My Issues with Level Scaling

Community General Discussion
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I have to be frank, I’ve grown very, very tired of level scaling functioning how it does in WoW. It makes leveling deeply unfun and uninteresting. I know this is a topic that’s been discussed to death and I’m beating a dead horse to some extent, but the recent Anniversary event has really brought to light just how big the problem is to me.

It’s bad enough that your power decreases by absolutely ludicrous amounts as you get higher level, relative to your low level power, but then you have the low level twinks running around in Timewalking gear outputting enough DPS to kill bosses in a single second. It’s deeply unfun and is wildly antithetical to what RPGs are supposed to be about.

It’s part of why I feel like WoW leveling even to this day has very much lost the essence of what an RPG is supposed to be about. RPGs are supposed to be about the journey, your character growing as you play and experience content. But instead, we currently occupy a space where your character can quite literally be the most powerful they will ever be at level 10, and then get progressively weaker until you hit the endgame. If Dungeons and Dragons functioned that way, quite literally no one would play it, they would all move to other RPG systems.

But then I stepped into a Raid Finder on one of my alts for the new BRD Raid and my expectations were shattered in the most depressing way I could have imagined. I had tried Normal on my main the day the patch dropped, but PuGing Normal just wasn’t happening, as most of the groups I joined got hard stuck on the 3rd boss. So I decided, ‘My main doesn’t need LFR gear, but some of my alt 80s could use it.’ So I queue into LFR expecting to experience the Raid and get to see the mechanics.

What happens? A level 45 Death Knight Twink sprints up and proceeds to deal quite literally 450 million DPS killing the bosses in 2 seconds before anyone can react because level scaling is that wildly broken. I’m sure some people were happy for the carry, but I was wildly disappointed by the experience, and frustrated that I didn’t get to experience the bosses at all. The next wing of the Raid? The same thing but with a Shaman doing 45 million DPS.

I’m aware the common consensus will generally be that Blizzard shouldn’t bother wasting resources on fixing the level scaling or leveling experience, because the endgame is the only thing that matters to a lot of people. But it’s not healthy for the game to be built this way. You end up teaching every new player in the game that leveling doesn’t matter, and it’s all just a race to get to the endgame so you can gear up and Raid or run Mythic+ Keystones.

I really think fixing level scaling SHOULD be a major consideration either in a major patch or in Midnight, as it would really strengthen the game to have leveling feel good again. I know Blizz can’t really look to Classic or SoD for how to fix the leveling experience simply because of the way level scaling works, and I have no idea how genuinely complex it would be from a programming standpoint to fix how gear interacts with level scaling, but that does seem to be the primary issue.

It feels like how stats are affected at various level ranges is the big thing that needs to be altered to fix the level scaling issues. If you smoothed out the curve of how much each level benefits from the stats on their gear then it wouldn’t be the monumental issue that it is. I’d actually prefer it if you DID feel more powerful as you got higher level, but I understand that would be difficult to achieve, so simply smoothing it out so you at least feel as powerful at level 79 as you did at level 10 would fix a lot of the issues.

My dream fix would realistically be undoing the level squish from Shadowlands, as I feel like spreading gear back across the 150 levels we’d be at, (Just as rough off the top of my head math) would dilute the stats a lot more heavily and fix that power curve balance, but I’m fully cognizant that unsquishing levels is never happening.

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I mean the only reason this is an issue to you is because you are looking at the damage meter. To a new player without details they aren’t going to notice the disparity in power at lower levels. Especially when they level so fast. I know this because I just got my GF into the game. She still doesn’t have a single add-on. And has no clue whether she is actually that powerful or not.

I think being able to que with somebody at any level is super nice. You are able to play with your friends whenever you want. What if I gotta go to bed but my buddy wants to stay on? No problem… lets que up tomorrow and we can still run stuff together even if you go ahead of me.

And I know most players are with me when I say that I think being able to level faster is a good thing, as most of us want competition and that simply will never happen at low levels. Especially because its not about skill… its about being over leveled. Just like any single player RPG ever… can’t beat the Elite 4 in Pokemon? Just go grind out victory road encounters till your dudes out level the final boss.

The real progression in WoW comes from endgame. As it should be.

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TL:DR but what i did skim. the only time levelling was exciting was the very first toon I ever made. After that it was a garbage experience. honestly skip levelling as a whole and just do a quick tutorial for the new abilities.

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Note that I at no point stated that I wanted level scaling to be abolished in terms of being able to play with people of any level. I have no issues with that, and I think it’s a very positive change. My issue is specifically with the feel of your character’s power throughout the leveling process.

And I disagree that you won’t feel the power difference if you’re not using a damage meter, as I have friends who play without addons because they don’t believe in them. A weird stance in my opinion, but that’s their prerogative. Even they say they hate getting to the high 70s because killing stuff slows down so much. My issue is largely just with the shear degree to which the power of low level characters is broken.

A level 10 in Timewalking gear is quite literally 10 times more powerful than a level 79 in optimal gear. A level 45 twink in BRD Raid Finder is more powerful than the entire raid combined X10. That’s just not a reasonably acceptable level of broken for the game to be in.

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Isn’t this like any video game tho? The higher leveled enemies should take longer to kill? Again your opinion is solely based on the damage meter. Of course fighting in the 70s stuff should die a ton slower then it did at level 10. You only notice the power disparity when you are lvl 50 qued with a lvl 10 mage who is slapping… It shows up on your screen as a really big number but for them its still a baby small number. And for a new player they aren’t really going to know what is actually happening to know that you aren’t doing that much damage.

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I wish they could undo all of it. It has been nothing but problems and frustrations

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Depends on the game, depends on encounter design.

The annoyance stems from two people doing wildly different %age of damage to the same exact enemy, which is understandable.

Sure, the lowbie is doing 100 while the high guy is doing 1,000,000.

Meanwhile for the lowbie it has 1,000 HP, while for the high guy it has 100,000,000

So for the lowbie, the high guy’s doing 10. Or, for the high guy, the lowbie’s doing 10,000,000

All numbers made simple to illustrate the point, it’s much more granular than that in reality.

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Eh, I wouldn’t say that’s really accurate. In most RPGs, basic enemies remain of a similar level of power relative to your character, and it’s only larger bosses that tend to become more challenging, I.E a C.R 30 Ancient Red Dragon in DnD having 458 hit points, relative to a C.R 4 boss having 63 Hit Points in Dungeons and Dragons. Growing weaker as you level is really quite a unique to WoW experience.

And you’re correct, a lot of my problem with level scaling stems from feeling like my contributions to the group in dungeons are pointless if there’s a level 10 in the group. It doesn’t feel fun to me to be running a leveling dungeon and be contributing 1/10th of what the level 10 is as a level 79. I enjoy feeling like my contribution to the dungeon matters, and I don’t get that a lot of times with the current level scaling system.

I also don’t see how fixing the power scaling would negatively impact the game experience for anyone, either. As you pointed out, most new players wouldn’t even be aware that there was a difference if they fixed it, and I think it would keep them playing the game for longer if the level scaling was repaired.

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I think about this quite a bit.

How/Why are they scaling it in a way that everyone is a different level and sees mobs at their levels? The balance on that must be super difficult.

Wouldn’t just making everyone the same level be easier?

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I wouldn’t really argue that as a solution, either. If everyone was functionally the same level then the process of leveling becomes equally pointless and tedious. The primary gist of the issue does stem from how enemies health relates to the damage output of each level range.

Lowbie mobs die too quickly relative to the damage output of higher level characters, so when a lowbie is chucked into a dungeon where everything scales to the relative power of the characters, they continue to kill things at that same too-fast speed as they kill stuff outside the dungeon. As I said, it largely has to do with the way that stats scale with your level, a Mastery point for example provides a lot more relative power to a level 10 than it does to a level 70.

Because of the way that levels have been squished down, it becomes a lot more difficult for Blizzard to code the game in a way where an item won’t suddenly jump a level 10’s power up to astronomical heights. Another solution to this problem would be removing all the sources of ilevel 50+ gear for level 10s, but I feel like that would only be a bandaid solution and the only long term solution that would actually fix the problem would be re-examining level scaling and the stat scaling as a whole.

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Gonna start with some background:

  • SL baby, started 3 years ago
  • Enjoyed Timewalking raids and dungeons since they came out.
  • Was a part of the Timewalking discord and used to optimise TW sets to do raids and dungeons better.

Positive changes:

  • Heroic TW raid is available and drops Heroic loot.
  • LFR is available to a larger levelling pool, this is cool.

Recent disruptive changes:

  • Scaling is extremely funky and is real bad for some classes.
  • No real way to deal with scaling other than make a levelling char or be maxed out. Previously max level players or players 71+ could use their current gear in say a TW Cata/WotLK/BC raid/dungeon and could further optimise using Azerite + 8.3 cloak /MoP sets+ cloak/Chromie time BC+WoTLK if they wanted to.

Essentially what they have done wrong recently is take the power from everyone and only give it to those who are levelling.

This just feels bad and there’s no solution to it :confused: other than them putting back in level ranges.

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No you absolutely notice that ability that used to kill mobs in 1 hit is now taking 2, then 3, then 5. Damage meters only present you with the exact scaling level to level, but being a functional human capable of experiencing the world will tell you “you got weaker as you leveled up.”

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Eh, I’ve been playing the game since it came out back in 2004, and I’ve lived through… three squishes so far? The first was the stat squish of WoD, the second was the ilevel squish of BFA and then finally the level squish of Shadowlands. Each squish that they did brought with it a whole host of scaling issues, and required extensive rebalancing throughout the game, and to some degree some of the scaling issues still aren’t fixed to this day. I.E the curse in Dire Maul East that the Satyrs throw out reduces your magic damage dealt in the 70s range by literally 100,000+%.

That said, each squish has necessitated and extensive rebalancing of stats and how they effect specific levels on Blizzard’s part, so they are capable of altering how stats relate to level. I think it is a fixable problem, it’s just a case of whether or not Blizzard would want to put in the work, and whether they think fixing the leveling process is worth the budget. I personally think it is, but I’m clearly a biased source on that, and am going to think of course my idea is worth it.

As I said, the easiest fix would be to undo the level squish from Shadowlands and distribute the current ilevels of gear more evenly across 150 levels, but I’m fully aware that’s never happening. Both from a programming standpoint, it’s not really viable and from a marketing standpoint, they can’t exactly go, ‘And now our new expansion Midnight with the new Maximum level 160!’

Thinking about this, I actually think it would be a viable solution if it was specifically handled in the way Final Fantasy 14 does level scaling for dungeons. Rather than the dungeon scaling to the players, the players scale to the level of the dungeon. So if, for example, you get queued into level 21 dungeon, the players who are above level 24 get scaled down to level 24.

So reasonably, you could unscale dungeons and band them back to their original level ranges, and then code it so that higher levels queuing into lower level dungeons get scaled down to the level of the dungeon. That said, that would probably be even more work than reworking the stat scaling. It’d be a much more permanent and certain fix, but it would take a lot of resources to rebalance basically every single dungeon in the game back to their original level bands.

It also then lends to the questions of whether or not you keep your higher level abilities when you get scaled down. FFXIV goes with the solution that you do not, they’re greyed out and you can’t use them, but that can often feel bad in that game. But if you do retain them then you are essentially leagues more powerful than the lower levels, and then their contribution feels less meaningful.

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Yea I think they should just remove level scaling for the most current expansion and focus on that.

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Under the old timewalking system, I saw people do very impressive things many times by exploiting legacy borrowed power systems, but I never noticed people doing millions of dps (especially not as like a level 50 healer with no special gear). The new system is clearly more broken, and not even in a particularly fun way

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Not sure if related, but going back to do some shadowlands/ bfa stuff on an alt and mobs being lvl 80 was really annoying. I just wanted some quick 1 shots to be on my way