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Is Scaling content a good thing?
Amaranthar
Member EpicPosts: 5,797
For me, scaling the content to fit my character, or the reverse of scaling my character to fit the content, isn't good.
I like to meet the challenges, and retreat/escape if I have to. It's just not fun to "win" if there's an adjustment to make all things equal.
I like to meet the challenges, and retreat/escape if I have to. It's just not fun to "win" if there's an adjustment to make all things equal.
Once upon a time....
Comments
If it's done like FFXIV where you can group for dungeons and it caps your level at the dungeon cap, that feels okay because at least then you are able to play any level dungeon with friends and it keeps the lower level content populated.
Scaling content ='s increasing enemy HP. I would prefer it makes the encounters tougher, but keeps the enemies the same.
Further more, when you level scale.... you pretty much are saying.. levels don't matter. I hate that too.
If you're going to scale every single battle and area to whatever your level is, why even have levels? Yeah you may be level 80.. but here.. you're 15.. deal with it.
Used to lov e back in open world RPGs when I could finally stay alive in the harder areas- Felt accomplishment when I could revisit an area I was destroyed in and actually survive...Level scaling kills all ...In a terrible and stupid way.
"Hey you're level 1 so the entire world is level 1-3...Worry not if you run across rare and incredibly powerful creatures since they will all be within your level range...for the entire game".
How did this ever even become a thing?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
It is also a bad thing, as it makes most of the content feel trivial for the higher level players, and it makes it a bit too easy for lower levels.
I cannot remember which MMO it was, but I do recall playing a while back, and you could mentor lower level players, basically reducing your character level to theirs, but you kept your armour/weapons and skills, so you could play with them at their level, helping them catch up to you, and in my opinion it was a better system.
We had Empires run by Emperors, we had Kingdoms run by Kings, now we have Countries...
You allow your customers to play with veteran friend. You take pressure of your content if you are smart because the max level grind kills content. You whole world is viable for end game content vs. a few max level areas.
The main con is you have a few people who fell like they aren't progressing and others who want to once shot newbie creatures. I can live with that audience not being happy. I think in games like ESO you still level up skills.
Am I allowed to add this? https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Difficulty_Indicators
You'll be in an on-level area and see one of the tougher Signature/Elite+ mobs that can kick your butt if not careful or you'll find whole areas with the tougher difficulty mob types. You can either tread carefully on-level or Fellowship up!
It would be nice to do that New Game+ type of thing i've mentioned before, in quest areas for harder content/better gear/more grouping if wanted.
Like an entire LOTRO map with different difficulty levels like Diablo or WoW Mythic+. Could you imagine The Shire at Mythic+ levels offering harder quests and better gear? EPIC!
Try delivering pies while being chased by a rabid pack of Wargs!
Gut Out!
What, me worry?
Is it a good thing if every WoW expansion starts from scratch by simply adding a few levels making all your previous effort totally pointless? A technique which also means that the devs don't have to come up with "creative difficulty" since all the new mobs are more powerful than you.
There were some - then - EQ1 devs some years ago who gave an interview / article about how careful they were when introducing new gear. And why they came up with EQ1's horizontal scaling, making characters slightly more powerful but also more adaptable.
WoW, of course, introduced scaling for its last expansion but it was on a par with the OP's suggestion: the mobs were simply harder. No need to really focus on mob mechanics. And based on the feedback it had multiple "hiccups".
ESO in some ways resembles EQ1 - although its horizontal levelling approach fits in well with ES lore of old. It does now anyway.
When it launched it was a hybrid of "traditional" levels coupled with mob scaling. To expalin: it launchedowith three "alliances" worth of content. Completing your chosen alliance - level 1-10, 11-20 ... 41-50 - unlocked the content of the other two alliances. Which you completed fighting mobs that had been scaled up by "50 levels" if you were below cp80 or by "2 x50 levels" if you were cp160. Not good.
Lots of feedback. People didn't like it coupled with people who wanted to "go anywhere". The latter doesn't fit at all with traditional level designs! A new character going to a high level area is toast.
So ESO changed. All mobs have a base level - some are harder than others but they all have the same base level - and new players are boosted until they get to cp160. So boosted for about two-thirds of the original content. These days that represents c. 20% of the content. And the new content - in particular - is "easier" or "harder" based on the mob mechanic. The horizontal scaling that kicks in after you hit cp160 makes things easier as well - but slowly.
And one side effect of this is that you can die anywhere. Every mob, in every zone cons. You cannot take liberties and just run through the hordes of Mordor ... because you are at level cap.
So at the end of the day I think it is more about how the game hangs together. If, for example, a game had some sort of scaling but you were the very first person ever to play through the content and so had no way of knowing did it work?
I'm ok with scaling instances to party size and you determining the level is fine like in COH. But automatic scaling of content to your leveli generally don't like.
I don't agree the that the point if leveling is to learn my class. That happens in maybe the early levels. The rest of leveling is because we enjoy progressing our character.
Just give my the chance to turn xp on or off as I see fit.
Eventually I do want those mobs to be Grey.
I think level scaling is a half measure. A shallow vertical progression would allow to get stronger with gear and skill but not have the huge power gap that negates content because it's lower level.
But it needs to be done carefully to keep the all-important sense of progression alive despite the scaling.
It works in ESO because that game has always had individual skill lines that progress totally apart from the base character level based on either use of skills from a skill line, PvPing, doing dungeons, finding lore books, etc. There are always character progression goals that have nothing to do with base character level. The impact of character level on the progression power curve in ESO has always been minimal compared to the other progressions built in - this has always been the way even before scaling was introduced.
The other thing they did simultaneously with scaling was that they added zone-specific gear set drops to each zone - 3 sets per zone - that drop at your level. A lot of those sets can be incorporated into advanced "end-game" builds and they're equally useful if you get that gear at lower levels. That reinforces what I said in my 1st paragraph about keeping zones relevant at all levels being their primary motivation as well as giving them the ability to release new content that is not level locked at all.
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