Soft Wipe for Episode #2 ? ?

There's ways this can be done.

Consider how Anarchy Online handled the Shadowlands expansion.

You basically had Planet A, the base game, which had a (pretty high) level cap, lots of zones, lots of content, lots of basic things.
Then you had Planet B, the expansion game.

New players could go to Planet A or Planet B at any time (assuming they'd bought the Planet B expansion). They could progress in one, or the other, and had a choice if they wanted to follow the political/faction storyline of Planet A(original world) or if they wanted to follow the more ephemeral, philosophical storyline of Planet B (Shadowlands). You could travel back and forth across these places in various ways.

The Shadowlands expansion gave players some new skills. You had to own the expansion to learn and use these skills. But you could go back to Planet A and use (most) of them (some were 'only castable in shadowlands). Your character benefitted from having developed via the "alternate advancement" lines of Shadowlands. Your character development included aspects of both areas. When you reached the "level cap" on Planet A, you could still progress with "shadow levels" on Planet B, and indeed, maxing out Shadow Levels was a significant achievement, so much so that any time a player did it it sent a global message about them becoming one with the Source.

Stuff from shadowlands could be bought and sold anywhere, some things required owning the expansion to use, others didn't - you could buy it and wear it, this actually acted as an encourager because there was a bunch of other cool stuff out in expansion land that had limits but you got a taste.

Then when the next expansion (Alien Invasion) was added, players could now earn a new type of XP for fighting in those areas/scenarios, that raised new perk/skill lines. You'd get regular xp from this as well (if not already capped).

What this meant was a new player could now go do any of these 3 things and achieve basic progression while also working on the achievement system progression of the expansion area. New players were, by comparison, much stronger than "the originals were back when we did it" since they had access to skills, passives, and perks that didn't exist "back in the days." And yes, the base game content, what we call Ep1, was 'easier' as a result. But it was also less rewarding to do, since you were only earning toward basic level progression. However, there was enough unique content, quests, rare things to farm, raids, contested PvP bosses, etc. to go do on Planet A that people still did it. The new player could work their way through the original content, yes, or they could go get boosted in shadowlands and come back to it with special perks/skills that they've earned and simply do harder missions in the 'base world' in harder areas.

This is what an expansion should do. Open up new improvement paths, new content, new areas, but you take everything with you. No artificial rollbacks, setbacks, or resets of earned potential, but rather new progression opened up in paralell. The new players will get the benefits of the New Episode from day 1, where as we had to struggle without it. Their experience will be far more robust because of it. Every single person that I brought into the game post-expansion had a much deeper experience from day 1 than the originals who had to do it the hard way, with a lot more options and a lot of parallel advancement making their character grow stronger at a faster rate. The expansion benefitted everyone who bought it, regardless of how 'far along' they were - which is what an expansion should do.

 

Well of course we did. No matter the outcome. It's a game. We amass pixels. A lot of people would tell you you waste your time.

But you have progression with scaling. So i honestly don't get your point here. Which is possibly a missunderstanding on my end.

 

If you scale a scene to "skill level 100" you're essentially saying that all the EXP I've earned beyond that "doesn't count."
Which leads to the next question ...why should I bother continuing to play/level if I'm going to be scaled back and all of that levelling can't be used?
Its like saying, sure, there's no global cap, but if every scene has a cap, what's the point in going beyond it?

 

But scaling as i know it (and the way i think it should be done) is scaling the "level" of the scene according to your "power level" (meaning your adv lvl + skills + equip = power level). So it doesn't matter if you are LvL 1 or 1000 (IT'S OVER 9000!!!! sorry, couldn't resist) the scenen will always be a challange.

 

Yes, we're thinking of this in different ways.
Scaling some content 'to the player' (rather than scaling the player 'to the content')
The first is far less objectionable, although there should be a lower floor and an upper limit.

IE, a scene shouldn't scale down below a minimum threshold or up above a maximum threshold.
Its like, if due to your build/skill level/rp choices, etc. you can't do a Tier 5 scene right now, you have the option to level up, get stronger, and try again. If content scales upward forever, if you can't do it now, you'll never be able to do it. This is particularly important the way Sota's skill system is, in that significantly more xp investment ("level") does not give the same increase of strength. You don't want to be in a scenario where levelling up is actually detrimental

 

The other issue with scaling is your probably need every scene to work as a separate instance. No more bumping in to people.

 

Good point tbh.
Not to mention sometimes you want scenes to be below your level for different reasons.

 

Yes excellent point scaling instance in multiplayer could be a issue they would need a solution to that. That’s to bad I was hoping some day they would have some way to scale, I suppose they could reserve that feature for party mode.

 

You could offer 2 options. Scale to highest Level and scale to lowest lvl.
Or you keep dungeons out of that. Dungeons are usually endgame content. So you could just go with "be adv lvl 150 or bust".

 

I'm not a fan on total scaling... but maybe the "partial scaling" that's being described here. It could be that a zone that's now Tier 4, could start at Tier 3, and cap out at Tier 5, as they recognize you and send reinforcements... but eventually you could beat it. Personally, I'd prefer if Ep.2 was just another continent in the existing game with higher level zones, and you can unlock more skills/recipes there (non-tradable), etc.

Could Lvl.1 people (who who have Ep2. access) follow a Lvl 100 into these new zones? Yes, just like they can now in a Tier 10+ zones. They just need to not take point.

Would Ep1. content be "obsolete" for high-levels in Ep 2? Yes, just as Tier 1-3 zones tend to be for high level people. That's just the nature of it. Same with equipment. I'm not sure how this is suddenly a problem with Ep. 2.

The only part to this I can understand, and even agree with, is that it'd allow them to *not* inherit the imbalance and mistakes of Ep. 1. Then again, I think they do need to bear that responsibility without the player's time and resources being expendable.

I've never gotten the "it's just pixels" argument, as it's basically just dismissing the ideas that those pixels have value to me. I spent the time - time that I will *never* get back - for a particular outcome. I have consented to that effort being destroyed when the game dies. I have not consented to that effort and personal value being voided under any other context. Otherwise, I'm gone.

 

Yea I think so, also and most important will eps 2 3 4 5 dungeon rooms be playable in my esp 1 dungeon since they kinda want them to all be exclusive?

If this is the case I would only need to focus on the dungeon pices and could skip the individual episodes.

Or will each esp only allow that eps to use its own dungeon rooms?

 

Yirks. No idea ^^ there you will have to ask @Chris

 

I was also curious how it'd work with POT owners. Would their towns be stuck in their respective episodes? What'd the point be if most people move out of Ep. 1?

 

This problem is one that I've been aware of for years, soon after i started playing. With the XP curve and skills system we have, how would you even make the usual power creep trope work? We started with what was basically a new paradigm, and now it needs another new paradigm so that it can advance four more times. And I can't remember where, but I'm sure I've seen the "go to a new world, new world nerfs you for a while" thing before.

That's definitely a weird thing that could happen. But remember how we were told to expect elves (or rather "half-elves", not the grey aliens we see now) as a playable race? This could be a way to allow that to work. People who don't want a new-you could just click OK OK OK OK there.

That's not scaling, that's power creep. Scaling is like ESO, when you go into the same area and it's exactly as hard to you, no matter how much you level, whether you are level 1 or level 100. And it's soul-destroying in that no matter how much you level up, you will never have peace. If you can roll over it at the chosen scaling, good for you, if you can't, too bad so sad.

What this sounds like is scaling YOU while in the new area (and the scaling goes away when you're back in the old area!), so that you level up anew, but with your XP in the old area applied as a bonus to the new area XP so that you level up crazy fast. So each episode has its own XP and scaling, and with a few weeks of play each, you can become awesome again.

If the typical knee-jerk reaction around here is to imagine the worst possible outcome, expectations get set very low. Things can only get better from there!

First, the dungeon rooms are just deco, it's only the spawned monsters that would be different. Second, if we were to go with the power creep option, the new monsters would be like tier 20+ or worse. If you can defeat them, all the existing stuff is tissue paper. It's not the new stuff being playable you have to worry about, it's the old stuff. Do you really want your Ep1 dungeon stuff to become tissue paper?

My perception of this is that the only thing being scaled is YOU, depending on which episode area you're in. And the only thing being gated by Ep2 access is being able to set foot in the new areas. Items can be freely passed back and forth. And we might even have a proper regional economy at last, especially if teleport-to-zone scrolls would only let you travel inside the same episode, and you have to go to specific places (like boats at port towns) to travel between episodes. (and I am not talking about control points that you have to fight through every time)

 

I don’t know why you think that there will already be totems that make this stuff nearly impossible no need to make content much harder in 2-3 etc as far as I’m concerned the max difficulty is near at what I’d consider max thru esp 5. Mabey 3-4 more tiers would be enough threw 5 look at how they did UO expansions they scaled but barley.

 

Bring back single-player online mode. If you're keen to have each chapter be its own game (and hey why not), then have single player offline and single player online make you start with a new character so you can experience the full story arc of the chapter properly with multiplayer features to boot. (Auto-scale content based on # of party members)

Online mode (MMO moad?) can be a tougher extension of Ep. I a la UO: Second Age? No wipes.

I'd think that's fairly feasible because the difficulty curve is already dynamic based on Online/Offline, right?

@Chris

 

ESO has the entire content scalling but that is probably hard to do for an indie company. Just keep in mind how many employees Bethsoft/Zenimax got at their disposal and still they got at times heavy bugs. I mean it probably very hard to do here.

I still think they should go for an optional reborn system(with incetives) that touches only adv. level because its probably more viable with their manpower too

 

You have to be kidding, this is about the worst idea in the history of bad Ideas. Does @Lord British know about and condone this? He said one char you are your toon this does not represent the spirit of that idea that he stood behind.

Come and save us RG your our only hope.

 

Scaling without hpmogonizing :

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...he-problems-self-imposed-handicapping.152570/