Guild Wars 2

• Firstly, what if I went to do a dungeon? I’m not getting downscaled, so I could easily clear AC by myself. This creates a balance issue. This server would be able to farm ridiculously easily compared to other servers. A fix for this would to, in response to getting rid of downleveling, also get rid of upscaling loots. Meaning, you kill a level 5 mob, you get a level 5 reward. The only dungeons that would be remotely profitable would be HotW, CoF, CoE and Arah. Not to mention the weaker dungeons would give less dungeon tokens to accommodate their ease for high level players. This leads me to my next point.
• Secondly, what if I was hosting a dungeon and someone in another server joined me. Do they get downscaled? Do I get downscaled? This creates a diversion in the community. A possible fix for this is to create a separate network that would be “non-downscaled” but that means that if you want to be non-downscaled, you’d have to buy a transfer similar to EU <—> NA.
• Thirdly, what is the point? I still don’t get it. You want to be able to one-shot mobs? I do that on my level 80 in beginner zones. I’m hitting mobs for a lot harder than beginners are capable. When I go to help my friends, they stand there hitting a mob for half a minute. I walk up to it, and with one auto attack bring it to near-dead. The way downscaling works is definitely flawed. It is possible to be weaker than someone at the current level, but it’s also possible to be stronger. Use that to your advantage, not your disadvantage.[/quote]

YES! You’re first two points make perfect sense. That’s exactly how they would have to go about it and it’s what I would’ve expected if they implemented this sort of thing. I would pay to go to a non-downscaled network. Everyone here thinks I want to do away with it for good. No, just make separate networks/servers without it. If I could get a moderators opinion on how feasible this idea is it would be much appreciated. Otherwise I feel like i’m going to be wasting a lot of time explaining the same thing over and over.

No, what I wont tolerate is people like you being rude for the sake of being rude.

Here: for you hamfast – While playing Guild Wars 2 (this includes forums), you must respect the rights of others and their rights to play and enjoy the Game. To this end, you may not defraud, HARASS, threaten, EMBARRASS or cause distress and/or unwanted attention to other players. This includes posting insulting, offensive, or abusive comments about players, repeatedly sending unwanted messages, reporting players maliciously, attacking a player based on race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Hate speech is not tolerated.

I apologize for making so many posts at first. I’m new to forums in general so I’m still trying to learn how this works. But thank you for the “warm” reception.

You contributed nothing to the original topic. I had a legitimate suggestion and other than a few respectful individuals all I seemed to get was “OMG YOU’RE WRONG”.

I can already hear people coming in here to bash my opinion so let me just say this again. I will not tolerate harassment or bullying of any kind for posting my opinion. I will report you.

I know I’m in the minority of players who feels this way. But in no way, shape, or form would having a dedicated world void of levelscaling affect your playing experience. It just wouldn’t, unless you decided to play on it. So for anyone to come in here and tell me I’m wrong is basically just you wanting to be rude for the sake of being rude. Which if that’s the case then maybe you need to re-evaluate yourself as a human being, learn to show some respect for others.

sorry, that’s getting off topic. and it’s already represented in game with higher level weapons.

Esplen.3940:

I personally believe it makes more sense than having level 1 mobs while you’re level 80. A sword is a sword, and by simply stabbing them, you will deal a decent amount of damage. It doesn’t matter if your sword is glowy or if it’s just a sword… It’s still going to stab them.

I’m sure someone will correct me on this but I’m almost positive the material your weapon is made of would have a significant impact on the amount of damage you could do. Take an iron or bronze sword, both are made of soft metals that wont hold an edge and therefore blunt rather quickly. I dunno if you have the opportunity but if you get a chance try and cut something with a blunt knife or sword. It’s a pain in the kitten and takes a lot longer than something that holds its edge. The difference is like night and day. Then look at a steel sword, or even the katana. The materials and forging process made that thing into one of the best cutting weapons of all time.

All technique aside then, someone swinging a sword (again we’ll just use levels to compare to because it’s easy) at level 1 will not be able to swing it as hard or as fast as someone at level 80, who’s obviously been doing it for quite some time. That’s supposed to be represented in a game with stats.

I’m talking about just straight swinging your sword. The basic attack. Anyone can wield a weapon. But it takes time to master it. And maybe that’s kind of what I’m getting at. A level 1 (anyone) can swing a sword and kill with it. They may take longer – do to inadequate technique, but it can be done. Alternatively a level 80 (master) can swing a sword and possibly decapitate his opponent with one slice, or pierce his heart with one thrust, effectively ending the combat much quicker than the level 1 could. With downscaling I feel like that’s lost.

At least that’s my impression. Any thoughts? And thank you for your thoughtful responses. I appreciate someone taking the time to discuss this.

True

But swinging a sword around for that amount of time would naturally increase your strength, allowing you to swing faster/harder. You would also learn new techniques for swinging that sword. It’s not just hack, slash, and stab. There are proper ways of wielding a weapon that you would learn over time allowing you to become more effective with it. At least that’s how it is in real life.

Again it just comes down to a feeling of progression. The downscaling really takes it away. Reading through some forums there are more people than you think who feel the same and I actually quit playing for a few months because of this.

I re-installed the game earlier this week to see if anything changed. Played for about 4 days before it started bothering me again. No matter how current I keep my gear I just don’t feel like I’m getting more powerful.

Other than that I’ve grown to appreciate everything else about this game. The artwork and scenery is beautiful. The music is amazing. Combat and skills are interesting. Exploring feels meaningful… But ultimately those things can be found in other games.

Not at all. I like the sense of power progression which I feel is lacking in the game. Especially when exploring every area for 100% completion.

Do not harass me with your facetious comments for posting a simple suggestion.

If you don’t have anything to contribute to this thread other than “OMG YOU’RE WRONG” then don’t comment. There are a lot of players that feel the same way. This is just my attempt at suggesting a compromise that would satisfy both groups without affecting the players who love the current system.

I know there are a lot of us that absolutely despise the downscaling feature we experience when going into a lower level area.

If there was a world or two where downscaling were disabled I think that would satisfy a lot of players who are otherwise losing interest and moving on to other games.

Just an idea. I hate to compare this game to WoW but it’s along the same lines as their PvP and PvE realms. They gave us the option and that made all the difference.

Here’s a simple suggestion:

Dedicated servers/worlds where there’s no downscaling.

You get to keep you nerfed playing experience and we get our sense of progression.

And now you’ve satisfied the 25% of gw2 players that hate downscaling but otherwise love everything else.

Win win!

Nope, I totally agree with removing it. Why even have levels? They’re irrelevant now.

At the least they could make an option to disable it. Playing with it disabled would mean no exp for low level mobs or events, no level appropriate loot in low level areas, and ultimately it would give me an incentive to move on. As it is I’m level 35 and have never left any of the starting zones. Why should I when I can just as easily level by doing the same events over and over.

Oh wait, this game isn’t about leveling, right, isn’t that what you guys are saying. Then what IS it about? Why even have levels then? I understand the whole “play for the joy of playing”, but that joy of playing comes from leveling my toon and getting new gear, throw a little exploring in there and I’m as smitten as a kitten with a ball of yarn. To each their own right. Some people paint for the joy of painting, some people paint for the joy of completing a beautiful piece of artwork. I’m in the latter group. So if you guys believe in the whole play just to play thing as much as you do then just get rid of levels entirely. Then you can really say you play just to play.

You guys complain about not wanting to one hit kill stuff in low level areas, but guess what, you still do! There was a warrior that cleared all the mobs around me in like 20 seconds, leaving me standing in an empty field waiting for them to respawn. So the whole argument saying that it’s supposed to prevent that is kind of moot.

All I know is that I grew to love everything about this game… except for the level scaling. And it’s a deal breaker. I feel like they really screwed the pooch with that feature. Not sure about anyone else but I’ll probably switch over to the elder scrolls online if they go free to play. Either that or I’ll go back to modding skyrim lol. Either way I want something that gives me a sense of progression. I don’t like feeling nerfed everywhere I go.

And here comes the mindless gw2 fanboys to tell me I’m wrong….

It would be nice to get some answers. After reading through a similar post in this forum I feel like they’re deliberately ignoring this issue.

Same problem here. I don’t earn nearly as much selling to vendors and the trading post is still broken with that “error attempting to sell” message so I feel like there’s no point in playing when my bags and bank are full. Haven’t played in a couple months and I was really hoping they had fixed that. Guess not. I probably wont last too much longer playing like this. Figured I’d come troll the forums to see what other people had to say.

At the least could you guys change the error message to one that’s more accurate, like: “You’ve exceeded the sales limit, please wait x minutes and try again”. Because an error message makes me think it’s a broke.

Account.9832:

There were several threads about the resetting / leashing bugs (and the stupidity of having hard resetting and leashing mechanics in a 2012 game in the first place) back during the beta weekends. Nothing seems to have changed.

Someone at Arena Net seems to think that protecting the mobs’ right to kill players without those players being able to exploit some flaw in the mob’s AI is more important than letting the players have fun while playing the game.

That’s why they can magically heal back to 100, that’s why they can spawn out of nowhere, right on top of players, that’s why they can push players off ledges but players can’t push them, etc..

“When in doubt, mob is granted god mode.”

And when developers have that kind of mentality there isn’t much hope that things will improve.

That’s exactly how it seems. “When in doubt, mob is granted god mode.”

This game trolls players so hard it’s not even funny. Well maybe the devs are laughing, but nobody else is.

I experienced this as well and it makes me rage quit, especially after reading through this thread and seeing the developers basically say “It’s not broke so deal with it”. There is absolutely no point in clearing an area if the mobs respawn before I move on. I mean really, just sit in one spot and grind until your heart’s content.

The most recent problem area I encountered was near Skill Challenge #8 – Thaumanova Reactor

The jungle skelk lurkers were respawning faster than I could kill them, which made getting to the actual skill challenge nearly impossible solo. Once there I tried to fight the fire elementals but the skelks respawned at my back, immediately drawing aggro and forcing me to hastily retreat through what I had already “cleared”.

If this many people are complaining about this specific aspect of your game, chances are it could benefit greatly from a little change. Anyway guess I’ll just have to keep complaining here until a developer notices. It’s not like I’m the only one who wants this problem resolved.

Zaxares.5419:

One thing to also be aware of is that downscaling can be rather inconsistent. For instance, if I’m on my level 40 Mesmer in a 1-15 zone, I can breeze through the level 3 – 7 areas, but level 8 – 9 areas are suddenly tough, and then when I hit the level 10 -11 areas, foes are suddenly easy again. It’s as if enemies are hitting for way more damage only within the level 8 – 9 area, even though I’m using the same general strategy in each area, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why.

I noticed this as well and it makes me feel like I’m being trolled by the game. It drives me absolutely bat kitten crazy to know that my lv 24 mesmer struggles with mobs half her level. Like it gets to the point where I just run through trailing a fat line of mobs because I don’t want to waste my time grinding through them again.

ThatOneArtistGamer.2914:

I have yet to see a valid argument on why skill potency has been diminished outside of personal preference, only evidence to support scaling down in general- which is a fine idea in and of itself. However, this is a very specific, very legitimate complaint to a system that provides less reward and weakens your abilities for exploration to lower zones.

This change is one element of the “Oblivion” effect- where just about any encounter feels roughly the same. You never truly feel a form of progression, because the game constantly makes an effort to eliminate any sense of it. A battle with a goblin will feel the same as one with an end-game demon- and so on. There are technically tougher enemies in later areas of the game, yes, but the area in which they feel different is slowly getting thinner and thinner. Essentially, you will be fighting the “same fight” time and time again- and all that will be different is the model and color palette.

I’m not saying there are zero benefits to a system SIMILAR to this with more refined tuning, but if this type of progression continues, the scenario I just described will be a common thing for everyone. And while the novelty of it may, theoretically, sound like a “constant challenge”, any player worth their mettle will easily become bored of it in time due to lack of variety and difficulty. It’s been proven to not be a very enjoyed scaling system in terms of balancing.

Battles should range from easy, to hard, to incredibly tough- not roughly the same given a few enemy spells.

This… describes exactly how I feel.

Downscaling is extremely annoying, especially for someone who plays solo. The only reason I can even see it having a purpose is because experience is shared. I bet the idea is they don’t want lv 80’s running through low level zones basically just handing xp to low level players.

So how do we fix this? Because I’m not gonna play much longer if I keep dying trying to do events by myself. What’s the purpose of building up your character if you can always get scaled down to whatever level the developers think you should be?