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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Especially since they're using a primary and secondary class system, where the secondary class uses an augment system to abilities. There's also going to be possible "augments" to abilities through many other avenues, such as: crafting, religion, politics, economics, guild-based systems (like a thieves' guild), mercenary system, exploration, and possibly others!
With an "augment" type system, that basically means the "leveling" process can be a fairly low number system, like how most dungeons & dragons campaigns and classes max out around level 20 before it gets wildly complicated or "epic".
A "leveling" system could be straight experience, skill based, or many other forms, but can always be represented by a number system - but it doesn't have to be!
However, Steven did make another mention to a stat-based system, which implies that there will be someway to add to those stats through leveling in some fashion, so... who knows?!
It's not a thing a would like to see.
In a case like that, with slowly but constantly increased level cap you would have the highest level character always going to the newest area to do the levels and the quests and all the stuff. They would rarely come back to starting areas because they wouldn't need to, so, either you have a constant flow of new characters, either lower tier areas will depopulate and the only really populated ones will be the newest released from time to time, thus actually limiting to one map the extent of your game-world.
Of course all areas would have "some" population, but there will be areas in which finding someone to group with will be hard. This, for a MMO, is a bad thing in itslef, it bores players that can't do certain too difficult to solo content or ar limited to grinding alone and they may leave the game.
Imho, would be better to have either larger maps (say level 1-20, 20-40), and/or some "backquesting" . The former would make so that you would more likely find someone near your level or at least on your same map to find help or group or do pvp with, or anything else; the latter would make so that you, as a high level character would not limit your game-world to the newest map alone. Devs could also devise quest where high level players and low level one can participate together in particular ways.
Of course expansions are welcomed and, ok, let's say that they release new levels from time to time but the quest system ,expecially in an ever changing world as AoC promises, at that point should need you to play all the world, always, whatever level you may be.
Or, say, in the tranquil, peaceful lake near a town in the 10-20 map appears a kraken level 50 wreaking havoc all around., and the only one that can save those poor chaps is you, badass full geared, end-gamer that got there just in time.
I would MUCH prefer alternate leveling systems where, once you reach lvl X, you then have a system in place to add small abilities as you progressed. DAoC and ESO are good examples of how to accomplish this.
The No zones, and no set-lvl cap. Instead, I actually would admire that I earn my Next levels as opposed to getting them so early.
More importantly, I would like a slight challenge in PvE; the Enemy NPCs A.I. is smarter & Awareness-Level is higher to ... but still being unique.
But IF a level cap were to be set ... after some thought, I think a Level Cap of 250 - 400 would be nice Xp
If they open a new area because levels increased vs not opening a new area because they already had it in place for when the levels increase... How does this affect the lower level areas? Either way the lower level areas will still be lower level areas and the higher level characters will still be higher level characters. For questing, I definitely think it should pull us all back to the roots of when we were lower.
Maybe we are on different pages for how exp and level gaining will be achieved?
Now that I think about it, I may recall that the area where the node is may scale in level as for what monsters are concerned? They said the the threats to the city will increase in power as much as it will do the node itself.
So maybe my assumptions on end-game maps being far away from the the starting point, like in DAoC or many other games, are simply wrong.
But if mobs' difficulty increases as the node becomes more powerful must then I assume that low level players won't be much around that node?
I'm getting a little bit confused on how the maps will be displaced around the world in terms of difficulty. If there will be no gradual increase in map's difficulty then the level cap gradual increase is totally fine. This way every map will be used by high and low level players alike, just in different ways.
To answer your question, it will affect low level areas because only low level characters will populate them and, as gaining a new level will be increasingly difficult and long, then you will see the lowest level areas populated only if new characters will be constantly created by new players:
- first map, levels 1-10, you take a few hours to reach level 10, you stay in that map for those few hours
- second map, levels 11-20, you take a few days to reach level 20, you stay in that map for those few days
- third map, levels 21-30, you take a few weeks to reach level 30, you stay in that map for those few weeks.
[...]
So, if the game gets a constant flow of new subscribers or if many players reroll a new character, then fine, you can increase the level cap as much as you want, low level areas will still be populated, but if it is otherwise, you'll see maps increasingly populated in proportion with their difficulty. The harder a map is, the longer you take to go past it, the cramped it will be iwth players trying to do so.
In Dark Age of Camelot, I played as a casual and I was fairly low level. I had difficulties in finding people to group with and do dungeons because the majority of them where in the end game maps doing PvP.
To leave some semblance of balance, between classes, abilities, PvP & PvE
a level cap is needed. Also in order to make the Corruption system more feasible it is totally necessary to have a level cap. Otherwise what good would the corruption do as a deterrent to ganking unflagged people? If a ganker could become "god like" with a super high skill level that average players can't reach when they earned corruption it wouldn't mean a thing. Their levels may lower but to what extent especially if they were to have god like skills?
HeavyTengu stated: "I believe ranging system like one i mentioned as a draft, or anything similar would give players much more feeling of accomplishment, would feel more rewarding and powerful and easier for devs to section out gameplay per range of the players."
The system he spoke of above in the thread might be ok in a general MMORPG but in a game such as Ashes where the actions of PvP and PvE together forge an ever changing world, it would not work. This game is more then just Dungeon raids or planned PvP arena events. Those are sidelines not the over all game play.
Guilds will always have their own system to determine who will be on their "honor" teams.
I'm actually quite sad to see there probably will be a level 50 cap. I'm one of those players who's in it for the progression. What makes the game fun is being able to get stronger. If I cannot get stronger, the game is no longer fun.
If I could do things my way I would do something crazy like a 1000 cap where anything beyond 100 is something most players will never reach because it takes years. https://imgur.com/VPLQyGZ (y-axis being xp needed) (and honestly it doesn't even have to be levels, as long as there's a way I can make either stats or abilities of my characters stronger without restrictions I'm happy).
One could then balance it out by having a player lose
Current Level × 0.1 - 10
levels when dying. Which would mean you're not losing anything upon death with level 100 and below. Level 110 you'd lose 1 level. If you're level 500 you'd lose 40 levels.
I get that developers want to have a cap in order to make PvP "fair" and raids "balanced", but shouldn't this really be up to each player? If I want to spend half my life making a character as strong as it possibly could be so I can wipe out an entire guild by myself at the snap of my fingers, shouldn't that be up to me? I want to see silly powerful black hole spells that are almost impossible to learn, but can delete a boss from existence in seconds. Okay, maybe I've just been watching too much anime and I'm the only person on the planet that likes the thought of this..
There is of course the problem of grinding. Grining mobs a billion levels lower than you for a month just to gain one level might not be as fun, so some sort of alternative way to train for experience must be added. Probably the most logical solution is having PvP against similar leveled players grant lots of experience.
I also think different classes should have different rates of progression. To me, it makes sense to have a fighter gain experience faster than a magician, while the magician may have more powerful abilities on higher levels.
#unpopularopinion
... likely " one of those players " who wants to speedrun through everything then complain how there's nothing to do later ...
It's not impossible to balance a game with this kind of system. While I did study game development for a while, I am by no means professional or experienced in the matter.. But all you need is some good ideas and creative thinking. "Impossible" is the worst enemy of a creator.
No quests or raids difficult enough for some players? Create some exclusively for level X+ leveled players. Too many people with high level? Set the experience gain from mobs, bosses and players to exponential decay. A level 1 player would get 10,000 exp from killing a raid boss for Lv50+ and 1,000 for killing a level 10 player. A level 100 player would get 100 exp from killing a raid boss for Lv50+ and 1 exp for killing a level 10 player. A level 100 player would get 100 exp for killing another level 100 player and level decrease upon death is a thing, which would encourage high-leveled players to fight each other if they want to gain more experience instead of raiding overleveled. For example.
Simple enough concept, as you earn XP, you earn more Skill points. You improve your Skills by leveling up the Skill Trees you have chosen. Each skill had a range from 1 to 100. When you hit 100 in it, you were considered a GM in that profession.
In BDO PvP, I've seen one person that was unable to be brought down by 15-20 other players strictly because of being higher leveled and out gearing them.
That's Crap with a capital "C". No one player should every be so powerful that they can stand there and let a dozen other players attack them without taking damage.
Raph Koster, one of the UO (and SWG) devs made a comment something like "Even a horde of rabbits can be deadly if there's enough of them". Death by 1,000 tiny cuts and all that.
Let play skill figure into it, but please don't let some ridiculous, non hard capped level system turn someone into a demi-god just because they have no life and can play the game 16 hours a day, every day.
In a normal WoW-like MMO you gain levels and items by progressing through content. Both level and gear increases your power level. Level usually increases your stats and allows you to unlock new content be it either new zone, skills, talents etc.
Usually this system leads to a heavy focus on so called endgame content or in other words the game starts at the max level any anythingelse is obscure and irrelevant unless things such as scaling are introduced.
As I have no idea how the character progressing in AoC looks like I will simply say that generally levels create more problems than they solve.