Why? It's makes earlier levels more harder and later levels not much. 100 hp boost I don't even notice at 15+. Another idea would be restrict player's skill levels by the character level. Skills can't be higher than 25 + 3×player's level. So to get higher skills you must level your character. I don't know if is it possible here, I couldn't do it in oldblivion.
How does INCREASING enemies' Health, or Level, address the issue of enemies outscaling the player? The reason why people are avoiding Leveling Up is because the enemies become stronger much faster than the player. On Master difficulty the player is dealing 16% of their damage, which already makes some enemies virtually impossible to kill, adding more survivability to those enemies only makes things significantly worse.
It's like settings yourself on fire in order to distract yourself from the pain of having a broken leg. It doesn't address the issue, and only adds another one.
If I understand, the stimulus is that the progression curve now makes it, so the start is more difficult, but that the difficulty tops earlier, letting the player keep progressing while NPCs are stuck.
The Balanced NPC level cap already caps NPC level. I try to make some npc's harder early on making players progress necessery before fighting them. Stops the intentionally starting certain quests at low lvl.
How does making early game enemies nearly unkillable fix the issue of scaling? You just made the game even more unplayable on Expert/Master than it already was.
The issue comes from the fact that enemies become absurd damage sponges the higher you Level Up, so to actually fix players being reluctant to Level Up we would need a mod that NERFS enemy Health scaling by a factor corresponding to the difficulty they're playing at, or disable Health scaling entirely for both the player and the enemies.
Personally i prefer static health pools with the variables being what the mob is, what level the mob is and what the mob is wearing and not be entirely dictated by what level "you" are, like normal rpgs handle it. It feels better when your progress isn't shared with the world, so you can actually feel growth and see it by your eventual out-classing of enemies. With that in mind, it makes more sense for the game to start harder and get easier as your character grows in strength. Scaling has always given me conniptions, since it is almost antithetical to traditional rpg progression systems.
Okay, let's do some math, because I did something similar with my Starfield mods and have been messing with something similar for Oblivion. I'm tired so if I screwed anything up -- whoopsie daisy.
These numbers are all examples, and of course finely tuning it to feel good is very important:
If at level 1, and enemy has 50 HP, it will now have 150 Hp. Making it 300% as challenging.
If that enemy gains 10 HP per level, that means that at level 10 it will have 150 base HP, or 250 HP. That's about 66% more challenging than Vanilla.
At level 40, the enemy would have 450 HP, or 550 HP with the mod. That's only a 22% increase over Vanilla.
So in this hypothetical, exaggerated example: Level 1: The enemy is 300% harder than Vanilla. Level 10: 66% Harder Level 40: 22% (imperceptibly) Harder
This doesn't take into account that your power scales MASSIVELY over time in Bethesda games.
All in all, this is a clever solution that would force a player to wait until they are stronger to handle some BOSS NPCs.
If you want static health pools, go install Ascension. This is a technique for making level-scaled games more satisfying by making them initally harder and more gated, which gives you something to overcome.
Oblivion isn't like Skyrim, the player doesn't become exponentially stronger by just Leveling Up, which is why people playing on higher difficulties don't want to Level Up too fast because the enemies outscale the player much faster. And Ascension doesn't fix that.
Also, here's some maths for you. If an enemy has 50 HP and you add 100 HP on top of it, than means that on Master difficulty that enemy will have an effective HP pool of 900, because the player deals only 1/6th of their damage so you have to multiply every health pool by 6. That is an insane amount of health to go through for any early game enemy, your Gear will be breaking during every single fight.
This mod makes Expert and Master difficulties unplayable, and anything below Expert doesn't need any incentives to Level Up because the game is already easy enough for the player to be able to Level Up organically.
I appreciate the effort that went into making this mod, but I struggle to understand who was it made for. People who play on Adept, but want a more difficult early game? Because I can assure you that no one playing on Expert and Master wants even more damage sponges.
Ascension doesnt have static health pools. It stops giving enemys better items at some point. That means that they still become stronger as player levels up, but not that much since they carry weak items.
I like the idea of this mod, although I feel like it doesn't quite capture my ideal world deleveling. Personally I am hoping somebody eventually creates a mod to make all npcs have a set level / level range. So like mudcrabs and rats will always be level 1. Make bandits like lvl 3-5. Gate keeper like lvl 15. Ect. I've seen a couple mods do it for bosses only, but I want to remove any sort of level scaling in the world. So doing certain quests or fighting certain creatures requires you as the player to actually level up to be strong enough to face them. Likewise I want all loot to be de-leveled as well, although there are a couple of other mods for quest reward loot, I haven't seen any for sigil stones and general world loot.
Reminds me YASH2 from skyrim. A completely unleveled world with static stats.
Technically it is possible to mod OBR like that even with current tools. Just set the min and max level value of NPC's at the same level. But that also requires balancing EVERYTHING around that. Items, spells, skills, attributes, prices... you name it. The scale is just too big.
And finally it wouldnt be compatible balance wise with most of the mods on nexus since they are build with leveled world in mind.
While I don't think the name of the mod is the best, I absolutely love having bosses being at their best to incentivise leveling up before fighting them, or to make the fights feel more boss-like.
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Another idea would be restrict player's skill levels by the character level. Skills can't be higher than 25 + 3×player's level. So to get higher skills you must level your character. I don't know if is it possible here, I couldn't do it in oldblivion.
It's like settings yourself on fire in order to distract yourself from the pain of having a broken leg. It doesn't address the issue, and only adds another one.
The issue comes from the fact that enemies become absurd damage sponges the higher you Level Up, so to actually fix players being reluctant to Level Up we would need a mod that NERFS enemy Health scaling by a factor corresponding to the difficulty they're playing at, or disable Health scaling entirely for both the player and the enemies.
These numbers are all examples, and of course finely tuning it to feel good is very important:
If at level 1, and enemy has 50 HP, it will now have 150 Hp. Making it 300% as challenging.
If that enemy gains 10 HP per level, that means that at level 10 it will have 150 base HP, or 250 HP. That's about 66% more challenging than Vanilla.
At level 40, the enemy would have 450 HP, or 550 HP with the mod. That's only a 22% increase over Vanilla.
So in this hypothetical, exaggerated example:
Level 1: The enemy is 300% harder than Vanilla.
Level 10: 66% Harder
Level 40: 22% (imperceptibly) Harder
This doesn't take into account that your power scales MASSIVELY over time in Bethesda games.
All in all, this is a clever solution that would force a player to wait until they are stronger to handle some BOSS NPCs.
If you want static health pools, go install Ascension. This is a technique for making level-scaled games more satisfying by making them initally harder and more gated, which gives you something to overcome.
Also, here's some maths for you. If an enemy has 50 HP and you add 100 HP on top of it, than means that on Master difficulty that enemy will have an effective HP pool of 900, because the player deals only 1/6th of their damage so you have to multiply every health pool by 6. That is an insane amount of health to go through for any early game enemy, your Gear will be breaking during every single fight.
This mod makes Expert and Master difficulties unplayable, and anything below Expert doesn't need any incentives to Level Up because the game is already easy enough for the player to be able to Level Up organically.
I appreciate the effort that went into making this mod, but I struggle to understand who was it made for. People who play on Adept, but want a more difficult early game? Because I can assure you that no one playing on Expert and Master wants even more damage sponges.
Technically it is possible to mod OBR like that even with current tools. Just set the min and max level value of NPC's at the same level. But that also requires balancing EVERYTHING around that. Items, spells, skills, attributes, prices... you name it. The scale is just too big.
And finally it wouldnt be compatible balance wise with most of the mods on nexus since they are build with leveled world in mind.