Guild Wars 2

All aside: to solve the issue of vertical progression that has plagued many a game developer (if you want the TL;DR version skip to the bold below):

By the way, I made a post on the WoW forums a long time ago, concerning level scaling. I’m glad that ANet has incorporated this into their game thus far. But I believe it can be stretched even further than just an enjoyability factor for older content. Older content can give renewed loot and purpose. The higher level you are the more it scales to give you better chances to kill easy mobs to get higher-end loot matching your level. This plays on dynamics very well.

To begin,

I think the idea here is to perfect the game, when they’ve fully perfected this game, they can move onto a new game model.

If higher health bars are needed, to give it an Everquest grind feel, then so be it. If it makes the game more stable and enjoyable to have mobs that take forever to kill, then so be it (especially if it gives the entire world scale and grandeur).

After this game has fulfilled what Everquest couldn’t do in its time, then we would move onto Guild Wars 3, and beyond.

This is the type of model all MMO development companies should take, and it is a correct approach.

When ANet has enough money and resources to work on Guild Wars 3, that’s when they can start pumping out a new Everquest type game with massive worlds, scale, and a long-long time to hit level cap just like in the original EQ. Until then I highly doubt they had the resources to do this in the beginning with GW2.

But agreed, I think it’s a bit easy to level and it doesn’t feel like an achievement, they need to stabilize that by factoring in skill adjustment or something. Scale how much additional damage can be done when a highly skilled player exploits all his skills to the max. This way there’s an ultimate balance with lvling speed. Not only this, but the leveling pace overall is a bit too fast, it needs to go back to EQ roots. EQ’s leveling system was very flat all-around and slow, when combined with gw2’s skill-based rewards system, it will be a good match. It’s just that the skill-based rewards to be tweaked down a little

As to how much additional vertical progression is actually needed, to perfect the game, that is up to the developers to decide on in the future.

In this vast universe of space and time, it’s hard to say whether things are limited or unlimited, but anything can definitely be perfected. Very zen and hard to swallow, but just my personal philosophy.

It’s also hard to analyze WoW’s future, as they are relying on the fact that they will be able to hold onto veteran players who will just keep doing the newest endgame content. This might be harmful in the end though, as it prevents new players from coming in.

If you want a game that will continue making money even way into the future, and not have an early sugar crash, then you have to follow moderation.

As it stands, Blizzard Entertainment has lost all respect and reputation from its players if you check the forums.

As for solving the issue of vertical progression, there are always new ideas you can try. For instance, for new content patches, xpacs, and ultimately dungeons: it has always been about the newly introduced and difficult mechanics has it not? So what can be done about this here, let’s think: you can keep your items/stats/lvl at the fixed cap and keep it remaining there. But, you introduce new and difficult things you have to do to beat the encounter.

The key aspect here also 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. 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. This is true horizontal progressive development.

There, your vertical progression problem is solved both on an abstract and discrete level

Enjoy.

One of the main reasons fractal levels were introduced was to give players a sense of progression. Making it account wide would rob dedicated players of the rewarding experience to progress in fractals on more than one character.

I believe that it would go against ANets philosophy of creating a lasting sense of progression, even if the price for that is having a hard time finding other players. I’m not saying that is a problem and shouldn’t be looked at by ANet, but before you start invalidating progress mechanics that you’ve just introduced, they ought to do better and find a way to help players setup more easily(LFG tool+auto grouping). Maybe tie it in as a guild functionality, so there’s a strong incentive to join a guild(easy grouping).

Admittedly I skimmed through a good bulk of what you wrote so I might have missed a few points but I did latch onto your idea of how to give vertical progression via scaled down gear.

As it is now, gear is scaled down when you go to older content along with level. What you are proposing is to allow higher level/geared players to “earn” their way into higher stats with lower level content by granting an increase in stats with the exact same gear they are wearing. Thus giving way to a “grind” if players want.

The question is now, why would players even go back to that lower level content? Is there a reward for grinding up gear to match stats they already have but are simply scaled down?

Progression players want to get stronger. This delves into the argument about carrot/stick and treadmill (which I agree is an illusion of progression since you are just “catching up” to the new high water mark and not getting stronger in the long run). That can be re-hashed any which way and was done on many other forum posts.

Something else that I have noticed while playing this game is that more and more references to Everquest are made here than I have ever seen in a long time. I myself am reminded of the newness and exploration I felt on EQ. Somehow this game has captured the spirit of EQ and I really enjoy that.

One thing I remembered about EQ was that at the start gear was very subtle. The smallest increase in armor was much needed and amazing. There were no +100 to what ever stat back at the beginning.

To fight a willowisp you needed a magic or a silver weapon, otherwise that wisp was invulnerable. So coming back to GW2, small increases in gear are good, but keep it minuscule and more about looks or content based.

It is a form of gating, but maybe give different areas a needed armor stat that is only useful in that dungeon/area. Like cold resistance for a cold weather area, or fire resistance for a lava area. Much like the fractals with agony resistance.

The biggest problem with fractals is that the levels end up being spread out so players become separated over time, which in turn makes it harder to find groups. Also agony resistance felt too mandatory, so an idea of area specific stats might give way to the same problems. (I know I"m contradicting myself, but throwing out ideas and pro/cons).

Even in WoW there was talk about a “stat squish” to bring back inline the over inflated stats and mobs because over time the more “+’s” they added to equipment the higher and more ridiculous the stats became.

I have often wondered how it would be if numbers went away and everything was percentage based. I.E. – an attack could do 10% of the targets life. Gear would allow for a 5% reduction in damage, so that attack would now do 5% of the targets life.

Levels could give way to innate armor reducing the percentages even more, so gear would allow you to survive more hits without having to worry about 100’s or 1000’s of damage. And weapons would allow you to do more damage.

This gets rid of stat problems and allows a weapon or armor to be as effective as it was when you first got it anywhere you use it. Add in levels now, a level 5 weapon will do 10% of a level 5 targets life, but a level 10 target it would only do 3% of that targets life (arbitrary numbers).

So now you have a reason to get new gear to match the higher level content, without making the older weapons weaker, just less effective in that new area.

Anyway, posting at lunch time so rambling ideas instead of taking time to think them through and clarify. Figure out my gibberish if you like.

@ASB

Well, for the progressive feeling that you’re implying, there is a workaround for that too. You could try cosmetics, as that is the last remaining element other than the technical aspects I mentioned. Am I not correct in this regard? For instance, add a fake glory bonus to your items, that would be the same as having Onyx such and such amulet for killing a great boss, or having super stats. It’s all reverse engineering, my friend.

@CMF: The idea is that the drop rates will be lowered significantly. But, if you can manipulate certain aspects well enough, such as take advantage of an intentionally placed low-level mob that will yield you high benefit if you can manage to chain attacks on it, then it will be more rewarding. More rewarding than simply attacking a lvl 80 boss in order to get legendary materials to craft a legendary, which is said to be the ultimate fixed reward. Albeit, the lvl 80 boss would give you a more steady chance overall. This is a play on dynamics. This is all theory. Of course, skill is rewarded, but skill is also a measure of exploiting dynamic elements, and the developers know this. They intentionally place things in certain locations in order for higher-skilled players to benefit and lower-skilled players to suffer if they cannot take advantage of it. This breaks things apart into high and low tiers of players. This also does not inherently ruin any balance if it was intentionally planned.

In the end, it’s all discrete. Abstractness is just a method to get there.

As for your percentage-based thing: I believe your idea is simply a different concept for regular item scaling. But of course, they could always introduce percentages into their damage calculations and level scalings.