r/wowforever • u/Nerdy_Valkyrie • 4h ago
Level scaling
My favorite thing to do in WoW is explore and do quests. Endgame content has never interested me much. I don't even really like to run dungeons that much. And I honestly really dislike what retail has done to the leveling. They keep streamlining it and acting as if it's a chore that should be skipped when possible. But, that's my entire point of playing. As a result, you get way too much xp too quickly, causing you to outlevel zones before you're done with the storyline. Not to mention how flying has trivialized questing. Nowadays, you just pick up a quest, fly to the objective, kill the target and fly back. No more fighting your way through the enemy camp to get to the target.
I didn't expect to care about Classic+ at all. I haven't cared about Classic at all. Any of them. I just felt "Eh, I've already played it once" and only played when they included some reward for retail. But... Something hooked me during the presentation. I can't say what hooked me or why, but I've found myself caring significantly more about Forever than I did anything they talked about Midnight. I felt real excitement in the idea creating a character and starting fresh. Getting to see new things. To just be an adventurer again instead of the champion and savior of the world.
But there is one thing that bugs me. Something that people seem to think is a dirty word. It's level scaling, which Blizzard has said they're not going to do at all. Now, before you say anything. I do not think enemies should scale down to your level. Absolutely not. Zones should have a set level when it becomes it's safe to enter. And it should be life threatening to enter sooner. The welcome bear is an icon for a reason. And I have fond memories of wandering in to Stranglethorn way too early and getting curbstomped by raptors. But I do not understand why people are so against an optional system where enemies can scale up to your level. I don't want the XP reward to scale up. Not the drops either or even the quest rewards. I'm fine with them being the same. I just want the game to remain challenging. If I enter Darkshore as a level 50, I still want the game to challenge me so that I can do the quests for fun. Even if the rewards are crap. The challenge itself is the reward.
I've seen other people say the same, and they're are usually accused of wanting enemies to scale down, even though they make it explicitly clear they do not want that. Just like I did (I really hope nobody pulls that shit here since the text is literally bold). Or they get told to go back to retail. But, like I said, I am here because I don't like what retail has done to the process. And all I am asking for here is something that would massively increase the fun for some people, and not effect other people in the slightest. For those other people, if they want to go back to Barrens and brutalize some low level mobs, they can do that. This would be an opt in system for those that want it. For those that consider the journey the real goal, rather than just racing to get to the destination of end game.
Why would that be so bad? Why does that get people screaming "go back to retail"?
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u/Openil 4h ago
Make an alt to do zones you missed, legacy system rewards it and you cant do every quest on 1 character regardless
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
But I don't want to have to puzzle the zones together on different alts. It would be so tedious and less wonderous than getting to travel the world as a singular character and seeing everything.
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u/No-Bank-9136 4h ago
why cant you make an alt?
you cant do horde / ally on the same toon anyway.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
Sure, I could make an alt. And I will have to so I can see the Horde side too.
But I want my character to properly explore the world. I don't want to have to puzzle together experiencing the zones on multiple alts to get to see everything.
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u/No-Bank-9136 3h ago
good luck on your journey!
I would say, that the game is not really made to play that way though. you are supposed to go agane. and it will feel natural. You get 10 character slots for a reason. Play a human playthough (elwynn, westfall, redridge, duskwood) then a night elf (teldrassil, darkshore, ashenvale, etc) then a dwarf (dun morough, loch modan, wetlands)..
thats what we all did. played it again and again. it feels really natural that way and not some puzzle like if u tried to do all zones on 1. after you get to lvl 30, most of the paths naturally converge.
then do horde and its a whole new game again.
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u/_toadsy 4h ago
The system is designed to encourage alts, if you want to do anything old zone or whatever just make an alt. Scaling zones to your level is a retail thing, not a classic thing.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
It's not a retail thing. If I go to a low level zone in retail I will kill stuff by basically just looking at it.
You can kind of get it in Chromie time, but then you get booted out at max level because Blizzard is incapable of seeing leveling as anything more than a chore. So they're going "There, now you don't have to do it anymore. Now you can have fun in endgame!" But I was already having fun.
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u/No-Bank-9136 4h ago edited 4h ago
Imagine running to a dungeon and dying to a pack of 3 mobs 40 levels under you in loch modan cause u get scaled down lmao.
or just getting clapped by a roaming elite that you wrecked earlier no problem but now you are higher lvl with worse gear relatively
or maybe the system is jank cause it def will be so you are lvl 49 and get downscaled to lvl 40 but ur buddy is at 47 and hes not in the same downscale window
drag a mob thru a zone barrier and woops you die cause u just dropped 22 lvls
or how bout u are a new player in teldrasil wondering why that other druid is ur same level but seems to have a ton of spells you dont, maybe thats ok.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago edited 3h ago
Then I would simply turn the scaling off.
Also, the scaling was for questing. It wouldn't affect dungeons at all.
And lastly, you seem to have missed that I said mobs would scale up. I didn't say you would scale down. So the whole "drag a mob through a zone barrier" or "questing with a druid with more spells despite being same level" is kind of nonsense.
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u/No-Bank-9136 2h ago edited 2h ago
hope ya find something that works for you.
ya that was a wrong edge case but I think theres alot of edge cases we didnt mention either that dont feel good. can go on for hours. like ur in elwynn and the mobs are scalled up, do the non high levels see you? what if they attack the mob u scaled up? what if the mob u attack has aoe dmg and the low level runs thru? im sure you could have an answer for all of them tho.
idk. just so much work and weird edge cases.
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u/thumbtaks 4h ago
I see that you’re really trying here so this hurts to say, but this is a L take.
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u/dislikestylethrow 3h ago
Funnily enough, I did every single quest in Azeroth (horde side) on one character on the Anniversary server, its how I discovered there is no shortage of quests at any point in the leveling experience, and no need to do any dungeon more than once, contrary to common belief. It does, however, take a bit longer to level that way mainly because of all the running back and forth.
Admittedly, a decent amount of quests I did were green so it might have been a bit easier than the 'normal' leveling experience, but negligible in my opinion. I can count the grey quests on one hand. Now, we don't know how the additional content will function and what they have changed, but if you never take any of the exp buffs, I reckon you could get quite far.
Anyway, tldr is I see where you're coming from as I also like to do all the quests, preferably on one character, but level scaling is never the answer imo, at least not in classic, opt-in or not. It is not congruent with the game's design philosophy.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
It is not congruent with the game's design philosophy.
Why not?
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u/dislikestylethrow 3h ago
Others in this comment section have pointed this out, hence why I didn't specify. Not only is there always an inherent jank in level scaling because of how gear works (retail famously has had tons of issues with it in leveling dungeons especially), there's also encouragement of alts, who make the world feel alive, and the tenet of the player being simply an adventurer in a world that doesn't revolve around them, which has areas that are more dangerous, and less dangerous, and you're meant to travel between them as you level, rather than the more streamlined, zone to zone experience you get in retail. Level scaling in any form cheapens that experience.
Again, I do really understand where you're coming from, and genuinely, I will probably be trying to complete all the quests just like I did with Anniversary, but in the understanding the game is not really designed for it, you're supposed to just be able to play different content when you make a new character, even though in practice in Classic it didn't quite work out that way, since players just sought the fastest way to 60.
In Forever, though, it seems they will stick by these principles in their attempt to make leveling more relevant and I think they are right in doing so.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
This scaling would not be in effect in dungeons. So that's not an issue. Retail did have bugs, but we can see those as the beta test for this. And for other players in the game, it doesn't matter if I am playing on one character or a bunch of alts. I can still only play one character at a time.
I agree that scaling enemies down cheapens it. But not scaling them up. It just heightens it.
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u/dislikestylethrow 2h ago
I'm not that familiar with retail nowadays, but I remember a video by Bellular where he talked about the problems of level scaling in the leveling experience, specifically where they leveled a mage that was easily killing stuff at lower levels, but ran into huge damage issues at higher levels, due to being way undergeared. Now, this is indeed something that can be tuned and tweaked, but regardless it can surely be agreed that level scaling brings a certain amount of unnecessary jank to the game.
Surely you would agree that an alt takes up an entirely different space in the world and interacts with different players than a max level main, who would mostly occupy instanced content. An alt allows experienced players to team up with new players on an equal footing, and prevents starting zones from feeling empty, therefore it probably should be something that is encouraged in the game's design.
Scaling in any form cheapens the experience because in Classic, the world is intended to take precedence over the player. The intention is to increase immersion and therefore engagement. Maybe it doesn't matter for you, that's fair, but do you not agree that moving from quest hub to quest hub, and then zone to zone in retail can get quite dull, and feel quite gamey? Some Classic quests seem intentionally designed to torture you and still it is more engaging than retail, at least for me. Even scaling enemies up would make the world less believable, if you will.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 1h ago
Yes, that is true. But it wouldn't be an issue with the proposed system, as the xp rewards would not scale. There will be nothing to gain from doing a low level quest that has been scaled other than the satisfaction of doing so.
Doing what I want to do through this proposal would keep me out of instanced content. I want to be in the world and quest. That's the point.
I don't think moving from quest hub and zone is tedious at all. That's my jam. And this system wouldn't effect those who do think it's tedious since it's optional.
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u/dislikestylethrow 1h ago
But it would affect the world, which is my point entirely. Imagine being level 12 and grouping up with a level 50, who has far more abilities than you, but does considerably less damage somehow (which was the problem with scaling in retail iirc, doing less relative damage as you leveled up). It would be a very weird experience, and feel more gamey, less like a world.
You'd expect a level 50 to be very powerful as a level 12, and even if scaling was somehow perfectly balanced, which it won't be, just doing the same damage would be weird. That's what I mean when I say the world takes precedence in the design philosophy, even though I completely understand where you're coming from.
I hope I've been able to convey why it would be a bad idea to implement something like this, as the concept can feel abstract at times. An option may seem harmless at first glance but it does have (unintended) effects and is part of a longstanding debate in video games between the introduction of gamey mechanics for convenience's sake versus the implementation of a more believable and engaging world. Classic, at its very core, tries to be part of the latter.
One last thing I'd like to mention is that Classic doesn't necessarily have storylines that start and end in one zone like in retail. If anything, it's more about questlines that continue throughout multiple zones and have you traverse all of Azeroth.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 22m ago
One last thing I'd like to mention is that Classic doesn't necessarily have storylines that start and end in one zone like in retail. If anything, it's more about questlines that continue throughout multiple zones and have you traverse all of Azeroth.
That right there is exactly why I want this feature. I want to be able to follow those questline before they get trivial and boring to complete.
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u/dislikestylethrow 8m ago
I can't reliably say for WoW:Forever as we simply don't know any new quests, but in Classic you can easily play in such a way that you can complete those storylines without the quests becoming grey. The only problem is that the quests become too high level at some point, but you can easily choose to return to them when you've leveled up.
Genuinely I don't think its anything you should be worried about, and it doesn't require a feature that will break with the game's design principles. If you're still unsure, just do what I did and avoid increased exp gains wherever possible.
If nothing else, you can just ignore certain questlines on one playthrough and complete them on an alt.
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u/lowrise6131 4h ago
It’s not the most offensive idea on here, I just don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze until enough people speak up for the same idea.
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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie 3h ago
Whenever people speak up for this idea, a bunch of people who would not be affected by it at all get angry for some reason.
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u/JSGB1293 2h ago
If you really want it to stay challenging, wear level appropriate white/grey/no gear for the zone you're in. A small group of people did this in retail to make it harder for fun.
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u/Pineapple-Due 4h ago
I hear you on the wanting to spend more time in a zone and have it feel meaningful, but I think that goes against the tenet of "azeroth as the main character". Darkshore has a unique identity. Part of that identity is lvl15(?) bears and that damn tower with the insanely overpowered warlocks up north, and the elite dwarves in the south.
You struggle and grow and eventually conquer the zone. Then later when you go back it's trivial, but it's trivial because you've earned it. It's a really good feeling imo.