Scaling Area (Hack n Slay)

[N3hu1s]

I have a little idea and don't know how to make it right.

I want to start a Hack n Slay with a startarea which is good to farm until endgame. You also have to farm there to get materials.

Now i have the problem that this area becomes a joke on higher hero level so i just think about few options for scaling :

1. Scaling units by the players which are in the area. For example there are 2 players in the area level 1 and level 49. the average is 25 so all monster scale to level 25. And yes, you see the problem, the level 1 player has no chance now.

2. Scaling the hero. When a hero goes to this area his stats will decrease but his items give him a little bonus so when you are on high level with good items you are stronger then a low level player in this area.
Good idea but i think much people dont like it when there are weaker in this area...of cause its only the stats which are lower and they already have a bigger bonus then others...but dont know

3. Replace the hero with another unit. Maybe i can do it with "pets". You can find pets with the time and these pets can fight in this area to collect material...but..this is a really strange idea i think.

4. Every player has his own area. Will be a good idea that every player has his own farmingarea, maybe with upgrading it.

What about you, how would you handle with this problem?

I prefer 4 and 2

 

[Oliver]

4 is easiest to balance but is pretty clunky.

Maybe as a 5th option you could have something like:

Each player has creature assigned to them.

When this creature dies a new one is spawned and either ordered to attack the player or the player is given indication to where the creature is (via a quest perhaps)

When the creature is spawned it is slightly higher level than the chosen player, so it's not a boring fight.

Maybe you could further improve this by deincentivising players killing creatures assigned to other players by reducing the xp for anyone but the assigned player.


In a map I'm making I have a boss system similar to this. Only there is only one boss shared by all players and I added a thing so there is a 10% chance that when a boss is spawned it spawns a unique boss hero which is more interesting and has unique loot.


An offshoot of this you could build this into a bounty type system, players get a quest to kill a creature. Killing that creature gives them a reward and some xp. So it is grinding but it's grinding dressed up as repeatable quests. (Guildwars 2 has this combined with your 2nd point and unless you've played the game a lot you don't even notice that you're actually grinding for xp)

 

[N3hu1s]

hmm its sounds nice.

i think with this idea i will find a good way to handle this!

 

[apsyll]

You could also have different types of monsters designed for different amount of players, many weak ish 1player, few middle hard 2-4player and rare really hard 5+ player in this area and every time a monster get killed it gets a bit stronger.
So that the weak monsters will be as strong as the middle one in mid game but your heros get stronger aswell so its fair and they even get a bigger pool to choose from in this time.
When you have a team they will go for the bigger one because of more rewards and maybe splitt off to single the weaks for more efficiency and because player always go for the easier way when they can...
You have to change also the scale rate on death for each type aswell because the xp increase exponentially per amount of hero.
Easy +10%
Middle +15%
Hard +25%
This will also help that the players don't just go for the hard ones because they will be to hard at one point.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Maybe instead of just making enemies tougher, you could replace them with more powerful enemies (as in, low-level heroes fight ogres, high-level heroes fight ogre magi and trolls).

For multiplayer you could have areas that correspond to enemy tiers, so level 1 and 25 heroes go to different areas, but level 15 and 16 heroes go to the same one.

 

[disruptive_]

Make the farm arena corridor-like. With a start and a finnish. The start parts are accesible to all players, but via ie. gates that only open to certain players, you begin discriminating how far a player can get on the arena, while achieving some continuity, and without making 1 arena per player level/tier. High level players might help low levels, or just annoy them by raiding their sub-zone, so there should be incentives to continue the corridor. But you already said that the whole point is to farm materials, so make higher level units in the corridor drop better/more materials. In the end this will allow players to mind their own business by going to the corridor part they need/want.