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dfsgbh
Meowsed
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
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Easy at first gradually harder and towards the end xp earning should be slow.
However, Ashes is an exception in this specific regard, and I think it not only fits in perfectly, but I think it would be kind of required.
My expected time frame before we see the first max level character is about a month.
Considering many games take only 2 or 3 days to reach max level, if it takes 30 before the more dedicated players reach it, that should be considered a long time.
How many hours to max level: over a month, even for hard core players
New Abilities: something new to look forward to every level
Features/content introduced at levels: flexible on this; I just want enough info before the game releases to plan my race and class
Guided levelling: only for the basics, then players can figure out advanced stuff
Capping speed-levelling: absolutely not - putting in extra effort to progress should never be punished or capped; players should still be able to progress with lower-level content, even if it takes a bit longer
PvP levelling: xp for caravans, less xp for arenas so people don't just play arenas all day
Low-level characters will be involved with nodes simply be doing stuff in the world. Low-level gathering and crafting will be a part of the economy where tiered crafting is concerned.
Max level: 50
Time invested: 45 days
They didn't say. When Steven said around 45 days he followed up by quickly saying he didn't want to give a number.
I'm going to lean toward thinking they don't want anyone hitting 50 before ~45 days, so it accounts for hard core players. Still a wild guess at this stage.
Aside from pacing, there are 3 core elements I look for in all RPG levelling systems:
1. Character progression - This kind of speaks for itself, you want your character to feel stronger or learn new skills as it levels up. Note it's not just about the numbers here, but how it feels to play.
2. Story progression - This can come in many forms but I like to see a bit of a narrative as I make my way through the levels.
3. Learning. This is the part where a lot of mmorpgs fail, in that they don't adequately teach you how to play the game. If you reached level cap and never once had to use your CC abilities, the game has failed. If you reached level cap and weren't told about key game mechanics that you'll need to know, the game has failed.
Now the humorous part of that is is going to take 45 days of semi-regular play (4 hours a night) or is it going to take 45 DAYS aka 1,080 hours. That we do not know and make for some good discussion, like you've already seen in this thread.
We do know that if you aren't going to higher level nodes then leveling is going to take longer, as the higher level nodes will have the higher level ranges of creatures, quests, etc, but in the most recent live stream we also heard that location matters as well, in that a Node near the starting area won't have the same level diversity of creatures that a node in the middle of the map will have.
When you have high number scaling in a MMO, you are almost forcing players to sprint to max level so they can reach "end-game." Not only are you overly rewarded in power for leveling, any rewards given to you is trivialized and almost meaningless as you will probably replace it was a random quest item you get at a higher level. It's not really smart to stop leveling at 25 to focus on getting gear as i will replace any gear i get relatively quickly again once i start leveling.
It's always smarter to wait until i'm max level before progressing my character in other ways because of how much you get for just getting to that level.
In addition to what i said, when leveling has crazy scaling, low level characters can't contribute in the content high level characters are doing and high level characters don't get anything from doing low level content because you don't want them power farming it. I don't like because it means my low level friends can't join me in what i'm doing and I don't get anything for joining them. If there isn't level equalization, the content is so easy it becomes boring.
I'm at the point where i don't see why it needs to be this way, especially in ashes where very little things bind. If my group wants to drag a low level friend through harder content and give loot, then why does it matter. Why does there level need to gate them out of it? I could do the content without them and just give them the loot, why not let me bring them around. If you want to gate people out of story related content then cool, gate them out by where they are in the story quest, not their level.
Sorry, kind of passionate about this one. The industry went one direction with this and I've played so many, i don't why it was needed. One shoting low level content gets old fast... at least for me.
I could agree with alot of your points but this is always an immersion shatterer for me. How is it i can be one of the heroes of the world, battled gods and demons, and jimmy apple theif back at the supersmile farms can fight me and i cant just paste him in a swing. Hopefully they find a happy medium of keeping progression impactful and feeling like you've made progress, and keeping lower level content longer lived.
But do we really need to be dragonball z characters?
Why do you need to be able to kill any life form under our level with one shot? If something stabs you, you should take some damage.
Your level should still give you a decent advantage over little jimmy apples as you have more and stronger abilities as well as having some stronger attributes. You should also have better gear then him so there shouldn't be much of a chance but if you let little jimmy come up and stab you, you still will take some damage. In one on one combat, little jimmy shouldn't stand a chance but if he brings a bunch of friends, then you might have to try and show off some of those fancy skills you have learned, instead of just breathing on them.
It sounds like hard-core players will want to go far away from the starting zones to find higher-level content to farm, so they can get ahead before nodes advance to the later stages. But perhaps they will still be limited by a lack of civilization in those areas. If the early node development happens primarily around starting zones, and everyone is dependent on them for gear, repairs, and quests to a degree, then it might still limit players who venture far away to find higher-level content in more remote areas of the map.
Like I think skill points should be handed out every level. And by default you only have 2 or 3 options of what you put those points into (standard primary class skill trees). But you can get access to your secondary class and other skill trees by doing specific content. I like the idea that you can earn lots of different abilities and augments to play with from various quests/progression systems around the world. (I know that they want to give some augment rewards via node/guild/faction progression, so who's to say where else you might discover new augments.) So basically you can work to broaden you skills, by actually broadening the content you participate in.
But of course, all the vertical progression would be separate, so you don't even need to unlock your secondary class if you'd rather just get to max level ASAP and focus on one type of content, especially if you're happy with your primary class as-is. If you just want to be the strongest mage with the biggest fireballs, that's fine.
There are a few things we DO know about augments ;D :
1. Each ability/spell will have around 7 possible augmentations (1Racial, 1religious, 1social and 4class)
2. Each class offers a different "school" of augments: Mage gives elemental damage and teleportation for example
3. By choosing to use the same class as a secondary, you can double down on the spell.
4. There are two ways of advancing spells/abilities: wide or tall
5. PLayers recieve skillpoints as they level (it is not possible to max all skilltrees)
Example:
Charge from the FIghter class turns into a smallscale teleport to the target if you go with a secondary mage class.
I actually wouldn't mind them being available late and relatively hard to obtain - level 30 or 40 maybe. I'd love for my class to feel different and stronger as I hit some of the higher levels and I think the sub class is going to provide some of that.
It's good to know that the have preliminary plans for all that. I guess I'm just hoping for one more category of augments that come from open-world content rather than character/faction progression. I'm sure it would be plenty fun just doing dungeons and quests for exp to progress your skills, but I like having those "get a new ability" quests after you reach the prerequisite level.
I personally hope quests play very little role in getting experience. In fact, I'd say quests should be focused solely on guiding players to find the content they should be hunting to gain experience, and maybe rewarding players with fantastic loot. 100% of the experience should come from actually fighting monsters and, possibly, undertaking other aspects of that player's archetype (rogues gain experience for roguey things like stealth attacks and picking locks, etc.).
As for time, I don't really get the reason for making players work their way through 50+ levels just to get to "end game" content. Part of the weakness of "tall" advancement systems is that everyone wants the end game content more than they want the development content. There's no real point to it and it just gunks up the system and fosters elitist mentalities, and makes the game more and more difficult to enjoy for those starting later and later after release.
I love PvP, but only when I have a chance at winning and succeeding. Until I hit the cap level where all players are presumably equal, it's a shit show. The more sensitive the level difference, the worse PvP is in the early-mid games. Either players are too easy or you don't have a shot in hell of beating them one on one.
So "time to take to max level", in a pvp game, depends on whether it's a hardcore tall advancement system (EQ, DAoC, damn near every other MMO ever made because they're ALL based on D&D's progression systems). If the level differences are fairly minimal (a new ability, less then 5HP/Energy difference, etc), then it wouldn't be much of an issue to have a very slow progression where it takes 3-6 months to reach max level. However, if the differences between each level are significant, may as well make it rather quick (like, a 50 level tutorial quick), and get everyone into the fun content fast.
Most games seem to do one of two things once you hit "max level". Either they add a new advancement system that's more horizontal than vertical and allows you to expand your character further without ridiculously overpowering you (imo, how you should have advanced in the first place), or they just tack on more and more levels and allow the progression to grow wildly out of control.
I'd also like to add that you should gain experience in PvP for both killing and dying. Still tack on the exp debt for losing, but also gain a percentage of what your slayer gains. So if someone kills you and gets 1000exp, you get 500exp. If you set the rules so that you are worth more experience the more PvP kills you've scored, you are then awarded with more experience for surviving longer. Add an additional penalty to corruption where corrupt players do NOT get any experience when they're killed in PvP. Scale the experience gained from killing others according to the level differences as appropriate, give a bonus to that experience because they're players, and use the number of kills you've made (in a single life) as a multiplier for the experience someone gets for killing you.
So a player kills 5 people, gets roughly 1k per person, and is slain by someone. The person who kills them gains 1k x5 for a total of 5k from one kill. Each of the players the first guy killed gain 500xp for their trouble (failure is also a learning opportunity after all).
IMO though, the progression system should be a wide system. Something that draws influence from table top games like the older White Wolf games (Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf: Apocalypse, etc.). Health never raises, a gun is as lethal to a Rank 5 Get of Fenris as it is to a Rank 1 Children of Gaia. However, your survive-ability advances because your experience can be used to raise things like your strength and stamina, as well as dexterity and skills like dodge that allow you to avoid damage.
A wide progression system solves many of the problems. It takes away the drive towards "end game" content, allows players to take on a plethora of advancements, is much slower and smoother in advancement, but still gives players a sense of growth and accomplishment.
My 2 cents.
I'd also like to see more xp allocated for performing class-specific tasks. Maybe not for using attacks, but specific to quests: clerics healing NPCs for more xp than other classes acquiring a healing potion, rangers getting more xp to track a fugitive than other classes asking 15 NPCs for clues, etc.
When the quest is fetch X or kill Y and the NPC tells you exactly what to do and how to do it, the xp should be low. When the quest is long/epic and involves the player exploring and/or figuring things out on their own, then I'd want it to give a good amount of xp. Really curious to see what kind of mix of quests we'll get.
I would expect to see augments eventually come from many different sources.
As Intrepid add content post launch, it will likely be the easiest way to give players "new" abilities.
In regards to accessing content, I think the 1-cap experience should just be to get you familiar with the map, your class, and mechanics in the game. A combination of Archeage and Blade & Soul's is ideal to me. I think both at least concept wise do a good job. Archeage moreso with integrating mechanics and the map (at least for legacy) and Blade & Soul for teaching you your class. Maintain a questline that teaches you basic combos and tips for your class skills every few levels.
I think content should be mainly focused on end-game. Just dungeons and mobs that get you familiar with the game's mechanics prior to end-game. I'd say some content for fresh cap players should be separate from true end-game content that way the game can always be experienced and enjoyable even following launch for new players.
Ashes isn’t going to have an endgame like that, and it most definitely will not allow a player to hit level cap by day 3.
Pushing players into a state of “max level or it’s worthless” is a very easy way to make levels 1-49 entirely pointless, just wasted time
Well, since there isn't an 'end-game', we don't have to rush to it. Why would you need to get to max level in a short time? Do you like bingeing for a month, then going somewhere else until more content is put in? I hope that people will play for years in this game.
Why not have a nice even progression where it takes a while to get to the max and have fun on the way? I played 1 character who got to max quickly, and another that never did get to max over the course of years. I had just as much fun with the lower level as the max. Just played them differently.
1. This way of thinking is the reason for WoW's downfall. You should try to put at least 30% of the game content into the leveling phase.
2. 1 DAY FOR MAX LEVEL?!? No matter your degree of experience, that should never be the case. What i hope is that it will take 45 full real life days to reach max level. That would show the dedication of everyone that managed to achieve it.
3. If a game needs to rely on its max level content to stay relevant, then tht means that it will fail.
4. Regarding the "main" and "side" quests with grind zones... just no. Ashes should not be rushed. It is all about the experience of people playing together to advance their node. To attack their neighbours and subjugate or destroy them, not about rushing to max level, ignoring all the story and history just to sit around and do nothing....
As someone that plays all games at the end game (even when taking the claims Ashes won't have an end game, I'll still be playing it's end game), I have to agree - other than the part about 45 actual days to level to max level (I personally think 100 hours is about right).
If it is possible to level up to max in a day, all that means is you will have a lot of players at max level that literally have no idea how their class works. This was seen a lot in Archeage, and is one of only really two reasons why 90% of players used cookie cutter builds in that game - if you haven't had time to learn your class, but you suddenly find yourself at max level and need a build, it is the only real option you have.
Fortunately, since Ashes will probably need nodes to be leveled up in order for players to be able to level up, those hardcore players will be slowed down to a fairly pedestrian speed of leveling up.
They will get to as high a level as the content reasonably allows, and will then have to assist in leveling up the node. While doing this, the players around them that didn't rush to level up as fast as they could will then be slowly catching up to them in level, as the tasks being completed will give the lower level players experience, but not the higher level players.
Hopefully, by the time the next stage of the node is unlocked, opening up a new tier of higher level content, the people that didn't just rush out to get as much XP as possible, as fast as possible, should have caught up in levels.
I predict that the people that get to max level first are the people that organize a large community of people to level up a node together, and who don't have any nearby competition slowing them down.
Rather than being a few people rushing for max level, if will be a few hundred people rushing to level a node.
As far as questing goes. So far I like ESO.
In my oppinion besides legendary items (which can only be obtained by killing a worldboss or reaching an artisan level uncompared to others), gear should not be levelrestricted, but a matter of dedication.
Because combat is not pure actioncombat (and therefore not only a matter of skill) though, it will be impossible for underleveled characters to make it to certain secrets in the game.
Of course the dungeons should not be possible to be cleared at a too low level and maybe even without a group, so certain items will be softcapped due to the difficulty.
But when a solo player makes it to the top of a mountain, which is hard to climb and needs dedication to be mastered, he/she should be rewarded accordingly.
And most importantly: legendary means legendary! It is by definition unique and can only exist once per server!
Leveling should be some sort of linear in my oppinion. Of course not to the extend, where lvl 1 to lvl 2 takes the same time as lvl 49 to lvl 50, but it should not be too drastically.
I would say lvl 1 -> 2 should take about 20 minutes (yes I know it's very long, compared to other games), and then it increases to about 1 real day at effective leveling.
So (this is just a wild guess, maybe someone wants to do the math) about 3% growth per levelup. But as long as the exploration and venturism is being rewarded accordingly to the put in dedication, I really don't mind if it takes much longer.
Keep in mind this timeframe is without any sideactivities like roleplaying or designing the freehold.
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So be great if we did not have to kill so many mobs. Really think it is more about repititious content. I was having fun leveling my tank throgh dungeouns but I had a steady stream of dungeouns to keep me busy. So number of hours not to important. If you play a game for 3 hours and find yourself doing the same thing over and over agind probably going to be real tedious. But if you have a variety of content to go through then most likely not as boring.