Avatar’s Update #383: Play Release 78 Now! Dynamically Scaled Difficulty! Shadow Creatures Preview!

I agree there; I would remove the easy/normal/hard/extreme naming. Probably just list the tiers and maybe flag one as "default." A new player not yet familiar with the tiers is going to see "Easy" and get a very wrong impression of the difficulty of the game when they run into a T7 zone.

 

Sure, but its a big-picture type of question. This is going to do very little to change how scene congregation works. We are trying to extrapolate how this will affect other scenes beyond the one that exists currently.

 

Mentioned some of this in chat just now -- good input (Easy difficulty labeling, etc.)

 

The problem with this is that not everyone with the same AL can clear the same content, AL being only a representation of how much total experience you have acquired, and not how strong you actually are. This means that someone VERY low level, but very smart in his experience spending would be forced to level up even more to get the same challenge that I can get from a zone, because My exp is spent in places that do not affect my power directly (ex. putting points in Blades serves me 0 purpose right now other than give me a few more GMs, so if someone would take the 50m exp I pumped into blades and used it in a smarter more useful way, we are the same AL but he can clear higher content than me). Also, AL does not represent gear, which has a HUGE impact on content you can do, so compare me, AL 115 with 450+ Str playing bludgeon with water and life to heal me up, versus another AL 115, with only 200 points in STR and a +3 sword, when we enter the "Default" difficulty, for me it is going to be a breeze, meanwhile that other guy is going to STRUGGLE so bad, and will get upset that zones are always scaled up too high for him.

With the way it works right now, players can pick their desired Tier and go in a zone that challenges them or not, depending on how they feel, so I think this way works great.

Also, the Dynamic Scaling Part makes sense when you understand how zones are built. FFrom what I gathered from Chris's Stream, and maybe I misunderstood but it helps me find that the words "Dynamic Scaling" makes sense the way it is now, is that they can set a Tier for the zone, lets say T5, but there are some mobs in that zone that they set to a higher Tier, ex. an Obsidian Destroyer in Crag Foothills. With the new Dynamic Scaling, They can simply set the zone to a certain tier, and say "The mobs here, here and hhere are +3Tiers, meanwhile these ones here, here and there are -1 Tier", When they change the zones Global Tier, to lets say 15, well now those mobs that were T8 are now T18, and that was done automatically, they did not have to change each individual mobs level, and this means they can change difficulties in a zone in minutes instead of hours, thus, the Dynamic Scale, which is Dev side.

 

All true, but I think "Dynamic Scaling" is probably still an unsuitable name. It may be correctly named from the dev side of things, but players aren't seeing that. So they would read "dynamic scaling" in the announcement or manual, and may presume this to mean content that scales with you, ESO-style. If you like that kind of scaling, you'll be disappointed to see it's not actually in the game. If you don't like it, the announcement/manual leads you to believe something you dislike is in the game when it isn't.

 

All true, but I think "Dynamic Scaling" is probably still an unsuitable name. It may be correctly named from the dev side of things, but players aren't seeing that. So they would read "dynamic scaling" in the announcement or manual, and may presume this to mean content that scales with you, ESO-style. If you like that kind of scaling, you'll be disappointed to see it's not actually in the game. If you don't like it, the announcement/manual leads you to believe something you dislike is in the game when it isn't.

 

Agreed! @Elgarion maybe propose a different name for the actual system? Something like Multi-Tier Scenes, or something like that?

 

@Elgarion I think you guys forgot to list Immortal City in the list of POTs that got updated in 77 in the update.

Also what is the difference between cities marked in Green vs White on the map?

 

Green ones are awesome, white ones are for LOSERS.

(I have no idea, but I am full of coffee and snark.)

 

You were already on the R77 update, just checked. And in the image. Green is what was newly added.

 

Oooooooh ok thank you!

 

I am hopeful DSD will be the first step (code/system wise) for things like the 'Survival' mode or option for CPs that Chris was talking with Fzol about, player dungeon difficulty scaling, harvesting node scaling and rewards, scaling of boss monsters for big rewards/epic fights akin to "World Bosses" in Guild Wars 2, scaling chance of rare/special bosses or tameable creatures spawning. etc..

Some polish down the road could be having the size of the enemies change, such as trolls, dragons, etc getting 10% bigger each difficulty tier over easy, or maybe get some unique VFX for the harder versions also.

 

I think that this is just a test scene for the tech so they can ultimately have quest scenes that scale to your level. Being able to choose the difficulty for a scene is also a pretty cool thing.

 

Given the new zone (sorry, can't remember the full name), it's set options for tiered difficulty (Easy > Normal > Etc.), so not based on who enters, but on what difficulty scale you choose.

 

This sounds like the easiest to implement without having to figure out everyone's AL and choosing low vs. high vs. party lead. It's player choice, which in the end I think is the best without having to worry about the other stuff.

 

That makes more sense indeed. Now my next thought is, does loot also improve when selecting a higher difficulty?
Or will it only be more difficult and bit more exp gained from farming mobs. And do all the farming skills also get more exp?

 

Not currently and neither does experience.

 

...really.

 

I thought XP did. Now that I think about it, though, I don't recall clearly. I checked back when XP was pure garbage, and I thought I remember seeing it higher (slightly less garbage) in normal vs. easy. So it may have only appeared to not scale because it was worthless no matter what difficulty you chose. Now that it's sorta decent (patch 1227, I think) in easy, I'll have to check again.

 

To be fair, it's a single cloned scene to test the tech, and it's probably a good thing they're not trying to implement everything all in one go and ending up with a broken mess.

(To also be fair, this maybe shoulda been done on QA first? Though, I don't know that they'd have gotten as much feedback/bug reports on QA. But still...)