Strong Mobs vs Numerous Mobs.

#1 - Sept. 12, 2013, 4:32 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Those the played dungeons and LF will notice that the mobs there have much superior stats when compared to the players. It is common for these mobs to have 20 times the health and 4 times the damage of a regular player.

Let’s call these “Strong Mobs”.

Back in the normal world, when we were leveling up our character, the world was filled with mobs that had similar stats as the player. They are only difficult when they outnumber the player.

Let’s call these “Numerous Mobs”.

I feel that right now the game is focus way too much on Strong Mobs, and not enough on Numerous Mobs.

Now there is good reason for that. Strong Mobs produces less lag (less mobs on the screen).

However when overused, every single fight becomes a DPS test. The test is just to see how fast the players can burn that hugh hp pool of the mob to zero. And there is a lack of epicness, since at the end of the day only ONE mob went down.

And worst of all, the stats of the mob are no longer relevant to the players’ stats. When overused, the players would feel that their character is inferior because the mobs are so strong. Think about it. When a “regular” mob have 20 times the health and 4 times the damage, the player can only win by being smarter than the dumb AI. Yes of course the player would still win. But the fight is not really a “fair” fight. The player starts questioning what kind of training and drugs those mobs got, since even their no name minions have better stats than our hero. Hope this make sense.

Now don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly fine to have mobs that have better stats than the players. But not the no name minions!

I think the game should find a balance in the fights, between Strong Mobs and Numerous Mobs. I played this game called Super Robot Wars. What they did was to have many Numerous Mobs as cannon folders. Those mobs have similar stats as the players, and are just there to be easily killed. The Strong Mobs at the back is the real challenge.

For example, let’s say a Scarlet Invasion fight usually have 20 Strong Mobs. Why not replace that with 15 Strong Mobs and 60 Numerous Mobs? This will be a good balance between challenge and an epic fight. The players would be killing 75 mobs instead of only 20.

#23 - Sept. 12, 2013, 10:36 p.m.
Blizzard Post

We initially launched the game with two types of scaling:

  • monsters get stronger
  • monsters get more numerous

Since then we have have adjust various events to utilize a scaling system that mixes the two. You’ve seen this in action when you start seeing champions and veterans popping up as more players show up. While I certainly feel that this approach is effective, I appreciate you sharing all of your comments and especially the examples. I agree that facing down an army one-shotting health bags doesn’t make one feel very powerful.

The intent of scaling isn’t necessarily to make content harder, it’s to keep it relatively the same difficulty no matter how many players appear.