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The World Tier System is a region difficulty design that the developer has described as being fleshed out during development. The idea is to apply a typical RPG-style progression, where higher-level areas contain tougher challenges, broadly across the open world and across many different skills and aspects of the game, not just combat. As with other in-development systems, the developer has cautioned that the design may shift before launch.
How Tiers Work
Each region is given a range of tiers, for example a range from 5 to 10. When the player enters that region for the first time, the region locks to a tier appropriate to the player's current character level, within that range. If the character is below the lower bound, the region locks to the bottom of the range. If the character is between the bounds, the region locks at or near the character's level. If the character is above the upper bound, the region locks to the top of the range. After that first entry, the region's tier does not re-scale.
Example Scenarios
Region Range | Player Tier on First Entry | Region Locks To |
|---|---|---|
5 to 10 | Below 5 | 5 (challenging until the player levels up) |
5 to 10 | 7 | 7 to 8 (tier-appropriate) |
5 to 10 | Above 10 | 10 (easy) |
The developer has compared this approach to Skyrim's region-locking model. Whether this design ends up being used exactly as described is still uncertain; the developer has been candid that it might not pan out and is open to changing the rules.
Cross-Skill Tiers
Tiers are not only about combat. A Hacker at tier 2 attempting to crack a tier 3 security system might be able to do so but will find it tough; a tier 8 police station might flat-out refuse to assign missions to a tier 4 Cop character due to being underqualified. The same scaling applies to other skill-based interactions across the world.
Weapons feed into the same progression: a weapon's subcategory, such as Pistols or Knives, ties into the tier system, so the gear that suits a region scales with it as well. The wider mechanics that interact with tiers are covered under Gameplay Systems.
Dynamic World Effects
Tier alone does not fully define a region. The developer has stated the game world is intended to be dynamic: random events impact factions and mayoral standings, and these in turn can affect a region's difficulty regardless of its initially-assigned tier. As a result, two playthroughs of the same world may experience the same region at very different effective difficulties.