 30% of the enemies to be indeed - fun. i prefer 80% fun enemies
varx, correct me if im wrong - since this mod requires a new game, isnt there a way to reset all the zones you already visited using a console command? a command that might make all zones reset as if the player never stepped foot in them?
What some of you are after, is a change that exists, but only for Skyrim AFAIK. The file > Encounter Zones Unlocked SE, fixes the other side of the EZ equation. It is a simple matter to modify EZs. But, you are still left with the problem of the EZ being locked to your level when you 1st visit it, a mechanic I believe F4 has as well. EZ Unlocked is an SKSE plug-in, and from what I can see, there is no equivalent of that made for Fallout 4.
Boosting EZ by themselves is an effective tool, but it is not the whole picture as it turns out.
Here is my comments on the file after looking at it
-A few ITMS. Maybe he wanted to change those, but forgot?
-A few updates are needed in a small # of the of zones settings.
-Some of the changes, are not well considered. For example RedRocketCaveZone is Level 76min and 80 max! This makes no sense at all. That cave, is supposed to be a starter\noob area. Not end game content. I changed this to 6 and 20. (vanilla is 4 and 9). I am going over this list and dialing it down in places, or boosting as case may be.
I reduced downtown from 55 < 45 and set its max levels back to 99. Setting lowered max levels really makes no sense if you are want things to spawn at higher levels.
But if there was some sort of organized opposition that decided they need to send in stronger reinforcements in case I return, drafting a bunch of grunts exactly as strong as me wouldn't make much sense, either.
Just sayin'.
So along come a half dozen deliciously wicked mod specialists to stir the pot -- concepts to enable bored people like me to all of a sudden find themselves engaged in hard fights all across the map! Like what I was expecting from the game developer -- NOT!
Including this mod, these are the ones I'm using to make the Wasteland come ALIVE, and adding a lot of fun for my character with Dogmeat, Shei, and Ada tagging along:
"More Birds" by Karel2015
"Raider Overhaul" by MadMAX713
"Beautiful Female Enemies" by rbddc12
"Supermutants Shall Inherit the Earth" by SephDragon
"Super Mutant Redux" by MadMAX713
"Adjusted Encounter Zones" (Medium) by varx
"More Spawns" (Medium) by varx
"Vertical Spawns - Aerial Assault" by coreyhooe
I have these mods loaded in the above order between Aesthetic Tweaks and Settlement Tweaks. Thank You!!
Unfortunately, when char reaches level 80 or higher, monsters are again no challenge.
The granted XP are so high, i am mostly level 60 after conquering the north half of the map. So i would like to see the monsters level higher on the south half.
Between level 50 and 120 or something, where 120 would be in the glowing sea. And maybe, make some random monsters (highest tier of each race or so) to be level 200, so there would be more "bosses", that you can only kill after a real fight.