Guild Wars 2

I know there are a lot of us that absolutely despise the downscaling feature we experience when going into a lower level area.

If there was a world or two where downscaling were disabled I think that would satisfy a lot of players who are otherwise losing interest and moving on to other games.

Just an idea. I hate to compare this game to WoW but it’s along the same lines as their PvP and PvE realms. They gave us the option and that made all the difference.

In other words, you want to go in a starter zone and put a meteor shower and kill all the bandits in the ranch with one skill and then /cheer and /laugh ?

Not at all. I like the sense of power progression which I feel is lacking in the game. Especially when exploring every area for 100% completion.

Do not harass me with your facetious comments for posting a simple suggestion.

If you don’t have anything to contribute to this thread other than “OMG YOU’RE WRONG” then don’t comment. There are a lot of players that feel the same way. This is just my attempt at suggesting a compromise that would satisfy both groups without affecting the players who love the current system.

I don’t see how downscaling will, by itself, make someone lose interest in a game.

Again it just comes down to a feeling of progression. The downscaling really takes it away. Reading through some forums there are more people than you think who feel the same and I actually quit playing for a few months because of this.

I re-installed the game earlier this week to see if anything changed. Played for about 4 days before it started bothering me again. No matter how current I keep my gear I just don’t feel like I’m getting more powerful.

Other than that I’ve grown to appreciate everything else about this game. The artwork and scenery is beautiful. The music is amazing. Combat and skills are interesting. Exploring feels meaningful… But ultimately those things can be found in other games.

I personally believe it makes more sense than having level 1 mobs while you’re level 80. A sword is a sword, and by simply stabbing them, you will deal a decent amount of damage. It doesn’t matter if your sword is glowy or if it’s just a sword… It’s still going to stab them.

True

But swinging a sword around for that amount of time would naturally increase your strength, allowing you to swing faster/harder. You would also learn new techniques for swinging that sword. It’s not just hack, slash, and stab. There are proper ways of wielding a weapon that you would learn over time allowing you to become more effective with it. At least that’s how it is in real life.

And you do learn new techniques. That’s what utility skills, weapon skills and traits are for!

I’m talking about just straight swinging your sword. The basic attack. Anyone can wield a weapon. But it takes time to master it. And maybe that’s kind of what I’m getting at. A level 1 (anyone) can swing a sword and kill with it. They may take longer – do to inadequate technique, but it can be done. Alternatively a level 80 (master) can swing a sword and possibly decapitate his opponent with one slice, or pierce his heart with one thrust, effectively ending the combat much quicker than the level 1 could. With downscaling I feel like that’s lost.

At least that’s my impression. Any thoughts? And thank you for your thoughtful responses. I appreciate someone taking the time to discuss this.

All technique aside then, someone swinging a sword (again we’ll just use levels to compare to because it’s easy) at level 1 will not be able to swing it as hard or as fast as someone at level 80, who’s obviously been doing it for quite some time. That’s supposed to be represented in a game with stats.

Esplen.3940:

I personally believe it makes more sense than having level 1 mobs while you’re level 80. A sword is a sword, and by simply stabbing them, you will deal a decent amount of damage. It doesn’t matter if your sword is glowy or if it’s just a sword… It’s still going to stab them.

I’m sure someone will correct me on this but I’m almost positive the material your weapon is made of would have a significant impact on the amount of damage you could do. Take an iron or bronze sword, both are made of soft metals that wont hold an edge and therefore blunt rather quickly. I dunno if you have the opportunity but if you get a chance try and cut something with a blunt knife or sword. It’s a pain in the kitten and takes a lot longer than something that holds its edge. The difference is like night and day. Then look at a steel sword, or even the katana. The materials and forging process made that thing into one of the best cutting weapons of all time.

sorry, that’s getting off topic. and it’s already represented in game with higher level weapons.

I can already hear people coming in here to bash my opinion so let me just say this again. I will not tolerate harassment or bullying of any kind for posting my opinion. I will report you.

I know I’m in the minority of players who feels this way. But in no way, shape, or form would having a dedicated world void of levelscaling affect your playing experience. It just wouldn’t, unless you decided to play on it. So for anyone to come in here and tell me I’m wrong is basically just you wanting to be rude for the sake of being rude. Which if that’s the case then maybe you need to re-evaluate yourself as a human being, learn to show some respect for others.

I’d like to take a moment to cherish the fact that you’ve had a conversation with yourself in the past 6 posts, all yours. There is an edit button which you can use to add to your previous posts instead of needlessly bumping a topic.

However, I really don’t see your purpose with this thread. You want there to be no downscaling, yet you say that the reason for it is to feel stronger, BUT you won’t abuse it by just one-shotting low level mobs.

IF Arenanet were to implement this, it would create a multitude of problems.

• Firstly, what if I went to do a dungeon? I’m not getting downscaled, so I could easily clear AC by myself. This creates a balance issue. This server would be able to farm ridiculously easily compared to other servers. A fix for this would to, in response to getting rid of downleveling, also get rid of upscaling loots. Meaning, you kill a level 5 mob, you get a level 5 reward. The only dungeons that would be remotely profitable would be HotW, CoF, CoE and Arah. Not to mention the weaker dungeons would give less dungeon tokens to accommodate their ease for high level players. This leads me to my next point.
• Secondly, what if I was hosting a dungeon and someone in another server joined me. Do they get downscaled? Do I get downscaled? This creates a diversion in the community. A possible fix for this is to create a separate network that would be “non-downscaled” but that means that if you want to be non-downscaled, you’d have to buy a transfer similar to EU <—> NA.
• Thirdly, what is the point? I still don’t get it. You want to be able to one-shot mobs? I do that on my level 80 in beginner zones. I’m hitting mobs for a lot harder than beginners are capable. When I go to help my friends, they stand there hitting a mob for half a minute. I walk up to it, and with one auto attack bring it to near-dead. The way downscaling works is definitely flawed. It is possible to be weaker than someone at the current level, but it’s also possible to be stronger. Use that to your advantage, not your disadvantage.

When I was level 12 I couldn’t solo Oak, now I can even aggro the nearby veterans and kitten them along the way np

It’s true that the downscaling can be quite harsh in some zones (I have 92% critical damage that gets down to like.. 7% in some areas), but you have the traits and utility skills that add up; you don’t have them when you are low level. Hell, if I had all the utilities and traits from the start it wouldn’t have been hell to level a mesmer (It was very fun, tho).

Also, you maybe can’t 1shot mobs… but you 2 shot them.

I understand the feeling of OPness you’d like to feel, but it would get very boring because:
1) The experience you gain from killing, mining and doing events would be kittented to the ground (Making it not even rewarding)
2) Mobs would drop only low level items
3) You would end up hanging around only in Orr for killing/farming, which gets boring even in the short run.
4) If dungeons were downscaled, it would be easier to farm tokens for your favorite gear but, once again, the only profitable dungeons would become the high level ones.

When I had just started this game, I didn’t really like this feature; I too liked coming back to an old area and exterminate in 1shot all those nasty mobs that were hell during my levelling but it became very boring everytime. Wonder why no one farms mobs in WoW low level areas or does quests there (And the ones farming old dungeons are VERY unmotivated to do so, unless they want to roleplay or feel nostalgic about old molten core).

Downscaling basically makes any area worth farming in, adding diversity and giving you the possibility to pick up the area you like when you feel like it, making it challenging but also rewarding, instead of being left wondering “Oh, this area is so good, I like it, why didn’t they make it high level so I’d feel motivated to actually come here?”.

This is my opinion but now, coming at your suggestion, how do you think it should be dealt with? I mean, if they made the downscaling possible, you’d want them to “instance” you, so that you couldn’t interferee with other’s playing? How do you think dungeons should be dealt with?

I’m equipped in full exotics and honestly low level areas aren’t a challenge for me. If anything the level scaling could be tweaked a bit to add some challenge.

I think if you want that, they’d need to change how the game scales in that server, or you’d trivialize everything below the level 80 zones. I already can one to two shot enemies in Queensdale, and if you take anything below the 70s to an 80 zone the mobs will likely one shot you.
Well if that really floats your boat I guess, though I warn yah, you’re losing your ability to party with lowbies.

CureForLiving.5360:

I’m equipped in full exotics and honestly low level areas aren’t a challenge for me. If anything the level scaling could be tweaked a bit to add some challenge.

Agreed. You level is lowered, you damage and HP got adjusted, but bonus from your equipments and traitline still bring you huge advantage against the mobs.

There may not be much difference for a level 12 player, but any level 30+ players can kill level 2 mobs with one or two strike even if their level is scaled.

I remember being in a level 15 zone at level 30 and some areas were too hard to solo because they spawned faster than I could kill them. I went back at level 80 and demolished them, even though my downscaled level was only one or two levels above the mobs level. Low level champions were something me and my friends used to go around, now they are something that we can try to kill. Some people even solo them. They take time and effort of course but they are possible. From this I can tell my character is much stronger than it was, or maybe I’ve just learned how to play. I guess if someone wants to feel uber powerful the level 2 area for a level 80 with full exotics is a good place to visit. One shot the mobs there till you get your fill of it then you can head to a higher zone for a little more challenge.

DropTrigger.5217:

Not at all. I like the sense of power progression which I feel is lacking in the game. Especially when exploring every area for 100% completion.

Do not harass me with your facetious comments for posting a simple suggestion.

If you don’t have anything to contribute to this thread other than “OMG YOU’RE WRONG” then don’t comment. There are a lot of players that feel the same way. This is just my attempt at suggesting a compromise that would satisfy both groups without affecting the players who love the current system.

Make a level 1 character, and level it through the starter zone.

Now bring your geared up level 80 and complete that zone.

If you can’t see the obvious power difference you are playing the wrong game. My thief can 1 shot most mobs in Wayfarer, I don’t think any more boosts are necessary.

DropTrigger.5217:

I can already hear people coming in here to bash my opinion so let me just say this again. I will not tolerate harassment or bullying of any kind for posting my opinion. I will report you.

Oh, you are so funny! You want no opposition in your game and you will tolerate no unkind words in your forums either!

Go to the Godslost Swamp in Queensdale. There are a ton of white-text frogs there that I use to get the Ambient Killer Daily Achievement. You may have to sneak up on them, but a skilled player should be able to one-shot them. Just be careful of those level 14 Skelk! If you aggro one of them, you’d better have a speed boost handy to get away!

Your next best bet is to do what you have already done. Leave the game if you don’t like it. Because they aren’t going to remove downscaling, and they shouldn’t.

No, what I wont tolerate is people like you being rude for the sake of being rude.

Here: for you hamfast – While playing Guild Wars 2 (this includes forums), you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, HARASS, threaten, EMBARRASS or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

I apologize for making so many posts at first. I’m new to forums in general so I’m still trying to learn how this works. But thank you for the “warm” reception.

You contributed nothing to the original topic. I had a legitimate suggestion and other than a few respectful individuals all I seemed to get was “OMG YOU’RE WRONG”.

• Firstly, what if I went to do a dungeon? I’m not getting downscaled, so I could easily clear AC by myself. This creates a balance issue. This server would be able to farm ridiculously easily compared to other servers. A fix for this would to, in response to getting rid of downleveling, also get rid of upscaling loots. Meaning, you kill a level 5 mob, you get a level 5 reward. The only dungeons that would be remotely profitable would be HotW, CoF, CoE and Arah. Not to mention the weaker dungeons would give less dungeon tokens to accommodate their ease for high level players. This leads me to my next point.
• Secondly, what if I was hosting a dungeon and someone in another server joined me. Do they get downscaled? Do I get downscaled? This creates a diversion in the community. A possible fix for this is to create a separate network that would be “non-downscaled” but that means that if you want to be non-downscaled, you’d have to buy a transfer similar to EU <—> NA.
• Thirdly, what is the point? I still don’t get it. You want to be able to one-shot mobs? I do that on my level 80 in beginner zones. I’m hitting mobs for a lot harder than beginners are capable. When I go to help my friends, they stand there hitting a mob for half a minute. I walk up to it, and with one auto attack bring it to near-dead. The way downscaling works is definitely flawed. It is possible to be weaker than someone at the current level, but it’s also possible to be stronger. Use that to your advantage, not your disadvantage.[/quote]

YES! You’re first two points make perfect sense. That’s exactly how they would have to go about it and it’s what I would’ve expected if they implemented this sort of thing. I would pay to go to a non-downscaled network. Everyone here thinks I want to do away with it for good. No, just make separate networks/servers without it. If I could get a moderators opinion on how feasible this idea is it would be much appreciated. Otherwise I feel like i’m going to be wasting a lot of time explaining the same thing over and over.

A few problems I see here: It would be a lot of time and energy on a-net part for a playerbase that will quickly get bored of the lack of engaging content. It would allow the market to be flooded with mats from instakills and a server like this would have an even bigger problem with bots who require minimal programing to gather. I doubt any money gained would offset the cost to maintain it.

DropTrigger.5217:

• Snip

If I could get a moderators opinion on how feasible this idea is it would be much appreciated. Otherwise I feel like i’m going to be wasting a lot of time explaining the same thing over and over.

Just a comment here. The moderator’s job is to police the forum and make sure people obey the forum rules. They have no idea on whether or not something like this is feasible. Devs, who do, rarely post in threads and they don’t give either positive or negative feedback on threads of this type. They read them or the moderators pass on these suggestions but they don’t respond on the forum to them.

I’ve never seen the appeal of outgrowing content, to be honest, but each to their own.

There’s a few problems I can see with this:

Participation of events – A level 80 would only have to sneeze in the direction of a bunch of mobs to kill them while in a lower level zone. This opens up the opportunity to grief these events for lower level players, and while in an ideal world they should be able to be ignored, they can’t. Not to mention; how quick do you think the events would be completed if a few unscaled level 80’s were participating? Wouldn’t give the lower levels who needed the events a chance to participate.

Dungeons – Get to level 80 > faceroll and farm dungeons for easy loot. Not saying you’d do it, but there are people who would. Not to mention this could potentially have an effect on the economy (buy dungeon Exotics > chuck Exotics in the Mkittenell what comes out). Even if the loot in the dungeon was scaled down to the dungeon level, this could still cause an issue.

Workload – Given how the game was built with the level-scaling as a core component, it would depend entirely on how many people would want this feature in comparison to how much work it would take to remove it (time is money after all), and could it be justified. Realistically, I also can’t see this bringing players back if this was one issue that led to them quitting.

Dustfinger.9510:

A few problems I see here: It would be a lot of time and energy on a-net part for a playerbase that will quickly get bored of the lack of engaging content. It would allow the market to be flooded with mats from instakills and a server like this would have an even bigger problem with bots who require minimal programing to gather. I doubt any money gained would offset the cost to maintain it.

It’s a lot of work for a very small playerbase is what Dust is trying to say, so I highly doubt it will be implemented in the near-future.

You still progress, you should have close to no problem at all to defeat low level enemies. The downleveling is one of the best things with GW2. Makes it much more realistic. You gain levels and become more powerful but not so much that you can breeze through low level areas.

Go with your level 80 exo to a starter area and kill some mobs. Now roll a fresh char (same prof) and kill the same mobs. There’s progression.
And honestly without downscaling they’d just turn off loot and xp gain anyway (likely rewards from events as well) just because you could 1-shot anything anyway, and then what would the point be?
“To help friends” Ah, if they’d be evil they’d deny xp to anyone if the mobs was touched by a high-level, ripe for griefing. Creates more problems than it solves really…

Also…

I can already hear people coming in here to bash my opinion so let me just say this again. I will not tolerate harassment or bullying of any kind for posting my opinion. I will report you.

I’m shacking…

What would this accomplish. Down scaled characters are already ridiculously overpowered to the point where I can one shot mobs in lower level zones. Down-scaling is an amazing feature that allows high level players to play with low level players without completely destroying the sense of balance. Every friend who tried to play WoW with me either got power leveled by chain running dungeons or told to go quest by themselves. In this game I can actually play with them in level appropriate content.

I whole-heartedly agree with everyone who strongly resents the idea of deleting down-scaling. I feel like it’s a core part of GW2’s immersion. I would be very upset if it was removed in any form.

Also, an idea that no one has suggested yet is this: Even CoF (an end-game dungeon) is only level 75 for explorable mode. Being able to do this as a non down-scaled level 80 would make it even easier than it already is. If someone from this non-scaled server decided to transfer back to a server with downscaling.. this could cause a lot of economic upset, especially if the person were trying to manipulate the market.

Go to non scaled server —> get a ton of loot by doing high level content far quickly due to not scaling down —> transfer back to a regular server —> disrupt the economy by having large supplies of goods that are considered expensive.

I also think that the downscaling system keeps things interesting and keeps people playing. Most of the ideas I have have already been posted, so I shall digress. Needless to say, I believe that even introducing non downscaled servers could disrupt the game for others.

Thinking that your ideas could never possibly disrupt anyone else is a little nearsighted.

Also, while I agree that harassing someone for their opinion is inappropriate, you should also consider that threats are just as inappropriate. You have the ability to ignore people’s rude comments and report them if you feel justified, but threats (especially on an online medium) just seem immature to me.

Temariah.9372:

Go to non scaled server —> get a ton of loot by doing high level content far quickly due to not scaling down --> transfer back to a regular server —> disrupt the economy by having large supplies of goods that are considered expensive.

Actually…the trading post is global…

The griefing potential is HUGE with this kind of change. The problem about removing downscaling is the very large potential griefing ability of higher level characters on lower level characters. There will be malicious players who will utterly destroy champion mobs with a sour look and every mob within the area, preventing players from completing or even participating in events.

There was also the issue about dungeons, cross realm dungeoning etc. which was already covered. Plus the trading post could completely crash, separating that, which is an integral part of the gw2 system i’d imagine as it goes through EVERY server, would be very difficult at best (if i’m right). Also, just on a programming level, removing an integral part of the system that’s used in almost every part of the world would take a lot of time and effort to be able to pull off.

Beyond completing the first server, i’d imagine they could copy paste the info into newer servers, but i know very little about programming as a whole, let alone the complexities of server programming.

So the major problems now are griefing potential, which i see no solution for, the world wide trading post, which splitting it between downscaling and non downscaling servers could prove difficult, and the programming difficulty of going through every area within gw2, including story progressions and dungeons and removing the downscaling capability sounds like a large scale project that may take weeks.

Specifically on the griefing issue, i’d rather not leave that statement as is and i’ll provide my reasoning on why i think there’s no fix:

first you have to take a look at what the goal is, if the goal is for higher level players to go into low level areas and be extremely powerful, there’s the issue of griefing i mentioned before, so a possible solution would be to set a minimum level for characters to be.

That brings up the issue that accounts are only bound to one server, so for players who have characters of lower levels than that, they have a huge problem. either they won’t be able to access their characters, whom they might wish to develop and continue their personal story, or they won’t be able to access the server.

on top of that, what if someone has extra character spaces. putting a minimum level for characters to be removes the ability to create new characters, which players would probably want to do, on top of buying more character slots as well. So either then you restrict the ability for anyone who does not have a full character roster to joing the server, prevent the ability to purchase more character slots or allow characters to directly jump to level 80 (level 80 is just an example)

That last solution isn’t viable either, as tons of players would simply head over to that realm, make level 80 characters instantly and then server transfer back over to their original realm. Preventing cross experience access all together prevents players who may wish to transfer back over to the downscaling system genuinely and preventing players to transfer newly made level 80 characters brings about numerous possibilities of server errors removing legitimately leveled characters when transferring servers, causing a whole bunch of messy issues, especially programming related i’d imagine.

So then just leaving the system as it is but only removing downleveling and removing the scaling of rewards as well should be the solution, right? but the game is programmed to prevent as much griefing as possible, to the point where players are granted experience for aiding others, reviving others, preventing mob stealing, preventing resource stealing etc.

Honestly, i see no solution to the griefing problem, unless you want to restrict it to players who have purchased every character slot available and filled every character slot with maximum leveled characters, which i’m not even sure ANYONE has done (though please do correct me if i’m wrong), but then if you want to delete a character or whatever, that causes more problems etc etc on top of restricting the number of players who could even transfer over to the realm.

I’ve tried looking at it from several angles, there really isn’t a solution beyond simply not making non-downscaling servers.

DropTrigger.5217:

I know there are a lot of us that absolutely despise the downscaling feature we experience when going into a lower level area.

If there was a world or two where downscaling were disabled I think that would satisfy a lot of players who are otherwise losing interest and moving on to other games.

Just an idea. I hate to compare this game to WoW but it’s along the same lines as their PvP and PvE realms. They gave us the option and that made all the difference.

I’m confused as to why players would lose interest in a game because of downscaling? How would steamrolling through low level areas while one shotting everything keep you interested?
Whenever I’m in a low level area doing events and I see non-downscaled players, I take care to not grief. I’ll wait and let them tag mobs before I one shot them or let them take on a veteran alone and only help them if they go down. A level 80 in whatever gear is superpowered compared to anything in starter areas.

I dont understand why you would want to get rid of one of the better features of the game.

Without the level scaling once you hit 80 you would only have 2-3 maps that would offer a challenge to you.

I think they need to work on making the level scaling more challenging for example instead of being 2-3 lvls above the area you should be 2-3 lvls below.

DropTrigger.5217:

Not at all. I like the sense of power progression which I feel is lacking in the game. Especially when exploring every area for 100% completion..

I’m not sure I understand. Even with downscaling a geared level 80 is much more powerful than a level 10 character (for example) in a level 10 area.

Also, the way their entire game engine is made, they would need to either re-build the game engine (hosted on separate servers) or re-build the current game engine to accommodate new servers like that. Most of the stuff is coded in a way that something of this magnitude would be impossible without re-writing most of the code.