this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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Nothing worse in an RPG than building yourself up into an unstoppable beast only for every stick brandishing bandit and feral dog to be juiced up to the eyeballs when you fight them, taking your god strength blows to the face with not even a flinch.
When you have a leveling system and everything in the world levels up along side you there may as well not be a leveling system at all. Devs do it when they want to say they have a leveling system but are too lazy to make it work correctly.
Terraria technically has scaling (actually just three tiers) but it works fine. Your gear generally upgrades much faster than the scaling enemies. The new enemies are the real obstacle which feels better. I've never noticed old enemies becoming a problem and by the end game your ability to clear whatever random enemies stands in your way is trivial
I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to. If by "three tiers", you're talking about pre-Hard-Mode, Hard-Mode, and post-Plantera, I don't think that falls under what is typically meant by "level scaling" (I realise you didn't use that term specifically, but people up-thread did). Level-scaling would be if a green slime, which dies in 2-3 hits at the beginning of the game, grew stronger alongside the player such that later in the game, it would still take 2-3 hits.
I'm not saying this just to be a persnickety asshole, but instead to make the point that Terraria is so great because it doesn't have the kind of scaling that Oblivion and many other open-world RPGs have. I love how Terraria has no qualms in repeatedly bitch-slapping you back to spawn if you insist on heading into areas you're ill-equipped for (and the tiered progression ensures that there's nearly always some such difficult place, even as the player levels up). I also find it interesting how the tinkerer's bench acts as a key driver of progression by allowing you to pack more accessory function into fewer equipment slots.
That is to say that unless I'm misunderstanding you, I completely agree with your points, except that I would consider this to be an example of good progression without level-scaling
It is a form of soft level scaling. I get your point that it's not meant as a way for enemies to fully catch up with you but it is the same system but toned down a lot