A bunch of random concerns over level scaling

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I’m sure the devs will probably get this right with Reborn and the end of Orbus’s current world but I wanted to provide feedback that I think differs from most people’s point of view on this.

I enjoy the current process of leveling, and I like leveled zones. Moreover I think in some aspect getting rid of this entirely could be detrimental to gameplay.

  1. Accomplishment

    Until you reach endgame (currently lvl. 20), there isn’t a whole lot to show for gaining a level and I think there would be even less with level scaling. Right now you gain the ability to go back to a zone and bypass mobs that used to be a nightmare to deal with. You get to look at that kelpie that used to kill you every time you passed the bridge and one-shot (or at least very easily deal with it) instead. Also helping out a new player and then later showing that you can aggro 10 mobs at once and still keep yourself alive can be quite entertaining as well. You also gain the ability to grind dram (covered in section 3).

  2. Skipping content

    I leveled healer as my main. I pretty much skipped the jungle entirely (during the intended lvls) on my first playthrough and chose to level in the desert instead with groups. After leveling archer as well, I think that this is much more efficient leveling path. (Really only the boars are solid for leveling in the Jungle) Currently with tank, I’ve been doing the same, going for the red star cactuar in the desert rather than deal with most jungle mobs. This somewhat factors into quest design as well. If there was a zone or quest that didn’t particularly interest me or make me want to put a group together, I could just power-level in another zone and then blow my way through the annoying area. Scaling the entire world could remove this.

  3. Grinding Dram

    People who are not hardcore participating in the economy get their dram from mass farming low-level mobs either in a dungeon or in parts of the overworld. Then they vendor everything to the smith and maybe try to sell the runemage reagents to a stall owner. Level-scaling would need to take into account that this is main money farming method for anyone who isn’t fishing or grinding an insane amount of mats. Another way for players to grind dram would be needed if this was removed.

  4. Hidden high level mob packs

    Some of my favorite leveling experiences have been getting completely owned by the mobs behind the stairs of bandit camp or the ones under the class statues in the guild city zone. I encountered both of these at the wrong level first and was like “whoa, there’s something cool here, I need to know what it is” It was a big incentive to keep going and grind and I’d come back to them every couple of levels to test if I was “worthy” yet.

  5. Grinding Spots

    This probably sounds silly as well, but discovering which location is the best to grind in and grinding itself is rather social and fun in Orbus. Yes, we joke about killing worms all the time for lvl 19-20 but some of my more lighthearted sessions have involved forming a party with some people and killing those worms for 90 minutes while we chat about life. I’ve also enjoyed scouting out secret locations with other players that turned out to be very efficient for leveling. That was pretty fun too.

  6. Size of the world

    While orbus doesn’t prevent you from walking across the map at low-levels, there’s a good chance that if you’re lvl 4 and wander into a lvl 8 zone, mobs are going to kill you. This added a huge amount of mystery and intrigue to early part of the game. There aren’t any keys or quests keeping you out of a zone, everything is really just kind guard-railed by the fact that higher level mobs will kill you if you go there and don’t know what you’re doing. This was even fun for all the times I’d jump though random portals between lvl 1 and lvl 8 and then being like “Oh no. I’m in the desert now.” killed by mob.

Anyway, just some random thoughts. I know there are a lot of advantages in making it easier for high-level players and low-level players to play the game together. So I wanted to provide some feedback on what I consider enjoyable about the current leveling process.

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I think that these are all very valid concerns. I’m not entirely a fan of the whole level scaling concept, but in the end I think we will get used to it. There are a couple points presented that really stood out to me, however.

The first being accomplishment. In level scaled worlds, it feels pretty worthless to level up and doesn’t give a ton of incentive to do so. The game already sorta has that currently, but there’s also a huge “worth” gap between being or not being a level 20. There is nothing to incentivize players (in my opinion) to level their classes up besides just “getting to do endgame content”. I think that there needs to be objectives, activities, or rewards for getting to different levels outside of higher damage, health, or new talent options.

Secondly, dram farming. I have quite the bias behind me as I am a mage, but being able to efficiently farm dram whenever I would like/need to is extreemely helpful. It allows me to be somewhat self-sufficient and also gives me the opportunity to drop 20k dram on getting a dragon to the plunderer trait for a newer player that I hung out with. I don’t want this experience to be ruined, so hopefully there are alternative ways of producing dram to this extent.

Just my thoughts on a couple of these things, but overall I think this post hit the nail on the head for a lot of my own concerns.

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I think my biggest concern is that with a flattened world and assuming the “no one owns a location” policy, it will be fairly easy for people grinding at a specific spot to be forced out if it by people “helping” to attack the mobs and radically reducing efficiency. Nothing would stop them from following people around to try to leech indefinitely.

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I’m not a fan of level scaling for the simplest of reasons. Doesn’t it make levels pointless? If I can no longer go back and pub stomp something, but instead everything scales to my level, I effectively have no level. To me level scaling means we are removing levels.

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My hope is that enemies don’t scale 1 to 1 with our character levels and different areas would have different amounts scaling. So red enemies at low levels would still eventually become green as you level up.
Also curious as to how it will work for a high level and low level fighting the same enemy. Will the enemy be scaled individually for each person fighting it, or will maybe the first person attacking determine the scaling?

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Arcane blast Narrow Orchard while I still can? Arcane blast Narrow Orchard while I still can :smiling_imp:

I agree with many points made
remembers when it took like 6 of us to tackle a single Narrow Orchard Sprite, everyone running screaming when more than one got accidentally pulled
Will treasure the pockets of difficult-mobs moments and relish going back to vengeance one shot things :sweat_smile:

Despite agreeing with most everything mentioned above, I really appreciate the movement to keep people together. I was lucky in that when I started playing, I always had a group, whether random encounters with fantastic venture quests with strangers or being able to coordinate with friends I had made in game. So when I hit 20 (and I was late to the scene, considering my start time, but I was in no rush and enjoyed the journey) I frequently see lower level people looking for groups, whether just to hang out while exploring, questing buddies, grinding company, first dungeon… and they can’t. Days pass as they try to find someone, and if that person is lucky a much higher level will swoop in after the opportunity for an “equal group” was given. I can’t imagine trying to play while struggling to find one or two other people, especially considering how very social this is designed to be. It is a problem and one that deserves to be resolved, and leveling alts isn’t covering it. I’m not a fan of the trend of waiting to be 20 before joining a fellowship either, or that non-endgame fellowships seem to be “interim.” That’s a sad and solitary way up when we really need to be enjoying the journey.

Maybe a toggle option? Some level scaled areas but not all, not counting endgame? Let’s brainstorm how to keep what we love about the current leveling system while still fostering everyone from the beginning, regardless of start time or timezone.

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We had a really big discussion about this during our Dev meeting this morning and threw around a lot of ideas. We all share the concerns some of you have, specifically about things like:

  • How do we get you to want to keep going around to different places in the world and not just stay in one spot if the monsters are just always the same level?
  • How do we give you a feeling of progression and increasing power in a world where everything is level scaled?
  • Do we level-scale everything? Just some things?

Etc.

Essentially the way that we are seeing this working is that the entire “overworld” and “normal” mode dungeons will be level-scaled. Instead of being assigned a level, creatures are assigned a difficulty rating directly. So it might be “challenging” or “easy” or “impossible” still, but the main difference is just that regardless of if you are Level 4 or Level 20, it should in theory always feel “easy” or “challenging”.

End-game content, including shard-mode dungeons and raids, would not be level scaled.

For the concern of feeling like you are still having progression, I think there are two different perspectives to focus on there, while leveling and while max level.

While leveling, you want to feel like you are getting more powerful. We intend to address this with a new gearing system which allows you to “get ahead” of the level scaling a bit, then fall back to normal. So for example if you go do a dungeon at Level 20, you might get a sword that is a “Level 20+1” sword. What that means is that at Level 20, this sword is a little better than a standard sword, and so you do more damage and feel a bit “mightier.” However, at Level 21, this is just a standard sword, and then if you were Level 22 and still had it, you would be a bit “weaker” than normal.

So essentially, you’ll have the ability to have a bit of variance in relation to the content even though it is scaled, in that you are a bit “mightier” or “weaker” than you should be for your level. You can’t “break it” to the point of being totally destroyed by enemies or one-shotting stuff (there is no “Level 20+8” sword), but at the same time it gives you still that feeling of getting new gear mattering and progressing in the game, albeit in more of a swaying fashion rather than a direct shot toward max level.

What this means for the max level player is that as you do shard dungeons and raids, you will have the opportunity to become that “little bit stronger” permanently. Again, it’s not going to unbalance the game like a Level 20 going into a Level 8 dungeon does currently, but it does give you some progression to go for. We’re also going to have a different way of doing gearing and stats on gearing this time around which will provide, I think, a lot of opportunity for players to build different sets of gear for different situations – so it becomes a little less “well I have a Level 21.5 bow so I’m the best!” and more “Oh well I have a specific set for this situation that allows me to do a little better because it can dampen DoT effects and there are a lot of those on this fight.” So more of a horizontal progression if that makes sense.

In addition to straight up gear/power progression, we are also going to feature a lot more progression of other types, whether that be cosmetic unlocks, rare transmog styles, etc. So it’s not just about grinding out stuff to get a bow with +11 Attack to do more damage, maybe your goal is to get a bow style that you think looks really amazing, and that is just as much effort required.

Finally, keep in mind the overworld is going to be a very different experience in the new game. While it’s still a nice big massive world to explore, there’s a lot more going on it that you’ll want to be able to jump into, from public events to specific monster hunts to salvaging missions. And there is going to be a type of ongoing “do stuff in the overworld, get rewarded” mechanic that even at max level you are going to want to keep triggering.

So I guess if you’re max level, your day might look like, go do Shard Dungeons to get some interesting new gear options to unlock that “little bit mightier” idea in more situations, do my daily overworld-based activity missions with a variety of players and levels so I can make sure I’m working toward my next reward cache, go do a public event that’s only up today this week that rewards a really cool new dye/pet/hair style that I want, etc.

The one thing that throws a wrench in all of this is the current game and our plans to roll out level scaling in that. When we announced that I hadn’t really sat down and drew up the plans for how it would all work, and now it’s very obvious that more than just implementing that mechanic itself, there is a lot of support structure that has to go into it to make it work well. So likely what’s going to happen is we will be doing a much more limited version of it in the current game – e.g. only very selected stuff will be level scaled. The reason for that being that we aren’t going to go back now and for example re-do how all the gear works in the current game. So, I will have more details on that as we get closer to that rolling out, but just keep in mind what you see in a few weeks in the current game is not going to be the “full implementation”.

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I am not sure if I understand it correctly - the scaling will be in both directions? Can you go with your level 20 to the lvl 30 area and fight “challenging” or “easy” monsters?
Or it will be only scaled down. So “easy” monster in lvl 30 area will kick your ass untill you reach the 28-30 lvl?

The “scaling down only” would be better to feel achievement when you reach better level to be able to go to another (higher level) location.

I think Guild Wars 2 does this kind of scaling, while having high lvl gear helps you be mightier than average in the scaled lov lvl zone.

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This is extremely exciting, thank you giving us this level of detail! I particularly like the notion of having a variety of worthwhile gameplay chases that vary on a regular basis. I’m a big fan of public events.

I did have a couple clarifying questions though.

In the example of being level 20 with a level 20+1 sword in a scaled world. It sounds like this will mean that if I get unlucky and don’t get a weapon drop for a couple levels, the literal same mobs I was overpowering with the bonus, will now be significantly harder each time I level up, and ultimately (depending on their base challenge level) may not even still be defeatable until I go farm lower challenge enemies and get a new weapon drop?

Is there any notion of having some form of a diminishing returns exp-based end-game progression, along the lines of alternate advancement from other games? This is something that would allow that fairly minimal, but still on-going progression of power, and could augment various aspects of the gameplay. (+1% movement speed x 10 ranks, +1 physical resist x 20 ranks, +1 vitality for 10 ranks, etc etc). Having a variety of gameplay options is great, but players tend to chew through content and rewards faster than it can be made, so a diminishing returns grind can maintain that engagement over the long term.

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Like, right now we don’t show levels of mobs in-game, just relative difficulty level. So you see a mob and it is “Challenging” or “Even Match”. That will be the same it’s just that you leveling up has no bearing on it going from “Challenging” to “Even Match” to “No Challenge” – if it’s “Even Match”, it will always be “Even Match.”

There will still be areas in the world that are more challenging in the sense that they have more difficult mob packs, that require higher skill to defeat, but it’s not just anymore “Well I’m Level 20 so this thing that was Challenging 2 levels ago is now a cakewalk”.

I mean, that’s how it would work in the current game as well if you tried running around with a Level 10 sword at Level 18 – your damage output would be unable to keep up with the new enemies you were facing. It’s sort of a similar idea. That said, the gear drop rate is going to be much higher in the new game.

I think we’re looking at those types of bonuses as being more gear-driven than character-unlocks, but basically there will be a mechanic where your XP bar keeps “going” even after you are max level, and you get XP from doing things in the overworld, and then every time you level up you get a cache of resources (e.g. potions, ingredients, cosmetics, even gear). So from that perspective that would be an additional driving force of continuing to play and do non-endgame stuff with at least a little bit of your day.

If we did do something character-driven like that it would be as part of a more horizontal progression. So for example what you might do is work your way up to unlocking +20 physical resist as something you can choose to activate. Or then you also can choose +20 speed after you’ve unlocked that. But you can’t have both active at once (as that would be too unbalanced). We are really interested in basically giving you the ability to make choices to maximize each encounter, similar to what some guilds are doing now with affixes, only on a much wider scale. Whether that comes via a character unlock or just gear options or gear mods or something isn’t fully decided yet.

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A little off topic, but…

Speaking of affixes, are they going to be retained or reworked? Are new ones being introduced? Are broken ones like lifepull going to be fixed? This topic has seemingly been brushed aside(?) despite the interest that some of the community has :stuck_out_tongue:

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LIGHTENING FORGED! Full sentence.

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There will be changes coming to those, yes.

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The amount of thought you’ve put into the system is really impressive and I’m much more excited about it than I expected to be.

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I agree with Orednod, level scaling sounds like a bad idea. What’s the point of having levels if I can’t get high enough to 1 shot a n00b mob? If that same mob is going to give me as much trouble as if I was a level 1, what’s the friggin point?

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I think the best way to handle it would be to have 90% of the over world mobs remain stagnant based on level rather than difficulty rating. This allows you to always go and feel powerful, arguably the biggest benefit to leveling.

Make all dungeons and raids scale up. So your 20 can go run cave dungeon woth yoir 12 friends and not have it be broken. You could also include these events and activities they have mentioned be scaling.

But as far as most overworld normal mob spawns, definitely keep them normal level based with no scaling. Literally everything else can be scaled.

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This is comment perfectly describes why I quit the game still at lv 18, I’ve been checking in to these forums to see how people are discussing the state of the game, since I loved a ton of Orbus but found myself spending more time bored with a sore shoulder from endlessly farming and once leveling up feeling no real reward for the hours of forced boredom with the pursuit of fun at 20.

My biggest suggestion would be to not give everyone every ability for their class right away.
The talents every 5 levels are cool…ish… okay they’re lame, lets be honest.
If I started as an archer and could only shoot arrows to start, then level 3 I got piercing shot, at 5 the rain of arrows, etc…etc… and even adding more abilities to each class so people can further customize how they want to play, like musketeers having a utility support option other than healing, and further refine the differences between rapid fire archers and sharp shooters, small shield and large shield warriors.

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What If normal mobs stayed their static level but greater mobs (chayr dragon/elk guardian thing/ovis ganger/ect.) scaled? That way as a max level there would still be few challenging things out in the world. I know the ovis hanger drops charcoal dye so make each of them have a certain drop that, at any level, can’t be farmed in 1 shot… just my 2 cents on the issue.

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Please for gods sake no level scaling, it is one of the worst things MMOs add to try and compensate for level differences and it always ends up poorly. Add in a party level sync option like FFXI did so people in groups can play together instead of making everywhere in the world the same for everyone, it kills things like the need to explore newer areas for higher level camps or the feeling like you actually got more powerful. I even despise when single player RPGs do it.

Just add a solid and obvious party search system with a group level sync system and toss the scaling system out the window. I was excited to see new classes and the visual overhaul coming, but when i read about level scaling my heart sank and now i might just not bother.

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Yeah I’m not a big fan of level syncing downward. I don’t think it would be as bad in Orbus as some other games that have done it since we don’t have a full bar full of abilities that you would suddenly turn off, but it really doesn’t even solve the problem that this is trying to solve in the first place, which is to make it really easy for new and veteran players to jump into the same activities with as little effort as possible, while still rewarding the veteran players with something worthwhile for their efforts.

I completely understand and respect everyone’s concerns with the possibility of a system that feels like it is going to make leveling up pointless or not give a feeling of progression. I think that there are ways beyond just “I am Level 20 and you are Level 5 and therefore you will die in one swipe of my blade” to make that happen, though.

I think the easiest way to explain the intent of what we’re doing is this. Right now in the current game, if I am Level 5, the number of people that I can interact with in a meaningful way for both of us is basically very limited. Sure, a max-level player might take the time to help me out and run me through a dungeon or help me farm some mobs, but them one-shotting stuff and me just tagging along collecting the loot isn’t a super-engaging experience for either of us.

That leads to basically a large gap in the experience where if you weren’t part of a major cohort that started leveling up at the same time (and that you kept up with), you end up playing a very lonely game. If you have a game that’s seeing 10,000 new players a day, then maybe you can avoid that with sheer numbers, but we simply aren’t going to see those kind of numbers in a VR title for a long time to come.

So, the goal of the level scaling is essentially to make it so that for the time you spend leveling, or as a max-level player the time you spend doing overworld content, everyone can play in the same cohort. You might be after different things (e.g. I’m doing a long achievement chain to get a mount I really want and you are just trying to get to Level 13), but we can still do this public event together without it being either impossible for me or so easy for you that it’s totally broken. This provides a source of shared content for the entire player base that can be done together all the time. It also makes it much easier on us as a Dev Team to be able to add new content to the game without having to ask ourselves “is this content only 5% of the player base can enjoy?”

Again, once I’m max-level and I have acquired a lot of max-level gear, things are still going to be easier for me to kill than they were when I was a fresh 30. It’s just not going to get to the “I can one shot this” degree. Not to mention all the non-level/gear related stuff, like having potions which increase stats, which makes content easier, and which a max-level player has access to and a beginner typically does not.

Finally, there will still be a sizable portion of content that is max-level only and which does not scale in the instances, and there will be areas of the overworld which are definitely designed with more a nod to those “mightier” players.

So the goal is not to make it such that all content in the game is available to everyone, but just to reduce the amount of content which is not to some degree, both to help ease the “cohort” problem and to make it easier on us to add stuff that can be enjoyed by more players, both new and old.

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