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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.
Thoughts about level increase with expansions
rikardp98
Member
So in the latest live stream there was a question about level increase with new expansions, and Steven said that that would be the case. Personally I do not like the idea of increase the level of your character to enable new content and new gear, since all previous content will no longer be relevant for most players. World of Warcraft is a good example where level increase did not work well for the game, and ESO is a game where not increasing the level with each expansion can work.
Ashes of creation is a totally different game so the increase in level may not effect the game in the same way as I'd did for WoW, but I'm still not a huge fan of it. What do you guys think?
Ashes of creation is a totally different game so the increase in level may not effect the game in the same way as I'd did for WoW, but I'm still not a huge fan of it. What do you guys think?
1
Comments
WoW is an odd case simply because it has been around for so long. Most games don't last more than 10 years before they die so there is limited time to run into major issues with power creep or stat inflation. WoW has been around for 15 years and has had so many expansions at this point that those problems are inevitable.
Of course, you can always follow GW2's example and not increase the max level with a new expansion, but you still need some form of character progression, which GW2 does with the elite specialisations and map exploration. The thing is that even without increasing the character level, you still experience power creep and old content becoming redundant. Sure it's less noticeable than in a game like WoW but it's still there.
FFXIV tried to tackle the problem of redundancy with its mandatory story and duty roulette system, but this causes yet more issues.
However, WoW power creep didn't take that long. After the release burning crusade, almost all the gear and raids from vanilla is irrelevant.
I haven't played GW2 that much but increasing a secondary progression system is probably a more long term solution, similar too ESO as well.
Before expansion ... level 50 to 51 will take 500 hours farming
After Expansion ... level 50 to 51 will take 3 hours, becouse of bonuses from new zone(expansion)
Horizontal progression (no level increases) just shifts from a straightforward exp gathering process to RNG based gear hunting.
Why would it process to RNG based gear hunting? In ESO they add gear with interesting and special set bonuses which you may or may not want. All gear they add can give a underrated class new life and potential.
Maybe I misunderstood your point though
That's true, but it's not the problem I'm talking about. I'm talking about the affect of increasing the level cap can have on the game.
Than if there are some kind of weekly, monthly chalanges that will slow down catch up of new players, you can still have meaningfull progress for new player, and yet keep old players ahead to let them feel like theyr time investement was worth.
Simply put..
Developers need to keep in mind, that MMORPG is highly time investment game, and newcommers should NOT be able to catch up to leading people fast.
Becouse lets be real, MMO where every single player has same amount of power non matter how much time they spend in game is totaly bad ....
MMO's ARE NOT FAIR, and SHOULD NOT BE FAIR! People who spend more time, should always be ahead of curve than people who play few hours a week
If they want to catch up they should have to go through the same dungeons, raids, quests, and crafting I had to.
The problem with that mentality is the issue of time spent outweighing player skill, which to me shouldn't happen.
If you have a system where players who come to the game late or can't play as much as the basement dwellers have no chance of catching up, they will just quit. If you can't pay your sub fee for a month and come back to find that you are behind without any chance of catching up, you will just quit. Over time more and more people will drop out and without catchup mechanics, you won't get any new players coming in. The result is the player base gets smaller and smaller until the game dies entirely.
That's another problem that one get when increasing the level cap, it will be harder for new players to reach the so called "end game" and maybe scare some way from the game.
Catch up mechanic in that sense can be good, like ZG in wow classic, but it there is a fine line where catch up mechanic become really bad for the game.
So not only do the developers need to think about the power creep with each new level cap, but also how to handle new players after that increase in level cap.
And it is very true what you said, MMOs are not fair and should never be fair.
This might be going off-topic, but.......Why do you believe that mmorpgs shouldn't be fair? I don't understand this mentality at all.
I think it comes down to a mindset of "we struggled through this 'back in my day' *shakes walking cane* and these young whippersnappers want it for free!" very similar to why a lot of veteran mmorpg players believe that levelling to max level should take months and months of mindless grinding.
Not really.... When new player join any MMORPG, they have the advantage of:
1 - Old players have ALTS
2 - Cheap equipment in Auction House that will increase your progress as new player over old players what they had to deal with when there was nothing to buy
3 - Many guides will be already out, tactics on dungeons etc.
4 - You can make higher leveled friend to help you level faster
5 - As new player, there will be tons of oportunities in already established NODES (lvl 4) to earn money, and quipment easy
* Probably there could be some kind to STARTER PACK for new players when they buy the game when servers will be already years online, with some consumable packs and basic items witch would not be "pay to win" becouse high level people would not even care about low level potions and armors to be given out for free by developers.
In your previous post you were talking about a system which basically boils down to however puts the most time into the game has the strongest character and there is no way to by-pass that, and you believe that that is a good way of designing an mmorpg.
EVERY SINGLE MMORPG is based on TIME INVESTMENT
If you create game, where everyone can have BEST ITEMS than that game is totally bad
IN MMO you need to have TOP PLAYERS, the STARS OF THE GAME, the people who will be promoted in advertismenets by company, you want developers to popularize CHARACTERS (players) so every players around the world know about them and know how amazing rare drops they aquired!
Becouse you always need someone to chase after to feel accomplishment in MMORPG....
But when u have MMO where everyone hase same items and same stats ... there is nothing special about it...
There must be TOP and STRONGEST players .... the known 0,01% of players that are overpowered ... so every single normal player would have desire to become one of them.
The desire to be able to drop some amazing item that could be sold for thousands and thousands so you can become rich, the RARITY OF ITEMS, SKILLS, POWER
Thats what push players to INVEST MORE AND MORE TIME TO THE GAME!
....What I don't agree with is that Time alone should be the measure of that. Player skill and efficient use of time should always be more important than raw time spent playing.
As I said before, if you designed a system where the only thing that determines the outcome of the fight is raw time spent playing the game, that game will die. Why should players invest effort into a game when there is no chance of them winning?
"Fair" may be the wrong word, what I mean is that players shouldn't have gear for no effort. Time, effort and skill = good gear.
So equal may be a better word, MMOs is not equal. Some players will have the best while others will have pretty good and some will have not good gear. And that's how it should be.
Skill and Inteligence of a player should and will benefit player to achieve things faster there is no doubt about it and I would be extremly dissapointed if I could not outsmart other players.
But there is still factor of time investment, that play a role.
Example: Whilie players need to grind EXP or gather materials, there should be ways how to make it efficient by AOE farming, party farming etc, but on the other hand there are people around the world who can compete againts efficient farming with pure time investment and dedication.
Player 1 - Farm 5 hours alone and he get 500 of material
Player 2 - Farm 5 hours efficiently and gets 800 of material.
But player 1 is able to play 15 hours day and his progres is 1500 materials per day
But player 2 is able to play 7 hours a day adn his progress is just 1200 materials per day
That conludes that if player 2 was able to play more, he would be much efficient than player 1 but on the other hand player 1 that invest more time daily, can be "better" just becouse he spend more time online.
And this can be aplied in real life too. Time managment and efficient work go hand in hand...
But problem of MMO games is that, time investment have instant reward in game, over real life where you need to wait for your pay check.
So in long run, spending more time in MMORPG increase your possiblity of becomeing 0,01% player over playing efficiently for few hours a day.
and there is another factor of RARE DROPS, RARE QUESTS, and more oportunities to find or participate in more actions in game, when you spend more time ONLINE.
I know, its not fair. and thats allright. I play MMORPG games my whole life, I know the difference of being able to play whole day or only few hours...
This is the reason why MMO's are not for everyone, and you cant play MMO few hours day and have goal to be a BEST... Its just not possible. You must make clear decision of what is your goal in game. You CAN NOT excel in every aspect of MMO just by playing 30 hours a week vs people who play almost 100 hours a week.
But yes, you are right. Efficient gameplay should be more beneficial than time investment with no efficientcy, but keep in mind that there are players who can be efficient and still play 14 hours a day and some even more. And there is no way to catching them...
And they are not alone, these type of players play in groups, efficient NO LIFE teamwork players will always be on the TOP. Its a SAD true about any MMORPG
The mmorpg types you have experienced are limited.
Here are my thoughts:
In ESO the gear appearance and gear strength are not connected.
Imagine if all you had was CP160 with tier 1 Breton looks and the strength of Ashen Grip and the new expansion brought CP170 looking like Covenant or tier 4 Breton with the power of warriors Fury.
But that's not the case is it? Because in stupid ESO a CP160 guy and a CP810 can both wear Warriors Fury.
The game also revolves around ez story mode and repetitive dungeon runs.
You can craft a new crafted set in 15 minutes and you are rdy to queue for cyro or bg.
A new dungeon gear might take you a day to collect.
The gear sets WAY TOO MANY and appearance has nothing to do with them.
That is why I wouldnt like, like you also dont, changing CP160 to CP170.
In other mmorpgs the content built around ez story questing map that you finish in 4h and new dungeons to run until you drop the gear you need.
In other mmorpgs a new expansion means a map addition with new open hunting grounds for you to spend MONTHS on, unlocking new class skills with the new lv cap, and new gear that takes A LOT OF TIME to craft, with an appearance that conveys more prestige and power than the previous expansions highest gear.
Having reached those new goals means you had months of fun open world gameplay and now you are stronger than those who havent done so yet.
And then you have games like AA and BDO that you are stuck with one only playstyle or even character, since your gear took you 4 years to enchant to competitive lv. And that is something I would never spend time on again.
Btw, why would you want AoC to follow the ESO gear model? Wouldnt that make AoC ESO2?
The CP points in ESO has nothing to do with gear, only until CP 160. After that you only have CP points for the secondary progression system where you can use your points to specialist in different directions.
The thing I like about ESOs gear model is that the gear focus mainly on the set bonuses and not the pure stats.
While I don't think the idea of being "better" simply because a person has played longer is a good model, I do agree that time invested should mean roughly the same thing in terms of experience gain.
What I mean by that is I've played far too many games where I'll start at the "vanilla" stage and after a few expansions the game will then add in a catch-up mechanic where players get a ridiculous EXP boost + ridiculous OP gear for their level in order to catch them up to the new content. While I understand the premise that the devs want players to experience the new content that they've probably been seeing in ads and all over the internet, I can't agree with how it's implemented. When you hand new players a "FastPass" it takes away not only from their own experience as new players, but degrades the work and effort that older players put in to get to where they are.
But also in regards to the OG question, I usually prefer games that have level increases. It doesn't need to be anything ridiculous, but it could even be something as small as 5 levels. It just makes me feel like I have something to progress towards rather than another gear/story grind.
It must’ve been a while since you’ve played because CP points have everything to do with gear power.
A level 10 character in level 10 gear has almost all of the stat density of a level 50 cp160 character in level 50 cp160 gear. But a level 25 character in level 15 gear will be much weaker than that level 10 character was because of how battle scaling in that game works.
If the gear cap was increased in ESO, all existing gear would become weaker. I don’t mean weaker comparative to the new cap, it would have lower stats than it had the day before the gear level increase.
No one should be looking to ESO for much of anything besides some world design. It’s a half-functional game with no immersion in its easy-mode solo questing, unplayable PvP that’s practically a meme of its own, and a development team that’s constantly putting out ethically questionable money grubbing tactics.
The only thing that needs to be done to remove the sting of no longer having the highest level gear, is letting players upgrade their gear. Why this is so rarely done baffles me. Of course players wouldn’t be bashing their head against an RNG wall and highly questionable loot rules (which for the record, individual looting is so much better) but that’d absolutely be a positive for the players. And it means they’ve gotta make sure content is more interesting that just it’s loot pool.
Yeah it's been a while since I played ESO. I also do not like the scaling in the game.
But what I meant was that CP over 160 dose not effect the gear, only the secondary progression system (if I remember correctly).
And as I said, one of the only things that I like about ESO is their way for creating interesting gear with unique set bonuses.
I no longer play ESO for a reason, but that specific thing about gear is good in my opinion.
I personally think a game is better off if it increases the level cap every 2 or 3 expansions/major DLC's. This makes the game more interesting in many ways, and provides players that are in the game for a long time with a break from the type of gameplay that always exists when you are at the level cap. Leveling to the cap and playing there is great, but occasionally having to level up again in a competitive manner is it's own fun - as long as it doesn't happen too often.
I do see issues with this in Ashes due to the way the games content is set up, but they aren't the kind of issues that wouldn't have a viable work around - they are simply things that mean Ashes would need to tackle additional levels in a different way to other games.
What I would find odd is if levels 1 - 50 (or whatever) take place in the original game world with the node system and it's system for content delivery, and when they increase the level cap they add a new area for levels 51 - 60 (or whatever) and we all spend our time there instead.
That would be odd.
In terms of the change in time needed to hit the level cap, I don't see it as an issue.
If it takes players 200 hours to hit the level cap if they push it from day 1, it should take a player around 150 hours to hit it when the guides are up and the market is full of easy gear for them to upgrade to.
So really, you have 150 hours as a base to get to the level cap.
If the level cap is raised from 50 to 60 (or what ever), it should still take a new playe 150 hours to get to the level cap. Not to get to the old level cap - to get to the level cap.
If in the increase of levels the developers work in that it should take 50 hours to get from the old level cap to the new level cap, that needs to be factored in to how long it would take a new player to get to the new level cap.
Under this, it would mean it should now take 100 hours to get to the old level cap, and then that same 50 ours to get from that old level cap to the new level cap, meaning a total of 150 hours, which was the same as the original time it took to get to the old level cap once guides and upgrades were available.
Someone that played at release and took 200 hours to hit the old level cap may look at someone that only needs to spend 100 hours to do that now and this that it isn't fair, but really, that player is just whining.
If the level cap is raised a second time, the amount of time it takes to get to that newest level cap should still be 150 hours. So if that newest level cap took another 50 hours to level to from the old new level cap (I'm trying to be confusing on purpose here), then that means it should take new players 100 hours to get to that old new level cap, followed by another 50 hours to get to the newest level cap.
This may see it only take 75 hours to get to the games original level cap, when people playing at the time took 200 hours.
However, in both situations, the base time it should have needed, assuming upgrades on the market and guides, is level 1 to the level cap in 150 hours.
And really, the time it takes to get from the start of the game to the level cap is the one thing that needs to remain constant - even if that level cap shifts.
Referring to this specifically, if it takes half the time to hit level50 a year after release as it did to hit level50 a few months after release, that should be entirely because of the community presence. It should not be because of new player exp boosts, nerfing content to be easier than it was, hyperinflating exp gains, or reducing exp requirements to reach level50.
There’s a natural easement for players entering the game. More resources, established areas, player guides, etc. the easement shouldn’t be coming from the devs artificially trivializing early levels.
When the 50-60 expansion comes along with new zones and gear, that doesnt mean that now the old content is obsolete and useless.
It is there for the new players to enjoy. If I am in a guild and new blood comes along I might create a new char to help their group, or simply stand guard with my high lv while they xp safe. Again, I had played in those zones and enjoyed them for months.
Look at games like ESO for example. You literaly finish a new map in hours. 0 memories.
Going back there to the older zones, because that's where werewolf hide gear drops, without a challenge takes a day of rng. Is that your successful definition of retaining players interest in older zones? And is this a good reason to oppose new lv cap and gear with a yearly expansion?
That expansion would bring months of gameplay with true rewards in the form of new gear and abilities within the new lv increase.
Unlike ESO, in which a CP increase would mean that your New Moon Acolyte cp160 golden out is sliiiiiiiiiightly worse than if you crafted within 15minutes and goldened a New Moon Acolyte cp170, and 10 more cp points to spend as opposed to brand new class abilities with new function and animations in games with true expansions.
Anyway... if a group of humans was used during their whole lives to seeing shadows on the walls of a cave, they will either be terrified or would ridicule the open world outside if they were ever told about it.
-Plato
Google for detailed account.
I agree that specific boosts to experience are essentially a kick in the face to existing players - unless existing players get some sort of equal boost. To me, there will always be better things you can do to get more people in to a game than offer experience boosts - as it is very rare that the time it takes to level up to the cap is the main barrier to people starting a game a year or more after launch.
I'm on the fence about making content easier though, or at least content for leveling.
As you would have gathered from my previous post, I am fully on board with it taking the same amount of time to get from level 1 to the level cap, regardless of where that level cap is. This means that getting from level 1 to level 50 needs to take more time to do when the level cap is 50 as it does when the level cap is 60.
To me, there are three viable ways to achieve this. The first is to decrease the actual amount of experience needed per level by a set percentage. The second is to increase the amount of experience players gain from all content. The third is to make all leveling content easier, thus allowing players to push through it faster.
I can see an arguement for each of the three. Even though I have one method that I would prefer (the first method), I wouldn't begrudge a developer for picking a different method.
I would, however, begrudge a developer if they did all three, and even more so if they also added bonus experience on top of that.
That shits not cool.