Funny how despite the age, the issue is still relevant.
I remember back in the early days, the Barrens had this band of Alliance NPCs roaming the road. I died a lot and remember ducking and hiding while questing/collecting plants.
When my DK got high enough level, I would come back to kill them again and again and again, gleefully, as payback and as a public service to other low-level hordies.
That was satisfying. Unlike some players, my friend and I love being overpowered in a zone. I die far too often and once in a while it’s nice to just chill and feel like yes, you aren’t a weak piece of jello like you feel in a lot of the zones (though now mostly because some zones are more tuned to those who do raids/m+).
The scaling is also rather – broken. I remember being able to take (sometimes) that bone dinosaur thing in Voldun with my rogue in the corrupted gear.
I went back with the SL gear and boy was I surprised when it just wiped the floor with me. Haven’t gone back again, regardless of how much I would like to try for the alpaca.
That speaks to me as very broken.
I preferred the game before the zones scaled at all - not because I felt I finished them but because mobs were properly performing based on their intent - everything feels watered down and easy with scaling now
I miss the old way of questing. I would start in the starting area for a character then think about what zone to go to to continue questing. There was always a choice all the way to max level for the expansion. Most often I made a proper choice and sometimes a zone that was too advanced for my level.
It was heavily requested by people who do nothing but level up alt after alt, and then delete an alt so they can level up another alt, and have been doing the same thing for year after year, sure.
Question is, are there more of them, or more of people going back and farming stuff in old zones? My money’s on the latter.
Scaling should have been optional. Of course, NOBODY would ever turn it on, despite the big talk from the serial alt’ers.
This is kind of weird how you’re trying to paint a requested feature of how leveling works by the people who level characters and enjoy leveling characters as a playerbase they should have ignored in favor of people who want nothing to do with leveling and just want to stomp old content even harder despite them stopping level scaling at the expansion prior to the latest or earlier depending on the zone and people have always been able to go back and stomp old areas.
I think you’d have it all wrong. In Gw2, it is the level. The gear doesn’t scale down. But the rewards from the scaled down level rewards you the same as if you were the current level of the zone.