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OPINION: Level Scaling vs Level Gating | MMORPG.com
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OPINION: Level Scaling vs Level Gating | MMORPG.com
Should a game scale to the player’s level, or should areas of the world be gated off until a player reaches a certain level? This is another one of design choices perhaps best suited for game developers, but what the hell? I’ll throw my hat in the ring and provide my two cents.
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. I do have a learning disability; I'll never have the best hand eye coordination at any game, however it used to feel nice feeling rewarded for dedication and persistence.
The overall difficulty in ESO for quest and overland content is just too easy and this makes it seem as if level scaling is at fault when it's actually not. The under-tuning of content is the problem, not the level scaling.
Additionally level scaled games need more mob difficulty variety in any given area in order to still provide a feeling of danger and accomplishment. ESO does this to some extent with very easy mobs like skeevers and wolves for example and much tougher ones like giants and mammoth, but there just aren't enough of the more difficult types sprinkled in. This is also undermined by the general under-tuning where the range that should go from easy to difficult is actually more like extremely easy to easy.
If you want to see an example of how it could work well in a level scaled system just head over to the Craglorn zone. The range of difficulty in that zone is more like it should be everywhere in the game. Mobs are all the same level but the range of difficulty and quantity of tougher content areas just provides a better challenge.
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My main reason for supporting scaling was that it does allow ease of group play, as the avatars all scale to the zone, but it is questionable if this is producing an increase in group play. That plus the fact you could just use a "buddy" system like you got in CoH means I have to question it. They could have a system that allows grouping without scaling so what use is the scaling? If the zones were all tough (ish) it would make sense, but they mostly now are easy mode with the exceptions Iselin mentions.
The other main advantage I see of scaling is the difficulty level can be uniform, difficult enough but not too difficult. But nearly every MMO is now easymode to top level, if you have that with scaling what's the point?
Legolas isn't suddenly immune to orc blades just because he has taken down a fell beast and an elephant. He has plot armor, not literal mithril skin. If he stopped being a badass for 2 seconds, he could end up as dead as anyone else.
I must have imagined all those skills and passive abilities I learned, and gear modifiers I picked up.
Sorry, but this is patently false. They do have progression, even if it isn't strictly linear/numerical. The way I can play at 80 hours is not the same as at the start. Numbers are just the most shallow, boring method of progression.
I love exploration and want a more open world. But it doesn't have to be completely open.
I want a feeling of progression by clearly seeing advancement in my abilities vs. MOBs over the medium haul.
But I don't need the sort of power gains in most MMORPGs where old content becomes useless except for whack-a-mole easy mode, and I can't play with other players or go to places outside of a very limited sphere of power.
Once upon a time....
This would make sense if your armor wasn't scaling with your said experience. I'd like to think if I had armor made from some kind of mythril beast that pulsated thunder, it should defend me while I'm not being a 'badass' as it were, but if its shocking them like a dog collar while I die to some low rank scout that decided to grind on wolves while I was saving the planet and got lucky, it kind of makes it moot. Almost makes as much sense as Goku dying to a gun shot that one time in DBS.
The problem is that if something is too hard forever and unbeatable, then players get frustrated and quit. It's not enough to make sure that nothing is too hard for an average player. You have to make sure that nothing is too hard for a completely incompetent player. And that means that everything has to be completely trivial for normal players.
The upshot is that games don't scale the world to your level. They scale it to something far below your level. That makes a game dreadfully boring to play. I don't know if it would be interesting or not if a game was designed to actually scale things to be appropriate at your level, but games with level scaling go far out of their way to avoid doing that.
If what you want from a game world is a chance to go explore, that's fine, but why should that world have combat at all?
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Things in the real world don't scale to you. You're not going to go hunt a Brown Bear in the wild on the idea that "it's okay, it's strength and agility will be scaled by Mother Nature so it's a fair fight!" Anyone who hunts bears started by hunting something far less ferocious and far smaller, building skills that are then used to hunt larger and more dangerous game.
It feels more immersive to me to see a power progression in my character compared to the game world. That doesn't mean no scaling, but I've yet to see an MMORPG do it well, unless you're defining well completely with: "I can go to any leveling zone I want and things will be pretty much the same level of challenge." That doesn't qualify as good scaling to me. The Witcher 3's scaling was much better: you got tougher and deadlier, but that never meant you were going to walk through enemies without a sweat. It scaled enemies up *only*, while leaving a good range of difficulty that still enabled me to feel like I was becoming more powerful.
And that is: zones have become incredibly dull. They're incredibly shallow: X level range levels here, no one else need apply.
That's lazy design. Create zones with multiple ranges of content. Just: do it intelligently. Don't path your endgame world boss into a starter area. Make it clear via scenery and other organic clues that a player is entering a far more dangerous part of said zone. Don't sequester everyone off into little batches of 1-12, 13-20, 21-28, etc..
It should be a primary design goal to have max level players mingling with new players, even if it's just in terms of visiting the same Inns because the zone serves both high and low level content. Stop acting like endgame is a separate game, and weave it into every prior part of the game, instead.
Quite frankly, one of the best things you can do to inspire new players is give them a seat to watch an exciting endgame event happen as soon as they set foot in your game world. They don't have to be an active participant: they probably shouldn't, because it would be impossible to balance. But put it in front of them so they know what they're working towards. You can also create lower level events that directly mirror your endgame events, such as world bosses and such. DAoC included mini-Frontiers as lower level battlegrounds to introduce their endgame PvP system to players, and it was a stroke of genius because you got a taste of what was in store at 50. All of this was done without deflating the entire world by flattening the power curve completely for 90% of your game's content.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The second issue is that you end up with huge amounts of content and game that is relatively unused once people progress past a certain level, and you concentrate most people to certain areas.
If the world scales to you, you can level an alt any way that you want, and there are almost always people in different areas, and the world does feel more alive, because you are seeing people, in most places.
In the past, I'd never been a fan of the world scaling, and I preferred traditional MMO's, but when I realize the vast zones that go relatively unvisited once I hit max level, it was almost depressing. Tie that into one way to get to max level, and while there was a sense of "progression" the game itself felt limiting. Like others have mentioned, ESO (post One Tamriel was what finally changed my perception.). I admit I didn't care as much about the linear progression feeling, and that was hard to do, but when the entire world was open, it changed the game. I had 14 or 15 max level characters my last go around, and I rarely ever took the same route to max level, so I felt like I truly was able to explore plenty of the game.
So I suppose if the only thing you have is "progression" to enjoy, then that design stinks, if you elect to play and appreciate other aspects of the game, it works. I do wonder however, if the linear progression is what causes games to spike, and bottom out. People experience all that they can, eat that content, and leave unsatisfied. It's definitely been a trend for years, or is that also a case of end-game not being fleshed out in most games at release?
Either or, I don't see as a one solution fits all, it's nice to have choices though, so people can find exactly what they want.
As long as I feel advancement of my character, this is really a great solution to either level gating or scaling content/character.
Edit, either and both.
Once upon a time....
As to progression, ESO has that in spades. It's just more gradual and less obvious but a level 10 player has zero chance of completing the hard content like raids or even the normal version of some dungeons that fully leveled players can do.
You'd have to experience it firsthand to see how ridiculous the idea that you get weaker as you play more is. That is utter nonsense at least in ESO.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED