Simulated Open World VS True Open World VS Linearity?

[Koh]

So this is a game design question my partner and I are thinking thoroughly about.

The way I envision the World of Chaos games is that they are games that have a main focal story, but also several side stories revolving around the main, secondary and tertiary characters, so people can get involved with the inhabitants of the world and get attached to them. This also calls for many optional areas and dungeons in the world, but some places would need to be accessed later. However, I also want points in the main story where there will be a handful of areas to do at once (like 3+), requiring the player to choose the order, but all need to be done before moving on. The problem all of these key traits creates is level scaling.

My general idea to handle that is to make it so when players start a story for these areas, the game saves that, and uses it to upscale the enemies for the other areas, and when the player starts the story of another area, the game upscales the other areas that still need to be started as well. My friend Josh, however, has stated that this creates a problem of the player being locked into a section unintentionally; it'd punish the players who decide to check out an area for a few minutes, decide they want to come back later and go to a different area, only to find the monsters are much stronger, and can't progress through. I'm not, however, seeing why this would be such an issue, or a different resolution to the problem.

I simply do not want the game to be extremely linear, where the player doesn't have ANY choice in the order of some areas. I do, however, also want later areas to be scaled up in level so that the player will still have a challenge after finishing one of the handful of areas. The whole game, besides the main story, is also about exploration, so I want players to be able to actually explore with some free will.

[Goemar]

Why not simply have enemies upscaled after so many quests are done or in relation to the players level? Seems like a lot more practical solution than having it triggered by simply accessing an area.

[puggsoy]

I was actually going to suggest that too. You could perhaps even make that the first time the player encounters one of that area's enemies, only the enemies in that area are levelled proportionately to the character.

You could also just make enemies dynamically upscale along with the character's level. There could be some randomization factor , so that sometimes you'll come along particularly weak or strong enemies, but in general enemies are more or less at levels that are challenging yet enjoyable to battle. There's no single trigger to buff them up, they just change along with you. Then once you've completed (or perhaps just battled a certain amount of enemies in) an area, or group of areas, then their levels are locked and stop changing, so that you can go back to it at a later time without them being too much of a nuisance.

This is just brainstorming, really. To come up with a definite system that works, I'd need to know the details with the game. (e.g. is there even a battle system or is it overworld fighting, like in LoZ?) But hopefully this gives you some ideas.

[Jermungandr]

I personally don't like it when enemies scale in relation to the player characters' levels because it turns grinding and leveling up into a moot point.

[Koh]

I personally don't like it when enemies scale in relation to the player characters' levels because it turns grinding and leveling up into a moot point.

This is what I was thinking about that being a constant thing too. Which is why it has to happen only once at some point, to set the average level for future areas. I'm sort of leaning towards Goemar's initial suggestion, where after X number of areas, the average level increases or something. But I'm all ears for any other ideas.

[puggsoy]

I suppose that is a good point, my idea probably isn't ideal then. I think it'd still be interesting to try and work it into a game somehow, sometime though.

Anyway, Goemar's suggestion seems pretty good yeah. You could maybe make a difficulty setting that varies the number of areas/quests/whatever you need to do before this changes, and/or the amount by which enemy levels increase each time.