Level scaling

Have to agree, atm it feels like a Maintaining-game.
Crafting weapons like these

is just necesary if you want to kill monsters 1 lvl higher.

About hardcore:
Doesn´t this fixed lvl-scaling produce a mentality of "just kill monsters 2lvls lower and you are safe even if you have bad equipment" ?

Another beneficiary of no level scaling would be PvP, unless you actually want level itself to matter in PvP.

With level scaling:

• A higher level character will have an extra advantage that seems unnecessary on top of the advantage gained by having higher level skills and gear.
• Killing a level 60 with a level 40 character would be nearly impossible
• Small level differences of 1-5 levels could have a significant impact on the outcome of a battle.

Without level scaling:

• Lower-level characters would be encouraged to try to take out higher level characters.
• Killing a level 60 with a level 40 character would be difficult but not impossible.
• Small level differences of 1-5 levels would have little or no impact on the outcome of a battle.

One more thing about level scaling would be that it would eliminate the problems of the game becoming too easy after you out-level the highest-level monsters.
Currently once you go past highest-level monsters, the game will keep getting easier as you level up. Without level scaling the monsters would be just as dangerous as before, only getting easier if you upgrade your gear.

I haven't made it past 60 in 0.9.1, but in previous patches, I had no desire to pimp out all my gear once I'd made it to the end of the content - just gaining a few levels made it easy enough that there was no need.
I mean, say you're planning to use a character for farming, but your accuracy is lacking a bit. You decide to grind for a bit to try to get some better gear. But then after a while you realise that while grinding for better gear, you've levelled up a few times and now you are hitting everything very easily. You don't need the gear anymore.

I kind of feel like there should be some incentive for players to improve their characters even after reaching the end of the content. Currently level scaling removes that incentive.


Having said all that, this won't be so much of an issue if the player's level is capped to the max level of the monsters. But if you can out-level the monsters (like you can now), it's one more reason to remove level scaling.

In short I would like to see enemys getting better and harder as you progress further into the game. Not just give out handicap to make it feel like they are.


And to that extent I am with You Malice.

If I understand what you mean by level scaling, the game currently has two tiers of character power so to speak.

The first tier is your actual character level. This level is used to compare against mosnters/other players to determine the success or failure of attakcs, etc. To use a very simply example if a level 1 character was to fight a level 2 character with bare fists, no skills , no gear and no pasives the level 2 character would win simply because it is level 2 against a level 1?

The second tier is your gear, passives and skills. Your character level here is only a factor to determine what you can actually have but is not directly used in any calculation?

Your proposal of removing level scaling is to effectively remove the first tier I mentioned above, but retain the second tier? So if I understand what you are going for is that leveling up your character still increases your power simply because you have access to higher 'level' gear, skills, and more passive points. Basically though if you do not allocate your passive point and do not gain any different gear, you are at the exact same power you were in the previous level. Effectively, only your equipment (skill gems, gear, etc) and passive abilities matter.

Just trying to see where you are coming from here. You want selections made by you (gear choice, passive choice, skill choice) to matter more than simply being stronger due to just being one level higher?

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PoERickety wrote:

If I understand what you mean by level scaling, the game currently has two tiers of character power so to speak.

The first tier is your actual character level. This level is used to compare against mosnters/other players to determine the success or failure of attakcs, etc. To use a very simply example if a level 1 character was to fight a level 2 character with bare fists, no skills , no gear and no pasives the level 2 character would win simply because it is level 2 against a level 1?

The second tier is your gear, passives and skills. Your character level here is only a factor to determine what you can actually have but is not directly used in any calculation?

Your proposal of removing level scaling is to effectively remove the first tier I mentioned above, but retain the second tier? So if I understand what you are going for is that leveling up your character still increases your power simply because you have access to higher 'level' gear, skills, and more passive points. Basically though if you do not allocate your passive point and do not gain any different gear, you are at the exact same power you were in the previous level. Effectively, only your equipment (skill gems, gear, etc) and passive abilities matter.

Just trying to see where you are coming from here. You want selections made by you (gear choice, passive choice, skill choice) to matter more than simply being stronger due to just being one level higher?

The level comparison is at least to me nothing but a handicap. The power you gain from leveling up is by stats and passives. (though stats do nothing but fulfill req. now)
By planing you build and getting gear that emphases the strength of said build and play accordingly would in the end result in the characters "power".
By this standard the mobs should get better not jsut gain more life for each level. Thus making a mob higher level then you so good att dr and evade that you would be at a disadvatage because of that, not getting "gimped" by chopping of an amout of your skillrates.

As a pure meleeway the thing I'm talking about would be viable. It would also make it so you could shift focus away from dmg modifiers and skip giving 300% healthbonuses on rares. Just give them better resists and evades skills.

Since spells skips the evade fase a caster would be prefered in above own level areas. Maybe to the pooint where it needs adressing. Maybe by lowering damage by succesdul partial evade.


The main point is that however good gear and good build you have today, you will come to an impasse where the level of mobs gets to high for it to be fun.
I hit that wall in ruthless when the mobs got +4 levels or above. My 1H mace dualwielding marauder still did damage enough. Also had no real problam about damage taken. But the level difference cut the chance to hit so severely across the line that it just took to long to kill.
Instead I had a quicker leveling progress in +1/+2 level areas. Lacking the challange there though.

If i get Malices mainpoint right its this "gimping" that undercuts good characters to blossom out to their full potential.
Its just a matter of balancing.
But shouldn't good players be able to play in higherlevel areas more suitable to their skills/build and get rewarded for it?

@Rickety, yes, that's exactly what I meant.

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Dalkordigo wrote:

If i get Malices mainpoint right its this "gimping" that undercuts good characters to blossom out to their full potential.

That's part of it, it's not just that though - that's no more important than all the other reasons I've talked about.

I means, on the other side of that is that you're not really penalised much for neglecting your armour. You can just simply fight enemies a couple of levels below yourself, letting the level scaling make up for the bad gear - and you don't really lose a whole lot in terms of XP, since you'll be hitting more often, scoring more crits, etc.
So, you are kind of encouraged to save as many orbs as possible, and upgrade your gear only when absolutely necessary.

But, as I mentioned before, that's also partly because the gear progresses so slowly.

I'm going to come right out and be blunt, because I have no idea if people in this thread are for or against level scaling, but level scaling sucks.

- I want to be judged based on my gear, skills, and passive point allocation.

- If I can kill a monster that is a higher level than me, I want all the EXP.

- If I have shitty equipment I should still be able to die to low level mobs.

- If I outplay a higher level in PvP, I should win, not lose by default.

Currently my only real beef with the game is the level scaling for EXP and how much simply being a specific level matters more than the gear itself. If I am perfectly fine killing mobs my level with the same gear for 30 levels, why should I waste time equipping stuff I find and upgrading? Fourier used the same bow for 12 levels. 12 freaking levels between 30-50! That is a LONG time to be able to use a low level piece of equipment!

@malice: first of all really nice text, seems like you put a lot of effort in it.

@topic: beating successfully an enemy really shouldn´t only depend on your current level. its like malice mentioned before: a lvl 1 witch shouldn´t have problems hitting a lvl 60 slow moving zombie.

i can understand that for example a ranger needs time (lvl) or better equipment to hit targets with his bow and that he has to skill in accuracy. but it is hard to understand that a well trained ranger could not hit zombies just because they are some lvl above him.

it also would encourage me to upgrade my equipment if i would get an advantage by having a better bow. but its completely unnecessary to spend time on farming items when you could simply lvl up to beat enemies without problems.

I would like a poll about this to get a feel for what the community thinks about level scaling. Maybe it would push GGG to look into it?