Level scaling

*Warning: epic-length post. Go get some popcorn*


Earlier in the year, before any community members were added to the alpha testing, GGG told us that PoE would not feature monsters that scale to your level.
While it's true the the game does not have Oblivion-style level scaling, it does have a significant amount of level scaling affecting all major combat calculations.

Some aspects of the level based approach have been touched on in other threads, and there has been significant discussion about accuracy, evasion, XP scaling, grindiness, rushing, monster variety, and risk vs reward.
This post concerns all of these issues on some level, and level scaling is at the heart of it.

First off, here's what I don't like about level scaling:

• Level scaling reduces the impact of skills and gear
  Relative level has a huge impact on combat effectiveness. If I am level 40 fighting level 43 enemies, I might find myself struggling to hit and deal criticals, taking a lot of damage, and so on.
  Now let's say I level up to level 46, without using any passive skill points, or upgrading any gear.
  Now I find that the same enemies that posed such difficulties before are much easier. Not because I'm using better gear, or skills, or anything else. Just because the character sheet says 46 instead of 40.
  I've always disliked this kind of thing. In my humble opinion, it should be the skills and gear you gain from being higher level that increase your power, not the level itself.
  With level being the single biggest factor, I've much less incentive to find and use better gear. No matter how hard you try to get ahead of the curve on a single stat (eg accuracy), it won't do you much good, since level scaling will diminish all of your strong and weak stats back to normalised levels.
  The end result is that I could use a whole bunch of orbs in the hope of a better weapon - or I can just grind a couple of levels for the same effect.
  
  
• Level scaling discourages risk vs. reward gameplay
  In games without heavy level scaling, a player can choose to go to (or accidentally stumble upon) a difficult area. They will generally find things much harder, but if brave the dangers and play to their strengths they are rewarded with better XP and perhaps a powerful item or two.
  In PoE, the opposite is true. Your strengths are diminished by scaling, XP rewards are penalised, and any gear upgrade is made more or less insignificant by scaling.
  You're therefore better off fighting monsters at or just below your level - things are much easier, you kill faster, and gain XP at much the same rate.
  
  
• Level scaling reduces monster variety
  Including level in armour-related equations results in strange situations - like having difficulty hitting clumsy, slow moving zombies that look like they can barely stay on their feet. Or half-naked scavengers punching through your full plate armour with their malnourished fists.
  Your accuracy-specced character will get dodged by zombies a couple of levels above you, while your attacks will track down even the shiftiest ninjas, as long as your level is higher than theirs.
  
  
• Level scaling screws up party progression
  All else being equal and assuming full clears of areas, a party of two will end up lower level than a solo player after completing any given number of areas.
  This is simply because there are a finite number of monsters per area, and the XP has to be shared between party members.
  
  This means that people playing exclusively in parties will inevitably find themselves lagging behind monster levels, and getting reduced XP because of it.
  If the level scaling were gone, increased XP from higher level monsters would make up for the lower overall number of creatures killed.

So all in all, emphasis becomes grinding monsters of about your level for XP, against samey monsters. This is opposed to gaining most of your power from skill choices and gear upgrades.
Sounds a lot like Oblivion-style level scaling right?


So there you have what I don't like about it. Funnily enough, fixing these things by removing level scaling has a number of positive side effects. Let's talk about that now.


"But man, removing level scaling from the damage reduction calculation would screw everything up."

It's true. But this actually opens up some tasty possibilities.
Currently it seems like there is no progression at all when it comes to damage reduction. By the time you defeat normal hillock, you've picked up enough gear to reach around 50% DR, and for a strength character, that's pretty much where it stays for the rest of the game. You can focus on getting great armour, or sorely neglect your armour upgrades, and it makes little difference. You always seem to be hovering around the 50% DR mark.

While the accuracy vs. evasion equation doesn't need level involved, currently level is the only counterbalance to damage reduction.
I believe this is at the core of the debate about evasion being inferior to damage reduction. An evasion focused character can turn the corner and meet a champion monster with high accuracy, that severely reduces the effect of evasion. Level scaling will nullify the evasion even further if the monster is higher level.
On the other hand, damage reduction has no counter. You might think that increased damage is the counter, but it is not. Increased damage counters all forms of armour - if a monster does double damage, it does double damage to DR users, evasion users, and ES users alike.

So without level scaling, we would need...

Armour Penetration
Armour penetration would be to DR as accuracy is to evasion. With no level involved, it would be a simple attacker's armour penetration vs defender's armour rating comparison. The same as accuracy/evasion is currently. So what would the consequences of introducing Armour penetration be?

• Greater parity between evasion and DR
  Damage reduction would now have a counter. Now DR characters would also feel the pain of champion monsters negating their defences.
  Evasion would now have a distinct advantage against certain enemies.
  Instead of increasing damage to give DR characters a challenge, it would be AP instead. Also evasion-based characters would be in their element versus slow, hard hitting monsters, where DR characters might struggle.
  This would have the added benefit of reducing 1-shot-through-evasion deaths.
  
• Greater monster diversity
  Currently there are two types of monsters: low-medium evasion monsters, and high evasion monsters.
  With level scaling removed, and AP introduced, there would be all kinds of different monsters, presenting different levels of challenge to different characters. For instance, consider these possible variations on the standard archer:
  
  • Archer #1: High evasion, low DR, low accuracy, high armour penetration
    This guy could pose a serious threat to a character focused on DR and AP. His main strengths wouldn't help him at all versus this particular archer.
    A character focused on accuracy and evasion on the other hand will have an easy time with this archer. His main strengths counter the archer's defenses/attacks perfectly.
    
  • Archer #2: High evasion, low DR, high accuracy, low AP
    This guy could pose a serious threat to a character focused on evasion and AP. His evasion won't be as effective against the archer, and his armour penetration won't help him do any more damage.
    
  • etc. for all other possible combinations
• Greater variety of character builds
  Speaks for itself really. Another stat on items, passive skills and so on means greater variety.
  Accuracy would no longer be the be-all end-all stat. There would be plenty of monsters around with no or very low evasion.
  
• Greater synergy between party members
  There would be more opportunity for different characters to complement each other's strengths and weaknesses.
  
• Greater class distinction
  Assuming armour penetration became a strength-focused stat, the duelist would have the opportunity to be a true generalist - dealing with all combinations of DR/AP/evasion/accuracy enemies equally well, but not matching the specific strengths of marauder or ranger.
  And the evasion-based melee character might find a niche!
  
• No more zombie acrobats
  With level scaling gone, monsters could have stats that make sense. Like zombies having good DR and AP - not evasion and accuracy. Their slow attacks would be countered by evasion (makes sense!), and their defences would be countered by AP.
  
• Fixes some passive tree asymmetries
  http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/4505/armourpen2.jpg
  

Greater risk vs reward, more varied/dangerous combat, better party XP, better balance between armour types, fixes accuracy & evasion, greater build diversity & class distinction, and a host of other benefits - what's not to like?

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope if nothing else this gives GGG an idea or two, whether it's related to this topic or not.

I like this concept in theory but I don't think it's quite where it needs to be yet.

The first issue I see with the introduction of AP is you've created a duality between two of the attributes and it creates a nice tradeoff but it leaves out the third attribute. Ideally, all three attributes should have similar mechanics that trade off with each other.

I agree that the level scaling plays too large a role in the combat calculations currently but I don't think it can be completely removed. A straight comparison between accuracy and evasion for example potentially forces the player to spend a significant amount of skill points into accuracy and evasion passives to keep up with increasing monster difficulty. It's not fun to spend 50%+ of your passive skills in mundane things accuracy or evasion. If you try to reduce the number of skill points the player needs to invest then you get a jagged cycle where the player is unable to hit anything and then after getting the accuracy passive he's able to hit everything. His hit chance slowly degrades over the next ten levels until he's forced to put another point into accuracy, his hit chance spikes back up, and the cycle continues. To smooth this out, you'll need to grant amounts of accuracy to characters every level. This applies for all of the core passives.

I think we should discuss some more specifics in the alpha forums.

Wall of text but I read it and mostly go along with what you are saying.

In my limited playing experience character v monster level seem too significant in battle calculations. But I'm not privy to the calculations or monster stats I can't really say why,

"

tpapp157 wrote:

A straight comparison between accuracy and evasion for example potentially forces the player to spend a significant amount of skill points into accuracy and evasion passives to keep up with increasing monster difficulty. It's not fun to spend 50%+ of your passive skills in mundane things accuracy or evasion. If you try to reduce the number of skill points the player needs to invest then you get a jagged cycle where the player is unable to hit anything and then after getting the accuracy passive he's able to hit everything. His hit chance slowly degrades over the next ten levels until he's forced to put another point into accuracy, his hit chance spikes back up, and the cycle continues. To smooth this out, you'll need to grant amounts of accuracy to characters every level. This applies for all of the core passives.

The idea was that with level scaling removed from the picture, only certain types of enemies will have functional amounts of evasion - many like zombies would have 0 evasion.

So, a level 1 witch would have no trouble hitting a level 60 zombie in melee (but would probably do no damage and die in one hit).

As for hit chance degrading slowly - that already happens now. The difference would be that it would no longer apply to ALL monsters - only evasion-types.

So a character that neglects accuracy in favour of AP might have a really tough time hitting certain enemies - encouraging them to maybe equip a spell to deal with problem high-evasion monsters. Or party with an accuracy specialist.

Defensive stats, evasion etc. would come from gear as they do now, with passive skills to bolster them if desired.

"

Malice wrote:

The idea was that with level scaling removed from the picture, only certain types of enemies will have functional amounts of evasion - many like zombies would have 0 evasion.

In this case I'm worried about how quickly the values could diverge. If a value of 0 is perfectly legitimate to maintain over the course of the game then characters can quickly be left behind in certain scenarios. For example, a Marauder might be literally unable to hit a high evasion enemy at mid-high levels because that high evasion enemy is balanced to challenge high accuracy Rangers. Similarly a Ranger with no AP might always be able to hit certain enemies but may never be able to deal damage. Of course you can place min/max values on chance to hit and chance to penetrate but then you run into the issue that a character can still get so far behind that even investing a few skill points doesn't put him above the min threshold. This problem happens under the current mechanics as well and it should frankly never happen. A player must always realize a net benefit from a passive that they take.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the suggestion about level scaling, but I think it's kinda late or maybe even inappropriate (overall questionable) to implement this into the game considering it's current stage and design plans.

The rest of suggestions are also good though.

"

tpapp157 wrote:

"

Malice wrote:

The idea was that with level scaling removed from the picture, only certain types of enemies will have functional amounts of evasion - many like zombies would have 0 evasion.

In this case I'm worried about how quickly the values could diverge. If a value of 0 is perfectly legitimate to maintain over the course of the game then characters can quickly be left behind in certain scenarios. For example, a Marauder might be literally unable to hit a high evasion enemy at mid-high levels because that high evasion enemy is balanced to challenge high accuracy Rangers. Similarly a Ranger with no AP might always be able to hit certain enemies but may never be able to deal damage. Of course you can place min/max values on chance to hit and chance to penetrate but then you run into the issue that a character can still get so far behind that even investing a few skill points doesn't put him above the min threshold. This problem happens under the current mechanics as well and it should frankly never happen. A player must always realize a net benefit from a passive that they take.

Well there definitely would be balance concerns - but not hugely different from the current system.
As a marauder you already have to bee-line as many accuracy passives as you can get, preferably also splashing into the dex tree to maintain a decent hit rate versus ALL monsters.
And evasion/DR/resistances are capped at 75% I see no reason to change that. So even with 0 accuracy against the most uber evasion boss you'd still be hitting 25% of the time.
A moderate amount of accuracy would still help greatly for monsters with middling amounts of evasion. But if you're hell bent on totally neglecting a stat to max out another, then you should definitely pay the price for that choice.

"

Xapti wrote:

Don't get me wrong, I really like this suggestion, but I think it's kinda late or maybe even inappropriate (overall questionable) to implement this into the game considering it's current stage and design plans.

You may be right, but I let the devs worry about that, no point me trying to second guess that kind of thing. I just throw ideas around - mainly I just like to get people thinking and discussing things.
A lot of people seem unhappy with evasion - I see this as a potential fix (even though it doesn't change evasion!).

I was really surprised when I got to the Armor Penetration part, you've put a lot of thought into it!

Good read, I'm really curious what Chris would think about it. All in all making a game based around gear and character building even more focused on these two factors sounds like the way to go.

From my personal experience: in beta so far I've been killing mobs of exactly my level 95% of the time. Its very efficient for the reasons described, but this requires no decision making at all, I don't feel good about existance of such a global rule, which discourages taking on harder challenges.

There's another thing I forgot to mention that I think is a good idea anyway - but would be even more important if level scaling was removed.

That is increasing the difference between each tier of items.

My marauder orbed a mace with +83% damage in late cruel, and continued to use that mace all the way through ruthless. It didn't get replaced until a little way into merciless.

This is because the gear progresses so slowly - there are a lot of tiers of weapons but they are all very similar. So you are less likely to get that feeling of power from suddenly doing a lot more damage when you upgrade your weapon, or go back to a lower level area.

Here's a list of two hand mace progression pulled from the item data page. The other weapons all have a similar progression.
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/8065/gearprogression.png

You can see that at low levels each tier gives a significant (20-30%) increase in DPS over the previous tier, but this quickly drops off until it plateaus off at about 6.5%, or 1.6%/level.

So while going and fighting enemies 8 levels lower than you will be a lot easier, that's mainly because of level scaling. It's not thanks to your weapon, which is only doing about 12-15% more damage.

So I think the game would benefit from having larger differences between tiers of items. It would give a much more satisfying feeling when upgrading weapons, and being able to decimate lower-level enemies.
Obviously monster difficulty would need to change to match the new higher-damage weapons. So going into higher level areas would be harder, but you would get better gear rewards as well.

I think this would be a good idea regardless of level scaling - but if level scaling were removed it would be essential, since otherwise with only a small % increase per level, it would be too easy to skip ahead though the game.

I kinda like your suggestions malice I'm for anything that makes me feel like my character is actually progressing and anything that adds diversity