I always get a little concerned whenever a dev starts talking about event scaling though. If an event scales based on the active participation what is the incentive to bring your friends along, or for you to cry out for backup? Also (and I'm not sure if I have this right) I heard a dev say that your level is scaled to match the area you are in, so if a level 80 friend comes to join you in newbie town he is scaled down to match mobs and visa versa. I fully understand the reasoning, my experience has been ruined before by higher levels thinking they are giving me a hand when really they are just completing the game for me, but If that's the case then why even bother with a levelling system?
This is a very good point.
The simple answer is that there is no point to a steep leveling system in any game, I.E. GW1 which only had 20 levels that you could get in less than one day.
This was to put all players on an equal footing and reduce level based powercreep and high level characters ganking lower ones and other problems associated with high numbers of levels, it was a good idea, but then came all the traditional MMO players who started whinging and whining about GW only having 20 levels.
So in GW2 they decided to increase the levels up to 80 like in a lot of other MMOs 'because this is something that players really wanted', but to also keep the equality of players that GW1 had by using scaling. This is trying to create a system that appeals to both GW1 fans, and traditional MMO fans who think that the number of levels they have is somehow a big deal in whatever game they are playing.
They have already said that higher levels wont really do a lot in GW2, there will be a cap where abilities stop increasing probably around level 20 like in GW1, and then higher levels will simply unlock more traits and maybe give a little extra HP. They are simply just there for the traditional MMOers who want to see a big number of levels next to their character.
I'm gob-smacked by the level of anti social gamers in MMOs, the software usually doesn't even try to help, it really shouldn't be possible to kill steal and what-not.
Its stuff like this that ruins traditional MMOs for me, kill stealing, ganking, people being able to follow you around to stalk, high level morons going into lower level areas to kill everything and grief lowbies etc etc etc.
Just about every traditional MMO has some aspect of these things, and thats why I enjoyed GW1 so much, because I could simply play it without being bothered by anyone else. Also, I strongly hate MMO systems where you need to spend up to an hour making a group for every single quest that you might want to do (lol DDO). If I cant pick up a game, install it and play the content without having to wait for absolutely ages to find specific cleric, rogue, warrior and mage classes, then I'm not exactly getting much enjoyment out of my time wasted having to form groups.
I want to be able to go anywhere in the game and play anything without waiting for ages for other people to join my group, and GW1 gradually allowed this with heroes, improved henchmen, and now being able to use full teams of heroes instead of other players.
Making groups for PVE content (missions and vanquishes) in GW1 was literally impossible. There was hardly ever anyone around that wanted to join you, and when they did they were running their own funky or copy pasted wiki builds that didnt really synergise or work well with what you had or actually needed for the area you were doing.
Now I can simply load up on my mesmer, necro and ritualist heroes and go and play absolutely whatever I want without wasting any time in GW1, and never have to worry about making groups, being griefed or affected by anyone else in the game.
In the majority of MMOs, playing with others is never a good thing, it always turns out to be the strongest negative about the game.
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