ESO 'Moving Away from Level-Gated Content', says ZOS

Overlord_Neizir

In a recent Reddit AMA with the top dogs of ZOS (CEO Matt Firor, Creative Director Paul Sage, Lead Designer Nick Konkle, Lead Combat Designer Eric Wrobel, Lead Gameplay Designer Chris Strasz, and Lead e-Commerce Designer Lee Ridout), the devs answered a ton of questions about consoles, Tamriel Unlimited, the Crown Store, Update 6 and DLC/expansion packs. 

One comment in particular that stuck out to me was one by Paul Sage, ESO's Creative Director. He said this, which honestly sounds pretty exciting and may well indicate ESO will turn into a sandpark (Like previous TES games) some time in the future, perhaps going so far as to even remove level restrictions altogether and give us the open-world, TES-like gameplay we love from the past games.

It also turns out that every single zone that ZOS releases from now on is actually not going to be level-restricted. The upcoming zones we know are coming so far are: Wrothgar, Murkmire, Mephala's Web, Sotha Sil, Vvardenfell, Winterhold and Anequina, and NONE of them will be restricted by level and you can enter them and do quests in them at any level. Using level-scaling, you will scale to a zone's level a little bit like content you'd find in Skyrim (Skyrim's level scaling is a little different in the fact that content scales to you, not you to it, but it's the same general concept). However, this, for now, only applies to zones released in expansions (Or Game Packs, as ZOS likes to call them), which will be released every 6-ish months. There's nothing stopping ZOS from implementing this into the 1-50 zones though, and Paul's comment seemed to imply that they're going to be gradually getting rid of level restrictions altogether, beginning with the removal of Veteran Ranks. Applying level scaling to 1-50 zones likely won't happen any time soon, but it's pretty exciting to see what will happen in ESO's bright future.

Thoughts?

mrneurosis

My thoughts?

I will believe it when i see it. Words are cheap really and that is is all we seem to get from devs lately.

parpin

if they manage to do it properly it would be fun and kind of revolutionary, only gw2 has similar system but it is only scaling you down and not up, the entire end game will center around champion system. you can go anywhere right from the start but the grind is basically will be for champion points and new tier of gear. 

JohnP0100

I'm not really a fan of the 'scaling' system.

It was terrible for me in GW2 and ES4-Ob. Just couldn't feel the progress my character was making.

observer

Originally posted by JohnP0100

I'm not really a fan of the 'scaling' system.

It was terrible for me in GW2 and ES4-Ob. Just couldn't feel the progress my character was making.

I can understand that viewpoint.  It's really an illusion though.  Numbers and stats determine the difficulty, instead of the A.I. and combat mechanics.

For example, a level 10 mob could have the best A.I. mechanics with challenging difficulty, but then it becomes irrelevant when a level 100 player kills it in one hit due to higher numbers and stats.

It's also less immersive and deems older content irrelevant if there isn't down-scaling.  With up-scaling, there is more freedom on how to spend your time.  Both systems aren't perfect, but at least they make the game less linear.

Ikeda

Why does this need another post when there is a whole other thread that's 8+ pages discussing the EXACT quote concerned?

 

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/426583/page/1

JackCracker411

Originally posted by JohnP0100

I'm not really a fan of the 'scaling' system.

It was terrible for me in GW2 and ES4-Ob. Just couldn't feel the progress my character was making.

I completely agree.  This really buried GW2 for me.  I like the feeling that my character has evolved and leveled to the point where previous content is easier to tackle.  I don't like struggling through old content because the game is gimping me due to the level of the zone.  That's just ridiculous.  

Belgaraath

Originally posted by JackCracker411

Originally posted by JohnP0100

I'm not really a fan of the 'scaling' system.

It was terrible for me in GW2 and ES4-Ob. Just couldn't feel the progress my character was making.

I completely agree.  This really buried GW2 for me.  I like the feeling that my character has evolved and leveled to the point where previous content is easier to tackle.  I don't like struggling through old content because the game is gimping me due to the level of the zone.  That's just ridiculous.  

I hate scaling systems as well and enjoy the typical PVE MMOs like WOW, LOTRO, AOC, Rift, SWTOR, current ESO, etc where you progress through leveled zones. This could either end up being a big mess, or it could be well implemented if they are careful. I hated the way Oblivion did it and I modded the game to create a sense of leveled areas and get away from the scaling. Skyrim did a better job at it since not everything leveled. Some things were appropriately easy to kill at higher levels, some were not. If they just scale everything I'll probably leave the game.