Battle Leveling and Reverse Battle Leveling Zones?

Anlaemar

This has probably been brought up as an idea, but I thought of this a few minutes ago.

We have players Battle Leveling "UP" in Cyrodill to remain competitive. Why not do that for our zones? Have each zone assigned a certain level and "Battle Level" everyone do said level, including higher leveled players.

IE: Level 10 Zone
- Player A (new player) at level 3, BASE STATS leveled UP to level 10. Could now travel the entire zone and stay "competitive".
- Player B (veteran player) at V16, BASE STATS leveled DOWN to level 10. These players still have a distinct advantage due to gear, champion points, ect though now the zone isn't a 1-shot fest.

Now picture that for other zones. A level 3 starting in EP could go to The Rift and be "Battle Leveled" to X (35-40?, base stats only). They could effectively quest and do whatever they wanted in whatever zone they can get to. This should NOT effect things like Craglorn, Trials, DSA/vDSA, ect as there should always be there you should have to work toward being able to do and complete. And note, your level 3 and get leveled up to a V10 zone, you would still have difficulties. The enemies there have a lot more resistances, health, ect than those in a level 10 zone. Only way around that is to become better yourself, but at least you could put up a fight (if a long one) and not die instantly.

This kind of a change (while huge) would ESO solo and TES friendly while keeping an the MMO feeling of progression. This concept doesn't touch group play, so the current scaling of dungeons would still be set in place. You would still want to level to better yourself, to be able to do tougher content, ect. Higher leveled players in lower leveled zones would still have advantages to others in the zone due to progress they've made, but wouldn't as one sided.

Any thoughts, changes, or criticisms?

DovresMalven

Sounds perfect! lol

DaveMoeDee

How many TES games had scaling like that?

Anlaemar

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

How many TES games had scaling like that?

How many ES games were MMOs?

Huggalump

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

How many TES games had scaling like that?

Oblivion

Brrrofski

Why don't we all stay at level 1 and just get battle levelled to everything.

Forget removing veteran ranks, remove them all!

This is a complete non issue. Just do quests, level up, go to the next zone.

DaveMoeDee

Anlaemar wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

How many TES games had scaling like that?

How many ES games were MMOs?

None. But you are the one who seems to want to make ESO more 'TES friendly'. I am fine with it the way it is.

If we want to make it really TES friendly, should we make the combat clunky, the quests uninspired, and every player incredibly OP?

Anlaemar

Brrrofski wrote: »

Why don't we all stay at level 1 and just get battle levelled to everything.

Forget removing veteran ranks, remove them all!

This is a complete non issue. Just do quests, level up, go to the next zone.

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Anlaemar wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

How many TES games had scaling like that?

How many ES games were MMOs?

None. But you are the one who seems to want to make ESO more 'TES friendly'. I am fine with it the way it is.

If we want to make it really TES friendly, should we make the combat clunky, the quests uninspired, and every player incredibly OP?

You misunderstand. I have zero problems with the game as it stands. I had an idea that sprung up reading another thread in shared it. Please don't assume.

This concept caters to others who dislike the MMO feeling. I personally like it.

Getting down to the nitty gritty tho @Brrrofski, this just gives players the opportunity to enjoy other zones in a non-linear fashion without getting 1 shot. There's still the challenge. And gives those who've done everything the chance to go back and enjoy it more without steamrolling everything. It's called recycling content, to an extent.

Turelus

I want to be able to enjoy Stonefalls again without a new character...

I support this.

Acrolas

That hurt my head a little.

It would probably be faster to get rid of levels completely and just put a shiny gold star next to everyone's name.
Then we're all the same except for the sparkle effects we grinded or paid for to make ourselves look different.

The single-player games had skill-based leveling. Here we have experience-based leveling and skills based on a combination of experience and points. Fundamentally different.

You can go to your last zone level and have enemies dodge all your attacks. There's nothing stopping you from exploring, though. Run around. Explore. Die a lot. Still more fun than adopting a nebulous advancement system that just emphasizes how there's still no real endgame content. Same *** different zone.

KhajiitiLizard

Guild Wars 2 does this. But rather than map based down-leveling it's regional based. There is no up-leveling though and in fact low level characters have increased aggro radius and will get one-shotted by trash mobs. lol

Anlaemar

Brrrofski wrote: »

Why don't we all stay at level 1 and just get battle levelled to everything.

Forget removing veteran ranks, remove them all!

This is a complete non issue. Just do quests, level up, go to the next zone.

Acrolas wrote: »

That hurt my head a little.

It would probably be faster to get rid of levels completely and just put a shiny gold star next to everyone's name.
Then we're all the same except for the sparkle effects we grinded or paid for to make ourselves look different.

The single-player games had skill-based leveling. Here we have experience-based leveling and skills based on a combination of experience and points. Fundamentally different.

You can go to your last zone level and have enemies dodge all your attacks. There's nothing stopping you from exploring, though. Run around. Explore. Die a lot. Still more fun than adopting a nebulous advancement system that just emphasizes how there's still no real endgame content. Same *** different zone.

Removing levels is not what I was aiming at, as this would effect ONLY ZONES. You still have dungeons that work normal (scaling on leader). All this enables players to do is to attempt questing and exploring in a non-linear fashion and being able to return to zones without one shoting everything.

Brrrofski

Well rather than cater for people who dislike how MMOs work, why don't we just concentrate on the ones who like it, and let the ones who don't move on to another game.

Same applied to this "forced to group" crowd. It's a multiplayer game. None of my irl friends play it. So I got on the mix and talked to random people. Now I'm in aguikd and run with people daily.

With this idea, it would reduce the point oflevelling VASTLY, storyline wouldn't make sense if you were jumping from one place to the next, certain zones would be overcrowded due to people hitting up the same grind spots.

This wouldn't work. The way it is now, does.

Acrolas

Most people just wander aimlessly in life anyway.

Don't be most people.

Anlaemar

Brrrofski wrote: »

Well rather than cater for people who dislike how MMOs work, why don't we just concentrate on the ones who like it, and let the ones who don't move on to another game.

Same applied to this "forced to group" crowd. It's a multiplayer game. None of my irl friends play it. So I got on the mix and talked to random people. Now I'm in aguikd and run with people daily.

With this idea, it would reduce the point oflevelling VASTLY, storyline wouldn't make sense if you were jumping from one place to the next, certain zones would be overcrowded due to people hitting up the same grind spots.

This wouldn't work. The way it is now, does.

Agreed it could jumble up the main zone quests if you're jumping around, but it would be the same if you skipped quests early and later decided to do them. No different. Leveling and earning exp would work the same (within 5 levels). The zone would have a fixed level and you can only gain exp if you're within those levels. No changes.

I do agree with your first statement, though. I wish ZOS would pick to focus on the MMO side of things. I'm here to play an MMO, not a single player game. I do like the idea of down leveling to an older zone, though.

Gidorick

Yep, we've brought it up before:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/176972/add-the-option-to-scale-characters-down-to-older-zones-please-d/p1

In the above thread I had originally suggested battle leveling up and down but players didnt seem to care for the idea of battle leveling up to zones. There seemed to be a general thought that players shouldn't be allowed to be viable in zones they haven't "earned".

While I get this, I still think battle leveling us UP to zones would be fun. It would make the world feel much more open.

NordJitsu

DovresMalven wrote: »

Sounds perfect! lol

Oblivion and Skyrim both had scaling (more in Oblivion.)

Morrowind did not.

willymchilybily

Questions

how would this affect grouping between characters of different levels?
Couldn't this open up abuse for bot farming resources in a zone far higher than their level?
Could this conflict with existing in game triggers?

I'm not particularly against the suggestion, I would assume one would turn it on and off as they pleased, but I think there would be ramifications for minimal gain. I start in an area where resources are suitable for crafting for my level, mobs have abilities suitable for my level/minimal skill set (don't cc in starting zones, mostly melee npcs).

not to mention a coding overhaul potentially risk of more bugs and dev team resources working on old content instead of new

Gidorick

willymchilybily wrote: »

Questions

how would this affect grouping between characters of different levels?
Couldn't this open up abuse for bot farming resources in a zone far higher than their level?
Could this conflict with existing in game triggers?

I'm not particularly against the suggestion, I would assume one would turn it on and off as they pleased, but I think there would be ramifications for minimal gain. I start in an area where resources are suitable for crafting for my level, mobs have abilities suitable for my level/minimal skill set (don't cc in starting zones, mostly melee npcs).

not to mention a coding overhaul potentially risk of more bugs and dev team resources working on old content instead of new

If everyone is battle leveled in the group then everyone would be leveled to the zone. I would think the group leader would have control over the group's battle leveling. Perhaps there could even be an option to "level to group leader". This could help with finding a group to play with.

As for the bots. That's a legitimate concern. This is one of the things that could prevent battle leveling UP and only level characters DOWN to zones they have outleveled.

Anlaemar

willymchilybily wrote: »

Questions

how would this affect grouping between characters of different levels?
Couldn't this open up abuse for bot farming resources in a zone far higher than their level?
Could this conflict with existing in game triggers?

I'm not particularly against the suggestion, I would assume one would turn it on and off as they pleased, but I think there would be ramifications for minimal gain. I start in an area where resources are suitable for crafting for my level, mobs have abilities suitable for my level/minimal skill set (don't cc in starting zones, mostly melee npcs).

not to mention a coding overhaul potentially risk of more bugs and dev team resources working on old content instead of new

Goes back to me stating that the leveled is based on zone, not group. Dungeon scaling would stay the same. And there's till the exp restriction to where if you're not within certain levels of what you kill, you get no exp for it. As for bots, I never see any. If they really wanted to farm mats, you can regardless of this concept. Why do it then? This wasn't aimed particularly at players wanting to farm better mats, but so they can explore and quest with more freedom like in previous TES games.

I particularly don't care. This is an MMO.

Zavus

Only if it's optional, I like skipping zones than going to do them when I've hit the cap. I *** hate questing, but I have to do it if I want the skill points. Doing it once on my main was fine, but having to repeat them on my 5+ vet character or every time I grind a new one up is extremely annoying.

Farorin

I like the idea of being able to battle level DOWN so that we can do lower level areas again without being too OP. But scaling upwards I don't like. Then it would seem like leveling is pointless.

Carde

You pretty much might as well get rid of levels with a system like this, though. You'll end up with a bunch of players that don't bother trying to build characters because they have no use for them in 90% of the game's content (since its all scaled for them anyway), and when finally going into that last 10% of stuff that isn't scaled (more like 5% since battle leveling exists in PvP to an extent) everybody is gonna be even worse and frustrated and start clamoring for EVERYTHING to be scaled (more like equalized, really).

No offense but this basically breeds mindless character development. Or no character development at all.

Huggalump wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

How many TES games had scaling like that?

Oblivion

That's not how Oblivion worked, bruh. Stronger tier mobs would come out the higher you got but nothing was "scaled" per se. If you leveled hard off of purely Athletics then you were going to get absolutely demolished by those high level enemies because your character sucks. See above.

DDemon

How about 'battle leveling' to group leader in a zone/instance and allow others to do certain quests with multiple people?

Carde

Farorin wrote: »

I like the idea of being able to battle level DOWN so that we can do lower level areas again without being too OP. But scaling upwards I don't like. Then it would seem like leveling is pointless.

Leveling DOWN is a good idea, though, and we have examples of this in other games. Off the top of my head Rift's mentoring system lets you downlevel to someone in your group and retain all your skills and most of your gear/level stats but scales them down to be on par with that level's skills (slightly higher if you're well built/good gear).

FFXIV lets you scale down to the dungeon's level so you can tackle the dungeon at the level it was intended to be played. Gear and stats are scaled down like in the Rift example, though skills are restricted to only being usable if they were usable in that level range (dungeon level +3 is the limit).

In both examples you continue to gain experience (at a lower rate obviously) and can progress, but it makes playing with lower level friends and guildmates a reality.

Anlaemar

DDemon wrote: »

How about 'battle leveling' to group leader in a zone/instance and allow others to do certain quests with multiple people?

That would create instances like dungeons for whole zones taking away the idea and feel of an MMO completely.

Carde wrote: »

Farorin wrote: »

I like the idea of being able to battle level DOWN so that we can do lower level areas again without being too OP. But scaling upwards I don't like. Then it would seem like leveling is pointless.

Leveling DOWN is a good idea, though, and we have examples of this in other games. Off the top of my head Rift's mentoring system lets you downlevel to someone in your group and retain all your skills and most of your gear/level stats but scales them down to be on par with that level's skills (slightly higher if you're well built/good gear).

FFXIV lets you scale down to the dungeon's level so you can tackle the dungeon at the level it was intended to be played. Gear and stats are scaled down like in the Rift example, though skills are restricted to only being usable if they were usable in that level range (dungeon level +3 is the limit).

In both examples you continue to gain experience (at a lower rate obviously) and can progress, but it makes playing with lower level friends and guildmates a reality.

I really like the sound of that one.