Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Dev Discussion #19 - Dungeon Scaling
LieutenantToast
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion #19 - Dungeon Scaling
Should open world dungeons scale up in difficulty significantly as you go deeper (ex. level 30-50), or should the difficulty band of a given dungeon be more narrow from top to bottom (ex. level 45-50)?
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Discussion topic regarding NPC behavior!
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Comments
I love it when games have difficulty that scales with skill rather than "you must his level X before you can contiue". let us try and fail, miserably and learn attack patterns and conquer the dungeon through perseverence!
It also adds a challenge for lower level players who may want to run that content despite not being properly leveled for it.
The reason to me is simple. If you have a dungeon where 30's are interested in 30's content, and 50's in 50 content, then naturally you have some conflict.. not all of it good. If levels mean something in this game and level 50's are in the same hunting ground as a level 30 then there's a lot of things that need to be balanced around this fact. It certainly makes things more interesting with all of the conflict but right now i'm viewing it as more of an annoyance based on past experience.
That aside, it might fit w/ the vibe the world is trying to give off by having more mixed zones. Other games have sometimes done some similar things, but i'm not quite sure w/ that extreme a level difference.. think upper/lower guk etc. from Everquest.
I think this would help keep up the interest since experienced players won't have to keep redoing the same content over and over to reach the higher floors, and newer players won't have all the mobs at their level killed by the more experienced players passing through.
However, there is something to be said about the player experience of going to a dungeon that you cannot fully clear at a lower level only to return later on at a higher level and complete the clear. I think in theory this is a great idea, but, I don't think the nature of players would allow this to work, again assuming it is all one shared instance.
I think overall it's much more sustainable and easier to balance if the dungeon has a narrow pool of players (45-50)
This would make the world feel more alive if you're rubbing shoulders with other players of varied progression rates. Having that social aspect sounds pretty immersive on paper....
On the other hand, you attract a lot of loot competition situations that cause players to sometimes get pvp gated if a zone is being controlled heavily by a certain guild or alliance.
Those newer players will end up having that "Make love, not Warcraft" situation of having guys at high level bully the lower end of the level recommendation players who didn't start the game at launch. One must never underestimate the strength of that which has no life.
I worry that when you add too much flexibility you lose the feeling of power progression if you're running a higher level raid or dungeon, and some group of 45s are fighting the level 60 mobs your level 60 group is running, and all that is different is the time it takes to kill mobs; then I feel like there's something lost in the design philosophy that forgets why you have levels in RPGs in the first place.
People like me love to find in the end game a challange : "exemple - we are 8 player at level 50 , we enter in this dungeon and want to make a record with time or lever reach.. Then if we go more deeper like level 150 difficulty will be funny !
Archages mentoring system was nice for having more experienced players meet newer players so this could introduce the same scenarios that I think are really valuable.
I think resource competition might be a problem but maybe thats the tradeoff for making it open world. Hopefully xp rewards are balanced so higher level players dont farm lower level mobs
Hopefully big zergs cant just roll over higher level monsters with their numbers as well. Seems like it would be hard to balance but who knows
Open world things will always have a zerg issue without proper mechanics in place.
With a team composed of skillful players with good gears, as a level 30, can you get into the higher levels without being destroyed by the monsters ? And if yes, can you actually get benefit from killing the monsters. I remember that some MMOs stop players from getting anything by killing a much higher level monster.
Regarding this, my thought is simple, is the time & resources invested worth killing those higher level monsters ? Because it would be pointless to struggle doing this if you can gain more by doing content that is of your level. If yes, then it can be interesting of having such dungeons since it could potentially boost a player's progression by taking huge risks.
But there is a problem, as far as I understand how all dungeons are made so far, 90% of the time, they are designed in a way as you progress through it the monsters become stronger and you finally end up facing a boss. So here's another question : Does these dungeons will have boss with different level ranges ?
In the end, when you do a dungeon if not for a quest or exp, you go for the boss's loots.
You need a boss for every level range or else I think it will lower the interest for players to get in.
Another problem I see regarding those dungeons is : can higher leveled players can benefits from killing lower level monsters ? If yes, well it gives two others problems even if it satisfy the lv.50.
The 1st : low level players will have to compete with higher leveled players and it's obvious who will have the upper hand. The other problem is the fact that low level boss are waiting to be farmed by high levels for easy loots and money at the detriment of low level players.
In any shapes or form, I don't see a level 30 winning against a level 50 by focusing a mob or a player.
So it would maybe be better for higher leveled players to not benefits from killing low level monsters, but then it would compromise one of your goal (I am not really sure about this, maybe it's a forum user's idea) but I read or heard somewhere you wanted that low level zones had still an interest for high lv. players. Also having half of a dungeon becoming worthless for lv.50 is maybe not the best idea.
In the end regarding the level 30-50 dungeon, I am mitigated in having those, since it would cause more problems than it gives benefits. Maybe having multiple entrances with different level range could help a bit.
About the dungeons that are more narrow from top to bottom I think that having those solve most of the problems I've highlighted before. If the player is at the dungeon's level, the progression would be smooth, and if you want to increase difficulty it would be by other means of having higher level monsters.
What I like is this time as a lower level player, you can still go into such dungeons, but it's based on the player choice, and not how the dungeon is designed itself. So the risk you take is something you took into account beforehand if you want to clear such dungeon.
In general, I prefer that the difficulty rises from the monsters stats, attack pattern, how you move into the dungeon etc... the further you go in more than adding level to monsters.
Since the world afaik will have no fast travel system it is likely that players will not explore the deeper regions of a dungeon because it would require them to travel far to just do that one quest or so which requires them to go in there.
Hoping zones from my experience is never really much fun imo. Especially when the travel time is long.
The issue that pops up in my head is how we get to the deeper floors when we reach a higher level so we don't wipe out the lower level floors leaving nothing behind just to get down there. Also of course with open world pvp you'd have to make the incentive to go deeper strong so that lvl 50s don't hang around killing lvl 30s (both players and mobs).
I also like the idea of a floor boss like in danmachi or SAO where they have to beat a big boss to progress to the next floor. Again there's the question of how we get past it if it just happens to be on the path to where we're going. Does it have a really short cooldown to solve this or can we use a portal or a secret passage if we've been there before? Speaking of portals I wouldn't want to use it like a straight up elevator. Imo it's an important part of the experience how you get to the dungeon. It makes everything feel more alive.
Lastly with how the node system works it might be cool if deeper areas of the dungeon opened up as the node grew. Maybe going really deep requires more resources somehow which makes it natural for people to be able to go deeper when the node gets stronger.
I think it would be acceptable for certain dungeons to have 'wings' or distinct sections that are tuned for different level ranges, but having a linear dungeon that forces level 50 players to steamroll their way through level 30 trash to get to more lucrative areas would just make the dungeon a pointless and inefficient experience for lower level players once the population starts to progress. If there's a large section full of level 30 trash and bosses that can be easily bypassed by level 50 players (either by the dungeon's layout, or some kind of key/attunement to 'skip' areas), then that problem mostly solves itself.
You could probably design the dungeon layouts with a variety of styles first, then determine how viable a wide level range would be after the fact. So strict, linear dungeons would probably be best with a narrow level range, and more free formed dungeons could serve a wider range. It'll also be important to consider where the dungeons are located on the world map, and ensure that someone living in a particular corner of the world doesn't have to go unreasonably far to find a dungeon suited to their level range.
It’s fine.
Virtue is the only good.
In terms of the scaling you are talking about, in open world dungeons, I am fan...conceptually. I think there is a lot of potential for fun, in a certain MMO built a certain way.
Unfortunately, I don't think AoC is structured in a way that will make that type of scaling effective. Here's a couple thoughts as to why:
- First and foremost, blending level ranges will end up being inconvenient for everyone.
The higher levels will be forced to chew through the low level stuff to get where they want, resulting in the lower levels not being able to have things to fight, because it was mopped up as "trash". Higher levels get an annoying "trash clear" (that no one likes), and low levels have to compete with the high levels to get the stuff that is relevant to them.
- "Reward" balancing.
In order to make it relevant for all parties, there has to be relevant reward. This ties into the first part in that you are either making the low levels compete against the high levels for rewards (which seems inherently imbalanced - I don't image they would be able to), or you are simply wasting the higher level's time by making them wade through stuff that has no value to them.
- PvP
I don't know that this is going to be unique to this particular system, but mixing high and low levels seems like it would encourage higher levels preying on low levels. Granted, I am not 100% familiar with all the intricacies of the PvP system, so this may either not be an issue at all, or be an issue in any open world dungeon, regardless of the level ranges.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS/COMPROMISES
- "Wing" based, instead of scaling
One way to work around the issue of "scaling", or mixing the level ranges, is that instead of having the difficulty scale as you go further in, you have "wings" or areas of the dungeon that branch off a central hub.
As an example, once you get in to a certain point, you go "left" for level 30-35 content, or go "right" for the 35-40 content.
This keeps the level range in which people are interested in the "zone" wider, and limits people just abandoning a dungeon/zone just because they outleveled it. It also keeps people from wasting their time in content they outlevel and removes the need to make all content relevant to all people in the overall range. This could be built on to have even more "wings" with various level ranges.
Frankly, that is the only solution I can see that would work with AoC. Any other suggestions, such as overall level scaling, individual scaling rewards, dungeon buffs, etc. all rely on game mechanics and design that I don't think would be effective in AoC.
So, long story longer - while I like the idea, I don't see how it could be implemented into AoC in a way that is effective and respects the general vision of the game. I think it would create more problems than it would potentially fix, and end up as something that is an overall negative, instead of a positive.
Unless you want to do some type over overall character scaling per zone a la ESO, or other games out there, in which case that opens up a whole other can of worms.
I definetly agree here!
Heroes of Many Expeditions || EU || Exploration Oriented
Guild Website || Guild forum post
This is placating the mobs; not changing design direction. Perhaps they realize something that they didn’t think of on their own.
Virtue is the only good.
That being said, any open-world dungeon does not have to have a linear progression path. (i.e. One way in, and one way down & through the place to get further in)
However, I'm also a big fan of limited information and more variability.
What that means in this case: I would prefer the levels, health, or any information is hidden from the players. With the rare exception of maybe a class with a unique ability that allows him/her to see the health, stats, level, etc. with a specific skill. I don't even like fancy name-plates for "elite" mobs, which I know we'll probably see in Ashes of Creation anyway. I want to explore the world and discover it all on my own, or with the help of the community. I want to go on an adventure!
For example: If I was travelling through the woods for the first time and I saw a bear. I might be wary of it based on its size. If I magically saw it's strength was nine times my own, I might pee a little bit and back away. Or maybe a fellow hunter who knows about bear hunting and brought proper equipment said they won't be a problem - I might even join in the hunt, given the proper gear.
How does that apply to this world?
The progression doesn't have to be telegraphed. I want some dungeons to have the giant dragon at the entrance, and his fart-breathing-brigade deeper inside sorting the treasure. Maybe the dragon is the strongest thing in that dungeon and just likes breathing the fresh air at the entrance? Maybe there's an even bigger dragon further inside? Maybe the dragon is taking a nap there outside of his lair, he just didn't want to be in the sun, and everyone inside doesn't want to bother a giant dragon blocking the way? Maybe the entrance dragon is an un-killable dragon and you actually have to sneak around him to actually enter the real/easier dungeon? (Think like it's a perfect/greater illusion spell, but you automatically fail your will saves on interaction, thus believing the damage is all real.)
tl:dr - I like the idea of harder content the further you go in a dungeon, or vice versa. I also like that the information needs to be discovered, not automatically shown with level name plates and/or health bars, unless it's a class skill. It breaks immersion.
These dungeons should be:
40-45
45-50.
The majority of the open world dungeons, around the various nodes should be for general purposes/revisiting areas. So:
10-30
15-40
20-45
25-50.
The main reasons I see for having wider level scaling (i.e. 30-50) instead of narrower level scaling (i.e. 45-50) are to encourage players to return to the same content at a later date or to minimize the number of dungeons needed to be created by expanding existing ones for diverse level ranges. The main benefit I see to a wider level range is that it would streamline development by allowing devs to create a smaller number of larger dungeons instead of creating a larger number of smaller dungeons. That could mean needing to make fewer entrances, and potentially fewer unique dungeon mechanics and assets. if this helps devs and they implement it well so that it does not hassle players needing to backtrack through redundant content they get no benefit from, then I see no issue with it.
However, if it is poorly implemented, such as if high level players have to slog through low level content that does not engage or benefit them, then it is a problem. If players have to kill certain bosses or a number of mobs to advance deeper into the dungeon it could be a greater problem, since level 50s and level 30s might be fighting for the same content. I doubt the lower leveled players would enjoy being pk'ed by higher level players, and the higher level players probably wouldn't enjoy waiting on respawning enemies and slower low level players to finish fighting bosses. Additionally, no player wants to just fight trash mobs and token mini-bosses until they get to level 50, if that were the case they would stay in the overland and never enter a dungeon. It would help if each section of a wide scaled dungeon functioned like a standalone dungeon, with its own mobs and unique bosses, maybe the last boss for level 50s could be an epic fight to reward returning over time and getting to the end.
Tl:dr: Personally, I would prefer dungeons scaling 45-50 than 30-50. However, if 30-50 scaling was well implemented with features such as high level players getting to skip already completed low level content, I could understand and accept it without complaint. I can see the value of both existing in the game.
Lots of rewarding quests for xp and items.
Grinding areas for expensive loot drops to make $ in a pvp zone.
I hated the gear score system it divides everything. "I like the old school way ok we know your gear sucks come run with us lets gear you up" rather then ah sorry your gs is too low no runs for you.
I loved leveling my gear and powering it up i hated so bad how it's very expensive to repair the armor it was quiet unfair and required way too much to do so "BDO" this is what made me quit the game grind for hours days to repair one armor and it doesn't repair the whole thing just a portion which made it so expensive and stressful this is suppose to be a game not a job. Point is materials should be not hard to get and the amount needed shouldn't be over crazy amount.
Check points at each nodes, cities you can fast travel flight to other check pointed explored node, cities.
fun themed dungeons & mobs rewarding in some way.
1. The first thing I'd need to consider is (roughly) how many dungeons will there be in a general location that could be easily accessed.
A. If the answer is "a lot" then I think narrow scaling would work better as it'd keep fairly similar level players together without causing massive waves of players preventing others from participating fully.
B. If the answer is "medium/they'll show up later" the Wide scaling might work nicely because even though you'd have a lot of players in the same area doing similar content, the level ranges would block those lower levels from progressing higher without a guide naturally spreading the population out.
2. What's the benefit of entering these dungeons/what's the goal?
A. If it's mainly for leveling up or questing I'd say Narrow is better because you'll have less people "farming" the same locations for exp/quests
B. If it's to beat a boss or gather materials, I think Wide because higher level materials could be located further into the dungeon/dropped from higher level mobs. And as for the purpose of beating a boss it may be tougher for lower level players to participate, but having too many dungeon bosses (with the narrow) degrades the overall satisfaction of beating them. They shouldn't be unbelievably rare, but I wouldn't want a dungeon boss to turn into a boring "elite" mob battle.
3. How often do you want people to come back to this content/how quickly will it shift?
A. If this is a quick shifting dungeon caused by something in the world and once it's "complete" the world shifts again then a narrow focus would be best. I say this because lower levels that want to see the content could push their way through with some higher level friends and higher levels will be able to participate as well (theoretically the levels would balance out to be the dungeons level with high and low level players)
B. If it's a more static fixture that you want people to continually come back to, like a cult that keeps re-emerging or a giant birds seasonal migration that causes havoc on the land, then a Wide range might be better. People could continually visit it whenever they wanted and wouldn't feel the pressure of missing something because of their level
4. What's the size of the dungeon?
A. If it's small then go with Narrow
B. If it's large go with Wide
I'll probably think of more later, but for now I'll end with this. A nice mix of both could be the best option, but the severity/intensiveness of the dungeons would drastically differ. Perhaps dungeons that are smaller offer a quicker paced environment but with greater risk of immediate death while larger dungeons would be slower and allow the player to asses their surroundings, check for traps, try to pick off a single mob etc. In the view of the world though I think the Wide range fits better overall if the option is to only pick one. If narrow scaling was the primary focus I think it might become more of a checklist of places to visit at certain levels rather then the open exploration that seems to be the goal.
Narrow Scaling would help keep similar levels together and could be useful for "quick" dungeons or quest lines
However, I believe a mix of both would benefit the world the most with wide scaling being used for world related dungeons while narrow scaling being used for local/seasonal related dungeons.