Hello,
I tried to use the search function on the forums for a similar topic but couldn't find any, sorry if this has already been discussed somwhere else!
For those who may not be familiar with this term, 'Power Creep' in MMO's describes a situation in which content becomes obsolete and worthless as a game progresses. World of Warcraft is a prime example of this, but it could be found in most MMO's, successful or not.
Every time you outlevel an area, you will be encouraged to move on to a new zone. Whenever a new tier of raiding gets released, its rewards will outshine the previous one's and trivialize its difficulty. Similarly, many areas will get deserted and then skipped while leveling as a new expansion gets released.
It sometimes is impossible to experience previous content the way it used to be.
An important thing to note is that many players enjoy coming back to lower level areas and raids, and being able to breeze through it, all by themselves.
Power Creep may seem natural but many games have recently tried to combat it, more or less effectively, in order to keep some of the content relevant or at least entertaining for the players to come back to. I feel it would be important in an MMO featuring a sandox open world to keep players coming to all the various zones every now and then, and not to put all of their focus in the newest 10%, while the most of the rest would get deserted and often skipped by newer characters. Even though it's great to rush to a brand new area that just got released, I'd love to have a vast open world that feels alive with players, regardless of individual level and progression.
Throwing out a few ideas from different games:
- World of Warcraft, Legion - all the zones introduced in the future expac will 'seemlessly' scale up to your character's level, individualy. World quests will give players an incentive to come back to them as one of several means of progressing their character. This system lets you group up and fight alongside with lower and higher level characters for any outdoor content without experiencing the actual disparities in power from level difference, aside from additional abilities. (Note that in Legion, this has been stated not to affect gear level, so a highly geared character will still steamroll through most of this content once he outgears it.
- Destiny - Damage done to a lower level mob is capped, and damage taken from it is scaled up, so that it may still be somewhat 'realistically' threatening to your character regardless of level or tier of gear. The main downside would be that you will see very low damage numbers pop up as you fight it, compared to what you would be dealing through current content. (Note that in Destiny, the cap is fairly high so doing a low level raid will still feel fairly trivial, but this would have happened with maxed out gear back when it was current and numbers could easily be tuned down by the developpers if they felt the need to make it challenging.)
- Wildstar - World Bosses, as well as other challenging monsters, have a dynamic level. They may display a minimum level (or none), but their damage will scale up to your character's should it outlevel them. Damage done to them will 'seemlessly' appear normal for you level and gear but will in fact be scaled down after poping up and before being taken into account, similar to Destiny's system, but for specific monsters and dungeons.
- Guild Wars 2 - You character's level is dynamically scaled down whenever you move between lower level areas. This doesn't affect your number of abilities, and will often let you slightly outlevel most monsters. This feels fairly 'artificial' and immersion breaking to me, having my level changing drastically all the time and I'd rather go with another system.
I personally like the dynamic level from Wildstar, since levels do not clearly appear in Pantheon at the moment, and it lets normal damage numbers show up so you don't feel gimped like in GW2. You could have it as a 'toggle' so that progression of your character would still be felt without using it, or just limit it to some questing mobs and dungeons/camps/raids that you want to always keep challenging.
Basically, having the option to keep most of the content properly challenging and having some incentives for players to come back to it seems fairly important to me.
Here would be some incentives that could work out fine:
- Rotating world quests that would provide interested players with some rewards for hunting down specific rare spawns, clearing a dungeon,...
- Specific crafting materials from particular areas
- Rare event or World Boss spawning somwhere, rewarding players with valuable tokens/currency/crafting mats/scaled up gear...
I'd be really interested in reading others' thoughts on this matter!
The concept is lost in zones where content by level is intermingled within the same zone. (A zone big and diverse with lvl 5 ~ 55 mobs)
Old games have creep, because their base landmass is small and zones are themepark.
Pantheon will be more organic and dynamic and mobs in a zone won't always be there... 64bit game world easily allows for migration or randomness. Tons of tools at Visionary Realms disposal to combat creep with.
And this is exacly why some of us want classic servers because as these type of things happen and expansions roll out it ruins the basic game. Developers become real estate tycoon's. Using bulldozers to destroy old zones and configurations of the game. When, it's so stupid because of an invention called a "hard drive" .. it let's you have more than one copy of files and they can even be different names (being a smart ass to Daybreak and Blizzard staff)....
This team has a lot of years so I would expect this effect to be minimal. If we look at P99 classic with Velious. The original content still is fun and not too easy even with tons of cheap gear on the market. People will even give you good gear for free. I don't see it making P99 less fun even though the power has shifted gear & money wise to be "easy mode". People are still in zones, people are grouping, the EC market is thriving. So a lot of the basics to control this creep exist and this team will know how to roll it out as best they can with the consideration of the original poster.
Hieromonk said:The concept is lost in zones where content by level is intermingled within the same zone. (A zone big and diverse with lvl 5 ~ 55 mobs)
Old games have creep, because their base landmass is small and zones are themepark.
Pantheon will be more organic and dynamic and mobs in a zone won't always be there... 64bit game world easily allows for migration or randomness. Tons of tools at Visionary Realms disposal to combat creep with.
And none of the big zoned mmo's really made it and wow has become instanced. To bring back EQ type of fun the zones need to be about the same size as Velious / Kunark, anything bigger and you will have more empty feel and emotion. I have talked to a LOT of mmo gamers about this and they agree zones are getting too big. Then again my friends we are content to hang out in West Freeport a lot lol (tiny zone). It's comfy and cozy and always good place to find someone.
The brain treats large zones differently. You can get a kinda mmo cabin fever if you just have lot's of NPC's and no other players & groups running around.
There are different tastes. Since for fantasy RPG I prefer D&D style things. Which where smaller to scale and with a busy life I don't have time to run around in eye candy lands like SWG had.
Hieromonk said:The concept is lost in zones where content by level is intermingled within the same zone. (A zone big and diverse with lvl 5 ~ 55 mobs)
Old games have creep, because their base landmass is small and zones are themepark.
Pantheon will be more organic and dynamic and mobs in a zone won't always be there... 64bit game world easily allows for migration or randomness. Tons of tools at Visionary Realms disposal to combat creep with.
EQ was a themepark?
What does 64-bit have to do with anything?
As I understand it, the Pantheon concept of "horizontal progression" may be an idea to prevent this kind of power creep by keeping starting cities and "newbie" areas still viable to character progression so you don't get those ghost towns.
While also having open dungeons that increase in difficulty the farther in, so you have the cool community effect of a bunch of different leved groups in a dungeon; camping or crawling along.
It's simple, just have zones that can foster a large range of levels. Designing a dungeon so that players can visit at level 10-15, then come back at level 30-35, and then another area of the dungeon is suitable for level 50. Possibly most of the zone is open so the different groups of level ranges can interact with each other so the zone doesn't feel empty and then you can also have locked areas where players need keyed or flagged. Also something that VG did a lot of was place raid content in lower level zones so that would keep players visiting the areas often.
What I'm not a fan of and what I don't think should ever happen, and maybe I read things wrong or misunderstood, but content should NEVER scale in an MMO such as Pantheon. A zone should be designed with a certain level range in mind and nothing else. Dungeon Killjoy should have mobs that are level 20 and that's it. The levels of these mobs should never change to scale with the player. This ruins the sense of growth and progression in MMOs is huge. You should always feel like you are growing and the best way and probably easiest way to do that is to have a zone that is difficult to complete at a certain level and then becomes easy once you reach another, higher level.
I'm sure there are other ways but this is my $.02. Smart zone design that permits multiple ranges of leveled players to interact with said zone. Again, the easiest way is to place raid content in lower level areas.
This is a heavily felt in EQ2 also. I took a break for some years and just could not believe the changes in gear made. If I could wish for something, then it's that gear doesn't lose its value so fast or becomes completely useless whenever a new expansion is released. Probably a lot of people find aquiring of gear motivating and it's their whole motivation in MMO. It's what keeps them playing, maybe, but I hate it. It feels like a chore to me to replace 22 slots of gear plus all the adornments plus all clickies each new expansion. Just to have it turned to garbage some months later? Oh god, please no.
I don't want to be a hamster in a wheel.
So very very very mild changes in gear for new expansions for me (if it is needed at all). Don't double my stats. Min/Maxers will still aquire what is considered BiS, that is good, but please don't turn gear what was aquired with sweat and blood like a joke the next expansion.
NoobieDoo said:It's simple, just have zones that can foster a large range of levels. Designing a dungeon so that players can visit at level 10-15, then come back at level 30-35, and then another area of the dungeon is suitable for level 50. Possibly most of the zone is open so the different groups of level ranges can interact with each other so the zone doesn't feel empty and then you can also have locked areas where players need keyed or flagged. Also something that VG did a lot of was place raid content in lower level zones so that would keep players visiting the areas often.
What I'm not a fan of and what I don't think should ever happen, and maybe I read things wrong or misunderstood, but content should NEVER scale in an MMO such as Pantheon. A zone should be designed with a certain level range in mind and nothing else. Dungeon Killjoy should have mobs that are level 20 and that's it. The levels of these mobs should never change to scale with the player. This ruins the sense of growth and progression in MMOs is huge. You should always feel like you are growing and the best way and probably easiest way to do that is to have a zone that is difficult to complete at a certain level and then becomes easy once you reach another, higher level.
I'm sure there are other ways but this is my $.02. Smart zone design that permits multiple ranges of leveled players to interact with said zone. Again, the easiest way is to place raid content in lower level areas.
Good post Noobie, I agree!
They are talking about having a mentoring system. That should be sufficient to allow players to revisit lower areas and still be challenged. I would not like to see any type of non consentual scaling going on. Having diverse level ranges of mobs in a given zone is the way to go IMO as well. This was handled very well in EQ1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
MINX said:Good post Noobie, I agree!They are talking about having a mentoring system. That should be sufficient to allow players to revisit lower areas and still be challenged. I would not like to see any type of non consentual scaling going on. Having diverse level ranges of mobs in a given zone is the way to go IMO as well. This was handled very well in EQ1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Interesting, I saw a mentoring system being discussed but didn't know it would actually be in the game. I'll try to find out where it was mentioned, this would definitely help.
I like the idea of having encountering varying level ranges in most areas. Sounds good to me, so far :)
Coldlight said:
Interesting, I saw a mentoring system being discussed but didn't know it would actually be in the game. I'll try to find out where it was mentioned, this would definitely help.
I like the idea of having encountering varying level ranges in most areas. Sounds good to me, so far :)
I don't know that it is a definate thing either Cold, but I sure hope that it makes its way in. I know Kilsin was discussing it in another thread. That is encouraging to me. To be clear, I mean a mentoring system with true scaling, not the type used in EQ2 where all of your high lvl spells are still available and just do less dmg. Would have to be a system that would physically gray out spells or abilities that are higher lvl than you are mentored to etc, and truely scales your armor values down to that lvl as well. As mentioned in another thread, this would go a very long way in keeping groups together as folks level etc.
Even if mentoring does not make it in, I would still not like to see any sort of auto scaling of characters in lower level zones.
@MINX A limited form of mentoring has been discussed, but VR hasn't committed to it yet. They are looking for suggestions on ways of implementing it that wouldn't lead to the issues it caused in other games.
As to the systems by the 4 suggested games, those all sound horrible. A mob should be its level, and so should a player. When you scale players, it will only diminish your achievements and sense of accomplishment. If I go back to a lower level zone, I shouldn't magically become weak like I was when I first went there. I earned the right to pass through or kill weaker mobs at my leisure. Likewise, players who haven't earned that right shouldn't be able to killed mobs scaled down. That includes such atrocities as "easy mode" dungeons and encounters.
The best I think we can hope for is just a more gradual system of advancement. Your raid items, for instance, should not be replaced by the following expansions group content. There should be a proper progression. If you want to raid, you do the previous raid content. The same with group content.
There should also be more horizontal progression allowing players to diversify their equipment and skill set to overcome a wider variety of content. Just because you are level 30, doesn't mean you should be able to clear all level 30 content. There should be some places and mobs that will be soft gated by particular items (as we saw in the most recent stream).
In the end, old items and content will become of less relevance. Its just the way of progression based games. However, there are also things you can do to remove currency and old items from the economy to make those places worth visiting for new players or to return to on alts or progeny characters.
MINX said:Coldlight said:Interesting, I saw a mentoring system being discussed but didn't know it would actually be in the game. I'll try to find out where it was mentioned, this would definitely help.
I like the idea of having encountering varying level ranges in most areas. Sounds good to me, so far :)
I don't know that it is a definate thing either Cold, but I sure hope that it makes its way in. I know Kilsin was discussing it in another thread. That is encouraging to me. To be clear, I mean a mentoring system with true scaling, not the type used in EQ2 where all of your high lvl spells are still available and just do less dmg. Would have to be a system that would physically gray out spells or abilities that are higher lvl than you are mentored to etc, and truely scales your armor values down to that lvl as well. As mentioned in another thread, this would go a very long way in keeping groups together as folks level etc.
Even if mentoring does not make it in, I would still not like to see any sort of auto scaling of characters in lower level zones.
What I saw so far about the mentoring thing was some people asking about what the mentor would get for xp or what they would get for killing mobs with their lower level friends and completing quests with them and what not. I thought the answer was pretty good and imo should be a definite thing. They said the mentor wouldn't get traditional xp like the lower level friend but could get points into things like AAs and stuff like that. So that was kind of cool to see. I don't know if they should have a unique tab of AAs specifically for mentoring or if they should just allow mentoring to give points into any AA you wish. Good stuff though.
I don't know how possible it is but I always loved the old Metroid games and Zelda games. Where you could go anywhere in the world but certain places you couldn't acces and would have to go back to after you got an item from somewhere down the road. But these weren't just keys, they were items you could actually use; a fire wand that you used to attack enemies but would also melt down ice frozen over a certain door. Or a bow and arrow that also let you shoot levers at a distance to grant access to whatever. I don't know how this could be used in an MMO but I love those games and who knows something like that might be pretty sweet to have players go back to old areas they couldn't access before.
Coldlight said: @Dullahan Just because a game is primarily ocused around PvE doesn't mean all of the content has to go to waste after a while. Not everybody want another WoW, where 2% of the content is meaningful if I have been actively playing. I don't think a system similar to Wildstar would hurt your experience in any way. You'd still get to cruise through lower level areas as you please, and only experience challenging content while going out of your way to tackle specific monsters, dungeons or world bosses meant to be difficult. I like the potential challenge any player might represent, I want to have the same expectations with at least part of the PvE content, and not just in the latest few released areas.
I agree, but this was already achieved in classic EQ up to Velious. That was two expansions in, and the old world was still relevant and viable. It was sandbox in that respect, because there was no linear path. During any level range, you had a dozen+ places you could level up. Just because you were in a 30 dungeon in Velious, didn't mean you were necessarily getting better items or experience than other players in kunark or the old world. I'd venture to guess those things have a lot to do with why many of us loved EQ and why many of us support Pantheon.
It was the same with raiding. If you wanted to raid the top in content in Velious, it was beneficial to do the previous content. Players were still going to the plane of fear and hate, killing dragons and gods and even visiting veeshan's peak long after temple of veeshan was around 3 years later. Why? Because they were still worthwhile. They weren't completely trivialized, and because they were a necessary stepping stone both in group and raid content, to progress.
Coldlight said: If the newest content brings with it different rewards, but not strictly better ones (different stats repartition, procs, set bonuses enabling specific builds...), then this solves Power Creep while keeping players interested in collecting the brand new gear. I think this would be some healthy horizontal form of progression for the game. Leveling content would still be obsolete aside from the possible mentoring groups, but all max level content would be used even years later. Sounds good to me.
There is no perfect solution to power creep. Without some vertical progression, horizontal progress will inevitably become an unfulfilling experience for most people. We like to get stronger, not just gain more options and versatility. I think there are new ways to broaden our horizon in this area, but I don't believe its the pure horizontal fantasy that some people like to propose.
I view it from the question of why are there eventually empty zones (assuming the zone is interesting and worthwhile to begin with)?
1.People have moved on - played through to be able to play in different and higher level content.
2. There are not enough new subscribers coming into the game to play through the old/original content.
It's pretty safe to assume that number 1 is going to happen. Eventually it is going to happen. If Pantheon only had players that fall into the number 1 group then it would be trying to get those people to play alts to experience that content again. But that will simply be diminishing in nature. People will play through faster and will play through less.
So then it is the issue of why are there no new subscribers to fill in the void. Perhaps they are not out there and Pantheon has all they will get for a subscriber base. If that is the case then not much can be done about power creep. But, maybe that isn't the case but there isn't as much interest and social connectedness for new players. In that case the older/longer subscribers have disappeared making the world feel lonely and isolated. Bringing us back to issue number 1 - how to get players to return to older content.
If expansions always offer something new to entice older/longer subscribers to venture to them it is self-defeating if part of that attraction is to abandon older zones. Come see the new zones and leave the old world behind! So, by my thinking, expansions shouldn't consist of content to take people away and not come back. Perhaps allow for expansions to build on existing zones. Perhaps new dungeons and new areas to explore in and around existing zones in a manner that still allows people who haven't picked up the expansion to still be able to play alongside those that have purchased the expansion. However, in the end, I think it is inevitable that given enough time things simply will have progressed and some zones will just become empty. I would like to see cities grow or change and develop a bit as expansions are released, but I don't know how that will work alongside people who haven't purchased the upgrade if it can even work.
I think if existing zones end up getting built upon with expansions that a period of time will probably need to go by before there is a forced requirement to upgrade - say 3 months. At that point the full expansion gets unlocked (sort of like paying for 2 expansions in one go - one that is released immediately and one that is unlocked after a period of time.) It needs to be a long enough period of time such that those who are playing the game and haven't purchased the expansion probably aren't going to purchase the expansion and probably are just playing out their subscription before leaving the game (although I may be completely wrong about characterizing those people). Give them some time to actually decide if they want the expansion or not before forcing it on them.
Original EQ had the original Splitpaw Lair zone that underwent an upgrade to try to get people into the zone. The zone was not a popular zone for people to venture to. However I loved the zone and played many sessions in there. The revamp happened about the time that I wouldn't be returning to the zone so it fell nicely into my lap and playstyle. I think that is one of the advantages of the zoning concept and that is the ability to revamp zones.
Could it be possible to mob spawning influenced by the average level number in a zone over a period of time (IE: the last 30 minutes). Of course this would have to figure amount of time those levels spent, to ensure a raid of level 50's running through on their way to a dungeon doesn't skew the numbers.
Kind of like the East Common Griffins, West Commons and Oasis Giants, occasional werewolf spawns, etc.
Particuularly if there are no hard zone lines, could high level wandering mobs from an adjoining zone wander into one where the average player level is higher than expected.
This would create a much more dynamic world, allow zones to have longer life spans for players, and add some excitement/anxiety to players in the area.
Dullahan said:There is no perfect solution to power creep.
I gave out a few. They may not be perfect, but they do address the problem.
Dullahan said:Without some vertical progression, horizontal progress will inevitably become an unfulfilling experience for most people. We like to get stronger, not just gain more options and versatility. I think there are new ways to broaden our horizon in this area, but I don't believe its the pure horizontal fantasy that some people like to propose.
Guild Wars 1 and 2 have proven horizontal progression is viable.
Interesting post Coldlight.
I am not sure what the term power creep is. With relation to zones or regions with wide level encounters I would call them highly dynamic. We used to see that in EQ and VG but one had to be careful in those areas. I think that was the initial intention. I agree when expacs are deployed it throws the entire region or zone get pretty much hosed. In WoW that happened on every expansion. With GW2 the scale down aspect does not work to well. I am playing that heavily while waiting for Pantheon. The level drops but you run into issues with gear and damage, spells and the artificial feel to it all. I can’t comment on Wildstar or Destiny. I know this is a common problem in MMO’s.
I know prior to and during RotLK in WoW they had a system in place that would pretty much make the higher level characters leave an area if they were over the level cap. Not forcibly but every mob would be greyed out and the loot was not desirable. I can’t recall why this was changed but it was. It effectively let farmers run wild in those zones.
In GW2 prior to launch the beta had some features that were not released and have not been. The actual stepdown of a character to say level 10 was just that. Gear stats and spells were all negated to that level. It was pretty interesting to do and was far better than the one released.
Zone balance is probably a tricky scenario to deploy in a zone. I think VR is and has stated that the challenge of an area is going to be dynamic indeed. I am curious to see how they deploy their vision of this but I am sure it won’t be perfect. That’s an unrealistic goal but they can and will balance it.
Ox
X
Liav said:Hieromonk said:The concept is lost in zones where content by level is intermingled within the same zone. (A zone big and diverse with lvl 5 ~ 55 mobs)
Old games have creep, because their base landmass is small and zones are themepark.
Pantheon will be more organic and dynamic and mobs in a zone won't always be there... 64bit game world easily allows for migration or randomness. Tons of tools at Visionary Realms disposal to combat creep with.
EQ was a themepark?
What does 64-bit have to do with anything?
I don’t think the 64 bit architecture was the intent but the ability to add more features. Again it does not really impact the game.
Ox
Aradune has described horizontal progression in these forums, and I think his take on it is quite interesting, see the topic 'Can Pantheon have Diplomacy? VG soh Bards?'
If you think vertical progression makes up for a more enjoyable performance, then most reasonable solution to me would still be to keep specific monsters and dungeons challenging and rewarding as the game ages.
You would still breeze through most of the outleveled and outgeared content, unless you go out of your way to face some content that is meant to always to pose a stern challenge.
I have read much about dynamic content in the different zones, but if some of the content adapts to the ever increasing power level of the players, it solves the problem indeed.