Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Wow this is the wrong genre for you. You are looking for a sim game not an MMORPG.
What does leveling have to do with Role Playing?
In MMORPGs, one of the main tropes is progressing your character from being a weak and clueless novice to LEVELING up gradually to a master adventurer or even a "CHAMPION!" depending on the game design. Ashes is looking to be more along the lines of progressing to a master adventurer instead of some ultimate savior.
Yes, character progression is very important in any RPG (including mmorpgs). However, does that progression need to involve mindlessly grinding mobs that take little to no effort to kill and just take huge amounts of time?
You make it sound like killing mobs is the only way to level. Yes you can kill mobs, but you can also pvp, go dungeon diving, do quests, etc. Yes they all take time, but thats part of the fun and your character development.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Wow this is the wrong genre for you. You are looking for a sim game not an MMORPG.
What does leveling have to do with Role Playing?
In MMORPGs, one of the main tropes is progressing your character from being a weak and clueless novice to LEVELING up gradually to a master adventurer or even a "CHAMPION!" depending on the game design. Ashes is looking to be more along the lines of progressing to a master adventurer instead of some ultimate savior.
Yes, character progression is very important in any RPG (including mmorpgs). However, does that progression need to involve mindlessly grinding mobs that take little to no effort to kill and just take huge amounts of time?
You make it sound like killing mobs is the only way to level. Yes you can kill mobs, but you can also pvp, go dungeon diving, do quests, etc. Yes they all take time, but thats part of the fun and your character development.
You cannot level up doing PvP
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
Having access to abilities that are necessary to complete content doesn't equate to completing that content. If an 8 man group is in a dungeon and a mob has a casted ability that puts significant strain on a healer limiting the ability to interrupt said cast because a member doesn't have access to their interrupt doesn't make for a fun dungeon. Its about limiting progress through player skill vs artificial barriers.
Ok, and when that group masters their gameplay skill, what do they do next? If there's literally no progress in mobs (cause everyone is the same lvl), what do those people do now? And some of the more skilled people would hit that point almost immediately.
Do you want a game with 0 character progress? This isn't a shooter where your avatar is a direct conduit of your irl skills. This is an rpg, where you must bring your in-game character on a journey, where it'll learn a ton of stuff and grows with that knowledge.
And you either do that through lvl progression or through repetitive actions (which are still kinda "lvl progression"). If you dislike that kind of gameplay - you dislike rpgs.
You have a new adventure in a new zone with new challenges and emergent ways to solve them. Character progress isn't limited to incremental statistical changes stemming from time investment. Acquiring the ability to make different character builds, both animation and gear-based cosmetics, cooperative and competitive politics, node building, animal husbandry, crafting, among many others. are all means of character progression and roleplaying beyond leveling. If RPG stands for Role Playing Game, why are you locking the RP behind a timesink?
"RPG" while it originally meant "Role Playing Game", for me it doesn't mean that.
RPG for me means leveling up and allocating points to a character. That is how those games were called. If such the game is 3D first person or close view, I might feel like I am that character, but I would still not "role play" unless we restrict the meaning of "role playing" to "pretend to be a warrior".
Sadly other players want to pretend they fish or farm their fields and demand right to have a chilling time while doing this. But this is still a PvP game and fight cannot be avoided.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
currently it's 45 days casual grinding avg to hit max level, which is too short imo. I hope they extend it.
Pacing matters - the slower things are, the significance things begins to feel. Milestones should feel like miles, not inches.
Players or young gamers have become impatience and addicted to constant dopamine - slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life or in-game life.
It's not a race, it's a marathon. It's not reach the end, nor should there be an end - it's the journey along the way.
If a potential runner started said marathon without legs and had to knit 45 days worth of sweaters to get your prosthetic legs would anyone run said marathon?
The fun in an MMO is exploring new environments with a team of people who all have specific roles.
For example, I want to play a tank. What level ranges can I play the game in the role I desire? Can I play with my friends, or must I invest more of my time to get anywhere. At what point is my class fun in moment to moment gameplay, meaning I have a rotation of abilities to maximize my threat, minimize my damage taken, and support my group in ways beyond basic combat. Investing days worth of time to get to the fun is nothing more than a time sink
This just sounds like bad design of low lvl gameplay rather than just a problem of leveling.
You could have a game w/o lvls but it would require you to repeat the same actions to lvl up your skills, so at the start you'd still have limited gameplay. And if you don't want to have that limit - don't play rpgs. Yes, Intrepid can give all the tools right at lvl1, but those tools would still have to be limited in their uses, because otherwise there'd be no progress of your character.
Its a problem with levels in general. Not to mention it makes portions of the content irrelevant outside of the leveling process. In a ruin is balanced around a level 23 adventuring there, what happens with a 30?
This is indeed a problem in the design of this game. If they solve it, to make each level feel as useful as the max level, they create another problem. I want leveling to be interesting and take 2 years long. That means the game should feel at any level as it would feel at max level which players typically call "the end game". They all rush to reach that because they say that is where the fun is. Probably is so in most mmos.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Wow this is the wrong genre for you. You are looking for a sim game not an MMORPG.
What does leveling have to do with Role Playing?
In MMORPGs, one of the main tropes is progressing your character from being a weak and clueless novice to LEVELING up gradually to a master adventurer or even a "CHAMPION!" depending on the game design. Ashes is looking to be more along the lines of progressing to a master adventurer instead of some ultimate savior.
Yes, character progression is very important in any RPG (including mmorpgs). However, does that progression need to involve mindlessly grinding mobs that take little to no effort to kill and just take huge amounts of time?
Seeking the area with a cluster of mobs that awared the best xp contributes to exploration.
Fighting over such areas creates conflict of interests, which leads to rivalries guild wars and server stories.
If you make leveling a breeze that can be completed within two weeks you get no gameplay.
Then, you need daily grinds, instanced content for fear farms, luckluster content such as ez, npc questing storylines.
All of that is found in mmos today.
People say grinding is a bad thing. I guess they are used to crap like bdo, another solo game.
Grinding is a word I will replace with this:
Play the mmo with your friends, since AoC will be challenging (and not mindless quest grinding for solo players) discover areas, farm mobs for xp, farm resoyrces for crafting, seek diagrams and key items, fight other people, encounter bosses, in the open world, for more than just two weeks.
I'm not saying that levelling should be completable in 2 weeks completely solo, but at the same time I see no point in making the players spam right click on mobs for 100+ hours just so your character can get strong enough to move onto the next proper objective.
I've seen far too many games that attempt to pad out their play time with pointless grinding as a way to hide their lack of content.
If I'm going out into the world looking for mobs, there needs to be a better reason for it than mindlessly grinding exp. Thankfully, from what I've seen, Ashes won't be like that, and as you said the game will be more challenging thanks to the open world PvP and greater consequences for dying.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
currently it's 45 days casual grinding avg to hit max level, which is too short imo. I hope they extend it.
Pacing matters - the slower things are, the significance things begins to feel. Milestones should feel like miles, not inches.
Players or young gamers have become impatience and addicted to constant dopamine - slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life or in-game life.
It's not a race, it's a marathon. It's not reach the end, nor should there be an end - it's the journey along the way.
If a potential runner started said marathon without legs and had to knit 45 days worth of sweaters to get your prosthetic legs would anyone run said marathon?
The fun in an MMO is exploring new environments with a team of people who all have specific roles.
For example, I want to play a tank. What level ranges can I play the game in the role I desire? Can I play with my friends, or must I invest more of my time to get anywhere. At what point is my class fun in moment to moment gameplay, meaning I have a rotation of abilities to maximize my threat, minimize my damage taken, and support my group in ways beyond basic combat. Investing days worth of time to get to the fun is nothing more than a time sink
This just sounds like bad design of low lvl gameplay rather than just a problem of leveling.
You could have a game w/o lvls but it would require you to repeat the same actions to lvl up your skills, so at the start you'd still have limited gameplay. And if you don't want to have that limit - don't play rpgs. Yes, Intrepid can give all the tools right at lvl1, but those tools would still have to be limited in their uses, because otherwise there'd be no progress of your character.
Its a problem with levels in general. Not to mention it makes portions of the content irrelevant outside of the leveling process. In a ruin is balanced around a level 23 adventuring there, what happens with a 30?
This is indeed a problem in the design of this game. If they solve it, to make each level feel as useful as the max level, they create another problem. I want leveling to be interesting and take 2 years long. That means the game should feel at any level as it would feel at max level which players typically call "the end game". They all rush to reach that because they say that is where the fun is. Probably is so in most mmos.
i would love an mmo that takes 2 years to hit "max" level.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
why it isn't good design? care to elaborate?
fun is subjective. killing mobs to level up or get gear is fun for me.
progression implies a timesink
If you're playing a dps role you need to have the necessary abilities to kill mobs. Jumping through artificial hoops doesn't add anything but jumping through artificial hoops.
you cant kill mobs at low level?
how do you plan to introduce abilities to players? so if your class has 30 abilities plus augments, should players start with everything unlocked? isn't that overwhelming? or maybe lets just give players 3 abilities max and that's it
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
why it isn't good design? care to elaborate?
fun is subjective. killing mobs to level up or get gear is fun for me.
progression implies a timesink
If you're playing a dps role you need to have the necessary abilities to kill mobs. Jumping through artificial hoops doesn't add anything but jumping through artificial hoops.
you cant kill mobs at low level?
how do you plan to introduce abilities to players? so if your class has 30 abilities plus augments, should players start with everything unlocked? isn't that overwhelming? or maybe lets just give players 3 abilities max and that's it
Pacing is very difficult in an MMO. Players have to be introduced to the overarching and unique game systems in addition to how their class plays in a solo, small group, large groupm and raids setting. Leveling doesn't teach any of that. A tutorial should act like a buffet hall, once completed individual players can choose what they want to do and how they want to do it.
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
I think what you should be saying is.
"I hate these 12 course meals, just give me dessert. "
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
I think what you should be saying is.
"I hate these 12 course meals, just give me dessert. "
If that's what I enjoy then yes. Chocolate comes in many forms and varieties. Let me customize my experience with what I enjoy rather than being forced to do things I find irrelevant because you prioritize an arbitrary variable next to your character portrait.
I feel levelling is the method of true skill acquisition. All of the oh shit moments, the close calls, the disconnects and returns should prepare you for later experiences. I often make screenshot or videos of certain challenges and levels. I would hate to have to slip the whole falling in love with the class to just have a cold experience and the hardships of the raids without any softness before hand.
Edit: of course, if expansions come out every 1 or 2 years and it takes 1 or 2 years to reach level caps then people will forever be levelling.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
why it isn't good design? care to elaborate?
fun is subjective. killing mobs to level up or get gear is fun for me.
progression implies a timesink
If you're playing a dps role you need to have the necessary abilities to kill mobs. Jumping through artificial hoops doesn't add anything but jumping through artificial hoops.
you cant kill mobs at low level?
how do you plan to introduce abilities to players? so if your class has 30 abilities plus augments, should players start with everything unlocked? isn't that overwhelming? or maybe lets just give players 3 abilities max and that's it
Pacing is very difficult in an MMO. Players have to be introduced to the overarching and unique game systems in addition to how their class plays in a solo, small group, large groupm and raids setting. Leveling doesn't teach any of that. A tutorial should act like a buffet hall, once completed individual players can choose what they want to do and how they want to do it.
I see what you're saying, and you're right that it's hard to teach players how to work in a group or raid environment while levelling.
That said, I feel a lot more could be done to teach players while levelling, mostly about their own class abilities. One of the biggest hurdles players encounter when they first reach max level is they are suddenly having to use abilities that they have never had to use while levelling.
Taking WoW as an example, most classes get some kind of CC or spell interrupt, and all healers get buffs and debuff-cleansing spells, yet none of these are needed during the levelling (you can literally get to max level just by spamming a single button if you like).
This means that once they get to max level, even IF the player remembers they have those abilities, they won't have developed the muscle memory to be able to use them effectively. That's partly why casual LFR dungeons and raids are such a coinflipping mess.
Compare that to a game like Sekiro, where early on you are introduced to the counter mechanic. The difference between Sekiro and WoW (aside from the difficulty) is that once Sekiro has taught you the skill in a tutorial, it regularly gives you enemies that require you to use it. This is crucial in helping the player to develop the muscle memory needed to complete the later parts of the game.
Unless you force players to use an ability by putting them in situations where it's needed, they won't use it and will forget about it.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
So don't grind the levels. Do what you like and is fun for you, and eventually you'll get there. It's not a race. Play with some friends and have fun and XP will trickle in. If there is absolutely nothing that is fun for you on the way to max level, I dunno what to say other than the game might not be for you.
I want levelling to take a long time, even for the no-lifers. I would also like to see a generous rested XP system for the more time-casual players to get a leg up.
I want to be a pirate. The social aspects are engaging and my friends and I want to RP while we plunder the seas. Why must we spend time doing something none of us find fun in order to compete in the part we find interesting?
Then play Sea of Thieves if you want to be a pirate straight away. MMORGPs are more about the journey, where you grow your characters from fairly generic noobs to, in your case, fearsome pirates. If you skip the journey and the character growth, you kill one of the most important core pillars of the game. It's simply the wrong genre for what you want.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant time sink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling time sink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Min/Maxing is fun because you know what min/max isn't. If you played AOC with everything you want for your character exactly how you wanted it within the game mechanics, you would have no idea how to create what you want, because you would have no clue what you didn't want. Leveling teaches you that.
Not to mention all of the other things like, leveling is preferred by many because it allows for someone to show off their character as well as their skill instead of just their skill, and the heroes journey, and the reward is the journey, all of that good stuff.
If your argument is "I can just pick what I like by reading the spells" then well take a fireball and a ice shard. Even if the game tells you the flat damage and range are the same, things like cast time, pen and what enemy type play a role in your preference between the two. Not only that, who you commonly play with (Ashes is balanced around 8v8 not 1v1) and the zones you typically play in (weather influences abilities) will all determine what lineup of spells you want at the end of the day.
Finally if your argument is "If I have access to the entire list then I can just use each until I find my favorite" well welcome to leveling
Let me customize my experience with what I enjoy rather than being forced to do things I find irrelevant because you prioritize an arbitrary variable next to your character portrait.
In a game with levels, if you could bypass the 'irrelevant grind', then what level would you chose to be?
In a game with content suited to all levels, would you not miss that content if you were your ideal level?
Would you prefer a game where all content is playable to all characters, and level is irrelevant?
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
Oh, you want to do a food analogy?
An MMO is like a restaurant's degustation menu. Its 10 courses, and each course is designed to be a part of the meal as a whole. Each course builds on the previous course in some way.
What you are saying here is that you want to go to a restaurant, order the degustation menu, but you only plan to eat one of the ten courses - and you expect to be satisfied by that.
If all you want is one plate of food, order that plate of food off of the a la carte menu. That menu is designed to satisfy people with individual dishes.
In terms of our discussion here, the a la carte menu would be other individual games. If you want to play a game to just be a pirate, dont play a game where being a pirate is about 2% of the whole and expect to be satisfied.
Rather, go play Sea of Thieves or something. Or learn to accept the rest of the game.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
why it isn't good design? care to elaborate?
fun is subjective. killing mobs to level up or get gear is fun for me.
progression implies a timesink
If you're playing a dps role you need to have the necessary abilities to kill mobs. Jumping through artificial hoops doesn't add anything but jumping through artificial hoops.
you cant kill mobs at low level?
how do you plan to introduce abilities to players? so if your class has 30 abilities plus augments, should players start with everything unlocked? isn't that overwhelming? or maybe lets just give players 3 abilities max and that's it
Pacing is very difficult in an MMO. Players have to be introduced to the overarching and unique game systems in addition to how their class plays in a solo, small group, large groupm and raids setting. Leveling doesn't teach any of that. A tutorial should act like a buffet hall, once completed individual players can choose what they want to do and how they want to do it.
I see what you're saying, and you're right that it's hard to teach players how to work in a group or raid environment while levelling.
That said, I feel a lot more could be done to teach players while levelling, mostly about their own class abilities. One of the biggest hurdles players encounter when they first reach max level is they are suddenly having to use abilities that they have never had to use while levelling.
Taking WoW as an example, most classes get some kind of CC or spell interrupt, and all healers get buffs and debuff-cleansing spells, yet none of these are needed during the levelling (you can literally get to max level just by spamming a single button if you like).
This means that once they get to max level, even IF the player remembers they have those abilities, they won't have developed the muscle memory to be able to use them effectively. That's partly why casual LFR dungeons and raids are such a coinflipping mess.
Compare that to a game like Sekiro, where early on you are introduced to the counter mechanic. The difference between Sekiro and WoW (aside from the difficulty) is that once Sekiro has taught you the skill in a tutorial, it regularly gives you enemies that require you to use it. This is crucial in helping the player to develop the muscle memory needed to complete the later parts of the game.
Unless you force players to use an ability by putting them in situations where it's needed, they won't use it and will forget about it.
How long does it take a player to learn how combat abilities work? A more complex game like Devil May Cry doesn't start you with your entire kit at the beginning but slowly introduces new weapons, combos, unlocks, etc over the course of a 10ish hour campaign; 10 hours is significantly faster than 45 days.
Is it necessary to have the additional time bloat?
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
So don't grind the levels. Do what you like and is fun for you, and eventually you'll get there. It's not a race. Play with some friends and have fun and XP will trickle in. If there is absolutely nothing that is fun for you on the way to max level, I dunno what to say other than the game might not be for you.
I want levelling to take a long time, even for the no-lifers. I would also like to see a generous rested XP system for the more time-casual players to get a leg up.
I want to be a pirate. The social aspects are engaging and my friends and I want to RP while we plunder the seas. Why must we spend time doing something none of us find fun in order to compete in the part we find interesting?
Then play Sea of Thieves if you want to be a pirate straight away. MMORGPs are more about the journey, where you grow your characters from fairly generic noobs to, in your case, fearsome pirates. If you skip the journey and the character growth, you kill one of the most important core pillars of the game. It's simply the wrong genre for what you want.
Sea of Thieves lacks all the MMO aspects I'm looking for in a game. It has only 4 player groups, lacks combat roles, has no shared economy, no permeant ownership of land for individuals/guilds, and can be summarized as a drop in/out game. The "journey" of leveling can easily be replaced by my interaction with the world. Socializing with other players should create the journey, not completing a bar through repetitive tasks.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
currently it's 45 days casual grinding avg to hit max level, which is too short imo. I hope they extend it.
Pacing matters - the slower things are, the significance things begins to feel. Milestones should feel like miles, not inches.
Players or young gamers have become impatience and addicted to constant dopamine - slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life or in-game life.
It's not a race, it's a marathon. It's not reach the end, nor should there be an end - it's the journey along the way.
Exactly, I want to enjoy the "slow burn" of levelling without feeling the pressure of trying to hit 20 levels in a week just because it's possible. If levelling quickly becomes restricted/hard to do, I feel like players will have more opportunity to focus on other aspects in the game.
Edit: Also, it forces players whose goal is to reach max level and ditch to play the game for a longer time than a month - which is the maximum playtime for most MMORPGs these days I feel like.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant time sink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling time sink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Min/Maxing is fun because you know what min/max isn't. If you played AOC with everything you want for your character exactly how you wanted it within the game mechanics, you would have no idea how to create what you want, because you would have no clue what you didn't want. Leveling teaches you that.
Not to mention all of the other things like, leveling is preferred by many because it allows for someone to show off their character as well as their skill instead of just their skill, and the heroes journey, and the reward is the journey, all of that good stuff.
If your argument is "I can just pick what I like by reading the spells" then well take a fireball and a ice shard. Even if the game tells you the flat damage and range are the same, things like cast time, pen and what enemy type play a role in your preference between the two. Not only that, who you commonly play with (Ashes is balanced around 8v8 not 1v1) and the zones you typically play in (weather influences abilities) will all determine what lineup of spells you want at the end of the day.
Finally if your argument is "If I have access to the entire list then I can just use each until I find my favorite" well welcome to leveling
Leveling doesn't teach any of that. Using WoW as an example, how many players in 2005 could play their character to any modicum of a degree once they reached level cap. The difference in skill level (talent build, gear choices, APM) between the Classic community and the Vanilla community illustrates that leveling does not teach anything.
As for the journey aspect, let players decide their own journey. Leveling hinders the ability for players to decide how and where they want to exist in a virtual world.
You're not going to get a core principle feature changed. How have you got to max level in other mmos if you don't like to level? Sometimes I feel like the thread is a troll thread.
Let me customize my experience with what I enjoy rather than being forced to do things I find irrelevant because you prioritize an arbitrary variable next to your character portrait.
In a game with levels, if you could bypass the 'irrelevant grind', then what level would you chose to be?
In a game with content suited to all levels, would you not miss that content if you were your ideal level?
Would you prefer a game where all content is playable to all characters, and level is irrelevant?
Obviously I'd be level cap. I want access to the abilities that let me do what I want. Customization comes from gear choices through crafting, ability optimizations through world exploration, banes/boons at character creation, where I choose to go in the world and how I choose to interact with it.
How would I miss content if its all balanced around everyone having access to their base class kit? All content would be viable, and none would be wasted. The time spent on out-levelable content becomes a waste of development time.
All content should be available at all times for all players, but that doesn't mean all players should be able to consume all content. Player skill, character choices, preparation, social relationships, willingness to take risks are all better determinants for access to content than arbitrary locks based on time sinks.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant time sink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling time sink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Min/Maxing is fun because you know what min/max isn't. If you played AOC with everything you want for your character exactly how you wanted it within the game mechanics, you would have no idea how to create what you want, because you would have no clue what you didn't want. Leveling teaches you that.
Not to mention all of the other things like, leveling is preferred by many because it allows for someone to show off their character as well as their skill instead of just their skill, and the heroes journey, and the reward is the journey, all of that good stuff.
If your argument is "I can just pick what I like by reading the spells" then well take a fireball and a ice shard. Even if the game tells you the flat damage and range are the same, things like cast time, pen and what enemy type play a role in your preference between the two. Not only that, who you commonly play with (Ashes is balanced around 8v8 not 1v1) and the zones you typically play in (weather influences abilities) will all determine what lineup of spells you want at the end of the day.
Finally if your argument is "If I have access to the entire list then I can just use each until I find my favorite" well welcome to leveling
Leveling doesn't teach any of that. Using WoW as an example, how many players in 2005 could play their character to any modicum of a degree once they reached level cap. The difference in skill level (talent build, gear choices, APM) between the Classic community and the Vanilla community illustrates that leveling does not teach anything.
As for the journey aspect, let players decide their own journey. Leveling hinders the ability for players to decide how and where they want to exist in a virtual world.
Ya, and there's games out there that only have 3 abilities regardless of level, if you wanna prove your point with garbage then your point is valid. However this game isn't out yet and we want it to be the best it possibly can, leveling CAN teach you, it just didn't in WOW because in WOW a single ability could be pressed until max level effectively negating any need for learning jack shit, but again that's garbage DESIGN, and should not be used as the comparison for designing future games, unless you want them to be shit as well.
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant time sink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling time sink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
Min/Maxing is fun because you know what min/max isn't. If you played AOC with everything you want for your character exactly how you wanted it within the game mechanics, you would have no idea how to create what you want, because you would have no clue what you didn't want. Leveling teaches you that.
Not to mention all of the other things like, leveling is preferred by many because it allows for someone to show off their character as well as their skill instead of just their skill, and the heroes journey, and the reward is the journey, all of that good stuff.
If your argument is "I can just pick what I like by reading the spells" then well take a fireball and a ice shard. Even if the game tells you the flat damage and range are the same, things like cast time, pen and what enemy type play a role in your preference between the two. Not only that, who you commonly play with (Ashes is balanced around 8v8 not 1v1) and the zones you typically play in (weather influences abilities) will all determine what lineup of spells you want at the end of the day.
Finally if your argument is "If I have access to the entire list then I can just use each until I find my favorite" well welcome to leveling
Leveling doesn't teach any of that. Using WoW as an example, how many players in 2005 could play their character to any modicum of a degree once they reached level cap. The difference in skill level (talent build, gear choices, APM) between the Classic community and the Vanilla community illustrates that leveling does not teach anything.
As for the journey aspect, let players decide their own journey. Leveling hinders the ability for players to decide how and where they want to exist in a virtual world.
Also you kind of glazed over my point, if your just given everything right away you have no way to min/max cause you won't understand the game, and leveling, effectively distributes the players time between learning their character and experiencing a hopefully content rich world
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
Oh, you want to do a food analogy?
An MMO is like a restaurant's degustation menu. Its 10 courses, and each course is designed to be a part of the meal as a whole. Each course builds on the previous course in some way.
What you are saying here is that you want to go to a restaurant, order the degustation menu, but you only plan to eat one of the ten courses - and you expect to be satisfied by that.
If all you want is one plate of food, order that plate of food off of the a la carte menu. That menu is designed to satisfy people with individual dishes.
In terms of our discussion here, the a la carte menu would be other individual games. If you want to play a game to just be a pirate, dont play a game where being a pirate is about 2% of the whole and expect to be satisfied.
Rather, go play Sea of Thieves or something. Or learn to accept the rest of the game.
I'm allergic to tree nuts. The third item on your ten-course meal has tree nuts in it. Must I partake in this item to continue progressing in the "experience"?
What you consider what percentage of a game is irrelevant as what you want is different than what others want. MMOs thrive when players with a variety of playstyles come together to partake in a shared world.
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You make it sound like killing mobs is the only way to level. Yes you can kill mobs, but you can also pvp, go dungeon diving, do quests, etc. Yes they all take time, but thats part of the fun and your character development.
You cannot level up doing PvP
It sounds to me like you just want maximum efficiency, without putting the effort in to achieve that.
Fun fact, while it may be true that high levels will dominate lower level content if it is profitable for them to do so, if you remove the need to gain levels, if you remove that time investment, players will dominate all content. At that point, there is nothing stopping anyone from dominating any content.
The thing with genesis that the setup is as important as the payoff. A game that is all payoff and no setup is a game with a very short lifespan.
Most people prefer working towards a goal and then achieving said goal, rather than just having that reward handed to them. The reward is more appreciated and more enjoyed when it is worked for. The more it is worked for, the more it is enjoyed.
If you want to be a pirate in Ashes, work towards being a pirate in Ashes. You'll enjoy it more if you put that effort in.
"RPG" while it originally meant "Role Playing Game", for me it doesn't mean that.
RPG for me means leveling up and allocating points to a character. That is how those games were called. If such the game is 3D first person or close view, I might feel like I am that character, but I would still not "role play" unless we restrict the meaning of "role playing" to "pretend to be a warrior".
Sadly other players want to pretend they fish or farm their fields and demand right to have a chilling time while doing this. But this is still a PvP game and fight cannot be avoided.
This is indeed a problem in the design of this game. If they solve it, to make each level feel as useful as the max level, they create another problem. I want leveling to be interesting and take 2 years long. That means the game should feel at any level as it would feel at max level which players typically call "the end game". They all rush to reach that because they say that is where the fun is. Probably is so in most mmos.
I'm not saying that levelling should be completable in 2 weeks completely solo, but at the same time I see no point in making the players spam right click on mobs for 100+ hours just so your character can get strong enough to move onto the next proper objective.
I've seen far too many games that attempt to pad out their play time with pointless grinding as a way to hide their lack of content.
If I'm going out into the world looking for mobs, there needs to be a better reason for it than mindlessly grinding exp. Thankfully, from what I've seen, Ashes won't be like that, and as you said the game will be more challenging thanks to the open world PvP and greater consequences for dying.
i would love an mmo that takes 2 years to hit "max" level.
you cant kill mobs at low level?
how do you plan to introduce abilities to players? so if your class has 30 abilities plus augments, should players start with everything unlocked? isn't that overwhelming? or maybe lets just give players 3 abilities max and that's it
I don't need to eat a bowl of feces to appreciate a perfectly cooked/seasoned meal.
Pacing is very difficult in an MMO. Players have to be introduced to the overarching and unique game systems in addition to how their class plays in a solo, small group, large groupm and raids setting. Leveling doesn't teach any of that. A tutorial should act like a buffet hall, once completed individual players can choose what they want to do and how they want to do it.
I think what you should be saying is.
"I hate these 12 course meals, just give me dessert. "
If that's what I enjoy then yes. Chocolate comes in many forms and varieties. Let me customize my experience with what I enjoy rather than being forced to do things I find irrelevant because you prioritize an arbitrary variable next to your character portrait.
Edit: of course, if expansions come out every 1 or 2 years and it takes 1 or 2 years to reach level caps then people will forever be levelling.
I see what you're saying, and you're right that it's hard to teach players how to work in a group or raid environment while levelling.
That said, I feel a lot more could be done to teach players while levelling, mostly about their own class abilities. One of the biggest hurdles players encounter when they first reach max level is they are suddenly having to use abilities that they have never had to use while levelling.
Taking WoW as an example, most classes get some kind of CC or spell interrupt, and all healers get buffs and debuff-cleansing spells, yet none of these are needed during the levelling (you can literally get to max level just by spamming a single button if you like).
This means that once they get to max level, even IF the player remembers they have those abilities, they won't have developed the muscle memory to be able to use them effectively. That's partly why casual LFR dungeons and raids are such a coinflipping mess.
Compare that to a game like Sekiro, where early on you are introduced to the counter mechanic. The difference between Sekiro and WoW (aside from the difficulty) is that once Sekiro has taught you the skill in a tutorial, it regularly gives you enemies that require you to use it. This is crucial in helping the player to develop the muscle memory needed to complete the later parts of the game.
Unless you force players to use an ability by putting them in situations where it's needed, they won't use it and will forget about it.
Then play Sea of Thieves if you want to be a pirate straight away. MMORGPs are more about the journey, where you grow your characters from fairly generic noobs to, in your case, fearsome pirates. If you skip the journey and the character growth, you kill one of the most important core pillars of the game. It's simply the wrong genre for what you want.
Min/Maxing is fun because you know what min/max isn't. If you played AOC with everything you want for your character exactly how you wanted it within the game mechanics, you would have no idea how to create what you want, because you would have no clue what you didn't want. Leveling teaches you that.
Not to mention all of the other things like, leveling is preferred by many because it allows for someone to show off their character as well as their skill instead of just their skill, and the heroes journey, and the reward is the journey, all of that good stuff.
If your argument is "I can just pick what I like by reading the spells" then well take a fireball and a ice shard. Even if the game tells you the flat damage and range are the same, things like cast time, pen and what enemy type play a role in your preference between the two. Not only that, who you commonly play with (Ashes is balanced around 8v8 not 1v1) and the zones you typically play in (weather influences abilities) will all determine what lineup of spells you want at the end of the day.
Finally if your argument is "If I have access to the entire list then I can just use each until I find my favorite" well welcome to leveling
In a game with levels, if you could bypass the 'irrelevant grind', then what level would you chose to be?
In a game with content suited to all levels, would you not miss that content if you were your ideal level?
Would you prefer a game where all content is playable to all characters, and level is irrelevant?
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Oh, you want to do a food analogy?
An MMO is like a restaurant's degustation menu. Its 10 courses, and each course is designed to be a part of the meal as a whole. Each course builds on the previous course in some way.
What you are saying here is that you want to go to a restaurant, order the degustation menu, but you only plan to eat one of the ten courses - and you expect to be satisfied by that.
If all you want is one plate of food, order that plate of food off of the a la carte menu. That menu is designed to satisfy people with individual dishes.
In terms of our discussion here, the a la carte menu would be other individual games. If you want to play a game to just be a pirate, dont play a game where being a pirate is about 2% of the whole and expect to be satisfied.
Rather, go play Sea of Thieves or something. Or learn to accept the rest of the game.
How long does it take a player to learn how combat abilities work? A more complex game like Devil May Cry doesn't start you with your entire kit at the beginning but slowly introduces new weapons, combos, unlocks, etc over the course of a 10ish hour campaign; 10 hours is significantly faster than 45 days.
Is it necessary to have the additional time bloat?
Sea of Thieves lacks all the MMO aspects I'm looking for in a game. It has only 4 player groups, lacks combat roles, has no shared economy, no permeant ownership of land for individuals/guilds, and can be summarized as a drop in/out game. The "journey" of leveling can easily be replaced by my interaction with the world. Socializing with other players should create the journey, not completing a bar through repetitive tasks.
Exactly, I want to enjoy the "slow burn" of levelling without feeling the pressure of trying to hit 20 levels in a week just because it's possible. If levelling quickly becomes restricted/hard to do, I feel like players will have more opportunity to focus on other aspects in the game.
Edit: Also, it forces players whose goal is to reach max level and ditch to play the game for a longer time than a month - which is the maximum playtime for most MMORPGs these days I feel like.
Leveling doesn't teach any of that. Using WoW as an example, how many players in 2005 could play their character to any modicum of a degree once they reached level cap. The difference in skill level (talent build, gear choices, APM) between the Classic community and the Vanilla community illustrates that leveling does not teach anything.
As for the journey aspect, let players decide their own journey. Leveling hinders the ability for players to decide how and where they want to exist in a virtual world.
Obviously I'd be level cap. I want access to the abilities that let me do what I want. Customization comes from gear choices through crafting, ability optimizations through world exploration, banes/boons at character creation, where I choose to go in the world and how I choose to interact with it.
How would I miss content if its all balanced around everyone having access to their base class kit? All content would be viable, and none would be wasted. The time spent on out-levelable content becomes a waste of development time.
All content should be available at all times for all players, but that doesn't mean all players should be able to consume all content. Player skill, character choices, preparation, social relationships, willingness to take risks are all better determinants for access to content than arbitrary locks based on time sinks.
Ya, and there's games out there that only have 3 abilities regardless of level, if you wanna prove your point with garbage then your point is valid. However this game isn't out yet and we want it to be the best it possibly can, leveling CAN teach you, it just didn't in WOW because in WOW a single ability could be pressed until max level effectively negating any need for learning jack shit, but again that's garbage DESIGN, and should not be used as the comparison for designing future games, unless you want them to be shit as well.
Also you kind of glazed over my point, if your just given everything right away you have no way to min/max cause you won't understand the game, and leveling, effectively distributes the players time between learning their character and experiencing a hopefully content rich world
I'm allergic to tree nuts. The third item on your ten-course meal has tree nuts in it. Must I partake in this item to continue progressing in the "experience"?
What you consider what percentage of a game is irrelevant as what you want is different than what others want. MMOs thrive when players with a variety of playstyles come together to partake in a shared world.