Scaling all content

Community General Discussion
1

I was traveling through Outlands to do Mechanar for the Silvermoon rep, and I have to say it made me feel very nostalgic. It seems such a shame that the way leveling is implemented in WoW means that all this content (not just TBC, but a whole swathe of content) is hardly used at all. Zones, dungeons and raids, all going to waste.

And there will be some newer players who’ve never even set foot in most of the dungeons and raids from older content.

And then I had a thought. Given that WoW already has scaling technology, why isn’t it possible to scale ALL content up to the level cap. That way, players could choose to do any and all xpacs as if they were the current endgame.

So here’s the rough outline of how I’d see it working:

  1. Start with a level squish. Let’s bring the level cap down to 65.
  2. Vanilla content is (obviously) available at Level 1.
  3. You can’t enter Outlands until you’re Level 30. And then you’d bump this minimum starting level by 5 for each subsequent xpac. For example, you couldn’t enter Northrend until you’re Level 35, Cata zones until you’re Level 40, and so on.
  4. All zones, dungeons and raids scale UP to the character’s level, all the way to the level cap. So a group of level-capped characters could do ICC or Siege of Orgrimmar as if it was the current endgame.
  5. Gear progression would still exist, but it would be the same gear progression in ALL content. In other words, it would be based on the character’s level, not on the content. (Or perhaps, if this proved a step too far, previous xpacs could offer gear 10 ilvls below that of the current xpac.)

Now, I know there are several issues here:

  1. It will have an adverse effect on farming for transmogs and mounts.
  2. At the moment, WoW’s scaling technology tends to give uneven results.
  3. Some content couldn’t just be plugged into the scaling technology. It would have to be reworked.

But if we take the view that the above three issues could be resolved to the satisfaction of Blizz and players, what do people think of the idea? And, if you like the idea, what other practical issues do you think would need to be considered?

3 Likes
2

It is an interesting idea, but I bet people would complain that leveling is too slow or too fast or why should they have to level at all. Or why should they have to kill any raid boss to get his or her loot. The list of inane complaints is endless.

1 Like
3

How much of that old content have you done? They’re genuinely better at designing content than they used to be. Lots of old content, probably most of it, would have to be redesigned to not be obviously terrible compared to anything from a recent expansion.

People used to hold up Wrath as an example of good design but one of its bosses is literally synonymous with a boring fight with no mechanics except for almost getting 2shotted by autoattacks. BC dungeon trash has 5 second stuns (you can have multiple mobs with them in the same pull).

I think the closest they’re going to be able to come to what you’re talking about is Timewalking, which has problems of its own.

1 Like
4

I honestly think blizzard is thinking of doing a level squish. Or doing legacy servers. It’s mostly likely going to be both. Some would argue that lv 100 is ideal, by some, I mean one irl person I know. I think that the wrath talent trees would be ideal with lvl 100 being the cap, but outside of that, I don’t know what to bring on this.

5

I started in WotLK.

And yes, I agree that newer content is better in at least two regards:

  1. Graphical quality.
  2. Boss design.

But if we allowed all content to scale up, then players would have access to MUCH more content. And I can think of at least one area - the layout and overall design of dungeons and raids - where some older xpacs were in fact better than the recent ones.

6

Well technically Patchwork is a Vanilla fight.

7

It’s not going to waste, people are simply not choosing to do it. There’s a difference. The whole point of the level scaling is to make it all available to more people.

Before, how many folks landed in Outland, skipped HFP, leveled in Zangarmarsh and Nagrand, and then headed off to Northrend to do 2.5 zones when they got there?

How many folks ever did the end zones in the earlier expansions? There’s a LOT of folks out there that don’t have any of the early Loremasters. I was not alone when I instantly stopped questing as soon as I dinged max level.

I pretty much never entered Silithus on Vanilla, I never completed the questing in EPL, or Winterspring, or anything like that. Once I dinged, I was hearthing home to start end game because there was no new gear waiting for me in those quest zones.

During BC, I did hardly any of Netherstorm, and pretty much NO quests in SMV. It wasn’t until Wrath leveling my Druid that I Loremastered BC, finally leaving BC at 77. I don’t know if I Loremasterd Wrath in Cata or MoP when I finally went back with an 80 I was leveling.

Now, when you ding 60, you can level in Netherstorm, Zul’Farak, SMV, or Grizzly Hills. Any of them.

That said, it would not bother me now, to have WQs in old zones. Events that spanned all of the continents, islands, and planets, with top level content.

1 Like
8

Ha.
Ha Ha
HAHAHAHA

BAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHH

/wipes tear

Oh wait, you’re serious.

BAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHHAHA

2 Likes
9

I can agree that 100 would work. Make 100 the cap and start working on alternate points towards bettering talents, abilities, and skills. That way someone that is working on a character feels progression instead of a reset each expansion. Just my thoughts though.

10

I liked it the way it was. No scaling anywhere at all. You would get too powerful for an area and move along.

I leveled alts to see old content again long before scaling was a thing.

7 Likes
11

They could still leave a “legacy loot mode” version of the instance available, or have kind of sharding option like Warmode - where you could choose a scaled shard or one where you could 1 shot everything.

I would like this in principal. However, I’ve seen a lot of post that make me think the community opinion is too divided for us to see a move away from the way it is and has been.

12

Enjoy your cleanse spamming in classic raids.

13

A level squish is no small feat, it would take a huge effort and without a ton of testing there would be bugs and balance issues all over the place. It would not be something they could accomplish quickly.

14

I like the idea. There could be an extra difficulty for dungeons and raids from old xpacs - ‘Legacy’ - in which level scaling is not switched on.

Or alternatively, and this might be a bit radical or a bit too hard to implement, there could be an NPC where you could switch level scaling off and on for all content. This might even help players who don’t like the current level scaling. They could choose to turn it off and all content would be at a fixed level, rather than scaling up to character level.

15

That said, it would not bother me now, to have WQs in old zones. Events that spanned all of the continents, islands, and planets, with top level content.

I could get behind this. This is a great idea.

16

I agree that the whole thing would be challenging and require a lot of man hours. And we have recent examples where that didn’t work so well. But we have older examples - the complete reworking of old world zones in Cata, for example - where such a massive, large-scale project was accomplished relatively smoothly.

17

I’d actually be fine with a scale-down effect if it was entirely optional and I could switch from destroying things with my bare hands to immersing myself in the quest line at-will.

1 Like
18

Yes, but I think people are choosing not to do it for two reasons:

  1. A fair number of players have done the content before and just want to do the shiny new content. Fair enough.
  2. Because the current level scaling is still done in blocks, and you out-level content pretty quickly.

Some players are complaining of a content drought in BfA, as they did in WoD. (Personally, I think there’s plenty of content in BfA, but some of it isn’t very interesting.) But if you allowed dungeons and raids to scale up to level cap, BOOM, suddenly you’ve drastically expanded the amount of endgame content available to players to do.

19

Personally, I hate scaling. However, it can be done so as to preserve a player’s sense of power progression while leveling – to me, that is paramount.

Scaling can be done well but Blizzard did not select one of the many good ways to scale.

  • scale the player up/down to content (FF14/GW2/SWTOR)
  • scale all content and players to the same virtual level (ESO)

Blizzard is attempting to have its cake and eat it too. Zones still maintain level restrictions, but the content is scaled to the player – this creates a flat/no-win, no power effect. Players don’t get the benefit of the level-specific zone growth because there is none. Flat scaling takes progression away.

Blizzard should abandon the concept of zone levels and just scale the world – let players of any level play any where. This works great in ESO. You actually feel your power gain as you level. Being able to play anywhere at any level would revitalize old content in a positive way.

Of course, hand in hand with player progression, is the need to gain new abilities/talents and gear as you level… and presently all these are sorely lacking in WoW.

1 Like
20

Scaling the entire game properly would probably be like an entire expansion worth of work for the dev team.
Timewalking shows off a ton of flaws in the scaling tech as it does not account for new and different mechanics properly, such as CD’s on dispel for healers.
Imagine scaling the whole game, then having to go through and meticulously adjust every single enemy to fit the current gameplay. Now imagine having to do that every time they decide the next expansion needs to overhaul gameplay again. It would be either be an epic disaster or very time consuming, and probably end up falling somewhere in the middle.

1 Like