WoW open world scaling is a joke

Community General Discussion
21

I’m in two minds about it.
I remember leveling an alt in Duskwood (pre-scaling) and by the end of the storyline (which I was enjoying, first time I’d done it in the new cata revamp) I was doing green and grey quests which didn’t feel great.
But I do miss the journey of getting to a zone and the mobs are orange or red (if I was being brave) and then getting a level or two and some gear and being able to handle the mobs easier and then eventually them being green and you could kill them easily.

I don’t know how we get this journey without zone becoming outleveled or outgeared too soon.

Also without the scaling your are limited to very specific zones at each level. When you were level 10 you went to Westfall or Loch Modan. When you were 20 you went to Duskwood and so on.
Now you have the option to do any zone you want to (more-or-less, some restrictions still apply).

There are pros and cons to both ways.
I think for leveling alts now when you’ve done the zones a few times I think the scaling is better so you can just stay in the zone without having to travel to a new zone every five levels to avoid green / grey mobs.

2 Likes
22

The problem is not the scaling in particular. The problem is the way BLizzard did it. Why not use the gw2 scaling system? It only downscales you and it doesn’t make the mobs the same level as you. If you are level 20 in level 40 zone you will see mobs as 40 BUT if you are in level 10 zone your level and ilvl downscales to that of 10. That is a huge difference than what Blizzard did.

23

It would not work for all quest chains, since there are god know how many overlaps when it comes to “brackets” of the zones. It is giant pile of mess at this point.

24

This (and party syncing) should allow them to de-scale the world but still allow players to do a whole zone if they wish or to pick a zone not normally within their level range.
Not sure why this hasn’t been done really. Then they have the best of both worlds.

25

It is clearly intended to do that. Allow people to do whatever zone storylines they feel like without having to move on prematurely for maximum xp gain.

26

Does for me as well. I tried to level my Horde Druid at 52 yesterday and I just couldn’t friggin’ do it. I just started at my screen killing a few mobs for 10 minutes and then I just decided to close it. I had gone for the Adventure Mode setting.

Then I tried levelling a new monk but I got incredibly bored by level 5 and started playing Skyrim with the Requiem addon, which makes the world have static enemy levels and spawns. Had fun for about 1½ hours until I had to go to bed.

It’s so boring. I despise this system. Gahhhr!

Absolutely not!

Let me know how your level 10 character is going to do in Western Plaguelands, why don’t you? Or, if you’re level 50, try killing it with Rank 1 Frostbolts. Forget it lmfao

You don’t need to outlevel quest chains just because the game is old! Like… what? Just allow many options and statically level each of them!

Yeah, this feels different to me. This is an optional system to play with friends, and it doesn’t actually make you feel weaker. It sort of feels like unequipping all your gear would and you can take it back on at any time. It should never be the default experience but there’s nothing wrong with it.

Mobs levelling with you though? Takes all the fun out of gaining a level.

4 Likes
27

What do you mean need ?
That’s how it was up to 7.3

2 Likes
28

What it was in 7.3 was that each expansion was dedicated like 2 hours and you had to play them all.

It obviously doesn’t have to be that way. That’s ridiculous.

But the way it can be is that you can choose to level in any one expansion, and regardless of whichever you pick the mobs there will be statically levelled from 10-50, with encampments and larger dungeons (I don’t mean instances) being the high level and each zone spanning different but overlapping level ranges.

If you’re not sure what I mean, just play Skyrim’s Requiem Mod. I promise you that

  1. It’s a lot of fun
  2. It explains what I mean perfectly.
29

The problem is that expansions have less zones than cata vanilla zones, how will that work?
Let’s say we take Legion to level thru, there is only five zones for fifty levels :man_shrugging:

30

But they’re bigger.

It doesn’t matter really. It only matters how long it takes to get through it - and I’m not even sure that matters. Just pick the faster option if all you care about is being fast.

31

They would have to put few brackets in each zone in order to work, which sounds easy enough in theory, but let’s be real who da hell will align those with the quest chains.

32

its annoying , im an old school player from vanilla, and i remember quests being “red” too high level for me to start or complete

ahh those days were good, felt good knowing that those once high level quests turned green i felt progression in leveling

33

One of the reasons for this might be how drops and quest rewards work.

In GW2 you get a mix of level appropriate and creature level drops. Heart rewards are fixed level however, but they’re mostly supplementary.

In WoW creatures used to have a specific loot table, not sure how it works now, especially when there is a party.

The coin has two sides.

I don’t ever want a 10 and 50 fight. Nonsense to me. I don’t care about this side at all. I don’t enjoy stomping nor do I want to suicide.

I am always focusing on 10-vs-10 or 50-vs-50. That’s where the difficulty increase comes in, so that higher levels generally take longer to take a creature of their own level and with that, they need a better, more diverse use of their abilities and rotations.

A game (zone) where the content is trivial is not fun for me.
My frost mage in retail doing BC 10-50 was killing mobs in 50-75% of the time it takes in actual BC to kill them, with the not-too-odd critfest instamurder (at 49). It’s already trivialized. I’m used to 15 seconds per 1v1 fight, faster with lots of luck.

Some people may want to complete everything in sequence, because loremaster, story, etc., while others want to rush or just take a peek at some zones. I don’t want to pick BC over and over just because its lower xp yields make me happier. I don’t want to skip dungeons so that things don’t get grey.

If I want to level multiple characters I would love to start the 2nd in Dragonblight after completing Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra on the 1st. Right now subsequent zones require higher levels to start.

2 Likes
34

I hate the mobs scaling, all the stat squishes, level squishes, etc. Blizzard has messed it up every time and it’s still not ‘done right’. I hate getting weaker as I level up both in the sense of mobs taking longer to kill and taking far more dmg than before and struggling to survive, but also the fact I can’t be ‘a couple levels higher’ than some quests especially things that might be ‘elites’ to come back to especially since there’s basically NO ONE leveling in old zones as a result of time and boosts.

Not to mention being able to farm profession mats in zones you’ve outleveled without much hassle from the mobs there.

It’s also completely messed with drop tables, various ilvl gear and now you have to browse stuff on the AH and try to sell ‘by ilvl’ I’ve never disliked leveling more. But I’m also the type that enjoyed Classic’s leveling.

2 Likes
35

It’s quite a bit of work, yes, but fortunately they already have a lot of data to do it. Fixing a mob’s level is no more difficult than taking it’s scaled value and settings its level range minimum and maximum to the same number.

If you want to do an exceptional job you will of course add some new spells and funny tricks to the harder ones.

As for quest ranges, be a little lenient. Take the hardest mob in the area of the quest and subtract 8 - or maybe just leave them all at level 10. If you are concerned about twinking - which frankly can be solved by just removing the XP lock - simply put in minimum level to equip instead of to take the quest.

Make the number differences smaller between the levels and disable defence/hit rating in PvP, but keep it in PvE in such a way that being max level gets you hit capped against anything. At low levels, however, you will suddenly face a steep punishment when fighting higher level mobs despite the health and damage differences appearing rather small.

Raids take no damage, you get progression, and PvP takes no damage. You no longer need ability scaling against low levels, either.

And now we’ve solved some problems. A LOT of problems, actually.

Don’t understand what you want to play RPG’s for.

In Skyrim Requiem, which I mentioned earlier, there are 3 types of wolves. The basic one is level 2, the dire one is level 5, and the frost one is level 8 and has frost resistance. Once you’re levelling 11 you can destroy whole packs of them, though more often than not they’ll try to flee from you if you approach, which also clears the road for you so you don’t have to bother with them.

Meanwhile a Vampire is level 25, some are level 40, and Harkon is level 125! If you try to take these on at level 11 you’re going to be in serious pain, but as you level up you’ll find vampires get easier. Eventually however perhaps it’s time to look into some Daedric artefacts.

Mehrune’s Razor is very, very powerful but you best be level 50+ to deal with the rapidly attacking invisible entities that can only be seen with Detect Magic and move incredibly fast, but are weak to lightning spells and therefore particularly weak to lightning runes as this will dispel their magic and make them visible.

This in my opinion is how you make RPG’s. This is what D&D does at well. It’s so much fun - you really feel the growth, low level trifles end up not hurting you and things that are stronger than you encourage you to push on into dangerous areas, but you’re constantly evaluating how strong you are and feeling it change upward every single hour of play.

Of course this also means that different areas of the world have different inherent difficulties. Bad idea to just sprint straight to Solstheim because the Ash Ghouls that spawn there will throw an Ash Bolt at you and blind you, then 1-shot you. But if you’re a level 30~ish player with some fire magic or an enchant sword and a shield you can block the Ash Bolt (or dodge it I guess) and then burn that thing alive.

Oh, and dragons? Be careful - you ain’t killing one in level 5, that’s for sure.

1 Like
36

they did this because too lazy to scale eac zone seperately so they make one size fits all

37

depends if you abuse alchemy /enchants ;)0

38

In Requiem? No, no it doesn’t. xD

39

I like it the way it is. With the original way you would have to skip multiple zones and you wont see 90% of the world. Now at least you see more of what you like the look of. Maybe they can be more strict on gating certain group of zones to different levels.

40

not that complicated to work out, you can go anywhere to level up rather than a forced line … which was why it was introduced. Not a major issue really. As you level in a new expansion youll be weak at the start and strong at the end, then you move on to the next expansion area and do the same thing.
Its all about giving you levelling options rather than the scripted path through an expansion zome. There are some places i just do not want to go to in every expansion, this method of levelling allows me to skip the stuff i dont want to do and handpick the stuff i do want to do, or find easier or more interesting.

Trust me, with 50 maxed alts, the last thing you want to do is go through an expansion having to start in the same zones, then progress to the next zone etc etc etc. Much more interesting and relaxing if you can go where the hell you want and do what you want.
Its better this way

1 Like