Official - Combat Changes - Upscaled Campaign Zone (Avernus)

noworries

This thread is for feedback/bugs on the upscaling applied to players in Avernus.

One thing we are trying out with these changes is that new campaigns have an item level restriction on entering the zone. During the first couple of weeks a campaign is live, that restriction is turned off and any player who completes the intro mission has continued access to the zone even if they don't meet the item level requirement. Any player below the item level requirement will be scaled up to that item level when in the zone.

This is currently in effect for Avernus which now has a 30,000 Item Level entry requirement. If you're character currently has access to the zone on live, they still have that access and if they are below 30,000 Item Level they will be scaled up to that value while in that zone.

This approach is to allow players a window of time where they can jump in and try the newest content, even if they don't have the item level to do so yet, so that they can be part of the new zone excitement while it is still new. We are interested to hear your thoughts on this change to campaign zones going forward.

eladonwarps

Making no other changes to my character, my Preview server Cleric is at 29000 item level. This character completed the Avernus campaigns.

Several groups of enemies are not taking any damage from me, in Arbiter or Devout loadouts, and if they attack me, kill me in 1 blow.

How can an adventurer who has completed a content area be unable to do anything in that area? Seems like an odd choice for RPG design.

cygnusx1

allowing players who are below the required IL doesn't seem like a good idea to me for the following reasons:

1. so not D&D. in the board game D&D, a level 10 cleric cannot go into a level 20 map area.

2. there'd be NO incentive to get to the required IL if everyone can play anyway. also, who's going to want to play the older content if they can play the new content? that's not good for the game if people can jump into the newest content right away.

3. one problem you're probably trying to solve is that newer players currently end up missing out on content (eg. Vallenhas isn't what it used to be and the Redeemed Citadel is almost over) but personally, I still enjoyed Chult, Barovia, etc tho they were already old content when I played them. Just made me want to play more and work harder to get to the newest content sooner. One suggestion would be to remove any time restrictions on how fast players can progress on older campaigns. if you want different IL players on the same map, rather than scaling up, maybe have different quests with different difficulty levels on the same map.

hustin1

For new players, running the older campaigns does bring some difficulties that weren't present when they first went live, mainly because so few people are there. Some examples:

Chult weeklies require running HE's, which only spawn once per hour. When Chult was live you could switch to an instance where one was up. Now, there is usually only a single instance up, so you have no choice but to stick around twiddling your thumbs until one pops.

The Bryn Shander quest where you attract beasts has had a bug since Storm King's Thunder launched. Sometimes, one of the knucklehead fish on the ground isn't interactable, making the quest impossible to complete. When the mod launched you could simply switch instances. With so few people such that there is often only one instance, this isn't possible.

On the other hand, few people in an instance can be a benefit. I've lost count of the times someone stole a quest objective from me in Sharandar. It seems less likely nowadays, even with few instances up.

I understand that Sybella's quests was an attempt to get people into the old campaign maps but I'm not sure that it has had enough of an incentive. One idea might be to extend an old campaign for level-80 players each time a new campaign is introduced. Something like that shouldn't require much development. It would be interesting if some sort of synergy between a new and old campaign could be worked out.

cherryman1

Scaling of players in old content didn't feel very good to me. This increased the time to complete quests by a multiplier of 2x on a near maxed out toon with a days worth of fiddling with the stats (maxed bolster/max boons/max companions/max insignia/max enchants moved to crit severity/maxed power/maxed forte/maxed crit sev/almost maxed crit). I haven't moved a low level toon over yet and tried doing content and will do that later this week. I also didn't feel like I was much different in a lot of different content in the game. In dread ring the mobs mostly required not quite 1 rotation of skills to kill them. The mobs in Avernus was about 1.5 rotations to kill them. Small heroic encounters in legacy zones were about 2 rotations to kill things and BHE's that I one manned took 2/3 of the timer of the BHE to finish alone. If this is correct then most players won't be able to do BHE's unless the idea is everyone is scaled up and we all do the same types of damage. If were not scaled up then most won't be able to do BHE's solo in old content zones. This will cause a lot of issues when it comes to finishing legacy quests. Most would skip them because of the time to get done and the new need of having many players to finish one. This will kill the reward to time ratios of the content for most folks. If the scaling isn't relaxed on the legacy zones your going to see a lot of folks mad who used to be able to complete an area not want to run that zones content.

starlight16

noworries#8859 said:

This is currently in effect for Avernus which now has a 30,000 Item Level entry requirement.

I'm not going to get into whether or not this should be done. But if it is happening, in my view, this requirement is too high for this zone, I'd suggest dropping it by a few thousand, or you'll be excluding a lot more people capable of the zone than you might expect.

I have 3 characters all of them play in Avernus and I have completed the weapon set in the citadel with 2, the 3rd may finish soon. But if they were new to the zone, none of them would have been able to enter the zone with this high of a restriction when they started the campaign, and 2 of them still couldn't. They've all gotten nice gear from the zone, so they were a fair bit lower iLvl before playing in it. But the highest of them is just at 30k now on preview, she would have been a lot lower in equivalence when she started the campaign and yet she's very comfortably playing in Avernus.

Here's the char details.

My main is 26k dps on live and shows up on preview as just a wee bit over 30k. She's typical of a building character, with bondings to 15 and 1 legendary companion, 1 legendary mount, a couple legendary insignias. She has a few high enchants and runestones, but mostly middle (8-10). Only 1 artifact is at mythic, the others are epic. This character had to work a bit in the beginning of the campaign, but is currently extremely comfortable in all the content, and can even be a bit careless and deal with an accidental pull of multiple groups of critters at one time. Can handle clearing in elite areas (was harder months ago).

My middle character is a paladin who also solos quests in Avernus (non-dps). She's 23k on live and not quite 29k on preview. The only campaign quest she needed a group for was Mote of Virtue. I am careful to be full health with all my skills refreshed before I engage. The fights last longer, but she gets it done. Can do the elite areas with effort, but generally avoid it because it takes too much time.

The lowbie is just 21.5k dps on live - the recommended level for the zone on live is 21k, and I'm pretty sure she was around 19k when she started there but after playing the other two chars, experience with the critters and quests made up for lack of iLvl. On preview she's 27k. Its been challenging but I enjoy the challenge. Is also able to do all the citadel and campaign quests by herself (excepting Mote of Virtue and the mini bosses).

arazith07

starlight16#1508 said:

noworries#8859 said:

This is currently in effect for Avernus which now has a 30,000 Item Level entry requirement.

I'm not going to get into whether or not this should be done. But if it is happening, in my view, this requirement is too high for this zone, I'd suggest dropping it by a few thousand, or you'll be excluding a lot more people capable of the zone than you might expect.

I have 3 characters all of them play in Avernus and I have completed the weapon set in the citadel with 2, the 3rd may finish soon. But if they were new to the zone, none of them would have been able to enter the zone with this high of a restriction when they started the campaign, and 2 of them still couldn't. They've all gotten nice gear from the zone, so they were a fair bit lower iLvl before playing in it. But the highest of them is just at 30k now on preview, she would have been a lot lower in equivalence when she started the campaign and yet she's very comfortably playing in Avernus.

Here's the char details.

My main is 26k dps on live and shows up on preview as just a wee bit over 30k. She's typical of a building character, with bondings to 15 and 1 legendary companion, 1 legendary mount, a couple legendary insignias. She has a few high enchants and runestones, but mostly middle (8-10). Only 1 artifact is at mythic, the others are epic. This character had to work a bit in the beginning of the campaign, but is currently extremely comfortable in all the content, and can even be a bit careless and deal with an accidental pull of multiple groups of critters at one time. Can handle clearing in elite areas (was harder months ago).

My middle character is a paladin who also solos quests in Avernus (non-dps). She's 23k on live and not quite 29k on preview. The only campaign quest she needed a group for was Mote of Virtue. I am careful to be full health with all my skills refreshed before I engage. The fights last longer, but she gets it done. Can do the elite areas with effort, but generally avoid it because it takes too much time.

The lowbie is just 21.5k dps on live - the recommended level for the zone on live is 21k, and I'm pretty sure she was around 19k when she started there but after playing the other two chars, experience with the critters and quests made up for lack of iLvl. On preview she's 27k. Its been challenging but I enjoy the challenge. Is also able to do all the citadel and campaign quests by herself (excepting Mote of Virtue and the mini bosses).

The whole purpose of this thread is to test the effects of Upscaling, meaning that your characters that are below 30k TiL are being scaled up to 30k and how it feels. It's not necessarily a requirement. If it feels too hard, they could be raising the upscaling by however much.