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AoC should increase the time it takes to reach lv cap
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack
Currently Steven said that a very active mmo player will need 45 days more or less to reach lv cap.
This game is shaping up to be wonderful. Here is this months Dev update describing gameplay revolved around mayor elections and mayor decisions that affect your community (nodes)
I think people will be happier if it took 120 days to reach level cap and FH accessible at lv 30.
There is so much to do. People wont be bored of grinding levels because there are a million of gameplay avenues.
And the best part of a longer "journey"?
It may seem like it never ends (even though 120 days seems like nothing to me..)
Like a table of food that is still filled to the brim, despite all the other hungry guests.
Increase to 120 days imho, and FHs at lv 30.
This game is shaping up to be wonderful. Here is this months Dev update describing gameplay revolved around mayor elections and mayor decisions that affect your community (nodes)
I think people will be happier if it took 120 days to reach level cap and FH accessible at lv 30.
There is so much to do. People wont be bored of grinding levels because there are a million of gameplay avenues.
And the best part of a longer "journey"?
It may seem like it never ends (even though 120 days seems like nothing to me..)
Like a table of food that is still filled to the brim, despite all the other hungry guests.
Increase to 120 days imho, and FHs at lv 30.
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the leveling speed of the nodes. maybe people in parties will just kill higher level mobs and level faster anyways. and cant make nodes level up too slowly, because it will take too long to recover a metropolis or unlocking content.
also slow leveling will keep many people in the same area and there wont be enough monsters for people to level up, since the areas are tied to the level of the nodes an there wont be many early on.
also, it will take more time for players joining the game some time after launch to catch up.
there are also too many things to do in ashes, tbh i wanna get leveling out of the way haha. probably gonna need those skill points to do other activities.
so we have to see how slower leveling affects other parts of the game.
Opinions like these invite the block button.
If the game succeeds in gaining long-term players, it's nice to have projects we can work on, in-game. HOWEVER! Some of us will be probing to see which class we will want to play in the long run of things, and it'd be nice to get through more than 3 classes and class-combos/year.
Am currently planning on Cleric/Cleric - but what if I decide it's just not for me, once max-level and all the abilities are un-locked? Should it really take another 1/3 of the year, to feel out the next class/class-combo?
Thanks for the laugh.
If you ever feel the need to actually have a conversation I'll be here.
WoW classic is still quite popular exactly because people like leveling in a game where that leveling is fun all throughout. Hell, there's even the hardcore stuff now, and that is ALL LEVELING.
Im an L2 veteran from 2003 and I have been following ashes since 2017. You got catching up to do son, not me.
So, you have already resigned yourself to the fact that the game is goint to have a fairly frequent server mergers and unrelenting player burnout?
The longevity of any MMORPG relies on the developers finding a way to intergrate new players in to existing communities. That is why both EQ and EQ2 are still getting literal full expansions every year - none of the players I played with daily are still playing either game, both are populated by people that came in much later and intergrated in to the existing servers.
This is why most MMORPG's increase leveling speed and make obtaining some gear easier as time goes on. The idea is that it should take a player x amount of time from character creation until they are max level, and y time until they can expect to be competitively geared. As the level cap increases, the time between levels is sped up so that the total amount of time is kept the same. As more tiers of gear are added, a way to speed up the process is added in. The reason "the game only starts at max level" is a thing (and it is accurate as a statement in every MMO I have ever played) is because that is the only point in which all players can be on any kind of equal footing. Sure, gear upgrades are a thing, but putting 20 hours in to gear gives a far smaller boost to over all power in most games to putting 20 hours in to leveling.
Thus, the closest thing to an equal footing is when levels can no longer be gained, making that the point where the game really starts.
This is more true in PvP games than PvE, but is true in both - outside of Korean games.
People will know what suits them.
Mmos arent alt-friendly by nature.
Alts are a product introduced to cover the lack of content that wow eso ff14 and the likes have.
That and the end-game treadmill that KingDumbDumberDumbest is addicted to.
1)Mmos need new servers for new players to compete on fair terms
2) server mergers is irrelevant to that. Server mergers happen on dead games.
3)mmos need expansions every two years
4)there is no burn-out in AoC. Too much to do.
Iirc you said that EQ2 added new location (and I think even planets?) in future expansions, right? So everything else in the past was either forgotten completely or just blazed through super quickly.
I simply disagree with that kind of design. I agree that with future updates Ashes will need some catchup mechanics. All mmos games that grow have those (well, maybe outside of gw2?). But when you have a more sandboxy game than a pure story-based quest-crawler - you can have a slower pace overall. Well, imo.
Modern MMO's seem to focus on, and sell, the end game that only starts once you reach level cap (gear level restriction, raid entry, etc).
Locking content behind a specific level is a sure way to force people into a sense of obligation to reach max level quickly.
Introducing higher XP requirements for leveling up, with high multipliers per level, will only impact negatively on the problem.
Climing the level ladder should be secondary, and exploring both the world and ones own class and it's abilities should be the primary focus. XP is a biproduct of activites you should enjoy doing, and reaching the next level should be a surprise or a bonus, not a goal.
How long it should take to reach maximum level is hard to predict, because several things impact the speed someone climbs the level-ladder.
- How many hours per week one plays
- How effective one plays
- How much experience different tasks grants
- How much help ones have from friends or guild
Dialing in these numbers should be one of the most important tasks during the Alpha stage of the game.
Do Intrepid Studios want the leveling phase to be where most players familiarize themselves with the world, the different game systems, their own class, artisan skills, and more?
If so, leveling up mining, herbalism and alchemy should be sufficiently rewarding in terms of reward (and XP).
Personally, I would like to see an MMO where reaching maximum level is something that most people forget about during their first months in the game, simply bacause it takes too long to be an immediate goal.
Whatsmore, I would like to see a new game where the grind for XP never ends. Everquest did this with Alternate Advancement (AA). You could always grind for even more unlocked abilities. This made character investment rewarding beyond simply reaching max level.
Edit: To add to this, Everquest made it hard to really gauge how much xp you got from various activites (or more specifically, from different mobs). Everquest had mob grind as primary source of experience, and you had to gauge progress over a long period of time to get an idea of how effective any grind spot was. To further impact on this, dying caused a severe XP loss, where only a clerics ressurrection would restore most of your lost XP. This made (most) people forget about how much XP they got, and focus more on what was fun. I miss that from MMO's.
1, only if your develoeprs are unable to find a way to intergrade players in to the existing server. Go tell CCP they need a new server, see how that goes - that one point in itself should signal to you that your thinking isn't inherently correct, it is only correct with bad developers (or bad game management, more accurately).
2, server mergers happen when the population of servers gets below a point that is considered healthy, this absolutely will happen in Ashes, the only question is how frequently. If you intergrate new players to existing servers, it means fewer mergers as the population of your servers are more stable than if new players had to go to new servers.
3, every year, imo. Don't let WoW's slow pace of combat sway you. EQ and EQ2 both manage to put out expansions every year, as well as content mid expansion, and their quality is on par with or better than what WoW does.
4, there will be plenty, and it will start 3 months after release.
5, (even though you only had 4 points) the problem with assuming new players start on new servers is that it means new players only start once a year. If I happen to be looking for a new game 3 months before those servers are due to come out, and my assumption is that I can not reasonable play the game on existing servers, I am not waiting 3 months to play the game - I am picking a different game.
If I were a developer of a game that is inherently social, I would consider it more important to get new players active in those social aspects of the game than to get those same players experiencing the same thing as older players while leveling.
In fact, there wouldn't even be a discussion as to which was more important - MMO's are about being social with others, new players to the game need to get to that point as quickly as is reasonable.
Rather, what I would do is keep a few key story beats in place during the leveling process, and make sure new players are pointed strongly towards those, leaving all other content for repeat leveling. This is why EQ2 for example had enough low level content when I stopped playing it to level a 6 characters up to level 70 without repeating any content at all.
This has the added effect for new players of being able to go back on alts and realize there is so much more to the game that they blasted through than they realized, something that is FAR more appreciated in hindsight than when presented with a seeming insurmountable leveling path.
I'd much rather prefer if they could come up with a way to involve all ranges of players in the same content w/o making the content super boring. This would not only save time/effort of the devs, but would also keep the "oh shit, I experienced that as well" feeling for newcomers.
Games like EVE are great in their neverchanginess because if a new player starts the game today, within some time they'd probably be able to go and join a massive fight around some system with a ton of ships in it. That new player came to the game because he heard about such fights and he now can enjoy them directly.
But in a story/quest-based game that's blazing through content updates like there's no fucking tomorrow - any new player would just utterly shit on any older content, simply because the game has moved past it. So when that newcomer hears about "an epic boss fight against this cool dude in the story" - they'll never get to really experience the epicness of that fight the same way that an EVE newcomer does in that game.
FF14 solved this by level scaling and letting everyone level up all the classes on one character, so even veteran players can go fight the same old bosses. Though even there it's usually "ah, I've done this shit 30 times already, I'll skip all the content and go directly to the end", which is a problem for newbies. The sprout icon helps this a bit, but only with vets that care about that.
I wish for a game that manages to add new parts to the old encounters that would require high lvl players, while the boss itself is built for lowbies, just as it was at release. Pvp helps out with this somewhat, but I do think this idea could be taken even further and designed even better.
The point of leveling is to open up new content. If that content is already open to you, why even have levels? I've never played a quest or story based game - EQ and EQ2 are content driven, not quest or story driven.
That said, the notion you have here of people not being able to experience specific encounters while leveling, again, not an issue.
The first point here is that they won't be able to experience them any way. In order to experience an encounter that is worth talking about, you need to have others of that same level range around. This means that if you are not joining a game with 30 other players, you are simply not going to experience that content at all. If you are joining the game with 30 other players, then go off and kill that encounter - it's still there for you to do that.
The second point is that if the content is actually enjoyable, the mechanics of it will be used again, meaning players would be able to experience an even better version of it at some point.
Would you accept a power to level up instantly which you could recharge while playing the game, to prevent rolling a new character often?
Wow you're so special, I hope one day iam as special as you are.
Long level time sucks, there is really no need for it.
I completely disagree. I prefer it when there's no fresh servers and the developers loop which servers new players are directed to join. This keeps the older servers going and keeps all the servers at roughly the same amount of players.
Not all aspects of a game should be balanced for "a very active mmo player". People who have that much free time to spend and decide to put it all in the same hobby/activity/game will progress fast, and burn themselves out fast too.
Sorry, George, but you got to spread out. If you want to extend your levelling time, instead of putting all your time in 1 character (as you previously said you intended to), roll multiple characters. If not, well, it's your own dang fault for going too fast.
You'll probably disagree, our opinions are usually at the antipodes. And I'm not complaining the levelling is too long or too slow btw, I've played EQ for about 2 years and never reached the max level with any character and I was quite okay with that. One thing we agree on: there should always be something interesting to do whatever our character's level is.
But I know that our opinions of how much stuff should be added with each update differs, so I doubt we'd see this the same way.
I guess EQ bosses were completely removed from its story or quests. The point remains the same, because I was talking about bosses (or at least encounters) in the first place.
This is also about good design of the encounter. Ideally the game would adjust to the raid composition. If only one lowbie came to the farm - he'll just have his own part of the content, while vets have their own experience with it. The content itself is the same, but it's "seen from different angles".
Wouldn't this mean that vets just keep redoing the same kind of content (mechanically speaking)?
Also, a question for you. Would you care if the same boss "evolved" throughout several expansions through getting new mechanics added to him? Or do you want those mechanics only added to new bosses? Loot would obviously be appropriate as well.
so they are good at bringing in new players but they are bad at keeping current players. got it xDD
also, there are many strategies to bring new players. fresh servers is one of those. it also allows veteran players to rediscover the game after changes are made in new expansions, etc (no one is saying there shouldnt be any expansions).
also, its probably less costly to open a new server than to spend a whole year developing a new expansion. just a thought
There are so many factors you need to take into account, AoC leveling is already planning to be long, to try to push that towards needing to spend 2880 hours of lvling is so short sighted.
I don't want to do a giant posting explain this either I'm trying to play a new game, so ill point out a few points.
1. Immense time leveling (added leveling time for no reason to extreme values) does not equal a sudden better longer experience. You are further creating separation between player base in terms of doing content of their level and of their area causing less players to be around.
2. Barrier to entry for casual and new players having to mount of giant wall to progress towards more meaningful content. )This does not mean the you can't have good early game content please don't get this confused)
As players reach higher levels introducing new people into the system will have sch a wall it will take forever to see them get towards content more veteran players are doing. Sieges, end game pve content, meaningful pvp content. Overtime you lose players and this wall will reduce the effectiveness of new players reaching that goal or feeling it is pointless since they need to invest towards 3k hours to get there. Than even upon getting there they need to get gear to compete. It is going to have a negative impact
3. Longer leveling simply means you are doing the same lower level content longer it is going to feel tedious either way. The effort/budget they spend on lower level content should not surpass end game content that everyone can enjoy equally (which will still have gear gaps inbetween) Any way you put around it the end game is going to be where the best content will be and important as you want that to cycle to keep people playing.
4. Just going to say simply PvP is going to destroy people that need all this time to level not being able to experience it, this is a story in itself...AoC already plans to have long leveling, there is no reason to further create dmg to a competitive scene of potential players forcing them to spend an insane amount of hours to level then needing to spend even more time catching up in gear. The competitive seen will been to replenish / obtain new players.
Nothing changes when you move all of your "meaningful content" to the max lvl.
I think you were present in the threads where I posted videos from L2 sieges and when I said that those videos have people in gear at 3 different tiers of progress. Yet they still all participated in the siege and brought something to the table. And Ashes will go even further with that cause it'll have siege tech that can be operated by lowbies.
Moving the entire game to the max lvl only works when your game is years-old w/o any inflow of newbies. Though even that is a shit design imo, cause then you have to add super strong catchup mechanics, otherwise newbies will obviously never catch up to the vets.
EVE is a fairly good example for what I'm suggesting. Pretty much endless leveling that still supports newbies having fun, because the content is meant to be enjoyed by players at a wide range of progress. I want the same concept for Ashes, just properly adjusted to its own designs.
Because WoW Vanilla has by far the best leveling phase of all games plus low levels matter (gathering low level ressources)
Archeage was my second favourite mmo and its leveling phase was absolute d*gshit