Before I start there is some benefits to level scaling, people can play with friends at different levels… and you know … okay well there’s one at least.
Now how I really feel - The following is my reply to the other thread “Level Scaling is not an issue. You’re just bad” and I felt that the length combined with my disdain of someone referring to anything that level scales in this game as having a “skill issue” warranted its own thread. The truth is the only parts of this game that are challenging aren’t even affected by level scaling - Lilith, Nightmare Dungeons, and one could argue World Bosses (maybe before you learn their mechanics [and at least they let you zoom out to a reasonable level]).
Wow you completely missed the issue of why people dont like Level Scaling, and frankly it’s kinda laughable that there’s 31 people who liked your post because you dont provide even a shred of evidence to back your claim or even really a solid argument.
Level scaling does make you weaker by comparison to the mobs at your level conditionally. It is just false to think that if you were to not add skill points, new gear, reroll gear, upgrade gear, or add paragon points that just the power level would remain constant by courtesy of a level up by both the monster and the character you’re playing. It is at least pre 70 incredibly easy to overcome the difference between series of levels if you’ve played action rpgs and understand the mechanics at even an elementary level. This however does not change the actual problem people have with level scaling.
The real problem people have with monsters scaling to their level has nothing to do with being able to clear content. Everything that scales in this game is the easy content of the game, in fact the only content that I’d venture to say even requires “skill” does not scale at all. NM dungeons, Uber Lilith, and I guess we can include World Bosses do not scale.
If there’s a problem I have with level scaling, it would be that it keeps scaling all the way through to 95… and there’s never really a part inside the open world where you can go back to and tell you’ve become stronger. It is an action role playing game a shift of power becomes necessary for the player to believe they are progressing. Diablo III did actually have level scaling to some degree by the way, the mobs do increase in level as you level up in the zone, but the difficulty of that mob will not continue to increase nor will their level passed a certain point. The way Diablo games in the past made difficulty was by tuning mobs to be harder in different difficulty settings which have been majorly over simplified and made fairly irrelevant in Diablo IV. Torment 1 - Torment XVI in Diablo III which used to be Monster Power (originally normal-nightmare-hell-inferno) is a vast array where monsters had ~138k times as much health as they did in normal by the time you get to Torment XVI. Not only that but Elite Monsters and Champion packs gained more affixes per each difficulty you climbed in early on in D3 Vanilla. This maybe more difficulties than necessary, I think most people would say it is but at least it provides a very tangible reward for when your character is improving.
In Diablo IV theres only one difficulty if were being honest with ourselves. Well maybe two. World I and World II (worthless) basically are the same thing they are 1-50, World Tier III is 50+ and has a very minimal change in monster power. World Tier IV is just 70+ (but for any decent player youre in there by 60 even in HC unless youre on a really underpowered build). There are some slight changes to World Tier IV like longer CC duration and extra damage but overall the mobs do not have a significantly stronger array of abilities or a power jump that is enormous enough to have to overcome a significant difficulty change. The level difference between the mobs and the players can provide a difficulty simply because you will take more damage and do less damage to higher level mobs.
In a sense the only difference between World Tiers is almost literally just their level - this makes it very monotonous, especially with legendary affixes being fairly bland you almost never see a major increase in power where you go from struggling to facerolling even if its just for a little bit. This in part is a good thing because the things like set bonuses in Diablo III were out of control on the amount of power but like all Devs the reaction to criticism of a subject by toning it up or down waaaaaaaay past what people will enjoy like they only have Vol 1 or 10 on their stereos. Diablo II felt amazing in how well it rewarded gear progression and Diablo IV doesnt reward it enough, Diablo III rewarded it too much. I haven’t played Diablo I in a long time but I remember it having more impactful drops than Diablo IV does.
Drops, Unchallenging mobs, Lack of Rewards for the small unscaled parts of the game that are challenging, have put Diablo IV in a spot where I as someone who had enough hours on monk alone in D3 to literally have my hour counter reset only be able to play Diablo IV in sessions of I got on my Rogue played one nightmare dungeon, swapped to my sorc played another got bored, quit. I will play Season I out of some sense of tribalism I guess, Im not quite sure.
PS… Im not totally against level scaling, I think it does have benefits, it just is way too far reaching its implications are laughable… I honestly was so disappointed when I realized mobs scaled to your level versus you even in your team leaders game at a completely different level. Can you understand why it feels weird to a level 100 fighting the same mob as a level 70 that maybe it does feel like youre not getting stronger per level when the level 70 (THAT CAN HAVE THE SAME EXACT GEAR) is killing that same monster just as fast. When I bought this game I was under the impression that the mobs would scale with me in single player but obviously if I brought someone into my game they would be fighting the same mob as I am… No we are literally fighting our own versions of that mob at different levels thats whack on the face of it. There’s no way around the fact that de-value’s leveling.
