Since my last post I have been forced to reconsider by a more knowledgeable (and numbers focused) player than I.
@nitocris83 you urgently need a blog post about scaling. This blog post needs to explicitly state what equipment is capped during scaling and what things are not capped. I believe this information being better, and more widely, understood will alleviate a number of points of contention in the community.
For those who are playing at home, go to Well of Dragons and take advantage of the fact that the Collections are scaled as well...maybe adjust your Boons...
I don't think there is anything that is going to make it better from explanation. having some kind of inexplicable advantage in well of dragons doesn't make up for the unplayable mess it is everywhere else. people are upset not because of numbers but because the experience. regardless of what the numbers say.. are the dungeons doable? Going back to a zone is it taking a reasonable amount of time to kill things? are you dying a reasonable amount? is a lower level player more adept than you?
To repeat what i said earlier. There has to be EXACT explanation of the scaling, in all circumstances. Why, what and how it will be scaled. Gear stats, combined stats, enchants, weapon and armor enchants and cap points of scaling (if they exist).
You will be scaled (and that to a level that a fresh lvl 70 toon has, not eligable to enter dungeons) isnt enough Information. All i could tell from my own testing is, that scaling is for me way to much down to be able to do the simpliest lvl 70 dungeon anymore. And the info scaling is to a fix cap point makes any progress unnessasary in hope to be later able to do it.
only to show one side of scaling: Portal, Well of Dragons, malabog castle Defense: ~53000, ~36000, ~ 29000 as lvl 73 tank (gf) with lvl 70 gear.
Please listem Silver stream that girl is very cleaver to apoint the way things goes to NW right now... dont let this game die, do something and listen ghe base players... scaling is a mess, fix it and fix comps non augments to makes sense use pets strikers and others again... come on dont let mod16 goes live THIS way...
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
As we move from the level 80 areas to level 70 areas (Chult/barovia/SoMI) our stats are being downscaled by circa 30%. This is pretty much a consistent and across the board downscale for our stats.
Eh, no.
We don't really have scaling - we have capping - meaning that it doesn't matter if you have R15s or R10s - they both get capped down to R9s (meaning there is little motivation to improve gear).
Second, capping seems to be done on a per-item basis, meaning that it matters where your stats come from, enchants, gear, insignia, companions, etc.
As for the percentage, I am seeing my "BiS" character get 40-50% when I go from YP to, say, Sharandar. My ArPen goes from 71K to 37K (47% reduction), while my Power goes from 117K to 67K (42% reduction).
There has to be EXACT explanation of the scaling, in all circumstances.
I don't think they can give an exact explanation in all circumstances. It rather appears that the entire "scaling" stuff has become a huge patchwork of ad-hoc adjustments, with not the slightest notion of a plan.
"Scaling" within an instance does not even seem to be consistent. In one area you can be scaled down very much, then you go through a door or an area transition and - poof - your stats differ.
Fact is, most instances are total chaos. The difficulty level within an instance swings wildly and I am not sure what the reason is. One factor could be different "scaling" in different parts of the instance. Another factor rather obviously is, that a large number of mobs and bosses still think they are in MOD 15. Some instance bosses melt like ice cream, and then there are places within an instance where an unnamed mob or a mini-boss one-shots players ...
They probably thought it would be a grand idea to make huge changes to classes, to stats, how stats work, to numerous of the game's core systems etc. etc. - without ever doing a single pass through each instance and each zone, adjusting the damage dealt by bosses and mobs, so that the content is playable.
My impression is, that they used "scaling" as a "cheap and easy" means to rework the instances / areas, along the lines - no need to look systematically at anything at all, rather - if preview tester A complains that mob X in instance Y is too powerful: Make "scaling" less aggressive or - if preview tester B complains that (s)he can "easily" solo instance Y: Make "scaling" more aggressive
I cannot be sure, and frankly I do not care if my above mentioned impression is accurate. Rather I will operate in the same way as they did:
They released an unfinished piece of software with 1000+ OBVIOUS BUGS and then (mis)used the preview testers to (randomly) report whatever bugs the testers stumbled upon, making erratic adjustments based on what was randomly reported. In fact, they explicitly admitted that the pendulum will swing back and forth in the attempts to balance the content.
In this spirit I will speculate wildly why things are as chaotic as they are now: My above impression is based on what came randomly to my attention. Tomorrow something else might catch my attention and the pendulum of my impressions will swing erratically back and forth.
Since my last post I have been forced to reconsider by a more knowledgeable (and numbers focused) player than I.
@nitocris83 you urgently need a blog post about scaling. This blog post needs to explicitly state what equipment is capped during scaling and what things are not capped. I believe this information being better, and more widely, understood will alleviate a number of points of contention in the community.
For those who are playing at home, go to Well of Dragons and take advantage of the fact that the Collections are scaled as well...maybe adjust your Boons...
I don't think there is anything that is going to make it better from explanation. having some kind of inexplicable advantage in well of dragons doesn't make up for the unplayable mess it is everywhere else. people are upset not because of numbers but because the experience. regardless of what the numbers say.. are the dungeons doable? Going back to a zone is it taking a reasonable amount of time to kill things? are you dying a reasonable amount? is a lower level player more adept than you?
It’s not Well, it’s all of RIQ, if you do it in Barovia instead it’s all of RAQ.
Instead of complaining, go do some investigation using the tool available.
I went from nowhere near cap to most key stats near cap by taking the time to investigate and learn.
They can tell us what is capped and what isn’t, when you know these things you can make better choices and scaled content stops being a disaster.
(I still disagree with how they did it, but at least now it’s manageable.)
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
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rickcase276Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,404Arc User
But do you honestly think that 90% of the players that play are going to take the time to investigate and find out how to make their stats better? No, they are not. They are going to see that they can not do what they were able to do before the new mod launched, and either complain a lot or just end up quiting.
There has to be EXACT explanation of the scaling, in all circumstances.
I don't think they can give an exact explanation in all circumstances. It rather appears that the entire "scaling" stuff has become a huge patchwork of ad-hoc adjustments, with not the slightest notion of a plan.
"Scaling" within an instance does not even seem to be consistent. In one area you can be scaled down very much, then you go through a door or an area transition and - poof - your stats differ.
Fact is, most instances are total chaos. The difficulty level within an instance swings wildly and I am not sure what the reason is. One factor could be different "scaling" in different parts of the instance. Another factor rather obviously is, that a large number of mobs and bosses still think they are in MOD 15. Some instance bosses melt like ice cream, and then there are places within an instance where an unnamed mob or a mini-boss one-shots players ...
They probably thought it would be a grand idea to make huge changes to classes, to stats, how stats work, to numerous of the game's core systems etc. etc. - without ever doing a single pass through each instance and each zone, adjusting the damage dealt by bosses and mobs, so that the content is playable.
My impression is, that they used "scaling" as a "cheap and easy" means to rework the instances / areas, along the lines - no need to look systematically at anything at all, rather - if preview tester A complains that mob X in instance Y is too powerful: Make "scaling" less aggressive or - if preview tester B complains that (s)he can "easily" solo instance Y: Make "scaling" more aggressive
I cannot be sure, and frankly I do not care if my above mentioned impression is accurate. Rather I will operate in the same way as they did:
They released an unfinished piece of software with 1000+ OBVIOUS BUGS and then (mis)used the preview testers to (randomly) report whatever bugs the testers stumbled upon, making erratic adjustments based on what was randomly reported. In fact, they explicitly admitted that the pendulum will swing back and forth in the attempts to balance the content.
In this spirit I will speculate wildly why things are as chaotic as they are now: My above impression is based on what came randomly to my attention. Tomorrow something else might catch my attention and the pendulum of my impressions will swing erratically back and forth.
The was well stated thank you.
Sometimes I think with the scaling (as well as other changes) they are trying to make things on new players easier but they have ended messing them up as bad, if not worse, as veteran players.
In the past new players could, with little trouble and some luck, get a few epic mounts, companions and save up AD to get high level enchants if they really put some time in or buy a relatively low amount of Zen. But now because pretty much everything has become so nerfed even if they buy Zen and get shiny new mounts, companions and enchants the combat system has made them negligible. I was playing around with a naked character level 60ish (except for weapons) no mounts and one empty companion and then did the same run again fully geared at about 9K IL and it maybe took 5% (if that) of the time off the previous run. I can't believe that is their intended plan because who will buy Zen at that point?
As we move from the level 80 areas to level 70 areas (Chult/barovia/SoMI) our stats are being downscaled by circa 30%. This is pretty much a consistent and across the board downscale for our stats.
Eh, no.
We don't really have scaling - we have capping - meaning that it doesn't matter if you have R15s or R10s - they both get capped down to R9s (meaning there is little motivation to improve gear).
Second, capping seems to be done on a per-item basis, meaning that it matters where your stats come from, enchants, gear, insignia, companions, etc.
As for the percentage, I am seeing my "BiS" character get 40-50% when I go from YP to, say, Sharandar. My ArPen goes from 71K to 37K (47% reduction), while my Power goes from 117K to 67K (42% reduction).
Thanks for pulling me away from the wrong tree that i was barking up!
But do you honestly think that 90% of the players that play are going to take the time to investigate and find out how to make their stats better? No, they are not. They are going to see that they can not do what they were able to do before the new mod launched, and either complain a lot or just end up quiting.
Which is why @nitocris83 needs to get a blog out ASAP that clearly explains (not marketing explains, explains for educational purposes) how scaling works. What is capped, what is not.
Letting this just go live and leaving that hidden for the community to discover among all the other changes, is indeed a disaster waiting to happen.
4 weeks of testing and people are only now starting to dig into this and get some sort of handle on it, and over 30 pages of “this is terrible and not working”, says just letting it go live without a clear explanation of how it works will be disastrous.
I still think the cap system they have used is a bad solution, but it is what we have, and as such it needs a clear, accurate, explanation.
Obsidian Moonlight - Paladin Obsidian Oath - Warlock A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
But do you honestly think that 90% of the players that play are going to take the time to investigate and find out how to make their stats better? No, they are not. They are going to see that they can not do what they were able to do before the new mod launched, and either complain a lot or just end up quiting.
You mean they're going to do what they do now, and look up a guide for what to do? This is a universal thing too, not limited to Neverwinter. It's why games with builds have build forums, and I expect that the less than casual theorycrafters will indeed be doing exactly what you suggest, and 90% of the population will be riding on their coattails, just as they do now.
It's not a bad thing, it happens everywhere it's possible. Some people design builds, others copy them, if they're posted where they can be copied. If you need further substantiation of this claim, just look at what builds are currently required to run end game content. How many truly unique builds are there, and how many are "cut/paste" jobs from some build forum or another?
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
Since my last post I have been forced to reconsider by a more knowledgeable (and numbers focused) player than I.
@nitocris83 you urgently need a blog post about scaling. This blog post needs to explicitly state what equipment is capped during scaling and what things are not capped. I believe this information being better, and more widely, understood will alleviate a number of points of contention in the community.
For those who are playing at home, go to Well of Dragons and take advantage of the fact that the Collections are scaled as well...maybe adjust your Boons...
I don't think there is anything that is going to make it better from explanation. having some kind of inexplicable advantage in well of dragons doesn't make up for the unplayable mess it is everywhere else. people are upset not because of numbers but because the experience. regardless of what the numbers say.. are the dungeons doable? Going back to a zone is it taking a reasonable amount of time to kill things? are you dying a reasonable amount? is a lower level player more adept than you?
It’s not Well, it’s all of RIQ, if you do it in Barovia instead it’s all of RAQ.
Instead of complaining, go do some investigation using the tool available.
I went from nowhere near cap to most key stats near cap by taking the time to investigate and learn.
They can tell us what is capped and what isn’t, when you know these things you can make better choices and scaled content stops being a disaster.
(I still disagree with how they did it, but at least now it’s manageable.)
to repeat myself I did what you said and I'm not seeing this magical suddenly manageable thing you're seeing. i'm seeing absolutely everything with the same cap. if there is some kind of special thing you're doing to make it otherwise in a specific set of circumstances it's undoubtedly not wai. but I even retrained my boons in wod I took a picture of my stats before I did it. it looked precisely the same as it did before I retrained.... no difference at all.
and a level 70 has the same boons as me. the only difference is a couple of crappy boons you can choose at the end that have no real bearing on anything. so it's net net. makes no difference.
So we need a handbook to understand what stuff is capped and what not, like: Enchantments capped down, gear capped down, Weapon enchants capped, boons not capped, companionbuff not.. and so on? Before entering the game, please visit the NWO-academy and do your master in "caps and scaling issues"
But do you honestly think that 90% of the players that play are going to take the time to investigate and find out how to make their stats better? No, they are not. They are going to see that they can not do what they were able to do before the new mod launched, and either complain a lot or just end up quiting.
Which is why @nitocris83 needs to get a blog out ASAP that clearly explains (not marketing explains, explains for educational purposes) how scaling works. What is capped, what is not.
Letting this just go live and leaving that hidden for the community to discover among all the other changes, is indeed a disaster waiting to happen.
4 weeks of testing and people are only now starting to dig into this and get some sort of handle on it, and over 30 pages of “this is terrible and not working”, says just letting it go live without a clear explanation of how it works will be disastrous.
I still think the cap system they have used is a bad solution, but it is what we have, and as such it needs a clear, accurate, explanation.
a clear explanation of what is capped and what is not capped does not solve the problem that people are seeing by doing. it is what it is.
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful). However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
Sorry, but this is the point where you have gone wrong. Scaling should be set to the point when they typically end campaign (so got all best upgraded gear in campaign), not to the point when they start campaign. So Ravenloft should be scaled down to crown seal gear, not campaign start gear. SKT should be set to vivified gear. Chult to upgraded ToNG gear. Because people finished campaign, they should be scaled down to point where there have finished it, not to the point where they have started it.
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful). However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
Sorry, but this is the point where you have gone wrong. Scaling should be set to the point when they typically end campaign (so got all best upgraded gear in campaign), not to the point when they start campaign. So Ravenloft should be scaled down to crown seal gear, not campaign start gear. SKT should be set to vivified gear. Chult to upgraded ToNG gear. Because people finished campaign, they should be scaled down to point where there have finished it, not to the point where they have started it.
I'd agree, but I'm curious where you're drawing the conclusion, based on what's actually said in your snippet quote, that your're set to starter gear, since it's stated in the very first line that you won't be?
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful)
The comparison made after this compares two characters that have both outleveled the content, only it's inferred that they may not be in the same gear, and it still doesn't say they're the same, but comparable:
However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful). However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
Sorry, but this is the point where you have gone wrong. Scaling should be set to the point when they typically end campaign (so got all best upgraded gear in campaign), not to the point when they start campaign. So Ravenloft should be scaled down to crown seal gear, not campaign start gear. SKT should be set to vivified gear. Chult to upgraded ToNG gear. Because people finished campaign, they should be scaled down to point where there have finished it, not to the point where they have started it.
I'd agree, but I'm curious where you're drawing the conclusion, based on what's actually said in your snippet quote, that your're set to starter gear, since it's stated in the very first line that you won't be?
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful)
The comparison made after this compares two characters that have both outleveled the content, only it's inferred that they may not be in the same gear, and it still doesn't say they're the same, but comparable:
However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
The current behavior could be well explained by the line: The scaling is setup so that a player IS(inserted by me) exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time. This could explain what happens now, where lv80 in max gear are weaker than lv70 when downscaled in Ravenloft. Additional lines try say higher gear would scale to unspecified something "more powerful", but this apparently does not happen now, so "more powerful" difference could be as well "by 0", rather than up to max zone rewards.
So the later phrases that you are quoting do not look as relevant to the current implementation, and they generally contradict the first phrase, rather than clarify it.
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful). However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
Sorry, but this is the point where you have gone wrong. Scaling should be set to the point when they typically end campaign (so got all best upgraded gear in campaign), not to the point when they start campaign. So Ravenloft should be scaled down to crown seal gear, not campaign start gear. SKT should be set to vivified gear. Chult to upgraded ToNG gear. Because people finished campaign, they should be scaled down to point where there have finished it, not to the point where they have started it.
I'd agree, but I'm curious where you're drawing the conclusion, based on what's actually said in your snippet quote, that your're set to starter gear, since it's stated in the very first line that you won't be?
The scaling is setup so that a player exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time, and a more leveled up player returning back are not at the same point (with the higher geared player being more powerful)
The comparison made after this compares two characters that have both outleveled the content, only it's inferred that they may not be in the same gear, and it still doesn't say they're the same, but comparable:
However, if two players who have leveled up far enough past the scaling go back to a scaled zone, they have a high chance of ending up very comparable to each other.
The current behavior could be well explained by the line: The scaling is setup so that a player IS(inserted by me) exactly where they should be to do a piece of content for the first time. This could explain what happens now, where lv80 in max gear are weaker than lv70 when downscaled in Ravenloft. Additional lines try say higher gear would scale to unspecified something "more powerful", but this apparently does not happen now, so "more powerful" difference could be as well "by 0", rather than up to max zone rewards.
So the later phrases that you are quoting do not look as relevant to the current implementation, and they generally contradict the first phrase, rather than clarify it.
What I wonder is if it's not that they're reduced to starter gear, but that they're lower than they think they should be? Because all the stat screenies that I've seen so far claiming such don't actually show that, they show characters that do, in fact have higher stats than starter geared characters, unless I'm reading something wrong in the screenies?
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
New player here. Part of the fun leveling, just got my first character to 70 thanks to the catch-up event, is when you overlevel an area you can just smash through everything. I mean that's kind of the point of having top-tier gear in any MMO is that you can grind through old content with ease.
If all of a sudden my progression through all the older content takes significantly longer than it normally would have previously, I'll be honest it's going to impact my desire to continue playing the game.
I don't get it. What's the point of getting better gear inside the campaign, when even the gear you earn from the campaign is stripped down to the "Campaign level"? Earn the best gear in Elemental Evil and get throat cut while in the same place, unable to progress farther because you now have to do the entire campaign with minimal statistics. This was the exact fiasco that made the game drop from 5 k daily players to nearly half that amount and not recover since 2014. Then everything had to be rescaled by Cryptic until the monsters were fightable again. Right now, I am being slaughtered in Fiery Pit faster than when the best gear I owned was earned from before the Elemental Evil campaign. There is zero point in making an area more challenging for gear and rewards that are nearly useless. There is a reason that most level 50 and above players stay out of Black Lake and scaling them down when they go there to do a bit of nostalgia run or a quick bit of farming just makes the experience even less palatable. It's become a joke to post "Remember Mod 6!" but apparently the Developers and planners have forgotten the horrors that Mod 6 brought to the game. As a reminder, maybe someone should go back and look at what happened to the player count shortly after Elemental Evil made levelling to level 70 a punishment for getting better.
New player here. Part of the fun leveling, just got my first character to 70 thanks to the catch-up event, is when you overlevel an area you can just smash through everything. I mean that's kind of the point of having top-tier gear in any MMO is that you can grind through old content with ease.
If all of a sudden my progression through all the older content takes significantly longer than it normally would have previously, I'll be honest it's going to impact my desire to continue playing the game.
That's certainly one perspective, however, the point to leveling up and obtaining better gear is to run harder content, at least, from a design perspective. From a player's perspective, which vary wildly, because we have your perspective here, and now mine, which is: I don't care about lower level content once I'm past it. I have heard all the arguments you can make for "but I earned it, I should be able to do it". However, while you're busy in the Cloak Tower, the people running in Undermountain won't know you're there, and, if you decide to quit, we won't know you left, either. What may actually happen, instead, is that someone like me, that was testing out a melee ranger today, but didn't get much of a chance to, because 2 lvl 70s hit my queue, in the aforementioned Cloak Tower, may get a chance to see how viable it really is, instead of running around hoping you actually get to hit something before it dies.
I've heard all these "we're going to be uber gimped" arguments before too. They were heavy in swtor when they did their scaling, and yet, a group of 6 of us still managed to take down a WB with no deaths, and no healers. It was even fun. If they broke it to where you can't even queue for some content you should be able to, that needs to be addressed. "If I can't roflstomp lowbie content anymore I'm quitting", not so much.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
I've some more testing with the lvl 80 barbie on the test server.
Equipped him with the undermountin seal gear, rank 13 and 14 enchants I had, new shirt which was a drop from an expedition, crappy green pants from leveling, and the artifact set with the electric neck piece.
Had that arti set at blue, but also used champions banner at mythic as primary, with other two artis at mythic.
Weapon and offhand were purple, with holy avenger rank twelve as weapon enchant,
I did all the weekly quests that give AD, aside from the one in well of dragons.
was scaled to 64 in sharandar, level 70 everywhere else.
In a nutshell, everything proceeded smoothly. While it was taking some additional swings on the bosses, the NPCS still died.
Only time I used a stone of health was in soloing a marauding bear tribe raiders herioc. I was not paying attention and they did their charge/smash big axe/stun cpl of times in a row.
Arcane reservoir, dread ring /dread spire, baphomet, tuern portal, biggrins were all strait forward maybe took 10%/15% more time.
I did not go to bariova as yet, and try the night terror.
1
micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
That's certainly one perspective, however, the point to leveling up and obtaining better gear is to run harder content, at least, from a design perspective.
This is the desirable design, yet this is not so in NW. NW encourages, on purpose, high level, higher geared players into low level group content via RQ.
And now moved all current content (which includes most sources of UES and RP) to lower level than the players will be, 70 vs 80.
From a player's perspective, which vary wildly, because we have your perspective here, and now mine, which is: I don't care about lower level content once I'm past it.
If the design would have encouraged that, then no need for any scaling, such hypothetical design should preferably be with relevant parts like dungeons with harder tiers and relevant rewards for it (so to not invalidate and make old content 100% obsolete - or ofc to always provide enough new content so it is not needed). Yet this is not the design in NW.
I have heard all the arguments you can make for "but I earned it, I should be able to do it". However, while you're busy in the Cloak Tower, the people running in Undermountain won't know you're there, and, if you decide to quit, we won't know you left, either. What may actually happen, instead, is that someone like me, that was testing out a melee ranger today, but didn't get much of a chance to, because 2 lvl 70s hit my queue, in the aforementioned Cloak Tower, may get a chance to see how viable it really is, instead of running around hoping you actually get to hit something before it dies.
You seem like a veteran of many MMOs, so you probably know that nothing you test there at low level is actually an indicator for the class and more so with the class re-done in a day, but ignoring the 'testing' part, and lets just take a leveling player in a leveling dungeon and we get an issue, an issue where two extremely conflicting type of players meet in one group content. Geared high level players who need AD, and only look at efficiency AD/Time and low level player, half the time with chat disabled, who want's to check and enjoy the game.
With all the respect (or not) to the conflict that occurs, it is in large due to the design. When the mechanics that encourages this was introduced, the devs were warned, repeatedly, that it will create a bad experience for both types of players.
And example of such discussion two years ago (I don't have the energy to look for older stuff, on the preview at the time, but please trust me, it's there)
For the context, that system was born out of desperation, low level queues didn't pop, new players had to wait for a long time for a public queue dungeon run, assumed the game is mostly dead and quit before actually getting to the game. So the game designers encouraged players to run older content, but that brought foreseeable issues, and now years after we are still in a patch on a patch on this design choice.
I've heard all these "we're going to be uber gimped" arguments before too. They were heavy in swtor when they did their scaling, and yet, a group of 6 of us still managed to take down a WB with no deaths, and no healers. It was even fun. If they broke it to where you can't even queue for some content you should be able to, that needs to be addressed. "If I can't roflstomp lowbie content anymore I'm quitting", not so much.
In your opinion.
In others opinion, after you slain dragons, banished super daemons, 7 headed dragons and stopped world destruction by some giant not-totally backed baby god, a level 10 sewer rat shouldn't pose a problem. And when it does, it should be fixed.
On another note, we are somewhat realistic and reasonable (at least some of us, maybe, when the stars align), devs can't make content fast enough, the new player population is too low for a separation, new players found themselves waiting without queues poping. Old content invalidated, and too easy and boring for geared players.
So a solution needed. (Again this is due to the game designers aim to steer players into older content, a personal perspective like yours or mine that we don't care about low level content is valid to the game, but not to the point due to the devs design objectives)
In any scaling solution we break progress on the overall larger scope - but as I've said, if having rat issues after slaying dragons is the price for healthier game I guess many can live with that.
We can look at two types of solutions, one without long term maintenance, a very simplistic and easy one - lets cap gear item level. This is a 'fire and forget' solution - no need to adjust it, change it, anything in the foreseeable future, a player enters a zone and they will be auto reduced to some cap setting set.
Just few slight problems:
The reduction is not linear - instead of reducing the whole chars IL to some cap with the same stat distribution as before, it is done per gear item, hence the overall stat distribution is all over the place.
The most important issue - It breaks progress on the specific smaller relative scope, this is inherent from to the cap design: two players one is just at the cap and the other miles over it, will be reduced to the same level, invalidating the second player's progress as compared to the first.
Why is this even an issue?
Players do want to feel that they work has/had impact, a player worked hard for the new shiny gear, they want to feel any even minor difference from it. A Cap nullifies it.
We can look at this in the Player vs Player relative perspective - I've work harder for my gear, I should see a benefit over someone who worked less. We can simplify this to an e-peen and a guillotine cutting it, or delve into the more deep psychological aspects of human nature, but no matter how to form it, it's important to the vast majority of the player base.
And we can look at this as a Player vs Environment issue on the more practical aspect, not only 'look at me slay this rat' - Players come at different levels of skill (different response times, age, reflexes, time to learn the depths of the game mechanics, etc..) over-gearing allows players who have difficulty in some content to just do it later, when they are more geared to compensate. I know most would like to believe that they are the top of the top, and can slay every boss naked, but this is not so, we mere average mortals use gear to compensate for lack of other aspects, and it's a valid thing. The games average player age is not 16.
I've posted in the other feedback thread, a talk from the Game Developers Conference with a discussion that touches about that and why it's so important for player retention. This is btw a core concept in PnP D&D and what made it work.
Now that was the cap solution, the easy one, the other type of solution to the same scaling problem can be utilizing an actual scaling function and not a cap. The devs tried that, and failed, IMO mostly because they tried to set the scaling factor (what defines the scaling function) based by the level difference, and with some unclear function instead of just setting it per zone. For example an overall Diminishing Function of the type x^(1/a) with (a > 1), can do this, you want older content, increase/set "a" higher (desmos).
This solves that relative progress issue, and the stats balance, yet it will take tinkering every few mods to compensate for the power creep.
So here we are - getting what we paid for (cheap, easy and more flawed, or with more maintenance and less flawed).
Obviously, in a better word, we wouldn't need scaling player back to fill low level content, an overall better solution is to create higher difficulty variant of the older content, with the proper rewards, but this will require a different solution for the then empty leveling queues in our not so better world.
another solution for the levelling dungeons is to create ai toons to play with the levelling toon. let the dungeons look for a minute then let it fill in with ai in appropriate roles with names that don't make it apparent they are ai to create the illusion of other levelling toons.
That's certainly one perspective, however, the point to leveling up and obtaining better gear is to run harder content, at least, from a design perspective.
This is the desirable design, yet this is not so in NW. NW encourages, on purpose, high level, higher geared players into low level group content via RQ.
And now moved all current content (which includes most sources of UES and RP) to lower level than the players will be, 70 vs 80.
From a player's perspective, which vary wildly, because we have your perspective here, and now mine, which is: I don't care about lower level content once I'm past it.
If the design would have encouraged that, then no need for any scaling, such hypothetical design should preferably be with relevant parts like dungeons with harder tiers and relevant rewards for it (so to not invalidate and make old content 100% obsolete - or ofc to always provide enough new content so it is not needed). Yet this is not the design in NW.
I have heard all the arguments you can make for "but I earned it, I should be able to do it". However, while you're busy in the Cloak Tower, the people running in Undermountain won't know you're there, and, if you decide to quit, we won't know you left, either. What may actually happen, instead, is that someone like me, that was testing out a melee ranger today, but didn't get much of a chance to, because 2 lvl 70s hit my queue, in the aforementioned Cloak Tower, may get a chance to see how viable it really is, instead of running around hoping you actually get to hit something before it dies.
You seem like a veteran of many MMOs, so you probably know that nothing you test there at low level is actually an indicator for the class and more so with the class re-done in a day, but ignoring the 'testing' part, and lets just take a leveling player in a leveling dungeon and we get an issue, an issue where two extremely conflicting type of players meet in one group content. Geared high level players who need AD, and only look at efficiency AD/Time and low level player, half the time with chat disabled, who want's to check and enjoy the game.
With all the respect (or not) to the conflict that occurs, it is in large due to the design. When the mechanics that encourages this was introduced, the devs were warned, repeatedly, that it will create a bad experience for both types of players.
And example of such discussion two years ago (I don't have the energy to look for older stuff, on the preview at the time, but please trust me, it's there)
For the context, that system was born out of desperation, low level queues didn't pop, new players had to wait for a long time for a public queue dungeon run, assumed the game is mostly dead and quit before actually getting to the game. So the game designers encouraged players to run older content, but that brought foreseeable issues, and now years after we are still in a patch on a patch on this design choice.
I've heard all these "we're going to be uber gimped" arguments before too. They were heavy in swtor when they did their scaling, and yet, a group of 6 of us still managed to take down a WB with no deaths, and no healers. It was even fun. If they broke it to where you can't even queue for some content you should be able to, that needs to be addressed. "If I can't roflstomp lowbie content anymore I'm quitting", not so much.
In your opinion.
In others opinion, after you slain dragons, banished super daemons, 7 headed dragons and stopped world destruction by some giant not-totally backed baby god, a level 10 sewer rat shouldn't pose a problem. And when it does, it should be fixed.
On another note, we are somewhat realistic and reasonable (at least some of us, maybe, when the stars align), devs can't make content fast enough, the new player population is too low for a separation, new players found themselves waiting without queues poping. Old content invalidated, and too easy and boring for geared players.
So a solution needed. (Again this is due to the game designers aim to steer players into older content, a personal perspective like yours or mine that we don't care about low level content is valid to the game, but not to the point due to the devs design objectives)
In any scaling solution we break progress on the overall larger scope - but as I've said, if having rat issues after slaying dragons is the price for healthier game I guess many can live with that.
We can look at two types of solutions, one without long term maintenance, a very simplistic and easy one - lets cap gear item level. This is a 'fire and forget' solution - no need to adjust it, change it, anything in the foreseeable future, a player enters a zone and they will be auto reduced to some cap setting set.
Just few slight problems:
The reduction is not linear - instead of reducing the whole chars IL to some cap with the same stat distribution as before, it is done per gear item, hence the overall stat distribution is all over the place.
The most important issue - It breaks progress on the specific smaller relative scope, this is inherent from to the cap design: two players one is just at the cap and the other miles over it, will be reduced to the same level, invalidating the second player's progress as compared to the first.
Why is this even an issue?
Players do want to feel that they work has/had impact, a player worked hard for the new shiny gear, they want to feel any even minor difference from it. A Cap nullifies it.
This scaling will address the issue I had in testing this idea. You too seem like you've been around MMOs a while, so you know that when you're not doing the default playstyle for a class with a default playstyle, ranger here, for example, since it always defaults to range on area transitions and after cutscenes, it takes time to learn to compensate for things like defaulting to ranged, and figuring out viable rotations, instead of rolling up at 70 and then trying to learn to play it. It's more than a little ironic that the argument against rolling toons up at cap tends to be "but you don't learn to play the class" to then read this kind of comment that implies that you can't learn a class by leveling it up the "right way". It doesn't take long to figure out how it works in solo content, but group content is another animal altogether, and this system will actually let you play it, instead of just putting a capped toon on follow, not sure you can even do that here, and letting them roll everything.
This account survived Caturday, think I have a t-shirt and a cap somewhere around here, and I left because the game was jarringly easy to level and play. It's so easy that I've observed a lot of capped toons that don't even bother moving out of "stupid" in content, because they know it won't kill them if they don't. I've seen a video of a group in the new content that does this, and then claims that the content is impossible. I watched them stand in not one, but two AoEs and die. Shocking, I know, but frankly, it's not a case of "there's no where to go to get out of it", but that they just didn't bother.
This "tactic" is learned because they got used to roflstomping everything in their path, and forgot the subtleties of playing their class. This is addressed with this system, and since I've seen comments by the dev team that there may well be adjustments made to the scaling, it may take a few shakedown runs to sort out. But I've seen this system work, and work reasonably well in both swtor, that went through it's own "growing pains" with it, and in GW 2 that's been doing it, apparently since I wasn't there, since launch. It's more than a bit funny that I could copy/paste comments from when swtor went to this type of scaling into this forum, and nobody would even know it was about a different game, and despite the "DOOM", I was still rolling lowbie content when the dailies sent me there.
As I said earlier, if it's breaking the game so that a capped toon can't queue for content they should be able to run, it needs to be fixed, and should be fixed before it goes live. But if it's just "but I can't roflstomp rats", to use your example, then it needs to be left alone, and any kinks fixed as they become apparent. Ideally they shouldn't make it to live, but, a test server doesn't always catch things that can happen in a live setting. I've seen it happen more than a few times, and one of the reasons is traffic. If I'd come back a month or so ago, instead of a week or so ago, I might have hit the test server to test things out. I didn't. I'm not going to spend what play time I have on the test server now, because that would just be time spent that I could be spending getting my toon(s) to 70 before it goes live, which I may not be able to do anyway, because of alts... snipped for length.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
This scaling will address the issue I had in testing this idea. You too seem like you've been around MMOs a while, so you know that when you're not doing the default playstyle for a class with a default playstyle, ranger here, for example, since it always defaults to range on area transitions and after cutscenes, it takes time to learn to compensate for things like defaulting to ranged, and figuring out viable rotations, instead of rolling up at 70 and then trying to learn to play it. It's more than a little ironic that the argument against rolling toons up at cap tends to be "but you don't learn to play the class" to then read this kind of comment that implies that you can't learn a class by leveling it up the "right way".
In my perception learning and testing are somewhat different, I've probably misunderstood then. Yet the point stands that it will be all different in 24 hours so...
It doesn't take long to figure out how it works in solo content, but group content is another animal altogether, and this system will actually let you play it, instead of just putting a capped toon on follow, not sure you can even do that here, and letting them roll everything.
I'm not sure what is that vast difference in group vs solo play in mod16. There is no timing, no synergy, no debuffs, no buffs, nothing really. It's just "let someone else handle the aggro" + "You can now stand in red and let the healer heal"
This account survived Caturday, think I have a t-shirt and a cap somewhere around here, and I left because the game was jarringly easy to level and play. It's so easy that I've observed a lot of capped toons that don't even bother moving out of "stupid" in content, because they know it won't kill them if they don't. I've seen a video of a group in the new content that does this, and then claims that the content is impossible. I watched them stand in not one, but two AoEs and die. Shocking, I know, but frankly, it's not a case of "there's no where to go to get out of it", but that they just didn't bother.
This is not related to the choice of caps as scaling in any way, you can look at end-game now vs end-game m16, in both places there is no scaling applied or level 70 in level 70 content vs level 80 in level 80 content. People will die in red, or not.
My specific points were not about damage rebalance but about the choice of scaling mechanism.
This "tactic" is learned because they got used to roflstomping everything in their path, and forgot the subtleties of playing their class. This is addressed with this system,
Not exactly, it is the rebalance of magnitudes, damage, counters stats etc.. which supposed to change that, yet as I've wrote before, it was implemented in a 'cheap' way, In essence doubling the stat ratio (or halving, not sure what is the correct term here), throwing in few caps, and all of the external buffs and mitigations. It has nothing to do with the choice of the cap scaling system.
You can remove the scaling system entirely and people are not supposed to roflstomp end-game (aka current live), you can select a different scaling system and it will achieve the above without the downsides of a cap.
But I've seen this system work, and work reasonably well in both swtor, that went through it's own "growing pains" with it, and in GW 2 that's been doing it, apparently since I wasn't there, since launch. It's more than a bit funny that I could copy/paste comments from when swtor went to this type of scaling into this forum, and nobody would even know it was about a different game, and despite the "DOOM", I was still rolling lowbie content when the dailies sent me there.
I'm sure NW will not die over scaling, new players will come, old players will leave. Enjoyment from a game is like scales, a balance of things we don't like and things we do. NW doesn't have that many things left to like, this is just one more thing on the scales. And it's up to every single person to decide where it tips too much.
I don't know what are the numbers, you are saying it works reasonably well, maybe for them it did, maybe their numbers dropped. At the end you are here, and not in GW2 / SWOTR (for example).
BTW, did they move every single peace of content to a level cap lower than the player base, and capped all the player earned gear in 6 years in one go to a noob level? Somehow I doubt that.
Because in a couple of days every single peace of gear I have, and earned will be capped to the same level as a new player (+ a bit) and nothing that I will keep earning or upgrading, e.g. new rank 15 enchantments, will change that. Assuming LOMM will not end up like CR, we will have one single dungeon where gear will matter.
As I said earlier, if it's breaking the game so that a capped toon can't queue for content they should be able to run, it needs to be fixed, and should be fixed before it goes live. But if it's just "but I can't roflstomp rats", to use your example, then it needs to be left alone, and any kinks fixed as they become apparent. Ideally they shouldn't make it to live, but, a test server doesn't always catch things that can happen in a live setting. I've seen it happen more than a few times, and one of the reasons is traffic. If I'd come back a month or so ago, instead of a week or so ago, I might have hit the test server to test things out. I didn't. I'm not going to spend what play time I have on the test server now, because that would just be time spent that I could be spending getting my toon(s) to 70 before it goes live, which I may not be able to do anyway, because of alts... snipped for length.
I'm not sure what is not apparent in every single piece of gear capped in all available content, and the entire progress in the game is nullified.
Yet, to repeat again, I've emphasized, that while scaling on its own is not optimal its necessity can be understood, it's the choice of how to scale is the issue, where I've outlined those issues in the previous post. If you are content to have all your gear frozen in time once you reach a level, or a mod time expire, it's ok, it's most definitely your prerogative. Same as mine to object to it, I'll rather see people roflstomp Rats, about which I don't care in the slightest (nor you would have met me in the low level content, which now I'm forced into at m16, with the game content becomes 10 level bellow the players), but my progress is not nullified. And the zones capped per zone.
Scaling doesn't have to be the end of all progress. Caps are. This is why diminishing returns and other methods are so widely used.
After playing with the "Capping" last night in Castle Never and TONG, I've decided there are some fundamental flaws in the way it's done:
1) As others have mentioned, the capping system pretty much kills advancement as far as gear and enchants goes. Mediocre level 70 armor or BIS level 80 armor doesn't matter as they will both be capped to the same stats. Enchants are even worse, being capped down to such a low level they are nearly useless with the new mechanics.
2) As many of us get a large percentage of critical stats (Armor Pen, Crit, Defense) from our armor and artifact gear (all of which gets capped) the capping can easily put most characters who had plenty of armor pen or crit for level 80 content well below the caps when scaled down into CN or TONG. This means you are either less effective at 70 content than you should be or you need to swap in alot of different gear to build these critical stats back up. Trying to build them back up with enchants is similarly useless as enchants are capped to such a low level.
3) The non-scaling sources of stats (Mounts & companions specifically) tend to be expensive or zen items, making it harder for the free players to compensate. Also some classes (Fighter, Barbarian for example) which have DPS roles are severely restricted in the number of offence slots for companion bonuses - thus it's harder for them to use these to build up armor pen for example.
As it stands currently, it's very difficult to create a character build that works for both level 70 and level 80 content, you basically need 2 different loadouts to make sure you have the right stat distribution and you need some expensive sources of non-scalable state. This means it's going to be rough going for most players who want to do the Random Queues. Of course, putting Castle Ravenloft and COTD in the advanced queue isn't going to help many players either as these were tough with unscaled characters, they are even worse scaled.
This scaling will address the issue I had in testing this idea. You too seem like you've been around MMOs a while, so you know that when you're not doing the default playstyle for a class with a default playstyle, ranger here, for example, since it always defaults to range on area transitions and after cutscenes, it takes time to learn to compensate for things like defaulting to ranged, and figuring out viable rotations, instead of rolling up at 70 and then trying to learn to play it. It's more than a little ironic that the argument against rolling toons up at cap tends to be "but you don't learn to play the class" to then read this kind of comment that implies that you can't learn a class by leveling it up the "right way".
In my perception learning and testing are somewhat different, I've probably misunderstood then. Yet the point stands that it will be all different in 24 hours so...
It doesn't take long to figure out how it works in solo content, but group content is another animal altogether, and this system will actually let you play it, instead of just putting a capped toon on follow, not sure you can even do that here, and letting them roll everything.
I'm not sure what is that vast difference in group vs solo play in mod16. There is no timing, no synergy, no debuffs, no buffs, nothing really. It's just "let someone else handle the aggro" + "You can now stand in red and let the healer heal"
This account survived Caturday, think I have a t-shirt and a cap somewhere around here, and I left because the game was jarringly easy to level and play. It's so easy that I've observed a lot of capped toons that don't even bother moving out of "stupid" in content, because they know it won't kill them if they don't. I've seen a video of a group in the new content that does this, and then claims that the content is impossible. I watched them stand in not one, but two AoEs and die. Shocking, I know, but frankly, it's not a case of "there's no where to go to get out of it", but that they just didn't bother.
This is not related to the choice of caps as scaling in any way, you can look at end-game now vs end-game m16, in both places there is no scaling applied or level 70 in level 70 content vs level 80 in level 80 content. People will die in red, or not.
My specific points were not about damage rebalance but about the choice of scaling mechanism.
This "tactic" is learned because they got used to roflstomping everything in their path, and forgot the subtleties of playing their class. This is addressed with this system,
Not exactly, it is the rebalance of magnitudes, damage, counters stats etc.. which supposed to change that, yet as I've wrote before, it was implemented in a 'cheap' way, In essence doubling the stat ratio (or halving, not sure what is the correct term here), throwing in few caps, and all of the external buffs and mitigations. It has nothing to do with the choice of the cap scaling system.
You can remove the scaling system entirely and people are not supposed to roflstomp end-game (aka current live), you can select a different scaling system and it will achieve the above without the downsides of a cap.
But I've seen this system work, and work reasonably well in both swtor, that went through it's own "growing pains" with it, and in GW 2 that's been doing it, apparently since I wasn't there, since launch. It's more than a bit funny that I could copy/paste comments from when swtor went to this type of scaling into this forum, and nobody would even know it was about a different game, and despite the "DOOM", I was still rolling lowbie content when the dailies sent me there.
I'm sure NW will not die over scaling, new players will come, old players will leave. Enjoyment from a game is like scales, a balance of things we don't like and things we do. NW doesn't have that many things left to like, this is just one more thing on the scales. And it's up to every single person to decide where it tips too much.
I don't know what are the numbers, you are saying it works reasonably well, maybe for them it did, maybe their numbers dropped. At the end you are here, and not in GW2 / SWOTR (for example).
BTW, did they move every single peace of content to a level cap lower than the player base, and capped all the player earned gear in 6 years in one go to a noob level? Somehow I doubt that.
Because in a couple of days every single peace of gear I have, and earned will be capped to the same level as a new player (+ a bit) and nothing that I will keep earning or upgrading, e.g. new rank 15 enchantments, will change that. Assuming LOMM will not end up like CR, we will have one single dungeon where gear will matter.
As I said earlier, if it's breaking the game so that a capped toon can't queue for content they should be able to run, it needs to be fixed, and should be fixed before it goes live. But if it's just "but I can't roflstomp rats", to use your example, then it needs to be left alone, and any kinks fixed as they become apparent. Ideally they shouldn't make it to live, but, a test server doesn't always catch things that can happen in a live setting. I've seen it happen more than a few times, and one of the reasons is traffic. If I'd come back a month or so ago, instead of a week or so ago, I might have hit the test server to test things out. I didn't. I'm not going to spend what play time I have on the test server now, because that would just be time spent that I could be spending getting my toon(s) to 70 before it goes live, which I may not be able to do anyway, because of alts... snipped for length.
I'm not sure what is not apparent in every single piece of gear capped in all available content, and the entire progress in the game is nullified.
Yet, to repeat again, I've emphasized, that while scaling on its own is not optimal its necessity can be understood, it's the choice of how to scale is the issue, where I've outlined those issues in the previous post. If you are content to have all your gear frozen in time once you reach a level, or a mod time expire, it's ok, it's most definitely your prerogative. Same as mine to object to it, I'll rather see people roflstomp Rats, about which I don't care in the slightest (nor you would have met me in the low level content, which now I'm forced into at m16, with the game content becomes 10 level bellow the players), but my progress is not nullified. And the zones capped per zone.
Scaling doesn't have to be the end of all progress. Caps are. This is why diminishing returns and other methods are so widely used.
First you say that you can just stand in the red and let the healer heal, and then you say it's not relevant to the conversation. It's relevant. In fact, it's more than relevant, because it exposes an element to some of the vitriol this subject is receiving.
Edit: I missed a little tidbit in your post. I have 800 gigs of games installed on this PC, and another 500 or so on my xbox. I play a lot of games, because I'm a gamer. I left this game around 5 years back, because it was way too easy, and pointless to play, and some of the classes I wanted to play weren't in yet. From reading the Zone chat tonight, I'd say about 90% of the rage quitters are still going to be here in a year. Why do I think that? Because they were actively complaining about most of the previous updates breaking stuff, and yet, they're still here. I've seen it before, where people are raging about how they're going to quit because of X, and a year later, they're going to quit because of Y.
Post edited by robertthebard on
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
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micky1p00Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,594Arc User
This scaling will address the issue I had in testing this idea. You too seem like you've been around MMOs a while, so you know that when you're not doing the default playstyle for a class with a default playstyle, ranger here, for example, since it always defaults to range on area transitions and after cutscenes, it takes time to learn to compensate for things like defaulting to ranged, and figuring out viable rotations, instead of rolling up at 70 and then trying to learn to play it. It's more than a little ironic that the argument against rolling toons up at cap tends to be "but you don't learn to play the class" to then read this kind of comment that implies that you can't learn a class by leveling it up the "right way".
In my perception learning and testing are somewhat different, I've probably misunderstood then. Yet the point stands that it will be all different in 24 hours so...
It doesn't take long to figure out how it works in solo content, but group content is another animal altogether, and this system will actually let you play it, instead of just putting a capped toon on follow, not sure you can even do that here, and letting them roll everything.
I'm not sure what is that vast difference in group vs solo play in mod16. There is no timing, no synergy, no debuffs, no buffs, nothing really. It's just "let someone else handle the aggro" + "You can now stand in red and let the healer heal"
This account survived Caturday, think I have a t-shirt and a cap somewhere around here, and I left because the game was jarringly easy to level and play. It's so easy that I've observed a lot of capped toons that don't even bother moving out of "stupid" in content, because they know it won't kill them if they don't. I've seen a video of a group in the new content that does this, and then claims that the content is impossible. I watched them stand in not one, but two AoEs and die. Shocking, I know, but frankly, it's not a case of "there's no where to go to get out of it", but that they just didn't bother.
This is not related to the choice of caps as scaling in any way, you can look at end-game now vs end-game m16, in both places there is no scaling applied or level 70 in level 70 content vs level 80 in level 80 content. People will die in red, or not.
My specific points were not about damage rebalance but about the choice of scaling mechanism.
This "tactic" is learned because they got used to roflstomping everything in their path, and forgot the subtleties of playing their class. This is addressed with this system,
Not exactly, it is the rebalance of magnitudes, damage, counters stats etc.. which supposed to change that, yet as I've wrote before, it was implemented in a 'cheap' way, In essence doubling the stat ratio (or halving, not sure what is the correct term here), throwing in few caps, and all of the external buffs and mitigations. It has nothing to do with the choice of the cap scaling system.
You can remove the scaling system entirely and people are not supposed to roflstomp end-game (aka current live), you can select a different scaling system and it will achieve the above without the downsides of a cap.
But I've seen this system work, and work reasonably well in both swtor, that went through it's own "growing pains" with it, and in GW 2 that's been doing it, apparently since I wasn't there, since launch. It's more than a bit funny that I could copy/paste comments from when swtor went to this type of scaling into this forum, and nobody would even know it was about a different game, and despite the "DOOM", I was still rolling lowbie content when the dailies sent me there.
I'm sure NW will not die over scaling, new players will come, old players will leave. Enjoyment from a game is like scales, a balance of things we don't like and things we do. NW doesn't have that many things left to like, this is just one more thing on the scales. And it's up to every single person to decide where it tips too much.
I don't know what are the numbers, you are saying it works reasonably well, maybe for them it did, maybe their numbers dropped. At the end you are here, and not in GW2 / SWOTR (for example).
BTW, did they move every single peace of content to a level cap lower than the player base, and capped all the player earned gear in 6 years in one go to a noob level? Somehow I doubt that.
Because in a couple of days every single peace of gear I have, and earned will be capped to the same level as a new player (+ a bit) and nothing that I will keep earning or upgrading, e.g. new rank 15 enchantments, will change that. Assuming LOMM will not end up like CR, we will have one single dungeon where gear will matter.
As I said earlier, if it's breaking the game so that a capped toon can't queue for content they should be able to run, it needs to be fixed, and should be fixed before it goes live. But if it's just "but I can't roflstomp rats", to use your example, then it needs to be left alone, and any kinks fixed as they become apparent. Ideally they shouldn't make it to live, but, a test server doesn't always catch things that can happen in a live setting. I've seen it happen more than a few times, and one of the reasons is traffic. If I'd come back a month or so ago, instead of a week or so ago, I might have hit the test server to test things out. I didn't. I'm not going to spend what play time I have on the test server now, because that would just be time spent that I could be spending getting my toon(s) to 70 before it goes live, which I may not be able to do anyway, because of alts... snipped for length.
I'm not sure what is not apparent in every single piece of gear capped in all available content, and the entire progress in the game is nullified.
Yet, to repeat again, I've emphasized, that while scaling on its own is not optimal its necessity can be understood, it's the choice of how to scale is the issue, where I've outlined those issues in the previous post. If you are content to have all your gear frozen in time once you reach a level, or a mod time expire, it's ok, it's most definitely your prerogative. Same as mine to object to it, I'll rather see people roflstomp Rats, about which I don't care in the slightest (nor you would have met me in the low level content, which now I'm forced into at m16, with the game content becomes 10 level bellow the players), but my progress is not nullified. And the zones capped per zone.
Scaling doesn't have to be the end of all progress. Caps are. This is why diminishing returns and other methods are so widely used.
First you say that you can just stand in the red and let the healer heal, and then you say it's not relevant to the conversation. It's relevant. In fact, it's more than relevant, because it exposes an element to some of the vitriol this subject is receiving.
Edit: I missed a little tidbit in your post. I have 800 gigs of games installed on this PC, and another 500 or so on my xbox. I play a lot of games, because I'm a gamer. I left this game around 5 years back, because it was way too easy, and pointless to play, and some of the classes I wanted to play weren't in yet. From reading the Zone chat tonight, I'd say about 90% of the rage quitters are still going to be here in a year. Why do I think that? Because they were actively complaining about most of the previous updates breaking stuff, and yet, they're still here. I've seen it before, where people are raging about how they're going to quit because of X, and a year later, they're going to quit because of Y.
Looks like you still missed the entire post, and the previous one, and chose to focus on PE zone complainers which I have never mentioned nor care about.
I've outlined the specific issues related to the scaling, due to this being the main thread about this. There are other issues with the gameplay due to the changes, you can find those in the general feedback and other places.
What PE zone cry about or will they stay is not my concern, I'm not their 'keeper'.
Their crying or them staying doesn't change in any way or form the fact that the chosen scaling method has a significant downside, and combined with the current game design will create the outlined issues. It's everyone personal choice if they want to remain with such issues in place, or look for other games, I'm not here to convince anyone either way. Yet on the other hand, your semi-claim that the complaints are not founded is also false, as you didn't directly address any of them.
It is you who is more likely to jump to your next game well before veteran players like me will leave, and I'll rather have a game that I will enjoy in the long term. So you are free to stay and enjoy the game, or leave, or argue with the flat earthers in PE, or if you think I'm wrong in any of the issues I've given, we can discuss that, but otherwise, please do not dismiss them as false.
Looks like you still missed the entire post, and the previous one, and chose to focus on PE zone complainers which I have never mentioned nor care about.
I've outlined the specific issues related to the scaling, due to this being the main thread about this. There are other issues with the gameplay due to the changes, you can find those in the general feedback and other places.
What PE zone cry about or will they stay is not my concern, I'm not their 'keeper'.
Their crying or them staying doesn't change in any way or form the fact that the chosen scaling method has a significant downside, and combined with the current game design will create the outlined issues. It's everyone personal choice if they want to remain with such issues in place, or look for other games, I'm not here to convince anyone either way. Yet on the other hand, your semi-claim that the complaints are not founded is also false, as you didn't directly address any of them.
It is you who is more likely to jump to your next game well before veteran players like me will leave, and I'll rather have a game that I will enjoy in the long term. So you are free to stay and enjoy the game, or leave, or argue with the flat earthers in PE, or if you think I'm wrong in any of the issues I've given, we can discuss that, but otherwise, please do not dismiss them as false.
I didn't address it because I already have. I'm not on a rage fueled rampage to "make a point". I'm merely discussing it, which is indeed what the forum is for. You again choose to state that something you bring up isn't relevant, then why bring it up? You made an off the cuff comment about me being here, instead of playing swtor or GW 2 as if this was some kind of evidence that the systems really suck. A google search on how GW 2 is doing financially would have saved you some embarrassment, and if you're not, you should be, since it's a highly successful MMO. I don't play swtor unless I can maintain a sub for the duration of time I plan to play, because even with preferred status, I don't get drops that are the main way to advance my characters, 20+ capped toons, w/out the sub. I game hop, a lot, because I have tons of time to play games, due to my disability. So I get burn out, and go, except here, where it was just too easy, and too limited when I left.
Reading comprehension is essential in a medium that requires reading for communication.
Comments
There has to be EXACT explanation of the scaling, in all circumstances. Why, what and how it will be scaled.
Gear stats, combined stats, enchants, weapon and armor enchants and cap points of scaling (if they exist).
You will be scaled (and that to a level that a fresh lvl 70 toon has, not eligable to enter dungeons) isnt enough Information.
All i could tell from my own testing is, that scaling is for me way to much down to be able to do the simpliest lvl 70 dungeon anymore. And the info scaling is to a fix cap point makes any progress unnessasary in hope to be later able to do it.
only to show one side of scaling:
Portal, Well of Dragons, malabog castle
Defense: ~53000, ~36000, ~ 29000
as lvl 73 tank (gf) with lvl 70 gear.
We don't really have scaling - we have capping - meaning that it doesn't matter if you have R15s or R10s - they both get capped down to R9s (meaning there is little motivation to improve gear).
Second, capping seems to be done on a per-item basis, meaning that it matters where your stats come from, enchants, gear, insignia, companions, etc.
As for the percentage, I am seeing my "BiS" character get 40-50% when I go from YP to, say, Sharandar. My ArPen goes from 71K to 37K (47% reduction), while my Power goes from 117K to 67K (42% reduction).
"Scaling" within an instance does not even seem to be consistent. In one area you can be scaled down very much, then you go through a door or an area transition and - poof - your stats differ.
Fact is, most instances are total chaos. The difficulty level within an instance swings wildly and I am not sure what the reason is. One factor could be different "scaling" in different parts of the instance. Another factor rather obviously is, that a large number of mobs and bosses still think they are in MOD 15. Some instance bosses melt like ice cream, and then there are places within an instance where an unnamed mob or a mini-boss one-shots players ...
They probably thought it would be a grand idea to make huge changes to classes, to stats, how stats work, to numerous of the game's core systems etc. etc. - without ever doing a single pass through each instance and each zone, adjusting the damage dealt by bosses and mobs, so that the content is playable.
My impression is, that they used "scaling" as a "cheap and easy" means to rework the instances / areas, along the lines
- no need to look systematically at anything at all, rather
- if preview tester A complains that mob X in instance Y is too powerful: Make "scaling" less aggressive or
- if preview tester B complains that (s)he can "easily" solo instance Y: Make "scaling" more aggressive
I cannot be sure, and frankly I do not care if my above mentioned impression is accurate. Rather I will operate in the same way as they did:
They released an unfinished piece of software with 1000+ OBVIOUS BUGS and then (mis)used the preview testers to (randomly) report whatever bugs the testers stumbled upon, making erratic adjustments based on what was randomly reported. In fact, they explicitly admitted that the pendulum will swing back and forth in the attempts to balance the content.
In this spirit I will speculate wildly why things are as chaotic as they are now: My above impression is based on what came randomly to my attention. Tomorrow something else might catch my attention and the pendulum of my impressions will swing erratically back and forth.
Instead of complaining, go do some investigation using the tool available.
I went from nowhere near cap to most key stats near cap by taking the time to investigate and learn.
They can tell us what is capped and what isn’t, when you know these things you can make better choices and scaled content stops being a disaster.
(I still disagree with how they did it, but at least now it’s manageable.)
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
Sometimes I think with the scaling (as well as other changes) they are trying to make things on new players easier but they have ended messing them up as bad, if not worse, as veteran players.
In the past new players could, with little trouble and some luck, get a few epic mounts, companions and save up AD to get high level enchants if they really put some time in or buy a relatively low amount of Zen. But now because pretty much everything has become so nerfed even if they buy Zen and get shiny new mounts, companions and enchants the combat system has made them negligible. I was playing around with a naked character level 60ish (except for weapons) no mounts and one empty companion and then did the same run again fully geared at about 9K IL and it maybe took 5% (if that) of the time off the previous run. I can't believe that is their intended plan because who will buy Zen at that point?
IDK.
Letting this just go live and leaving that hidden for the community to discover among all the other changes, is indeed a disaster waiting to happen.
4 weeks of testing and people are only now starting to dig into this and get some sort of handle on it, and over 30 pages of “this is terrible and not working”, says just letting it go live without a clear explanation of how it works will be disastrous.
I still think the cap system they have used is a bad solution, but it is what we have, and as such it needs a clear, accurate, explanation.
Obsidian Oath - Warlock
A whole lot of other Obsidian toons as well.
It's not a bad thing, it happens everywhere it's possible. Some people design builds, others copy them, if they're posted where they can be copied. If you need further substantiation of this claim, just look at what builds are currently required to run end game content. How many truly unique builds are there, and how many are "cut/paste" jobs from some build forum or another?
and a level 70 has the same boons as me. the only difference is a couple of crappy boons you can choose at the end that have no real bearing on anything. so it's net net. makes no difference.
Before entering the game, please visit the NWO-academy and do your master in "caps and scaling issues"
So the later phrases that you are quoting do not look as relevant to the current implementation, and they generally contradict the first phrase, rather than clarify it.
If all of a sudden my progression through all the older content takes significantly longer than it normally would have previously, I'll be honest it's going to impact my desire to continue playing the game.
What's the point of getting better gear inside the campaign, when even the gear you earn from the campaign is stripped down to the "Campaign level"?
Earn the best gear in Elemental Evil and get throat cut while in the same place, unable to progress farther because you now have to do the entire campaign with minimal statistics.
This was the exact fiasco that made the game drop from 5 k daily players to nearly half that amount and not recover since 2014. Then everything had to be rescaled by Cryptic until the monsters were fightable again.
Right now, I am being slaughtered in Fiery Pit faster than when the best gear I owned was earned from before the Elemental Evil campaign.
There is zero point in making an area more challenging for gear and rewards that are nearly useless.
There is a reason that most level 50 and above players stay out of Black Lake and scaling them down when they go there to do a bit of nostalgia run or a quick bit of farming just makes the experience even less palatable.
It's become a joke to post "Remember Mod 6!" but apparently the Developers and planners have forgotten the horrors that Mod 6 brought to the game.
As a reminder, maybe someone should go back and look at what happened to the player count shortly after Elemental Evil made levelling to level 70 a punishment for getting better.
I've heard all these "we're going to be uber gimped" arguments before too. They were heavy in swtor when they did their scaling, and yet, a group of 6 of us still managed to take down a WB with no deaths, and no healers. It was even fun. If they broke it to where you can't even queue for some content you should be able to, that needs to be addressed. "If I can't roflstomp lowbie content anymore I'm quitting", not so much.
I've some more testing with the lvl 80 barbie on the test server.
Equipped him with the undermountin seal gear, rank 13 and 14 enchants I had, new shirt which was a drop from an expedition, crappy green pants from leveling, and the artifact set with the electric neck piece.
Had that arti set at blue, but also used champions banner at mythic as primary, with other two artis at mythic.
Weapon and offhand were purple, with holy avenger rank twelve as weapon enchant,
I did all the weekly quests that give AD, aside from the one in well of dragons.
was scaled to 64 in sharandar, level 70 everywhere else.
In a nutshell, everything proceeded smoothly. While it was taking some additional swings on the bosses, the NPCS still died.
Only time I used a stone of health was in soloing a marauding bear tribe raiders herioc. I was not paying attention and they did their charge/smash big axe/stun cpl of times in a row.
Arcane reservoir, dread ring /dread spire, baphomet, tuern portal, biggrins were all strait forward maybe took 10%/15% more time.
I did not go to bariova as yet, and try the night terror.
And now moved all current content (which includes most sources of UES and RP) to lower level than the players will be, 70 vs 80. If the design would have encouraged that, then no need for any scaling, such hypothetical design should preferably be with relevant parts like dungeons with harder tiers and relevant rewards for it (so to not invalidate and make old content 100% obsolete - or ofc to always provide enough new content so it is not needed). Yet this is not the design in NW.
You seem like a veteran of many MMOs, so you probably know that nothing you test there at low level is actually an indicator for the class and more so with the class re-done in a day, but ignoring the 'testing' part, and lets just take a leveling player in a leveling dungeon and we get an issue, an issue where two extremely conflicting type of players meet in one group content.
Geared high level players who need AD, and only look at efficiency AD/Time and low level player, half the time with chat disabled, who want's to check and enjoy the game.
With all the respect (or not) to the conflict that occurs, it is in large due to the design. When the mechanics that encourages this was introduced, the devs were warned, repeatedly, that it will create a bad experience for both types of players.
And example of such discussion two years ago (I don't have the energy to look for older stuff, on the preview at the time, but please trust me, it's there)
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1236053/random-dungeon-low-level-toon-booted-from-the-party-in-the-freakn-cloak-tower/p1
And some who defend this system, "low level players should form groups", "It's on the community" yeah.. look how that worked..
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1236291/flaming-and-off-topic-bickering/p1
For the context, that system was born out of desperation, low level queues didn't pop, new players had to wait for a long time for a public queue dungeon run, assumed the game is mostly dead and quit before actually getting to the game. So the game designers encouraged players to run older content, but that brought foreseeable issues, and now years after we are still in a patch on a patch on this design choice. In your opinion.
In others opinion, after you slain dragons, banished super daemons, 7 headed dragons and stopped world destruction by some giant not-totally backed baby god, a level 10 sewer rat shouldn't pose a problem. And when it does, it should be fixed.
On another note, we are somewhat realistic and reasonable (at least some of us, maybe, when the stars align), devs can't make content fast enough, the new player population is too low for a separation, new players found themselves waiting without queues poping. Old content invalidated, and too easy and boring for geared players.
So a solution needed. (Again this is due to the game designers aim to steer players into older content, a personal perspective like yours or mine that we don't care about low level content is valid to the game, but not to the point due to the devs design objectives)
In any scaling solution we break progress on the overall larger scope - but as I've said, if having rat issues after slaying dragons is the price for healthier game I guess many can live with that.
We can look at two types of solutions, one without long term maintenance, a very simplistic and easy one - lets cap gear item level.
This is a 'fire and forget' solution - no need to adjust it, change it, anything in the foreseeable future, a player enters a zone and they will be auto reduced to some cap setting set.
Just few slight problems:
The reduction is not linear - instead of reducing the whole chars IL to some cap with the same stat distribution as before, it is done per gear item, hence the overall stat distribution is all over the place.
The most important issue - It breaks progress on the specific smaller relative scope, this is inherent from to the cap design: two players one is just at the cap and the other miles over it, will be reduced to the same level, invalidating the second player's progress as compared to the first.
Why is this even an issue?
Players do want to feel that they work has/had impact, a player worked hard for the new shiny gear, they want to feel any even minor difference from it. A Cap nullifies it.
We can look at this in the Player vs Player relative perspective - I've work harder for my gear, I should see a benefit over someone who worked less. We can simplify this to an e-peen and a guillotine cutting it, or delve into the more deep psychological aspects of human nature, but no matter how to form it, it's important to the vast majority of the player base.
And we can look at this as a Player vs Environment issue on the more practical aspect, not only 'look at me slay this rat' - Players come at different levels of skill (different response times, age, reflexes, time to learn the depths of the game mechanics, etc..) over-gearing allows players who have difficulty in some content to just do it later, when they are more geared to compensate.
I know most would like to believe that they are the top of the top, and can slay every boss naked, but this is not so, we mere average mortals use gear to compensate for lack of other aspects, and it's a valid thing. The games average player age is not 16.
I've posted in the other feedback thread, a talk from the Game Developers Conference with a discussion that touches about that and why it's so important for player retention. This is btw a core concept in PnP D&D and what made it work.
Now that was the cap solution, the easy one, the other type of solution to the same scaling problem can be utilizing an actual scaling function and not a cap.
The devs tried that, and failed, IMO mostly because they tried to set the scaling factor (what defines the scaling function) based by the level difference, and with some unclear function instead of just setting it per zone. For example an overall Diminishing Function of the type x^(1/a) with (a > 1), can do this, you want older content, increase/set "a" higher (desmos).
This solves that relative progress issue, and the stats balance, yet it will take tinkering every few mods to compensate for the power creep.
So here we are - getting what we paid for (cheap, easy and more flawed, or with more maintenance and less flawed).
Obviously, in a better word, we wouldn't need scaling player back to fill low level content, an overall better solution is to create higher difficulty variant of the older content, with the proper rewards, but this will require a different solution for the then empty leveling queues in our not so better world.
This account survived Caturday, think I have a t-shirt and a cap somewhere around here, and I left because the game was jarringly easy to level and play. It's so easy that I've observed a lot of capped toons that don't even bother moving out of "stupid" in content, because they know it won't kill them if they don't. I've seen a video of a group in the new content that does this, and then claims that the content is impossible. I watched them stand in not one, but two AoEs and die. Shocking, I know, but frankly, it's not a case of "there's no where to go to get out of it", but that they just didn't bother.
This "tactic" is learned because they got used to roflstomping everything in their path, and forgot the subtleties of playing their class. This is addressed with this system, and since I've seen comments by the dev team that there may well be adjustments made to the scaling, it may take a few shakedown runs to sort out. But I've seen this system work, and work reasonably well in both swtor, that went through it's own "growing pains" with it, and in GW 2 that's been doing it, apparently since I wasn't there, since launch. It's more than a bit funny that I could copy/paste comments from when swtor went to this type of scaling into this forum, and nobody would even know it was about a different game, and despite the "DOOM", I was still rolling lowbie content when the dailies sent me there.
As I said earlier, if it's breaking the game so that a capped toon can't queue for content they should be able to run, it needs to be fixed, and should be fixed before it goes live. But if it's just "but I can't roflstomp rats", to use your example, then it needs to be left alone, and any kinks fixed as they become apparent. Ideally they shouldn't make it to live, but, a test server doesn't always catch things that can happen in a live setting. I've seen it happen more than a few times, and one of the reasons is traffic. If I'd come back a month or so ago, instead of a week or so ago, I might have hit the test server to test things out. I didn't. I'm not going to spend what play time I have on the test server now, because that would just be time spent that I could be spending getting my toon(s) to 70 before it goes live, which I may not be able to do anyway, because of alts... snipped for length.
There is no timing, no synergy, no debuffs, no buffs, nothing really. It's just "let someone else handle the aggro" + "You can now stand in red and let the healer heal"
Here is what was:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F3mCbLskTjFCtMOYnVb-AYLncw9VeDUpGATOZ8IPvPY/edit
Now, nothing left. This is not related to the choice of caps as scaling in any way, you can look at end-game now vs end-game m16, in both places there is no scaling applied or level 70 in level 70 content vs level 80 in level 80 content.
People will die in red, or not.
My specific points were not about damage rebalance but about the choice of scaling mechanism. Not exactly, it is the rebalance of magnitudes, damage, counters stats etc.. which supposed to change that, yet as I've wrote before, it was implemented in a 'cheap' way, In essence doubling the stat ratio (or halving, not sure what is the correct term here), throwing in few caps, and all of the external buffs and mitigations. It has nothing to do with the choice of the cap scaling system.
You can remove the scaling system entirely and people are not supposed to roflstomp end-game (aka current live), you can select a different scaling system and it will achieve the above without the downsides of a cap. Hmm.. when in the history of NW that statement worked as expected? I'm sure NW will not die over scaling, new players will come, old players will leave.
Enjoyment from a game is like scales, a balance of things we don't like and things we do.
NW doesn't have that many things left to like, this is just one more thing on the scales. And it's up to every single person to decide where it tips too much.
I don't know what are the numbers, you are saying it works reasonably well, maybe for them it did, maybe their numbers dropped. At the end you are here, and not in GW2 / SWOTR (for example).
BTW, did they move every single peace of content to a level cap lower than the player base, and capped all the player earned gear in 6 years in one go to a noob level? Somehow I doubt that.
Because in a couple of days every single peace of gear I have, and earned will be capped to the same level as a new player (+ a bit) and nothing that I will keep earning or upgrading, e.g. new rank 15 enchantments, will change that. Assuming LOMM will not end up like CR, we will have one single dungeon where gear will matter. I'm not sure what is not apparent in every single piece of gear capped in all available content, and the entire progress in the game is nullified.
Yet, to repeat again, I've emphasized, that while scaling on its own is not optimal its necessity can be understood, it's the choice of how to scale is the issue, where I've outlined those issues in the previous post.
If you are content to have all your gear frozen in time once you reach a level, or a mod time expire, it's ok, it's most definitely your prerogative. Same as mine to object to it, I'll rather see people roflstomp Rats, about which I don't care in the slightest (nor you would have met me in the low level content, which now I'm forced into at m16, with the game content becomes 10 level bellow the players), but my progress is not nullified. And the zones capped per zone.
Scaling doesn't have to be the end of all progress. Caps are. This is why diminishing returns and other methods are so widely used.
1) As others have mentioned, the capping system pretty much kills advancement as far as gear and enchants goes. Mediocre level 70 armor or BIS level 80 armor doesn't matter as they will both be capped to the same stats. Enchants are even worse, being capped down to such a low level they are nearly useless with the new mechanics.
2) As many of us get a large percentage of critical stats (Armor Pen, Crit, Defense) from our armor and artifact gear (all of which gets capped) the capping can easily put most characters who had plenty of armor pen or crit for level 80 content well below the caps when scaled down into CN or TONG. This means you are either less effective at 70 content than you should be or you need to swap in alot of different gear to build these critical stats back up. Trying to build them back up with enchants is similarly useless as enchants are capped to such a low level.
3) The non-scaling sources of stats (Mounts & companions specifically) tend to be expensive or zen items, making it harder for the free players to compensate. Also some classes (Fighter, Barbarian for example) which have DPS roles are severely restricted in the number of offence slots for companion bonuses - thus it's harder for them to use these to build up armor pen for example.
As it stands currently, it's very difficult to create a character build that works for both level 70 and level 80 content, you basically need 2 different loadouts to make sure you have the right stat distribution and you need some expensive sources of non-scalable state. This means it's going to be rough going for most players who want to do the Random Queues. Of course, putting Castle Ravenloft and COTD in the advanced queue isn't going to help many players either as these were tough with unscaled characters, they are even worse scaled.
Winter Lily (CW) / Winter Rose (DC) / Winter Ivy (HR)
Pandora's Misfits Guild Leader
Edit: I missed a little tidbit in your post. I have 800 gigs of games installed on this PC, and another 500 or so on my xbox. I play a lot of games, because I'm a gamer. I left this game around 5 years back, because it was way too easy, and pointless to play, and some of the classes I wanted to play weren't in yet. From reading the Zone chat tonight, I'd say about 90% of the rage quitters are still going to be here in a year. Why do I think that? Because they were actively complaining about most of the previous updates breaking stuff, and yet, they're still here. I've seen it before, where people are raging about how they're going to quit because of X, and a year later, they're going to quit because of Y.
I've outlined the specific issues related to the scaling, due to this being the main thread about this. There are other issues with the gameplay due to the changes, you can find those in the general feedback and other places.
What PE zone cry about or will they stay is not my concern, I'm not their 'keeper'.
Their crying or them staying doesn't change in any way or form the fact that the chosen scaling method has a significant downside, and combined with the current game design will create the outlined issues.
It's everyone personal choice if they want to remain with such issues in place, or look for other games, I'm not here to convince anyone either way. Yet on the other hand, your semi-claim that the complaints are not founded is also false, as you didn't directly address any of them.
It is you who is more likely to jump to your next game well before veteran players like me will leave, and I'll rather have a game that I will enjoy in the long term. So you are free to stay and enjoy the game, or leave, or argue with the flat earthers in PE, or if you think I'm wrong in any of the issues I've given, we can discuss that, but otherwise, please do not dismiss them as false.