I know I personally like scaling because of while, yes, I like to be able to progress as a character, I also dislike when there is a disparity in the apparent nature of a mob versus it's mechanical one.
Like, why is one wolf in a "lvl 10" zone weaker than one in a "lvl 30" zone? In many cases the thinnest of excuses are used as far as reskinning them to say they are a tougher breed of mob or something, and it tends to remain a flimsy excuse at best as Iselin pointed out.
My preference as a consequence would rather be for mobs to have unique traits to make them challenging, and through horizontal unlocks and at most minor vertical scaling, players can re-balance their stats from a generalist into a specialist role that gives them clear advantages in certain scenarios that caters to their play style. Allowing them to progress in a fashion where they do become masters at certain skills, but not suddenly making a beholder irrelevant because they are a few levels higher.
Bit of a simplified example, but point there being that I think the idea of players re-balancing stats in order to evolve into specialized roles, and gaining advantages over certain types of challenges in games in that method, just feels more organic to me and does not cause as much loss of relevant content to play.
As I said, options. Ironically, options would also turn this long thread to moot...
Put it in the players' hands as a tool. The normal players can play normally, those who want to sit in the mediocre, lukewarm puddle everywhere they go can scale themselves all the time, and the rest can use it on a case by case basis: when in group with a different level player, when in dungeons, etc.
Is it possible? Of course it is, CO has it, CoH had it (maybe past tense ain't precise now with the private servers), LotRO has it for the dungeons and skirmishes (and for the open world there's the xp disabler, to keep yourself on level with the zone as an option), AoC has it for specific dungeons, plus optional hard mode of zones for returning high level players, etc.
Why forced scaling is the norm lately then? Because devs are cheap, lazy f.cks, and looks like there's a moderate enough size of players love the mediocre, lukewarm puddle and support those devs... which is both a shame, and the source of long threads like this, since forcing something (forced grouping, scaling, msq, anything) always divide.
If the system's designed to accommodate that (such as in all your examples, utilization of instanced environments or disabling of progression, though that last one would run counter to, y'know, progressing), sure, can always have the option to turn scaling off for an easier time I guess.
For starters, it practically negates any feeling of your character really progressing and getting stronger and secondly it comes off as lazy because it's just a cop out for dev teams to develop more content at the higher end so they make shit scale and call it content. Horse shit, dog shit, ant shit, its flat out lazy.
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.
There for leaving you behind as you friends progress further. Unless you have no friends or your friends finally gave up on you.
If the system's designed to accommodate that (such as in all your examples, utilization of instanced environments or disabling of progression, though that last one would run counter to, y'know, progressing), sure, can always have the option to turn scaling off for an easier time I guess.
That's a good point - except how you explain then this movement of forcing it into systems which were not designed to accomodate it? ESO, SWTOR, recently Neverwinter (ok, at least that one exploded into their faces, over the month they had to remove more than half of the scaling, but they still seem adamant to keep it at least in a few areas...) all were games with regular progression for years before the "let's scale it" plague engulfed them.
(edit: while with the same, or even less effort they could've added optional scaling... if leaving the games alone wasn't a possibility the first place)
If the system's designed to accommodate that (such as in all your examples, utilization of instanced environments or disabling of progression, though that last one would run counter to, y'know, progressing), sure, can always have the option to turn scaling off for an easier time I guess.
That's a good point - except how you explain then this movement of forcing it into systems which were not designed to accomodate it? ESO, SWTOR, recently Neverwinter (ok, at least that one exploded into their faces, over the month they had to remove more than half of the scaling, but they still seem adamant to keep it at least in a few areas...) all were games with regular progression for years before the "let's scale it" plague engulfed them.
(edit: while with the same, or even less effort they could've added optional scaling... if leaving the games alone wasn't a possibility the first place)
Not Sure I can entirely follow or agree with your position. ESO accommodates scaling relatively well from my perspective, and as for the other two titles I cannot speak to them since I have not touched them in a long time, but your concern of them working or not or the mechanic being forced into a system that does not accommodate it well, I see no reason I'd have to explain it because the explanation should be fairly obvious.
Devs are humans and make mistakes. In spite of what some may want to believe, or have others believe, many devs are every bit as subject to flaws of lacking insight or logic as a "regular consumer".
Consequently, devs attempting to change a system and botching it, or trying to wedge a concept into their game that doesn't fit, is bound to happen. Sometimes someone with authority or wisdom catches it, other times enough of the studio thinks it's a good idea and charge right into a mess.
None of that really seems to tie back to the point I'd made there though. A system that does scale, is not necessarily a system that cannot accommodate scale. Much as a system that scales does not necessarily bar forcing some form of scaling.
To answer more directly the reason adding scaling to a non-scaling system or vise-versa is not actually as easy as you seem to think, is that use of either style affects a broad scope of the game's balance. It's just simpler to focus on one style or the other generally, because each one handles difficulty tiers somewhat differently in most cases.
Like ESO does actually utilize a minor degree of voluntary difficulty scaling for regular to veteran dungeons, and they have a decent difficulty scope for players to experience. It does this not by simply scoping mobs up or down in stats (some of that does happen though), but by changing up mob abilities and groups, adding new events to the dungeons, and modifying some of the challenges to create a tougher scenario.
A non-scaling system tends to have an easier, and often lazier, time of this because it's most immediate method of increasing or lowering the difficulty is to simply modify the present mobs stats up/down.
Now, nothing is stopping a non-scaling system from doing something like how ESO handles the move from normal to veteran, but it would mean that each "step" of a non-scaling dungeon would require it's own table to be generated that fits the tier it's being used for. It creates a much larger stack of information for the non-scaling system to keep track of, and a lot more effort on the dev's part to create a variety of different challenges and features for just one dungeon.
Or in short, it can outright balloon the development cost of even a single dungeon to try and merge the two styles.
On the flip-side, it can be way cheaper for the scaling system to accommodate a non-scaling option since it's considerably less intensive to modify the stats of a static table of mobs up and down. However, those dungeons and mobs are generally tuned to meet specific standards, and some forms of challenges and features don't really scale well or at all. Something might accidentally swing from being a moderate challenge to an absolute cakewalk, or the level disparity may not do anything if the specific feature of the dungeon was a binary event.
So you can accommodate one method in the other in either direction, but you are asking for alot more than you seem to think.
Not Sure I can entirely follow or agree with your position. [...]
My position is easy, options.
I like regular progression, I like scaling as a tool (used it plenty of times in the past), and I abhor forced scaling.
If the thread would be the other way around (scale people against the "forced progression"), I'd say the same, regardless of I prefer regular progression I'd support the addition of optional scaling into them. Because options are always better than a one-way street.
I'd argue on the second part though. (Forced, overall) scaling is cheaper and easier. Especially on the long run. It's not even up to guessing, devs stated that quite a lot of times, actually that was a common theme in patch notes after most simplification-like changes in games over the last few years: "It's easier for us." (and of course cheaper)
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
The irony is that for me after t1 ESO became EZmode and trivialized nearly the entire game world, in the process it also destroyed any faction meaning .There is no need for any tactics in ESO pve until VET Trials, even all the preceding dungeons runs are all dps spam fests..Groups do not even need a tank or healer 4 dps is fast and easy , this is very telling. The game is extremely easy and casual and thats exactly what Fior and his team were aiming for.
Before T1 you could wander into zones and find real challenge and have to fail and find different approaches, not anymore.. now you run in close your eyes and spray .. this is true for 90% of the game , nearly the entire game can be soloed easily ..and this all a direct result of Scaling
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
The irony is that for me after t1 ESO became EZmode and trivialized nearly the entire game world, in the process it also destroyed any faction meaning .There is no need for any tactics in ESO pve until VET Trials, even all the preceding dungeons runs are all dps spam fests..Groups do not even need a tank or healer 4 dps is fast and easy , this is very telling. The game is extremely easy and casual and thats exactly what Fior and his team were aiming for.
Before T1 you could wander into zones and find real challenge and have to fail and find different approaches, not anymore.. now you run in close your eyes and spray .. this is true for 90% of the game , nearly the entire game can be soloed easily ..and this all a direct result of Scaling
That happened long before level scaling. It was the switch from Veteran ranks to the CP system that made the content easy. It has nothing to do with scaling and everything to do with the CP power creep.
And it's only that easy for us with bucket loads of CP. I still see players dying to easy mobs in the overland, delves, dark anchors and public dungeons all the time. It's a totally different experience for the no-CP noobs.
What you describe about 4 DPS overpowering dungeon runs without a tank or a healer only really works with 4 DPS with 600+ CP points and enough self healing to deal with damage... and I wouldn't recommend trying that in one of the newer DLC dungeons on vet mode lol.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
No zone should be level capped. Every zone should be populated with every level of NPC or beast imaginable. The phrase survival of the fittest and the concept of natural selection were created because in the real world, nature is unkind. The young and old are prey. They exist right alongside the very dangers that await them or die trying.
Those thousands of sea turtles that make the run of their life to the sea after birth... most of whom never even make it and the ones that do are no more safe in the water than they were on the land. Life is a struggle. It doesn't change because they just dinged a level. Sure you are no longer the prey of some creatures, you now become the prey of others... those creatures don't patiently wait for you to advance to them, they come looking for you.
So there should be no level zones for mobs. A level ?? elite has just as much right to plow through a starter zone as a newb has to ghost run to the other end of the continent. You can still have levels, they just aren't pigeon holed into a single set of areas... the whole world is their leveling zone.
That's what's wrong with level scaling... it was never done right in the first place. Every inch of WoW should have creatures from level 1 to ??. Every one of them. The world gets abandoned because they make the world for levels.
For starters, it practically negates any feeling of your character really progressing and getting stronger and secondly it comes off as lazy because it's just a cop out for dev teams to develop more content at the higher end so they make shit scale and call it content. Horse shit, dog shit, ant shit, its flat out lazy.
Traditional leveling is the most documented laziest way to do a MMORPG, literally.
You can still scale a character to level for grouping in if you don't have normally. I don't mind either way in a MMO as long as if you have no scaling their is some sort of levelling "buddy" system.
No zone should be level capped. Every zone should be populated with every level of NPC or beast imaginable. The phrase survival of the fittest and the concept of natural selection were created because in the real world, nature is unkind. The young and old are prey. They exist right alongside the very dangers that await them or die trying.
Those thousands of sea turtles that make the run of their life to the sea after birth... most of whom never even make it and the ones that do are no more safe in the water than they were on the land. Life is a struggle. It doesn't change because they just dinged a level. Sure you are no longer the prey of some creatures, you now become the prey of others... those creatures don't patiently wait for you to advance to them, they come looking for you.
So there should be no level zones for mobs. A level ?? elite has just as much right to plow through a starter zone as a newb has to ghost run to the other end of the continent. You can still have levels, they just aren't pigeon holed into a single set of areas... the whole world is their leveling zone.
That's what's wrong with level scaling... it was never done right in the first place. Every inch of WoW should have creatures from level 1 to ??. Every one of them. The world gets abandoned because they make the world for levels.
And that's how UO and AC handled it and why it's one of the better system and proof scaling is not necassary
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
The irony is that for me after t1 ESO became EZmode and trivialized nearly the entire game world, in the process it also destroyed any faction meaning .There is no need for any tactics in ESO pve until VET Trials, even all the preceding dungeons runs are all dps spam fests..Groups do not even need a tank or healer 4 dps is fast and easy , this is very telling. The game is extremely easy and casual and thats exactly what Fior and his team were aiming for.
Before T1 you could wander into zones and find real challenge and have to fail and find different approaches, not anymore.. now you run in close your eyes and spray .. this is true for 90% of the game , nearly the entire game can be soloed easily ..and this all a direct result of Scaling
That happened long before level scaling. It was the switch from Veteran ranks to the CP system that made the content easy. It has nothing to do with scaling and everything to do with the CP power creep.
And it's only that easy for us with bucket loads of CP. I still see players dying to easy mobs in the overland, delves, dark anchors and public dungeons all the time. It's a totally different experience for the no-CP noobs.
What you describe about 4 DPS overpowering dungeon runs without a tank or a healer only really works with 4 DPS with 600+ CP points and enough self healing to deal with damage... and I wouldn't recommend trying that in one of the newer DLC dungeons on vet mode lol.
That's not true at all from personal experience me and a couple friends were cruising thru dungeons as all dps in just 100+ I even recall picking up players under 100 to run thru dungeons and it was easy ... there are plenty of videos showing this also
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
Way to spin and stretch the points made. Since you believe MMO's are "in this state" that must mean you believe they were once in a better state.....no? Funny....because before they were "in this state" I do not recall any older (imo better) MMO's that featured scaling.
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
The irony is that for me after t1 ESO became EZmode and trivialized nearly the entire game world, in the process it also destroyed any faction meaning .There is no need for any tactics in ESO pve until VET Trials, even all the preceding dungeons runs are all dps spam fests..Groups do not even need a tank or healer 4 dps is fast and easy , this is very telling. The game is extremely easy and casual and thats exactly what Fior and his team were aiming for.
Before T1 you could wander into zones and find real challenge and have to fail and find different approaches, not anymore.. now you run in close your eyes and spray .. this is true for 90% of the game , nearly the entire game can be soloed easily ..and this all a direct result of Scaling
That happened long before level scaling. It was the switch from Veteran ranks to the CP system that made the content easy. It has nothing to do with scaling and everything to do with the CP power creep.
And it's only that easy for us with bucket loads of CP. I still see players dying to easy mobs in the overland, delves, dark anchors and public dungeons all the time. It's a totally different experience for the no-CP noobs.
What you describe about 4 DPS overpowering dungeon runs without a tank or a healer only really works with 4 DPS with 600+ CP points and enough self healing to deal with damage... and I wouldn't recommend trying that in one of the newer DLC dungeons on vet mode lol.
That's not true at all from personal experience me and a couple friends were cruising thru dungeons as all dps in just 100+ I even recall picking up players under 100 to run thru dungeons and it was easy ... there are plenty of videos showing this also
Cool story. If that were even remotely normal why do players putting together groups to run the daily vet dungeons through chat always want 600+ CP players?
Back when the Viper set was still a thing I used to solo farm vet FG1 for the drops... but that's FG1. Try 4 CP100 DPS in CoA2 or Darkshade 2 vet and let me know how you do. Better yet do a video and show us. The Fire Maw and Engine Guardian's green phase in particular should be fun to watch with no healer.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
By them scaling enemies to your level they really get rid of alot of the accomplishment of leveling in the first place. I want to obliterate enemies in lower levels (with no xp or loot reward obviously)and have a hard time in higher levels. They do that so they dont have to make the worlds as big. I want them to make far bigger open worlds like Lord of the Rings Online did. Absolutely massive open world. 400 times larger than WoWs world. 2000 times larger than Skyrim. I jsut love massive worlds and knowing that there is just so much to explore. But not dead spaceless worlds either
For those who enjoy scaling, is there a way to "test" your character, take on tougher mobs than you without hanging onto a higher level character in some fashion?
Continuing with my theme of using ESO as an example just because it's the only level scaling MMORPG I have a lot of experience with, a mob's level has never been the only factor that determines the challenge.
Even before you start getting into "elites", mini-bosses, bosses differentiation they have a range of mob difficulties ranging from trivial swarmers like skeevers and wolves, regular ones like bears and bandits, tougher ones like common Daedra and tougher yet again with special daedra, trolls, giants and mammoth... then come the different mini boss and boss ranks with some world bosses for example being much tougher than others - typically several moderate difficulty ones per zone that a well built, competent player can solo even though they are technically a group activity with one or two per zone that are bad mofos that only the best players can solo.
Then there's difficulty based by location: the regular overland locations are the easiest, then comes delves where the same mob types tend to be a bit harder, then comes the dark anchor event mobs then the "public dungeons" that are tough delves with bigger packs and tougher mini-bosses - those are really meant for casual, drop-in grouping since they work like non-instanced dungeons like those in the early MMORPG games... they can be done solo too by above average players.
After that you get into group instances with their own difficulty range from very easy to very tough (specially the newer DLC dungeons) and then the solo raid, Maelstrom Arena and finally full raids with their own range of difficulties as well.
All of that is done with all mobs being the same exact level: level 50 / CP160 equivalent and all of them represent a different challenge for the noob level 10 guy with little choice about which abilities and passives they have to work with and the geared to the teeth vet players with 100s of CP points and all abilities they care to have unlocked.
So despite the scaling your progression will eventually trivialize a lot of the content although not to the same extent that it's trivialized in non-scaled games when you go to a zone where everything cons white or gray to you.
What you don't get in scaled games is the red con rats (or rat like thing with a new scaaaaryyyy skin to let you know they're not the same rats from level 1 but their mutant cousins with super powers) that will eat you alive.
I mean lets get real here guys, if you want to look behind the curtain and strip games down to their mechanics essentials don't just do it for the scaled games you don't like - do it for all of them. Because all of them always have you fighting the same thing at any level be they scaled or not. Sure their 3D texture may change to make the level 162 thing look different than their level 1 cousin but it's the same bloody fight lol.
And when they aren't the same fight it's because they have added new AI mechanics to the mob that you're not so familiar with - something that can be done with mobs of the same exact level (as ESO does) or reserved for higher level mobs in games that cling to the traditional "Dings matter!" formula.
I think I get what you're saying. It sounds interesting with a lot of coding going on behind the scenes. It's tough to compare ESO with a non-scaling game like I enjoy, though. Zones sound leveless, there is no "con-ing" mobs, and it sounds like there is no place that has the players praying they get through an area as in a non-scaled game.
Did you answer my question? Can you "test" your character in this scaling MMO? I know you said there are no red cons, so where do you go to find a nigh impossible fight because you have a great idea you want to try out? Which of these difficulties give you the toughest fight, and are there examples of getting your behind handed to you anywhere in the ESO world?
Also, my brain is not grasping the idea/reality/immersion that one monster "changes" according to the player it faces. What happens if 2 or more players of varying power engage it?
I see more immersion in a tougher "Giant Rat" fight over a
simple "Tiny Rat" fight than the exact same rat giving me the exact same difficulty as I level throughout the game. I'm sure other's opinions vary
PS: I played EQ for 38 levels. I stopped seeing challenging "rats" in my mid teens. To me, your rat example sounds more of an asset problem, not a design one.
Also, I'm not bashing nor nay-saying scaling. Because I don't know it well, I'm trying to understand its appeal
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
For those who enjoy scaling, is there a way to "test" your character, take on tougher mobs than you without hanging onto a higher level character in some fashion?
Sure there is a way to test your character because there is progression and tougher mobs. Traditional level scaling exists so people can trivialize challenge. The idea that MMO gamers like challenge is a lie. They like the illusion of challenges that they always win.
It's not that I hate levels as an idea, it's just that it feels so outdated and clunky now. Mob conning seems so ridiculous to me now that it makes the game play feel comical. It's like being invited to a deep strategy game and the host opens up Chutes and Ladders.
Now I'm confused, which shouldn't surprise anyone
Does the game you're thinking about have scaling or does only the player progress? You said there is progression and tougher mobs, but if that game uses "scaling", are those new mobs actually tougher than the player?
And to be clear, I'm not advocating "character levels" as a whole, but rather "progression" not hindered by scaling everything to meet that character's skills. I want a game where I see a low skilled player in trouble and ask if they need help as I run by. Is that possible in scaling MMOS?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Yes, it's the main reason I love Elder Scrolls... I love being able to go to any zone while having relevant [COMBAT] content there.
Fixed that for you
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
For those who enjoy scaling, is there a way to "test" your character, take on tougher mobs than you without hanging onto a higher level character in some fashion?
Continuing with my theme of using ESO as an example just because it's the only level scaling MMORPG I have a lot of experience with, a mob's level has never been the only factor that determines the challenge.
Even before you start getting into "elites", mini-bosses, bosses differentiation they have a range of mob difficulties ranging from trivial swarmers like skeevers and wolves, regular ones like bears and bandits, tougher ones like common Daedra and tougher yet again with special daedra, trolls, giants and mammoth... then come the different mini boss and boss ranks with some world bosses for example being much tougher than others - typically several moderate difficulty ones per zone that a well built, competent player can solo even though they are technically a group activity with one or two per zone that are bad mofos that only the best players can solo.
Then there's difficulty based by location: the regular overland locations are the easiest, then comes delves where the same mob types tend to be a bit harder, then comes the dark anchor event mobs then the "public dungeons" that are tough delves with bigger packs and tougher mini-bosses - those are really meant for casual, drop-in grouping since they work like non-instanced dungeons like those in the early MMORPG games... they can be done solo too by above average players.
After that you get into group instances with their own difficulty range from very easy to very tough (specially the newer DLC dungeons) and then the solo raid, Maelstrom Arena and finally full raids with their own range of difficulties as well.
All of that is done with all mobs being the same exact level: level 50 / CP160 equivalent and all of them represent a different challenge for the noob level 10 guy with little choice about which abilities and passives they have to work with and the geared to the teeth vet players with 100s of CP points and all abilities they care to have unlocked.
So despite the scaling your progression will eventually trivialize a lot of the content although not to the same extent that it's trivialized in non-scaled games when you go to a zone where everything cons white or gray to you.
What you don't get in scaled games is the red con rats (or rat like thing with a new scaaaaryyyy skin to let you know they're not the same rats from level 1 but their mutant cousins with super powers) that will eat you alive.
I mean lets get real here guys, if you want to look behind the curtain and strip games down to their mechanics essentials don't just do it for the scaled games you don't like - do it for all of them. Because all of them always have you fighting the same thing at any level be they scaled or not. Sure their 3D texture may change to make the level 162 thing look different than their level 1 cousin but it's the same bloody fight lol.
And when they aren't the same fight it's because they have added new AI mechanics to the mob that you're not so familiar with - something that can be done with mobs of the same exact level (as ESO does) or reserved for higher level mobs in games that cling to the traditional "Dings matter!" formula.
I think I get what you're saying. It sounds interesting with a lot of coding going on behind the scenes. It's tough to compare ESO with a non-scaling game like I enjoy, though. Zones sound leveless, there is no "con-ing" mobs, and it sounds like there is no place that has the players praying they get through an area as in a non-scaled game.
Did you answer my question? Can you "test" your character in this scaling MMO? I know you said there are no red cons, so where do you go to find a nigh impossible fight because you have a great idea you want to try out? Which of these difficulties give you the toughest fight, and are there examples of getting your behind handed to you anywhere in the ESO world?
Also, my brain is not grasping the idea/reality/immersion that one monster "changes" according to the player it faces. What happens if 2 or more players of varying power engage it?
I see more immersion in a tougher "Giant Rat" fight over a
simple "Tiny Rat" fight than the exact same rat giving me the exact same difficulty as I level throughout the game. I'm sure other's opinions vary
PS: I played EQ for 38 levels. I stopped seeing challenging "rats" in my mid teens. To me, your rat example sounds more of an asset problem, not a design one.
Also, I'm not bashing nor nay-saying scaling. Because I don't know it well, I'm trying to understand and its appeal
For a challenge, depending on how many abilities you have unlocked and how many champion points you have, if you're soloing you can just go up a couple of difficulty tiers (like just go fight some giants if you're a low level player with only a few things unlocked) all the way up to running the solo raid, Maelstrom Arena, in the higher difficulty level (called veteran in ESO) or even try to solo a world boss or instanced content that is meant for a group.
If you want to play in a group there is a whole range of group instances all the way from the easiest normal difficulty dungeons to veteran difficulty raids.
For new players the difficulty can be found anywhere because even though you are scaled up to the mob's level if you're below it that is only part of the story of how power works in ESO and not even the most important part.
The key of why scaling suits ESO well and can be horrible in some other games is that ESO has multiple skill lines with important active and passive ability unlocks that level independent of your character's level. Some of those skill lines are leveled by using skills from those lines (weapons & class abilities mostly) and some are leveled by participating in a type of activity (PvP, group dungeons, etc.) or even exploration (Mage's skill line for example.) And as you would expect, the best and most powerful abilities unlock much later than the trivial ones.
It has always had this parallel advancement system since release - it isn't something they did for level scaling. Your character's level has always been a minor part of the progression so it was really trivial for them to do level scaling because the true progression system is still very much there.
So sure everyone in ESO gets scaled up to the mob's level (and all mobs everywhere are the same level - level 50 / CP160 equivalent - but players are anything but equal in their ability to handle any kind of content because the true power comes from things other than character level... and you still need to level those.
I honestly have no idea how it could work while still retaining a robust sense of progression in games where everything is tied to your character's level.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
So far most if not all arguments against scaling are in order to trivialize world content and make it ezmode. lulz and people wonder why MMOs are in this state.
"Easy mode?" Never running into a monster that can one-shot is easy mode? I loved trying to get my enchanters in EQ1 to High Pass Hold for their level 16 spell, only in that place's library. It was a hairy run around monsters that outleveled me. In City of Heroes, I enjoyed tryintg to take purple con enemies trying out my new powers, sometimes.
Why do "pro scaling" enthusiasts always take the worst possible negative scenario, like your "EZ Mode" and Iselin's awful "rat example", which is an asset problem, not a leveling problem, as examples to make a point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
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Like, why is one wolf in a "lvl 10" zone weaker than one in a "lvl 30" zone? In many cases the thinnest of excuses are used as far as reskinning them to say they are a tougher breed of mob or something, and it tends to remain a flimsy excuse at best as Iselin pointed out.
My preference as a consequence would rather be for mobs to have unique traits to make them challenging, and through horizontal unlocks and at most minor vertical scaling, players can re-balance their stats from a generalist into a specialist role that gives them clear advantages in certain scenarios that caters to their play style. Allowing them to progress in a fashion where they do become masters at certain skills, but not suddenly making a beholder irrelevant because they are a few levels higher.
Bit of a simplified example, but point there being that I think the idea of players re-balancing stats in order to evolve into specialized roles, and gaining advantages over certain types of challenges in games in that method, just feels more organic to me and does not cause as much loss of relevant content to play.
For starters, it practically negates any feeling of your character really progressing and getting stronger and secondly it comes off as lazy because it's just a cop out for dev teams to develop more content at the higher end so they make shit scale and call it content. Horse shit, dog shit, ant shit, its flat out lazy.
Unless you have no friends or your friends finally gave up on you.
Devs are humans and make mistakes. In spite of what some may want to believe, or have others believe, many devs are every bit as subject to flaws of lacking insight or logic as a "regular consumer".
Consequently, devs attempting to change a system and botching it, or trying to wedge a concept into their game that doesn't fit, is bound to happen. Sometimes someone with authority or wisdom catches it, other times enough of the studio thinks it's a good idea and charge right into a mess.
None of that really seems to tie back to the point I'd made there though. A system that does scale, is not necessarily a system that cannot accommodate scale. Much as a system that scales does not necessarily bar forcing some form of scaling.
To answer more directly the reason adding scaling to a non-scaling system or vise-versa is not actually as easy as you seem to think, is that use of either style affects a broad scope of the game's balance. It's just simpler to focus on one style or the other generally, because each one handles difficulty tiers somewhat differently in most cases.
Like ESO does actually utilize a minor degree of voluntary difficulty scaling for regular to veteran dungeons, and they have a decent difficulty scope for players to experience. It does this not by simply scoping mobs up or down in stats (some of that does happen though), but by changing up mob abilities and groups, adding new events to the dungeons, and modifying some of the challenges to create a tougher scenario.
A non-scaling system tends to have an easier, and often lazier, time of this because it's most immediate method of increasing or lowering the difficulty is to simply modify the present mobs stats up/down.
Now, nothing is stopping a non-scaling system from doing something like how ESO handles the move from normal to veteran, but it would mean that each "step" of a non-scaling dungeon would require it's own table to be generated that fits the tier it's being used for. It creates a much larger stack of information for the non-scaling system to keep track of, and a lot more effort on the dev's part to create a variety of different challenges and features for just one dungeon.
Or in short, it can outright balloon the development cost of even a single dungeon to try and merge the two styles.
On the flip-side, it can be way cheaper for the scaling system to accommodate a non-scaling option since it's considerably less intensive to modify the stats of a static table of mobs up and down. However, those dungeons and mobs are generally tuned to meet specific standards, and some forms of challenges and features don't really scale well or at all. Something might accidentally swing from being a moderate challenge to an absolute cakewalk, or the level disparity may not do anything if the specific feature of the dungeon was a binary event.
So you can accommodate one method in the other in either direction, but you are asking for alot more than you seem to think.
Before T1 you could wander into zones and find real challenge and have to fail and find different approaches, not anymore.. now you run in close your eyes and spray .. this is true for 90% of the game , nearly the entire game can be soloed easily ..and this all a direct result of Scaling
And it's only that easy for us with bucket loads of CP. I still see players dying to easy mobs in the overland, delves, dark anchors and public dungeons all the time. It's a totally different experience for the no-CP noobs.
What you describe about 4 DPS overpowering dungeon runs without a tank or a healer only really works with 4 DPS with 600+ CP points and enough self healing to deal with damage... and I wouldn't recommend trying that in one of the newer DLC dungeons on vet mode lol.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
No zone should be level capped. Every zone should be populated with every level of NPC or beast imaginable. The phrase survival of the fittest and the concept of natural selection were created because in the real world, nature is unkind. The young and old are prey. They exist right alongside the very dangers that await them or die trying.
Those thousands of sea turtles that make the run of their life to the sea after birth... most of whom never even make it and the ones that do are no more safe in the water than they were on the land. Life is a struggle. It doesn't change because they just dinged a level. Sure you are no longer the prey of some creatures, you now become the prey of others... those creatures don't patiently wait for you to advance to them, they come looking for you.
So there should be no level zones for mobs. A level ?? elite has just as much right to plow through a starter zone as a newb has to ghost run to the other end of the continent. You can still have levels, they just aren't pigeon holed into a single set of areas... the whole world is their leveling zone.
That's what's wrong with level scaling... it was never done right in the first place. Every inch of WoW should have creatures from level 1 to ??. Every one of them. The world gets abandoned because they make the world for levels.
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
Way to spin and stretch the points made. Since you believe MMO's are "in this state" that must mean you believe they were once in a better state.....no? Funny....because before they were "in this state" I do not recall any older (imo better) MMO's that featured scaling.
Back when the Viper set was still a thing I used to solo farm vet FG1 for the drops... but that's FG1. Try 4 CP100 DPS in CoA2 or Darkshade 2 vet and let me know how you do. Better yet do a video and show us. The Fire Maw and Engine Guardian's green phase in particular should be fun to watch with no healer.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Did you answer my question? Can you "test" your character in this scaling MMO? I know you said there are no red cons, so where do you go to find a nigh impossible fight because you have a great idea you want to try out? Which of these difficulties give you the toughest fight, and are there examples of getting your behind handed to you anywhere in the ESO world?
Also, my brain is not grasping the idea/reality/immersion that one monster "changes" according to the player it faces. What happens if 2 or more players of varying power engage it?
I see more immersion in a tougher "Giant Rat" fight over a simple "Tiny Rat" fight than the exact same rat giving me the exact same difficulty as I level throughout the game. I'm sure other's opinions vary
PS: I played EQ for 38 levels. I stopped seeing challenging "rats" in my mid teens. To me, your rat example sounds more of an asset problem, not a design one.
Also, I'm not bashing nor nay-saying scaling. Because I don't know it well, I'm trying to understand its appeal
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Does the game you're thinking about have scaling or does only the player progress? You said there is progression and tougher mobs, but if that game uses "scaling", are those new mobs actually tougher than the player?
And to be clear, I'm not advocating "character levels" as a whole, but rather "progression" not hindered by scaling everything to meet that character's skills. I want a game where I see a low skilled player in trouble and ask if they need help as I run by. Is that possible in scaling MMOS?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
If you want to play in a group there is a whole range of group instances all the way from the easiest normal difficulty dungeons to veteran difficulty raids.
For new players the difficulty can be found anywhere because even though you are scaled up to the mob's level if you're below it that is only part of the story of how power works in ESO and not even the most important part.
The key of why scaling suits ESO well and can be horrible in some other games is that ESO has multiple skill lines with important active and passive ability unlocks that level independent of your character's level. Some of those skill lines are leveled by using skills from those lines (weapons & class abilities mostly) and some are leveled by participating in a type of activity (PvP, group dungeons, etc.) or even exploration (Mage's skill line for example.) And as you would expect, the best and most powerful abilities unlock much later than the trivial ones.
It has always had this parallel advancement system since release - it isn't something they did for level scaling. Your character's level has always been a minor part of the progression so it was really trivial for them to do level scaling because the true progression system is still very much there.
So sure everyone in ESO gets scaled up to the mob's level (and all mobs everywhere are the same level - level 50 / CP160 equivalent - but players are anything but equal in their ability to handle any kind of content because the true power comes from things other than character level... and you still need to level those.
I honestly have no idea how it could work while still retaining a robust sense of progression in games where everything is tied to your character's level.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Why do "pro scaling" enthusiasts always take the worst possible negative scenario, like your "EZ Mode" and Iselin's awful "rat example", which is an asset problem, not a leveling problem, as examples to make a point?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR