Guild Wars 2

I know that this is generally frowned upon, but I believe that this is an issue that has dogged the game for a long time now, and I believe that the players deserve a firm developer response on it:

When an event upscales, does it every downscale?

What I mean is, if a given event starts out scaled for five players, and then five more players pass by, without interacting with the event at all, does the event still scale up to a ten person event? If the five new players fight for a bit, but then leave, does it return to a five person event? If the second five players die, and go off to do something else, does it return to a five person event?

Under what conditions do events downscale, and if the answer is “they never do,” then something REALLY needs to be done about these events in which you’re not meant to handle them as a single zerg, you’re meant to split up into several simultaneous groups, if they scale up to match whatever group engages them, but never scale back down, then many of these encounters would become impossible, as they would scale up to a 30 man encounter, but then the group realizes that more people are needed elsewhere, so 15 leave, only now it’s 15 people vs. a 30 man encounter, which is a hard slog at best and no fun for anyone.

This would represent horrendously and fundamentally broken content design.

They do downscale, and the three-headed wurm is a great example of it. That event scales up on the number of players at all three points, rather than scale each point individually. One tactic on the final phase is for the first two groups to finish their wurm to run out of the event area. You can see a significant increase in the rate the last wurm’s health goes down as it is suddenly scaling to 1/3 of the players it was a moment before, but still has the same number of players hitting it.

Hmm, then why during the Boss Blitz do the last few bosses become impossible as players just give up and wander off and you’re left with only 2-3 players even attempting it anymore? Shouldn’t it scale back down to a small group threat at that point?

Ohoni.6057:

Hmm, then why during the Boss Blitz do the last few bosses become impossible as players just give up and wander off and you’re left with only 2-3 players even attempting it anymore? Shouldn’t it scale back down to a small group threat at that point?

Hit all 6 at once and they don’t scale up the same way.

Becouse the bosses are pretty hard for 2-3 players to do. Tried one with 5 players and it is realy realy hard.

So I think there is a minimum thought out players to be able to handle a boss.

Yargesh.4965:

Ohoni.6057:

Hmm, then why during the Boss Blitz do the last few bosses become impossible as players just give up and wander off and you’re left with only 2-3 players even attempting it anymore? Shouldn’t it scale back down to a small group threat at that point?

Hit all 6 at once and they don’t scale up the same way.

While this is true, it cannot be stated enough that the scaling during the current alteration of the Queens Pavillion is pretty awful.

Some bosses can be done with 3 people others cannot even be remotely attempted without 10. There’s no good safe spot and due to this the scaling goes through the roof.

Would be nice if there was an indicator on the boss to show just how much it’s scaled. Even if its just a color coded arrow.

A lot of events come in waves and each wave is scaled to the number of people present, I expect. Mobs that are already present will not descale if people leave. Some events with counters, such as bring me 10 collectables, can scale up when they start and remain that way over many hours until the event is completed.

Griefing through scaling is possible but doesn’t happen very often. Players can be deliberately dead on the floor in an event area just to upscale an event to make it too difficult for others. Separate scaling for each wave of an event tends to prevent much inadvertent upscaling by people passing by.

Hit all 6 at once and they don’t scale up the same way.

I can’t hit all six, I have only one account. If you mean that the players should split up to hit all six at once, that is something that can happen, but never something that can be counted on to happen, especially when the UI does not do a good job of letting you know how many players are on each boss and how each fight is doing.

Griefing through scaling is possible but doesn’t happen very often. Players can be deliberately dead on the floor in an event area just to upscale an event to make it too difficult for others. Separate scaling for each wave of an event tends to prevent much inadvertent upscaling by people passing by.

Whether scaling grief is intentional or not, it should not be possible. Scaling should be based on the actual effectiveness of the people available, not based on assumptions of their effectiveness based on their numbers. If a fight is taking longer than it was intended to take, then it should start to automatically downscale to account for the apparent fact that a large portion of the players present are not pulling their weight, for whatever reasons.