by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

It looks increasingly like World of Warcraft will see some widespread dungeon scaling mechanics in the near future. Back in August developers mentioned that the technology was pretty much complete, they just needed a reward system, and more recently a bug accessing the tech was stumbled upon by this YouTube user. As an option, it’s not a bad thing to have. There will be people out there who don’t want to roll an alt just to play with their low-level friends, and with scaling they can just jump straight into a dungeon with their friends and still have the same experience. But what about for the rest of the player base? What are some possible reward structures that would be appealing to them?

The obvious: Valor, achievements and vanity rewards

I’m not ashamed to admit farming valor is probably my least favorite activity in WoW, and if it wasn’t for raiding awarding the small amount it does, I’d probably struggle to get any at all. If the major source of valor is going to continue being the repetition of a half-dozen or so scenarios (or dungeons), then using dungeon scaling to increase that pool would definitely be welcome. I count about 70 dungeons in the game at the moment, so if we were able to complete a number of those, you’d have to fancy your chances of not repeating the same dungeons week after week, which would help keep things interesting. There’s currently more than 30 raid instances which could add to the variety, but they would have to award a huge chunk of the cap, like 50-75% scaled on a per-boss basis, to make it worth it, as well as keeping the 5man-level tuning to encourage multiple runs.

Assuming the scaling feature is something that could be turned on and off, you could award extra achievements (eg. Black Temple (Level 70)) for completing it at the correct level. Hopefully there would be a way to retroactively track people’s achievements from when they originally completed the raid so that, for example, I wouldn’t have to go back and complete the level 80 Naxxramas because I’d done so during WotLK. These achievements could form part of a meta-achievement, similar to the Challenge Mode dungeons achievement, which could award a new set of prestige transmog gear, a mount, or pets.

The not-as-obvious: Max-level gear and heirloom items

You can already get the low level items for transmog by running it at max level, so if you were to run dungeons and raids at a scaled level, then it makes some sense to have max level rewards. It would involve a ton of item duplication for the dungeon’s current level and for its max level, but it would also add a lot of gear diversity to the game. Instead of choosing between 2 or 3 pieces, with more than likely only one “real” best-in-slot option, particularly at the pre-raid level, there could be closer to 20. Scaled raids could award epic quality gear scaled up to LFR or Flex level, depending on its difficulty under those scaled conditions.

Or what about heirlooms? Who wouldn’t like to level with an heirloom version of your favourite weapon. Sure, you can just transmog it now, but what about using a legitimate heirloom version of an Obsidian Edged Blade. Classic and popular transmogs can be passed down to fresh alts, rather than just using that one set of heirloom gear we currently have, which makes almost every character look the same at that level. Heirloom tier gear? Yes please. Did somebody say Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker?

The downright insane: A new legendary

The legendary capes were an interesting experiment, but what if instead of constantly running the same raid over and over for the quest “tokens”, you were sent back to run max level versions of the old raids with a storyline in which you needed to absorb the power of every great “bad guy” to fuse into a new legendary of great power. It could be a new item, or it could simply empower another item, similar to the capes.

Or if we want to go completely over the top, what about a super-mega-legendary, where you needed to collect every legendary in the game by running the max-level raids, which then combined to form a Megazord of legendary weapons and items. It would be incredibly cool, though somewhat unwieldy.

Unlimited potential

At the core of dungeon scaling needs to be the idea that the latest tier of raids is still more powerful than what you can get by running old content, and I don’t see Blizzard ever bending over on that point. However, running the same content every week over and over is losing its appeal: just look at subscriber numbers, or the advent of connected realms to see that the game, while far from dead, is suffering from a case of mass burnout. Blizzard seems to think that forcing players into one very specific gearing pathway at end game, which requires a lot of time and dedication, is what will keep players coming back, but I disagree. The effort to reward ratio is a long way out of whack, particularly at the pre-raid level, and all the way up to normal-quality gear.

The Timeless Isle came to us with promises of easing the grind. No daily quests! No set structure! All fun, all the time! While it has made inroads, the Timeless Isle is still a grind. After a week, you’ve seen everything the Isle has to offer. On top of that, the isle has nullified dungeons and almost nullified heroic scenarios. I’d go so far as to say that it even impacted on LFR. Each has become increasingly difficult to find a group for, and the effort involved is usually not worth the reward, especially if you’re still looking for gear. This is where being able to run a selection of up to 70 different scaled dungeons and another 30 raids has its appeal.

Valor is great but if dungeon scaling is ever going to be implemented as a core feature, then it can’t just be “for points”. It has too much potential for it to be wasted like that. We have all this content that, while not new, would add a great shot of variety into what is a very repetitious process. If we can bring back legitimate gearing options from dungeon runs or scaled old raids, at least up to Flex-quality or even Flex-ready quality, then players will have more meaningful tasks to do within the gearing process. And if we have the technology to do it, then what are we waiting for? Pick a reward scheme, implement it, and see how it pans out. Keep the top-tier raids to a once-a-week or even twice-a-week lockout (LFR/Flex, Normal/Heroic), but give us the option to progress through a wider variety of instances, rather than the one raid over… and over… and over… and over.