My feelings are that I like Vet Levels because the entire level has one level of monsters, and resource nodes.

Non-Vet Levels, I hate them. I hate finding world bosses I can't kill, or outlevel enough that I can't exp/loot. Same with dungeons. Same with Dolmens. I feel like I am railroaded into a linear game without choices because every "option" other than "A" is met with punishments.

If I break the "A to B" line, or kill to many mobs, I risk falling into the punishment.

I also hate finding 3-4 types of each crafting material most of which I either can't use and won't be able to use for another 6 levels, or ones that I stopped using 6 levels ago.

I favour leaving the game design well alone, it's fine as it is.

The priorities should be fixing outstanding issues and adding more content, not changing the whole structure of the existing content.

Pele wrote: »

Interesting idea but some quests require you to begin in a previous zone. Starting in a later zone or any zone you wish would break these quests.

I found I had this exact problem playing through VR anyway. I would do the quest in the wrong order by mistake. I killed the final boss in the Rift for my first quest there and played through the rest with a lot of WTF I already killed these guys!! There is heaps of *** quest design like this though.

Remmo wrote: »

I'm a big fan of scaling as long as it scales on the side of sensible challenge. Go somewhere tougher and scale up, but obviously lack a lot of the utility you would normally have there via gear and skills, scale down to help a guildie and have a more comfortable ride - as it should be, but still a balanced contribution. I also like it when the mobs scale up as more players arrive (Guildwars 2 had this).

Obviously both systems have pros and cons, but I personally prefer scaling to a sensible challenge.

This. I want it to be a bit more difficult if I go to Reaper's March at level 16. (Which it will be, since base stats are the only things that scale in Cyrodiil, hence the huge gap between VR players and 1-50 players.)

jeevin wrote: »

Pele wrote: »

Interesting idea but some quests require you to begin in a previous zone. Starting in a later zone or any zone you wish would break these quests.

I found I had this exact problem playing through VR anyway. I would do the quest in the wrong order by mistake. I killed the final boss in the Rift for my first quest there and played through the rest with a lot of WTF I already killed these guys!! There is heaps of s***y quest design like this though.

The quests in many cases are not designed to be either stateless or re-entrant, but are designed to be progressed through. I agree that this isn't taken into consideration well enough in a lot of cases, but it's not bad design; it was intended to work that way.

I think that this points to the notion that I've believed for a long time, that the Veteran Ranks and the re-telling of the story, sort of, that VR entails, was added as an afterthought, after the main story quests were all designed. Time and budget constraints and all of that kept them from going back and re-designing the whole thing. Hopefully with the switch to Champion Points and the restructuring of the 50+ experience, that will change, though fixing it will be a grave challenge. I'm absolutely certain that they know about this.

For those reasons I really doubt that the game would withstand the additional chaos caused by scaling, which would enable whole chunks of the story to be done out of order.

This is just not a bag of unrelated quest material which we endure for the sake of leveling to the "real" game. This is the game itself, a collection of interrelated stories. Change that basic dynamic and you destroy the game's structure, and probably the game itself. At the very least you make it incoherent.

How would being able to do quests anywhere destroy the game? Mechanics as they are, would not change but the opportunity to do quests elsewhere would bring much needed variety in cost efficient way compared to complete new areas.

How would stat scaling Cyrodil style really break anything? Its like you go to a zone in level 40. You do same quests in same fashion as someone who has stats scaled to level 40. Scaled player would still be weaker, less tools and not as good weapons yet, they do have a chance to explore.

I dont get it (Clearly ) why people accept this linearity in any of todays MMO. Everyone seems to complaint about it but still it is accepted. Many seem to think too complicated. What prevents playing like you always played with optional scaling to bring variety to game? When taking in count that this is TES before MMO, all these restrictions are just bad design, nothing more.

it is also a joke how you cant explore like you should in TES. It is absolutely illogical that small animal canmurder you when you just couple of minutes ago easily won a battle againts flesh atronach and some of its companions. It just hurts.

Inversus wrote: »

I'm not the biggest fan of the linear-style questline, but it's been built that way and adding scaling really wouldn't work for it. It's built linear, it'll have to stay linear

^

i clicked the wrong button

jeevin wrote: »

Pele wrote: »

Interesting idea but some quests require you to begin in a previous zone. Starting in a later zone or any zone you wish would break these quests.

I found I had this exact problem playing through VR anyway. I would do the quest in the wrong order by mistake. I killed the final boss in the Rift for my first quest there and played through the rest with a lot of WTF I already killed these guys!! There is heaps of *** quest design like this though.

This is the feeling we all get playing the usual TES single player games , people will treat you the same when it comes to dialogs for quests , so hey there , i killed a 1000 of the strongest enemy , did 1000 crazy OP things ...

And the guy will ask you to go grab his shoes like you are a peasant.

While i dont think i would change that for ESOs formula in a single player TES games , here atleast they get to tell the story in a path that makes sense and people have a higher chance to talk to you in a way that makes sense.

It sounds to me like all the things that would break is just players fault for skippin part of questline. Majority of quests are quests that do not have followups. If the game would break by stat scaling. It is broken allready since you supposedly can take any quest anywhere allready and do them with help of someone else.

If stat scaling break game because you would then be able to do quests before their time, the game is allready broken since you can do this allready, only not alone.

If you are a soldier in a war, doing heroic stuff and back in some village, an old man asks you to help him to get his shoes back... You would do that if you are true hero or refuse if you feel it is below you would you not? This is totally different than slaying a vampire lord and after that, murdered by cow.

Maybe just make the linear quest lines really linear so you cant do next before doing the first. At least side quests could easily be done in any order.

Drazhar14 wrote: »

I support this only if you are scaled down and not up. Like in gw2, where you could revisit previous zones/help friends and actually have a challenge still. Only your base stats from leveling should be scaled down, so you will still be powerful because of gear, but at least not be 1 hit killing everything.

Now see, I didn't enjoy that at all in GW2. It made it feel like leveling was a pointless waste of time. I didn't feel like my character was progressing at all. I actually enjoy being able to revisit lower levels and take my revenge on monsters that gave me a difficult time by smacking them into Oblivion. If you are auto scaled down, you never get this satisfaction.

A mentor program where you can choose to level yourself down would be fine. But I don't want it just automatically done without giving me a choice.

I would actually like something somewhat the other way around... I dislike leaving my faction's area whenever I need to farm or vendor-buy something all the time. Home sweet home and all that.

I'd like zone scaling, a bit like in Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind.'
And then they can phase out weaker enemies with stronger enemies.

Like in the other ES games. So instead of a group of Skeevers, you might find a group of dire wolves at high level.

Skyrim scaled. If you're high level you meet high level monsters and high level dragons and such, and bosses level up with you.