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Reach Max Level, then what?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
My understanding is level cap is quite readily obtained in a realively short period of time.
So upward progression is short and simple.
So once cap is reached, what is next ... horizontal progression?
So upward progression is short and simple.
So once cap is reached, what is next ... horizontal progression?
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Hopefully some quests that add to a characters combat progression (perhaps learning some strong abilities) or even related to crafting/gathering progression can be locked in areas with good xp/mats/drops which would also lead to pvp.
Then there is the gathering/processing and building of things like caravans, ships and homesteads, that would take time from players, time that otherwise would go towards lving up.
There once in a while guilds would waste time in trying to get a castle. Even more rarely a node siege could happen, and regardless of whether it is destroyed, a lot of resources from both sides would be wasted, either for preparing defences, or making the declaration scroll for attack.
I hope that all those things should delay reaching max lv, way more than what steven said with the whole "45d 8h a day".
And then there should be new content. The max lv should be increased by 5, new map areas perhaps, a new castle for guilds to fight for. New gear and new abilities (in order to learn some of these abilities maybe players would have to devote time to travel the dangerous seas, reaching some quest related islands).
By that time the xp grind should be a lot harder. The new gear way harder to craft. And that should give players another 3 or so months. Then a new update.
And once again I will say that IS should create fresh servers for new players every now and then.
I'm curious where you got the understanding that leveling will be fast? Here's a quote from Steven countering what your understanding is:
"The idea is not to be a game where somebody can essentially no life for a week and be max level. The idea is to incorporate some significant chunk of time but still respect the casual player, because you know the way we respect the casual player is not everything is driven in our game through the adventuring progression line. Not everything is driven through your class level per-se. There's a lot of different progression paths that are available and make you relevant within certain systems and mechanics within the game; and some of those paths are more casual friendly and some of those paths are more hardcore friendly. So with regards to the adventuring class, the idea is to make sure that investment needs to be pretty significant and that the reward then is respective of that investment." Source
It seems either longer or more on par with the norm of levelling speed in other MMORPGs. Fast compared to what? WoW for example is ~5 days of in game time for a fresh character not being speed run to reach max level. Games like EVE and Albion basically take no time to get into the swing of things. BDO is now pretty fast to get to where you're grinding for end game. Ashes seems like it will be more daunting than most every other MMORPG
Fast compared to L2.. approx 5,000 -7,000hrs played and never reached the level cap!
Near end of time playing, was obtaining 0.25% of level Xp per hour, with a good few backward XP from pvp deaths.
All MMO`s since have been a cakewalk to get to near max level compared to L2.
For AoC, I think it was quoted as about 40hrs or something.. so once players learn the xp area sweet spots, you can probably already get that to 15hrs.
And nowadays, there will be a powerlevel walkthough online for all to see within a few weeks.. so neglible grind!
Yes, most likely that'll be brought down to maybe 120-140h with some optimizations, but it's nowhere near 40 or, let alone, 15.
Adventurer
Node
Racial
Social Org
Religion
Naval
Artisan
Guild
Tavern/Freehold
Node progession is not particularly short - and it has to be maintained.
It's good to ask about endgame though. Probably similar to other games, just in Ashes of Creation style. Pvp stuff, pve stuff or social stuff lol. Depends on how it's implemented if it's fun or not.
You don't de-level, but you will get penalties for death, especially XP debt. For instance, if you have from 0 to 1000 XP for the current level, if and you're at 500 XP points and die, you may accrue something like 200 XP debt. Meaning that now, instead of leveling after another 500 XP points, you need 700 XP.
So your progression is also in part tied to your skills and gameplay style. If you die to a mob as a Green, you gain more XP debt than if you died to another player as a Purple. So depending on whether you're PvP centric or PvE focused, you might lose more or less and grow faster or slower. Solo players will likely take longer to level than groups. But groups will have a harder time gearing up from PvE than solo players, as they'll need to share the loot.
We still don't know the difficulty of random mobs in the world. If it's like WoW vanilla where 3 sudden mobs attacking you spelled death if they were around your level, then it may take longer for people. If you can wipe scores of enemies without falling below 50% HP, then it'll be much faster.
Grinding zones may also be contested between players racing to level up faster than the other, and PvP may incur, leading to the aforementioned death penalties for one of the sides.
As a reminder of death penalties:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death
Experience debt (negative experience).
These all serve to slow down your progression. So the 45 days of 8 hours per day of gameplay, may take longer depending on what you encounter and how much you die.
Maybe is a good choice to be like this, else players cannot participate or be very useful in PvP
Well, from my past experience in Lineage 2 at least: Crafting and grinding for gear, raid bosses, castle sieges, clan v clan pvp etc. In ashes, you'll also have node politics, wars, caravans, sea content, node sieges and freehold content.
I'd assume, gearing will not be as easy, or I at least would hope so. In Lineage 2 early days, you'd spend years gearing up to a max and would require team effort to obtain materials needed to craft top level gear. But we'll see.
Mate, forget the days of L2. We, players in their 20's and 30's perhaps enjoy it, but younger generations will hate spending 2 years to level to max and lose 4% of exp upon death. It's just the reality of it. I remember us trying to craft DC robes with a 60% success recipe in Lineage and it was painful. I don't think any game developer will bring those things back - it's too brutal for today's gamer demographic.
Highly time deprived nowadays.. but trying to wind down.. so if this releases in a few years time, timing might be good
Leveling in a SandBox is a very different beast compared to leveling in a Themepark. "What is next?" Is like a Kid looking up at its mother whilst sitting in a sandbox. "I made the castle you told me to make, what's next" I dunno kid, use your imagination. Go forth and play!
Kid: *Starts eating the sand*
There's a bunch of hamster wheels to run on.
i dont know if pvp is normalized in any way in terms of if your level matters (like how some games make it where you cant even hit higher level; havent double checked if it was stated in wiki) but im sure a lot of large scale pvp stuff will probably prefer higher level players in many cases
there could be other systems they tie to that level later on as well since a lot of other content wont matter as much for your adventurer level
Like every other game, you'll spend months getting BiS gear, transmogs and other rare drops. However, what's actually BiS gear depends on Node development, so once there's enough information out and the Wiki has the actual BiS gear breakdown, people will be able to try and make said BiS gear available, which is going to be interesting.
If you're into professions, you'll be able to max out at most two different professions from one of the artisan trees, so that's a lot of time and gold investment. There's also your house, if you buy one, which I hope will be an interesting feature, not as deep as a PoH in RuneScape, but hopefully interesting and rewarding since to master processing and crafting professions it will require decked out freeholds.
Regarding PvP, you have instanced PvP in Arena (hopefully BGs too, absolutely no reason not to have them), open world PvP ganking, trolling, griefing and some PvX, Castle Sieges which in my opinion will be the main PvP attraction of the game and, last but not least, Node Wars which in my opinion will become rarer the longer time goes by.
Apart from all of that, I personally hope that there will be an Achievement Diary/Collection Log, basically a little UI for general goals for completionist players so you can more easily set goals and get cool titles, cool cosmetics and increase your e-peen size as a reward.
Since I have a life, I'm guessing it'll take me at least 1 year to achieve my modest goals, probably closer to 2 years to run out of content. I would expect that the first "big" expansion will probably be added about 2 years after launch, so I'm happy with that.
If you don't want people complaining about there not being enough content, then the game would need to have 95% of all content be max level content.
Since most games launch with about 25% of content being appropriate for max level (as in, within 5 levels of the level cap - not even just level cap content), those people making that complaint actually have a perfectly valid point.
Well once you hit cap you can't go any higher so of course you'd spend the most time at cap. I don't think it's a valid point if part of the game is the journey to cap and someone rushes through it without sleep. End game is usually just replayable things, it just needs to be fun.
Personally if I spend 250 hours in the game, even if I experience all the content, I'd be able to wait for new content if I enjoyed the 250 hours. That's just the leveling too, then there's getting the best gear and stuff. That's alot to have on release imo, but if you rush the 250 hour part then it's brought onto yourself.