Guild Wars 2

Dynamic Level Adjustment (DLA) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment is a good idea but it does not go far enough.

At the moment character and gear attributes both go down. The character’s attributes without gear are exactly as they were at the level to which the character drops, nice and a good idea. However I feel that those lower level maps are still too easy.

For example my level 50 Warrior with good gear had a much harder time against level 50 mobs than he does now at level 80 with his exotic level 80 Gear. Of course he does and it is right that the Exotic Gear should make a difference but the difference is too great. As I understand it the point of DLA is to make it more interesting going back to lower level maps but to be honest it isn’t much of a challenge at all.

Three examples to illustrate my point:

Daily Achievement. How many level 80 Characters do that in level 80 maps? I think very very few. I don’t. If I do them with my level 80 Warrior I go back to a lower map and do them there because to do x events, kill x types of mobs, etc is so much easier and faster there.

Yesterday I was in an on level part of a map (about 45 I think) when an Event started, to defend the place I was at. There were also two other characters who, from the appearance of their gear, were a very high level I am guessing at level 80 or close to it. My little Guardian was running all over like a headless chicken but everything was dieing so quickly he hardly had a chance to hit anything because everything was dieing so quickly. I had done that Event a few times before around the right level so I knew it should have been hard work but not this time.

Here is an Event most level 80s will know. Defend the camp next to Ascalonion Catacombs from Harpies. I can almost solo that one with my level 80 Warrior but I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have stood a chance of doing it on level when there for the first time.

Gear obviously is making a huge difference. Too much of a difference.

Try doing Ascalonian Catacombs at level 35 and again at level 80, both are at level 35 but the difference is too great. Dungeon difficulty is something being talked about elsewhere so I won’t get into that argument now I just needed something to illustrate my point.

The penalty inflicted on gear is not high enough.

As a noob, I prefer to have an easier time going back to kill old maps.

It’s not just the gear, but also those 70 skill points that make a difference. Your hitting harder, have more HP, and skills you wouldn’t normaly have at that point. Yeah it could use some tweeking, but any change to weaking a player would probably meet some high resistance and would just be called an other nerf.

If it’s too easy, try the following:
- lower lvl chars
- remove gear and traits, don’t use utilities/elite skills
- play on lvl 80 maps
Any of them would solve your “challenge” problem without affecting others.

2 words: Character progression.

I’m a high lvl thief, I defeat Zaithan, I follow into the war in Orr, I killed thousands of Undeads, I’m an elite, even a legendary thief in tyria, but hey!, I come to my land and a deer kill me with 2 hits…

I think that the lvl adjustment is fine as it is now, you feel that your character is something and is more powerful, in low lvl you feel that your character is kitten. Now I can come back to tyria like a legendary thief and kill that kitten centaurs who defeated me lot of times in the past.

This game is built around the level adjustment mechanic. And ayone who doesn’t want to play in a game designed around this particular mechanic has plenty of other MMOs to choose from.

Agreeing or disagreeing with the merits of the design doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it functions correctly, and right now it doesn’t seem like it is. High level characters are still too powerful when down-scaled – not because of any personal philosophy of individual players who think it’s necessary, but because results are simply not matching the intentions of the philosophies this game was built on.

• Skill is supposed to matter more than gear. That is a hard pill to swallow when a down-scaled level 80 character is easily two-shotting mobs in a level 10 event while a level 10 character is struggling to survive. Broken.

• Players are supposed to be happy, not frustrated, when other players show up. Explain that to the player of a low-level character trying to enjoy challenging content when a high-level character strides onto the same battlefield and starts turning a challenging event into a joke with his presence. Broken.

• A level 5 character fighting level 5 content has to work hard to earn rewards appropriate for his true level. That’s the concept of risk versus reward at work. And the whole reason we, as level 80’s, can go back to a level 5 encounter and earn rewards appropriate for our true level is because (in theory) down-scaling maintains the precious balance of risk versus reward. In reality, that balance looks very much out of whack when we’re both earning rewards appropriate for our level, but the level 5 characters has to work so much harder to do so. Broken.

When a mechanic is broken, you fix it. If you want to convince the developers to remove the mechanic altogether, feel free to start that topic in a thread of your own. Simply put, the intention of this game mechanism is to keep content challenging for everyone involved regardless of who is participating. However, in reality that isn’t working very well and it could use tweaking. Whether you like the system or not to begin with is simply not relevant. It’s the equivalent of suggesting a bug should remain in place because you dislike the idea of it working correctly.