The speed of gaining experience

ArchivedUser

In my opinion gaining experience slower is so much better. Longer adventure is what I am really looking for. I am done with rushing lvl cap - this is not good, so I have enough because it takes place in almost each new MMO game. It should takes months or even years of hard working.

I don't want to reach 15 lvl in one day (where 50 is maximum) - this is really bad and destroying the game.
Unfortunatelly nowadays the community is very lazy and games are creating in according to their needs. That is why I am carrying about Intrepid Studio decision about exp speed. The only thing i preciated is that they hate "end game" sentence and the game is constructed very realistic.

What do You think about it and how will it be looking like in Ashes of Creation?

ArchivedUser

Steven has only spoken briefly on this subject, but when he did he said the average time to get to max level (currently 50, but that isn't firm yet) is 45 days.  Now, he didn't state if that was 45 days played (ie in game hours), or 45 calendar days.  If it's days played, that comes to 1080 hours of gametime, which is fairly substantial.  He also stated that would be for the average player, which implies that some people could level faster, thus possibly being 45 calendar days.  

I understand there have been a lot of people calling for the game to take 6 months to a year to reach max level, but so far that doesn't look to at all be the mindset at intrepid.  Keep in mind though, that even if you level somewhat faster in Ashes than you may like, that it doesn't mean you won't have to work for it.

Currently quest givers are not going to be labeled with the ! mark, nor will there be any in game guidance for quests.  You have to find the quest givers yourself, say the right things to get a quest from them, and then figure out what to do and where to go on your own.  With this level of effort, I personally don't see faster leveling as being any less of an achievement than in any other game.

One thing I've noticed from a lot of folks that bring up long leveling times is they seem to want a fairly serious "grind" (this may or may not apply to you).  So when considering time to level, keep Steven's opinion on grinding in mind:

Steven via TheLazyPeon Q&A 2017-05-15 -

Is the game going to be leveling through quest or grind?

 No grind. Grind sucks. We hate the grind.

1. Need to disassociate the word “grind” with “time”
1. There’s a lot of things that involve time that can progress your character
2. Repetition won’t be a part of that progression
3. We want enough stuff to do in the game where you “can’t do them all”
4. Want people to see the fruits of their effort while they are doing things.
5. We want it to be fun, we don’t want it to be work
2. We’ve designed a lot of different paths for you to choose from

ArchivedUser

There simply isn't a levelling system that will make everyone happy there are some who want no levelling system at all, personally I think people are missing the point of MMO's that feel that way. There has to be some sort of progression power needs to be acquired through a journey of questing and experiences the trick as a game designer is to make that journey as fun and varied as possible so it in no way feels like a grind, not easily achieved.
Personally I hope it does take some time to level, I also hope that there will be so many things I want to do in game that levelling will just be something that happens and you barely notice, oh what when did I level lol. Quests to find organizations to join, crafting and gathering mats, nodes to help progress, caravans to guard/attack, houses, freeholds to build, ships to sail upon the seas, dungeons to explore, and lore to discover around the world of Verra.
At this point in time all we can take is Steve's word that there will be many things to keep us busy while we reach maximum level. But it does not matter how long or short the levelling experience is for some it will be too long and others it will be too short. I just want it to be fun and fingers crossed it will be.

ArchivedUser

Ok. It is good to hear from you that you divide my sentence.
The game is creating for us so I hope that developers know what we care about and it will be fine at all.
I hope it will take some time to level up (maybe not days or years but just few months to reach max lvl is OK like on old school Lineage II low rate servers - on Interlude and previous Chronicles).
I hope Steven is also that type of low rate player and is creating exactly such game for us.
For example modern games like Black Desert or Archeage are definitely too fast for me now.
I count on a completely different situation in our Ashes of Creation

ArchivedUser

I'm hoping for a game where leveling up is not what takes over and makes the game boring. 
With what we know so far it seems that we will have much to distract us and different paths to choose.   Ashes is not going to be leading us by the nose from quest to quest.  Nor is it going to stop us from exploring the land.  Ashes to me sounds like a great adventure to be taken with many discoveries to make.   The idea that the path I choose and the words I speak may change the dynamics of what I find down the road is more intriguing then making sure I have made the next level. 

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."    Robert Frost

ArchivedUser

A little off topic but even if you reach your player's level cap fairly quickly or not, it's not like the node you reside in will become max level anytime soon since supposedly it'll take ~6 months or so to get metropolis. So what i'm trying to say is even if you get to max level at a quick rate you didn't like you can at least contribute heavily to your nodes progression.

ArchivedUser

Lysander said:

A little off topic but even if you reach your player's level cap fairly quickly or not, it's not like the node you reside in will become max level anytime soon since supposedly it'll take ~6 months or so to get metropolis. So what i'm trying to say is even if you get to max level at a quick rate you didn't like you can at least contribute heavily to your nodes progression.

Right,  and with an ever changing world due to our influence there will always be something new

ArchivedUser

Time to level, is relative ofc. There are those who will play every minute of every waking day during release week to level. There are those who will take time off work and there will be those who don't decide when their annual leave is, but I understand what people are saying about rushing. Whatever pathways Intrepid set for reaching max level, there will always be those that rush it.  

ArchivedUser

I wonder if there's a way to design an mmo like this that has classes but NOT levels?  

You have to use skills and train them to get better but how to do it?


A leveling system provides a milestone that, once reached, allows advancement.  It's neat, compact, and easy to understand but the focus is on an experience bar rather that just playing the game and using the skills your class provides.

I do like the idea of roles and having classes; I'm not in favor of a classless system where you level up the skills you want ala carte.  Maybe there can be classes with limited choices of skills that make sense for each class and you can choose to improve your character from the list of class skills through use and training?

Maybe there's no class experience bar but you 'notice' when a skill no longer seems to be progressing and that's your cue to go train it.  

I recall in UO you had a maximum of 700 skill points to use and each skill could be a maximum of 100 so you could have 7 skills at 100 each or 14 skills at 50 each.

Just thinking about how character progression could be handled differently and still be fun, existing, and provide a sense of growth.

ArchivedUser

Long leveling can be great BUT...

ONLY IF leveling content has great amount of fun stuff to do and not only grinding mobs and doing dull quests.

Plenty of fun low level dungeons, low level PvP mini games, various low level events,  great story, etc.etc. If you have that, then leveling part of game can be awesome so that you really wish to immerse yourself fully.

But if leveling is just about questing and mob grinding, then who wants to spend ages to reach max level to start doing actual (fun) content. Then everyone will just rush max level, and it's understandable.

ArchivedUser

I think that vanilla WoW actually had a pretty good balance of time to get to max level and interesting content to do along the way. There were a few bumps (looking at you Barrens) but generally there was so much to do and so much choice that I never felt like I was grinding (that came much later with reputations and other things). 

There were a plethora of really interesting instances to do (still some of my favourites to this day), a lot of varied zones and a huge amount of quests in each zone that weren’t linear so there was real choice on how to progress through a zone. In short, it was a very enjoyable time in my MMO life.

I had absolutely no rush to get to max level. I just enjoyed the journey. I am really looking forward to recreating this in Ashes as I feel that the journey will be even more rewarding.

ArchivedUser

We are talking about 45 calender days for an average player. Let's assume an average player plays for 2-3 hours a day, that would mean it takes up to 135 hours until level cap.

A dedicated player can do that in 2 weeks, some will even push it in 1 week. Other than calculating how much time it would take to get a level, I hope they will also have other mechanics in place to somewhat slow done your leveling progress.

For instance, increase mob difficulty and require better gear to continue leveling efficiently. You can either keep grinding on a low level spot for 1% an hour or work on your gear and grind on a higher spot for 5% an hour.

ArchivedUser

@Taneroth
Great minds think alike, eh ? 

• https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/34273/slow-progression-please/p1

Agree 100% with the Thread's Title  your initial post 

ArchivedUser

I too, am an advocate for the levelling experience taking a while, it took me months to get to 60 in vanilla WoW. And I thoroughly enjoyed my adventure there.

ArchivedUser

@Eragale
Our point of view is the best but unfortunately there is too lazy community. For me I can even reach max lvl, improve statistics and skills in about year of hard work or even more.

ArchivedUser

FliP said:

We are talking about 45 calender days for an average player. Let's assume an average player plays for 2-3 hours a day, that would mean it takes up to 135 hours until level cap.

A dedicated player can do that in 2 weeks, some will even push it in 1 week. Other than calculating how much time it would take to get a level, I hope they will also have other mechanics in place to somewhat slow done your leveling progress.

For instance, increase mob difficulty and require better gear to continue leveling efficiently. You can either keep grinding on a low level spot for 1% an hour or work on your gear and grind on a higher spot for 5% an hour.

I think they may have a throttle already in place. We know that nodes will pop to 3 fairly quickly. 2-3 days seems to be the consensus. If higher level mobs are linked to node level as is most likely, there just won't be the exp farm for the speed grinders to hit cap as fast. If there is a mechanic to where you gain no exp if something is much lower than you, or much higher, that will also limit speed runners. A few weeks to node level 4. A couple months to 5, and around the 6 month mark to 6. Depends on what factors into that. If those times are all added together or separate estimates from server start. A node is starting to gain prominence and is de-leveled, making the race to metropolis and higher level content needed to effectively speed level even longer. A year down the line it would be possible to take a new character from start to cap fairly efficiently, but in the beginning it looks to be throttled nicely if this is the case. 

ArchivedUser

I think its important to have a good amount of time spent leveling, but in order to do this properly and not have people just rushing through content, it has to be meaningful. Not just grind quests, but storyline, sideline quests ect. In addition the BIGGEST problem I see with many games is that they may have good lvling quests or content but a lack of content in end game. There are three stages in most MMOs, the first is lvling, where you focus on reaching your highest lvl potential, then there is the early stage max level where you are transferring from trying to reach levels to improve your gear, flesh out professions or other side quests. The final stage is high end content when you're focusing on fine tuning gear set up or skills. All are important and all need to be in the game fleshed out in order for it to work well.

ArchivedUser

FliP said:

We are talking about 45 calender days for an average player. Let's assume an average player plays for 2-3 hours a day, that would mean it takes up to 135 hours until level cap.

A dedicated player can do that in 2 weeks, some will even push it in 1 week. Other than calculating how much time it would take to get a level, I hope they will also have other mechanics in place to somewhat slow done your leveling progress.

For instance, increase mob difficulty and require better gear to continue leveling efficiently. You can either keep grinding on a low level spot for 1% an hour or work on your gear and grind on a higher spot for 5% an hour.

Am I the only one hoping it's 45 days played, rather than 2-3 hours a day. Because I'd hate to hit level cap in like a week or two

ArchivedUser

I'm fine with very very very long leveling process ... at this condition : 

we can change both of our primary and secondary archetypes. I wont pass another year to level up char cause i dont like the gameplay of the first.

ArchivedUser

I think the gaining of skill experience should equal the natural story line.  So many times in other games, I find myself always behind in experience to the natural storyline or side quests available, and i'm  stuck grinding my way back to the appropriate levels in order to move on. So unless they have months worth of available story / side quests, i hope the leveling experience stays in line with them.

ArchivedUser

Faster is better to me, and there is no question that 45 days would be a grind.

I don't think it's unreasonable to state that a large function of this game's content centers around the PvP. If it takes people 45 days of real world time to get to the point then not only are you denying a faction of the playerbase enjoyment of the game until they have invested a substantial amount of time, but you're also instituting a game design that actively punishes anyone for not having achieved those higher levels because a level 50 can come along and gank a level 30 no problem.

Also, it makes it easier to create secondary characters who fill different roles. They can make it of course where you can freely switch roles on a single hero, but I've never particularly liked that mechanic. As much as I don't like grinding out levels I don't think it should be easy to just flip professions to fit whatever role you need. If you want a tank then you need to level up a tank character. Likewise if you want a healer or mage.

ArchivedUser

I'm  fine with slow experience gain as long as you aren't being gated out of content by your level. If levels only give you more ability and augmentation options then i think it's fine for leveling to take time. I don't want to be in a situation where the only thing i can realistically do for the first few months is grind for levels.

ArchivedUser

I'd love leveling speed like in Vanilla WoW.

Took a fair amount of time to reach max level, and with plenty of content to do while leveling, including great dungeons and level based PvP mini games.

And of course lots of world PvP (I played on PvP server).

ArchivedUser

Gothix said:

I'd love leveling speed like in Vanilla WoW.

Took a fair amount of time to reach max level, and with plenty of content to do while leveling, including great dungeons and level based PvP mini games.

And of course lots of world PvP (I played on PvP server).

Yes I thought vanilla wow had it about right took a good amount of time, and there were so many things to do, plus how long did it take to save for that first mount.

My hope is that it will take as long to level crafting/gathering skills as it does your combat level.

ArchivedUser

Affy said:

but you're also instituting a game design that actively punishes anyone for not having achieved those higher levels because a level 50 can come along and gank a level 30 no problem.

This is an assumption that I hope is proved wrong. I know that this is the norm these days, that someone of even 5 levels below max is just destroyed without chance by a max level player.

It didn't always used to be this way. In years gone by, in a number of games, a 10 level difference didn't necessarily mean the automatic destruction of the lower level player.

I would much prefer an incremental levelling increase of power over the exponential that seems to have become popular in modern MMO gaming.

If this is implemented wisely then the rush that everyone has to get to max is lessened and people become more than happy for horizontal progression and are more than happy to take their time to enjoy the levelling experience.

Even in a game as broken as Warhammer Online, you could be useful at many different levels below max. We often rolled around in RvR zones with characters well below max level and they had heaps of fun.

So balance can be achieved. Of course over time this starts to blow out a little as gear improves and two years down the track people are looking for another round of improvements. But we are two years from release, let's worry about two years after release in two years

ArchivedUser

When I have played MMORPG's in the past, it feels like getting to max level to enjoy the full of the game is so important.  In AoC I am hoping that there will be enough to enjoy that you don't feel the need to rush it.  Or enough spread out enough where the high level players still get plenty to keep them busy.