LvlGear downscaling for new endgame direction

LvlGear downscaling for new endgame direction

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: FaRectification.5678

FaRectification.5678

To maintain a horizontal progression development ideal, and to perfectly solve the problem of vertical progressive content:

I also made a suggestion about normal lvl scaling a long time ago in the WoW forums, and I’m glad to see ANet has implemented it, but it can be stretched even further.

The key aspect here to maintain the difficulty involved when you face a new encounter with same level gear is to scale down that gear just as they scale down your levels in lower-lvl areas. Also, the primary element to new encounters is the challenge and all that acquiring new and more stat-heavy loot does is to give a sense of power or to be able to beat the next level. It is all skill-based in the end, and introducing new dynamics to challenge the players is the way to go. When you’ve beaten the same boss enough times, then you earn points to scale your armor gradually back up as a lootable drop, and this is a customization system in and of itself because you will have to choose which stats matter more. This is essentially a simple reverse engineering approach to WoW’s lackluster vertical progression approach. In the end, it’s also about a feeling of power and cosmetics, so as new content pushes old content back, old content can still be doable by introduction of horizontal development cosmetics or enjoyability loot. There is also a small trick here, if you want content with an even more vertical progressive feeling, then simply apply this reverse engineering and down-scaling to a more extreme degree.

What people don’t realize about my post here, is that this reverse engineering is just for stat-based items that you normally see in WoW, and all those do is just apply a higher tier of stats. You can still introduce new loot with interesting dynamic applications, but the idea is not to make the loot more powerful.

The key idea here to increase the power of said character is not to endlessly and vertically progress, but once having achieved said amount of vertical power (of which I believe GW2 still has room to work on such as more stable/larger health pools), perfect the smaller dynamic aspects to give said character increased versatility in a minor and balanced way. However, GW2 still needs to work on creating a game that’s not as “twitchy” in a sense by scaling down how much damage can be done by increasingly skilled players.

Vertical progression is not wrong, however the ultimate purpose when it comes down to vertical progression is merely to find the correct lvl at which to cap things and give the entire game enough staying power. After that, it’s all about horizontal progression and introducing new dynamic elements to increase interest or to push the buttons of skilled players. Increasing the power of the character even further would do nothing and would be a repetitive development direction. Giving a character more power can also be done by increasing effects.

This way the level cap remains forever fixed, and no tearing occurs. This way the artificial difficulty can be introduced in a safe and natural way without introducing vertical progression.

The ultimate ideal goal for any dev would be to create a situation where perfect skill/stat calculation/depth planning or whatever you want to name it is required to beat the ultimate endgame boss. This is ideal.

This is true horizontal progressive development.

Purist, Idealist, and Theorist.

(edited by FaRectification.5678)