Level scaling but no item scaling.
I noticed this too, found it incredibly strange that your level scales down to the zone, but the items don’t scale to you :$
^This
It also doesn’t scale exp gain much at all. It’s kinda pointless to go to a 1-15 zone as a level 60+ and play there. All the loot is going to be crap.
I’ve actually found it hit or miss. I got a mixture of low level and level appropriate gear. But that was about a week ago or so when I went and did the Asura starting zone when I was level 50 or so.
Rewards are suppose to scale and many times they do. Maybe it needs to be tweaked a little bit
There is item scaling. However, they have made it so that lower level items can still drop for you in order to get lower level crafting materials.
ArenaNet have always stated that you will be incentivized for doing lower level content, but more appropriate loot and better XP will always come with higher level (and, in turn, more difficult) content.
If players could do easier/faster content and walk away with the same bundle of goods as the difficult content, why would they ever do the more challenging content?
I like the waypoint cost thing though. They need to keep players from avoiding those waypoint costs.
There is definitely item scaling to your actual level, though it seems to be somewhere around 20% (guesstimate based on my experiences). I have definitely gotten level appropriate gear from lower level zones, though it’s nowhere near as prevalent as the zone level gear.