OPINION: Should MMOs Scale To A Player's Level, Or Gate Content For Progression?

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OPINION: Should MMOs Scale To A Player's Level, Or Gate Content For Progression?

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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Amathe

To me, the most important thing in a mmorpg - more important than anything else - is immersion. If I can freely travel the world without risk of encountering something much more dangerous than me, that substantially reduces any fear or apprehension I have, which sucks the life right out of the game (for me).

There are also the rewards that come from progression. As a max level player I like being able to go places where Angels fear to tread.

ChildoftheShadows

Neither. I want an open world that I'm allowed to explore every inch, but I don't want it handed to me. I want to earn my ability to stay alive and conquer different areas. I want to accomplish something without being spoon fed.

Po_gg

Without opening the can of worms (based on how much I hate scaling I'd guess my post count on that matter is in the hundreds region ), I just leave this nutshell here:

"should MMOs scale..."  nope. What they should do is either

a) completely avoid scaling as a whole, or

b) put it into the players' hands like CO (and CoH) does, or LotRO within dungeons and skirmishes.

Scaling is a tool for the players, and not a lazy cop-out gating mechanic for the devs - at least not in an ideal world, but sadly way too many players love generalized mediocre lukewarm experience...

ed: didn't address the second part, since that's clearly a nope. Players should go freely wherever they want. If they can survive, thumbs up. If they're squashed and ripped apart, that's enough "gating", no need for boring artificial barriers based on levels, gearscore or similar BS.

Aeander

I like it when games downscale, but not upscale. It keeps all content viable even as you move onto the next zone. It makes the game semi-linear as you progress, but more and more of a sandbox retroactively. 

Moreover, I think it's a more immersive approach. Just because you have gotten more experienced and capable of taking on new foes does not mean that old foes should suddenly become completely incapable of posing a threat. Strictly linear progression is out of touch with reality.

Tiller

ESO vs FFXIV

ESO everything scales globally: This allows you to bounce around the world if you get bored with being stuck in one zone.


FFXIV locks zone and dungeon content behind main story progression: This forces you along a narrow path, though the main objective of this game is the story. Advancing to the next area feels more like a true accomplishment.


Both have their pluses and minuses in my opinion. I really don't care as long as I enjoy the game as a whole.

lotrlore

Aeander said:

I like it when games downscale, but not upscale. It keeps all content viable even as you move onto the next zone. It makes the game semi-linear as you progress, but more and more of a sandbox retroactively. 

Moreover, I think it's a more immersive approach. Just because you have gotten more experienced and capable of taking on new foes does not mean that old foes should suddenly become completely incapable of posing a threat. Strictly linear progression is out of touch with reality.

I agree with this personally too. Plus it definitely makes it easier when trying to get a new friend involved in an MMO you've been playing.

alkarionlog

lotrlore said:

Aeander said:

I like it when games downscale, but not upscale. It keeps all content viable even as you move onto the next zone. It makes the game semi-linear as you progress, but more and more of a sandbox retroactively. 

Moreover, I think it's a more immersive approach. Just because you have gotten more experienced and capable of taking on new foes does not mean that old foes should suddenly become completely incapable of posing a threat. Strictly linear progression is out of touch with reality.

I agree with this personally too. Plus it definitely makes it easier when trying to get a new friend involved in an MMO you've been playing.

yes like gw2 with means the scalling down still leave you stronger then someone on the same lvl, MMORPGs first thing is like always looking for power, all rpg base is developing your char with more power, by it by skill, lvls and/or gear.

I remember one game who had a invasion event who all mobs scaled based on they attacker, that mean the first dude to hit that mob would take the attacker lvl and then you can damage him, first hits was always null, but here is teh thing, in case the dude died, or just hit once the mob would retain his lvl, so if a high lvl hit the boss all lower peeps would die or never kill said mob.

or of course make the whole game instanced with means lvls have little weight.

part of bein in a RPG is knowing then tehre is things out there who can kill you, in a single players means little, the game is made to be worked alone, or with your group of npcs, but in a MMO that should never be in question.

Sovrath

I want a world where there are mixes of different things in an area. Where a low level can wander into a place and realize he/she doesn't belong there.

Where high levels go to starter areas because there is "high level content" there.

I remember in Everquest 2 there was a sewer area in the starter city that had an additional part that was too high for low levels.

It would be great if low levels could get a small raid going to attempt higher level content.

gating a world is horrible. keeping everything at the same level for players is not my taste.

Asm0deus

Areas should not be gated so you should be able to go at lvl one into an area with lvl 90 mobs etc. Also areas should not scale to the players level.

Instead if for "reasons" you need to let peeps at level one play with with level 90's then the players themselves should scale to each other with the option of one or the other scaling up or down or not at all and this scaling should only be possible if you are actually in a party with those you are scaling with.

Hariken

Today where most people playing mmo's do it solo i can see why scaling is a thing. It had to happen when mmo's went mainstream. I remember how it was pre Wow with mmo's. Most here would not have lasted at all playing those games. I remember in Anarchy Online how easy it was doing low level missions.

You were always getting mission in your safe city area. But once you hit level 30 missions were taking you to dangerous areas. Yes the mission was your level but getting to it was an adventure and dangerous but fun. You really felt great that you made it to the job. That's why everyone saved credits up for flying vehicles. Then getting to missions was easy.

Iselin

Sovrath said:

I want a world where there are mixes of different things in an area. Where a low level can wander into a place and realize he/she doesn't belong there.

Where high levels go to starter areas because there is "high level content" there.

I remember in Everquest 2 there was a sewer area in the starter city that had an additional part that was too high for low levels.

It would be great if low levels could get a small raid going to attempt higher level content.

gating a world is horrible. keeping everything at the same level for players is not my taste.

Every zone in a game should have those mixes instead of level gating zones.

ESO tries and they do indeed have a mix in each zone ranging from simple mob types > strong mobs > delves > public dungeons > group event locations > world bosses.

Their problem is not that they have level scaling but that the difficulty for all of those except the world bosses are just tuned to be too easy. Any half-way knowledgeable player built logically can trivialize all of that solo including the "group suggested" events and public dungeons.

But that's a balancing issue not a level gating vs. scaling issue.

I'm like you. I find level gating zones to be an old standard but horrible design that needs to die.

DafAtRandom

Well, you can implement either/or, but I won't be playing your game They are both terrible mechanics.

Ungood

I don't think an Either/Or approach is really a good one with this.

Personally, I think a mix would be ideal.

Like Open World, is better served with a scaling in effect, because that keep the content viable, longer, for more players.

However, I am not a fan of up-scaling, as I believe that having level steps allows players to progress and explore and feel like they are progressing both upwards and outwards.

Equally so, if the game needs to "Upscale" they should just fully max level the character, as opposed to what amounts to just a blanket power boost.

To use an example.

The way sPvP works in GW2, is a solid and good way to balance PvP, where everyone is given a fully maxed level character, with all abilities, and top stats, so they are at least, on equal availability footing. This means, no matter what level their Character is in PvE, in sPvP, they have a fully maxed out max level character to run with.

The way GW2 does WvW is poor system, where you just get a blanket power boost to make you comparable to a max level character, but still do not have access to all the abilities, or even the exotic/ascended stat combos.

Equally so, I think GW2 did the same thing with Fractals, where they would up-level you, but again, I never liked this plan. 

I like Dungeons to be level caped, and in GW2, I even liked their Agony system, TBH, where you needed to not only have max level gear, you also needed to augment that gear with infusions that came from the content itself, forcing players to start at the beginning and earn/learn their way up through the fractals.

That was a Smart plan IMHO.

Which is why I think Dungeons/Raids should be hard level caped, require flagging, and other systems to ensure that people are in fact ready for that content, and have this flagging content function as a preliminary challenge runs to see if they are ready to even try the raid, and provide gear to help them with the raid itself.

DDO did this the absolute best! They had Flagging Quests for Raids, where the flagging quests needed to be done, before you could even access the Raid itself (you could not bypass this in any way, and every character, individually needed to flag, just to make sure you didn't try to bring a gimped toon into the raid), and these quests gave you a feel on how ready you might be to handle the raid. If you were struggling with the flagging, there was no way you were ready for the raid.

Which is how I think MMO's should be. It should be a process, something to work towards and through.

Asm0deus

Ungood said:

...snip...
DDO did this the absolute best! They had Flagging Quests for Raids, where the flagging quests needed to be done, before you could even access the Raid itself (you could not bypass this in any way, and every character, individually needed to flag, just to make sure you didn't try to bring a gimped toon into the raid), and these quests gave you a feel on how ready you might be to handle the raid. If you were struggling with the flagging, there was no way you were ready for the raid.

...snip...

Hmm DDO flagging quests could be done easily, most raiders had other toons parked at the flagging quests and you could get a higher level to carry you through it.

For raids there was always gimps in pugs that got carried as a soulstone and most raids even pugs had a few of us that new how to do the  more tricky stuff like Abbot where you need a few peeps that know how to do roids/tiles.  Most other peeps were just carried past those parts till you got to abbot himself.

Mendel

I'm not certain that scaling works well within a game designed for groups.  It seems to encourage solo play over group play.  If that's the focus of the game, then scaling seems to work.

However, scaling in a group-focused game makes the entire experience somewhat more bland.  First, the characters in the group need to be 'balanced' before the content can be adjusted.  Balancing the group tends to make each individual function similarly, removing the distinction between the characters.  This devalues gear, skills, accomplishments and other forms of progression in my view.  That seems to be directly opposed to what an MMORPG is trying to accomplish.

k61977

I prefer level gating to some degree. I can't stand the feeling that I am not getting stronger as I play. This is what happens when the monster just keep leveling up with me. I like to be able to go back to that area that was giving me grief for weeks an totally destroy it to just make me feel good. You never get that chance when you have scaling.

This was one of the things that pushed me away from ESO for a while. I wasn't able to really see improvement in new builds because I would level an it could actually take longer to kill things than it did before I leveled. They did add the leveling back with CP which makes a huge difference when you get it to 300, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

The biggest problem that comes from level gating is xpacs. To many developers don't realize that they don't have to add levels every time they do an expansion. Maybe add a couple levels here or there every other expansion to break the player base up to those who are up to the new xpac an those that are not.

Overall this is all just personal preferences.

hallucigenocide

i probably prefer the scaling.. i hate that when they add new content the old stuff becomes obsolete. this endgame obsession that WoW probably is the worst offender of just makes a huge game feel really small.

olepi

I don't really like scaling, so that everyplace looks the same.

My favorite games had a mixture of mob levels, so that even at low levels, some areas contained much higher mobs. You could level up and go back to take those on. Every zone has a range to match the player, and then a sprinkling of higher mobs too.

Kyleran

I've never played ESO, GW2 was closest I came to level scaling and it was only true downwards.

Being a progression junkie I have been more fond of gated content but will confess to favoring a more EVE like setup the past 10 years.

Meaning as much as possible every area of the game should hold challenge for every player regardless of progression to date.

I'm not interested in it being completely scaled to the point the risk is nearly the same everywhere which sounds boring,  at least to me.

frostymug

I always like the idea of scaling when it is presented, but never like the end result.

I am also primarily an explorer.

It sounds good to have the whole world available to you from the start. Being able to go wherever you want and see all the diversity built into the world sounds like it should be ideal for me. However, in actuality, it ends up lacking the feeling of going where few of my character's ability go, or should go. The feeling of exploring and seeing things my character should not at their ability level is gone.

In the end the challenge is missing and it just turns exploring into simply wandering.

Scorchien

Scaling Blows...................../end

koldmiser

I don't like scaling. Never have. Never will. I want to feel like I'm accomplishing something and my character is getting stronger. I love going back to an area and finding an elite mob that killed me and getting some payback.

That said if we have to have scaling the ESO version would be my choice. I despise what World of Warcraft is doing now with the new areas. Mobs that scale, but also mobs that are higher level than you. Oh and here's a quest to kill an elite mob, but you're going to have to group up because that mob is always going to be too strong for you to kill alone because he scales with you.

Kyleran

Scorchien said:

Scaling Blows...................../end

Agreed,  I mean how could one gank noobs in a perfectly level scaled game. 

Heck, 2 or 3 together might even be able to prevail over a veteran.

Can't let that sort of nonsense idea gain any traction.

Tuor7

Hi, I'm level 1, and this mangy wolf pup is kinda tough, but I can kill it.

Hi, I'm level 20, and this mangy wolf pup is kinda tough, but I can kill it.

Does that seem realistic or immersive? Not to me. Not at all.

And if you like to explore (as I do), then level up and explore.

Also, I agree with some of the other posters that leveling down for content (and especially to play with low level players) is okay, but I think that the reverse should never be permitted.

hallucigenocide

koldmiser said:

I don't like scaling. Never have. Never will. I want to feel like I'm accomplishing something and my character is getting stronger. I love going back to an area and finding an elite mob that killed me and getting some payback.

That said if we have to have scaling the ESO version would be my choice. I despise what World of Warcraft is doing now with the new areas. Mobs that scale, but also mobs that are higher level than you. Oh and here's a quest to kill an elite mob, but you're going to have to group up because that mob is always going to be too strong for you to kill alone because he scales with you.

i've always wondered how sincere that argument really is.. do people actually feel like killing a mob by farting in it's general direction as they pass by as fun gameplay?

personally that just means i ignore them because they pose no threat.