Guild Wars 2

I find it interesting that lower level players are scaled up to 80 while in southsun cove during the event duration.

It begs the question, at what level is an area considered too high and will get people upscaled? Is it only done in Southsun because the code is already there from the island’s introduction in november? Would they scale up people in Sparkfly Fen if the next living story takes place there? I wasnt scaled during F&F except for the dungeon, which is understandable for Wayfarers but Diessa is not as newbie accessible and was part of F&F without upscaling.

Obviously they do it so the content is accessible by all (though they decided not to upscale in Diessa). Should it always be done the living story is in zones higher then the 1-15ish newbie areas? Only in level 80 areas? An arbitrary point between the two? Or maybe it shouldnt be done again?

Levels are not important in this game. Traits and armor are.

That’s besides the point though.

Levels are more important as far as upscaling is concerned because without it, all the armor and traits in the world wont make a lvl 26 put up a useful fight in Sparkfly Fen. If they didnt re-use the upscaling on Southsun that was already implemented you wouldnt have characters in their teens fighting Karka there.

Mastruq.2463:

That’s besides the point though.

Levels are more important as far as upscaling is concerned because without it, all the armor and traits in the world wont make a lvl 26 put up a useful fight in Sparkfly Fen. If they didnt re-use the upscaling on Southsun that was already implemented you wouldnt have characters in their teens fighting Karka there.

Just look at the Flame and Frost story arc, nobody was scaled up apart from in the instances.

Yea I wrote that in the first post. The thread is meant to encourage discussion on what players think about upscaling with regards to future living story chapters (that might take place in zones between the two extremes we had so far).

Onshidesigns.1069:

Levels are not important in this game. Traits and armor are.

Traits and armor are strictly limited by your level. Also when you’re level 15 and the mobs are level 60, your aggro radius becomes huge and your armor doesn’t matter because you get one-shotted. Have you even been underleveled in a zone?

Well during Halloween they had events running in mid-level areas (30’s and 40’s) and no one was upscaled. But then that was before Lost Shores so it might be because they hadn’t thought of the idea at the time.

The point of upscalling is to make sure the content is accessible for the majority of players, so I suspect it will be a judgement call made by each team when they’re developing their content.

It made sense not to with Flame and Frost because most new players are likely to do at least a bit of the starter content before they start thinking about what their options are and consider doing the Living Story. Then they could start with the stuff in Wayfarer Foothills and by the time they’re done they’d probably be ready for Diessa (or close to it anyway). And they had plenty of time for all that to happen (assuming they got the game towards the start of the story arc.)

So I suppose it will depend on how far into the game they want their content to be available and how reasonable they think it would be for players to level up before starting it.

Danikat.8537:

Well during Halloween they had events running in mid-level areas (30’s and 40’s) and no one was upscaled. But then that was before Lost Shores so it might be because they hadn’t thought of the idea at the time.

But you were upscaled in the halloween-“dungeon”.
I think it’s different, if a low-level-character is not upcaled in Diessa or Southsun. Because in Diessa it’s not THAT dangerous and what you had to do there you could do without fighting against a mob. But in Southsun there would be no “running-through” for a low-level-character. Even a level 80-character can easily die there. Most chars under that level would be dead by one shot. In Diessa that’s different.

Makes one wonder why levels where actually implemented. They should be removed alltogether, since levels lose all relevance outside pen and paper play. But old habits die hard, most vet from other games couldn’t cope with such a design.

The Up leveling was specifically mentioned for Southsun, so, I would wager that unless they said “hey we will uplevel you for this” they won’t.

Leablo.2651:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Levels are not important in this game. Traits and armor are.

Traits and armor are strictly limited by your level. Also when you’re level 15 and the mobs are level 60, your aggro radius becomes huge and your armor doesn’t matter because you get one-shotted. Have you even been underleveled in a zone?

What are you doing in a higher level zone at level 15? Level up in the appropriate zones for your level. Then when you reach 80, only traits and armor are important.

marnick.4305:

Makes one wonder why levels where actually implemented. They should be removed alltogether, since levels lose all relevance outside pen and paper play. But old habits die hard, most vet from other games couldn’t cope with such a design.

Apparently early on they did try scrapping levels and just had skill/trait points being awarded every time you earned a certain amount of XP but the alpha testers didn’t like it because you didn’t have the same sense of progression.

I agree that levels in this game are largely meaningless but the one way they are useful is as a guideline for progression. It’s much easier to see you’re level 10 and the recommended level for a quest is 10 and know you can probably do it than to try and access for yourself whether you’ve got enough health and armor to deal with the damage the enemies will do. Or to know you’ve hit level 80 so you’re ready for max tier gear and (in my case) can start to worry about what you want it to look like instead of using whatever you can find.

My ranger is level 20ish and he can’t do much in Southsun. Even scaled up, he gets absolutely destroyed by most mobs.

Treadstone.2564:

My ranger is level 20ish and he can’t do much in Southsun. Even scaled up, he gets absolutely destroyed by most mobs.

I took my engineer there in his 20’s, he did fine, but I had bought the best gear I could for him. Upscaling is really dependant on the quality of your gear, if its fallen behind that only gets accentuated as you are uplevelled.

Of course traits matter, and you will find it harder as an uplevel, but you can do it, and certainly can run in a small group in events.

IMO levelling should have stopped at 30. The extra 50 levels dont add much to the experience, and if all the 30+ zones had been “endgame” it would have opened many more options.

Players of any level under 80 (even 79) will get upscaled in Fractals of the Mists, WvW, or certain areas related to the Living Story. Not all areas upscale, but any area below level 80 will downscale players in the same way.

The point of upscaling is so people can actually get to do the stuff, so it akes sense for these temporary events, since not everyone has an 80 handy. In WvW, its an attempt to balance the game, again so more people can do it. In places like Orr though, which is always around and aimed at level 80’s, there is no upscaling, since you need to earn your place there.