Prophecies shouldn't have a campaign condition by default

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21

No, no, no, no, no, NO!

Not now, not later, not ever :wink:

That’s one of the worst gaming concepts existing and belongs into an ARPG like dog shit on a pizza.

Let’s point out why:
The idea of an ARPG is to start out weak and become stronger through experience (-> level ups, skill points etc) and item drops. The reward of becoming stronger is having an easier time with monsters, that’s called power fantasy. We can go back to the lvl 2 rats that gave us trouble and annihilate them like a god if we so please.

Level scaling takes this integral part away. You even get penalized for leveling up as monsters don’t have the second avenue of progress - items. That lvl 20 rat will be tougher to beat at char lvl 20 then it’s lvl 2 version was at clvl 2 for the scaling system needs to imply item upgrades for the character, which he didnt necessarily get.

So please, leave this crap out of an ARPG forum. Might as well remove all affixes and replace them with a single “item power” number that gives X amount of Strength/Dex etc. based on your class… oh wait :wink:

22

Yes & no. Sacred 1 & 2 had mobs scaling with player level with a floor and a cap, it worked well, you could still go back to lower level areas and kill everything with impunity if you wanted.

You’re assuming that the level scaling assumes that the player always has the highest level gear equipped. This is a reach and it doesn’t have to be the case, you could “easily” put the mob power level equivalent to 75% of the max player power. That way there is still a pressure on the player to improve their gear and if/when the player does get a new tier of gear equipped as soon as it’s available then they feel more powerful because they’re relatively over-geared.

Yes, lets throw the baby out with the bathwater & dismiss ideas out of hand because we’ve had a bad experience with a poor implementation.

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23

This doesn’t change a thing. The moment you ding, you are relatively weaker compared to the monster that also dinged and that’s a no-go. Whether you say 75% or even 40% doesn’t change that.

You might find a point at which the gain of a skill point offsets that scaling, but that would be an extremely small number.

There isn’t much of a difference, both are fundamental crimes against ARPGs. I’m sorry to be this absolute, but I mean it.

24

But it’s also likely to be a small amount so not noticeable. It’s not like ding OMGZor! Teh Mobzs now all have a treeeeellion health and dps.

Besides, you’re complaining that it would make the game trivially harder for a short period of time (before you equip a better item) while everybody & their dog is complaining that the game is so easy for the majority of the campaign.

A:
B: You’re wrong because you’ve never experienced a good one. It’s like telling a child that a thing can be nice but they refuse to believe you because they’ve had one bad example.
C: Your opinion is both subjective & not the only one.

That depends on the skill & the skill point you put into it, but early on the next tier of weapons are often more of a power bump than 1 more skill point. Aaaaaaaaaand, if the power you get from skill points is that trivial (when they really aren’t, but again it depends on the skill, they can be for older skills) then why do people complain that too much player power comes from skills & not enough from gear? Perhaps you should just get better gear.

I also find it amusing that you think that 1 additional level for mobs would be such an insurmountable jump in power but that 1 additional skill point would be so trivial. This is clearly why people complain about relevelling skills, that the amount of power they feel they loose is so mind-numbingly trivial that they can’t bear to loose it.

25

One does not imply the other.
Regarding the first point, as I’ve already stated before, in D4 there was a period of about 10 levels where I failed to get a better weapon in early game. And I went from needing 1s to kill a mob to half a minute. It made the game a lot more boring. Rather than simply being able to progress, every single pack I saw I had to slowly kill. My progression slowed to a stop until a weapon finally dropped.
And all this happened because I didn’t have a place to fall back to in order to farm a better weapon. So with level scaling you’re often at the mercy of RNG and it can make a fun experience turn into a very frustrating one very fast.

As for the second part, you don’t need level scaling to make the game harder. You just need to balance it properly.

The problem is that, so far, ALL examples were bad examples. Even GD. I like GD in spite of level scaling.

26

Not necessarily, it depends. If there were caps (as in Sacred 1 & 2) then you could go back to an earlier/lower level zone.

I’m confused. Do we not have threads complaining that the game is too easy? But the OP thinks that making the game slightly harder (rather than OMGZOR! levels of hard as he assumes that it would be) would be a bad thing?

This is true, it’s one way of doing that.

Apart from Sacred 1 & 2. And GD.

27

I meant that wanting the game to be harder doesn’t imply we need level scaling.
As for what he said, I think he meant simply that level scaling is inherently unfair to the player. Because scaling has to compensate for your increase in power, it will inevitably become harder when your increases start to trickle down, since the monters’ won’t.

I think I’ve played Sacred, but it was too long ago to remember, so I have no opinion on that.
As for GD, I’ve already stated that I don’t like their level scaling either. I like GD in spite of it. Much like, if they were to implement it in LE, I would probably still like LE in spite of it.

To me, the biggest issue I have with level scaling in LE specifically, as opposed to in general, is that level scaling is something that will only apply to the campaign, nothing else.
Monos, arena and dungeons all already have mechanicsms to control the difficulty so it wouldn’t be applied to them.
Which, considering that most players just want to get the campaign over with, will lead to more complaints (even if some say they want it to be harder).

In my opinion, the best way to deal with difficulty in the campaign would be difficulty modes that you select at the start, like veteran, elite, or whatever you want to call it. That way, each player can choose which difficulty applies to them best.
And once they get to monos, they’ll be able to fine tune their difficulty even more.

Also, as a sidenote, level scaling doesn’t actually fix anything in LE by itself. As can be seen by the fact that my whole trip to empowered monos is done when I’m 10+ levels below the area level and it’s still not hard. So scaling areas to your level doesn’t fix it.

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28

Lvl scalling is bad period doesnt matter how good its implemented. If it ever comes to this game. I will be done with the game as well as supporting EHG

I pointed out why this is in this thread. Lvl scaling. I dont play diablo 3 or 4 nor GD for this exact reason among mamy others.

I mention Skyrim and cyberpunk as examples both these games where miles better till they broke the game adding in lvl scalling. Lvl scalling umo has far more cons than it does pros

29

This 100%

100% agree lvl scalling doesnt need to happen to do this.

30

Even in these game lvl scalling is just bad. Never liked it in sacred games either. Been so long since i played but i do remember bitching about lvl scalling alot

31

Yes, scaling within a certain range is a common way to do it, and it does work well.
I think the key is that Sacred was open world. You can’t have open world without some kind of scaling, fixed zone levels forces you to follow a certain path.

Kinda true. A lot of ARPGs don’t have level scaling, and all of them are harder than LE.
The problem with no level scaling at all is that it will be extremely hard to keep the campaign challenging for people who just rush the main quest AND for weirdos like me who do all the side quests.
Who do you balance around? Scaling (with a min and a max level for each zone) is the only solution I can think of.
Or stop giving xp for killing mobs and doing side quests, I would second that, but somehow I think I would be the only one. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Completely true.
A lot of players claim they want the campaign harder, but they also want leveling uniques, meta builds, early trade to equip alts… People are full of contradictions!

1 Like
32

That’s very extreme.
Even a bit sad, you’re missing out on some good stuff.

I consider level scaling enormously better than fixed area level (and I am in luck, most games nowadays want a bit of open world, and to do that almost all recent games scale one way or the other), but I wouldn’t go as far as not play at all if there is no scaling.

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33

To each there own.

One Problem of many i have with pvl scalling is if i go back to a lower lvl zone it ruins the Emerson of getting stronger. Because u can tell those mobs are no longer the power lvl they where once u already beat that content.

Mobs shouldnt be getting stronger at lower lvls after iv already beaten that content.

Other reasons i hate this have also been pointed out in this thread

34

You balance around those who do all the side quests. Those are the ones that are playing the game as intended. The ones that just rush the campaign aren’t interested in it being harder, just in getting it over with.

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35

You would think so. Yet nobody does it. :woman_shrugging:

I have spent all my gaming life being stupidly overleveled after the first area of pretty much every game, until level scaling became a thing.
Ah, the good old days of running out of WoW towns before logging off to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally get some bonus “rested xp” making things even worse!

In LE’s case, it was actually not THAT bad: I used to be very overleveled from the start, then less and less, and in chapter 9 my level would roughly match the zone level.
Sadly in 1.0 they have added extra xp somehow, and I remain over zone level until Black Sun mono, but not by very much.

36

I actually always do all side quests. Even when I skip to monos at 25ish, I always go back to finish the quest. It triggers my gamer’s OCD if I don’t.

I think they increased mob density a little in some areas.
The easiest way I find of not being overleveled, is to just ignore most mobs unless they’re rare.

1 Like
37

Sorry, misunderstanding: by “nobody does it”, I meant “no developer balances their game on people doing all quests.”.
In pretty much every fixed-level game you have to do only the main quest and very very few sides if you don’t want to outpace the levels of the areas.

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38

Well thanks. He just tried to build a strawman, putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say and argued against those.

It’s like I said “5<6” and he went “but what about a large 5?”, “it could be a small 6”, “no big difference in the first place”… none of that was the point.

39

Arena and dungeon ones are ‘side-content’ prophecies so to speak. I don’t pick them either but they have their place during end-game.

Campaign prophecies for low lvl players during their (first) trip through the campaign have no ability to access them in the first place
Also secondary characters have no ability to access them before Act 9 unless you get a Teleport over, which clearly is not the intended way to do that.

So, without the circumventing of intended design and Majasa campaign prophecies basically guarantee you the need to backtrack. They’re the only mechanic which isn’t aligned with end-game for prophecies.

Or a well made system since the prophecies don’t function on a RNG loot-drop basis, hence since we already have that there’s alternative options present.

Just one example of a quickly thought up (and the numbers being utterly unbalanced) mechanic for that:

Imagine that prophecies are ‘build your drop’ mechanics.
You get a baseline cost for ‘drop 1 rare item’… let’s say 100 Favor for the sake of it simply being an example.
Now you choose rarity. Rare? Exalted? Unique? Add a multiplier! x5 for exalted and x10 for unique as an example. So 500 for a exalted and 1000 per unique drop.

Base? No issue! Add another multiplier. No base? x1. Specific slot? x5. The more bases removed from the pool in that slot the higher the modifier if you wanna go even further.

Then add amount, more items means more multiplier. A nice reward for getting more items though, so a x1,95 per item for example, people saving up for their specific drop.

This can be improved further. Weaver items getting a higher use-number, uniques with LP, rare/exalted with FP… more multiplier!

You see… the more deterministic you go the more ridiculous the multiplier becomes. And to take into consideration specific bases which have only ‘rare’ uniques attached? Also no problem! Have those bases chosen for uniques be a higher multiplier!

You choose what loot to get, how much effort you wanna put in to get it and how many copies you want.

Surprise… suddenly it’s deterministic like MG, needs massive investment the more your choices confine the outcome and the ‘RNG on RNG’ argumentation for CoF which stands counter to ‘big number outcomes’ from MG aren’t an issue anymore with suddenly.

Instead we got the RNG mini-game mechanic rather then something for SSF-style players.

40

Good point about campaign prophecies, they are not available while leveling, I forgot about that.
They might still have a place in the system for they are among the fastest you can complete.

I don’t like the “build-a-drop” idea. It goes a little far, after all we’re playing for fun and the biggest fun-spike (for me) is a lucky drop. I wouldn’t play a slot-machine that said “feed me $1 for 5k times in a row and you’ll win 5.01k$”. Feels more like a job at that point.