Post-Cap Discussions, Part 4: Scaling Up or Down

[Duskruin Arena] creatures are scaled to your level. I think it would be a valuable project to create an instanced area in different hunting grounds for capped characters that originally were used during the 1-90 leveling process.

[…] The Adventurer’s Guild could be utilized to create tasks where you need to kill a champion of a particular creature type. Let’s say that there is a Shan champion in Solhaven that must be dispatched. Well when you get to the hunting area for shan you are now faced with capped Shan rather than their normal level. You could enter the area through a veil much like you enter the elemental confluence or a Sunfist warcamp. This could be repeated in multiple towns and give some variety for capped characters and […] potentially help with the population in some towns such as Zul Logoth.

an addition to the adv guild as a task option for post cap might be:

you have multiple older creatures to kill, patrol this area and kill 15 grizzly whatevers.. let those creatures be boosted up to match your skills like the grims or bandits.

It might even solve the problem for those that prefer towns like River Rest and Zul, where people past the hunting age of the area can get a task that is at least in the highest age areas without turning bandits loose on major pathways […] maybe call the [enemies] some unique name so that they can be identified as a creature considerably older then you would normally find.

a potion to de-age, de-level your character for a short period of time would be cool. Say you want to be level 25 again, purchase the correct potion and you end up at that level for a while. Your stats and skills would be averaged in a very predictable way for the duration of your time at that level. You aren’t exactly you, but pretty close.

You stay at that level for pre-determined period of time or until you gain or lose a deed.

I also think it would be a good idea to allow capped characters to gain experience, take bounties, etc. as if they were the chosen level. […]

If one were so inclined, they could replay the game level by level allocating whatever skills they wanted, but gaining experience normally the entire time. Leveled as a pure wizard and want to see it again as the ultimate pure with every magical skill capped? Why not? Or why not go war mage? Want to try UAC? […]

I really like the potential of this idea. It gives post-cap players several new ways to experience life in the post-cap, which I feel is sorely needed. But I also think it will have the effect of breaking down the social barriers that exist as a result of the geographical segregation caused by level.

throw in some portal that takes you to some “other” Elanthia. It’s the same as regular Elanthia, but everything is scaled to 100, from rats and kobolds all the way up. The true Capstone area.

The difficult part would be how to balance basic critters like rats to not be trivial encounters at cap, since just scaling up the numbers probably wouldn’t be enough with their only attack being a regular attack.

make it a single hunting ground accessible through a portal from all towns and give it a selection of creatures that rotate[s] every few days. Whether it’s too easy or too hard, either way it’s a limited time thing just for fun. It would basically be a warped plane where you’d never know what was inside until you went in[…]

The only dilemma I could think of for my version was that loot would be incredible since hunting pressure would never set in, so I thought the number of entries to the hunting ground each day would have to be limited and/or have a cost.

[regarding scaling down characters] It’s fun for a capped player to be able to go back with excess training and wipe the floor with a hunting ground they couldn’t hack at level 50.

It isn’t fun for the level 50 character who was dealing with that hunting ground until the capped character walked in and finds their kill rate drops by 90% and their death rate triples in consequence.

A 2x cap player able to go and hunt in a level 50 area with 2x the normal training points for the level would make the normal level 50 character look like a monk does to other classes. Having characters that are nominally peers but one massively outpowers the other is not fun at all.

[later, further explaining…]

Say an area has a spawn rate of 2 per minute and a cap of 2 critters with 1 character present and double that with two characters present.

High kill rate profession on its own in the area kills the 2 critters as fast as they spawn for a kill rate of 2 per minute. Low kill rate profession on its own in area kills 1 critter per minute and the spawn rate drops to 1 because the critter numbers are capped.

Disparity when on their own 2:1 in favor of the high kill rate profession. Playable.

Put them together and what happens is that the high kill rate profession kills all 4 as fast as they spawn and the low kill rate profession doesn’t get anything.

Disparity when in there together 4:0 in favor of the high kill rate profession. Unplayable.

[The downscaling idea] pretty much takes the problem with skinning and amplifies it 1000 fold. The super capped people(me included) hunt hunt hunt and loot is a very important part of the game. […] If they can change their level at will to go where ever the loot is best… […] imagine all the rich spots people look forward to being decimated like that with people with account1, account2, account3, etc and are able to put a loot farmer scripting in each area to max profit per hour.