Many of you had asked if scaling could be improved and brought forward many ideas on ways that could be approached. We heard you and have made changes. Let’s dive into the differences between what scaling is on live and how it works differently with this module.

Live Scaling

The scaling system on live works in the following way:

1. It looks at the map’s maximum item level

2. Determines what the maximum item level is for different items

3. Those items are then capped which brings down the player stats.

New Scaling

One of the big requests for scaling from the community was proportional scaling where all of the players stats are shifted down or up as needed in relation to the content. It isn’t perfect yet due to certain game elements. However, it should result in a better experience for many players.

Scaling will now:

1. Look at the player’s item level

2. Look at what the maximum item level is for the map

3. Compares the two on a ratings chart to determine the change needed to player ratings

4. Then the scaling applies that proportional difference to the player ratings, damage, and hit points.

Issues

As called out above, this scaling is not perfect due to different aspects of the game. The main issue is that item level is not an exact reflection on ratings due to items such as bonding runestones, which grant a variable amount of stats at a single item level.

This means that two players at the same item level can already perform very differently when fighting unscaled content. That difference will carry through when scaled as well. The scaling down has been set to be fairly lenient which should give a wide range of players the best possible experience when scaled down.

Why go forward with this approach when it is not perfect? We feel it will provide a better experience to players compared with the current live scaling. If we can improve an experience, we’d rather get that out sooner instead of having players deal with a worse experience while we try to get it perfect.

Future

In the end we want a seamless scaling experience that is accurate and as non-disruptive as it can be. Because of this, we are already working through the plans for the next step in scaling to make it even better. We should be able to discuss that in more detail in a few months.

We hope the scaling changes improve your experiences with our queues. These changes are already available on preview. Feel free to try it out and let us know how what you think so we can keep improving scaling to be the best experience possible.


Jared "NoWorriers" Sears
Lead Systems Designer