How about scaling the difficulty based on character level?

Since each area is instanced, shouldn't the opponents be scaled to match the level of characters?

This would make going back to the begining and redoing the Missions and/or the Explorable Areas a valid idea.

Effectively this would double the game size.
It would also allow the addition of a difficulty level to the game. Setting an "effective level" to scale opponents against.

i have already tried to post this idea multiple times....in several variations too...

one was this exact same thing, another was to say that the mob lvl would depend on the amounf of players in your party, an the last was to mix em both saying it would depend on the TOTAL lvl of the entire party combined (so you need teamwork)

Doesn't make it any less of a good idea.

This makes sense in a game where levels are the primary goal, you want the game to stay fun. But most of your time spent on pve content is spent at lvl 20, and most of the game is simply balanced around that. A level 20 character is both very average and as strong as you can get, and its cool that some monsters are harder or easier than others. The game would be lame if they were all of a similar difficulty.

This would also annoy those of us who go back to do missed quests and expect a nice relaxing time of it. Really, being level 20 and going solo in the low level zones is still a little more difficult then being the right level with a party, assuming you don't have some sorta elite farming build.

I like the idea, and I already know of lots of RPGs that do something like this. But what would happen if one player was level 20, one was level 3? If the monsters were scaled to level 20, way too hard, level 3, way too easy. Level 10, the level 20 could still easily beat them.

Where do I sign?

Reaching level 20 is quite easy to do. As far as replayability is concerned, most of the PvE content is currently wasted because there is no point in going back to Maguuma, Kryta or Ascalon once you've ascended (barring farming). Crappy opponents, no drops, no XP, no challenge, no skill to capture... Wasting 5 regions out of 8 is unfortunate.

After all, why wouldn't Charrs be able to be as strong as Stone Summit? They invaded Orr and caused its destruction. I trust there are level24 Charrs hiding somewhere. Please let them frighten us again...

I'd go even further than Greentongue's difficulty scaling. Not only could the missions / explorables be tougher, but using high level characters could also unlock higher level content such as new quests with better rewards, capturable elites in Ascalon...

Scaling the difficulty is rather easy to do. Compute the average level of the party. If it's higher than the area's 'standard party level', the difficulty starts increasing. Use a difficulty setting which linearly increases the monsters' number, level, attributes, base armor & damage. Then optionally use a nonlinear setting to make monsters use different skills, or simply to have access to elites if the party level is high enough.

That is a choice the players have made. If a level 3 wishes to party with a level 20 they need to expect things to be difficult.

The level 20 will have their hands full trying to keep the level 3 alive. A different type of challange.