Antisocial mechanic for partying

I'd like to touch on something that makes me a little bit mad about the grouping we all experience in Alpha 2.

As of now, grouping with too much of level difference than other party members is extremely punishing regarding experience loss and gear drops. As of now, the drops are significantly lowered if party members have 4 or more level difference, and the same for the EXP gain.

I think this brings an antisocial aspect in a game that is supposed to be social, mainly because we aren't at the same place in life. We can't always be online to catch up with our friends so the level difference can become suddenly very high. And no, it is not easy to find a party to grind at level 14 when everyone is 19+. I lost 1 hour and a half trying to find a party the other day. It was a big waste of time.

Now, I will say that I understand Intrepid's intent behind this decision, but I think they overcomplicate things a little bit when it can be a simple solution that works for a lot of MMOs (including Guild Wars 2) : Level Scaling.

For those who don't know what level scaling is, it's a concept that if you party with member with a lower level than yours, your level will be downscaled to the same level or similar power rating than your teammate. This effectively allow higher levels to play with their friends while maintaining a restrictive approach to level boosting as they won't be able to kill high level monsters because of their downscaled level.

Let me say that even if you're downscaled from level 25 to 10 (because your friend in your party is level 10), you would still have a little bit more damage/mitigation than your friend, because you would still have access to the skills you unlocked via your adventurer leveling. The difference is that you wouldn't make 100% or 150% more damage than your friend, but instead maybe 5 to 10% more (depending on how Intrepid balance this). With this level scaling, there wouldn't be any drop decrease because their power is similar.

This should only be a PvE situation. If the level 25 is downscaled to 10, it shouldn't affect their power against other players.

I have examples from Guild Wars 2 of how it works.

These are screenshots of my level 80 character with normal stats and normal damage on a level 80 monster :

These are screenshots of downscaled stats to level 9-10 and downscaled damage :
As mentioned above, my damage is 562 right now, but is it still a little bit higher than level 10 characters because I have access to a lot more skills and rotations.

This screenshot is the UI indicator that someone is downscaled based on the area (party in case of AoC) :

I'd like to mention that I would like level scaling to be only effective when in a party with lower level players than you. Not when you enter an area with lower level monsters.

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Comments

daveywavey

Fully agree. It baffles me that they'd want to stop people from playing with their friends, and to stop people from bringing in new players to the game who then wouldn't be able to play with you.

Vhaeyne

I don’t love being the one with a counter-opinion in every complaint thread on the forums. Maybe it just means I really appreciate Ashes' intended game design?

While I’ve enjoyed scaling in other games because it allowed me to play with friends, I want to highlight some of the most important reasons against scaling:

-It encourages meeting and working with new people. This is, after all, a social game.

-It helps manage the number of players at a POI. Imagine how difficult low-level POIs would become if a bunch of level 25 players synced down to do them.

It’s worth remembering that leveling is temporary. Eventually, everyone will reach the cap, and at that point, everyone can play together. Until then, enjoy the journey—meet new people, tackle every POI you come across, and savor the ride to the top.

If you’re set on only playing with friends, you can always use the tried-and-true method of keeping characters specifically for playing together. My core friend group has done this countless times in countless MMORPGs, and it always works.

nanfoodle

Current lvling needs some love. Personally I would love to see some devs try lvling with the community outside of what the current majority are in level. I miss playing with some of my friends I'm nowhere near

Lucascp92

I suppose traditional questing will become more attractive when they add the story arcs.
However, will lion's hold & samia's hope have an story arc?

I fully agree with @Vhaeyne

Smaashley

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I don’t love being the one with a counter-opinion in every complaint thread on the forums. Maybe it just means I really appreciate Ashes' intended game design?

While I’ve enjoyed scaling in other games because it allowed me to play with friends, I want to highlight some of the most important reasons against scaling:

-It encourages meeting and working with new people. This is, after all, a social game.

-It helps manage the number of players at a POI. Imagine how difficult low-level POIs would become if a bunch of level 25 players synced down to do them.

It’s worth remembering that leveling is temporary. Eventually, everyone will reach the cap, and at that point, everyone can play together. Until then, enjoy the journey—meet new people, tackle every POI you come across, and savor the ride to the top.

If you’re set on only playing with friends, you can always use the tried-and-true method of keeping characters specifically for playing together. My core friend group has done this countless times in countless MMORPGs, and it always works.

How is encouraging to meet and play with new people a bad thing ? Why is it an argument against scaling ? I feel like this is absolutely the point of scaling and not destroying everything because you're overpowered. As of now, the game doesn't feel social with newbies when everyone is level 18+.

You see, I think it won't change that much for PoIs being contested, because if I understand correctly your concern about this, high level players will contest in a very high number of players the low level areas. Why would they do that if it's not for helping their friends (to be more social). The only reason high levels are in a low level area (PoI) is because they want to help their friend to get levels and gear/materials for these low level friends. There is no incentive for them to do that other than helping their friends, because the drops they will get won't have any value compared to what high level players can drop (Ex.: Dull Glint vs. Glowing Glint). I'd like to add that there are a lot of other factors that will influence that. As of now, the only way to level up is by contesting PoIs, so I think it's totally understandable to think it will be highly contested with high level players. But when more system are implemented like Questing, Story Arcs, Bounty System (for contested areas) AND the fact that it is only that much contested because we are 6k concurrent players in a single biome + 1/3 of the desert (that has no content yet), players will be spread out into the world and we won't have that vision of highly contested area, unless they increase the concurrent player per realm to 50k with 18 biomes (which I highly doubt).

Now I really think that ''everyone will reach the cap'' is not true. There will probably always be new players entering the game. For a good economy, we gotta have players in every level range. While most players, one day, will reach the cap of level 50, it is not true that Intrepid should make a system where new players entering the game after months of release struggles to find a group to play with, because I'd like to remind you that the game is made to be best played in a group of 8 players. With 50 levels (at launch), I can assure you that months after release, new players will struggle to find a party with diverse archetype to play with if we continue to have those level difference restrictions (EXP and drops).

At launch, 200 hours of farming to reach the top level. Don't you think that people would like to enjoy those 200 hours playing with friends instead of solo because we are a year after release and almost everyone is high level ? Honestly, if Intrepid can maintain a very high low level population by doing marketing, I'm fine with that. But the fact is that lots of multiplayer games lose low level players fast.

I'm sure, if not scaling, that there are ways to do this without penalizing low level players to group with friends.

Vhaeyne

@Smaashley

I was not saying meeting new people is a bad thing. I was trying to say that without scaling you are more forced to meet new people around your level to fill a party.

Going through the effort of filing a party with new people takes a little more time, but it can lead to friendships that can span over the life of multiple MMORPGs.

I am not saying it has to be this way. I am just trying to offer up some sensible reasons for why things are the way they are, and why I lean more to the current design than scaling.

This topic has come and gone many times and I think the only thing we have ever heard is that Steven doesn't like scaling.

I will say that no one ever thought WOW would have scaling, but here we are. So it's not that I don't think it could happen. I just don't think Steven wants it. I prefer open world PvX without scaling myself.

Mhyth

The current situation makes getting groups at POIs a degenerating sliding scale as time goes on. I first went to ROS at level 13 with a group and did great. Leveled from 13.8 to 15.1. A couple days later groups at ROS looking for additional members wanted 16+, I mostly solo and duo leveled to 16. Then the LFM requests were 17+, then 18+ well geared no rangers, actually saw a few requesting 19+ which is absurd as those laggers should have moved on to SB or Carphin. I've seen duos of 24 and 25 farming at RoS - something is broken level design wise if drops or some other adventitious reason is keeping high levels there.

During the same period a guildmate was complaining in our discord the previously 19+ gear farming camps were only taking 24+ players. I suspect that was largely due to the increasing conflict between groups trying to force others out of "their" gear farming camp, so they only wanted high level muscle. *rolleyes*

The empty platitude of "meet new people" is just that, empty. It doesn't hold up with the reality of what the current level range limitation is creating. That trite logic also fly is the face of exactly why most join "social" guilds(as opposed to powergaming guilds), to play and group with a known group of people or at least reasonably like-minded people. Random pick up groups do indeed lead to sometimes meeting new folks who become part of your social group but overall they tend to be short lived, frustrating, and too often pointlessly unrewarding experiences. So much so that many avoid them entirely. My experience so far has been 50/50 of good random groups and complete disasters - there seems to be little middle ground.

Scaling isn't a perfect solution, but it's the best that currently exists. Simply doing nothing will lead to increasing frustration and toxicity and make Ashes a very very small niche game. A new creative better solution would be welcomed by all.

Xeeg

Yeah, I basically haven't played with my best friend irl since introducing him to this game, largely because of level difference stuff, but also because we have very different schedules AND because we both wanted to retain the integrity of the "new player" experience. Even though we are good friends, we tend to have different playstyles and I didn't want to pollute his idea of the game with my style right off the bat.

At any rate, we still haven't grouped up yet. We talk about the game, and I have explained a few mechanisms to him here and there, etc. It's not a complete disaster that we are having our own individual experiences of it, it's fun hearing about what he is up to and what his goals are.

As to some of the talk about POIs being grinded by geared/high level chars and newbies not able to compete or find groups, this is a very valid point. A main counterargument to this would be that a new player starting Jan 10th (~20 days after Phase 2 launch) would have access to many items and materials in the player markets and can buy stuff that they would be grinding these places for anyways.

All they need to do is glint farm to level 10, maybe sell some for a silver/buying items and then become a citizen and try to run a caravan or whatever. Just a couple gold can get them some nice level 10 weapons and they can skip some of the POIs if they cant find a group. Or do some efficient solo/duo/trio grind while LFG. If you already have good gear, there are plenty of places where small groups can exp farm efficiently.

For sure the experience at the POIs will be evolving based on the lifetime of the server. Not sure if level scaling is the solution to this, though. A huge part of the current design is based around level and it would take a massive overhaul to all the interconnected systems for it to still make sense. Interesting to see what they come up with, and how big of a problem it ends up being.

lukedawuke

cry me a river, this isnt wow or some other of the 1000s of noobified games you can choose from

daveywavey

Vhaeyne wrote: »

-It encourages meeting and working with new people. This is, after all, a social game.

I do want to be social, with the friends I've made waiting for testing to begin.

I'm not saying that scaling is the answer, just that it's shit to have a design that prevents you from playing with your friends, or from inviting in new people once the game is already established.

Laetitian

Yet another problem that would be solved by encouraging beating higher above your own level. If the average player is encouraged to boost up and coordinate groups to take down mobs 15+ levels above their own (while still making it difficult but rewarding to succeed at doing so), you don't need to be as stringent about their group level difference.

Some details on the mechanics of how to make that system viable and balanced linked in my responses here.

Gizban

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I don’t love being the one with a counter-opinion in every complaint thread on the forums. Maybe it just means I really appreciate Ashes' intended game design?

While I’ve enjoyed scaling in other games because it allowed me to play with friends, I want to highlight some of the most important reasons against scaling:

-It encourages meeting and working with new people. This is, after all, a social game.

-It helps manage the number of players at a POI. Imagine how difficult low-level POIs would become if a bunch of level 25 players synced down to do them.

It’s worth remembering that leveling is temporary. Eventually, everyone will reach the cap, and at that point, everyone can play together. Until then, enjoy the journey—meet new people, tackle every POI you come across, and savor the ride to the top.

If you’re set on only playing with friends, you can always use the tried-and-true method of keeping characters specifically for playing together. My core friend group has done this countless times in countless MMORPGs, and it always works.

Encouraging social activities through penalties is poor design.

Your POI argument: 1st, They can flag up and kick em out. THIS is the intended game design.
2nd, at release it'll be even harder to find groups as the 6-8k players will be spread out over a vast area, and POI crowding won't be nearly the same issue it is a now.
Phase 2 start was Walmart on Black Friday.

The idea of having a char specifically to lvl with friends is a good one.

Smaashley

Honestly, I don't care if they don't add level scaling. The only thing I want is to party with friends without getting penalized for it. I don't care how they do it, but penalizing players is a shitty system.

It's like getting EXP debt at high level because the enemy's AI is trash. It shouldn't happen because it's not players' fault.

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