Darkonflare15 wrote: »

You supose to level up your skills and gear. You get this from leveling up and exploring. When you come back to that area, you should be able handle anything just like when you out level enemies. The knowledge of gear and skills is your reward. With the right skills and knowledge on how to take on the content is the progression of the game.

But before, when you came back to the area you'd now be better than the enemies. With scaling, it doesn't matter how much you've levelled up, they've done it too. Sure, new skills, blah blah blah, but if I'm having difficulty killing something when I'm level 30 and I come back when I'm level 50 I expect it to be significantly easier, not just a little bit easier. Those stupid wolves that ganged up on me right at the start while I was still getting the feel for the game and mucking around with keybindings? I want to come back and one-shot the miserable things for revenge. Sure, you don't get XP for taking out low level mobs, but you don't need XP because all the quests and enemies manually had their difficulty levels set to match roughly where you'd be by the time you got to that area of the game.

From what I can tell, the "level scaling everywhere" approach is seen as good by people whose primary goal is just to level up and who enjoy the endless dungeon running and the pursuit of shinier gear, and those of us who are more interested in just experiencing the game as the designers intended don't like it.

(I suppose in fairness I'm probably playing the "wrong game" -- I almost view ESO as a single player game that just happens to have other people running around in it, and other than the fact that sometimes they happen to be doing the same thing as me the other people in the game may as well be random NPCs. )

ParaNostram wrote: »

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

I don't know your feelings about it, but for me this "feature" really destroyed any fun I had in the game.

I'm still not even lvl 50, and I like to do quests and kill mobs in order to increase my lvl and become stronger. Now what? I don't even need it. I can go anywhere, my lvl will be scaled, or the mobs lvl will be, so I don't have any fun or need in doing it. It would be only for the skills.

What's the sense in that?

Also, when I encountered a strong mob (a group boss maybe) and I wanted to take it down alone, if I couldn't, I just made some lvl more, became stronger, went back and kicked his...butt. Now it's useless. If I can't kill a mob, I just can't. I will be forced to do it with a group of people. That's not funny.

Really, in the last weeks I logged in and played as much as I could, every time I had some free time to spare. Now, I logged in, went to some old-low-level zone, fought some monster and saw how long it takes me now to kill them...I just logged out. Now we have to be careful wherever we are, but not too much because there is no one who can really kill us. It's so "flat" that takes all the fun away.


My opinion, of course.

Or you can level your skills, get better gear, and come back? I spent most of today soloing world bosses in various zones just to see if it was still possible, and it was. With time, talent, and dedication, you can still solo anything in the overworld. Only places I have found things I couldn't kill by myself would be a few world bosses in Orsinium, Hew's Bane, Craglorn, and both world bosses in the Gold Coast.

What a shame, I could solo all those bosses, even with a glass cannon, 16k health stamblade xD
Git
Gud

Well lets hope Maelstrom is easier now

Ufretin wrote: »

I mostly agree with OP. Even after maxing out CP on my main long ago, I've still enjoyed the sense of achievement during the leveling phase on every new toon: being able to advance into a new area, being able to kill a boss you couldn't kill before, new gear becoming available, etc.

Nowadays there's only two types of characters: "incomplete" ones (lvl1 - cp159), a pityful existence to leave behind asap and "complete" ones (cp160+), ready to be geared up properly, start pvp, start doing dungeons/trials to farm sets etc.

Have you noticed ZOS shoving another xp buff down our throats with almost every update? We have xp buffs from psyjic ambrosia / crown scrolls, pledge of mara, eso plus, enlightenment, we had the insane 100% buff during anniversary event, they turned "training" trait (which used to be a nice way to exercise control over which skill lines to level up) into yet another generic xp buff, they buffed xp gained from pvp with DB update and now again with OT, etc, etc....

Why? To please players who can't enjoy playing a toon until he reaches 160/561cp? First steps to do away with level system altogether? Looks like devs were / are uncomfortable with their own leveling system and are trying to bury it clandestinely...

Or it could have been something less nefarious. Perhaps they just wanted a way to ease us into a level system that had 3,600 CP levels?

I don't plan to read everything. But, I'm getting the sense that the OP is not telling the truth. Hidden in the language of their "scaling has ruined the game" rant is the sentiment that I am no longer a special snowflake. A low level can output similar damage as me and that ain't right? Is that essentially it? Please, inform me if I'm wrong.

Tandor wrote: »

DM_ESO wrote: »

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

I don't know your feelings about it

I started playing 2 weeks ago. All I've been doing is the story quests in each zone. I've had trouble where I have been out leveling everything easily, and never getting XP for my kills, or getting drops that were way out of my level range. Most of my gear is ~10 levels outdated.

Today I'm in a new zone. I'm no longer too high level like I've been most of the week, but I'm getting appropriate drops. When my friend logs in later, I'll be able to go and play with her without having to sacrifice my fun and progress.

I've been playing RPG games since the late 80s and I've come to the conclusion that vertical character progression sucks, and causes nothing but problems. Game that offer horizontal progression instead have always been much better.

Thankfully, a lot of games are coming around and switching to horizontal. Games like Final Fantasy Explorers, Monster Hunter and etc get rid of levels all together and are instead about earning skills and better gear. Guild Wars has switch completely to area based skill acquisition (after the base game). Dungeons and Dragons still has levels but is starting to go in that direction with it's 'bounded accuracy' implementation.

I agree.

I was playing tonight on my level 39 EP assassin nightblade. He had been fighting level 36 mobs before, now they're his level. He couldn't previously do what an assassin nightblade should do and go join the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood because he'd have come back to the level 36 mobs and he'd have been into the 40s, so he was having to wait until he was level 50. Now he can do all those things at level whenever he wants, and even back at Davon's Watch which is his base city he can get some xp and worthwhile loot from killing the spiders etc on his harvesting round. It's all positive so far as I'm concerned.

I agree, too. Unfortunately I have to wait until the 18th (because console) but I've been super excited for the update since it was announced! There were plenty of world bosses I wish I could do again, but can't because I am now overlevelled. Or finish the rest of the quests in my faction, but losing the motivation to do so because "low level rewards" and I the lack of pleasure from looting dead pixels. I'm holding off on doing any quests in my faction until OT comes on Xbox.
On another note, personally, I think this was a step in the in right direction. Levels are just numbers, and the reason I was overlevelled so fast was because I was chasing Skillpoints to unlock skills and passives. I reckon, in OT, if I can't finish a boss, then I'll look at my build and gear and refine my skills in using them. Instead of gaining 5 levels over and nuking their faces = less rewarding in my opinion.

To me, the update doesn't only appeal to those who "want shiny things". The game now gives you the decision on how you want to play. I like following the main story but I still found that I levelled up too fast and ended up facerolling mobs in the next zone. Now I can switch between questing and farming for gear sets!

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

I don't know your feelings about it, but for me this "feature" really destroyed any fun I had in the game.

I'm still not even lvl 50, and I like to do quests and kill mobs in order to increase my lvl and become stronger. Now what? I don't even need it. I can go anywhere, my lvl will be scaled, or the mobs lvl will be, so I don't have any fun or need in doing it. It would be only for the skills.

What's the sense in that?

Also, when I encountered a strong mob (a group boss maybe) and I wanted to take it down alone, if I couldn't, I just made some lvl more, became stronger, went back and kicked his...butt. Now it's useless. If I can't kill a mob, I just can't. I will be forced to do it with a group of people. That's not funny.

Really, in the last weeks I logged in and played as much as I could, every time I had some free time to spare. Now, I logged in, went to some old-low-level zone, fought some monster and saw how long it takes me now to kill them...I just logged out. Now we have to be careful wherever we are, but not too much because there is no one who can really kill us. It's so "flat" that takes all the fun away.


My opinion, of course.

Well I disagree. I hate the idea of noob area's and that "strong bandits" suddenly become weaker then mudcrabs from other zones. I like the idea of scaling. I don't play for progress. I play for the story and the fun in dungeons and PvP. I like they way they did this. And Craglorn is now awesome.

To each their own of course. This is my opinion and I am very happy with one-tamriel.

ElBiggus wrote: »

acw37162 wrote: »

It did not kill the game it is in fact good for the overall health of the game.

I'm unconvinced. One, if you have the patience you can now reach CP600 without ever leaving your starting island. Two, you could complete every quest, run every dungeon, complete all the trials with one hand tied behind your back, and still be in danger of being killed by a mudcrab on the starting island. To me, both of those possibilities just existing immediately makes the game less appealing.

Doesn't work like that. If your mudcrab scenario character progresses to that point it would obliterate the mudcrab. This could be seen prior to today taking a 160cp character to Wrothgar and then again later at 300. The higher CP version likely with much better gear had a much easier time.

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

Also, when I encountered a strong mob (a group boss maybe) and I wanted to take it down alone, if I couldn't, I just made some lvl more, became stronger, went back and kicked his...butt. Now it's useless. If I can't kill a mob, I just can't. I will be forced to do it with a group of people. That's not funny.

Really, it should not be just funny to kill a World(Group) Boss, it should be a group challenge, and I like the changes which make these bosses no longer easy to kill alone. There was already too many delve bosses so easy to kill that they started to bore me long ago. The challenge must be real and if you die on WB when trying it alone, that means you need a group or a friend before you make another attempt - that's the way MMO should work.

Personally I love the idea of Group Bosses from those DLCs, Hew's Bane, Gold Coast and Wrothgar - these Bosses are really strong, so strong that even 4 players usually are not enough to deal with them and the ads. A group of single tank, healer and dps can still kill those 2 mln hp bosses with some problems and in a long period of time, but afaik it's not possible to do it alone or in 2 ppl.

Man, it's a World Boss - remember those magnitudes from SWTOR? Gaining people in MMO for WB is a big thing, it should be made like some operation and the fight should last long, should not be an easy task. Only then the fun is great. What's the fun if you killed the WB alone and easily without sweating? It's no fun at all.

I'm grateful that ZOS finally changed this boring part of game, because with good build untill now the World Bosses were no challenge at all, even the strongest. Now they are interesting again.

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

I don't know your feelings about it, but for me this "feature" really destroyed any fun I had in the game.

I'm still not even lvl 50, and I like to do quests and kill mobs in order to increase my lvl and become stronger. Now what? I don't even need it. I can go anywhere, my lvl will be scaled, or the mobs lvl will be, so I don't have any fun or need in doing it. It would be only for the skills.

What's the sense in that?

Also, when I encountered a strong mob (a group boss maybe) and I wanted to take it down alone, if I couldn't, I just made some lvl more, became stronger, went back and kicked his...butt. Now it's useless. If I can't kill a mob, I just can't. I will be forced to do it with a group of people. That's not funny.

Really, in the last weeks I logged in and played as much as I could, every time I had some free time to spare. Now, I logged in, went to some old-low-level zone, fought some monster and saw how long it takes me now to kill them...I just logged out. Now we have to be careful wherever we are, but not too much because there is no one who can really kill us. It's so "flat" that takes all the fun away.


My opinion, of course.

but dude, you can exploit so many stuff, abuse so many things!, like get meteor at level 3, and bomb the sh#t out ppl in blackwaterblade pvp, or get master wizard title before level 10 and so on!

I don't think I'm quite at the point where I'd say the game is "ruined" (it's improved quite a bit for my champion main), but I can see this whole setup being a massive annoyance for new characters. The studying-game-design-as-a-hobby wheels in my head have been turning, that's for sure.

The ultimate fact is that Elder Scrolls has never done level scaling right. Daggerfall's level scaling was compounded by painful difficulty (admittedly the game is basically a first-person roguelike), Oblivion was an absolute mess, and Skyrim's level scaling was a decent chunk of the reason that game was so bland (you know how everyone went back to talking about FONV a few months after FO4 came out? That's what would have happened to Skyrim had it not been hyped to hell and back).

Part of the reason that ESO felt like such a breath of fresh air to me back during the beta, so long ago, was the fact that it went with the Morrowind method of game design; differentiating different areas by level range and placing more importance on actually leveling up instead of shallowly offering you everything anytime because that's all the same and bland and boring. ESO in general was never designed with level scaling in mind; the stories are meant for you to do all the story arcs in one area before moving on to another, and doing them out of order will inevitably make the writing feel much worse (something I've already noticed on my Champion character). The feeling of progression with your character has diminished severely for anyone that isn't a Champion already, since the EXP gain for 1-50 characters seems to have diminished significantly. Making the "entirety of Tamriel" open to the player clashes so hard with the intrinsic design of the game, whether it's the writing, the game design, the quest design, the enemies and everything, so on and so forth that I honestly don't think the update should have been released in this state.

The question I'd like to pose is this: why exactly did ESO need to have all of Tamriel "opened up" when it already was? Yes, if you had friends in different alliances, this would require new toons to be made to catch up to them, but as far as I'm aware that's par for the course for MMOs, and not something that something so sweeping as level-scaling would have fixed in a satisfying way. On top of this, the entire world of Tamriel was, for the most part, already open, and designed in a way to avoid the shallowness and lacking combat and exploration in Oblivion and Skyrim. Have any of you actually tried making a new toon and playing through the areas? It took me a solid four days of playing at the very least in order to finish all of Glenumbra, and that's me playing numerous hours per day.

The areas that Tamriel is divvied up into are huge, and wide open enough to give players ample room to do many of the quests in them in whatever order they liked. This allowed them to experience the story arcs in each area naturally, going from the introduction of each area's antagonist group(s) to meeting/informing people and helping to save or clear out other places, culminating in the climax before finally slowing down and nudging you on to the next area, which you would probably be ready for even if you didn't go out of your way to do everything, and you'd be more than ready for if you did go out of your way to do everything. So many parts of ESO managed to address the innumerable issues people have had with the game design of Skyrim and Oblivion, and funnily enough it's because of the concessions they were forced to make because it was an MMO. To quote a guild member, "Zenimax did what Bethesda's forgotten: they made an RPG". And the lack of level-scaling was a huge part of that. The complaints that it "wasn't enough like Skyrim" were a good thing. It meant it wasn't... like Skyrim, which is almost inarguably the weakest title in the series in every regard.

As soon as I heard the news about One Tamriel back during E3, I immediately had alarm bells go off in my head, because of how many pieces of ESO's core design are at odds with a level-scaling system. During the past few weeks that I've returned to the game, I've thoroughly enjoyed it, from starting a new thief character and even picking up the Thieves Guild DLC to help play said character, to returning to my main and grinding gold (through various means) in order to get the Akaviri motifs. But as One Tamriel creeped closer and closer, the more anticipation I got, because I knew that no matter how much I hoped that Zenimax could pull it off, the level-scaling would probably hamper the game a lot. And, well... maybe not for champion characters. But for anyone just starting to play, which is what they're probably trying to do? I don't see the game lasting for them any longer than it did before.

All that said, I'm perfectly willing to admit that there are upsides - primarily, as I've stated like a broken record this whole post, for Champion characters. I managed to re-optimize and improve my main's build recently, but do you know how much trouble I was having with Greenshade quests since I was halfway through it and only Champion 30 when I came back to the game? I might be much higher now, but the level scaling has made the veteran areas much, much more bearable, and even not just a little, but a lot more fun. Like, I feel like I want to keep going with my Champion character, rather than making a token effort to get gold and then going back to my thief. It's the opposite now, the thief is unsatisfying and the Champ is loadsafun.

The realist in me knows that the level-scaling isn't going to be reversed, because it was so heavily marketed that why would they reverse it? But I'm curious to see how many tweaks it goes through further down the road.

skyprowerb14_ESO wrote: »

Part of the reason that ESO felt like such a breath of fresh air to me back during the beta, so long ago, was the fact that it went with the Morrowind method of game design; differentiating different areas by level range and placing more importance on actually leveling up instead of shallowly offering you everything anytime, because it's all the same and bland and boring.

That's always how RPGs used to work; you could technically go anywhere right from the start, but the difficulty of enemies in some areas would quickly let you know if you're trying to skip ahead in the story. Heck, even Dragon Age does it -- you can go and do Orzammar quite early in the game, but it reveals a few spoilers so the game makes it tricky to do by placing a group of gatekeeping enemies on the path. If you come back and try it at the natural point in the plot, though, the enemies are now at a respectable level to tackle.

Witcher 3 has a similar "OK, you can try, but you're going to die pretty quickly" way of steering you away from discovering areas before you naturally find them through the story. You're not forbidden from finding them, but if you're not meant to be there yet you'll find a lot of enemies that will swat you like a fly.

Most of the pro-scaling crowd seem to be the "the game doesn't really start until CP160, and it's all about the gear" folk, but for me I'm kind of dreading that as it means I'll have finished the story part of the game (which is the bit that interests me), and all that's left then is endless repetition of dungeons and grinding for new gear, and that's my idea of purgatory.

I agree with this ^^^

As a new player compared to most on here I actually liked the fact I was getting owned by mudcrabs to start with. Currently at cp110 I liked seeing the returns of levelling up by being able to return to a newbie area and one shotting 3 in one go while collecting mats. It felt like I had got better/stronger. I then liked going to a brand new area and getting owned by the simple mobs in that area…..and so on.

It gave a feeling of progression. Im still doing it as I work through caldwells silver.

Im on PS4 so have to wait a week or so before we get to see the new levelling but from what im reading it looks like the progression is now just a number over your head and better gear. There doesn’t appear to be any ‘fear’ of what lies in new undiscovered areas.

Giant_Lizard wrote: »

I don't know your feelings about it, but for me this "feature" really destroyed any fun I had in the game.

I'm still not even lvl 50, and I like to do quests and kill mobs in order to increase my lvl and become stronger. Now what? I don't even need it. I can go anywhere, my lvl will be scaled, or the mobs lvl will be, so I don't have any fun or need in doing it. It would be only for the skills.

What's the sense in that?

Also, when I encountered a strong mob (a group boss maybe) and I wanted to take it down alone, if I couldn't, I just made some lvl more, became stronger, went back and kicked his...butt. Now it's useless. If I can't kill a mob, I just can't. I will be forced to do it with a group of people. That's not funny.

Really, in the last weeks I logged in and played as much as I could, every time I had some free time to spare. Now, I logged in, went to some old-low-level zone, fought some monster and saw how long it takes me now to kill them...I just logged out. Now we have to be careful wherever we are, but not too much because there is no one who can really kill us. It's so "flat" that takes all the fun away.


My opinion, of course.

Climb off the grind wheel (now that it has stopped) and take a look around.