Combat power from level should be Incremental NOT Exponential

heliowolf

I really hope that leveling your adventurer class and acquiring the corresponding gear and skill upgrades incrementally increases your strength in a linear-ish fashion. I really dislike it in MMOs and RPGs when each level doubles you strength. I think it massively cheapens the experience when going from level 9 to level 10 allows you to take on level 10s for the first time and makes you one shot level 9s. Levels should reflect content difficulty and reward not content gating.

From a Risk-Reward game design perspective a you should be able to contest a much higher level monster or player through superior numbers and skill, and taking on multiple lower level opponents simultaneously should still provide challenge. I love almost every aspect of the design of AoC and can appreciate a super long leveling process and no scaling so longs as combat with/against higher level players is still viable. If power gain from level, gear, skills, buffs, etc is incremental and doesn't excessively compound, players can play with different level friends, control difficulty of PVE content both solo and with groups, use off meta builds and play styles, defend themselves in groups from high level PK characters, pull off incredible feats of skill against stronger opponents and participate to some effect in node and world events.

Doing .1% damage to a high level player or getting one-shot 10x over-killed isn't fun. When I grind for a level or upgrade I want it to feel stronger, not be put in a whole new tier and bracket of players and content. I doubt this will be the case but if it was up to me I would want the time it takes to progress level to level, gear to gear, to be exponential but the power increase provided each level to be constant with a mild compounding effect across level, gear, ability, buffs, etc. The new player should fairly quickly get to the point they aren't being one shot by top tier stuff but reaching that top tier yourself and becoming the apex predator would take a majority of the time. With a small group of friends, some time investment and knowledge of how to play effectively few monsters (obviously high level raids are another story) and no players should be untouchable. Almost all MMO's fail at this design by making power gain both across levels/gear tiers and content expansions wildly out of control and if it were up to me I think I may look for a one level and corresponding upgrades increase to provide as little as 10% total power increase, maybe 15% with the compounding effect of builds. Edit: I mean 10% of the original level such that a level 20 is 100%, twice as powerful, as a level 10 which would in practice make him stronger than two level 10s due to concentration of power but weaker than three.

Songcaller

Someone told me the difference between maximum power and base power is +50% which i hope is hearsay. +50% is far too much of an advantage in my opinion. We have no references for stats gains or anything at the moment and it should all be fine tuned as tests progress.