The infinite scaling is the bane of modern ARPGs

General
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Last Epoch included.

If we take old ARPGs like Diablo1, Diablo 2 or Titan Quest, they have something that modern ARPGs don’t: static difficulty setting. That is, there is no “Torment 901290419” or “Corruption 4895203”. Instead, as you progress, in addition to obvious HP/Damage increases, you also get different enemies with different AI. Like, Diablo 1 skeleton Archers are weak and stupid (shoot rarely, can’t open doors, never flee), but Succubi actually flee from you and pursue you relentlessly. This makes progressing through the game actually interesting because the game keeps throwing something different at you.

Cut to modern ARPGs where you fight the same enemies from scratch. Diablo 4 is particularly bad at this because it features like a few enemy types that repeat the whole game. At level 15, you fight fallen ones, Osprix or whatever with a HP/Damage multiplier of 1, at level 100 you fight same fallen ones/osprix with same AI, just with HP/Damage multiplier of 500 or whatever, and at corruption 1000, nothing changes but the damn multiplier.

This effectively means that the core gameplay is effectively set from scratch. Think about it: if you removed the numbers, corruption levels and such, you’d effectively feel no difference between level 15 and corruption 10000 if your pass gear checks.

It’s the same damn game, just with different backend numbers on the engine side.

This begs me to question the point of it. Like, obviously, it’s a video game. Playing it IS the point by itself, intristically. BUT. Why bother with corruption 100 or 200 or 500, why chase items, if all that changes is some number and backend data?

Here’s a thought: How about a cap to corruption, introducing new enemies at certain breakpoints, CHANGING the AI every breakpoint (so that higher level enemies aren’t just a bigger multiplier on the server side, but actually a way to change the flow of the game) and introducing clever pinnacle fights that aren’t just “accumulate XXX DoT mitigatons or die instantly” kind of thing?

Grim Dawn is the only actively developed ARPG game that sort-of does this with the Crucible game mode and planned Ascendent difficulty. And I find that this makes me able to retain interest for WAY longer. The infinite difficulty scaling is just… boring. Like, once I reach say corruption 500, I have zero incentive to go higher, because really NOTHING changes but some meaningless backend numbers. This contributes to the burnout heavily.

Your thoughts on this?

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to me, infinite scaling is only bad if it feels forced.

for example if an item drop was made exceedingly low that a regular “casual” cannot farm it on “regular difficulties” lets say c100. and it only really starts dropping at c300 or c500, due to the drop bonuses. then the infinite scaling stops being an “infinite challenge” and starts feeling like a requirement.

that makes players feel forced to play optimized builds. and thus kills off player exploration.

so far the only item i can think of is the red ring. but even then one can argue, you can get it at lower corruption. its just highly unlikely.

as long as infinite scaling feels like a dick measurer and feel totally optional, i really dont care for inifinite scaling.

i m more aggravated by the existence of uber abbaroth which gatekeeps arguably the best relic in the game.

personally i feel that the game should more or less cap out at around corruption 200-300.

one thing i would point out is GGG actually tried to do what you mentioned. they dont have infinite scaling in POE1. but the gap between weaker players and the strong ones are just too fucking huge. its just unreasonable for a regular person to use their own build to challenge those content.

POE2 GGG actually tried to pull things way back down. player HP for example was expected to be around 2.5-5k. damage is adjusted accordingly, also player movespeed was expected at 25-40% quite low numbers but allowed them to make enemies have longer telegraphed attacks with lower aoe.

it shows a lot of promise on creating content without infinite scaling but the devs are currently torn. do they make the game more deliberate, or more zoom? they cant have both. and each one will require a different approach to scaling.

your suggestion for AI to change is interesting but as an arpg theres not too much that can be changed. after a while everything just becomes a gimmick.

as for LE. we do kinda have a softcap which is estimated at c1000? apparently you get diminishing returns above that point.

when you mention GD i m slightly torn about it. coz on one hand the end game feels very optional, you could choose to farm on certain paths of dungeons. theres many different ways to farm. i dont feel too forced and everything feels simply optional. but once the new expansion comes out i m worried that they will increase the upper limit at the same time. we still do not know how it will play out.

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I am aware of the “casual magnet” those game modes cater to. Zoom-zoom, lots of explosions, seasons, infinite scaling… it all follows “Diablo 3’s guide to (questionable) success” in maintaining long-term interest in the product.

However, I think that many of those things can be simply done better. Would a casual object to different AI for 300 corruption? No, because he never gets there. He gets bored after two days. This is why many of those things should be locked behind content that casuals don’t approach anyway.

The “optimization” is mostly a (by)product of the times we live in. Streaming is huge, and the vast majority of people simply follow whatever a streamer of choice does. No amount of effort will stop “optimized” builds from emerging, and too much nerfing can cause everything to feel bland instead, ie. it doesn’t matter what you choose since everything ends up the same, “balanced”, boring flavor anyway. Smart devs will shake up meta from time to time, and this is more or less under control.

Well, yes, but it moves the goalpost further. And it doesn’t have to be drastic. Let’s say that each enemy gets a new, unlockable attack type after certain goalposts. 200 corruption, 400, 600, etc. So for example some enemies can now charge, other can channel a stunning attack, etc. It changes the gameplay right away. It’s worth mentioning that because LE is generally very devoid of defensive skills (some classes, like primalists, don’t even have those AT ALL except the Warcry which is more of a buff anyway…), it is hard to actively reward players for using smart answers to unexpected threats. We don’t have many ailments (that do something that actually isn’t a DOT), even Blind was essentially reworked into “no crit” thing and lost the unique factor. So we have that limitation to deal with while creating new attack patterns or behavior.

And it was something I respect them for doing, even though it was met with a ridiculous backlash from the community. They are actually trying to implement a new standard of gameplay, they have a vision - rather than re-doing the tired “infinite scaled greater rift” D3 formula ad infinitum. Hopefully they’ll do it right once POE2 reaches completion. Right now, POE2 is a mess, because most skills are useless.

I’m super happy for GD in general and it’s my most played ARPG of all time (bar Diablo 1). It does many things right. There is an infinite mode there, but it’s just an option, you have other endgame modes to pick from. The Crucible is IMHO a prime example of a mode done right - the waves are set, which makes them manageable, and static, so you can see meaningful progression that doesn’t end up scaled down through engine’s backend numbercrunch. I have high hopes for Ascendant mode, too. A very hard campaign for elite characters, essentially - this is what I want to play personally for my dream ARPG endgame. The endless scaling stuff just doesn’t work, it bores me to tears if I’m forced to repeat it.

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I love this idea. Not sure how much work is required to implement it but it would greatly improve replayability and player retention.

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What you are explaining is a game that is designed as a mostly one and done experience.

its vastly different then a online live service game thats more about long hours of grind vs a gameplay experience.

Both have their places, but I dont think about enemy ai when I am bulldozing them on hour 500, which is what LE falls into.

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The problem with this is that all of that takes a long time to implement.
Having scaling content for the endgame means that once you’re done with the core content, you can keep playing and pushing all you want, rather than simply having nothing else to do.

Corruption is there simply to give you something that you might want to chase after you’ve done the basic stuff available to you. You do the same thing again, only it’s harder now. If you didn’t have that, you’d simply reach the “end” and stop playing because there’s no reason to keep pushing.

Like in your GD example: you finished the campaign, have your build online, you killed the superbosses. What now? Why would you keep playing? There’s no reason for it. So you have crucible and SR to keep having a challenge once that is done.

In LE, it works similarly. For example, last season you pushed to 300c. You killed all the harbingers. You could even push further and do Aby. Once all that was done, rather than just quitting the game because there is nothing else to do, you keep pushing corruption for the challenge.
Then, season 2 comes. They add new zones, new mobs with new abilities, etc. So you now have more stuff to do, but once you’re done, you still have the endgame scaling content to keep you busy.

I understand your point. But you don’t have to push harder. You push until you’re happy. Because the reverse of that coin is that you simply have nothing else left to do and you have to keep doing the same things over and over again, except there is no challenge anymore because there is no harder content. You already wipe the hardest content the game has.
That, to me, leads to burnout much faster than scaling content.

Having scaling content at the end lets the devs introduce new content at certain points of the progression (like woven echoes that require 200c or 300c) but still leave you with an open-ended system to keep playing with.

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I’d argue that neither Diablo 2, nor Grim Dawn are “one and done”. In fact, I have way over 3000 hours put into Grim Dawn and probably over 5000 combined in D1+D2, which don’t offer infinite scaling.

I’m of course absolutely fine with people having other preferences than me for endgame content. It’s in fact possible to appease all sides - like Grim Dawn did - there’s shattered realm for “Greater Rift mode” and Crucible, Uber bosses and now Ascendant diff if you wish something different.

But this point is, eventually, inevitable like Thanos’ finger snap. You’re gonna get to the pinnacle content… eventually. However, the approach I’m suggesting changes the road to that point itself.

Let me put it in Diablo 4 terms: I recall using bear shockwave vs. fallen ones as early as… idk, level 15-16 (as soon as aspect of the shockwave dropped, which I believe was level 15 initially?). And I recall using that very same build in the Pit. Against the very same fallen ones, behaving the very same way as they did 100 hours ago.

Because in this model, NOTHING changes from start to finish EXCEPT backend numbers for the engine!

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That is not a problem with difficulty scaling. That is simply the build being online early. In D2 I played skeletons since level 1 and I was playing skeletons at level 90+. Having infinite scaling or not doesn’t change this.
Also, in D2 you’re actually just repeating content. Once you finish normal mode, you will always fight the same mobs (they might just have some new mods for rare packs), only at a harder difficulty. After finishing normal mode, the only new mobs you get are uber diablo and uber tristram, which you won’t do until you’ve finished hell anyway.

I love D2. I’ve played it for years and years. But once you reach a certain point, you don’t actually do anything new. It’s just the same thing again. And endgame is farming meph (or whichever you choose) for hundreds of hours. It never really changes. So once you finish hell and can farm your boss of choice, you’re “done” and there’s nothing left to do other than start a new character and do it all over again.

LE isn’t as bad as D4. In D4, everything is scaled content (although, to be fair, so is GD. All areas scale with player level). In LE, only the endgame is scaled.
I dislike scaling for leveling. Even in GD. I love GD despite it having level scaling, not because of it.
But scaling for endgame is actually a good thing because it can keep you longer in the game. You actually have things to do.

Maybe if we try putting things into perspective:
If LE didn’t have infinite scaling, content would end at 300c when you kill harbingers. You might push for Aby/Uby, but there’s nothing new. You’re “done”.
With infinite scaling you can keep pushing for more difficulty and keep playing while you feel there’s a challenge.

And when they add something new (like they added weaver content this patch), without scaling you would finish that and you would be “done”. There would be nothing left to play for.
With scaling, you can keep pushing.

My point is that the system is neither good nor bad. It will just appeal to some players and not others.
With static content you will always reach a point where that content no longer has any challenge. Everything is easy to kill. Some players don’t mind that and keep doing it. Some players think that’s boring because there’s no challenge.
With scaling content you will always have a challenge. Some players get bored from doing the same thing over and over (but they also get bored with static content anyway), while others like to keep pushing to a place where combat is still challenging and meaningful.

Static content requires investment time. You can only add so much in a certain amount of time. And, by definition, new static content will make the previous ones obsolete. You farm the top content, so new harder content means you no longer farm the previous one.
Scaling content means an open ended endgame. Everything new that you add is still relevant in endgame because it all scales. So you keep farming all the different content because the older one isn’t obsolete.

Also, I just want to point out that GD also has scaling content. Not just crucible and SR, but the campaign itself. The reason why you keep farming totems/bosses in the campaign in GD is because area scales to player level. They never change their behaviour, they just increase in number.
Otherwise no one would go back to the campaign to farm anything.

And lastly, LE has a campaign progression where things keep evolving. You keep getting new enemies with new abilities. And now, in monoliths, you have tombs and cemeteries, with new enemies and new abilities.
So it’s not that nothing changes. It’s only that LE is still a young game and doesn’t have enough content added yet. I think that is the main problem you have, not the scaling itself.

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This boils down to “How about better balance/better pacing/more content”.

In our non-ideal world infinitive scaling is a good thing, it removes some pressure knowing that “it is just a number”.

Some casual homebrew builds go for 100c, other ez op meta builds go for 1000c. Setting limit to random 500c would be bad for both ends.

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Oh, but it is. See, while your build may indeed be available early in other games, the enemies are not. You will not face, say, Death Knights in Diablo 1, Minotaurs in D2 or Machae in Titan Quest until end game.

But Diablo 4 just throws its entire roster (of like 10 monsters) at you almost straight away and never really adds anything new. That’s basically the worst case scenario for scaling.

There are some differences - there’s more champions/elites and they have multiple mods on them.

Which is very true. And inevitable. BUT we can delay this moment from happening. A very badly made game (like D4) basically offers this from scratch. Unfortunately, LE is in a bad spot because the campaign is just an unskippable, braindead tutorial after which you’re doing the typical “all hands on deck” content with the entire roster. Of course LE is much better here because it features a much bigger cast of monsters.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There is no such thing as “infinite gameplay”. I think chasing it is a terrible decision for developers, simply because it won’t happen: at best they’ll introduce infinite scaling.

However, they do have control over what happens from the starting point to the “pinnacle point”. And if it’s just scaled and regurgitated from start till finish, then we, as players, have basically seen the entire gameplay (or “gameplay loop” as some refer to it) after in under an hour. ugh!

I disagree. This is an illusion. If you could turn off the numbers, you wouldn’t be even aware what Corruption/Greater Rift/Pit level you’re playing, because they are absolutely identical except the back-end damage/hp numbers and player damage.

Replaying things with greater numbers is effectively no different than replaying the same static content over and over, but the devs trick the players into an illusion of progress (there is effectively none, though - the gains in stats by the player are equalized by the gains of stats by the monsters).

If this is a little abstract: what is the difference between a Level 1 player with 10 damage attacking a 5 HP opponent and a Level 1000 opponent with 100000 damage attacking a 50000 HP opponent? There is absolutely no difference in player exeprience. All you see is different numbers. Take away the numbers and you won’t be even aware that anything changed at all.

But you’re done either way. See the explanation above.

Pushing what, exactly? There is nothing different except for the numbers. As per the example above.

And I have no problems with a different point of view. It’s OK.

My point of view is that scaling is just a lazy illusion that kills creativity in modern ARPGs. Diablo4 is the worst offender. You can get away with a 15 minut gameplay “loop” and simply extend it with back-end number cruncher to give people an illusion that something changed.

Yes, LE is better than D4. No doubt. But LE has problems of its own (the campaign needs rework because it’s completely brain dead easy), which I believe will be sorted out eventually.

What I’d love here however is something like a GD Crucible. Something that allows you to actually progress your character (in killing speed, the relative power level of your build, etc.) rather than just offer the same thing with different numbers, over and over and over.

The regular monsters don’t scale at all. Bossess do, but only to a set point, after which they don’t scale anymore.

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Didn’t read, but most popular game in genre don’t have infinite scaling. Not in v1 and in v2 neither. (btw it’s hack&slash, not arpg)

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But that is still the same mobs. They just have different stats. They don’t behave differently nor do they have extra abilities.

But that is my point. LE is the same as D2 in this regard. It just doesn’t have much content yet because it’s been out for a short time. But it does get new stuff (zones and enemies) added, and you still have scaling at the end.

If D2 had an infinite scaling content at the end, it would have only gained by it. It would have had the regular content, plus you would always have something to do afterwards.

Yes, but that is what happens in D4 because they take it to the extreme. Not in LE. The campaign is fully static. It’s only when you finish the campaign that you get to scaling content.
And the more content they add over the years to that will keep the freshness for longer, while still maintaining the challenge.

The options are basically:
-I’ve reached the end of content. I’ll keep doing the end of the content over and over, even though there is no challenge.
-I’ve reached the end of content. I’ll keep doing the end of the content over and over, but I can increase difficulty so it’s at least challenging.
Both options are effectively the same, but one actually feels more satisfying.

What you want is simply more different stuff to show up before you reach that point. Which will happen in time.

It is, though. Very different. One shooting the whole screen over and over again because the mobs are simply too weak for your build is very boring.
Killing the same mobs with higher numbers makes the combat feel more challenging.

Let’s compare with D2:
-You kill meph or whatever boss hundreds of times. You don’t even kill packs along the way because there is no point to it. They’re not challenging. You can’t even die to them. So you just kill 1-3 mobs over and over again, and even they are not challenging.
-In LE, the same packs you would ignore in D2 are now challenging. Not only that, they also have good drops, potentially. So you actually engage in combat with them. So you end up killing dozens of different mobs. Yes, they’re the same ones that you killed hundreds or thousands of times, but it’s better to kill dozens of challenging mobs over and over again than it is to kill the same 1-3 mobs that offer no challenge whatsoever.

Pushing the challenge. The most important thing in a game in this genre is combat. If combat stops being challenging (as it happens with static content), then there is no point in playing anymore.

Arena is pretty much the same thing.

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True, but that was ~25 years ago, things have changed since.

For diablo? No, not really. ARPG is also a historically used term to refer to games like Diablo.

Kinda, but GD also has the shattered worlds thing added in Forgotten Gods.

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Shattered realms is a separate mechanic from Crucible, though. And Crucible is kinda like arena.

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My bad, most popular now. Poe, not diablo. Anyway, infinite scaling sounds good and competitive, when it’s not forced. For now game ends with uber aberoth kill and we can move higher to test our limits thanks to scaling,

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PoE has delve, though, which is popular enough (even though I personally hate it).
I expect PoE2 will eventually also get something of the sort.

It never is. The point of it is finding a goal you’re comfortable with. You don’t have to push higher.

Before launch and during season 0, I never pushed corruption. I got to empowered monos and just created a new character.
It was only with harbingers that I started pushing corruption. And even then, I didn’t go past 500-600c because I saw no point to it. It was boring to keep pushing. But it’s nice knowing that the option is still there if I want to.

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delve limited to 6000 levels and it’s not main content like in LE. Imagine map scaling infinite lol. They don’t do that becouse you can make maps hard enough for any build even without infinite scaling. Yep, that’s the point.

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Delve is limited to 65k, not 6k. And that’s because of the variable limit. LE also has a limit, most likely the same one. We just don’t have enough power creep to reach the end of it. Which is the same thing that happened to PoE. For the first few leagues, you couldn’t reach the “end” of delve.

You can. If you keep adding tiers. Which is why you’re already up to T19.
Maps in PoE are already infinite scaling. They just have a cap. When they want to increase difficulty, they increase the cap.

There is no real difference between both systems. If EHG capped corruption at 500c or 1000c, you would have the exact same thing as you do in PoE.

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heh, poe scaling like x1 to x3 monster hp it’s like 200 corrupt is t16-17 without natural level scaling (dunno about that). But here you can’t pump up echo like ‘delirium 100% + abyss + beyond + crit mods + somecrazykillingshit’. All you can do is push up corruption level to simple hp/dmg scaling.

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That would be the old corruption mechanic before launch, where the mods where what actually added difficulty, rather than the corruption level. People didn’t like that particularly (you had to constantly watch what nodes you were going to take, you had to sometimes postpone the boss fights so the mods would go away, etc), which is why it was changed to the current system.

I was actually expecting this season to bring something like that, where we could add mods to the echoes for higher difficulty/rewards. Was kinda disappointed it didn’t happen.