Do y'all enjoy world scaling?

Community General Discussion
82

I think dialing it back would be okay, though I would hope they maintain the difficulty. The raids just need to have harder progression. Ice Crown felt good. First wing got your foot in the door and each wing after had it’s increasing difficulties. I would like to see mythic gone and make normal relevant again. Normal is so pointless now. I recently geared a dh and think I might have been there one time… maybe none? It’s such a pointless difficulty.

Yea, that’s very much the case. There are really some easy fixes to this as well.

  • Reduce the value of borrowed power per expansion. While it can still be central to our experience, it shouldn’t make or break our ability to progress if we don’t have everything. It’s like legendaries in Legion. Some of them were crucial to damage, healing, or mitigation. Not having them meant you quite literally couldn’t be competitive. Borrowed power should be a small portion of the whole.
  • Make primary stats matter most. Agility, Str, etc. These stats should far out weigh secondary stats. It should be very clear when an item drops that it’s an upgrade.
  • Balance talent tiers… As is, many specs have talents that are completely useless in almost any situation. If each tier was balanced, choice would actually increase. As is, people play meta builds or meta specs because any other option is pointless.
  • Diversify utility. The more homogeneous the game has become, the more the game boils down to just raw output. If all that matters is your damage and not what you bring to a group, then the top DPS specs or heals or w/e will always be taken first. If the game didn’t revolve around numbers so much and instead rewarded execution and decision making, meta comps would matter less. For instance, look at disc priests on Grievous weeks. Grievous is poorly designed and it completely invalidates disc as a healer. They should have made grievous about decision making. Making smart heals… instead, grievous rewards output only. The more healing… the better.

The game could easily move away from min/max needing to be so central to our play. The problem is, the devs created this beast and now… it almost feels like the players are being blamed by them. The fact players are blaming other players is just nuts.

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83

Secondary stats being so powerful has a lot to do with how Blizzard changed how specs work and provided synergy between secondary stats and spec resources.

That is what needs removed if we want primary stats be the driver. And I don’t think it would go over well.

Although I would argue that may have never been the case. In classic hit and crit can be favored over str or agi for many classes.

That and content is just tuned so tight. If mythic+ capped at 15 and Nzoth was more in line with Shad’har in difficulty then a lot of the reason to care about every optimization lessens.

84

who needs a sense of progression when enemy hp is artificially inflated to pad time played metrics?

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85

These are all great suggestions.

It really feels bad when it feels like most of your class’ capabilities come from things that you don’t have while leveling, and will be taken away in later content. Makes a real “what’s even the point?” sort of feeling. Why bother going after something that you don’t get to keep?

Primary stats mattering most would also really help with the issue of keeping 50+ gear items in your bags of various ilvl, because with x trinket, y and z become better than what you have, but only on certain affix weeks. Always hated having to keep around multiple combos, often of lower ilvl, just because the secondary stats synergized better.

I do believe they’re still tackling the ever-present issue of talent tiers being imblanced. They have been since their conception, but I think maybe the answer to that may lie in the content reinforcing these “go meta or suffer” ideas. Being merely 10% behind the head of the pack can really feel like a detriment even in “casual” content, even though it shouldn’t feel that way.

Finally, the utility thing is something WoW’s moved away from for far too long. They try to address it every now and then, but it’s usually too weak to the point of being irrelevant, therefor removed later. I really do miss the ability to be valued for the supportive roles you could bring - things that go on behind the scenes that meters can’t measure. Too much emphasis in-game on playing “meter pvp.”

TBC’s class design has a few great examples of how support roles could be done right. Look at retribution in TBC; something many forget is that, compared to vanilla, TBC ret actually didn’t do that much more DPS relative to boss HP than it did in late vanilla. What made it desireable was what it brought to everyone else: more crit chance on bosses through imp jotc, more damage to whatever group it was in via sanc aura, maintaining judgment debuffs via crusader strike.

It was still a bottom tier DPS spec if measured by throughput(unless playing a blood elf in a certain way to abuse SoB), but it was desirable nonetheless.

The design can work, but what I think Blizzard is afraid of is upsetting those who like their giant yellow numbers(who doesn’t like them, lol?), because it’s been a long time since then. To suddenly turn someone’s favorite bursty DPS spec into a “support DPS” could upset a lot of people. Another thing is it would go against their “bring the player, not the class” philosophy, but I personally do not think the latter is anything to worry too much about.

I don’t think Blizzard is ignorant of this, just worried if the risk is worth the reward.

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86

No. We work to better ourselves, scaling defeats that purpose.

On a slightly similar note, to think that since 2004, I have never put a downgrade item in my main character, always an upgrade item, and my character is actually less powerful than she was 2-15 years ago. When Shadowlands Patch 9 hits, back to level 50–a level my main has not been since WoW Release Days 2004.

What was the point of all the long nights of raiding and gearing up, saving & spending DKP, grabbing the latest greatest loot, expansion after expansion, rinse and repeat 8 times, only to see my character power the same or less than what it was during Release Days?

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87

Yes love it. Without it old content would be obsolete.

88

Except we knew these where the same elves that held the door open for the legion during the shattering. They should’ve been our first target, not screwing around with that bearded elf and his dream problems. Or some Naga, or some new Tauren’s problems with their neighbors, or dealing with Papa Pooch of Gilneas and some viking stuff. Plus, Alt U Guldan was most likely there anyway, so we really, really, REALLY should’ve struck there first.

But you’re right. Blizz will never solve the issue. Only now we’ll have to be lvl 50 for all that stuff to unlock.

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89

To give the CEO a multi million dollar bonus obviously

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90

I remember feeling like I had to pop by the AH at level 120 to get at least some ilevel 325 gear way back in 8.0 or so to survive in open world. (In particular, blood trolls with blowguns who kept jumping away in different directions… And maybe the smarter npc squads on arathi highlands patrol.) But my mains are pretty strong against world raid bosses and solo normal dungeons now. So it seems like everything but raids has an ilevel cap you can overpower at max level.

Edit: Oh yeah, level scaling smoothed out the levelling experience. I think all the special holidays and dailies and non-story activities and heirlooms broke the levelling experience. Like the monsters’ levels and powers were well calculated for you to have a little challenge and finish stories. (If classic is any indication.) But if you ran off grinding pet battles in heirlooms, your storyline levelling experience would go down the drain.

91

I like a little bit if world scaling. Fighting lower level mobs is boring.

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92

I hate it.

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93

I like not having to go into the same leveling zones over and over again and take a non linear path.

94

scaling is okay mostly.

unlike my level 112 vulpera DK alt doing the Tiragarde invasion today, and there are level 120 mobs strewn in along with the target mobs. or that ‘class dismissed’ invasion quest in highmountan, where everything in that cave is level 111 regardless of your character level.

95

I like how it can possibly open up more options for twinks by making all gear relevant, as everything scales up.

However besides that one thing I do NOT enjoy scaling, it greatly damages the feeling of progression you used to have when levelling up. A level 55 paladin killing abominations in the plaguelands shouldn’t go back to Elwynn and be threatened by basic defias thugs.

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96

It is a pure load of crap.

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97

I’ve liked scaling. I like not outleveling zones, and being able to pick precisely the ones I want to level in to shape my own character’s story.

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98

Oposite of yes!

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99

Overall I like it, the ilevel scaling cap needs to be drastically lowered at 120, but it would be nice for players to be able to turn it on and off - even if it requires a game client restart.

100

who needs a sense of progression when enemy hp is artificially inflated to pad time played metrics?

Where’s the padding? Basically every iteration of WoW’s scaling has taken the average enemy kill time from 10+ seconds to 3-4 seconds. There was like 1 summer of 7.3.5 where mobs were tuned to take a single rotation of 3-4 spells at around 7-8 seconds, then they nerfed it by like 30% at BfA launch, and now again in Chromie Time scaling we have enemies that die in 1-2 hits.

101

This is the part I hate. I don’t mind world level scaling, saves me the hassle of changing zones when things go green (I never stayed in green zones unless I REALLY loved the zone). But the 120 scaling? ugh. x500.