Dynamic Level factions

[Starhammer]

Yes, the topic has been broached before, but I'd like to try framing the suggestion again in a more limited yet thematically appropriate scope.

I like enemies who are automatically matched to my character's level, whatever that may be. Such as the support minions for the War of the Veil in Croatoa, or clockwork building or following the Paladin in King's Row. I would like to see more of this in the game. I like the idea of enemies maintaining relevance and not having entire zones "go gray." I think the two factions that could most safely and justifiably have all members replaced with this type would be Longbow and Arachnos. They're staples of the "enemies" faced, regardless of what level zone you're in. To have them hold onto that relevance regardless of what zone you travel to I believe would be great for immersion. If it works as I believe it would, it would set a good standard to follow with other omnipresent factions in time, such as 5th/Council, Circle of Thorns, and so on. If it works as detractors have claimed it would, it's only a limited slice of the content and not a catastrophe for anyone's game experience.

The other place I would want to see this applied is ambushes. It seems to be the case for some ambushes already (Clockwork ambush for Synapse come to mind) But I think there's still some missions that may cause ambushes of inappropriately high level enemies in low level zones (I recall high level 5th/Council ambushes in Steel Canyon being a problem at one point, though in all fairness, I don't see that ambush very often anymore since we have a lot fewer players than live, and most seem to bypass the mid levels using AE farms or PI radios). Nonetheless, I think making sure it applies to all ambushes should be a quality standard.

{EDIT:}
Ultimately of course, this would be my preference for most if not all content in the game. I dislike having to "turn off XP" or risk missing content just because I want to team up with friends who are doing a lot of high XP content. Having to go back to do something through Orouboros is insufficient, especially since flashbacks function as a sort of TF, and we can't add folks on the fly.

Edited February 6 by Starhammer

[megaericzero]

It's a bit moot for factions that already span from low levels to endgame like Arachnos, Longbow, and Circle because their mobs change out at level milestones anyway - mobs gain new attacks, new ones are introduced, existing ones drop down a tier or are phased out.

 

Even if you scaled Wolf Spiders so they spawn in Grandville, for instance, you'd either be watering-down the difficulty of Arachnos spawns or you'd have to make a new, endgame-viable version of them anyway, which defeats the purpose of making them scale up.

[Rudra]

I can agree with specific things like events having levelless mobs, but not everything. I see no reason for the likes of the Hellions or Skulls to be a constant threat to super powered beings that have achieved what amounts to godhood just so someone can fight them as a threat in the starter zones despite being level 50+3. Some mobs really shouldn't always be a threat. Now if you were asking for higher level versions that were part of something new that justified them being said threat, that I could agree with.

 

Edited February 6 by Rudra
Edited to remove unnecessary "are".

[Uun]

While necessary for zone invasions (Rikti, zombie, etc.), I find levelless mobs boring. By necessity they're always even con and don't present a challenge.

[tidge]

19 minutes ago, Uun said:

While necessary for zone invasions (Rikti, zombie, etc.), I find levelless mobs boring. By necessity they're always even con and don't present a challenge.

 

This astute observation feels (to me) like the flip side of the "My low(ish) level character can't defeat ToT spawns!" refrain.

 

As @megaericzero points out: enemy factions gain new abilities and phase out trivially incompetent enemies (for the most part) for higher level content.

 

[Skyhawke]

3 hours ago, tidge said:

 

This astute observation feels (to me) like the flip side of the "My low(ish) level character can't defeat ToT spawns!" refrain.

 

As @megaericzero points out: enemy factions gain new abilities and phase out trivially incompetent enemies (for the most part) for higher level content.

 

 

Ha, now I'm imagining some COT guys in Peregrine firing the lowbie Thorn Wielders. "Sorry, Thorn Wielder, but you're not what we're looking for at this juncture. You just don't bring anything to the table anymore. We're going to have to let you go. Please leave your robe and dagger with HR and pickup your severance check on the way out." 

[Starhammer]

On 2/6/2025 at 8:00 AM, Uun said:

While necessary for zone invasions (Rikti, zombie, etc.), I find levelless mobs boring. By necessity they're always even con and don't present a challenge.

See, that's the thing... I find grays boring. Yet, there's still things I need to do from time to time in places that are populated solely with grays. Gotta spawn Death Surge? go park afk at a power station with a damage aura running while you make dinner, surely no threat you should need to be paying attention to the game for... For many level 50's white cons are "boring" but at least you can't casually pretend they aren't there. Similarly, a lowbie may find an area populated exclusively with purples "boring" since there's still "nothing to do" game wise in what might be an important area for something unrelated to combat.

But then the point was, start this off with certain factions that are to some extent, omnipresent. A Longbow Lieutenant is a Longbow Lieutenant is a Longbow Lieutenant, whether you find them in Mercy, Cap, or Nerva...

I get it. We're not going to agree. We're not going to change each other's minds.

[Rudra]

19 minutes ago, Starhammer said:

See, that's the thing... I find grays boring. Yet, there's still things I need to do from time to time in places that are populated solely with grays. Gotta spawn Death Surge? go park afk at a power station with a damage aura running while you make dinner, surely no threat you should need to be paying attention to the game for...

Go start a TF/SF or a story arc via Ouroboros to make you lower level, then go hunt the no longer grey enemies.

[megaericzero]

4 hours ago, Starhammer said:

A Longbow Lieutenant is a Longbow Lieutenant is a Longbow Lieutenant, whether you find them in Mercy, Cap, or Nerva...

Demonstrably false, though? Sergeants only exist at 1-9, Chasers at 20+, and Menders at 30+. Even Nullifiers gain new powers as you rise in level, in spite of how ubiquitous they are.

Edited February 7 by megaericzero

[Super Atom]

👉  https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/home

[Starhammer]

4 hours ago, Super Atom said:

👉  https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/home

Lovely game. This aspect of how it works is what I'd love to see here. Unfortunately, as much as I also love ESO, City of Heroes is many other things I love that ESO doesn't do.

[Starhammer]

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

Go start a TF/SF or a story arc via Ouroboros to make you lower level, then go hunt the no longer grey enemies.

If you're just going to be rude, you can see yourself out.

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, Starhammer said:

10 hours ago, Rudra said:

Go start a TF/SF or a story arc via Ouroboros to make you lower level, then go hunt the no longer grey enemies.

If you're just going to be rude, you can see yourself out.

That wasn't being rude. It is a solution to making enemies in any given lower level zone no longer grey to you.

[Starhammer]

7 hours ago, megaericzero said:

Demonstrably false, though? Sergeants only exist at 1-9, Chasers at 20+, and Menders at 30+. Even Nullifiers gain new powers as you rise in level, in spite of how ubiquitous they are.

Exactly. You have precisely described what's wrong with it.

 

[Starhammer]

11 minutes ago, Rudra said:

That wasn't being rude. It is a solution to making enemies in any given lower level zone no longer grey to you.

Suggesting a non-solution is rude. It's trolling at best. I'll be adding you to ignore now.

[kelika2]

kinda wish supatrolls in skyway got this

[tidge]

21 hours ago, Rudra said:

Go start a TF/SF or a story arc via Ouroboros to make you lower level, then go hunt the no longer grey enemies.

 

10 hours ago, Starhammer said:

If you're just going to be rude, you can see yourself out.

 

I've done exactly what @Rudra suggested, specifically to street sweep enemies that would otherwise con grey to me. It is neither a rude, nor absurd suggestion.

[megaericzero]

10 hours ago, Starhammer said:

Exactly. You have precisely described what's wrong with it.

 

They need to gain new powers as you rise in level so that they stay a challenge and are thus worthy of giving a reward. It's not just about doing even-level damage. That's why the Council got buffed; it wasn't because they were conning grey to the teams running radios in PI.

 

As far as I'm aware (insert SCR here), the game can't spawn an entity and say "only use certain powers at this level range." It has to list each power spread as its own version. AE shows each bracket of Nullifier gets its own entry. (There's two of each because it also has separate listings for male and female models too.)

Edited February 8 by megaericzero

[Starhammer]

3 hours ago, megaericzero said:

They need to gain new powers as you rise in level so that they stay a challenge and are thus worthy of giving a reward. It's not just about doing even-level damage. That's why the Council got buffed; it wasn't because they were conning grey to the teams running radios in PI.

 

As far as I'm aware (insert SCR here), the game can't spawn an entity and say "only use certain powers at this level range." It has to list each power spread as its own version. AE shows each bracket of Nullifier gets its own entry. (There's two of each because it also has separate listings for male and female models too.)

I can't speak to AE functionality as knowledgeably as I'd like to. It's just not a subsystem of the game I've managed to dig into thoroughly. I do know that when you're building a custom enemy you're able to set the level range and choose what powers it has access to, which determines how much xp it will provide.

But let's look at the hordes supporting the GMs in the War of the Vale in Croatoa. They do not seem overwhelming when fighting them at low levels (any more than such numbers would seem overwhelming in any other content in level appropriate zones) nor do they feel irrelevant as a threat at high levels (any more than any level appropriate content in standard zones). They feel like they fit the situation, no matter what level you are. The same feels true of the Clockwork trying to build the Paladin in KR. I can't just stand there with a lev 50 damage aura and go afk, knowing they'll pop like mosquitos on a bug zapper, but low level characters can also take part and contribute meaningfully.

The Spring Fling missions also show content allowing the full range of character levels (well maybe not level 1s and such) to be quite functional. Does a full team of 50+ characters steamroll it? yeah, but they do that to everything anyway, so they're as much an outlier to the topic as level 1s. But it's something everyone in the middle can take part in, being meaningful and relevant, without having to engage in some workaround like altering your own level with a local TF (which still leaves you restricted in where you can go without having to change it every time you zone, or whom you can team with.) The wedding event that was just released reinforces my view on this, and compels me to say all named NPC heroes and villains should also be on this list (even moreso than the omnipresent groups).
 

Ultimately, I feel very strongly that making more content accessible and relevant to more characters in more places is good for the game.

[megaericzero]

Am I misunderstanding your suggestion? The original post sounds like you want levelless enemies added for the suggested factions wholesale - in all zones, missions, etc involving those groups - but your supporting examples are all very specific, tailored encounters isolated from everyday content.

Edited February 8 by megaericzero

[Starhammer]

On 2/8/2025 at 12:59 PM, megaericzero said:

Am I misunderstanding your suggestion? The original post sounds like you want levelless enemies added for the suggested factions wholesale - in all zones, missions, etc involving those groups - but your supporting examples are all very specific, tailored encounters isolated from everyday content.

What I 'want' is wholesale, yes, as was suggested by someone, similar to what we see in some other games like ESO, (and to a lesser extent, SWTOR & STO) and so on. We gain levels and advance our abilities, and the world around us keeps itself morphed to our level rather than us having to be in the right place (or engage in dysfunctional extra steps) to be its level.

What I'm suggesting, considering the resistance to wholesale change, is doing this to a few specific factions, maybe to certain story arcs (Ganymede and Scratch's Spring Fling missions would be a good test bed, requiring only 3 factions that already function across the full level range, so minimum consequence for trying it out), or even to a specific zone (I think Cimerora would be a neat place for it, especially considering the relatively small number of enemies that would need to be changed... but a new zone built around a Moon Base complex with both space station and an underground ocean where Neptune has been building an army to reclaim the Earth would also be good) in order to allow more folks to get used to the idea slowly, and as they inevitably realize they didn't actually lose anything besides nuking grays, continue the project forward over the years until it becomes the default, especially for new content.

Things like sidekicking and Ouroboros were workarounds for a problem. They each addressed it in their own way, but they were not really a solution. Don't get me wrong, they're both significant improvements, especially sidekicking as it stands. They just aren't quite enough. This is, in my opinion, a better way and how it should have been done from the start. Obviously it wasn't, and now the spaghetti code is baked into the lasagna as it were, but using this as a new workaround could eventually replace the need to fix the unsatisfactory default.

[keyguardactive]

I like that a bunch of enemies are gray. It's part of the power fantasy. My scrapper used to have trouble with mobs of Hellions or Skulls, but now at max level I can one shot purse snatchers. There's stuff that's SUPOSED to be easy for an Incarnate, and it's narratively satisfying that it is. 

 

I get why you want this, I do, but I don't know that this problem is ubiquitous as you're making it sound. The fact that there ARE solutions that get you what you want, but not in the way that you want, makes it seem like you aren't willing to compromise on this either. 

 

My voiced opinion on this, which I am entitled to in an open forum, is that I do not like the idea and do not want it. 

[Starhammer]

21 minutes ago, keyguardactive said:

My voiced opinion on this, which I am entitled to in an open forum, is that I do not like the idea and do not want it. 

That is the standard of dissent we should all strive for 🙂

[biostem]

The so-called "leveless enemies" should be used sparingly and only where appropriate;  Even the likes of Arachnos or Longbow wouldn't dedicate their toughest and most versatile agents, (read:  those that would even-con to higher level players), to what we deem as lower level zones.  It's not about whether these factions have members that are evenly-matched to us, it's just where you would or should run into them that's at odds, here...

[golstat2003]

No thanks. I don't like levelless. I don't like the suggestion and would not like it to be implemented here on Homecoming.