[avereveard]

It's the lazy way out to world design for non linear games.

Why put any effort in making sure player locality influences the surrounding quest level, if player can go anywhere, let's put level appropriate enemy everywhere.

Dungeon siege approach was so much better, even if the game was not as solid: minibosses or higher difficulties quests barred the access to higher difficulties areas. Within a zone, progression and choices were non linear. Item and enemies and xp reward were leveled to the zone, so the player had an incentive to not stick around in low level zones farming aimlessly.

[detaro]

To a degree you can also "hide" it in places where it is logical. E.g. if a game has an enemy faction that goes out of its way to attack the player, it does make sense that these attacks get stronger - if someone causes a faction more trouble, he gets more attention and stronger assets are sent to take them out, guards are reinforced, ... And maybe in reverse, weaker intelligent enemies make a point of avoiding the player (would some badly-equipped bandits really ambush a party that's clearly better prepared for combat than them?). That's then somewhat satisfying: clearly those enemies are stronger, and you now can beat them!

What makes little sense is if wildlife you've encountered before suddenly can take 4x more damage, or the same badly equipped guard suddenly fights back a lot better.

[filoleg]

> Why put any effort in making sure player locality influences the surrounding quest level, if player can go anywhere, let's put level appropriate enemy everywhere.

That's not how it works in Diablo 4, enemy scaling only comes into play if you go to an area that is naturally lower level than yours. Looking at the world map and hovering over areas shows their minimum "recommended" level, and enemies there will start at that level.

So you absolutely can go as a lvl 10 character to an area that expects you to be 40+ and get smacked down in a few hits by a basic lvl 40 minion.