Dynamic level adjustment for Zones (like GW2)

ArchivedUser

One of my biggest gripes with many MMOs is the trolling of high level characters in low level zones. Nothing ruins immersion more then having your adventuring interrupted by a character who's at max level come waltzing through an area slaughtering everything in sight. You then have to stop and wait around for everything to respawn and pray that you don't get overwhelmed if everything respawns at once. How many times have you seen a rare creature appear/boss come up on your radar, and as you slowly fight your way to where they are, a max level character goes flying past you, ignored by all the surrounding mobs to one shot the rare creature/boss? Same thing for PVP. I have no problem with PVP, but at least give me a fighting chance to either fight back or escape. One of the most common trolls is to take high level characters into a newbie area and start slaughtering unsuspecting new players who have no chance at all. Talk about ruining immersion.

My suggestion is to have dynamic leveling for zones like they have in GW2. Where every zone has a certainly level range and when you go into a lower level zone, you are automatically scaled down in power to that range. It would resolve many issues.

- There would always be a challenge for people no matter what zone they go to. While people with their epic godlike weapons would still be able to kill things effortlessly, it would still take a couple hits instead of one shoting everything. This also means you could continue to explore lower level zones you may have out leveled and still have a meaningful experience in them.

- Rares or area bosses would still pose a challenge no matter what level you are and it would give more time and opportunity for other players to assist and get credit for these battles.

- PVP would be a little more fair. If you are always going to be within 5-10 levels of someone, it means that you will always have a chance to either fight back or escape with your life. I don't care about what the penalties are for PVPers, nothing makes me quit a game faster than being slaughtered by someone 50 levels higher then me. It destroys immersion and my interest in a game.

- Caravans for lower level characters would actually stand a chance if they didn't have to worry about being trolled by a high level character one shoting all the guards and yourself.

ArchivedUser

Yeah, I can get behind this.

Dynamic leveling has another added bonus of making all zones relevant. That way there's no need to be constantly be moving to the "endgame content". You can has challenging combat wherever you go.

ArchivedUser

I doubt this will be a thing...although I don't know how they plan to handle starter zones later in the game.
The regions and zones level up as the players level their nodes.
All the zones and regions are dynamic rather than static.
it's definitely not going to be like GW2 or any other previous MMO.

ArchivedUser

I'm also in favor. It's one of the things that really ruins themepark games but it has relevance here too. Trade routes don't work as well if they go between a relevant zone for your character and an irrelevant zone, for example.

Dygz, are you thinking that zones with outposts will be the lower leveled zones and zones with metropoli are the high leveled zones? That would be pretty weird, players would then have to start in different places based on the history of the server! This isn't the impression I got from what I've seen so far.

ArchivedUser

Given how each node will progress or digress, I don't think traditional "Go to Zone C to kill mobs level 45-50" will exist, will it? As such, I have no idea how content will scale (or not; seems odd if it didn't scale given the organic nature of nodes). I'm looking forward to more explanations about that because there is actual character/artisan levels, so mobs need some kind of level or at least scaling.

For PVP/caravans, it's going to be a big deal if a max level caravan strolls through a low level area. The lower levels folks won't have any chance of winning.

ArchivedUser

I was always under the impression that while the zone grew, it was more in what content was available, not what level the content was. So say level 1 zone has 10 available quests.. if it evolves into a level 2 zone, then you have vendors and say 20 available quests. get to level 5 then it would have crafting area, bank, housing and 50 available quests. The appearance might also change, but I don't think the zones will become a higher level.. I always viewed it like how the garrisons in WoW would level up.

ArchivedUser

I agree Blackgate99. Otherwise new players wouldn't be able to become citizens in more developed nodes, which sounds like nonsense to me.

ArchivedUser

Never liked GW2 dynamic levels, didn't give a sense of progression to me.

ArchivedUser

Are there going to be levels? If so I hope it's very flat on the power inflation. I don't want to see a level 50 be 2x more powerful than a level 49. I would rather a level 50 be about 49% more powerful than a level 1, or 1% more powerful than a lvl 49.

ArchivedUser

I liked how GW2 instituted the dynamic level system in their game. As others have said, no matter what level you were, if you felt like treading old stomping grounds, you could do so, while still feeling a sense of challenge. That kept he game interesting, in that respect.



[quote quote=19978]Never liked GW2 dynamic levels, didn’t give a sense of progression to me.

[/quote]


I've heard this argument before. And, if by "progression", you mean a "gods walking amongst mere mortals" feeling, and just mercilessly curb stomping anything that happens to cross your path, than no. Dynamic progression negates all that. But, to say that it didn't give a sense of progression is false, imo. For example, a lvl 40 character going into a lvl 10 zone, wouldn't be a lvl 40 character. But, they wouldn't be a regular lvl 10 character either. They would be more akin to an "elite" lvl 10 character, so to speak. Plus, this allowed player to play with, and help, lower lvl friends, without ruining the experience for them.

Not sure how that kind of system would work with all the complexity's of Ash's node systems, but I would definitely be open to it, as a viable additional option to the game.