Npcs leveling and scaling

maboleth

In Skyrim and Oblivion all npcs level with you. I have noticed in ESO there are zones with certain levels. Mages guild, fighters guild and main quest do scaling however. What's the logic behind those zones and fixed levels? Why not making the entire game scalable, like they did for those DLCs? Every player would fight mobs on their own level. I guess there have to be pros and cons for all this, I'm new to mmos.

sirrmattus

maboleth wrote: »

In Skyrim and Oblivion all npcs level with you. I have noticed in ESO there are zones with certain levels. Mages guild, fighters guild and main quest do scaling however. What's the logic behind those zones and fixed levels? Why not making the entire game scalable, like they did for those DLCs? Every player would fight mobs on their own level. I guess there have to be pros and cons for all this, I'm new to mmos.

thats wak... u'd never experience being a noob

Waseem

its not skyrim online
nor oblivion online

Vildebill

Waseem wrote: »

its not skyrim online
nor oblivion online

It's Morrowind online

Heindrich

It won't work in open world zones and I'll give you a quick example of why.

I could take my VR16 NB to a lv3 starter island, make all the NPCs in an area spawn as VR16 mobs and then cloak away when real noobies show up and cackle as they get one shot by random bandit archer light attacks.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

It will be soon.... They are working on expanding the roll of scaling. And plan on continuing its roll in the new dlcs.
At least that is what is in their plans for '16 post.

The reason some do and some dont is because when the game launched nothing did. And I think it is safe to assume it is much easier to go back and add something like that to small instanced areas, personal story, dungeons, that sort of thing. Then just shove it into the whole game at once. And that is what they have done. Started with the small instanced areas, and of course the dlc, since you want as many as possible paying for that.

maboleth

Heindrich wrote: »

It won't work in open world zones and I'll give you a quick example of why.

I could take my VR16 NB to a lv3 starter island, make all the NPCs in an area spawn as VR16 mobs and then cloak away when real noobies show up and cackle as they get one shot by random bandit archer light attacks.

Thanks. Yeah, it does make sense. I still haven't visited Orsinium/Imperial city DLCs, but what happens if/when the noob goes there with VR16?

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

It will be soon.... They are working on expanding the roll of scaling. And plan on continuing its roll in the new dlcs. At least that is what is in their plans for '16 post.

The reason some do and some dont is because when the game launched nothing did. And I think it is safe to assume it is much easier to go back and add something like that to small instanced areas, personal story, dungeons, that sort of thing. Then just shove it into the whole game at once. And that is what they have done. Started with the small instanced areas, and of course the dlc, since you want as many as possible paying for that.

That's some good news indeed. I didn't know how ESO started, it's great to see they are constantly expanding the scaling.

I asked this question mainly because of all those great quests that we have missed but might have inferior npcs.

crashen17b14_ESO

In just about every case of level scaling in mmos that I have seen, the players scale down to the zone they are in, while the NPC's stay the same. You don't lose your abilities or stats, but you are adjusted to deal the same relative damage and health of the appropriate level of the zone. So if you are VR16 and you go back to the starting zone, you will be scaled to be roughly even with a level 6 player, even though you will retain all your passives, abilities, skills and gear.

The other times I've seen scaling, the NPC's (usually bosses in this case), are scaled up above normal players, but then their damage, health, and damage recieved scales per person attacking them. Basically regardless of your level, your attacks do a percentage of it's health, and vice versa. So a lvl 3 would do 5% of it's health with an attack, while a VR16 would also do 5% of it's health with an attack. This seems a lot more complicated and difficult to do, which is probably why I've only really seen it on a per-boss type thing.

Finally, in one game, the more players in an area, the higher everyone scaled, including enemies, so everyone was roughly equal in power, and just higher level than normal.

The one constant is that someone higher level can't come in and ruin everything for everyone lower level.

Personally I would love it if the whole world scaled, but that wouldn't be enough by itself. I feel like the next step would be including dynamic events. Several MMO's have achieved great success with such things, like Rift and Defiance. ESO already has the perfect premise for it as well.

Imagine this: Dark Anchors can drop *anywhere* in a zone, not just at specific fixed locations. And once they open up, hordes of Daedra spew forth and make their way towards certain locations, like towns, outposts, maybe even the special crafting stations in the world. They then attack the npcs and you know, do what they are supposed to do, and bring Coldharbour to Nirn. From there you could have periodic zone invasions where many dark anchors drop at once, super daedra lead literal armies across the zone and try to conquer the surrounding areas. Whenever this happens, a world message flashes so everyone is aware and can come fight. Maybe even the option to teleport straight to the action pops up. And since everyone would scale, everyone could participate regardless of level.

The zones would feel alive again, and you would have reason to visit places you already quested through that you enjoyed before. And Molag Bal would seem a little bit more threatening.

maboleth

Thanks crashen. I guess that would be very hard to implement now. But we do have small versions of anchors, when those oblivion creatures fall from the small thundering hole.

Artjuh90

crashen17b14_ESO wrote: »

Imagine this: Dark Anchors can drop *anywhere* in a zone, not just at specific fixed locations. And once they open up, hordes of Daedra spew forth and make their way towards certain locations, like towns, outposts, maybe even the special crafting stations in the world. They then attack the npcs and you know, do what they are supposed to do, and bring Coldharbour to Nirn. From there you could have periodic zone invasions where many dark anchors drop at once, super daedra lead literal armies across the zone and try to conquer the surrounding areas. Whenever this happens, a world message flashes so everyone is aware and can come fight. Maybe even the option to teleport straight to the action pops up. And since everyone would scale, everyone could participate regardless of level.
.

you kinda already have this in small with 2 waves of 3 daedra spawning but would like to see larger more random spawns