A bunch of random concerns over level scaling

#22

The problem you just explain with one person outpacing the other and having to play alone is solved by level sync. It keeps the base of the game the same but lets friends and groups play at the same level and do the same activities with the only barrier being what the lowest level person can do. Besides that you pointed out the one major downside with a sync system which is having to take away abilities…but this game doesn’t have that issue since we get everything right away pretty much (can’t say i loved that to begin with, part of leveling’s biggest rewards was always attaining new skills/spells). You scale down the level and gear stats of all the players to the synced players level and if done right they should be playing pretty much like if everyone was at that level.

If your going to scale everything for every level…why bother with levels? Its now become only a gear gap which could potentially be skip by quickly or be made to feel useless since it will have a minimal effect until endgame.

I have yet to see scaling not pretty much turn out that way even by major MMOs with giant budgets and teams. It just encourages going as fast as you can to endgame where things might actually matter again.

#23

@Riley_D I’d like to point out that although many, including myself, have expressed concern, I think we can all say it come from a place of constructive criticism. I am sure the game will only be more enjoyable in the long run, even if there are a few turns we don’t all like the look of. This game is obviously a labor of love, or you wouldn’t be remaking it for free. We trust you in your vision, but we’ll probably never stop fretting over the details.

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#24

No worries! I really am genuinely interested to get feedback on this which is why I keep writing out these long responses to this thread haha. I would rather discuss it now than 5 months from now when it’s too late to change anything, and everyone has their own take on it. The thread has been very constructive thus far and that’s always helpful.

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#25

Hey thanks for everything you wrote on it. In the end, I think most of us players will have to try the beta and test it to really feel it and provide good feedback on it. And I think most realize this is probably under development like everything else. I agree with Aelar, most people will probably get used to it over time anyway.

I’m still nervous about some aspects of this but excited about others. The combination horizontal and vertical progression at end-game sounds really cool over the mostly vertical we have now. Of course shard dungeons and overworld missions together sounds like a long play session since shard groups can already occupy a casual weeknight afterwork play period for 2-3 hours. I think a lot of this we’ll just have to see.

I definitely lost my leveling co-hort a couple times and had to catch up and there were a few times (near lvl 17 I think before the necropolar came out when the game became very lonely). I remember getting stuck on the Silicus wanting me to kill the Dweorg Soldiers in the desert dungeon for a while when the rest of my group had just finished that. However in other parts of this game, I’ve seen this issue solved by really clever (or possibly accidental?) design. The two I can think of how farming basic lvl 1 shards for Sentry was necessary for everyone and also a great way to gear up fresh lvl. 20s. The other is that my favorite dram farming area was Wenderwood. This meant I regularly got approached by lvl 8s who needed someone to run them through Voluspa’s tooth which I did if they asked nicely. (One person came up to me and pretty much demanded it, so yeah, that’s why I mention nicely. lol…) I don’t think there was anything that really corresponded to this for the Junge and Desert dungeons other than putting up a LFG.

Another thought on that whole continuing leveling in overworld for cache at 30. I would think most people who are already lvl 30 in one class would prefer to use the exp from those overworld missions on getting an alt to 30, would that interfere with receiving the cache or its contents?

I agree with some of the other posters that making intermediate levels more meaningful than just the talent system would be nice but I’m a little conflicted on this point. One of the coolest things about this game is how every class has most of it’s abilities right at the start and that it’s up to you to use. A lvl 1 runemage who can chain cast frost 3 is a good runemage. That’s a pretty cool style of gameplay imo. Maybe instead tie leveling into house expansions or something so going up a level is still rewarding despite the scaling on mobs?

#26

I have never been a fan of level scaling, but I’ve played Orbus since the very beginning. The game definitely needs something like it in the overworld. I really think it’s not going to be a big problem as long as the end game content isn’t scaled as well (sounds like that’s the current plan I’m mostly addressing other players that are worried).

It feels good going into TM now and seeing how much stronger we’ve gotten. That’s a very important part of games, and as long as you can preserve that somewhere I really think it will be fine.

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#27

Would it be possible for us to experience this in a beta test? Maybe set it so your first character is level 1 and if you make a second it starts at like 15 or something in at least the 4 original classes.

#28

One thing I think is important when the level scaling happens on some of the content, but not on all, is to focus on making both type of content as valuable for a higher level player. And a way to make this work better is by for example making a level scaled activity required or very useful for a non level scaled activity.

Otherwise I think something in the following example will happen:

  • If sharding is a level required activity
  • Getting a specific dye from an elite lower level mob which is a level scaled activity.
  • There is not much reason for getting the dye other then looking good, where most people might not even want that specific dye, so not many high level people do it. They are sharding after all, and getting that dye or not getting that dye did not help or change anything about the sharding activity, so why bother? It even has a reverse effect because you lose the dye anyway when you get higher shard gear -_-

But if the dye is some special reflective dye which is also required for the super badass demon of light boss while the dye also gets destroyed by the boss, then it makes it more of an activity where the higher level players will also spend time on.

This wasn’t the best example, but I hope people got what I am trying to say here. Basically I am trying to say: Give the higher level players a good reason to do shared level activity periodically and prevent them from only sticking at the high level content by encouraging shared level content which will be needed for high level content.

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#29

After the long read I have an idea that may or may not work.

Think of max level players as “great heroes” and low level players as eager young adventurers.
Well if there’s a world event and say it’s a big world boss, and the devs decide it spawns outside highsteppe once a week (obvious hypothetical) But this boss is level 20 and there’s people of all levels around.

Lets say the level 20 players give off an “inspiration aura” for the great heroes they are, and through inspiring the lower level players, it temporarily buffs them to at least enough so they don’t get 1 shot, but they also do noticeably less damage than the level 20’s.

This would probably only work for overworld events and be problematic if it just always happened while near level 20’s

For partying up with a large level gap, maybe have a “lend me your strength” sort of deal where we go full socialist and basically steal power from your higher level party members so they get weaker and you get stronger, but still keep a noticeable power difference that the higher level is more powerful.
This way it only takes place when in a party, and solo high levelers can still wreck low level areas and feel strong.

A Mentor system would be incredible too, basically if you are level 20, you can find any player who is lower level and make them your apprentice. This would give the Mentor certain bonuses and rewards each time he helped his apprentice level up, or complete a quest. This would give incentive for high level players to interact with newer players, guide them, teach them and hopefully keep them playing longer, while also rewarding the veterans for helping out.

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#30

I just want to be level cap and still be able to grab 7 mobs of low level and group them and kill them all at once easily and feel like a badass.

#31

So we had some further discussions about this the other day. One of the things that came up was this idea that as a newer player just learning the game, you need space to make mistakes and improve. So for example let’s say you are fighting a sorceress who can teleport, dodge your attacks, and fire back with her own powerful fireball you need to dodge. A newer player is going to have a tough time managing all of that. But in a level scaled environment, you’re sort of thrown to the wolves mechanically right away.

So I think piggybacking off of what I mentioned before about “slightly breaking the level scaling”, we will likely also be doing something where either through natural vitality or the way the gearing works, at lower levels you would basically be more resilient to damage but deal less damage yourself, and then as you progress through the game you would be less resilient but deal more damage. The idea being that more resilient + less damage leads to a little longer fight times, and a little more room for error, and then as you increase in power you become able to kill things more quickly but you have a little less room for error, because in theory you should be better at the mechanics.

Again, this is all talking about +/- 10-25% in power, we’re not talking about the range of difference between a current Level 10 and Level 20 monster fight for a Level 20 player.

There are going to be some mob types in the new game that you can naturally do that with. So like, there is a mob type that we are working on right now that sort of rushes the player and each one is individually weak but they come in larger packs that you have to dispatch.

At the same time, with the overall increase in complexity of the new monster AI, there is a lot more to manage and deal with even in a 1 on 1 fight. The monsters are no longer just going to rush to you, stand there and take damage and occasionally put a DoT or something on you. They are going to be dodging your projectiles, rushing you or attempting to keep their distance, blocking your attacks (requiring you to break that block), have cast bars that are powerful attacks or heals that need to be interrupted, etc.

So if you’re saying, I want to be able to group up 7 things that are meant to be a challenge 1-on-1, outside of taking those on with a group that’s probably not likely to be possible, but not just due to level scaling.

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#32

This is basically the whole plan haha but we’ll see how it goes. Essentially there are a set number of “missions” that you can accept across a variety of activities in the game every day that give good rewards even for high-level players; in addition to that, your XP bar continues to fill up even after you are max level and every time you level up you receive a “reward cache” of good items (e.g. potions, ingredients, dyes, etc.) All of these activities are open-world activities. So basically it’s to encourage max-level players to have a reason to spend at least part of their time in the open world.

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#33

These ai mechanics all sound really fun and interesting. So glad you’re putting a lot of work into giving enemies unique abilities!

You meantioned breaking a block. Will each class have a way to do this or is it like a warrior shield where you just dps the shield hp?

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#34

This sounds really neat. There was an idea brought up the other day (I don’t remember who told me… Invective maybe…) that sounded pretty good. What was mentioned was that, as you level up, your aggro radius slowly goes down. This would allow higher level players to still roam the world easily like we can now, but wouldn’t trivialize any of the fights that we might get into. This would also help with, as we become less resilient to damage and have to dodge more, accidentally pulling other enemies into the fight. Perhaps this could start at level 15 and end at level 25, giving incentive to level through mid-game?

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#35

I think having some perks like this that make you feel subtly more powerful as you gain levels but don’t trivialize individual combat encounters are a great idea for sure.

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Update for speculated/wished-for mechanics in Reborn?
#36

Still haven’t convinced me on this level scaling. Reborn might be when I stop playing Orbus.

#37

I was a little skeptical at first, but I’m all for trying it. The logic makes sense of why to do it and I think it will be beneficial over all. You might lose 1 person due to the change but gain 1,000.

#38

hard to convince someone whoalready made up thair mind. sadtosee u go

#39

I’m trying to figure out why this level scaling thing is even an issue that ppl complain about. Nobody actually cares about levelling anyway, the objective of every MMO is to do the fun dungeons, as questing/grinding is super boring. The only difference for a max level user is how quickly they can grind low level mobs for gold (and for obvious reasons, the fact that farming the lowest level mobs is the fastest way to get dram is an entirely different problem).

If anything, level scaling would mean that all dungeons are fun to play at max level, instead of just the max level dungeons. This means that you get to play more fun content, since the number one time consumer for developers are the max level dungeons (and why they always have you do the boring leveling shit to slow you down).

#40

I mean, I enjoy grindingly and questing, so that point is all subject to opinion. I’m also mainly just a fan of being able to explore the world without having to worry about aggroing mobs all around me everywhere I go, so having to deal with that while just trying to relax is one concern for me. Sure, being able to farm lower level mobs to gain some money that I basically never use is kinda alright, but I mainly use it to buy pet treats to make dragons plunderers and give them away if I meet someone who I like and help them quest/level for a while. Other than that, I harvest and explore the game to contribute to my fellowship. Level scaling will just slow all of that down, which I find as a bummer, but not the end of the world.

Additionally, we have shard dungeons. That is OrbusVR’s way of making all dungeons relevant and fun to do at end-game, and it was fairly decent imo.

#41

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