Character Power Scaling and Zones

I am not sure what you mean by that. Scenario mobs are increased EXACTLY by certain amounts and it works for scenarios. At least up to E9, from first hand experience and I know people are quite alright with E10 scens as well.

For open world zones, it IS as simple as scaling -currently same HP- level 50 mobs in this context.

I am not talking abou timplementation difficulties, of course. That is something the devs should comment/consider. But the locusts you mention are a good challenge and quite killable in scenarios, to be honest. And for scenarios, your options are more limited. In open world there is no upcoming wave so you CAN let it cast regrowth. In scenarios, you better not let the mobs pile up.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there wouldn’t be ANY complications. However, some complications are better than making a huuuuuge playfield completely trivial to anyone over 150 IP is my basic idea here.

Cheers!

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Thank you for the reply, however I think my 5-year degree in Computing & Information Science, 4 years programming for telecommunications industry, 5 years running my own online service, re-developing a basic multi-player game into a multi-million line monster, and years of working with other programmers probably qualifies as ‘not all that naive’.

“Oh, that’s deep in the old code, so deep we would need to hire a team of archeologists even to find it” is probably the #1 excuse of programmers everywhere for ‘we really don’t want to go over that again’. Not that it’s impossible, mind you, but it’s pretty common. Programmers expect other people to be all mystified by the intricacies of coding.

If it took a single programmer even 2 weeks to set up an elite and a nightmare level instance of a smaller zone (Savage Coast maybe) I would call him a slacker. The maps are done, the missions stay the same, it’s a limited list of mobs and the reward changes are a simple multiplier. “If difficulty = elite then X” really isn’t that complex of a programming challenge. Instancing a single smaller zone is not in any way ‘nearly the same work as doing all zones’, although it would certainly lay the groundwork for doing later ones more quickly.

The real issue is, what is the return on 2 weeks/approx.$5,000 of dev. resource/time? Will it sell $10,000 worth of subs and/or Aurum, or retain/expand the player base? And the opportunity cost that something else now lacks 2 weeks of a single programmers work.

‘That effort is not really cost effective’ is a much better reason than ‘that’s too deep in the code to mess with’. You make that point as well as the point of ‘I would rather see something new developed’, and I somewhat agree with those.

All I can say is, FunCom has somewhat of a tradition of making interesting, engaging games that break the normal mould
 and then barely making enough money to keep going. So perhaps they should try allocating resources a little differently than they have in the past
 just to see.

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Let me rehash. I suspect my point was not clear.

I am not talking about making all zones mandatory Elites. I am talking about the OPTION to go to harder difficulty zones.

Because, as the gear/AP/SP scaling is set up now, there is no way to make new content mechanically interesting let alone challenging to an Elite ladder climber without making it impossible for the casual player.

So, people being unable to complete zones in their story mode solo builds is completely irrelevant to the discussion. We are talking about content for people whose power levels are far above the zones which is VERY, VERY easy to get even with the most casual play style.

Cheers!

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Hey @Elenoe, thanks for your input.

Yeah, I took a break from the game for a bit so I’m still 850ish IP but I am well aware of what you are talking about.

The thing with zones is there are very rarely mechanics like that and they are not hard stoppers. Like, sometimes some mobs respawn or don’t count as a kil if you one shot it but I do not really remember anything that comes close to dungeon mechnics in open world.

To be honest with you, I doubt there would be more than a few kinks if they just script updated hit point / defence / damage values of mobs in zones and did the same with shard / xp rewards with the missions.

A few kinks in this context would not stop us from completing content too. It is not comparable to Wayeb-Xul hitpoint triggers, really. It keeps you away from completing a group instance at level to progress.

Cheers!

So how would you access this ? A new branch of Agartha, the option at the usual portal to have a window asking “Do you want to access the Normal or Hard version of Kingsmouth ?” then "Do you want to travel to Kingsmouth? " something like that ?

Also i’d like to point out that if Funcom refuses to help the wait with PvP content (because whatever content is in NJ -New Jerusalem- it’s going to be murdered in a bit more than a week and then the wait resumes) they could implement that HardWorld feature to help us keeping interested.

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I would prefer the Teleport UI or maybe Activity Finder to have Elite options based on your IP once you have them.

I would think this would be the “cheapest” option.

A hidden buff on player with a selector on the character sheet with something like “Teleport to E5 instances” would be the second best choice in my opinion.

New branch in Agartha would mean assets, moving things around and frankly, I would think those would be unnecessary.

But these are my personal opnions obviously.

Cheers!

Yeah, some had to be killed many time with “Too Slow!” and some just Nurtur’ed their way into Nightmare dungeons :smiley:

Cheers!

Easier than changing all of the zones
 add a scale bar to the Anima Allocation window from 0 to 100%. Now if you feel you want the challenge of a 25% Scale there it is.

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My problem with this solution is then, yes, it makes it more fun to play, but there’s no reason to do it beyond ‘doing the story’ again. It would be nice to go to Kingsmouth and doing my dailies there and get the same kind of rewards I’m getting in at ‘least’ Besieged or Shadowy.

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The thing is to be allowed to get rewards (xp - shards) with the proper level.
Currently i can only get these from lv50 monsters. If i’m downscaled to level 15 or 30 i should be able to get these kill rewards too.

This. I don’t trust them with math after seeing their attempt at it with Elites.

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I think zone scaling is a great idea, if done well. It is done in plenty of other titles, and when it is done well, it really does add replayability

I think ESO hit the nail on the head with their scaling. However, it would be a massive undertaking I think for the dev team. Also, this game is 100% linear in its progression.

They did try something to make Kaidon not trivial to 10.4/10.4 players
 aegis!

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And look how that turned out. For the non nightmare new players that were in blues at best and just barely scraping by with the LOLLEECH solo meta.

They want us to replay old content. Okay ! Scale it up.

“we” again? What’s wrong with “I” in English? :slight_smile:

Well I wouldn’t. I enjoy SC/BM/SD and the way pesky mobs don’t attack me anymore. I see no reason to be bothered by them while doing the same thousand times over.

Having them to attack me without any better reward would not be plausible at all. And you are asking for lvl 50 zones, not for rewards, right?

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He/she says “we” because there are obviously (as seen in this thread) multiple people wanting this feature, so the we is valid even though you don’t include yourself in this “we”. They have the right to express themselves too, just as you.

You don’t like being assaulted by mobs, you see no reason for monsters to be monsters, okay. Well this feature is suggested as an optional mode that you don’t have to use at all (definition of optional). The game can and probably will include stuff you don’t enjoy or want but is desired by other people, it is not your offline moddable game.

WE are asking for a challenge in old zones because we feel bored, and boredom kills a game, see where i’m going ?

In that case, we should ask the developers to focus on new content and useful features instead of some stillborn scaling feature.

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May I make a far easier suggestion. Once you hit level 50 zones get upgraded to a level 50 area and you only enter “story” mode when you meet up on a player in one of them. Would make the earlier zones a bit nicer from a shardgain perspective and you could upscale all missions to one reward tier throughout the game. Wouldn’t solve the issue of stuff getting to easy but it solves the issue of low level mobs not being worth it to shot since they don’t drop any shards, xp or even aggro you breaking the immersion.

It’s a halfmeasure but one that probably comes with less effort to implement.

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I see now. Then our opinion on the topic is, we don’t want 50 lvl old zones.

Since developer resources are scarce and implementing this in SWL means a lot of work we would rather have new content, bug fixes, QoL things, new system to play with first.