making lower level areas more appealing to higher level characters
in Suggestions
Posted by: Shai.8195
The main issue: People are getting to level 80 quickly and the higher level areas are being flooded while the lower level areas are getting empty.
If lower level areas would be more appealing to higher level characters, they would be more evenly divided and people actually get to play in the areas they like rather than in the areas they are ‘forced to play’.
The reasons (or at least my reasoning):
1. Higher level characters do get good event rewards, but the exp and loot do not scale well or not at all.
2. Materials like orichalcum can only be gathered in a few higher level areas.
3. Last but not least the lower level areas are simply not challenging for higher level characters.
The fix:
1. I believe rewards can easily scaled to your level. For the economy it shouldn’t matter whether you get your loot in Cursed Shore or Queensdale. If anything I think it would get better as farming events in Cursed Shore has been way too rewarding!
2. Scaling of gatherables is harder, but I’ve come up with the following:
All ‘metal nodes’ become the same while mining picks have a certain chance to gather certain materials. This way a copper mining pick has 100% chance to gather copper, an iron mining pick has say 45% chance to gather iron, 45% chance to gather silver and 10% chance to gather copper, etc. This way higher level characters are not demotivated to go to lower level areas.
I do foresee two disadvanages. The first being that you do not know what material you will be gathering and you will flood your inventory fast. The second being that in that case all nodes would look similar, which is simply less fun.
3. Scaled down characters are too strong because they have more traits and higher quality armor giving rise to higher stats (even as scaled-down characters). I believe scaling down higher level characters will always be difficult or unfair, but I do believe it can be improved.
I believe the current method is along the lines of stat * area level / character level, giving a simple correction on all stats depending on the scaling. Due to the above bonusses of higher level characters this means unfair scaling.
I propose the following procedure:
*All traits, all items and all runes add stat points or stat point equivalents. Adding them would give a number, say 11000 for a level 80 in full exotics.
*Similar numbers can be defined for any level, for instance the average for level 80 is full rare with a total of say 10000 and the average for levle 40 is full masterpiece with a total of say 4000. Scaling a level 80 to level 40 would mean scaling from 10000 to 4000 or simply stats * 0.4 (rather than 0.5 as I believe is currently implemented).
*The level 80 in full exotics would get a stat point equivalent of 4400, meaning the character is definitely rewarded for investing time into getting better equipment, but being less over-powered.
Using these or similar procedures I think – or hope – that higher level characters will be playing more in lower level areas making higher level areas such as Cursed Shore less crowded and lower level areas such as Queensdale less empty. In addition it allows people to play in the areas they like rather than ‘being forced’ to play in certain areas because the loot is too good.