Area scaling curve and character level in campaign

General
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As I wrote in another thread named “Please make leveling easy!” here on the forums, where I am of the opposite opinion, sort of. I wanted to ask something that is sort of related to this, that is leveling and area scaling. I wonder if it is intended that we out level the areas we go through during leveling? I often find myself to be 4-5 levels above the area im in, even though I havent even grinded or cleared every mob in areas before it. I just run along doing the quests that I find and during chapter 2-3 and onwards im always overpowered for the intended area and never die unless I fall asleep on my keyboard. Enemies are one-shotted by the more dps oriented builds I’ve tried so I dont even have to bother with enemy abilities, and the more defense oriented builds i’ve tried the mobs still die in 1-2 hits with an aoe ability and with these builds, in the longer fights you can just facetank the bosses anyway so again no need to care for their abilities. Which is a shame because I really want there to be a sense of danger and adventure to explore, and to get an incentive to observe the enemies and their abilities, if you dont pay attention you might die, which makes you want to get better.

And look, im not saying the game should be super hard or punishing either, im not a Darksouls kinda person, more D2 I guess, but it seems to me that maybe a tad bit more health on mobs wouldnt hurt so we can actually take notice of their abilities before they die, and most importantly that areas scale up better to align with you character level.

Whats your thought on this? I understand there is a middle ground to balance this and different people have different perspective on whats “hard”, sure I get that, and I also get that the end-game is where the true challenge is in these sort of games.
But again, my main point is that at least the areas should scaled better with character level, as right now it is not the case as far as i’ve gotten, and I tried all the classes. So is it intended to be this way or will it get adjusted by the devs in the future? Also I do like the pace of character leveling up and progression as it is, the issue is perhaps more the areas not keeping up.

I’ll leave my original post quoted below where I answered in the other thread about difficulty in general as well. I repeated most of it here but I wanted to focus more on the “area level” and ask the devs about that, thus the reason I made a new post.

Blockquote
In my opinion, I find leveling in this game way too easy. I outlevel every area im in and im not even grinding, im following the quests I get and kill the mobs I run into, and im 5 levels above area level, and everything dies in 1-2 hits, especially early on. I guess it can depend on class and build, but seriously this game is just so easy it gets less fun in many ways. I want there to be a sense of adventure and danger around the corner, I want to die to learn the game rather than ignore the mosters and just kill them before they can even act.
If someone dont have time to invest in the game, thats fine, but thats no reason to make the game even easier for everyone else. It should be balanced somewhere between too easy and too hard of course, but I much prefer if the enemies got a tad more health and the areas are scaled up abit to match the normal leveling you get from quests (no grind needed). Right now its just too easy with all the classes imo. Just my two cents.

Blockquote

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Honestly, for an experienced ARPG player, I agree… the Campaign portion of the game is too easy.

Cant really argue that its not…

However, the end-game content gets progressively MUCH more difficult & the ability to outlevel enemies rapidly gets harder…

I suppose the issue here is that new players may like the easiness of the Campaign… and feel that the End-game is too hard without lots of grinding for gear and build perfection… and the exact opposite for those of us (like me) who actually prefer rushing through the Campaign to fight the real bosses in the end-game and grind the ideal gear and theorycraft OP builds.

Maybe the Campaign needs a little more balancing (and probably will get it when the rest of the content is more stable and complete) but its still got to cater for a wider audience than the End-game content which will require 10s if not 100s of play hours to master… Time a lot of players may not have… or be willing to spend…

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For me the campaign is exactly as it should be.
I don’t want the campaign to be a struggle or to be painful. I want it to be a lore exposition, a tutorial for the game and a leveling tool for new heroes. How can I focus on the story if I must retry the same area multiple times? How can I focus on the story if I must stop for a long crafting, regearing or re-specializing session?
Endgame is where the difficulty begins. It’s where you must review your whole build, compensate its weaknesses, adapt it or even change it. The core of the game is in the endgame. I can suffer in endgame, it’s made to challenge me. The endgame is my opponent, the campaign is my friend.

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I would argue its difficulty is right where it’s enjoyable to me. Do I kill many mobs in 1-2 shots following optimal builds? Sure. Do I occasionally die because I do something stupid? Yup.

I’ve been playing ARPGs since D2 released. However, I’m not a high-tier player doing the toughest ARPG content and screaming “MAKE THE GAME HARDER!”.

I’ve found while most of the regular mobs die pretty easy even while leveling, some of them do really high damage and you have to pay attention to and move out of their attacks. Bosses are often the same unless you’re playing a tank build that can just sit there. It feels like a good balance of 80% of the encounters being easy with the other 20% teaching me about what abilities/mobs I need to avoid. For someone who (honestly) plays games more casually these days, it feels like an appropriate balance that welcomes newer or less serious ARPG players, a welcome change IMHO from something like PoE.

I’m early on in the end-game content (only lvl 58 or so on my highest) and it’s still pretty easy. If what you’re saying about it ramping up quickly is accurate then I feel that’s exactly how it should be. Make the game accessible to anyone who wants to spend a few hours playing through a campaign at an easy pace, but make it more difficult the longer you play because you’re likely up to the challenge and won’t quit just because it got challenging.

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Thanks for you feedback guys. Again I should make it clear that in no way do I want the campaign to be “hard” or punishing. I merely think it should be an adventure where you should pay at least bit of attention to not die and that way be learning you class, a little sense of potential danger around the corner tends to give that feeling, but you should not be dying many times in one area of course, that would indeed throw many newcomers off.
But now its the opposite, when I level I one shot everything, usually with AoE skills that clear the screen in 1 sec, that is neither fun nor gives learning. I just ask for some balance tweaks and especially the Area leveling issue that I cannot imagine is really intended this way?

Once again, all the mix-maxing and challenge and more punishment for failing and so on should be left for end-game, I agree on this! Im asking about rather small balance and area curve tweaks if the devs will adjust it a tad bit to better scale with you character level (which in itself has a great pace and feel right now I think so no issue there).

I guess its about personal preference here, as with everything. A middle ground should be reached though hopefully, as of now its abit on the extreme on the opposite end, hence the thread. :slight_smile:

For the record I am not a “high-tier” player, and I dont grind or even min-max, I just test out some builds and go along as I quest but its hard to even optimise when everything is dead in a second before I can compare much difference, the only element of strategy is bosses and glass cannon builds could die on those sure, but they focus on DPS so much that bosses die in few seconds anyway so they sometimes dont even use all their abilities before they are dead, lol Ah well. Thanks for sharing!

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I feel it’s already at the point of “pay at least a bit of attention to not die”…going into the game blind, my first death was around lvl 20 on a sorcerer, when I played rogue, knowing the game much better (this was like my 4th character), I died around lvl 12 or so because I didn’t know what skills worked well and wasn’t used to playing in melee in this game. After learning rogue better and changing my skills, I’m lvl 25 and haven’t died since 16 or so.

Any game is going to generally get easier the more you play it. ARPGs tend to carry a lot of similarities in overall difficulty which allows your experience in others to mostly transfer. A brand new player who isn’t use to play ARPGs will likely die a lot more in the campaign than someone experienced in Diablo or PoE. Some enemies could certainly use a little more health or damage, but there’s definitely enemies that can output a lot of damage quickly if you don’t intentionally avoid their attacks and focus them down.

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I played the campaign a bit more than twenty times. It’s very few compared to some other players, but it’s not “nothing” though. And yet, I only succeeding once in not dying, with a very easy class: Paladin. I know the levels, I know where mobs are, what they will do, but I still make errors the game does not forgive. So yes, the campaign may be very easy, but even something easy and well known can kill you.
I understand you and you may be right, but I still feel the campaign’s difficulty is exactly as it should be.

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Right, thanks again guys for your thoughts on this. The other thread was mainly focused on the topic of difficulty in general. I made this thread with the focus on Area level vs Character level discrepancy that occurs. So lets just focus on that here instead, so we dont repeat everything in two different threads. I just wonder if thats as intended and hence the difficulty curve is as intended because you overpower it. If thats the case I might be contributing with gimping my own game experience because somehow I get too much exp. I plan to make a new character tonight and try to avoid as many mobs as possible and go straight from quest to quest, no exploration, and see if I will still overlevel the areas im in. Thus far I’ve leveled all classes to mid game with only slight difference and always overleveled the area.
I will come back with more feedback after my new playthrough test then.

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I’m not a diehard ARPG player but I’ve spent time in most of the popular ones aside from POE. So far the campaign difficulty feels just right. It’s entertaining enough, mobs die quickly enough, and true carelessness will get you killed. It achieves the goal of telling the game’s story and teaching you the basics of the mechanics.

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I think thats the exact challenge that the devs will face when they get to the release date…
That magical balance that has to cater for everyone… casual and hardcore (not even thinking of multiplayer)

Probably an entirely different & complex conversation, but I suppose it will also depend on how they see the game evolving over time and how they envisage people playing the game long term - and to some extent how these players will be monetised - once off, dlc or cosmetics - to keep the game alive financially.

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Yup, long story short is game is too easy most of the time if you have any arpg experience.

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Update and additional feedback:

So I tried leveling two new classes during the past few days, with the intention of ‘only’ doing quests and try to avoid as many trash packs as possible to try out the difficulty, Area level scaling and progression. I made one Acolyte Lich and one a Primalist Shaman. The Acololyte I leveled first and I got to level 41 or 43, cant recall right now, and I realized it was perhaps a mistake because it is really easy to level with pets that take aggro and the “extra life” you have with the Lich form later on - though I think all classes have these quirks that helps them survive in some way or another - anyways, I thought that alright ok lets restart as a Primalist without pets, a shaman, and this one was definitely a little bit more squishy and perhaps I made a bad build intentionally just to try the difficulty out, I also did no crafting and only wore loot I found. Since im not a hardcore player at all and I did my absolute best and I did indeed die a few times every now and then during my campaign experience, yay! I guess I was “kinda” mistaken with my initial take then, from a different perspective now.
I can totally understand that when new players come to Last Epoch and play the campaign for the first time and perhaps try out different skills and builds, not following a guide and so on, they will have some troubles at some places. And look, I only did this to provide some honest feedback and I did not want the game to be punishing just for the sake of it, especially early on (pre-lvl 40) where it hurts the new players the most.

So while I do still think that the game is perhaps abit on the easy side for most experienced players and people with decent builds etc, I guess its alright and might only need minor adjustment in future beta.

And this is perhaps where Area level vs Character level during the campaign comes in. Its just slighly off. Despite me trying my best to avoid all mobs and only do the quests I found, I noticed that I consistenly was about 3 character level above the intended “Area level” in general throughout the story. This might actually be the issue here, if the Area level get scaled up about 3 levels to match your level progression, I think we would hit the perfect middle ground, as I imagine the difference would be your things like your Resistance being slighly (3%) lower if Area level increased and so on, so its nothing major.
If someone then were to explore and kill all the mobs in areas, as I originally did, one might find themselves 4-5 levels above, as I originally stated, this would lead you to instead be 2 levels above the Area level if tweaked.

Maybe this was initially the case even before they added new areas during Beta? I have no idea as I havent been here that long back in time, but some who played Last Epoch for a year or a dev might know better.

Anyway. The game is great and hope it continues to develop and it balances out to be a great game for most people. Maybe even another difficulty might be added later on down the line? Not sure how that would work and balance with everything else though, ladders, end-game wise and so on, I suspect it would take alot of work to do.
And no, dont even suggest we go play Masochist mode, it even says so in its description, its not really an option for people who just want one step up difficulty and not get extreme massacre :grin: Im talking more like Normal > Nightmode in D2 as example, idk.

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For me its kinda a strange experience currently playing the campaign: I am playing hardcore, because thats what keeps it fun for me trying multiple builds until I die! Having said that I noticed I can easily level almost any character to chapter 7 until I reach the snowy areas… there is suddenly such a damage spike that its getting from super easy to extremely difficult for me… lost 3 characters there in a row… not sure what to do… anyone else have experienced that?

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Yes, there is a strong difficulty raise when you reach the Divine Era. You can prepare before, by putting Cold and Physical resistances on your can. This can help. And till the end of the campaign, you’ll need physical and all three elemental resistances.

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I’ve changed my leveling style to where now I just run through the zones and barely kill things at all. My Avalanche Shaman is ~5 levels under zone and it’s been smooth sailing so far.

I would honestly prefer to have a stronger scaling curve so I’m more in line with the areas I’m leveling through. But as it stands, it’s more engaging to run ahead. Otherwise, I have the same experience that you shared: 3-4 levels above zone and there’s not much challenge.

Full disclosure, I am using a build guide for this character, so that might have an impact. It would likely be more challenging if I was making less optimal passive/skill choices. I’d imagine that the devs are balancing zone xp to give a smooth experience for the new player who isn’t using a guide.

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It’s not build guides at all, if you get a decent amount of resistances just about any setup works and you only need about 30% for the campaign. Main problem is either things hit like wet noodles or they die so fast it doesn’t matter how much damage they do. With this games slower pace and smaller packs of mobs they should be more difficult to compensate. Another option is adding more difficulties like masochist mode but more normalized for certain play experiences.

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