Overleveling vs Underleveling

[Koh]

Now I always overlevel. Underleveling is so overrated. It does NOT. I repeat. It does NOT add a challenge to the game. All it does it drag out the fights unnecessarily. Because 60% of the time in the battle will be used to spam healing spells and/or potions, instead of actually fighting. That's not skill, and that's not a challenge, that's just a waste of time.

[Gors]

umm, do you really need to make a poll for literally everything?

Again, the games program battles with the level they intend you to be. So, being underleveled (or overleveled) shouldnt happen, unless they didnt balance te game out properly.

Also skill isnt just fighting, its also the ability of using your resources, defending and managing all your items until the end of the battle, but I see what you mean.

[Koh]

umm, do you really need to make a poll for literally everything?

Again, the games program battles with the level they intend you to be. So, being underleveled (or overleveled) shouldnt happen, unless they didnt balance te game out properly.

Also skill isnt just fighting, its also the ability of using your resources, defending and managing all your items until the end of the battle, but I see what you mean.

Of course, it's nice to see people's opinions on a chart too .

I know micromanagement is another form of skill, but you can do that while being overleveled too. Again, being underleveled means the following most of the time:

-Damage isn't as high as it can be, thus it takes way more time to defeat a boss or whatever.
-Characters are not as fast as they can be, so if it's a turn-based RPG, the boss or whatever is likely to go first, or if it's an ATB-RPG like Final Fantasies 4-6, then the bars won't fill up as fast as they really could.
-Characters can die faster, which means you'll likely be using like 2 minutes or more of however long this dragging out of the fight could take, just using potions and spells, and revivification items, which really doesn't add anything to the battle.

EDIT: Over and underleveling can happen very easily actually, no matter how balanced they think the game is. Because enemies respawn, one is always able to kill the same goblin over and over until they gain more levels for example. And you know that in almost every RPG out there, just doing boss fights or whatever, and not actually taking the time to walk around in circles to grind, usually causes problems and the need to do so later XD. Kingdom Hearts is a good example of a game that doesn't need grinding, though it does shave off time on the battles if you do.

[Gors]

which is "your fault". You cant really complain if youre obviously weak for the enemy (except if, again, the game was poorly balanced). A good game places enemies compatible with your current level. If they force you to levelgrind and/or make you face a boss from fucking nowhere, thats also their fault.

[Koh]

which is "your fault". You cant really complain if youre obviously weak for the enemy (except if, again, the game was poorly balanced). A good game places enemies compatible with your current level. If they force you to levelgrind and/or make you face a boss from fucking nowhere, thats also their fault.

Well I can't think of ANY game that does both. It's either one or the other; the enemies level up with you, but become super overpowered in the higher levels (Final Fantasy Tactics, for example), or they expect you to have put levels under your belt by certain points (Any JRPG). You can never just go straight through the story in an RPG unless you know what you're doing (Final Fantasy Tactics), or if the game allows for it (Kingdom Hearts). A game is NEVER perfectly balanced xD.

[Previous]

There's games that dynamically set the enemy level around your own average level (or maximum for some games). So you can't really be over- or underleveled.

[Kriven]

If the game allows you to progress without grinding, isn't it balanced? O-o

[Koh]

If the game allows you to progress without grinding, isn't it balanced? O-o

Not necessarily. Some things, while not necessarily grind-worthy, can have too much of one stat, like HP, which makes it take forever to kill them. Another example is money. While the enemies may not be hard, money could be an issue. Things are way too expensive, and you aren't given enough money to compensate. There's a lot of things like this that make every game imbalanced in some way; there's never perfect harmony.

[puggsoy]

I do neither. Practically every game I play has either no levelling (relying purely on player skill), or is well balanced and whatever level I happen to be on allows me to advance, while still being a reasonable challenge. If I do play a game that isn't this well balanced (and I have to grind), I grind minimally up to the point where I can progress, this keeps the game fun.

[Terminal Devastation]

If the game allows you to progress without grinding, isn't it balanced? O-o

Not necessarily. Some things, while not necessarily grind-worthy, can have too much of one stat, like HP, which makes it take forever to kill them. Another example is money. While the enemies may not be hard, money could be an issue. Things are way too expensive, and you aren't given enough money to compensate. There's a lot of things like this that make every game imbalanced in some way; there's never perfect harmony.

Erm. Player playstyle also affects this though. Some players just HAVE to buy out the shop for the next best armor, even when they could sell their old armor, and the game will give the same armor to buy just a few minutes later. Things like that could adjust the feel of the balance. There's no way to balance that perfectly, as the player themselves is unbalancing the game. A "balanced" game just does it job well enough, and tries to balance prep-time (Grinding, equipment buying, exploration) with combat ease. More prep-time, easy boss fights. That's balance in my book, as long as the rates of growth are fair.

As for the difference between overlevel and underlevel... Underlevel isn't always that much longer a fight. Depending on how complex the battle system is, an underleveled fight might just consist of more care in commands and greater knowledge of how the game works with only 2 or three more turns. In several games, elemental affinities become almost a non-factor with a little overleveling, while they could be the difference between winning and losing while underleveled, even though the lengths overleveled fight and the underleveled fights are maybe a turn or two appart, since the underleveled might take the time to buff and debuff more often, or use a status effect or two, while with the overleveled, it might just be a waste of time.

There's a few other cases where underleveling requires more skill rather than just more time especially in action RPGs. Some bosses are balanced to be easy for appropriately leveled characters, so at normal and overleveled states, they're not a big challenge due to things like defense stats and HP being enough to tank a lot of it, or characters having a spell to deal with it at that point. Underleveled? They might have to learn to dodge more, since a lot of attacks are suddenly an actual threat, and you might have to deal with a problem attack more than once, while in an overleveled, or normal leveled, you might end up beating a boss before said problem moves even appear, or only have to deal with it once, and you can just tank a single one.

It's the same concept as a 3 heart run of a Zelda game, or a buster only no hit run of a Megaman game

[PrettyNier]

Koh, i'm sorry, but you don't understand what "balance" or "imbalance" is. Much less difficulty.

Assess things on a specific basis in an attempt to understand why things might be the way they are.

For what it's worth, I've always found over-leveling to be incredibly boring. Its nothing but trite trivialization. I go with the flow of the game unless the game requires that I level more, which is very, very rare. It offers a purer experience where things are more likely to be challenging or interesting. I would rather have an exciting fight where things actually pose a threat, where singular decisions actually matter, where there might actually be a reason to heal, or defend, rather than just regurgitate the same attacks over and over again. In cases of rote regurgitation, of simply mashing the attack button to speed things up, numbers become meaningless and the battle system in and of itself becomes a passive chore.

[Koh]

Koh, i'm sorry, but you don't understand what "balance" or "imbalance" is. Much less difficulty.

Assess things on a specific basis in an attempt to understand why things might be the way they are.

For what it's worth, I've always found over-leveling to be incredibly boring. Its nothing but trite trivialization. I go with the flow of the game unless the game requires that I level more, which is very, very rare. It offers a purer experience where things are more likely to be challenging or interesting. I would rather have an exciting fight where things actually pose a threat, where singular decisions actually matter, where there might actually be a reason to heal, or defend, rather than just regurgitate the same attacks over and over again. In cases of rote regurgitation, of simply mashing the attack button to speed things up, numbers become meaningless and the battle system in and of itself becomes a passive chore.

But that is also a poor argument! Just because you add healing to the list of commands, that doesn't mean you aren't doing the same exact commands over and over.

Special Skills/Physical Attacks -> Boss Attacks -> Potions/Heal Spell -> Special Skills/Physical Attacks -> repeat.

You can't use repetition as an argument, because both sides have this issue.

Also, if it's a GOOD game, overleveling won't necessarily auto-spell victory, like Kindom Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics with the random battles, etc. And other games like Lunar Silver Star Story where the bosses level up with you.

And underleveling doesn't add a challenge like I said. What it does is....let's have a basic example:

Level 12 Stats
Max Hp: 97
Strength: 23

Level 20 Stats
Max Hp: 163
Strength: 41

If you're Lv 12, you'd basically have to dish out more attacks, and heal more often than the Lv 20 character, and thus drag out the fight for more minutes than it really needs to be.

[Kriven]

and thus drag out the fight for more minutes than it really needs to be.

I don't see why this matters.

Also, if it's a GOOD game, overleveling won't necessarily auto-spell victory, like Kindom Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics with the random battles, etc. And other games like Lunar Silver Star Story where the bosses level up with you.

If the bosses are always of equal comparative strength, there is no such thing as being "over" leveled.

[PrettyNier]

Challenge is determined by how much of a threat something is to you, by how difficult it is to defeat. How well a boss is capable of defeating you is intrinsically a part of that. And if you're HP is decently higher than its supposed to be, if you're defense is decently higher than its supposed to be, if your offense is decently higher than its supposed to be, then the fight is no longer balanced. Numerically speaking, it is going to be harder for the boss to consistently pose as much of a threat to you. If a boss is incapable of doing anything to be a threat to your continued existence then that means that there is no difficulty and the battle system is exactly as i described.

Most boss-battles do not last terribly long. That you're so concerned about the time being consumed by using a healing item or doing an action that is not directly offensive shows nothing but a misguided thought process.

You can't use repetition as an argument, because both sides have this issue.

you're assuming a lot, here. not only that healing would be required every other turn but that every turn would play about the same, in sequence. A well designed game would have variance and would actually give you a reason to use a number of different abilities depending on circumstance.

even if we operate under that assumption, if we remove the healing phase, then that removes an extra variable. meaning the fight is just:

Special Skills/Physical Attacks -> Boss Attacks -> Special Skills/Physical Attacks -> Boss Attacks, rinse and repeat.

I'm not sure what definition you're using for repetition, but that is kind of By Definition more repetitive.

Kindom Hearts,

is not a good game lol

[Maxpphire]

So Disgaea- Lets go make your Item's a world that you can level up the items with.

Only two games I like Grinding in are Pokemon and Disgaea.