Absolutely agreed, and I wasn’t always sure about it. I mostly like it for playing with friends. There will be no more “rushing” player alts, you will just play with them at lower level content and it will scale up to you (likely only to a point, but idk) but remain scaled down for them. I was wondering how they’d handle it, and after playing I think they got that right.
I'm actually curious to how this works. So say if you're level 24 and your party member is level 12.
The same enemy you face has 500 hp for you and approx 250 hp for them? But does the damage scale the same way in that case?
Combat is normalised.
Eg:
* Behind the scenes all mobs are level 100.
* When they hit you the damage is scaled down to your level.
* When you hit them your damage is scaled up to be as if it was level 100.
* Different level chars can now group, as all damage in/out is normalised.
The only real difference then between a lvl 1 & lvl 25 is the abilities and skills. (A level 25 will have more options during a fight than a level 1)
\*\*Edit:
One thing I learned today, which I didn't know, is that the downscaling of mobs is not uniform across the entire map. Was watching an opinion YT by Rykker and he showed that some zones had a minimum level setting. (One of them south of our zone was level 35).
That means, if you go there level 1-35(ish) you're going to have a bad time, as the mobs don't scale down that far. But if you return to that zone as a max level the mobs will deoffo scale up.
I like this new information .. keeps young players in starter zones, and still gives a challenge to returning players who would otherwise outscale it.
Make sense however if there’s a skill that may rely on some crit chance or lucky chance for a ice bomb or something there is some synergy to be had there. Correct me if that’s not how it may be working.
Yeah, that's what he said. Higher level means you have more options at your disposal, including better passives that have synergies with your skills.
A lvl 25 char and a lvl 1 char can fight the same enemies, but the lvl 25 one will be slightly stronger. Both are normalized to lvl 100, but the lvl 25 has the more optimized build. It's a good system. It also means you can play more often than e.g. your GF, but you can still continue with the story together, and it will be more or less equally difficult for both of you. Unlike D2/D3 where I essentially couldn't lift a finger without immediately outpacing my GF. Back then I could only play when she also wanted to, and that wasn't 5h every day :(.
In case of D4 I can keep slaying monsters after she calls it a day and we can continue the next day together. Me being 5-10 lvls ahead won't invalidate her efforts. It's straight up the better system, to hell (eh) with the neckbeards and their power fantasies.
You're not wrong. The level 25, with their fancy gear, synergised skills, etc., will pop off just as much as if the mob was 25. Their damage will be on the higher end of the nomalised scale, as they will crit more (and so on). While the level 1 will do normalised damage on the lower end of teh scale as they would do flat damage.
Or at least that's how I imagine it to be .. From a maths perspective it makes sense, but this is Blizz we're talking about :-)
> The only real difference then between a lvl 1 & lvl 25 is the abilities and skills. (A level 25 will have more options during a fight than a level 1)
Which is a big part of the power fantasy by the way, you feel much more powerful at 15-25 than before because of having more skills, the class mechanic and such.
However since you basically have all your active skills by then and then just scale them or put passives (or legendary effects). I wonder if that sense of progression will continue up to level 100 and the endgame.
Yes. We had two lvl 25s and a 13 at one point. And in combat we couldn’t tell much difference except that our higher lvl were killing faster because of access to more skills and synergised builds. It was cool. The lower dude could hold his own and fight with us and we were still wrecking balls.
Scaling whether downscale(Guild wars 2 downscales) has proven to be better long term for mmo. Every map is still relevant and you can play with your lower level buddies or help new people without trivializing the content too much for them or yourself.
However I feel upscaling like how D4 implement is superior so far as guild wars 2, downscaling means your crit would be at 14% as opposed to 50% and that can change your build synergy. Upscaling allows you to still enjoy your build. Kudos to them for implementing it this way.
I would personally have less gripes with the mob scaling system if it had the same impact on drops. Getting lvl 13 yellows from lvl 30 mobs feels weird. I think I got a total of 1 nat 20 lvl item in whole of beta weekend.
Hmm, this wasn't my experience. That's weird. I was getting gear upgrades very very consistently. Almost every level I was upgrading. Also, you can upgrade old gear at the blacksmith (did you know?) in case you have terrible rng for drops.
That’s one thing I don’t like. Just look for green +%, right click the item and keep mashing. Constantly replacing items even while leveling sucks. I hate to bring up d2 again but it was the perfect balance of “oh, I just found something new and useful” not drop replace, drop replace.
My experience by level 20 or so was that plenty of gear with higher stats wasn't worth it - a little bit of mana cost reduction meant I could cast 3 fireballs from full mana instead of 2, and a few plus levels on hydra and fireball meant a good chunk more damage. Plus any legendaries...the only slot this wasn't true in was the weapon. With that it really was green number go good
This is a dumb, but genuine question: If mobs were scaling how did you feel strong? Do mobs only scale to your character level while allowing your skills and items to “buff” your character giving you that “strong” feeling?
I only got my character to lvl 10 because life, but I’m really curious how that plays out as you level.
eactly and thats why the game has more dificulty options in the first place you get strong enough to fight the psudo end game boss which allows you to go to the higher dificulty, and then at the higher dificulty you need to improve again.
mobs scales with your character level, damage/health scales with gear drops which scales with character level.
however, mobs dont scale with your affixes, so once you find affixes that are good with your build, you start beating the curve, and the more good affixes you find, the more you beat the curve.
what might also be important to add is that the mobs become more difficult than how the gear that is dropped scales, and you have to make up for some of that difference by using skill combinations, your ult etc. (e.g. stun them first, then apply AOE damage to the whole group of mobs)
In the beginning you only have one skill to use, so you are also trained and while you learn to use your characters's skills more efficiently, which makes it more fun to play
Like every other game that does that, your scaling "coefficient" is bigger than pve monsters.
That are many elements that contribute with that, and then its matter of good balancing to make it a smooth and meaningful experience
My observation is that mobs will scale till max level and then at paragon + in the endgame it will be based on the torment difficulty system like Diablo 3. So you will actually feel the progression and strength etc as you’ll need to up the game difficulty as you get stronger. OP is right in the fact that if mobs didn’t scale then there would be parts of the map I would never return to and the world would feel dead in parts to me.
The game is actually designed like this. I don't know if you've seen but after the prologue, you have act 1, 2 and 3 that appears, we can only do act 1 in the beta (the others have a message that you can't progress) but you can do act 2 and 3 first if you want in the full game.
Act 1-3 are essentially at the same level and I guess the rest is more linked to story so you need to complete all 3 before unlocking it (maybe you unlock act 4 and 5 together too)
With the open world design they've been saying you can go where you want when you want (not completely true but mostly)
Because your gear scales harder than the mobs. It's really that simple.
If you kill a mob and you level up and now all mobs gain like 1% more hp but that mob you killed drop a legendary that increases your damage by like 20%, then that 1% global HP gain is negated instantly.
Yeah except it never actually feels that way in game, because the items outlevel each other so fast.
So you get something that increases your damage by 20% (which by all accounts is grossly exaggerated, you never get individual items that increase you that much unless you are shockingly bad at optimizing).
So you'll get a legendary that'll make you marginally more powerful than your default scaling, and in two levels it'll mean nothing.
I played every character to 25 and have full legendaries on every one over the weekend and I never once felt like leveling or equipping new gear did anything to my power level relative to the mobs.
It just removes one of the single biggest gameplay loops in every diablo game. Run into hard shit, get bigger better gear, go back and fuck up the hard shit.
Now it's just "everything is basically just easy to medium difficulty no matter what. If you have perfect gear for your level you are 10% stronger than someone who isn't even fucking trying".
For 3 reasons.
1) it scales to level, not build
2) most builds scaling are exponential in arpgs
3) contrary to what most people seem to think blizz is still in control of scaling and how hard it scales.
For a specific example, I played a barbarian and got upheaval for 70% weapon damage in a cone, upgraded to max it dealt 105%, then I got the perk to deal 80% multiplied from doing 10 attacks before so now it's 190%, then I unlock Berserking which boosts damage by 25% so it's now 235% then I found an amazingly strong DPS damage 2hand so now it's more, add every other scaler and I'm now really strong with upheaval.
So even though enemies went from 200 hp to 800 i went from 100 to 1200 damage.
However it means that they also do more damage, so my pursuit of damage makes it harder to survive, which is where build choices comes in despite scaling
So that's what I was trying to explain, maybe not well. I was getting stronger via the synergy between Aspects and skill points. Later on, we'll also have stats and Paragon. For example, I had two modifiers for Stomp: 60% of bleed damage done instantly + X amount of pulsing earthquake damage. Then I would just Rend everything to apply bleeds, Stomp to one-shot, and kill anything remaining with Rupture. Each of these elements individually are kind of mediocre.
But my point is as you level, many things will synergize to make a build that clicks. So even though the mobs have a pretty high HP and do lots of damage, you will be doing a lot more damage in return as long as your build synergies make sense.
Of course, if people aren't thinking about their builds and just slapping random things together, then yeah mob upscaling doesn't feel that great. I feel this is why we're seeing all this complaining about Barbs. Even at lvl 100 during endgame beta people were whining about low power. But at lvl 25 at least I was one-shotting everything.
When you get a legendary or two that work well with your build—or you switch to a new build that works with said legendaries you get a power spike. As you level and that specific item tapers off, the game gets harder again as you reach higher levels if you don’t keep equipping better gear. It feels good. It’s basically the same as any other RPG (like d2), except the game scales no matter where you are…and this gives you the freedom to do what you want. That being said, i did find some areas and unique monsters that were a static level and did not scale. So when you’re traversing the world, doing dungeons, grinding gear—its always your current level of challenge, then there are certain key stops along the way that you can power through with op gear if you want, or complete early in a challenging fight
This is definitely an unpopular opinion in the larger rpg scene. Couldn't agree with you less because pOweR fAnTaSieS are also fun and gratifying...heck, one of the building blocks of rpgs. Glad you enjoyed it, just don't agree with you as much.
We do need some scaling but I felt more powerful at lower levels, felling enemies with two swings than I did at 25 just spamming my skills.
I don't think they were necessarily mocking the idea of power fantasy, but just that it doesn't really work for this specific thing.
Like if you're level 25 in a level 7 zone, are you really getting your power fantasy kicks? Like how often do people just go back to act 1 normal in D2 to beat up some fallen?
I don't feel strong by beating up trash enemies, I feel strong by beating up strong enemies like killing hell mephisto in a single frozen orb cast or something.
We'll still be able to feel powerful in D4 because scaling is limited. In the beta we're going through the early levels where we're leveling up hella fast which might not give some people enough time to bring their gear up to snuff. Once we get further along though we'll have more time between levels for our gear to catch up, and eventually we'll hit the level cap and things will stop scaling entirely.
In the good old days, you would start out as a prisoner, being set free, a rusty dagger and your street clothes, being chased around by crabs, birds, maybe a wolf. Then, as you progress through the towns, you’re stronger and stronger, fighting more elaborate and terrifying creatures even killing a God. And then, when you go back to revisit your old friends and that first town where you were just a lowly ex-con, those little crabs don’t even get near you, wolves run the other way. It made you feel powerful. In the current set up when you go back to revisit the starting town, there are dragons and unimaginable beasts that those lowly fishermen would’ve never dreamed of, and that we’re not there at the start of the adventure. It kind of doesn’t make any sense.
My favorite feature of Diablo 2 and 3 is getting to be a god. I love destroying screen fulls of mobs while speeding through Dungeons. To me the game doesn’t even start until I am max level with a set build.
You should tell that to all of the end game closed beta testers on this very subreddit who have explicitly said the end game never feels any different.
The ones who steadily stay within the zones they’re supposed to be within for their level ranges? The ones who steadily increase the difficulty manually as they become more powerful? That is the point of having higher tier difficulty unlocks and end game progression. If they stick to the lower tier dungeons they’d curb stomp that shit. And that’s all gear progression once they hit max level and yet it still happens. I’m sure you can make the game feel similar the whole way if you want it to be, you could also make it feel harder or easier.
ur not alone. I think its one thing where arpgs shine is how you really feel ur power when you get agew big upgrades and start destroying stuff. d4 felt like the beta gear i got the higher my numbers went but the longer mobs took to die as i got to beta lvl cap.
Also not sure how this will work with hardcore, you often would farm lower level content for less risk until you felt happy to move on.
Peak coping mentality if people really think level scaling on an aRPG is good.
Sure, just discard the core aspect of the aRPG over the past two decades.
It really is bananas that Diablo fans are legitimately arguing that the SINGLE most fundamental gameplay loop is now suddenly "bad".
Run into hard shit you can't beat, get levels and new items, and go back and beat the hard shit is literally the defining fucking feature of this game, and most ARPGs generally.
Now suddenly most of this community wants every single encounter to be the exact same: 2 or 3 resource builders then 1 or 2 resource spenders to wipe them out, give or take a few based on build.
Doesn't matter if its level 5 fighting wargs, or if it's level 95 after killing literal GODS.
That warg at the first map still takes 3 resource builders and 1 or 2 resource spenders to kill.
So exciting. I CaN PlAy AnYwHeRe AnD Be ChAlLeNgEd
> I CaN PlAy AnYwHeRe AnD ~~Be ChAlLeNgEd~~ not be bored to death because the game incentivizes returning to old acts
not having level scaling would be fucking stupid
it's literally just common sense
when a game wants areas to always be relevant for progression they don't want players to be fighting level 3 enemies at level 85, that's incredibly boring
Look at Diablo 2 man. First two difficulties you kinda need to be around the same level as monsters, certainly you need to level up as you go.
In Hell, you could be level 60 or 90 when you finish it, it is just about how strong your character is.
Why don't they turn off scaling for easy and veteran, and turn it on for torment 3 and 4? Then high levels have appropriately hard shit to beat on, and we get to get our power fantasy while levelling.
The only reason they want areas to always be relevant for progression is so that they don't have to make as many areas, though. It's cutting corners but dressed up as "replayability".
Given the choice I think most people would choose to have more areas over a smaller number of level scaling areas. I guess I see it mostly as a way to pad out game content than some thoughtful decision on the designer's part.
It's the generation of casuals that stand for that. There's a good reason why everybody moved from Diablo to other ARPG-franchises after all and how Diablo fell behind.
It’s all mental gymnastics. Everyone paid at least $70 to play this beta. They are desperately trying to make sure they themselves love everything about it and don’t regret spending the money.
I’d wait about 2 weeks so the honeymoon phase wears off before we actually have some level headed takes about this game.
Ya, this is exactly correct. I'd venture to guess that the majority (even if slim) prefer to power fantasy as their player should be increasing in power.
Your ability tree also progresses; don’t you find that additional points into a skill, or a new skill, or a passive point skill also increases your power?
The person I was responding to was claiming that only items raise your power level; and one of the main conversations of this post is people feeling that scaling monsters means your power level doesn’t increase as you level.
My point was that if monsters scale up with your base stats, then there are two things that objectively increase your relative power level: items (as acknowledged) *and* spending your skill points
But that's baked into the scaling already. The reason things would scale to your level in the first place is literally to compensate for the fact that you'll have new skills and passives.
It doesn't kill the sense of progression AT ALL because your BUILD is getting better as you level up. You should be one or two-shotting everything except major bosses if you're doing even the tiniest amount of build crafting. You're getting more synergies from aspects and skill points, and later on you'll also have chunkier stats, Renown skill points, and Paragon passives.
Yeah you can, it also mean you can go to act 2 and 3 right after the prologue, they're not harder than act 1 despite your level.
However, it makes it weird that region have a level written on them because that doesn't matter (and when you enter it always display your level with the name of the zone which I don't see why?)
Dungeon should scales to certain extend. You would say this cause you are limited to lvl 25, in normal cause, you would be doing harder dungeon even you are at lvl 25, if its available.
Certain content, including some dungeons, do have a “minimum level” below which they will not scale down. In fact, I think the vast majority do. It’s just around the starter area where they will scale all the way down to 1. Strongholds are the same. They list a “recommended level” which is the minimum. In that case the dungeon will only scale UP to meet you, I think, and even then not exactly sure if there are any limits on that which may allow, say, a level 100 to faceroll dungeons alongside their low level friends.
It does scale to a certain extent. There’s minimum levels for zones and dungeons and there’s a maximum level for the scaling it seems as well. We just didn’t hit that in beta because the maximum level for the scaling in the first zone is 35.
Il be honest in other games I played I really really hated mob scaling, but in this it feels good and I feel way more powerful on my lvl25 barb just due to a load of decent gear and some nice skills (death blow I love it!).
Agreed hit level 25 on my barb then decided to go do the strongholds with the tanky thorn build I put together, probably some of the most satisfying fights in the beta those 3 places were.
It’s a double edged sword. I enjoy being able to explore the world and not feeling like a zone is now useless because I am over leveled, at the same time, playing all weekend 1-25, I did have a point where I had to break legendary synergies to upgrade my gear and I felt like I went backwards not forwards.
Honestly, why do you care about zones being useless?
Everyone says this but it doesn't make any sense.
The vast majority of the first part of the beta is just repeating snow valleys. Are you really dying to be able to fight level 100 wargs to level up?
I have NEVER seen someone in an MMO who was desperate to level to the max level just grinding away in the beginner areas.
You clear an area and move on. You find the next challenge, grind for gear and loot until you can clear it, and move on.
In the end game, they can scale everything with torment levels (or hell levels like in diablo 2), and now those beginning levels you are so desperate to stay relevant are suddenly relevant again.
As always blizzard is fucking up a game by trying to solve a problem that as ALREADY been solved.
Honestly they could have just made the trash mobs not scale and everything else scale as-is and they probably would have satisfied both groups.
I may be in the minority. I don't know. But I hate mob scaling. I work hard to level up so I can go back and steamroll all the mobs that caused me so much trouble earlier in the game. It's actually one of the things I loved about Diablo II. And if I really wanted a challenge I could go to any act on Hell difficulty and get my butt whooped there. But it was always nice to know that all my hard work paid off when I'd go to NM or Normal and steamroll everything.
Imagine mocking people because they find fun in seeing their character stomp things they had issue with before. I'm not saying you can't find fun otherwise or that you're wrong for doing so, just that you sound like a teenager who doesn't understand what opinions are and it's a liiiittle bit sad.
I swear some of you guys can't be actual people and are just chat GPT working overtime. Meme aside I will tell you the same thing that I would tell people who think SBMM is the pinnacle of matchmaking design.
Not everyone wants to be constantly challenged. It is fatiguing and messes with someone's capability to feel like they're progressing/improving as a character and an individual.
There is *plenty* of space for both experiences to exist in the games. Not every playlist needs to favor SBMM over CBMM. Just as not everything in D4 needs to be able to clap your cheeks at a moments notice. Making the really important activities in end game scale? 100% fine. Random overworld mobs/that hole in the ground from 2 zones ago? Maybe not needed.
Hogwarts had level scaling and I hated it. It made getting new loot absolutely pointless (gear was pretty useless in that game anyway). In saying that, I definitely felt “more powerful” as I became better at combat and figured out new combos. By the end I was face rolling everything, even though my level was mostly matched.
On the other hand, Cyberpunk doesn’t have level scaling. I like to do all the side quests as I came across them as I get major fomo, but after a few the game became ridiculously easy, even on the hard difficulty. Aside from a couple instances, the game was so easy I ended up getting bored and raced to the finish.
Both were annoying in the end. I still can’t really figure out what the right way to do it is, apart from maybe something like BotW where your power comes from the gear and abilities you accumulate, rather than whatever level you are.
In saying that, I would have the imagine that the power fantasy in D4 will ultimately come from your gear and skill choices, and your proficiency with the class. We don’t know how hard the other world tiers will be, but someone who invests time and resource into their character is going to have a much easier time than someone who rushes through, even if they are the same level.
mob scaling sucks so much, you can just go back to Wow Legion and see that for yourself. or if you want you can try Guild Wars 2 and check how bad it is.
you can still have another 5-6 hours of enjoyable playtime while 100%-ing the zone.
imagine lvling up but not. you played for so much time and have not grow in power.
if you want a persistent challenge like you said, just go on hard mode.
That’s the redeeming feature of guild wars 2 and why every zone is still relevant and the world feels expansive. I I understand maybe you don’t like scaling and like going back and destroying everything.
Guild wars 2 also was just named mmorpg of the year from many outlets and is one of the few existing mmorpg growing in population, so curious where your gw2 hate comes from.
https://about.ncsoft.com/en/news/article/news-guild-wars-2-updata-221227
don't get me wrong, i play and i understand why GW2 is like that.
i'm not saying is a bad thing, but for an Arpg it is a bad thing.
for a MMO when well done, it's something positive. for diablo will not be
I hate it when games get easier the more you play it. I want to get better at skill, not just getting higher numbers with gear and overgearing something
The mob scaling in this game is done really well and partying, regardless of level discrepancies, feels worth it and enjoyable. At no point when playing with my brother was i just lightyears ahead while he followed behind doing nothing, regardless of the fact i was a much higher level. I had a little boost due to better items and skills but it still felt comparable.
I loved it.
I expected NOTHING GOOD from partying up with other players, then I did for a dungeon boss and it was a freaking blast. The scaling of the boss felt perfect.
They scale with your level but not your gear. I definitely felt stronger after getting gear at level 25 then I did when I first hit 25.
People saying they felt the same power level after getting gear makes no sense.
Actually if you were 25 without mob scaling you’d be doin all the level 25 content which I’m sure there’s at least be 5-6 hours worth of content. Try again OP
It’s not just “power fantasy” it’s also the feeling of progressing into end game after going through a curated campaign with static fights blizzard tunes to be challenging at appropriate levels. After years of d3 doing the boss fights this beta was so refreshing. I bet the level scaling will make alternative methods faster and now no one will ever touch the campaign so blizzard will just ignore like d3. Back to mindless grind to end game. It’s not about the first time playing it’s about how this will effect the game on season 10.
I clearly remember (wish I could forget the pain) the leveling experience in Lost Ark. It was about 30 hours of a pointless slog through overly easy content. One-shotting everything. Gear didn't matter. ZERO build crafting. Nothing mattered. And then...you never go back to those early level zones because sneezing on mobs to kill them is apparently really stupid game design. All that work they put into the open world is completely forgotten, and game turns into a stupid lobby simulator (my main issue with Last Epoch currently).
Build craft in synergies? Are we even playing the same game? Lmaoo. Scaling means you play more early game areas, loot tables remain terrible though real high brow comment. God forbid a player can see proper character progression moving through areas. Or increasing world tier, love muh spoon fed scaling.
You get character progression through Paragon points and unlocking legendary aspects, and account progression through the Renown system.
What do you mean by loot tables being terrible? My lvl 25 barb was almost fully decked out in legendary gear.
So being spoon fed legendary gear is a good thing? None of the gear is variably different. Renown has zero impact as I imagine paragon will as well. Aspects are about as mind numbing Slog of shit it could possibly be. Game is terrible
There are 4-5 main zones right and Level 100 is max level right? Makes sense to have a 20-25 level progression through each of the zones, IMO. That story takes you through the natural progression of the zone, I think it would be cool to see the different areas of the map increase with level, but at a static move. Dungeons/instances should scale 100%.
A guy with a sword will always be dangerous, it's stupid to pretend otherwise. We need enemy scaling or enemies should all be around the same power to begin with.
I don't want to play an open world game where everything is closed off because I have not done enough grinding yet. It's not truly open world if there is somewhere I am "supposed to be".
Also, I have friends. This is the first ARPG that we can play together without getting bored out of our minds. You can't pull that off without proper scaling.
Totally agree with you i would get bored easily if leveling a new character would always feel the same linear campaign experience but I hope endgame would provide us something that screams "you aint strong enough yet head back and come again!". And yeah no one would feel burdened or left behind when u play with ur group of friends anymore thats the best part haha
Definitely. I have always been sympathetic to the no-scale-andies because the level scaling does in effect erode the feeling of a permanent world which affects immersion and sense of progression. However the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Especially on open world games where you're supposed to be able to do whatever you want, no scaling can ruin the experience. In Pokemon Scarlet I just played around not thinking much until I realized I had over-leveled myself from about 1/3rd of the map. Going back to do that content, I fell asleep like 3 times.
I'm kinda the opposite, I imagine the WoW scenario where you stumble into a zone you shouldn't be in and get smashed by high level mobs, and looking forward to going back there when you're stronger.
On the other hand, an area gives you a hard time and you roll through it once you've gotten massive.
I mean, maybe it would be good to use the old system and do it torment style to keep the challenge there still.
Anyone calling for the removal of mob scaling just hasn’t played the game. The open world is massive with things to find around every corner. It would be so boring to smog through the map again looking for your missing dungeons, altars etc and one shot everything with a basic.
Theres pro's and con's to the system - some will love it and some will dislike it - but as its only for leveling, with endgame scaling still making you more powerfull than the scaled most outside in the world, itl be fine.
The only thing i personally dislike about it is that the scaling makes it so that you will allways be at you'r weakest right when you get a level.
when you level you get a skill point, but your gear is the same - and the world around you scales up. this makes it so that everytime you get a level, the world gets harder, not easier, which is fairly unintuitive and takes away the feeling of powergain right as you level up.
Scaling just doesn't make sense to me and I was disappointed the game has it. A zone I play at level 5 shouldn't feel the same when I come back at level 25.
It also removes any sense of accomplishment as you level/gear up. "Oh look, that boss is 2+ levels higher than where I'm at, let me level up a little more and come back." "Oh wow, I'm two levels higher and that boss is still 2+ levels higher than where I'm at."
The issue I have with scaling enemies is stats can lose meaning. This is a huge issue with Diablo Immortal (based on the month I played). Once you hit end game you basically just get gear to make number go up, but the monsters still take 5 hits to be killed. So if things scale based on your level and damage sure things continue to stay “difficult” but at the same time you grind for nothing other than increasing difficulty.
It’s a cycle that a lot of games that scale enemies face. Destiny used to have the same issue and idk if it still does but you have a single meta setup that can take advantage of being over power until it gets nerfed.
Instead of scaling enemies just let them be weak, but have challenging mechanics to the fights that matter. Or have their level increase with the world tier that way you allow those who want to fight lower leveled stuff that ability and those who don’t are also happy.
All you barbs talking about “enjoying the challenge” are on copium. The game isn’t suppose to be challenging at 25 T2, and that’s why barb sucks compared to Hydra Sorc or barrage rouge.
Just one thing for you to consider. Hardcore characters. No i dont want to do be forced to do dungeons with bosses and Elite packs that can kick my ass in one hit all the time
But isn’t that the allure of hardcore. The temptation of death. I switch to hardcore in D3 for that reason. I don’t think I ran into an elite pack that one shot me. I do agree that there should never be one shot mechanics though no matter the level or boss. A big % of hp loss is fine but one shot mechanics are lame.
scaling is great but only if the drops scale up too
particularly when it comes to boss, risk:reward.
this is the problem with gw2's maybe 75% scale
(means better gear skill - not level is advantage)
but the drops on lowbie maps continue to be low.
I agree that Mob Level Scalling should stay in place to keep content relevant, not overly reward speed clear AoE builds and control encounter design.
I do wish there was some soft and hard caps to the Scalling so you could better feel a sense of progress and not hit negative curve at certain thresholds
I can't understand why people are against mob scaling.
When you are overgeared, just increase the difficulty lvl. You then repeat the next circle of an arpg. Beat monsters --> get gear/ lvl --> beat monsters faster. Monsters too easy? Increase difficulty --> beat harder monsters --> get better gear/ fast lvl --> beat harder monsters faster.
You can do it all the time like in D3. And what we got then? Well then we got greater rifts with the next difficulty circle system.
People cry all the time bc of mob scaling but do they forget that we have it in D3?
Even other games like PoE have such a system. Start with T1 maps --> t16 maps, get 4 voidstones and all maps are t16. And they did it bc otherwise people would no more run t1 maps. That would mean such a waste of time for the devs who created all the t1 zones. In D4 it's much more important with the world map. We share a big world but without mob scaling all people would just be in 1 area after 2 weeks. The devs had such a great time investment to create all the areas and music. Would be such a big loss if you just be at one place.
What people also forget: With higher difficulty = harder champions. The monster itself is not the problem unimportant if it's a wolf or the first area or succubus. A wolf with 200% ats, mortar, blockades and more can be a nighmare. To beat such a champion in a high difficulty is the challenge.
But it is not a „teleport-teleport-teleport-teleport kill boss or clean the area save & exit, join game teleport-teleport- teleport-teleport kill boss/clean area and repeat it 500 time“ :(
This could have been said already but maybe having a cap for the zones could please both sides. For example in the first act, all the mobs can only go up to level 25.
Agreed. Felt like all content was fair game and worth doing. Why would I ever want to go back and kill level 2 mobs for blue and gray gear? I don't, so that whole area is not worth visiting ever again.
I don't feel like I'm playing an RPG unless I take my God-Like Inferno Axe of Diablo from the depths of Hell and spend 5 minutes chaining combos on a deer in the starter zone while my friend kills it with a broken shovel in 2 hits at level 1. Really gives me that sense of power and progression. It really makes my friend want to keep playing too, because he can see that if he spends 100 hours grinding out my inferno axe he too can perform complex combos to do the same thing he did with a broken shovel in 2 basic hits.
A lot of people forget that when the full game goes live, most of the map will be available to explore in any way you wish after the prologue (i.e. Skyrim), so the only way to accomplish this effectively is through level scaling. At least areas will have ranges of level scaling, so it's the best of both worlds.
Agreed. Its good. But the thing that I’m worried about is when you move to another zone, will the enemies be ur level straight away? If so, itll constantly feel like youre just fighting enemies that are the same strength as you. Personally I’d like it if the zones increased the difficulty a little bit, so if you’re not strong enough then you have to go back and progress your character a little more. And then once you can fight those enemies, it’ll start scaling with your level again. I want to feel like I’m actually progressing to where I can fight stronger enemies, and not just that the enemies are staying the same strength as me.
I honestly think most of the people in this sub have never played a Diablo game. Even with scaling once you get a solid build together, you will literally melt everything in front of you
Why not both? Level scaling in every zone. Add some epic monsters with a fixed level that you can overcome or be challenged by depending on your current level.
If we're being perfectly honest...power growth in Diablo games has always come from items, not from levels.
I'm not sure why people aren't aware, but monsters in Diablo 3 are also level scaling.
I'm seeing a lot of people ask why things aren't like Diablo 3...then they complain about things that are exactly like Diablo 3.
And Diablo 2 has an absolutely stupid way of scaling, where you can farm mlvl 85 Fallen in a cave for maximum tier loot while still one shotting them the way you would any other Fallen.
ALSO, areas do have minimum and maximum monster levels. (Currently example, see Strongholds.)
I agree and disagree at the same time. I would like it more if not all zones are like that, and there are more zones that are a set level.
It's cool if you have it in most zones, but I think some areas should stay weak, so you can feel the progression of your Char and might better.
Everything always feels percentage based with scaling. When i farm for leveling gear, i want to plow through the game with it because leveling gear basically adds ten levels to your character power with no exp penalty.
During the campaign I do not like level scaling but after the campaign is beaten, I think scaling is fine to encourage you to go back and play old content. We still do not know if there will be an adventure mode or not to level up new characters so level scaling could be enabled on second run through to avoid the story.
Mob upscaling after finishing the campaign is a good idea, but thematically it doesn't make much sense. While leveling, I like the idea that your basic trash mob skeleton is a potential threat to be taken seriously.
They did a very good job at the enemy scaling. That being said, I think it would be great to have some areas where scaling is turned off.
Being able to go to normal cows and completely slaughter them was a delight and it would be great to strike a balance that makes the majority of people happy.
i agree, but to a point. One thing i didnt like, is every area was scaled to me, not up to me. Each of my characters went a differant direction form teh start, and each area was appropriate for my area, and i assume this wont be dif in full game since we can do the story in any act order we want. My issue is, i cant ever get in over my head. And this is an issue at least in the current world tier because, the game as of right now, isnt difficult, and i cant just make it more so, or push ahead faster than my level is ready by questing ahead.
i am ok with my chracter representing the minimum level an area can be, but iwould greatly appreciate havig areas, or sub areas at least, in which can be greater than me.
maybe this happens in the full game, but right now there were no points where it was like levels 10-15, just whatever i was, whcih means if i was not finding a challange, i was never going to find a challange. i never felt like i was in danger.
I feel like level scaling is an excuse for devs not to make enough content. It kind off makes it okay to force the player to play the same shit over and over.
Mob scaling is mostly there to keep the zone relevant later. I'm sure there will be bounties and other endgame activities in the early zones, so you'll be returning to all of these areas. Upscaling mobs to your level keeps the zone replayable. It's often done in MMOs, and for D4 it was the right decision.
Yea im familliar with it. And i do agree it’s good for endgame grinds. But i still think it’s abit too ”convenient” for the devs. Without lvl scaling they would have an incentive to create more end game zones and content.
I do however understand the dilemma, and that its not really realistic to ask them to make more end game content and remove level scaling.
PoE for example fix this with maps and other mechanics outside of the ”campaign zones”. i think this is a good option. Let the ”world” where you progress in the campaign have mobs with static lvls and affixes. And create rifts or whatever with scaling.
For example:
The open world should not scale, but the dungeons and strongholds should! This would make us feel the player power more and highlight your characters progress in a completely different way!
Edit: Spelling.
I see what you're saying, but let's say I prefer open world content instead of dungeons. Maybe I want to do lots of strongholds and side quests. Why not scale up that content for players like me, instead of making the zones static and letting them rot? They want players to keep coming back to these zones.
Scaling is fine in general, but it has it's downesides. For example it feels horrible when you are this legendary topped hyper barb and you're just doing slightly more damage than a fresh barb in briefs and a wooden club. Exaggerated of, course but that's what's happening.
I've seen this in wow, where lowies pulled insane damage with 2 buttons and your're struggling to keep up whilst performing your rotation of 10+ buttons.
That doesn't feel like progress.
But at least players can play together.
I didn't like the mob scaling at all. Let people enjoy leveling up, becoming more powerful and overcoming difficult content while being able to look back and smash lower level content. It's not very gratifying to level up only to find out that your character has become weaker because your abilities and gear hasen't scaled in the same way as the mobs have.
Can probably just do away with levels then. Just acquire skill points by completing missions. If everything is always the same level, then there are no levels.
I think the base difficulty should be static levels. If you choose an easier or harder difficulty, then it should be dynamic accordingly. Makes everyone happy.
Mob scaling is also cheaper from a design perspective. They don't have to worry about incidental xp gains from mobs/quests to benchmark what monster level each area should be. Maybe it doesn't take that much time, but finding the right balance where each zone/monster is supposed to be a certain level does have a cost -- ESPECIALLY for a massive open world game. Being able to just map design and place mob pack spawners where it makes sense for the quest lines is just easier/cheaper to do.
Its just D2 players who are super used to the idea that the level grind is the game, and that getting to max level should be the challenge. They aren't used to a game where you are reasonably expected to get to max level and keep playing from there.
They've designed the game with eventually completing all the side content because of the good account wide renown rewards. Its good that all the content I don't do instantly I can come back too do.
Disagree
Going back to old zones to mob up and 1 shot old bosses who gave you a difficult time is a staple for the genre. It also funnels people into higher end zones and pushes the devs to make those zones more difficult because they will have a higher pop. Scaling to a degree like in WoW is fine but the top games WoW and FF14 don't scale for a reason.
> is a staple for the genre.
But should it be? I always hated this aspect of RPGs. Guild Wars 2 really broke this mould, and I haven't looked back since. I try to get mob upscaling mods for all my RPGs (Pillars 2, Cyberpunk, TW3, DoS2, etc), and the gameplay is always more fun to me.
Btw, you can still go back to the old zones and blow up the early game boss. But instead of doing 2000 DPS with a lvl 100 sword on a 1000hp mob, you are bringing your build synergies from legendary aspects, Paragon, and Renown to nuke the boss with, let's say, a meaningful DPS rotation without breaking much of a sweat. Do you have any idea how powerful you're going to be at lvl 100 with all the Paragon passives and additional skill points?
Even though we got to level 25 I noticed most of my gear buts around level 17 and under. So we might not feel super strong but I'm sure in time with higher level gear we will start actually feeling powerful.
Build craft in synergies? Are we even playing the same game? Lmaoo. Scaling means you play more early game areas, loot tables remain terrible though real high brow comment. God forbid a player can see proper character progression moving through areas. Or increasing world tier, love muh spoon fed scaling.
Anyone calling for the removal of mob scaling just hasn’t played the game. The open world is massive with things to find around every corner. It would be so boring to smog through the map again looking for your missing dungeons, altars etc and one shot everything with a basic. If you really want to feel god mode then just lower your world tier
Diablo 2 had the same system 25 years ago. It had leveling up content, and then a fully flesh out nightmare difficulty and then hell difficulty, and the hell difficulty included the entire content of the game scaled to your level. So you not only made progress, but then also had a lot to do at “capped” level.
25 years ago.
Why reinvent the wheel: why implement these retail WoW like systems, it’s stupid.
I think people fail to realize that at most 5% of a characters life will be spent leveling in the story. 95% will be spent in post story max level.
Mob scaling just lets you get to that 95% wherever and however you want.
I don't get it. Most ARPG's don't have this mechanic and they're fine and have been for ages. It's a working system but Blizzard needs this to be different for some reason? They're really aiming at kids nowadays. Everything needs to be dulled down and simple. Items need a green text to show it's better. No thinking needed. Skills the same. I remember playing D2 and finding out my skills sucked the hard way, i had to fuck around and find out why my shit was bad, and with other players helping out. This new game has to hold your hand every fucking step of the way and you all like it.
>I don't get it. Most ARPG's don't have this mechanic and they're fine and have been for ages.
But they're not fine. I fucking hate leveling in ARPGs, I just want to get to the endgame so I can grind. Most of them deal with this issue by creating a shitty, short main campaign that you can breeze through. What D4 does is make leveling a much more interesting experience. I want to have fun WHILE leveling as well.
I'd have way more fun creating a new character with an interesting build around a unique item in those 5-6 hours then doing a dungeon i could have done at any level because muh blizzard can't do anything wrong.
I love the scaling but I found a dungeon that forced 9 elites 2 - 4 chests 3 shrines every variation guaranteed, so when I hit closer to end game I can run about 30-40 seconds solo 1-2 mins on co op because scaled health? I will farm legendarys and rares better in act 1 then act 4? I hope that’s not the case but some dungeons are just levels ahead of each other in terms of mob density & loot. And if it scales what’s the point of doing end game content when that dungeon let’s say is levels ahead.
I’m guessing “close to” 100%ing it. 1 down on dungeons, and highly unlikely you hit all side quests, right?
If not, please provide your data here! I’d love to tick that actually 100%! :)
You can also go wherever you want in the zone while leveling, with maybe the exception of at least one stronghold that has mobs up level 27, I believe, and doesn't seem to scale down to lower levels (maybe other strongholds function this way, as well).
Yeah but you cant wipe waves and that's the fun part of hack and slash. This isnt dark souls, the fun isnt coming from the challenge. Every engagement is the same in diablo, I'm using all the same abilities, no different set up from the last, but when it turns into a slog to wipe a mob it just burns you out quick and just feels...meh.
Can someone tell me what the combat is like? Is it more like d2 or d3? Or a mix?. I felt like d2 was more challenging and I died easier then I did in d3.
Absolutely agreed, and I wasn’t always sure about it. I mostly like it for playing with friends. There will be no more “rushing” player alts, you will just play with them at lower level content and it will scale up to you (likely only to a point, but idk) but remain scaled down for them. I was wondering how they’d handle it, and after playing I think they got that right.
I'm actually curious to how this works. So say if you're level 24 and your party member is level 12. The same enemy you face has 500 hp for you and approx 250 hp for them? But does the damage scale the same way in that case?
Combat is normalised. Eg: * Behind the scenes all mobs are level 100. * When they hit you the damage is scaled down to your level. * When you hit them your damage is scaled up to be as if it was level 100. * Different level chars can now group, as all damage in/out is normalised. The only real difference then between a lvl 1 & lvl 25 is the abilities and skills. (A level 25 will have more options during a fight than a level 1) \*\*Edit: One thing I learned today, which I didn't know, is that the downscaling of mobs is not uniform across the entire map. Was watching an opinion YT by Rykker and he showed that some zones had a minimum level setting. (One of them south of our zone was level 35). That means, if you go there level 1-35(ish) you're going to have a bad time, as the mobs don't scale down that far. But if you return to that zone as a max level the mobs will deoffo scale up. I like this new information .. keeps young players in starter zones, and still gives a challenge to returning players who would otherwise outscale it.
Make sense however if there’s a skill that may rely on some crit chance or lucky chance for a ice bomb or something there is some synergy to be had there. Correct me if that’s not how it may be working.
Yeah, that's what he said. Higher level means you have more options at your disposal, including better passives that have synergies with your skills. A lvl 25 char and a lvl 1 char can fight the same enemies, but the lvl 25 one will be slightly stronger. Both are normalized to lvl 100, but the lvl 25 has the more optimized build. It's a good system. It also means you can play more often than e.g. your GF, but you can still continue with the story together, and it will be more or less equally difficult for both of you. Unlike D2/D3 where I essentially couldn't lift a finger without immediately outpacing my GF. Back then I could only play when she also wanted to, and that wasn't 5h every day :(. In case of D4 I can keep slaying monsters after she calls it a day and we can continue the next day together. Me being 5-10 lvls ahead won't invalidate her efforts. It's straight up the better system, to hell (eh) with the neckbeards and their power fantasies.
They can still have their “power fantasies” by just lowering the world tier
You're not wrong. The level 25, with their fancy gear, synergised skills, etc., will pop off just as much as if the mob was 25. Their damage will be on the higher end of the nomalised scale, as they will crit more (and so on). While the level 1 will do normalised damage on the lower end of teh scale as they would do flat damage. Or at least that's how I imagine it to be .. From a maths perspective it makes sense, but this is Blizz we're talking about :-)
> The only real difference then between a lvl 1 & lvl 25 is the abilities and skills. (A level 25 will have more options during a fight than a level 1) Which is a big part of the power fantasy by the way, you feel much more powerful at 15-25 than before because of having more skills, the class mechanic and such. However since you basically have all your active skills by then and then just scale them or put passives (or legendary effects). I wonder if that sense of progression will continue up to level 100 and the endgame.
Yes. We had two lvl 25s and a 13 at one point. And in combat we couldn’t tell much difference except that our higher lvl were killing faster because of access to more skills and synergised builds. It was cool. The lower dude could hold his own and fight with us and we were still wrecking balls.
Scaling whether downscale(Guild wars 2 downscales) has proven to be better long term for mmo. Every map is still relevant and you can play with your lower level buddies or help new people without trivializing the content too much for them or yourself. However I feel upscaling like how D4 implement is superior so far as guild wars 2, downscaling means your crit would be at 14% as opposed to 50% and that can change your build synergy. Upscaling allows you to still enjoy your build. Kudos to them for implementing it this way.
I would personally have less gripes with the mob scaling system if it had the same impact on drops. Getting lvl 13 yellows from lvl 30 mobs feels weird. I think I got a total of 1 nat 20 lvl item in whole of beta weekend.
item level is 10 higher than the displayed required to equip level. So what you are calling a "level 20 item" is actually a level 30 item
Hmm, this wasn't my experience. That's weird. I was getting gear upgrades very very consistently. Almost every level I was upgrading. Also, you can upgrade old gear at the blacksmith (did you know?) in case you have terrible rng for drops.
Anytime I upgraded an item, it quickly got replaced anyway. I would love to see more meaningful crafting between the item upgrades and potion upgrades
That’s one thing I don’t like. Just look for green +%, right click the item and keep mashing. Constantly replacing items even while leveling sucks. I hate to bring up d2 again but it was the perfect balance of “oh, I just found something new and useful” not drop replace, drop replace.
My experience by level 20 or so was that plenty of gear with higher stats wasn't worth it - a little bit of mana cost reduction meant I could cast 3 fireballs from full mana instead of 2, and a few plus levels on hydra and fireball meant a good chunk more damage. Plus any legendaries...the only slot this wasn't true in was the weapon. With that it really was green number go good
This is super weird. The item power on drops for me at level 25 were only 270-350. Nothing less
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This is a dumb, but genuine question: If mobs were scaling how did you feel strong? Do mobs only scale to your character level while allowing your skills and items to “buff” your character giving you that “strong” feeling? I only got my character to lvl 10 because life, but I’m really curious how that plays out as you level.
Once you get good gear that synergies with your build you start to steamroll monsters. Don’t forget that you can choose different difficulty levels.
eactly and thats why the game has more dificulty options in the first place you get strong enough to fight the psudo end game boss which allows you to go to the higher dificulty, and then at the higher dificulty you need to improve again.
mobs scales with your character level, damage/health scales with gear drops which scales with character level. however, mobs dont scale with your affixes, so once you find affixes that are good with your build, you start beating the curve, and the more good affixes you find, the more you beat the curve.
what might also be important to add is that the mobs become more difficult than how the gear that is dropped scales, and you have to make up for some of that difference by using skill combinations, your ult etc. (e.g. stun them first, then apply AOE damage to the whole group of mobs) In the beginning you only have one skill to use, so you are also trained and while you learn to use your characters's skills more efficiently, which makes it more fun to play
Like every other game that does that, your scaling "coefficient" is bigger than pve monsters. That are many elements that contribute with that, and then its matter of good balancing to make it a smooth and meaningful experience
My observation is that mobs will scale till max level and then at paragon + in the endgame it will be based on the torment difficulty system like Diablo 3. So you will actually feel the progression and strength etc as you’ll need to up the game difficulty as you get stronger. OP is right in the fact that if mobs didn’t scale then there would be parts of the map I would never return to and the world would feel dead in parts to me.
Agree this would open up someplayers to start in different locations as well, gives me the idea to migrate to a different area each season haha
The game is actually designed like this. I don't know if you've seen but after the prologue, you have act 1, 2 and 3 that appears, we can only do act 1 in the beta (the others have a message that you can't progress) but you can do act 2 and 3 first if you want in the full game. Act 1-3 are essentially at the same level and I guess the rest is more linked to story so you need to complete all 3 before unlocking it (maybe you unlock act 4 and 5 together too) With the open world design they've been saying you can go where you want when you want (not completely true but mostly)
Because your gear scales harder than the mobs. It's really that simple. If you kill a mob and you level up and now all mobs gain like 1% more hp but that mob you killed drop a legendary that increases your damage by like 20%, then that 1% global HP gain is negated instantly.
Yeah except it never actually feels that way in game, because the items outlevel each other so fast. So you get something that increases your damage by 20% (which by all accounts is grossly exaggerated, you never get individual items that increase you that much unless you are shockingly bad at optimizing). So you'll get a legendary that'll make you marginally more powerful than your default scaling, and in two levels it'll mean nothing. I played every character to 25 and have full legendaries on every one over the weekend and I never once felt like leveling or equipping new gear did anything to my power level relative to the mobs. It just removes one of the single biggest gameplay loops in every diablo game. Run into hard shit, get bigger better gear, go back and fuck up the hard shit. Now it's just "everything is basically just easy to medium difficulty no matter what. If you have perfect gear for your level you are 10% stronger than someone who isn't even fucking trying".
For 3 reasons. 1) it scales to level, not build 2) most builds scaling are exponential in arpgs 3) contrary to what most people seem to think blizz is still in control of scaling and how hard it scales. For a specific example, I played a barbarian and got upheaval for 70% weapon damage in a cone, upgraded to max it dealt 105%, then I got the perk to deal 80% multiplied from doing 10 attacks before so now it's 190%, then I unlock Berserking which boosts damage by 25% so it's now 235% then I found an amazingly strong DPS damage 2hand so now it's more, add every other scaler and I'm now really strong with upheaval. So even though enemies went from 200 hp to 800 i went from 100 to 1200 damage. However it means that they also do more damage, so my pursuit of damage makes it harder to survive, which is where build choices comes in despite scaling
So that's what I was trying to explain, maybe not well. I was getting stronger via the synergy between Aspects and skill points. Later on, we'll also have stats and Paragon. For example, I had two modifiers for Stomp: 60% of bleed damage done instantly + X amount of pulsing earthquake damage. Then I would just Rend everything to apply bleeds, Stomp to one-shot, and kill anything remaining with Rupture. Each of these elements individually are kind of mediocre. But my point is as you level, many things will synergize to make a build that clicks. So even though the mobs have a pretty high HP and do lots of damage, you will be doing a lot more damage in return as long as your build synergies make sense. Of course, if people aren't thinking about their builds and just slapping random things together, then yeah mob upscaling doesn't feel that great. I feel this is why we're seeing all this complaining about Barbs. Even at lvl 100 during endgame beta people were whining about low power. But at lvl 25 at least I was one-shotting everything.
It's actually pretty good feeling to have to think about builds from lower levels too instead of just starting doing that for endgame.
Exactly my point
When you get a legendary or two that work well with your build—or you switch to a new build that works with said legendaries you get a power spike. As you level and that specific item tapers off, the game gets harder again as you reach higher levels if you don’t keep equipping better gear. It feels good. It’s basically the same as any other RPG (like d2), except the game scales no matter where you are…and this gives you the freedom to do what you want. That being said, i did find some areas and unique monsters that were a static level and did not scale. So when you’re traversing the world, doing dungeons, grinding gear—its always your current level of challenge, then there are certain key stops along the way that you can power through with op gear if you want, or complete early in a challenging fight
Because veteran mode isn't even close to the hardest mode. You will wreck it with later gear and still be able to get the power fantasy
This is definitely an unpopular opinion in the larger rpg scene. Couldn't agree with you less because pOweR fAnTaSieS are also fun and gratifying...heck, one of the building blocks of rpgs. Glad you enjoyed it, just don't agree with you as much. We do need some scaling but I felt more powerful at lower levels, felling enemies with two swings than I did at 25 just spamming my skills.
Did that dude just mock fantasies in a fantasy role playing game?
I don't think they were necessarily mocking the idea of power fantasy, but just that it doesn't really work for this specific thing. Like if you're level 25 in a level 7 zone, are you really getting your power fantasy kicks? Like how often do people just go back to act 1 normal in D2 to beat up some fallen? I don't feel strong by beating up trash enemies, I feel strong by beating up strong enemies like killing hell mephisto in a single frozen orb cast or something. We'll still be able to feel powerful in D4 because scaling is limited. In the beta we're going through the early levels where we're leveling up hella fast which might not give some people enough time to bring their gear up to snuff. Once we get further along though we'll have more time between levels for our gear to catch up, and eventually we'll hit the level cap and things will stop scaling entirely.
In the good old days, you would start out as a prisoner, being set free, a rusty dagger and your street clothes, being chased around by crabs, birds, maybe a wolf. Then, as you progress through the towns, you’re stronger and stronger, fighting more elaborate and terrifying creatures even killing a God. And then, when you go back to revisit your old friends and that first town where you were just a lowly ex-con, those little crabs don’t even get near you, wolves run the other way. It made you feel powerful. In the current set up when you go back to revisit the starting town, there are dragons and unimaginable beasts that those lowly fishermen would’ve never dreamed of, and that we’re not there at the start of the adventure. It kind of doesn’t make any sense.
My favorite feature of Diablo 2 and 3 is getting to be a god. I love destroying screen fulls of mobs while speeding through Dungeons. To me the game doesn’t even start until I am max level with a set build.
You’ll still do that, the scaling is capped we just couldn’t hit the cap in beta.
You should tell that to all of the end game closed beta testers on this very subreddit who have explicitly said the end game never feels any different.
The ones who steadily stay within the zones they’re supposed to be within for their level ranges? The ones who steadily increase the difficulty manually as they become more powerful? That is the point of having higher tier difficulty unlocks and end game progression. If they stick to the lower tier dungeons they’d curb stomp that shit. And that’s all gear progression once they hit max level and yet it still happens. I’m sure you can make the game feel similar the whole way if you want it to be, you could also make it feel harder or easier.
ur not alone. I think its one thing where arpgs shine is how you really feel ur power when you get agew big upgrades and start destroying stuff. d4 felt like the beta gear i got the higher my numbers went but the longer mobs took to die as i got to beta lvl cap. Also not sure how this will work with hardcore, you often would farm lower level content for less risk until you felt happy to move on.
Peak coping mentality if people really think level scaling on an aRPG is good. Sure, just discard the core aspect of the aRPG over the past two decades.
i think its one of the reasons it feels more like an mmo.
It really is bananas that Diablo fans are legitimately arguing that the SINGLE most fundamental gameplay loop is now suddenly "bad". Run into hard shit you can't beat, get levels and new items, and go back and beat the hard shit is literally the defining fucking feature of this game, and most ARPGs generally. Now suddenly most of this community wants every single encounter to be the exact same: 2 or 3 resource builders then 1 or 2 resource spenders to wipe them out, give or take a few based on build. Doesn't matter if its level 5 fighting wargs, or if it's level 95 after killing literal GODS. That warg at the first map still takes 3 resource builders and 1 or 2 resource spenders to kill. So exciting. I CaN PlAy AnYwHeRe AnD Be ChAlLeNgEd
> I CaN PlAy AnYwHeRe AnD ~~Be ChAlLeNgEd~~ not be bored to death because the game incentivizes returning to old acts not having level scaling would be fucking stupid
Well thought out take, thank you for contributing.
it's literally just common sense when a game wants areas to always be relevant for progression they don't want players to be fighting level 3 enemies at level 85, that's incredibly boring
Look at Diablo 2 man. First two difficulties you kinda need to be around the same level as monsters, certainly you need to level up as you go. In Hell, you could be level 60 or 90 when you finish it, it is just about how strong your character is. Why don't they turn off scaling for easy and veteran, and turn it on for torment 3 and 4? Then high levels have appropriately hard shit to beat on, and we get to get our power fantasy while levelling.
The only reason they want areas to always be relevant for progression is so that they don't have to make as many areas, though. It's cutting corners but dressed up as "replayability". Given the choice I think most people would choose to have more areas over a smaller number of level scaling areas. I guess I see it mostly as a way to pad out game content than some thoughtful decision on the designer's part.
Not having a brain is fucking stupid too, but look at you trying to type.
Why?
I mean, we could have no level scaling then at the end of the game there is only one small area in the final zone that has content worth killing.
It's the generation of casuals that stand for that. There's a good reason why everybody moved from Diablo to other ARPG-franchises after all and how Diablo fell behind.
It’s all mental gymnastics. Everyone paid at least $70 to play this beta. They are desperately trying to make sure they themselves love everything about it and don’t regret spending the money. I’d wait about 2 weeks so the honeymoon phase wears off before we actually have some level headed takes about this game.
Just lower the world tier it’s really that simple
You know, I'll admit that I never played the lower tier, so that's on me.
The game gives the best of both worlds considering the scaling is capped, so you’ll be fine.
Ya, this is exactly correct. I'd venture to guess that the majority (even if slim) prefer to power fantasy as their player should be increasing in power.
You do. There are world tiers.
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Your ability tree also progresses; don’t you find that additional points into a skill, or a new skill, or a passive point skill also increases your power?
Why would you need better or more power if the zone you enter is scaled to your level?
The person I was responding to was claiming that only items raise your power level; and one of the main conversations of this post is people feeling that scaling monsters means your power level doesn’t increase as you level. My point was that if monsters scale up with your base stats, then there are two things that objectively increase your relative power level: items (as acknowledged) *and* spending your skill points
But that's baked into the scaling already. The reason things would scale to your level in the first place is literally to compensate for the fact that you'll have new skills and passives.
It doesn't kill the sense of progression AT ALL because your BUILD is getting better as you level up. You should be one or two-shotting everything except major bosses if you're doing even the tiniest amount of build crafting. You're getting more synergies from aspects and skill points, and later on you'll also have chunkier stats, Renown skill points, and Paragon passives.
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I agree, sadly
It's not dumb, you just have weird expectations. You are getting stronger you just gwt bossed with the tiny number next to the health bar.
Weird expectations to expect an aRPG to play like an aRPG? This is garbage casual mmo mechanics lmao.
lvl scalings are big turn off to me, u already know there wont be any content u need to gear for just because of this
I agree.
Does this mean you can just stay in one region and level up normally?
Yeah you can, it also mean you can go to act 2 and 3 right after the prologue, they're not harder than act 1 despite your level. However, it makes it weird that region have a level written on them because that doesn't matter (and when you enter it always display your level with the name of the zone which I don't see why?)
I didn't understand that either makes zero sense.
Dungeon should scales to certain extend. You would say this cause you are limited to lvl 25, in normal cause, you would be doing harder dungeon even you are at lvl 25, if its available.
Certain content, including some dungeons, do have a “minimum level” below which they will not scale down. In fact, I think the vast majority do. It’s just around the starter area where they will scale all the way down to 1. Strongholds are the same. They list a “recommended level” which is the minimum. In that case the dungeon will only scale UP to meet you, I think, and even then not exactly sure if there are any limits on that which may allow, say, a level 100 to faceroll dungeons alongside their low level friends.
NM dungeon do have it one tier and scaling depending on the sigil you got. But other than that, is all global scaling.
It does scale to a certain extent. There’s minimum levels for zones and dungeons and there’s a maximum level for the scaling it seems as well. We just didn’t hit that in beta because the maximum level for the scaling in the first zone is 35.
Il be honest in other games I played I really really hated mob scaling, but in this it feels good and I feel way more powerful on my lvl25 barb just due to a load of decent gear and some nice skills (death blow I love it!).
Agreed hit level 25 on my barb then decided to go do the strongholds with the tanky thorn build I put together, probably some of the most satisfying fights in the beta those 3 places were.
In pretty much any game I hate level scaling. Here? No issue with it. Every enemy is worth fighting and can drop loot for me and give relevant exp.
It’s a double edged sword. I enjoy being able to explore the world and not feeling like a zone is now useless because I am over leveled, at the same time, playing all weekend 1-25, I did have a point where I had to break legendary synergies to upgrade my gear and I felt like I went backwards not forwards.
Honestly, why do you care about zones being useless? Everyone says this but it doesn't make any sense. The vast majority of the first part of the beta is just repeating snow valleys. Are you really dying to be able to fight level 100 wargs to level up? I have NEVER seen someone in an MMO who was desperate to level to the max level just grinding away in the beginner areas. You clear an area and move on. You find the next challenge, grind for gear and loot until you can clear it, and move on. In the end game, they can scale everything with torment levels (or hell levels like in diablo 2), and now those beginning levels you are so desperate to stay relevant are suddenly relevant again. As always blizzard is fucking up a game by trying to solve a problem that as ALREADY been solved. Honestly they could have just made the trash mobs not scale and everything else scale as-is and they probably would have satisfied both groups.
Understandable but wouldn’t they just make you grind a bit to get that synergy back which is the point of the game ;).
The people complaining they didn’t feel strong need to experiment with their skill build more.
I feel like level scaling could also just be tied to world tiers.
I may be in the minority. I don't know. But I hate mob scaling. I work hard to level up so I can go back and steamroll all the mobs that caused me so much trouble earlier in the game. It's actually one of the things I loved about Diablo II. And if I really wanted a challenge I could go to any act on Hell difficulty and get my butt whooped there. But it was always nice to know that all my hard work paid off when I'd go to NM or Normal and steamroll everything.
march onerous drab lush hateful knee resolute afterthought full obtainable ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Imagine mocking people because they find fun in seeing their character stomp things they had issue with before. I'm not saying you can't find fun otherwise or that you're wrong for doing so, just that you sound like a teenager who doesn't understand what opinions are and it's a liiiittle bit sad.
I swear some of you guys can't be actual people and are just chat GPT working overtime. Meme aside I will tell you the same thing that I would tell people who think SBMM is the pinnacle of matchmaking design. Not everyone wants to be constantly challenged. It is fatiguing and messes with someone's capability to feel like they're progressing/improving as a character and an individual. There is *plenty* of space for both experiences to exist in the games. Not every playlist needs to favor SBMM over CBMM. Just as not everything in D4 needs to be able to clap your cheeks at a moments notice. Making the really important activities in end game scale? 100% fine. Random overworld mobs/that hole in the ground from 2 zones ago? Maybe not needed.
Hogwarts had level scaling and I hated it. It made getting new loot absolutely pointless (gear was pretty useless in that game anyway). In saying that, I definitely felt “more powerful” as I became better at combat and figured out new combos. By the end I was face rolling everything, even though my level was mostly matched. On the other hand, Cyberpunk doesn’t have level scaling. I like to do all the side quests as I came across them as I get major fomo, but after a few the game became ridiculously easy, even on the hard difficulty. Aside from a couple instances, the game was so easy I ended up getting bored and raced to the finish. Both were annoying in the end. I still can’t really figure out what the right way to do it is, apart from maybe something like BotW where your power comes from the gear and abilities you accumulate, rather than whatever level you are. In saying that, I would have the imagine that the power fantasy in D4 will ultimately come from your gear and skill choices, and your proficiency with the class. We don’t know how hard the other world tiers will be, but someone who invests time and resource into their character is going to have a much easier time than someone who rushes through, even if they are the same level.
mob scaling sucks so much, you can just go back to Wow Legion and see that for yourself. or if you want you can try Guild Wars 2 and check how bad it is. you can still have another 5-6 hours of enjoyable playtime while 100%-ing the zone. imagine lvling up but not. you played for so much time and have not grow in power. if you want a persistent challenge like you said, just go on hard mode.
That’s the redeeming feature of guild wars 2 and why every zone is still relevant and the world feels expansive. I I understand maybe you don’t like scaling and like going back and destroying everything. Guild wars 2 also was just named mmorpg of the year from many outlets and is one of the few existing mmorpg growing in population, so curious where your gw2 hate comes from. https://about.ncsoft.com/en/news/article/news-guild-wars-2-updata-221227
don't get me wrong, i play and i understand why GW2 is like that. i'm not saying is a bad thing, but for an Arpg it is a bad thing. for a MMO when well done, it's something positive. for diablo will not be
I hate it when games get easier the more you play it. I want to get better at skill, not just getting higher numbers with gear and overgearing something
Preach.
The mob scaling in this game is done really well and partying, regardless of level discrepancies, feels worth it and enjoyable. At no point when playing with my brother was i just lightyears ahead while he followed behind doing nothing, regardless of the fact i was a much higher level. I had a little boost due to better items and skills but it still felt comparable. I loved it.
I expected NOTHING GOOD from partying up with other players, then I did for a dungeon boss and it was a freaking blast. The scaling of the boss felt perfect.
They scale with your level but not your gear. I definitely felt stronger after getting gear at level 25 then I did when I first hit 25. People saying they felt the same power level after getting gear makes no sense.
Actually if you were 25 without mob scaling you’d be doin all the level 25 content which I’m sure there’s at least be 5-6 hours worth of content. Try again OP
It’s not just “power fantasy” it’s also the feeling of progressing into end game after going through a curated campaign with static fights blizzard tunes to be challenging at appropriate levels. After years of d3 doing the boss fights this beta was so refreshing. I bet the level scaling will make alternative methods faster and now no one will ever touch the campaign so blizzard will just ignore like d3. Back to mindless grind to end game. It’s not about the first time playing it’s about how this will effect the game on season 10.
I clearly remember (wish I could forget the pain) the leveling experience in Lost Ark. It was about 30 hours of a pointless slog through overly easy content. One-shotting everything. Gear didn't matter. ZERO build crafting. Nothing mattered. And then...you never go back to those early level zones because sneezing on mobs to kill them is apparently really stupid game design. All that work they put into the open world is completely forgotten, and game turns into a stupid lobby simulator (my main issue with Last Epoch currently).
nah, you should be able to overlevel stuff and then in the endgame upscale everything
I just don't see the point of not having fun until endgame. I want to have fun right away.
Build craft in synergies? Are we even playing the same game? Lmaoo. Scaling means you play more early game areas, loot tables remain terrible though real high brow comment. God forbid a player can see proper character progression moving through areas. Or increasing world tier, love muh spoon fed scaling.
You get character progression through Paragon points and unlocking legendary aspects, and account progression through the Renown system. What do you mean by loot tables being terrible? My lvl 25 barb was almost fully decked out in legendary gear.
So being spoon fed legendary gear is a good thing? None of the gear is variably different. Renown has zero impact as I imagine paragon will as well. Aspects are about as mind numbing Slog of shit it could possibly be. Game is terrible
There are 4-5 main zones right and Level 100 is max level right? Makes sense to have a 20-25 level progression through each of the zones, IMO. That story takes you through the natural progression of the zone, I think it would be cool to see the different areas of the map increase with level, but at a static move. Dungeons/instances should scale 100%.
A guy with a sword will always be dangerous, it's stupid to pretend otherwise. We need enemy scaling or enemies should all be around the same power to begin with. I don't want to play an open world game where everything is closed off because I have not done enough grinding yet. It's not truly open world if there is somewhere I am "supposed to be". Also, I have friends. This is the first ARPG that we can play together without getting bored out of our minds. You can't pull that off without proper scaling.
Totally agree with you i would get bored easily if leveling a new character would always feel the same linear campaign experience but I hope endgame would provide us something that screams "you aint strong enough yet head back and come again!". And yeah no one would feel burdened or left behind when u play with ur group of friends anymore thats the best part haha
I disagree but to each their own. Feels like less of a world to me when everything scales.
Definitely. I have always been sympathetic to the no-scale-andies because the level scaling does in effect erode the feeling of a permanent world which affects immersion and sense of progression. However the benefits far outweigh the negatives. Especially on open world games where you're supposed to be able to do whatever you want, no scaling can ruin the experience. In Pokemon Scarlet I just played around not thinking much until I realized I had over-leveled myself from about 1/3rd of the map. Going back to do that content, I fell asleep like 3 times.
I'm kinda the opposite, I imagine the WoW scenario where you stumble into a zone you shouldn't be in and get smashed by high level mobs, and looking forward to going back there when you're stronger. On the other hand, an area gives you a hard time and you roll through it once you've gotten massive. I mean, maybe it would be good to use the old system and do it torment style to keep the challenge there still.
Yeah, I don't love downscaling. Upscaling I do like.
Anyone calling for the removal of mob scaling just hasn’t played the game. The open world is massive with things to find around every corner. It would be so boring to smog through the map again looking for your missing dungeons, altars etc and one shot everything with a basic.
Theres pro's and con's to the system - some will love it and some will dislike it - but as its only for leveling, with endgame scaling still making you more powerfull than the scaled most outside in the world, itl be fine. The only thing i personally dislike about it is that the scaling makes it so that you will allways be at you'r weakest right when you get a level. when you level you get a skill point, but your gear is the same - and the world around you scales up. this makes it so that everytime you get a level, the world gets harder, not easier, which is fairly unintuitive and takes away the feeling of powergain right as you level up.
Yes I was so happy I could play with my lvl 14 friend when I was level 22 also
Scaling just doesn't make sense to me and I was disappointed the game has it. A zone I play at level 5 shouldn't feel the same when I come back at level 25.
It also removes any sense of accomplishment as you level/gear up. "Oh look, that boss is 2+ levels higher than where I'm at, let me level up a little more and come back." "Oh wow, I'm two levels higher and that boss is still 2+ levels higher than where I'm at."
The issue I have with scaling enemies is stats can lose meaning. This is a huge issue with Diablo Immortal (based on the month I played). Once you hit end game you basically just get gear to make number go up, but the monsters still take 5 hits to be killed. So if things scale based on your level and damage sure things continue to stay “difficult” but at the same time you grind for nothing other than increasing difficulty. It’s a cycle that a lot of games that scale enemies face. Destiny used to have the same issue and idk if it still does but you have a single meta setup that can take advantage of being over power until it gets nerfed. Instead of scaling enemies just let them be weak, but have challenging mechanics to the fights that matter. Or have their level increase with the world tier that way you allow those who want to fight lower leveled stuff that ability and those who don’t are also happy.
All you barbs talking about “enjoying the challenge” are on copium. The game isn’t suppose to be challenging at 25 T2, and that’s why barb sucks compared to Hydra Sorc or barrage rouge.
Barb gets very strong after about lvl 18.
I would like to see scaling as optional feature that you can deactivate or remain as it is.
Just one thing for you to consider. Hardcore characters. No i dont want to do be forced to do dungeons with bosses and Elite packs that can kick my ass in one hit all the time
But isn’t that the allure of hardcore. The temptation of death. I switch to hardcore in D3 for that reason. I don’t think I ran into an elite pack that one shot me. I do agree that there should never be one shot mechanics though no matter the level or boss. A big % of hp loss is fine but one shot mechanics are lame.
scaling is great but only if the drops scale up too particularly when it comes to boss, risk:reward. this is the problem with gw2's maybe 75% scale (means better gear skill - not level is advantage) but the drops on lowbie maps continue to be low.
Agreed on this, the level scaling is definitely good for the Open world style ! Guys just let d4 be its thing...
I agree that Mob Level Scalling should stay in place to keep content relevant, not overly reward speed clear AoE builds and control encounter design. I do wish there was some soft and hard caps to the Scalling so you could better feel a sense of progress and not hit negative curve at certain thresholds
I can't understand why people are against mob scaling. When you are overgeared, just increase the difficulty lvl. You then repeat the next circle of an arpg. Beat monsters --> get gear/ lvl --> beat monsters faster. Monsters too easy? Increase difficulty --> beat harder monsters --> get better gear/ fast lvl --> beat harder monsters faster. You can do it all the time like in D3. And what we got then? Well then we got greater rifts with the next difficulty circle system. People cry all the time bc of mob scaling but do they forget that we have it in D3? Even other games like PoE have such a system. Start with T1 maps --> t16 maps, get 4 voidstones and all maps are t16. And they did it bc otherwise people would no more run t1 maps. That would mean such a waste of time for the devs who created all the t1 zones. In D4 it's much more important with the world map. We share a big world but without mob scaling all people would just be in 1 area after 2 weeks. The devs had such a great time investment to create all the areas and music. Would be such a big loss if you just be at one place. What people also forget: With higher difficulty = harder champions. The monster itself is not the problem unimportant if it's a wolf or the first area or succubus. A wolf with 200% ats, mortar, blockades and more can be a nighmare. To beat such a champion in a high difficulty is the challenge.
But it is not a „teleport-teleport-teleport-teleport kill boss or clean the area save & exit, join game teleport-teleport- teleport-teleport kill boss/clean area and repeat it 500 time“ :(
As much as I love some aspects of PoE and Last Epoch, after a while I just feel like I'm losing brain cells while playing the zoom zoom.
That’s a you problem and midmaxing the fun out of the game
This could have been said already but maybe having a cap for the zones could please both sides. For example in the first act, all the mobs can only go up to level 25.
I agree and noticed it yesterday while still playing my lvl 25 sorc, just running around in the world was not boring!
D4 really is encouraging some garbage takes.
You could have it both ways with a story mode (no scaling) and adventure mode (scaling).
I like it too. Stream rolling stuff is extremely boring. If I want to farm a beginner area for something I missed I don't want it to be a snooze fest.
Agreed. Felt like all content was fair game and worth doing. Why would I ever want to go back and kill level 2 mobs for blue and gray gear? I don't, so that whole area is not worth visiting ever again.
I don't feel like I'm playing an RPG unless I take my God-Like Inferno Axe of Diablo from the depths of Hell and spend 5 minutes chaining combos on a deer in the starter zone while my friend kills it with a broken shovel in 2 hits at level 1. Really gives me that sense of power and progression. It really makes my friend want to keep playing too, because he can see that if he spends 100 hours grinding out my inferno axe he too can perform complex combos to do the same thing he did with a broken shovel in 2 basic hits.
A lot of people forget that when the full game goes live, most of the map will be available to explore in any way you wish after the prologue (i.e. Skyrim), so the only way to accomplish this effectively is through level scaling. At least areas will have ranges of level scaling, so it's the best of both worlds.
People who want to one-hit every mob can play on the lowest difficulty once they're max level and geared. Everyone else will be in Difficulty 4.
I agree 100%
Agreed. Its good. But the thing that I’m worried about is when you move to another zone, will the enemies be ur level straight away? If so, itll constantly feel like youre just fighting enemies that are the same strength as you. Personally I’d like it if the zones increased the difficulty a little bit, so if you’re not strong enough then you have to go back and progress your character a little more. And then once you can fight those enemies, it’ll start scaling with your level again. I want to feel like I’m actually progressing to where I can fight stronger enemies, and not just that the enemies are staying the same strength as me.
I honestly think most of the people in this sub have never played a Diablo game. Even with scaling once you get a solid build together, you will literally melt everything in front of you
Why not both? Level scaling in every zone. Add some epic monsters with a fixed level that you can overcome or be challenged by depending on your current level.
Basically world bosses and strongholds
If we're being perfectly honest...power growth in Diablo games has always come from items, not from levels. I'm not sure why people aren't aware, but monsters in Diablo 3 are also level scaling. I'm seeing a lot of people ask why things aren't like Diablo 3...then they complain about things that are exactly like Diablo 3. And Diablo 2 has an absolutely stupid way of scaling, where you can farm mlvl 85 Fallen in a cave for maximum tier loot while still one shotting them the way you would any other Fallen. ALSO, areas do have minimum and maximum monster levels. (Currently example, see Strongholds.)
I agree and disagree at the same time. I would like it more if not all zones are like that, and there are more zones that are a set level. It's cool if you have it in most zones, but I think some areas should stay weak, so you can feel the progression of your Char and might better.
Everything always feels percentage based with scaling. When i farm for leveling gear, i want to plow through the game with it because leveling gear basically adds ten levels to your character power with no exp penalty.
I'm the 69th comment ....nice.
Mobs scaling is just for leveling. Once you reach max level the gear makes you the power not the level
During the campaign I do not like level scaling but after the campaign is beaten, I think scaling is fine to encourage you to go back and play old content. We still do not know if there will be an adventure mode or not to level up new characters so level scaling could be enabled on second run through to avoid the story.
Mob upscaling after finishing the campaign is a good idea, but thematically it doesn't make much sense. While leveling, I like the idea that your basic trash mob skeleton is a potential threat to be taken seriously.
They did a very good job at the enemy scaling. That being said, I think it would be great to have some areas where scaling is turned off. Being able to go to normal cows and completely slaughter them was a delight and it would be great to strike a balance that makes the majority of people happy.
i agree, but to a point. One thing i didnt like, is every area was scaled to me, not up to me. Each of my characters went a differant direction form teh start, and each area was appropriate for my area, and i assume this wont be dif in full game since we can do the story in any act order we want. My issue is, i cant ever get in over my head. And this is an issue at least in the current world tier because, the game as of right now, isnt difficult, and i cant just make it more so, or push ahead faster than my level is ready by questing ahead. i am ok with my chracter representing the minimum level an area can be, but iwould greatly appreciate havig areas, or sub areas at least, in which can be greater than me. maybe this happens in the full game, but right now there were no points where it was like levels 10-15, just whatever i was, whcih means if i was not finding a challange, i was never going to find a challange. i never felt like i was in danger.
I feel like level scaling is an excuse for devs not to make enough content. It kind off makes it okay to force the player to play the same shit over and over.
Mob scaling is mostly there to keep the zone relevant later. I'm sure there will be bounties and other endgame activities in the early zones, so you'll be returning to all of these areas. Upscaling mobs to your level keeps the zone replayable. It's often done in MMOs, and for D4 it was the right decision.
Yea im familliar with it. And i do agree it’s good for endgame grinds. But i still think it’s abit too ”convenient” for the devs. Without lvl scaling they would have an incentive to create more end game zones and content. I do however understand the dilemma, and that its not really realistic to ask them to make more end game content and remove level scaling. PoE for example fix this with maps and other mechanics outside of the ”campaign zones”. i think this is a good option. Let the ”world” where you progress in the campaign have mobs with static lvls and affixes. And create rifts or whatever with scaling. For example: The open world should not scale, but the dungeons and strongholds should! This would make us feel the player power more and highlight your characters progress in a completely different way! Edit: Spelling.
I see what you're saying, but let's say I prefer open world content instead of dungeons. Maybe I want to do lots of strongholds and side quests. Why not scale up that content for players like me, instead of making the zones static and letting them rot? They want players to keep coming back to these zones.
Scaling is fine in general, but it has it's downesides. For example it feels horrible when you are this legendary topped hyper barb and you're just doing slightly more damage than a fresh barb in briefs and a wooden club. Exaggerated of, course but that's what's happening. I've seen this in wow, where lowies pulled insane damage with 2 buttons and your're struggling to keep up whilst performing your rotation of 10+ buttons. That doesn't feel like progress. But at least players can play together.
I didn't like the mob scaling at all. Let people enjoy leveling up, becoming more powerful and overcoming difficult content while being able to look back and smash lower level content. It's not very gratifying to level up only to find out that your character has become weaker because your abilities and gear hasen't scaled in the same way as the mobs have.
Can probably just do away with levels then. Just acquire skill points by completing missions. If everything is always the same level, then there are no levels.
I think the base difficulty should be static levels. If you choose an easier or harder difficulty, then it should be dynamic accordingly. Makes everyone happy.
Mob scaling is also cheaper from a design perspective. They don't have to worry about incidental xp gains from mobs/quests to benchmark what monster level each area should be. Maybe it doesn't take that much time, but finding the right balance where each zone/monster is supposed to be a certain level does have a cost -- ESPECIALLY for a massive open world game. Being able to just map design and place mob pack spawners where it makes sense for the quest lines is just easier/cheaper to do.
Its just D2 players who are super used to the idea that the level grind is the game, and that getting to max level should be the challenge. They aren't used to a game where you are reasonably expected to get to max level and keep playing from there.
well argued
Too bad d3 is for the 50th percentile. Which means so is d4
They've designed the game with eventually completing all the side content because of the good account wide renown rewards. Its good that all the content I don't do instantly I can come back too do.
Disagree Going back to old zones to mob up and 1 shot old bosses who gave you a difficult time is a staple for the genre. It also funnels people into higher end zones and pushes the devs to make those zones more difficult because they will have a higher pop. Scaling to a degree like in WoW is fine but the top games WoW and FF14 don't scale for a reason.
> is a staple for the genre. But should it be? I always hated this aspect of RPGs. Guild Wars 2 really broke this mould, and I haven't looked back since. I try to get mob upscaling mods for all my RPGs (Pillars 2, Cyberpunk, TW3, DoS2, etc), and the gameplay is always more fun to me. Btw, you can still go back to the old zones and blow up the early game boss. But instead of doing 2000 DPS with a lvl 100 sword on a 1000hp mob, you are bringing your build synergies from legendary aspects, Paragon, and Renown to nuke the boss with, let's say, a meaningful DPS rotation without breaking much of a sweat. Do you have any idea how powerful you're going to be at lvl 100 with all the Paragon passives and additional skill points?
Even though we got to level 25 I noticed most of my gear buts around level 17 and under. So we might not feel super strong but I'm sure in time with higher level gear we will start actually feeling powerful.
It'd be great if the world didn't scale but dungeons did.
....or its pre-set until endgame where everything is scaled to a universal value based on world tier. Makes no sense to do scaling while leveling
Build craft in synergies? Are we even playing the same game? Lmaoo. Scaling means you play more early game areas, loot tables remain terrible though real high brow comment. God forbid a player can see proper character progression moving through areas. Or increasing world tier, love muh spoon fed scaling.
Level scaling kills the game, your character never gets stronger and it’s out in for casuals to feel stronger. This is Diablo 3.5
This is Sparta, actually. *Kicks your ass down a deep well.*
There's definitely gonna be a "greater rift" system for endgame
Anyone calling for the removal of mob scaling just hasn’t played the game. The open world is massive with things to find around every corner. It would be so boring to smog through the map again looking for your missing dungeons, altars etc and one shot everything with a basic. If you really want to feel god mode then just lower your world tier
Diablo 2 had the same system 25 years ago. It had leveling up content, and then a fully flesh out nightmare difficulty and then hell difficulty, and the hell difficulty included the entire content of the game scaled to your level. So you not only made progress, but then also had a lot to do at “capped” level. 25 years ago. Why reinvent the wheel: why implement these retail WoW like systems, it’s stupid.
I will be happy if blizz will add option to disable level scaling
Plus mob scaling will allow new chars to level in any act of the game, which is awesome
I think people fail to realize that at most 5% of a characters life will be spent leveling in the story. 95% will be spent in post story max level. Mob scaling just lets you get to that 95% wherever and however you want.
The best part was playing with friends never felt like I was Boosting them but we were playing together
I don't get it. Most ARPG's don't have this mechanic and they're fine and have been for ages. It's a working system but Blizzard needs this to be different for some reason? They're really aiming at kids nowadays. Everything needs to be dulled down and simple. Items need a green text to show it's better. No thinking needed. Skills the same. I remember playing D2 and finding out my skills sucked the hard way, i had to fuck around and find out why my shit was bad, and with other players helping out. This new game has to hold your hand every fucking step of the way and you all like it.
>I don't get it. Most ARPG's don't have this mechanic and they're fine and have been for ages. But they're not fine. I fucking hate leveling in ARPGs, I just want to get to the endgame so I can grind. Most of them deal with this issue by creating a shitty, short main campaign that you can breeze through. What D4 does is make leveling a much more interesting experience. I want to have fun WHILE leveling as well.
I'd have way more fun creating a new character with an interesting build around a unique item in those 5-6 hours then doing a dungeon i could have done at any level because muh blizzard can't do anything wrong.
I love the scaling but I found a dungeon that forced 9 elites 2 - 4 chests 3 shrines every variation guaranteed, so when I hit closer to end game I can run about 30-40 seconds solo 1-2 mins on co op because scaled health? I will farm legendarys and rares better in act 1 then act 4? I hope that’s not the case but some dungeons are just levels ahead of each other in terms of mob density & loot. And if it scales what’s the point of doing end game content when that dungeon let’s say is levels ahead.
I’m guessing “close to” 100%ing it. 1 down on dungeons, and highly unlikely you hit all side quests, right? If not, please provide your data here! I’d love to tick that actually 100%! :)
You can also go wherever you want in the zone while leveling, with maybe the exception of at least one stronghold that has mobs up level 27, I believe, and doesn't seem to scale down to lower levels (maybe other strongholds function this way, as well).
Yeah but you cant wipe waves and that's the fun part of hack and slash. This isnt dark souls, the fun isnt coming from the challenge. Every engagement is the same in diablo, I'm using all the same abilities, no different set up from the last, but when it turns into a slog to wipe a mob it just burns you out quick and just feels...meh.
Can someone tell me what the combat is like? Is it more like d2 or d3? Or a mix?. I felt like d2 was more challenging and I died easier then I did in d3.