Guild Wars 2

Today I was doing my daily in wayfarer foothills with my full berserker gear and ascended GS. I saw two svanir thugs guarding a blockage. One whirlwind attack was enough to kill them both and shatter the blockade!

I like being strong and all, but…come on! Wasn’t one of the promises of GW2 that you would be scaled down in low lvl areas to make content challenging? And I thought a while back they increased the difficulty a bit more. But I don’t see it…

Does anyone else remember “Hard Mode” in GW1 when even low areas became fresh again? Where each hard mode zone was as tough as the other? There is zero reason for me to be careful, to make sure I don’t over aggro…

Come on Anet. Make your stuff challenging!

No. You forget the difference between the gear you have now (3 uber high stats) compared to the gear typically available at those levels (1 single, MAYBE two, digit stat). The scaling also does not take into account reducing your trait bonuses, nor does it correctly scale high level armor.

Aidan Savage.2078:

No. You forget the difference between the gear you have now (3 uber high stats) compared to the gear typically available at those levels (1 single, MAYBE two, digit stat). The scaling also does not take into account reducing your trait bonuses, nor does it correctly scale high level armor.

From what I remember, you could be using the very highest lvl gear in GW1 and the “Hard Mode” in the low level areas would eat you alive and spit out your remains if you were careless.

Well, you can’t do GW1-style personal hard mode in an open world map, so the only other avenue here is to tweak the level scaling so that max level characters (or rather: their stats) are scaled down even more.

It wouldn’t be very much fun for newbies if the content was 10x more difficult in starter zones. If you desire more of a challenge, perhaps playing in a Level 80 zone might provide that for you. Just a thought. =)

Wayfarer as a zone has wonky level scaling too.

I’ve often found my downleveled characters 3 or 4 levels higher than the mobs I’m fighting in spots. Combine with the more powerful gear and yep… I’m one shotting mobs in Soldier gear.

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

The downscaling doesnt work very well in the lowest lvl areas. I use to farm black lion keys, and my warrior using lvl 0 blue weapons (which are quite strong compared with the starter weapons) hits the mobs for 20 damage, while my lvl 80 thief hits the same mobs for 700 damage. So basically a well geared character can one shot every mob while a fresh lvl 2 character struggles to fight then.

Go Gendarran Fields an pull masses of Pirates there, and have fun .. or some more of these funny Jellyfish in Snowden Drifts.

The low level areas are fine as they are, the scaling system needs tweaks. Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

Really the higher level areas need to be more difficult. I still miss Orr at launch. And by miss I mean I hated it so much, but it was the end game area, I expected it to be difficult,

Naqaj.6219:

Well, you can’t do GW1-style personal hard mode in an open world map, so the only other avenue here is to tweak the level scaling so that max level characters (or rather: their stats) are scaled down even more.

Even more agressive scaling would be bad for fresh level 80s. I doubt everyone had their Exotics (and maybe even Ascended trinkets) ready the moment they hit 80 on their very first character.

I doubt level scaling takes into account gear tier, it’s the same if you use Ascended and if you use White gear.

Well, the scaling system DOES work. The issue is with how it treats the stats and traits.

Basically, if you’re in a zone who’s typical gear only has one stat, like the 1-15 areas, your gear is downscaled and treated so as to “only” have a single stat. Rune sets should be treated as the level appropriate minor/major sets, and traits should be limited as well (100/10% at 1-39, 200/20% at 40-59, 300/30% at 60+).

edit: didnt realize a plus sign “bracket” underlined stuff..

maddoctor.2738:

I doubt level scaling takes into account gear tier, it’s the same if you use Ascended and if you use White gear.

You’re right, scaling currently doesn’t seem to properly account for different gear levels. That would have to be included in order to scale high-level players properly into the starter zones.

But why bother? If one doesn’t want to play in a zone that is too easy, why not play in a zone more suited to your level? Are the starter zones that much more interesting that they should be changed?

How about playing in some of the rather lesser-populated maps? More of a challenge, and it helps with the ‘these maps are dead’ issue. Scaling isn’t so wonky in the higher level zones. Again, just a thought. =)

For the scaling system to work properly, it would have to look at each individual piece of gear and scale it to a proper level version. And this would still leave the question of traits.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

QFT

Scaling is the issue, not the areas themselves. (Although some AI adjustments probably wouldn’t hurt either). Hopefully with the adjustment to critical (being a ratio stat, instead of a fixed %) they can take a closer look at downscaling and adjust it better. Introducing ascended gear simply made the issue with downscaling that much more noticeable.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

But why bother? If one doesn’t want to play in a zone that is too easy, why not play in a zone more suited to your level? Are the starter zones that much more interesting that they should be changed?

How about playing in some of the rather lesser-populated maps? More of a challenge, and it helps with the ‘these maps are dead’ issue. Scaling isn’t so wonky in the higher level zones. Again, just a thought. =)

Starter zones aren’t more interesting, but one of the things that draw people to them are daily achievements. Killing 5 veterans in Snowden is a lot faster than killing them in Cursed Shore. Not to mention champions drop lootbags (with a lot similar rewards) no matter their level. If the rewards are the same but on lower zones you get them faster, why even bother with the higher level zones?

And then we go back to the difficulty issue, the same issue in reverse: if they give the same rewards, shouldn’t they have a similar difficulty as well?

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

Xhyros.1340:

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

I love this idea. Make it so Anet!

bhagwad.4281:

Aidan Savage.2078:

No. You forget the difference between the gear you have now (3 uber high stats) compared to the gear typically available at those levels (1 single, MAYBE two, digit stat). The scaling also does not take into account reducing your trait bonuses, nor does it correctly scale high level armor.

From what I remember, you could be using the very highest lvl gear in GW1 and the “Hard Mode” in the low level areas would eat you alive and spit out your remains if you were careless.

Difference is, in GW2 when your geared out and go to low level zones only your stats/health etc are lowered,

In GW1 when you went into HM everything was pushed up to level 80 etc, then attacked 50% faster and moved faster also.

No no no. On my new Warrior, I had to ask for help with a skill point yesterday because I kept dying.

Coming back as a high level is one thing.

Doing it on a level appropriate character is entirely another.

bhagwad.4281:

Xhyros.1340:

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

I love this idea. Make it so Anet!

Colin already stated at PAX last year that they do not want to do a hardmode set up (open world or dungeons). They do not want to ‘break up the player base too much.’ While this view could have changed since then, for some reason I doubt it has.

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

If you want the low level areas to be more challenging, use only the maximum gear for the area and maybe tone your traits back.

OR

If that is too much for you to do then do as suggested and go to a level 80 zone. Maybe do Southsun Cove solo and watch yourself get face rolled by the wildlife with your zerker/ascended setup.

bhagwad.4281:

Xhyros.1340:

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

I love this idea. Make it so Anet!

And then there would be absolutely no reason at all for anyone to go back to the old zones….

maddoctor.2738:

bhagwad.4281:

Xhyros.1340:

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

I love this idea. Make it so Anet!

And then there would be absolutely no reason at all for anyone to go back to the old zones….

The old zones would hold the huge number of lower lvl chars. Yes, there would be no reason to go back to the old (easy) zones. But so what?

With the feature patch and the new trait system low level mosnters are likely to become even weaker, which is quite depressing since those low level zones (the majority of the world) that were supposed to be replayable thanks to downscaling are nothing but a sad joke already.

On the “positive” side, it’s not like a player should be interested anyways on wandering around the map after the first exploration.
Anything potentially rewarding either requires a zerg to take advantage of scaling (spawn a higher amount monsters to tag, train champions that scale poorly or don’t scale at all, …) or it’s just designed around a massive amount of players.
There are a few world bosses which are faster to kill with a small group or even solo, but the reward is still interesting for those zergs to take place so I guess we should forget about anything different once megaservers kick in

Doing some daily achievements and maybe a bit of gathering. That’s pretty much everything the open world offers to the roaming character, and that’s still likely to happen on predetermined spots.

Why not try running weaker gear..

honestly maxed out Zerker gear and you think lvl 1-15 zones are too easy… really?

make a new character and then get reaquinted with low level zones and maybe you will see how much of a silly idea this is

better yet make a new character after the feature patch update in which you wont get your traits until you hit level 30
then come back and say if the game is still too easy..

Zerkers gear is way OP anyway it’s hardy fair to make everyone else suffer because Zerkers is OP..

hell I went to WvW for the first time in over a year with my Zerker Ranger yesterday
one Barrage was enough to earn me a crapload of loot from dpsing a enemy zerg..
I was getting multiple kills every single second

Granted I could get utterly destroyed within a second myself but staying back and playing a dps role was stupidly OP and the loot proved it

if you want more challenge in low level areas then play on a lower level toon or play with a different setup
no need to make the zones harder because Zerkers gear is stupidly over powered

bhagwad.4281:

From what I remember, you could be using the very highest lvl gear in GW1 and the “Hard Mode” in the low level areas would eat you alive and spit out your remains if you were careless.

This game has nothing in common with GW1, besides the lore (not that I got over it).

I’ve always thought the downscaling system should make lower level areas more difficult, but even more than that, this game needs mobs and bosses to have more varied attacks and attack patterns. No reason to do anything with scaling with how overly-simplified mob AI is across the entire game.

As an alternative option, why not a ‘Hard Mode Toggle’?

When you enter a zone, it gives you the option to switch this toggle on. When this toggle is on, the only way you can switch it off is by leaving the area, and then it goes onto a cooldown.

The toggle would:

• Apply scaling to gear stats, trait stats ect.
• Reduces stats by a further 10%
• Reduces the effectiveness of Traits, Sigils ect.
• Reduces boon duration and condition duration that you inflict.
• Increases condition duration applied to you

And so on, with increased rewards (bonus gold, karma ect).

Since this only affects your character, there’d be no need for creating seperate maps.

Maybe even make it so you have a list of debuffs you can choose rom, similar to the Gambits in the Queen’s Jubilee?

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

Yes, they’re scaled.
A lvl80 blue gear scales perfectly to a lvl62 one when on a lvl62 zone, for example.
Stat points provided by traits are also scaled and the low level character usually has a higher total amount of effective trait stats.
The way downscaling works, however, lvl80 characters end up being quite more powerful than zone level ones, usually by a huge margin.

• Gear is scaled based on character level, not ger level.
  A lvl80 character is usually going to wear lvl80 gear, so it will perfectly match the new zone level. A lvl5x characater, on the other hand, might be using some 4x (or even lower) gear piece and that will be proportionally scaled as if it were a 5x one.
  In short, it’s like the lvl80 would be always using the best gear available, which is soething almost unthinkable for a low level one.

• There are higher rarities of gear at lvl80.
  Just like a lvl80 blue gear scales perfectly to a lvl62 blue, a lvl80 exotic/ascended gear does it to a “lvl62 exotic/ascended” one, which is something that often doesn’t even exist. These differences are quite significative, specially for things like weapon damage.

• High level gear includes more stats than low level one.
  There’s a quite neutral scaling here that can even work in favour of the low level character.
  The number of stats is somehow compensated so, for example, a lvl80 berserker blue gear piece will provide, when downsaced to lvl30, a lower amount of power and precision than a lvl30 blue strong (power/precision) gear would. Obviously, the lvl80 gear will still retain the third stat so the amount of stats will be the same (berserker is a quite weird case, since critical damage scales horribly atm), but the low level character has a higher room for “expertise” (assuming he’s completely up to date on his gear and using the same rarity, which won’t happen :P)
  Something similar happens with traitline and rune stat points. 100 points in the powerline for a lvl20 character can never be matched by a lvl80 one.

• Traits, Runes and Sigils
  Even if the low level charcater can get favoured in terms of “expertise” by raw stat points, additional effects form trait, runes and sigils can’t be matched and are usually much more impactful.

Teratus.2859:

if you want more challenge in low level areas then play on a lower level toon or play with a different setup
no need to make the zones harder because Zerkers gear is stupidly over powered

Zerker (or any other thing with critical damage) is the weakest option on considerably downscaled enviroments. It’s pretty much like you were wearing just Power/Precision.
It’s probably still the most hard hitting combiantion, but Knights, Soldiers or even Condition Damage setups are overall far better.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

It wouldn’t be very much fun for newbies if the content was 10x more difficult in starter zones. If you desire more of a challenge, perhaps playing in a Level 80 zone might provide that for you. Just a thought. =)

Lol this is so true. I can’t believe this guy complaining about it being to easy for him in a low lvl area and he’s all tricked out in end game gear. Like only lvl 80’s matter in this game. What an ego.

Xhyros.1340:

Aidan Savage.2078:

GW2 cannot do hardmode unless it’s a dungeon. Why? Because unlike GW1, the “open world” of GW2 is not instanced. This means they cannot create any such hardmode content unless it’s in the very limited instanced zones.

Incorrect, every map is its own instance with a high player cap. What do you think overflows are? This is not a seamless world, there are portals and loading screens and borders for each map. Having hard modes for each zone would be completely, but would take a lot of work and would further split the community. Imagine having a popup appear with an option to select the normal difficulty or a hard mode each time you try to zone into a map. Normal would, of course, send you to the regular map instance, whereas hard mode would send you into a different map instance that would have harder stuff.

I don’t think you understand the meaning of instance.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

I think it could handle having the gear stats and traits reduced by a percentage too. You would still have an edge because better gear and more traits will still have more stats and higher stats, but not so high as to trivialize the content, necessarily.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

I think it could handle having the gear stats and traits reduced by a percentage too. You would still have an edge because better gear and more traits will still have more stats and higher stats, but not so high as to trivialize the content, necessarily.

That guy is incorrect, your armor, weapon, and trinket stats are downscaled, but not as much as your base stats. The difference between level 80 ascended gear and level 1-15 greens is so huge that if was there no downscaling at all any single player could one-shot every champion mob on the map.

I agree with OP that low-level zones are too easy for geared 80s. But scaling needs to be adjusted. Not the difficulty of the zones.

Also, you can remove a couple pieces of armor to manually scale yourself down more.

Conncept.7638:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Ravion Hawk.4736:

The scaling system IS working properly.

It ONLY scales your BASE stats. Your gear, weapons, trinkets, and traits are NOT scaled down because this is supposed to be your edge.

I think it could handle having the gear stats and traits reduced by a percentage too. You would still have an edge because better gear and more traits will still have more stats and higher stats, but not so high as to trivialize the content, necessarily.

That guy is incorrect, your armor, weapon, and trinket stats are downscaled, but not as much as your base stats. The difference between level 80 ascended gear and level 1-15 greens is so huge that if was there no downscaling at all any single player could one-shot every champion mob on the map.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I’d like to see percent scaling based on gear quality, level and zone. So in starter zones Ascended gear scales down by a higher percentage than level 76 Exotics, or level 63 Rares. The end value will still be higher, but the difference will be much much smaller, making the experience more challenging, hopefully.

You want a challenge, yet you roll as a Warrior…. otherwise known as the “Faceroll class”. Create a necromancer or a ranger and tell me you can one hit those guys. Then I’ll be impressed.

Aren’t those guys that OP is talking about lvl 2? With a full skillset and max weapons, he should own lvl 2 mobs.

They aren’t farmable/drop significant loot so who cares?

The lvl 12+ mobs in the same zone scale enough that there is some effort required.

Downscaling needs to be harsher

They could always implement a downscale on everything if you’re level 80 AND a full zerker setup. How’d that be?

Btw, I have full zerker ascended armor and trinkets AND I know how to dodge. Play a higher level if you want harder content – are you FotM level 50 yet? It’s like you don’t even realize what a video game is about when you post these things. Were you any good at the original Super Mario Brothers level 7-2? Of course not b/c you did what almost everyone else did: used the shortcut to get to the end of the game. A video game is only as enjoyable as the person playing it wants it to be and what they are focusing on.

Downscaling is horribly done and screws up people’s builds. All the level 80 cap has done is made all but a few maps completely trivial and thus unfun. It’s too late to go to a lower level cap, so perhaps every map should be set to level 80 and lower levels get upscaled to 80. (Terrible solution, but better than what we have now.)

If the starter zones are too hard:

- Take off your armor.
- Reset your traits to nothing.
- Equip a level 0 white weapon.

And there you have it, hard mode.

DeceiverX.8361:

If the starter zones are too hard:

- Take off your armor.
- Reset your traits to nothing.
- Equip a level 0 white weapon.

And there you have it, hard mode.

That’s voluntarily crippling yourself. Players would like to wear all their armor and still face tough content that’s also rewarding. Proper downscaling should go a long way.

bhagwad.4281:

Today I was doing my daily in wayfarer foothills with my full berserker gear and ascended GS. I saw two svanir thugs guarding a blockage. One whirlwind attack was enough to kill them both and shatter the blockade!

I like being strong and all, but…come on! Wasn’t one of the promises of GW2 that you would be scaled down in low lvl areas to make content challenging? And I thought a while back they increased the difficulty a bit more. But I don’t see it…

Does anyone else remember “Hard Mode” in GW1 when even low areas became fresh again? Where each hard mode zone was as tough as the other? There is zero reason for me to be careful, to make sure I don’t over aggro…

Come on Anet. Make your stuff challenging!

-

By challenging if you mean more annoying then no.

A mob hitting harder isn’t any more challenging in a lowbie area – it’s just more annoying.

If you want less people in the lowbies areas by all means go with your suggestion.

Orr is not difficult but it simply packed with far to many mobs and look how dead it is due to that fact.

Bad idea – just simply terrible.

Not all lvl 80 characters are going to be full berzerker with all ascended gear. Many of us don’t play that way and can’t be bothered with the grind of ascended gear.

Just go to a higher area and play if you feel starter zones are too easy…duh…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

QFT

Scaling is the issue, not the areas themselves.

This. Scale down L80 downscaled player damage more. I’ve often thought this. If nothing else, I imagine it annoys lowbies doing low level DEs when a L80 is around one-shotting stuff all the time.

Conncept.7638:

I’ve always thought the downscaling system should make lower level areas more difficult, but even more than that, this game needs mobs and bosses to have more varied attacks and attack patterns. No reason to do anything with scaling with how overly-simplified mob AI is across the entire game.

It just scales YOUR BASE stats and weapon stats. The mobs do have varied attacks, I mean there are slashing damage, vampiric damage (life steal), poison, bleed, AoE, knock downs and that is all in lvl 1-3.

The AI is not as simple as you think. It is very complicated, but it is the sheer numbers (read zerg) out does the AI of the boss. I mean, take MAW for example, There are many AoE affects that happen and scaled down players oft times do get downed and killed.

Sarie.1630:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

Fix the problem, not the symptoms.

QFT

Scaling is the issue, not the areas themselves.

This. Scale down L80 downscaled player damage more. I’ve often thought this. If nothing else, I imagine it annoys lowbies doing low level DEs when a L80 is around one-shotting stuff all the time.

But yet I have seen downscaled lvl 80 players overstretch themselves and die. No one is UBER is this game.