The infinite scaling is the bane of modern ARPGs

General
35

Everytime I want to go back to LE, I remember why infinite scaling makes the game pointless and unninstall it after an hour or so.
The thing with “just push it as far as you can and play where you’re comfortable at” would maybe work if this was a complete game with an engaging story and not still in beta content wise.
You either sit at a comfortable corruption level and that’s about it, everything is one shotted and the chance of a gear upgrade factoring in the upgrade rng comes down to once a month and it’s pointless because everything already is dying too fast to matter while at the same time the next difficulty level will be so much different that the upgrade wouldn’t make a difference.

Build diversity , lets see. You got maybe 15 builds that work more or less up to what, 300 corruption ? anything beyond that, you got the one or two bugged&overpowered builds that work with that specific item that everyone rolls and that’s about it, 0% diversity for the chance of…not doing anything different than what you were doing before, least that it’s bigger numbers now.
I can theory craft for weeks looking for combos and gear for my minion army build and buff micro …but why would I when a single helmet drop is working 10x better with one overpowered minion that I can get afk behind it ?

It’s not like hey if you work hard enough ,(we’re not playing anymore, it’s work), you could find stuff that further improves whatever build you choose and get to a higher tier. Nope, There’s the noob ceiling of 200-300 corruption where everything sorta works…but beyond that, you need to give up and just play the one build and gear combo that is designed to work there.
The game lets you have it with diversity and fun but in a setup where it all works as long as you don’t get out of the noob zone, once you try to, it forces you to give up everything you thought fun and use the cheat-builds that were designed for you.
I could maybe find it fun to grind for 2 months so that I can improve my archmage build slowly but surely…or my ninja skelly builds…but no, they are simply not designed to work beyond a threshold while at the same time there are one or two builds that are designed to work out of the box beyond that thresold like abomination or giga wraith, while the skelly/mage build would require insane amount of farming to make them work further, these later ones work with basically any gear, as long as you skill into it.

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36

If you mean 15 builds per class, then yes.
Pretty much every build can reach 300c comfortably now.

You have dozens of builds that do at least 700c.
Every single mastery has had an Uby kill.

Balance isn’t great right now, but build diversity does exist. And it’s not hard to reach at least 500c with most of them.

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Yea, the thing is, what’s the point of doing "at least 700c’ with your favorite fun build, while it would take you several months of daily farming with extreme luck to be doable with any but the designed builds that work out of the box ? There only thing you’re rewarded with is that probably devs will come with a patch and nerf whatever made it work because “now it’s too strong, it should’nt be there” mentality. To that they added the “trade guild” , inevitably a gold hax would happen and people will try all sort of crazy stuff buying up perfect equipment which is the best QA you can ask for, people come up day 2 with imba stuff devs never thought of so they can nerf it on and on until the only stuff left working is what they decided it should work.
Want to make all sort of builds viable &infinite scaling ? then just make it so I can spec 40 points into whatever makes my skellies do stuff, instead of 10 or 15…I’ll pick what I want to improve and not be hardlocked into 10 points…that only gives me that, I might get 50% more out of it after 3 months and a lucky t7 double afix that even luckier won’t fail on that perfect 2LP …maybe if, otherwise I’m better just picking whatever the top tier build everyone using.
There needs to be some actual sense of being rewarded for getting stronger instead of …well I got to 600c , I got a nerf patch and anyway, there’s nothing special here, I go to 700c same content floors me with 1 hit, I guess I need more t7 double life affix and another 3lp to slap it on , to survive 700.
What about skill evolutions like whenever you breach a corruption tier, you can evolve one of your skills to be much more effective, it can hold more skill points, whathave you, ideas are there. Something to make your character feel meaningfull instead of just being a QA test character in this endless open beta ?
There is no real end goal here, the rng is way all over the place and whatever you thought you accomplished by finding some op stuff to get the one thousand corruption it either gets nerfed or everyone starts doing it so there’s nothing about it. Without a ceiling and the only content being reworked items and copy-paste bosses since 5 years, I can’t see this as a game anymore. Is rather a tech demo where one can endlessly pretend to try balance everything around an infinite scaling difficulty which means the company can pretend to be busy “adding content” for the next 10 years without actually ever adding a story/lore or more timeline maps and content. Good luck farming then )

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I hate infinite scaling too. The way it feels is bad to me because when you push higher, your character will never feel like it has reached the nice power breakpoint, where you have great damage and survivability, a build feels complete. Like, you find the best items, reach max level and push a certain corruption and no matter what you do, you will hit a wall. This is how i feel about it i guess, in d2 you had to struggle with low items at start, farm with low dps and survivability, but after some time of farm, you could just run around and 2 shot everything and that felt rewarding for the time spend. With infinite scaling there is no power fantasy completion.

3 Likes
39

There is a difference between LE’s scaling and D4’s scaling, though. And that is that in LE you can definitely have that power fantasy and in D4 you can’t.
That is because D4’s scaling is based on character level, whereas in LE you’re the one in control.

So, like your D2 example, you can have some difficulty doing 300c. But then you gear up and now you’re crushing 300c. You can keep going up in difficulty, but you can also always go back and crush previous content.
And that also means that, if you want, you still have goals to achieve if you want to push them.
Whereas in D2, you beat Hell, you’re farming meph or whoever and there’s really nothing else to do. You’re “done”. Your character is finished (outside of trying Uber Diablo or Uber Tristram, which most people don’t). There’s no more reason to play, unless you want to roll a new character and start over.

And I’m saying this as a huge D2 fan that still plays D2 on and off after all these years.

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I’d like to counter that D2 wasn’t really made with rampant duping/RMT in mind, so actually “comfortably cruising through hell” actually is neither easy, nor accessible… unless you play ladder OFC.

And yes, in every game you reach a point where there’s nothing more to do. That’s because “infinite gameplay” is impossible. You can only fool yourself with the infinite difficulty stuff. However, infinite difficulty means that by default, the only builds that can actually reach the highest possible corruption are the top meta ones, whereas properly balanced static difficulty opens a lot more build viability without the “but it’s viable at 200c!” cope.

There is of course some value in challenging the player to find the top meta build… but who are we kidding here, we have maxroll, you’re going to know the top builds from day 1. And even if a player has restraint not to try, 99% of the community doesn’t, and the player with restraint ends up handicapping himself.

I’m gonna sound like a broken record here. Adding some back-end numbers for the engine to process in the background doesn’t really change anything. A player with 200000 DPS and 5000 EHP vs. enemies doing 100k dam and having 2000000 HP is actually the exact same experience as a player with 20000 DPS and 500 EHP vs. enemies doing 10k dam and having 200000 HP. I mean EXACT, to a T. It would be different if higher corruption/difficulty/whatever changed something else: AI, monster attack patterns, monster attack types, added hazards, added ailments, forced some strategy through resistances or immunities, and so on. The list of possibilities is very long and a developer can get very creative here.

But no, in LE (and most “infinite scaling” games) there’s nothing except the multiplier for monster EHP and DAM values.

Diablo 2 did the multiplier thing too, but it did change things upon selecting difficulty setting, for example:

  • monsters would possibly get immunities forcing the player to have backup skills
  • boss/champion packs were more common and could spawn multiple mods on the boss

That’s not much, but a 25-year old game could do more than just push the HP/DAM slider to the right in the background. We’ve made a step backwards recently.

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I have to agree with this, since the implementation of procedural generation as well as enemy scaling rather then new enemy types games have become less… engaging. We just need to look at a prime example, Fallout 76.
You fight Super Mutants at level 10, you fight Super Mutants at level 50, you fight Super Mutants at level 1000. They’re the exact same enemy, just scaled up, nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing changing at all. A big ass universe where Cryptids, animals massively changed through radiation and whatnot happens and we got the same 30 enemies from start to finish, at best remodelled at times.

And then in comparison we get games like Grim Dawn, handcrafted, enemies are different specific to the area with background lore implications, you’re immersed from start to finish, everything has a ‘place’ and also it makes farming things all the more enjoyable. Wanna get xyz? Go to this place and you’ll drop it! You need those specific resistances, these enemies will be there, you can plan and don’t need to be able to handle everything at once all the time.

The regurgitating of content for big games like Path of Exile is a given to provide a long-term experience otherwise hard to deliver, I accept that, hence why we see the same enemies as we have in the campaign also in end-game, same for Last Epoch after all. Understandable! But plainly spoken the game should gradually progress through this face, they’re a placeholder after all, you implement them since you lack the variety which needs resources. So doing it is kinda important… but most games don’t anymore, they forgot why the reason to include it in the first place was there.

And the same goes with any sort of scaling, be it enemies, or difficulty itself, generally just there to divert the attention from an actual lack of content, even if the game becomes massive mechanically. Chronicon’s whole end-game is absolutely boring because you’re completely done making your build and it’s just scaling up difficulty with the same enemies and the same setup and the same maps even. And the same thing happens in Last Epoch. At least in Path of Exile each map is a unique layout, there’s over 100 different layouts available and there’s specialized thematic unique maps on top of that (which are mostly worthless outside of one completion but still, variety!), that’s what people want, the scaling is just there to allow it to work despite unique new content being missing partially.

So yes, clear-cut goals like corruption limits, cap unlocks, unique content set inside, more fixed map/enemy combinations and player agency to go through that rather then the procedural slob would be nice. More effort so I understand why it’s not done… but it should come piece by piece on the side at least rather then being ignored.

And yes, since ‘nothing new’ presents itself you stop engaging, because if 20k corruption is the same as 200 corruption basically then you’ve ‘done everything’. There’s a really small subset of people which actually are fine or even better with infinite scaling rather then variety of content to make up for it.

Which to a clear-cut degree… it should. If there’s need then there’s reason to do it, without a need the value lowers substantially, which is a prime motivator for our brain to do things.
Give things value in some way and they become worthwhile, the higher the value the more worthwhile. Mind you… with increasing value comes automatically increasing effort, and hence there’s a ‘golden line’ depending on each product type which is optimal to follow. PoE has a good one, LE has a decent one (spiky engagement, hence happy people become unhappy and unhappy people suddenly become happy… it needs to cater to a specific type, not shift substantially with progress), D4 has a atrocious one since even the target audience often speaks ill of the game… kinda not what you wanna have :stuck_out_tongue:

With high complexity comes a high learning curve. GGG does a bad job in countering that, which is their core issue.

But when LE becomes as large as PoE the exact same thing will happen as too many evenues to oversee properly - and take into consideration - will crop up. This is a natural progression of size.

A prime example is Dwarf Fortress, they improved their UI by absolute magnitudes when releasing on Steam, still… it’s a darn hard game to get into because it’s ridiculously complex.

Not really, they tried to reign in the numerical scaling issues they have in PoE 1, which goes out of hand with action-speed overall.
But they did crap in doing that with the generation aspect of generic content, the same random lifeless maps in end-game are still existing then in PoE 1, the same ones like in LE. We need distinct unique content, not regurgitation non-stop, the more there is the better it overall is perceived.

Grim Dawn is anything but and follows that exact example.
So no, it only depends on how it’s handled and is harder to achieve. Procedural generation and scaling mechanics are simply a crutch.

Yes, 100% agreed with that statement.

Which doesn’t mean ignoring it though, it means piece by piece gradual implementation over time rather then double- or triple-dipping down on the already existing scaling.

Yes, which means those systems existing on the highest level of content is no issue… but that needs to be a fraction of overall presented content, not ‘end-game’ which is the majority of play-time in total.

Having corruption based content available after 100-150 hours play-time is absolutely fine, no issue… but we sadly get into it at around 25-30 hours for a first-time player, and… 3-4 for a experienced player, and that’s plainly spoken ‘too little’.

It’s not about builds being online or not, that simply went off course there.
The point behind it is that you interact with content in a different way, procedural content or endlessly scaling content is not ‘consumed’ like designed content is. Those mechanics are to support other things, not to be the major aspect.

They’ve not without reason come under major scrutiny over the last years after all, and I’m also against ‘remove them completely’, they have their place. But the proper implementations are the goal to achieve.

That’s why Path of Exile has Simulacrum, empowered breachlords, empowered timeless challenges, uber-bosses, deep-delve, Heist content and so on and so forth. Even if no distinct new content is available there’s bits of content still available, hard to handle and something to strive to handle. 100% delirium maps for example at the basic game. Or juiced maps with ambush (strongboxes) being handled without constant chance to die from a second to the other.

It’s why people play it so long… corruption does that job too, but magnitudes worse, it gives solely a false sense of progression since there’s nothing distinct to progress towards, no reward for it.

And beyond I lost track of properly reading, so sorry for missing out on the other posts, but I’ll call for a change my post here :stuck_out_tongue:

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42

That’s not quite true in context though. The big difference between high and low numbers, is the gap between bad, ‘good’ and best builds. The bigger the numbers, the greater the gap from S tier to trash and the more obvious it suddenly becomes to everyone how ‘bad’ their build is compared to the best, especially if monster numbers scale infinitely too.

Now that could technically still be the same ratio, but that’s not how it plays out. The meta sees power creep, but often the baseline doesn’t change, it just gets materially worse all the time. Your build that did 100K damage used to be ok because meta was doing 150K, but now you’re doing 125K and the meta is doing 1.5M, feelsbadman.

The key point really though is that infinite scaling in itself isn’t necessarily bad, but, the game must have a point of balance. In Grim Dawn it’s SR30 or Crucible 150 Gladiator. In PoE it’s (kinda, they don’t really balance much) T16 Maps, LE sort of stated at ~300c. For LE, it needs to be clear (i.e. just set c500 and make it notable) and the devs have to show they’re balancing around that.

Exactly, if used as a design principle. Hence, D3 leaned into this heavily. Torment difficulty changes because screw balance, new forced meta each league apparently works well enough. PoE just does new leagues and has such breadth of skills, content and build options that it takes time for the meta to emerge within the *new thing.’ The boredom is there though, look how the numbers always drop back to ~5-10K each league, and who knows how many are bots in that.

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43

to me there needs to be a lower ceiling. the ceiling is too high. the reward for infinite scaling should be more rewards instead of better rewards or even exclusive rewards.

regular abby is a good example of a goal for players to tackle. he has exclusives but most players are expected to get there.

ubby abby, on the other hand is practically telling players. you want the best gear? dont explore the game. just follow a build guide.

its a bad feeling to have being told your self made build sucks ass just because its not overperforming. but that is what pinnacle content does to players.

and if we’re being honest, after reading about how the community voted AGAINST mid season nerfs, it pushes the narrative of following meta builds even harder.

i m so disgusted with uber abby and the fact that certain classes are overperforming to such a huge degree i kinda stopped playing LE altogether.

in fact. i’m taking a break from this game. might come back after an expansion or two. i m not gonna stick around if the games gonna end up funnelling players to play a certain way.

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Oh, which ceiling? We have no defined ceiling, it’s ambiguous, that’s the whole issue with it!

If LE would provide a clear-cut progression road without even introducing corruption up until the point where you’re expected to kill Aberroth and then switching over? Nobody would complain about it being unclear! You get step 2 after step 1, it’s simple! Our brain understand it, caveman genes are happy ‘do stuff get stuff’ achieved, no abstract concept to wrap the mind around.

Suddenly Uberroth is not such a big issue anymore. ‘Well, progression’s over anyway, it’s just a bonus!’. Why? Because it’s not in the same position as Aberroth. It’s not the pointer anymore to gesture at you back and say ‘You’re inadequate to reach this distinctly special thing which is not abstract progression slob’, the expected corruption level of an Aberroth kill still being ‘0 Corruption’ at that time and only unlocking corruption after killing the boss of end-game? Hurray! Not only is an actual unlock in it but it’s also enforcing distinct limitations on balancing. ‘Oh, my build can’t get proper gear to actually kill the boss… hmm… guess something needs to be done since I’m stuck half-way in end-game to the actual end-boss!’

No excuses suddenly for EHG, no more ‘150 corruption builds barely able to progress without distinct player-skill rather then progression through core mechanics like itemization’ and similar.

Yeah, which is another issue. EHG introduced a aspirational boss which is basically impossible for nigh every build. I got no clue what they were thinking.
Do we have 50 other bosses of all kinds to test out mettle at them? Is it really the point in time to implement something which usually is done as a singular instance happening in MMO’s like WoW during a full-fledged expansion at best? Is the game so saturated with content it feels fitting to have as it ‘completes’ the overall scale of experiences they can design?
Or… is it rather a implementation which friggin 75-100 players out of your roughly 75k individuals will even be able to beat in a timely manner while there’s damn issues existing that affect 40k of those people?
Dunno, kinda seems badly weighted to waste development time in this segment when there’s 2 dozen problems available which likely will need less development time to fix then implementing a new boss when item factions are still messed up, campaign balancing is all over the place, build balancing is even more over the place, outdated class designs never updates are still prevalent currently.

Kinda makes me wonder what the focus is on, definitely not a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong, the boss is a nice addition, but like mastery-respec, like dungeon skips or charms for friggin lizards simply… missing the point for the here and now rather then what would be good in the future.
Adding content nigh nobody is able to attempt while also implementing methods to skip content in a friggin content-starved game for the genre is simply wild. It’s having a fat target right in the middle of your sight and you’re shooting in a wild circle around it… it’s not like it’s generally heavily over- or underestimated. No… it’s both, which is what baffles me so much :joy:

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i actually LIKE aspirational content that “no one” is expected to clear. its just that ubby doesnt feel optional.

it reminds me of how in POE1 back when GGG started pushing the the ceiling. before maven, most content peaked at t14 map power. you could encounter “endgame” league bosses at t14 so if you werent strong enough you still could farm for their loot albeit at t14. you didnt necessarily have to do them at t16. then GGG introduced maven and the ceiling just skyrocketed into oblivion.

i always find it horribly ironic. POE has the most flexible and vast skill tree allowing countless builds. but by them increasing the ceiling, they have effectively forced players to hyper optimize. the gap between a decent build and a good one was between 100k dps to millions and billions of dps. what is the point of having such a vast skill tree with 1001 different skills/supports when the best way to play is to follow optimized build guides?.

i find it horribly sad that players who actually WANT to explore and experiment a game dev’s hard work and effort is rewarded by the knowledge that some of the best rewards are just simply out of reach if they chose to play that way.

the easy solution is just to follow a build/play something meta/overperforming.

to me following a build guide is akin the game playing you, rather than you playing the game. exploration. experimentation. all has zero value. you are punished for “fully enjoying” the games mechanics.

i’ve come to the conclusion that i dont like d-likes anymore. or at least, i dont like what most of the community likes about d-likes.

LE is the closest to my dream d-like. but its going back to the same path of poe.

in fact, i’m now play survivors like. its a braindead distillation of all d-likes. 1000 hours of grinding boiled down to 1 hour of gameplay. i get power fantasy, i get to explore builds, get loot. the bosses can have some mechanics that i need to learn. but i dont feel punished in any way. i never ever once felt like i needed outside help. i dont need carries. i dont need trade. because the game is balanced around not having that.

everything feels optional.

there is no ceiling but at the same time, i want to keep pushing. why? that is the beauty of the premise of the game itself. i want to challenge the game. i dont need exclusive reward drops. a lot of people keep saying “if theres no exclusive reward, then people wont have a reason to kill ubby”.

to me thats a good point. but i come from an opposing mindset. people should want to kill ubby simply to challenge themselves.

in poe there are a lot of pinnacle content that has no drops that i want. but i challenge them anyway. why? because i want to test myself against them.

being in various forums, i find myself exposed to many who always need an excuse to do content. if theres no reward, people wont do the content. more rewards are not enough for them. they want exclusive ones and very powerful rewards in fact. whatever happened to doing content because you wanted the challenge.

similarly theres a notion of players losing interest in seasonal content if they clear it too fast. they get bored. what about players who continue playing seasonal content because they like the content itself.

it seems to me modern gamers dont know how to enjoy games anymore. the devs need to follow the money and cater to them.

the fact that majority players voted against mid season nerfs to me makes me feel that the gaming community is fucked beyond repair. they’re fine with things being imbalanced because they WANT to enjoy playing something OP.

this is actually the same as D4. the devs listened to the community and did not implement any mid season nerfs. tons of players were playing spirit born.

if i still enjoyed d4, i would be STUPID if i did not play spiritborn. i could farm all the hardest content and get all the best loot for my permanent character.

similarly i feel stupid for not rolling sentinel and clearing ubby to farm his relic.

instead. off feeling all this negativity. i just tell myself. why am i too heavily invested. i already got burned by POE. over a decade of heavy copium.

i really want to enjoy LE, but in its current state/direction its heading, i m not too keen. i’ll just play something else. i m done trying too hard.

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46

Oh but they do spend an awful lot of time and effort telling us how exciting all the things in their games that deserve our money are though!

And then along come games like BG3 and Clair Obscur that show you when a company just builds a game they like playing, with no extra ‘incentives,’ we do too. Amazing.

And honestly, Grim Dawn is your answer here. It’s single player, balanced, incredibly replayable and doesn’t try to dig holes in your pockets (actually it’s too cheap!) It’s not designed to keep your interest for two weeks every quarter and the team has never grown beyond the game’s scope and appeal. Also check out The Slormancer, which just released out of EA. Pretty good casual blast with no live service/cycle system and plenty of content, Even if a little repetitive after a while, it’s fun.

I hope LE finds the balance between live service and core product. If they build out the campaign more with optional, engaging content, extend build variety (new skills/classes) and put effort into actual proper balance, while not growing the company to the point microtransactions/packs become their primary income incentive, LE could have a long and growing stay in everyone’s ARPG roster. I would quite like LE to adopt a yearly ‘expansion’ release cadence, with QoL and minor feature releases in between. Do a quarterly ‘ladder’ like D2 if you want, but don’t rely on ‘cycles’ to sell the game, I think it’s a bad incentive.

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47

Seconded on Grim Dawn. It’s a game that doesn’t try to put you on a hamster wheel and isn’t balanced around refreshing MTX every “season”. It’s also simply fun and probably offers the best balance there is on the market of arpgs.

I still have characters made a few years ago in GD and they are perfectly playable.

LE has to find its identity, but I’m pretty sure the “vocal majority” which is perfectly fine with 2 weeks on-10 weeks off “seasonal” schedule will drive the game to be yet another Diablo 3 clone.

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Reading through this thread makes me want to buy a copy of Grim Dawn and check it out lol

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It is a very good game.

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The big difference between GD and LE is that GD doesn’t have servers to pay and maintain. Nor do they need to put out new stuff regularly. Once every 2-3 years is enough to keep people happy.

So if LE were to go the GD route, they would shut down the servers, you’d get single player only and they would release an expansion every other year.
It’s definitely an option, but not a likely one.

GD is great. Along with D2, it’s a game where I return to regularly. Usually once a year or two, I will go back and play for a couple of weeks.
I usually don’t go back to it more often because it doesn’t offer anything new. It’s just reviving the experience (which is a very good one). So I tend to go back to LE instead. Occasionally even going back to PoE or D4 as well.

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And p2p multiplayer. And support for modding.

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GD doesn’t support modding. They allow modding. Not the same thing.
Games that support modding are games like BG3 that have a mod manager integrated with the game, which GD doesn’t.

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But they do put stuff regularly. There have been many free content updates via patches. Some added new zones and bosses, others - new items. In fact Crate pumped a ton of free content into the game, despite it not being exactly a part of the “live service” business model.

Their balancing has been also top notch and overperforming things were mercilessly culled to a point where have a TON of viable builds. There’s still stuff that’s stronger/weaker but that’s OK. There are no outliers like Falconer or 1.2 Paladin there.

You may want to wait for the “Fangs of Asterkarn” expansion (in development) for a complete experience. Should be released this year.

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What do you consider regularly?
1.2.0 added new stuff in Jan 2024. Before that, only 1.1.9.0 had added new stuff in Mar 2021. That is pretty much 3 years apart. And 1.1.9.0 barely added anything. Just a few new zones for SR, 3 new legendary sets and a visual update for another set.

Yes. When you barely add anything new, you have lots of time to fiddle with balancing. Balancing is harder to achieve when you keep adding new things that mess with that balance. Which is why they usually have a ton of changes/fixes after adding new stuff.

Not to mention that GD’s balance didn’t start great. It was tuned over time.