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Making levelling interesting for veteran players
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'm sure I'm not alone here when I say that as a veteran mmorpg player I find levelling new characters very easy and very tedious. I honestly can't remember the last time an mmo challenged me while levelling and typically the only thing that drives me through it is the thought of end-game content or an engaging story. This is understandable because developers need to cater the levelling to brand new players. Make the levelling too hard and you'll drive away newer players and the playerbase will dry up.
In single player games you often have various difficulty settings to cater to lots of different players. This is great but doesn't translate well to mmorpgs where you could have a veteran and a newbie questing in the same area. You can't just increase the stats of the mobs for the veteran player because then the newbie would struggle. You could decrease the stats of the veteran but this would cause issues of scaling at end-game, plus this wouldn't necessarily make the game harder but just the levelling to take longer.
This is the other problem. You can't just alter the base stats and expect that alone to engage players. Anyone who has played WoW Vanilla/Classic will tell you just how boring it is. It's not even that it's harder, it just takes a lot longer to kill anything and level up. I don't know about anyone else but I'd love to see mobs that force me to use my entire toolkit. The game gives me CC? Make me use it. The game gives me interrupts? Make me use them. Of course if they added these mechanics in, new players would struggle. You could potentially make it so that the mobs only use more advanced tactics on veteran players but what happens when a veteran player groups up with a newbie?
Has anyone got any ideas on how to make levelling engaging for veteran players? Or is it just something we have to put up with?
In single player games you often have various difficulty settings to cater to lots of different players. This is great but doesn't translate well to mmorpgs where you could have a veteran and a newbie questing in the same area. You can't just increase the stats of the mobs for the veteran player because then the newbie would struggle. You could decrease the stats of the veteran but this would cause issues of scaling at end-game, plus this wouldn't necessarily make the game harder but just the levelling to take longer.
This is the other problem. You can't just alter the base stats and expect that alone to engage players. Anyone who has played WoW Vanilla/Classic will tell you just how boring it is. It's not even that it's harder, it just takes a lot longer to kill anything and level up. I don't know about anyone else but I'd love to see mobs that force me to use my entire toolkit. The game gives me CC? Make me use it. The game gives me interrupts? Make me use them. Of course if they added these mechanics in, new players would struggle. You could potentially make it so that the mobs only use more advanced tactics on veteran players but what happens when a veteran player groups up with a newbie?
Has anyone got any ideas on how to make levelling engaging for veteran players? Or is it just something we have to put up with?
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This is easily prevented in Ashes by choosing to level in another totally different node and then just transfer to your main node. Dont forget: all nodes will be like a starting zone and an endgame zone wrapped in one ;D
It's not even about levelling alts but levelling in general. For most veteran players there is no challenge in levelling so unless you are invested in the story you are just trying to get through it as fast as possible to reach max level.
The thing is, that most people figure out how they play their class during the levelig process (which i can imagine being even more so with Ashes having all the augmentations involved).
That means, that you cant just skip it all if you already have a character of another class for example.
Leveling will always be a thing that you will have to deal with, and to be honest, i love the leveling phase in mmorpgs. ;D
What do you mean by "high skill floor abilities"?
With a high skill floor, a build is almost worthless unless you are a skilled player. The "floor" or base skill level needed to play the build is higher than for other builds, but it pays off by having a higher ceiling as well.
That is the theory yes, but it very rarely happens in practice. You aren't going to learn how to use a combat system unless you face opponents that force you to use that system. BDO is a classic example. I levelled from 1-50 in that game just by spamming my left mouse click. I didn't read any of the class abilities or learn any of the combos. Why? Because I never needed to. Why waste time learning and using fancy combos when it's far more efficient just spamming 1 ability all the time?
BDO isn't alone here either. When was the last time you needed to use CC while levelling? You don't. Yes you can but there's really no benefit to doing so.
Now, Intrepid has said they have some plans to make the leveling interesting, and we won't be blitzing to max level in a week, the goal is roughly 45 days for max level.
I would argue that even with a good story or non-grinding levelling, if the combat doesn't engage you as a player it's pointless. I actually really enjoyed the storylines of BDO, B&S and TERA but their combat ruined it for me.
A lot of the Ashes sceptics have one common concern - the combat. They want the combat to be engaging, but what a lot of them don't understand is that combat is a 2-way street. Not only do you need to make the character combat interesting, but you need to have interesting opponents to use it on.
I hope their writers are going to immerse us in a very interesting lore driven campaign to make leveling exciting. Based on my name some will get this reference but I'd love if they could take story-telling like in great RPGs, such as Baldur's Gate, and apply that to AoC. Give us this long but engaging story that makes the player want to read or listen (if they add that) to the NPCs. I rarely stop to read the text boxes because the overall story I have never truly cared for in an mmo but I'd be willing to if it was interesting.
Please let me level from PvPing. I would be so happy if IS found a way to make PvP almost as effective, if not equally effective, way to level in the game. Caravans, guild wars, battlegrounds, whatever. I'll grind played players all day and happily instead of mobs or quests.
I think the first step to making leveling interesting is to remove it as a requirement for most content so players have more freedom in choosing what they want to do when they play. If this is done, i think you have a little more freedom to make the experience interesting as players are no longer forced to grind through it to get to your current content.
Well yes but now you have shifted from "leveling" to "combat"
And the combat being immersive is a whole different issue.
This is one really good option and maybe there could be race, class or religion specific storylines and campaigns which would offer players variations during their journey and totally new experiences when leveling alts.
Combat makes up a large portion of the levelling process in many mmorpgs, and usually when a game has a rubbish levelling experience it's down to the combat, not the story or the side activities.
Now that I would certainly enjoy, as long as the increased difficulty had suitable rewards attached to it. Runescape does this very well with it's quests which are all rating in terms of length and difficulty and of course the longer and/or harder quests offer much more exp than the easier quests do.
This is another good idea. There could also be PvP quests which flags the players as combatants and that way enables PvP encounters and promote palyers to participate more to open world PvP.
Runescape is a good example here and I remember how satisfied it was finally accomplish those long questlines. On top of that some quests could be related to professions so players could level their artisan skills at the same time when leveling up the character. This would also offer a different kind of path from basic combat oriented leveling and could be at least nice variability if nothing else. Also those players who focus more on lifeskills would be most likely pleased.
The combat is fun and interesting, the different amount of builds and play styles you can do is nice change of pace.
The game is a bit overwhelming at first and still is to me. I'm not rushing to 50 I'm taking my time and I'm enjoying the journey immensely.
If AOC can make it fun and entertaining while I explore the world, they will have me for the life of the game.
This is the only thing that I have hope for in the Leveling process. There might be a few dungeons or quests designated as optional extra-hard content, which have more mechanics and skill tests. But they can't make enough of that content to satisfy veterans entirely. It's just not feasible to make two separate leveling experiences, one for veterans and one for newbies.
So I expect that veterans will rely mostly on grinding the same normal-difficulty stuff that newbies get. Of course they'll seek out higher-level quests and more efficient grinding paths, while skipping anything below their level, but that doesn't necessarily make it more challenging or interesting; it mostly just increases damage and HP numbers. Hopefully the tried-and-true tactic of fighting many mobs at once, to make better use of AoE and DoTs, will speed things up a little bit.
But yeah, I'm not hoping for much. And I doubt they can can even reach those few hopes before the end of the betas.
And I'd be willing to bet that the story and lore is absolutely garbage on launch. Intrepid is counting on the player-driven stories and all the different progression systems to push players through the leveling process. The dungeons/end-game raids/node events might have some decent plot behind them, but I predict that 90% of the leveling process won't have any narrative flourish worth mentioning.
If Intrepid makes a point of hiring 20+ writers in the next year, I'll change my expectation. Otherwise, it's just logistically impossible to make good leveling stories for every region in the game, while also letting players choose their course.
When WoW was first announced, they talked about epic quests that would take weeks to complete. That was a big draw for me, even though that's not how questing turned out.
Pretty much agree with epic quests for higher levels. Would love to see epic quests that are presented as threads that players need to notice, then pull on using exploration, investigation, and powers of deduction. I.e. a max level player is not just a combat machine but a well-rounded adventurer.
I would say that IS needs to invest on leveling process or otherwise a lot of people will quit before they hit the max level. I am basing this argument on claim that leveling to max level will take averagely 45 days, and if the leveling is boring as hell then it is hard to see people e.g. just grind mobs or do basic kill/collect quests to achieve the max level milestone. If the leveling is taking a long time then it is also important make that experience as enjoyable as possible. I do not know how much they need writers to accomplish this mission but surely they have to take care of this aspect as well.
Unfortunately, if you make a challenging game, then you only get players who want a challenging game. So the options are to have a large, diverse community, or a skilled community that is much smaller.
I would certainly enjoy a game that attempts to be challenging at every level. Something focused entirely on end-game, raid-like content. It's a neat concept. But AoC is not that kinda game. AoC needs plebs, for several reason.
That's definitely a risk which is present in AoC. I'm hoping (and I think Intrepid is counting on) all of the different gameplay systems to make up for the lack of a carefully-directed leveling experience. Nodes/guilds, the communities built around them, artisan classes, PvP (small- and large-scale), exploration, messing around with build options, the search for legendary gear. These elements provide a more interesting experience from a macro perspective, and they should keep people interested in the game long after they finish leveling. So theoretically they should also be enough to keep people interested while leveling. But that's just a theory.
There are many reasons for a players to get get through a long leveling process. Some players only stick with an MMO and get to max level to finish the main story. And then they only come back to play when new content is released. Then there are players who hate the leveling, but they stick through it to get to the end-game so they can raid, or do PvP, or play with their friends. Some other people just enjoy RPG systems; leveling and growing a character and making new builds and such. Lastly, a few people have simpler tastes and no expectations, so they just like seeing their numeric progress, or they enjoy messing around in a big fantasy world. And of course there's going to be some overlap between those player types, but I think those are the most common reasons to play through an MMO.
The point is that leveling typically sucks (expect for those RPG grind-lovers), as the OP explained, but players have a ton of ancillary reasons to get through it. Story is only one of those reasons. So Intrepid just needs to make sure there are fun, interesting things to do in general, and let players get a taste of them while leveling. As I've already listed, I think there are plenty of interesting gameplay systems that are planned. The only question is how much players get to play with them during the leveling process.
And it sucks to say, but I really don't think story-driven players will enjoy AoC. And yeah, even the players who are focused on other parts of the game will probably be somewhat disappointed if the stories are lackluster. But the bottom-line is that Intrepid doesn't have the time to make a good story-driven game, while also making an open, large-scale sandbox game, focused on deep gameplay and community. Good story would be a nice cherry-on-top, but that's not what I'm here for, and I don't think Intrepid is going to prioritize it.
See the thing is, none of what I describe is challenging. It requires a small amount of situational awareness and basic knowledge of your class’ skill set.
I too often see MMOs not even require that.
You should be teaching and testing players throughout the leveling process so they improve as they play. You should not be instilling bad habits by allowing players to ignore their class’ cc, not demanding they be aware of their surroundings, and showing them that the basics are optional.
Even the plebs should know they have to interrupt enemies and stay out of red. That’s not exactly a tall order, and if that is “so hard” it’s dealbreaking for anyone, well then they wouldn’t be doing much of anything anyway.
We both will get to the same point, but I will actually enjoy the time I spend. If doing something is not enjoyable, why would you do it? I hear people complain about the grind. Why not enjoy the journey?
I agree, I want leveling to be somewhat challenging. And all players should be encouraged/taught to do intermediate-level mechanics throughout the leveling process. But some players are truly terrible. Maybe they're just playing because their friends/spouse dragged them into it. Maybe they're kids. As long as they're willing to pay the sub-fee though, they at least deserve to get to max level. So leveling has to be designed, at least in part, for the lowest-skilled players.
I do think it's possible to support different skill-levels to some degree, and provide the appropriate challenge level for everyone, but that takes a lot of extra work. And the version of the leveling process that is braindead easy, is more important than the veteran challenges. The minimum viable product is one in which every player, even the complete newbies, can participate and make it max level. Everything else is extra.
So veterans will probably have to put up with a little bit of tedium when they run out of bonus challenges, unless Intrepid manages to make two, entirely separate, complete difficulty modes for leveling,
They way you get around that is with a smooth learning and difficulty curve. Teaching someone a new skill requires 2 key aspects - Gradual integration and practice. You start off with something really simple (e.g. moving your character and basic attacks) and from there you add on more and more elements. However, it's important to incorporate practice into the mix too. If you get a person to do a specific skill once and then they don't use that skill again for months, they will lose the ability to use that skill.
A lot of mmorpgs, and games in general in fact, fail on either or both of these core concepts. I actually did an experiment not too long ago where I picked 6 different mmorpgs (WoW, ESO, GW2, TERA, BDO and FFXIV) and played them for an hour each to see how well they taught the basic skills. There were mixed results with some of them not teaching anything at all, and some of them overloading the player with too much information right at the start. Regardless of what they taught though they also lacked the practice element which is crucial to retaining skill.
They aren't the only ones either. I recently picked up The Witcher 3 again and it has the same problem. The tutorial at the beginning of the game goes over every skill in one big block - information overload. Then as soon as you get out of the tutorial you face mobs that die in 2 hits with no effort required at all. It's not until you get much further into the game that you start needing all your abilities, by which time you've likely forgotten how to use them. Even if you remember what they are, because you haven't been practising them you haven't developed the muscle memory to use them effectively in combat. This is the part where a lot of players will give up and claim the game is too hard. Well no, the game isn't too hard, it's just that the player wasn't required to practice the skills they learned and so lost the ability to use them.
Compare that to a game like Sekiro which slowly introduces new skills into the mix and then constantly gets you to practice those skills over and over until the end of the game. The difference is night and day.
Gradual integration and Practice.
Of course, this is great for brand new players but might be very tedious for veterans.
Regarding mechanics, I guess you will have the choice to take on regular monsters and stronger ones to make it harder. A way I thought it would be interesting to make a monster an interesting challenge is to mimic some players in the way they fight between themselves. Don't misunderstand, I don't want every monsters you fight some godlike AI that can't be defeated.
For example in Aion, players in pvp will cover a specific debuff, with other debuffs, to explain it further, you can have a potion of 30s CD that dispels two debuffs in the order your receives them. Basically, you use a slow, and a fire DOT, then use a silence on a mage, so that he can't dispel the silence, rendering his abilities unusable. I would have liked to see such mechanics while I level up.
We don't know yet how will be AOC, but maybe integrating some sort of human pvp behavior into monsters, but really simple. t would make the fights interesting on two aspects. Which are : the leveling is more more engaging for veteran players that seeks challenge. And the regular player can progress and learn on monsters a little on how to fight other players, linking both aspects of PvE & PvP into one.
The way AOC is made, maybe they could make other aspects of the game harder by choices in the leveling. I remember that in questlines, our choices matters a lot in how the quest is completed. Maybe givings ints for the player to research things in the world of asks things to NPCs to unlock an "alternative path" to a questline for extra rewards.
The regular player would still be able to succeed normally, and those who seeks to get harder challenges find them in different ways through the leveling, I guess we could find more things to do this way. But those two are the only I thought of.