Dynamic leveling

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Dynamic leveling is a video game term and mechanic where characters added to a party have their initial stats adjusted to be similar to the current party's stats. This is used to prevent the need for piggybacking and results in a more balanced party all through the game. Naturally, this is primarily used in games that have lots of characters with upgradable stats, like role-playing video games.

Although dynamic leveling eliminates piggybacking, most forms of it allows the player to exploit the mechanic by grinding out levels early in the game so that all subsequently acquired characters will be very high level as well. Dynamic leveling still allows for low level runs.

Personal

I was made aware of dynamic leveling when my friend Eric explained the mechanic to me in Final Fantasy VI. Although I had already played quite a bit of the game, I hadn't noticed that each new character's level was about as high as mine. At first, I didn't like the idea, but, after realizing how much pointless grinding it eliminated, I appreciated it. When I learned about the level-99 trick in the rafting scene of the game, it didn't initially dawn on me that all future characters would also start at level 99 guaranteeing the rest of the game would be extremely easy.

History

Most early RPGs either only gave the player a single character or had them generate their entire party of characters from the beginning, so there was no need for dynamic leveling. As RPGs became more complex in the late 1980s, designers began adding new characters to the party later in the game, but they would typically add them in at level one, requiring the existing party to piggyback the new character through several battles until they were powerful enough to stand on their own. By the mid-1990s, some developers were employing dynamic leveling. Since this is such a minor aspect of games, I haven't yet researched how common the practice was, or which games made first use of it.

Usage

Over the years, game designers have come up with a variety of ways to dynamically level new party members.

Match level

This method uses the level of the existing party members as a baseline and then starts each new character at a similar level. This tends to result in new party members being fairly close in over-all power to the rest of the party. The designer will have to decide how exactly they want to get the existing level; they could use only the main character's level, use the lowest or highest existing party member's level, average the levels of the existing party and round up or down, etc.

The game Final Fantasy VI uses this method. The first time a new character joins the party, the game takes the average level of the current party's and rounds down to the nearest integer. Certain characters have a slight adjustment to give them a level advantage or disadvantage.

Match experience

This method uses the experience of the existing party members as a baseline and then starts each new character with a similar amount of experience. Although it is similar to matching levels, this method will result in a slightly different approach in games where different classes don't level up at the same rate. Just like with matching the level, there are different ways to do this; use the main character's experience, use the experience of the character with the most or least, get the average experience of the party, etc.

An alternate way of getting a similar result is to also give experience earned by the party to the characters they haven't yet met. This guarantees each new character will be on equal footing as the existing party. Obviously, any level up messages for characters not yet met will be hidden.

Pre-set levels

This method attempts to match the level of each new character to the monsters around the time when they first join the player's party. For example, if the party will meet a character in a dungeon where they would need to be around level six to hold their own, the character will always join the party at level 6.

This is a rather naive approach and isn't as dynamic as the others, but it also prevents the player from being able to grind levels early in the game to ensure that all future party members are high-level and unbalancing the game.

This method is used by Final Fantasy IV.

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