From a design perspective, there are three scenarios where this content could exist. Either the encounter needs that lower level player and is content the guild would run, the content needs that lower level player but is only content a guild would run for said lower level player, or the lower level player is optional.
As I envision it, it would be an optional additional thing rather than a replacement of someone in the raid. It would be beneficial for guilds to bring lvl-appropriate people to the raid. But not so highly beneficial that majority of that guild's players would make alts just to run that content.
L2 had a low lvl epic boss that gave one of the best items in the game. So obviously majority of guilds would make specific alts that could easily farm that boss (on top of general recruitment practices).
I think... in Ashes, a low level Adventurer could be a max level Gatherer.
And in some cases it would behoove having this character with a max level Adventurer group in order to acquire the best loot possible from the mob/boss kills.
I think... in Ashes, a low level Adventurer could be a max level Gatherer.
And in some cases it would behoove having this character with a max level Adventurer group in order to acquire the best loot possible from the mob/boss kills.
Yep, that is also a potential thing and having the feature I suggest would not only help that character not simply die during the raid, but also have more content than just "I stay in this corner for 20 minutes while you kill the boss that I gotta spoil at the end".
people werent punished for progressing. if i was higher level than you i could easily kill you even if you had QA ring (the jwel nikr is talking about). also, you could get at higher levels a jewel that anyone could get and would give you the same mdef and because it was much easier to get, you could even overenchant it without worries, and end up with better defensive stats. the qa ring mostly just helped daggers and archers (specially daggers) because it gave some crit damage and auto attackers, thats it. most of the good jewels were acquired by high lvl characters.
Then the item NiKr was talking about isn't one of hte best items in the game.
also, at first, iirc, you could go with your high level character and just disintegrate the boss
This is also bad game deisgn.
Preventing it is the appropriate thing to do.
The thing is, not only is it bad game design that it was possible to do this, it was bad game design that players would have a reason to want to do it.
If they have additional players who are so completely done with all of their high lvl progression that they're free to make an alt and play on it instead - yes, guilds will get alts for this. But at that point it would simply mean that the game has not introduced any new content that's valuable enough to make those high lvl players ignore their alts.
In a PvE setting, it doesn't take organized players all that long to get to the point where the only progress left for them to achieve is via raiding.
Thus, progression can only ever happen on organized raid nights - perhaps as few as two or three nights a week.
If someone wishes to play the game on other days or at other times, then yeah, them not having any character progression to obtain on their main was a common situation.
I mean, players don't need to be bombarded constantly with the need to run content every day. Again, that is bad game design. They just need to have a clear progression path in front of them and a plan for taking it on.
Even in Archeage - a game that was constantly bombarding players with events that you were foolish to not run and with multiple daily and weekly events that were well worth doing, there was still plenty of time to level up alts.
Throughout my years of playing L2 I can't remember a single server where newbie towns weren't just absolutely filled with high lvl guilds yelling "looking for new players; will give starting money; high potential of getting into the guild".
And this was true on all types of servers, from super fast-paced ones to the most official-type-loyal as possible. Yes, some players did in fact do this on alts. Some used those alts to then spy on the guild (another great part of this feature btw). Some just did this to boost their guild as much as possible cause they didn't have to do anything else at the time (usually on high-paced servers, where leveling was super trivial).
But I always saw this as one of the most community-welcoming features of the game. I've not only joined cool guilds through this, but have also made friends by inviting newcomers and then learning that they're great people with high skill. None of that would've been possible if the game didn't encourage and reward my interaction between high lvl guilds and new-/lowbies.
I've seen many games attempt to implement systems to make this happen, and yet literally not once seen it actually happen.
I've seen the systems get cheesed by players in basically every game that attempted to implement such a system.
Then the item NiKr was talking about isn't one of hte best items in the game.
I haven't known a single dagger that didn't want to have that ring. Now, maybe your definition of a "one of the best items in the game" is something that's super universal, but to me an item that's BiS for a whole class type is definitely "ONE of the best items".
And as Depraved said other phys classes appreciated it too, so it was always highly sought after (especially considering a 30% chance to drop it from a 36h respawn boss).
Older updates make it way less valuable, but those updates also made the game less valuable so fuck 'em
In a PvE setting, it doesn't take organized players all that long to get to the point where the only progress left for them to achieve is via raiding.
Thus, progression can only ever happen on organized raid nights - perhaps as few as two or three nights a week.
I guess this is one of the things I was missing in our previous discussions. I had always assumed that when you were talking about "I want my raid group to have enough content" that meant "at least 3h daily". Which is why I always thought that it'd be somewhat unreasonable to have that many bosses in the game, especially considering that you wanted to kill quite a few of them each time.
But if you were always talking about just a few evenings a week, then our approaches to mmos are just way too different. And I'm gonna be interested to see if Intrepid ever manage to get us both to enjoy the game to the fullest.
To me, if a high lvl player has nothing better to do than level alts - the game has failed to entertain that player enough at their lvl of progress. And THAT is bad design imo.
To me, if a high lvl player has nothing better to do than level alts - the game has failed to entertain that player enough at their lvl of progress. And THAT is bad design imo.
To me, if a high level player has to be grinding the same content 7 days a week, the game has failed.
No game should require that much from players if they want to stay relevant.
The reason Korean games do it is because it is what the cafes want from games - they want people coming back day after day, and stay hour after hour. And fun fact, in Korea, if you have a subscription game that no Cafe is installing on their computers, you aren't getting any Korean subscriptions.
As such, the customer for games in Korea is actually cafes moreso than players. Games are developed for the Korean market to maximize Cafe income.
The GGG ideal around this is kind of great imo. They don't want PoE to be the only game people play. Rather, they want people coming in and checking out the new content every few months, then heading off to play other games for a bit.
There is no "grinding the same content" as high lv.
Every day is a different experience of doing stuff to improve your friends/guild/community/node/possetions/gear +all the pvp drama, in various locations.
Well, there's always gonna be the unsexy maintenance and upkeep of gear and property to keep us occupied, what a relief!
Oh, and the re-building of the sewer system! What great times we'll be living in.
Be bold. Be brave. Roll a Tulnar !
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FantmxMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited September 2023
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
I don't really mind longer progression time, as long as my character is not utterly gimped for not being max level, and is still viable for activities while being a few levels below someone else.
Please explain the reason why a long level grind needs to be increased for the sake of level grind. Because hardcore players view time differently and will easily throw hundreds of hours at a game. While people without as much time will have even less effect on the world having to spend for them a year to even touch end game.
A better illusion of progress.
Getting a new piece of gear that you worked 3 weeks to get is cool and all, but that'll be only 1/16 of your progress (more precisely a 1/80, if we have 5 tiers of gear). Getting a lvl that you worked 3 weeks to get is fucking huge. You get a new augment point, you get a direct visual representation of your efforts and it's a 1/50 of the overall progress, so it feels more impactful.
Getting to lvl50 super quickly and then realizing that you now have to purely grind for gear feels way worse imo than just leveling up, doing content and getting gear along the way. In other words, it's a more holistic experience.
Part of the whole point is getting people closer to power so more people can do content together, not further increase the gap. Just because someone has tier 3 gear does not mean they are doing tier 1 dungeons and one shotting everything.
That is literally what I'm asking though. You're still thinking along the lines of "if I'm one level above this dude I'M GONNA DESTROY HIM". I don't want that, because in my experience that was never the case.
I make this point in my other post and this one as well. You need to have enough content so the cycle does not feel repetitive or people say your game has no content. This is why the idea of spending resources to have more content early game to match this 120 days of 4-6 hours will reduce quality else where with their budget. That type of content that is not repeatable or you wouldn't go back.
You do realize that in order to do that Intrepid would have to put a ton of content at the endgame, right? So it's literally the same as having it in lower lvls and people doing that repeatedly, but instead it's at the max lvl and people doing it repeatedly.
And if Intrepid can in fact make a ton of content so that it doesn't feel repetitive - then why the hell not just spread it over all the lvls?
Unless you are saying they add no additional content but instead stretch things out and have people doing the same grinding of mobs and content just to level? They have stated its not going to be "grindy" in terms of mob killing and repetitive quest another point they are not going the korean route.
It's an mmo. It's going to be grindy. I won't believe that they'll somehow succeed at preventing that until they prove me wrong (which is yeaaars away at this point).
I'm just saying that grind throughout your leveling process feels better than grind when you're done leveling. It ruins the feeling of finality imo.
And as for added content, you can read my discussion with Noaani here. I want Intrepid to come up with a design that doesn't just leave the old content on a dusty shelf forever forgotten. I want new mechanics added to old bosses and mobs, in the context of allowing new players experience that same content but w/o the insane inevitable powercreep of "if you came to the game one year late - you can forget about having a challenge on these older bosses, cause you'll get all their gear through easy quests and you'll outlevel them in a few days".
Gear can affect abilities and such if they want to do it like that and make gear chase feel just as impactful without being level grind gated. Rather than just levels it becomes a matter of skill / gear over you don't have levels and are missing all these abilities.
Also that large gap of player levels is exactly what I don't want as it gives people a reason to complain, you are effectively making people just have edges over others and basing it off grinding time and not the actual content of the game. Power based on you have grinded hundreds of more hours does not sound very western compared to you having done content successfully.
Another thing that is the point you work harder and gain less, it is part of the way to increase the cycle and length of the gameplay. You are level 50 you get smaller gains so the game can artificially increase its length and have something players are working towards.
The game isn't going to be if you are one level over someone you will destroy them, you will have an advantage though. Now if we are talking about going from 25-50 hours of progress to the person is now 100- 150 hours ahead of you for 3-5levels (maybe around lvl 30) you are going to be gapping someone with quite an advantage and the answer is you need to spend 100-150 hours to be able to beat them because they are some levels ahead of you with perks.
This kind of thing again is easier swallowed at end game where its based on gear / skill rather than gear / skill / level..
Im going to explain this again a game had a budget content just doesn't appear out of thin air. The content cost money / time to make. Creating content that is not meant to go back to will take a element of budget, same with making end game content. Simple deciding you want longer levels by 3 times the amount does not mean anyone is going to be creating 3 times the content suddenly for lower levels. That budget should be going towards end game because what you are talking about is excessive leveling time for the sake of leveling.
So yes money, its like asking why don't they spend time refining art assets people hardly see. Things need to make sense, content that people don't' repeat does not make sense unless you are talking about a single player game where its about a run of the experience and than the game is over.
Ya it is normal to talk older dungeons and add more stuff and increase their difficulty. Again im going for triple the leveling time and experience, the world isn't' going to be suddenly bigger because triple of the leveling time... Though it technically should because more content would be needed else you are just doing the same things over and over.
This is why i dislike comments like the original post of the thread. Says increase the time by 3, you can tell it is inexperienced or naïve as that is all they say, clearly just wanting to play the game a lot and level from it for a longer period of time. Maybe a casual player that doesn't think about other casual players and other issues.
No way or attempt to say "Lets increase the leveling time (even though i have not played it) by 3 times the amount. Ok this is why it should be increased, this is how it will affect the content and work the with content, this is the reason why the current world can work with with 3 times the content without adding more, etc" Just says some random absurd number and doesn't explain how it works within the current frame of the game.
At this point I feel you have played a lot of korean type mmorpgs / games and not as much western ones. I feel like you want this kind of endless leveling feeling that doesn't exist in western mmorpgs as things are designed differently. End game run can be more fulfilling than leveling with gear chase and upgrades you get from it. There is a lot of people and a huge gear chase where everyone is work together, and allowing the devs to slow down the process of players fairly.
Terrible, leveling is easily the worst part of any MMO. Id rather not spend 120 days to get to the part of the game i want to play.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this, but I am haha
To me, the leveling experience is one of core aspects of a MMORPG. A slow-paced leveling so you can actually have a sense of progression, feel the difference between each level, truly experience each zone to the fullest, meeting and uniting with people along the way in the open world. Games like classic WoW, classic Aion, LotRO, etc, those are games that I actually miss the leveling experience.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
Terrible, leveling is easily the worst part of any MMO. Id rather not spend 120 days to get to the part of the game i want to play.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this, but I am haha
To me, the leveling experience is one of core aspects of a MMORPG. A slow-paced leveling so you can actually have a sense of progression, feel the difference between each level, truly experience each zone to the fullest, meeting and uniting with people along the way in the open world. Games like classic WoW, classic Aion, LotRO, etc, those are games that I actually miss the leveling experience.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
And there is a reason why steven based AoC in L2 and AA, not in wow and its clones.
It's that simple.
Terrible, leveling is easily the worst part of any MMO. Id rather not spend 120 days to get to the part of the game i want to play.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this, but I am haha
To me, the leveling experience is one of core aspects of a MMORPG. A slow-paced leveling so you can actually have a sense of progression, feel the difference between each level, truly experience each zone to the fullest, meeting and uniting with people along the way in the open world. Games like classic WoW, classic Aion, LotRO, etc, those are games that I actually miss the leveling experience.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
And there is a reason why steven based AoC in L2 and AA, not in wow and its clones.
It's that simple.
I doubt anyone that played archeage can name more than 5% of the quest givers encountered during the leveling process. The leveling process for archeage had nothing to do with the systems that excited players to play and immersive themselves in the world.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
This may not be a popular opinion but here I go lol.
I think that there needs to be time investment to level. Certainly would like it to take 3 or 4 months on average to reach max level. What I would also love is that leveling is based off of ability to play and perfect one's rotation/trade/crafting abilities/etc.. Have quests or training moments that a player needs to perfect, in order to gain xp faster, or even level to the next level! As opposed to it just being a grinding slog of kill 6,000 boars.
Leveling to me, needs to be more than just sitting hours in a zone grinding out trash mobs gaining small amounts of xp.
I also do not like the long tedious grind just to learn spells. Again maybe stressing more on perfecting the use of those spells to level them up. I liken it to a chess game. Imagine playing chess and you have the king.... then you get a pawn, then another, and another. Eventually you get the castle and a knight. That is not a rewarding system at all. It takes a person 6 months to get all their chess pieces just to play chess.... all the while competing against people who just started and maybe just have a king and pawns. Then trying to pretend that somehow they are the superior gamer, when in reality they just spent countless hours grinding a mob that was not hard to grind, it was just tedious and time consuming. Saw it oh to often in wow. Bad gamer started game before another player and grinded to reach max. They then act superior to everyone else. But the moment you caught up on all your spells you slapped them around because you had all your "chess pieces". And actually perfected how your class, spec, and rotation functioned.
Im going to explain this again a game had a budget content just doesn't appear out of thin air. The content cost money / time to make. Creating content that is not meant to go back to will take a element of budget, same with making end game content. Simple deciding you want longer levels by 3 times the amount does not mean anyone is going to be creating 3 times the content suddenly for lower levels. That budget should be going towards end game because what you are talking about is excessive leveling time for the sake of leveling.
Mag, ffs, I'm literally suggesting making less content, so that they can spread out their budget better. I'm asking Intrepid to make us go back to previous dungeons/bosses/mobs, instead of telling them "give us 500 unique and completely different encounters".
My suggestion also fits perfectly with the planned node interactions. A node has fallen and now you don't have that lvl5 node content that was meant for only higher lvls? Well now you have lvl1 node content that can still appeal to those high lvl players.
This would potentially help people not leave the game when their preferred node falls and they then have to either relocate or spend a ton of time not doing good content in their preferred location and instead go farm someone else's stuff (which would also help those people's node instead of yours).
If Steven wants Nodes to be the highest loyalty feature, it would make sense to create deeper roots in a single node rather than, after a siege, telling players "well, your node is gone so just relocate. You made friends and know npcs and locations here? Ah, get over yourself, you can do that elsewhere as well".
At this point I feel you have played a lot of korean type mmorpgs / games and not as much western ones. I feel like you want this kind of endless leveling feeling that doesn't exist in western mmorpgs as things are designed differently. End game run can be more fulfilling than leveling with gear chase and upgrades you get from it. There is a lot of people and a huge gear chase where everyone is work together, and allowing the devs to slow down the process of players fairly.
You do realize that Steven is literally inspired by 2 korean mmos, right? And Jeff is gone, and we've still gotten 0 clue about Bill's investment into the project cause they didn't even mention him on the latest stream.
Right now there is 0 indication that the game will not be similar to those korean mmos. As Dygz would tell you, after Jeff left the game became waaay closer in design to said korean mmos than how it was before. Funny how that is when Steven becomes an even bigger influence on the development than he already is.
Terrible, leveling is easily the worst part of any MMO. Id rather not spend 120 days to get to the part of the game i want to play.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this, but I am haha
To me, the leveling experience is one of core aspects of a MMORPG. A slow-paced leveling so you can actually have a sense of progression, feel the difference between each level, truly experience each zone to the fullest, meeting and uniting with people along the way in the open world. Games like classic WoW, classic Aion, LotRO, etc, those are games that I actually miss the leveling experience.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
And there is a reason why steven based AoC in L2 and AA, not in wow and its clones.
It's that simple.
I doubt anyone that played archeage can name more than 5% of the quest givers encountered during the leveling process. The leveling process for archeage had nothing to do with the systems that excited players to play and immersive themselves in the world.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
I dont remember any of the quest givers of L2. Not important. Players make the stories, the grind sets the time and place.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I agree with this but I also think character leveling in the traditional sense is outdated and no longer needed. I would also prefer a skills based progression system rather than an overall leveling one. It makes more sense that because I cast fireball 100 times or crafted a dagger 100 times I would increase my skill in those areas and not general spell casting or weaponcrafting.
Nothing outdated about it.
It's just a different preference (leading towards a different genre of game).
This may not be a popular opinion but here I go lol.
I think that there needs to be time investment to level. Certainly would like it to take 3 or 4 months on average to reach max level. What I would also love is that leveling is based off of ability to play and perfect one's rotation/trade/crafting abilities/etc.. Have quests or training moments that a player needs to perfect, in order to gain xp faster, or even level to the next level! As opposed to it just being a grinding slog of kill 6,000 boars.
Leveling to me, needs to be more than just sitting hours in a zone grinding out trash mobs gaining small amounts of xp.
I also do not like the long tedious grind just to learn spells. Again maybe stressing more on perfecting the use of those spells to level them up. I liken it to a chess game. Imagine playing chess and you have the king.... then you get a pawn, then another, and another. Eventually you get the castle and a knight. That is not a rewarding system at all. It takes a person 6 months to get all their chess pieces just to play chess.... all the while competing against people who just started and maybe just have a king and pawns. Then trying to pretend that somehow they are the superior gamer, when in reality they just spent countless hours grinding a mob that was not hard to grind, it was just tedious and time consuming. Saw it oh to often in wow. Bad gamer started game before another player and grinded to reach max. They then act superior to everyone else. But the moment you caught up on all your spells you slapped them around because you had all your "chess pieces". And actually perfected how your class, spec, and rotation functioned.
Some people see it as "sitting hours to clear trash mobs in a spot".
But it is more than that.
1) You prepare your consumables in town (craft/economy/trade with friends/guild).
2) You assemble your group with good supports, good healers, good tanks, good dps, and good PVPrs because it's an open world pvp mmo.
3) You make your way to the destination that may combine:
Good xp per hour
Good profit outlook
Relevant mats that can be found
Related quest
4) as you make your way there you may encounter caravans, rivals, friends or just play /zone chat drama
5) once you get there you compromise with other friendly groups and you deal with enemies
6) during the grind you catch up with friends, you talk socially. Not just "heal!", "aggro!", "minions!". This is NOT, unfortunatly the case in eso, ff14, w0w, instanced treadmil.
7) there is a time and a place for organized friends/guildies to take on challenging content and act out a mechanical scenario. Instanced dumgeons with lore and hard mechanics and OW raiding and the pvp threat from rival raiders.
8) during the grind you may fight enemies or you may duel with friends
And again... all of the above could be cancelled if:
You encounter enemies,
Spot a caravan
Being asked for help by a guild member (not a stranger in a zerg guild, for which you dont care).
NONE of the above happens in end-game mentality mmos. You just queue at the groupfinder with randoms or guildies, you shout "aggro" "heal" "minions" rinse repeat over and over and over.
NONE of the above happens in games driven by npc quest givers.
You treat NPCs as ppl and ppl as NPCs, ignoring them completelly since:
They cant pvp you
Overland content isnt challenging in order to request/offer help.
The /zone chat is just a memefest without any ingame/gameplay implications or drama.
Terrible, leveling is easily the worst part of any MMO. Id rather not spend 120 days to get to the part of the game i want to play.
I shouldn't be surprised to read this, but I am haha
To me, the leveling experience is one of core aspects of a MMORPG. A slow-paced leveling so you can actually have a sense of progression, feel the difference between each level, truly experience each zone to the fullest, meeting and uniting with people along the way in the open world. Games like classic WoW, classic Aion, LotRO, etc, those are games that I actually miss the leveling experience.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
And there is a reason why steven based AoC in L2 and AA, not in wow and its clones.
It's that simple.
I doubt anyone that played archeage can name more than 5% of the quest givers encountered during the leveling process. The leveling process for archeage had nothing to do with the systems that excited players to play and immersive themselves in the world.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
I dont remember any of the quest givers of L2. Not important. Players make the stories, the grind sets the time and place.
You don't remember them because it's super boring and questing itself loses importance as you complete more quests. Your alternative, grinding mobs, is about as interesting at facilitating story as watching paint dry.
Your allowed to like whatever you want, but forcing everyone else to participate in your preferred content isn't good game design.
This may not be a popular opinion but here I go lol.
I think that there needs to be time investment to level. Certainly would like it to take 3 or 4 months on average to reach max level. What I would also love is that leveling is based off of ability to play and perfect one's rotation/trade/crafting abilities/etc.. Have quests or training moments that a player needs to perfect, in order to gain xp faster, or even level to the next level! As opposed to it just being a grinding slog of kill 6,000 boars.
Leveling to me, needs to be more than just sitting hours in a zone grinding out trash mobs gaining small amounts of xp.
I also do not like the long tedious grind just to learn spells. Again maybe stressing more on perfecting the use of those spells to level them up. I liken it to a chess game. Imagine playing chess and you have the king.... then you get a pawn, then another, and another. Eventually you get the castle and a knight. That is not a rewarding system at all. It takes a person 6 months to get all their chess pieces just to play chess.... all the while competing against people who just started and maybe just have a king and pawns. Then trying to pretend that somehow they are the superior gamer, when in reality they just spent countless hours grinding a mob that was not hard to grind, it was just tedious and time consuming. Saw it oh to often in wow. Bad gamer started game before another player and grinded to reach max. They then act superior to everyone else. But the moment you caught up on all your spells you slapped them around because you had all your "chess pieces". And actually perfected how your class, spec, and rotation functioned.
Some people see it as "sitting hours to clear trash mobs in a spot".
But it is more than that.
1) You prepare your consumables in town (craft/economy/trade with friends/guild).
2) You assemble your group with good supports, good healers, good tanks, good dps, and good PVPrs because it's an open world pvp mmo.
3) You make your way to the destination that may combine:
Good xp per hour
Good profit outlook
Relevant mats that can be found
Related quest
4) as you make your way there you may encounter caravans, rivals, friends or just play /zone chat drama
5) once you get there you compromise with other friendly groups and you deal with enemies
6) during the grind you catch up with friends, you talk socially. Not just "heal!", "aggro!", "minions!". This is NOT, unfortunatly the case in eso, ff14, w0w, instanced treadmil.
7) there is a time and a place for organized friends/guildies to take on challenging content and act out a mechanical scenario. Instanced dumgeons with lore and hard mechanics and OW raiding and the pvp threat from rival raiders.
8) during the grind you may fight enemies or you may duel with friends
And again... all of the above could be cancelled if:
You encounter enemies,
Spot a caravan
Being asked for help by a guild member (not a stranger in a zerg guild, for which you dont care).
NONE of the above happens in end-game mentality mmos. You just queue at the groupfinder with randoms or guildies, you shout "aggro" "heal" "minions" rinse repeat over and over and over.
NONE of the above happens in games driven by npc quest givers.
You treat NPCs as ppl and ppl as NPCs, ignoring them completelly since:
They cant pvp you
Overland content isnt challenging in order to request/offer help.
The /zone chat is just a memefest without any ingame/gameplay implications or drama.
Rewarding exploration says hi.
Everything you want is easily solved by making interesting things in the world players want to explore and have rewarding progression components tied to them. Make a specific forge found in the an abandoned city the only way you can smelt iron ore into special iron ore. The abandoned city is haunted by fire spectres rewarding the acquisition of fire protection pots/auras/gear.
Grinding is all about seeing a number get bigger, exploration is about having a damn adventure.
Also not my preference. L2 and AA are Stevens preference.
In addition the class, +class, nobility, olympiad, epic raid quests of L2, even though I dont remember the npcs or the damn background story, had real gameplay rewards and increase the power factor of the organized players that stood head above shoulders amongst the rest in a server, not to mention unique previledges/skills/gear for the best 34 or the strongest 4000 players in a server.
Compare that to mount skins char skins and titles you get from wow eso ff14......
Also not my preference. L2 and AA are Stevens preference.
In addition the class, +class, nobility, olympiad, epic raid quests of L2, even though I dont remember the npcs or the damn background story, had real gameplay rewards and increase the power factor of the organized players that stood head above shoulders amongst the rest in a server, not to mention unique previledges/skills/gear for the best 34 or the strongest 4000 players in a server.
Compare that to mount skins char skins and titles you get from wow eso ff14......
So you remember none of the lore or any world immersion garnered by completing the quests, but you fondly remember the number value increase associated with the reward?
Skinner boxes aren't really all that fun to me, but you do you!
Also not my preference. L2 and AA are Stevens preference.
In addition the class, +class, nobility, olympiad, epic raid quests of L2, even though I dont remember the npcs or the damn background story, had real gameplay rewards and increase the power factor of the organized players that stood head above shoulders amongst the rest in a server, not to mention unique previledges/skills/gear for the best 34 or the strongest 4000 players in a server.
Compare that to mount skins char skins and titles you get from wow eso ff14......
So you remember none of the lore or any world immersion garnered by completing the quests, but you fondly remember the number value increase associated with the reward?
Skinner boxes aren't really all that fun to me, but you do you!
I remember all the 60-90 member guilds, their flags, the alliances and the enemies. I remember the strong players the famous players and the encounters.
I remember my inrl smallscale group, one of my friends playing his dark elven knight like a piano, taking out 5 players and 10 mobs all at once (same gearscore etc), another friend PKing 15 ppl when I gave tje signal
I remember the raid runs and the pvp, the castle ownerships and betrayals.
I remember my inrl being introduced to a 50yo guild ldr inrl and the course we took to revive his once legendary guild.
I remember the crafts the over enchants the gifts and so much more.
You want story? Go play
Dragon age
Witcher
Batman
Assassins creed
Rdr
Gow
Soulslike
Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
I played world of warcrafr 3 + frozen throne, the original dota and the likes, but I never touched wow and it's themepark content, forced faction pvp blue v red.
Why? It wasnt an mmo.
Also not my preference. L2 and AA are Stevens preference.
In addition the class, +class, nobility, olympiad, epic raid quests of L2, even though I dont remember the npcs or the damn background story, had real gameplay rewards and increase the power factor of the organized players that stood head above shoulders amongst the rest in a server, not to mention unique previledges/skills/gear for the best 34 or the strongest 4000 players in a server.
Compare that to mount skins char skins and titles you get from wow eso ff14......
So you remember none of the lore or any world immersion garnered by completing the quests, but you fondly remember the number value increase associated with the reward?
Skinner boxes aren't really all that fun to me, but you do you!
I remember all the 60-90 member guilds, their flags, the alliances and the enemies. I remember the strong players the famous players and the encounters.
I remember my inrl smallscale group, one of my friends playing his dark elven knight like a piano, taking out 5 players and 10 mobs all at once (same gearscore etc), another friend PKing 15 ppl when I gave tje signal
I remember the raid runs and the pvp, the castle ownerships and betrayals.
I remember my inrl being introduced to a 50yo guild ldr inrl and the course we took to revive his once legendary guild.
I remember the crafts the over enchants the gifts and so much more.
You want story? Go play
Dragon age
Witcher
Batman
Assassins creed
Rdr
Gow
Soulslike
Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
I played world of warcrafr 3 + frozen throne, the original dota and the likes, but I never touched wow and it's themepark content, forced faction pvp blue v red.
Why? It wasnt an mmo.
You can have fond memories of players, server social structures, pvp battles, etc, but none of that is created by leveling itself.
As for story, I want a shared world where players interact and build a collective story of villany, piracy, and heroism. Where real people act the roles, much like what you described above. Time investment centered leveling is not necessary to create this. There are better ways to facilitate positive/negative player interaction through exploration.
Comments
And in some cases it would behoove having this character with a max level Adventurer group in order to acquire the best loot possible from the mob/boss kills.
Preventing it is the appropriate thing to do.
The thing is, not only is it bad game design that it was possible to do this, it was bad game design that players would have a reason to want to do it.
Thus, progression can only ever happen on organized raid nights - perhaps as few as two or three nights a week.
If someone wishes to play the game on other days or at other times, then yeah, them not having any character progression to obtain on their main was a common situation.
I mean, players don't need to be bombarded constantly with the need to run content every day. Again, that is bad game design. They just need to have a clear progression path in front of them and a plan for taking it on.
Even in Archeage - a game that was constantly bombarding players with events that you were foolish to not run and with multiple daily and weekly events that were well worth doing, there was still plenty of time to level up alts. I've seen many games attempt to implement systems to make this happen, and yet literally not once seen it actually happen.
I've seen the systems get cheesed by players in basically every game that attempted to implement such a system.
And as Depraved said other phys classes appreciated it too, so it was always highly sought after (especially considering a 30% chance to drop it from a 36h respawn boss).
Older updates make it way less valuable, but those updates also made the game less valuable so fuck 'em
But if you were always talking about just a few evenings a week, then our approaches to mmos are just way too different. And I'm gonna be interested to see if Intrepid ever manage to get us both to enjoy the game to the fullest.
To me, if a high lvl player has nothing better to do than level alts - the game has failed to entertain that player enough at their lvl of progress. And THAT is bad design imo.
Well, you haven't played L2
No game should require that much from players if they want to stay relevant.
The reason Korean games do it is because it is what the cafes want from games - they want people coming back day after day, and stay hour after hour. And fun fact, in Korea, if you have a subscription game that no Cafe is installing on their computers, you aren't getting any Korean subscriptions.
As such, the customer for games in Korea is actually cafes moreso than players. Games are developed for the Korean market to maximize Cafe income.
The GGG ideal around this is kind of great imo. They don't want PoE to be the only game people play. Rather, they want people coming in and checking out the new content every few months, then heading off to play other games for a bit.
Every day is a different experience of doing stuff to improve your friends/guild/community/node/possetions/gear +all the pvp drama, in various locations.
Why rush the level cap?
Oh, and the re-building of the sewer system! What great times we'll be living in.
Gear can affect abilities and such if they want to do it like that and make gear chase feel just as impactful without being level grind gated. Rather than just levels it becomes a matter of skill / gear over you don't have levels and are missing all these abilities.
Also that large gap of player levels is exactly what I don't want as it gives people a reason to complain, you are effectively making people just have edges over others and basing it off grinding time and not the actual content of the game. Power based on you have grinded hundreds of more hours does not sound very western compared to you having done content successfully.
Another thing that is the point you work harder and gain less, it is part of the way to increase the cycle and length of the gameplay. You are level 50 you get smaller gains so the game can artificially increase its length and have something players are working towards.
The game isn't going to be if you are one level over someone you will destroy them, you will have an advantage though. Now if we are talking about going from 25-50 hours of progress to the person is now 100- 150 hours ahead of you for 3-5levels (maybe around lvl 30) you are going to be gapping someone with quite an advantage and the answer is you need to spend 100-150 hours to be able to beat them because they are some levels ahead of you with perks.
This kind of thing again is easier swallowed at end game where its based on gear / skill rather than gear / skill / level..
Im going to explain this again a game had a budget content just doesn't appear out of thin air. The content cost money / time to make. Creating content that is not meant to go back to will take a element of budget, same with making end game content. Simple deciding you want longer levels by 3 times the amount does not mean anyone is going to be creating 3 times the content suddenly for lower levels. That budget should be going towards end game because what you are talking about is excessive leveling time for the sake of leveling.
So yes money, its like asking why don't they spend time refining art assets people hardly see. Things need to make sense, content that people don't' repeat does not make sense unless you are talking about a single player game where its about a run of the experience and than the game is over.
Ya it is normal to talk older dungeons and add more stuff and increase their difficulty. Again im going for triple the leveling time and experience, the world isn't' going to be suddenly bigger because triple of the leveling time... Though it technically should because more content would be needed else you are just doing the same things over and over.
This is why i dislike comments like the original post of the thread. Says increase the time by 3, you can tell it is inexperienced or naïve as that is all they say, clearly just wanting to play the game a lot and level from it for a longer period of time. Maybe a casual player that doesn't think about other casual players and other issues.
No way or attempt to say "Lets increase the leveling time (even though i have not played it) by 3 times the amount. Ok this is why it should be increased, this is how it will affect the content and work the with content, this is the reason why the current world can work with with 3 times the content without adding more, etc" Just says some random absurd number and doesn't explain how it works within the current frame of the game.
At this point I feel you have played a lot of korean type mmorpgs / games and not as much western ones. I feel like you want this kind of endless leveling feeling that doesn't exist in western mmorpgs as things are designed differently. End game run can be more fulfilling than leveling with gear chase and upgrades you get from it. There is a lot of people and a huge gear chase where everyone is work together, and allowing the devs to slow down the process of players fairly.
It would be naive to assume this to be true.
Vanilla wow took the avg player 10-15 days of played time to hit cap a far cry from this proposed increase. Experiencing no name useless mobs and doing irrelevant quests completely negated by vertical progression isn't really immersive for me.
There's a reason major figures in the MMO community were massively against this kind of profession system circa the late 00s and into the 10s. Frankly it's rather boring.
1a) If leveling (which is tied to not only to character "progression", but also as a benchmark for gear strength and price value, mapping out the mmos world into dangerous/grouping hunting zones and more relaxing zones, simple and DIRECT measure, as a single number, of who can pull their weight in your group [instead of asking them what Lv is you X Y Z A B C D E D ability]), is outdated, in other words if Level, this simple and understandable number that appears SO MANY TIMES on so many tabs and windows, is outdated and no longer needed....
1b) what does that make of the passive skill trees of 0.05 crit dmg, 120 armor pen, 2% chance to apply burn status, +10 mp, +25% mp regen, -10 mp cost per cast, 0.2% chance on hit to restore mp and all the other bullshit passive, invisible combat factors as opposed to Active Abilities (not to be confused with action combat)?
2a) How did we ended up talking about the "Lv" not being needed any more in mmos, when every shitty singleplayer open world rpg has introduced levels on the protagonist of the story (assassins creed assasins need levels to become better at killing... the witcher sudenly needs levels to do his thing)
2b) You want the devs to code leveling based on how many times you casted fireball which has 5s cooldown? What about fireshit, that has 20s cooldown? Should they factor the higher CD and put an xp modifier on it? Code for that, just so we can move on from "outdated character levels"?
Does it really make more sense to you, to do all that?
Should we limit active skillbars to 5 skills just because everybody should level up their skills now and that is meta?
Should you be forced to swap out skills? "On monday I will play with fireball, on tuesday I will play with fireshit and the rest of the days I will level up my iceturds, and I will have levelled up all my 'good abilities' equally.
Why re-invent the wheel on things that nobody cares?
"Lv" is a means of communication. Leave it at that.
Lastly, back to topic, in mmos there used to be official servers, in which rates for xp/gold/drops were low, and there were private servers in which levelling/wealth was a mater of days or hours.
Same mmo, different servers with ONLY the level/loot speed changed.
Which ones do you thing had 10,000 people and which ones do you think had 150?
And there is a reason why steven based AoC in L2 and AA, not in wow and its clones.
It's that simple.
I doubt anyone that played archeage can name more than 5% of the quest givers encountered during the leveling process. The leveling process for archeage had nothing to do with the systems that excited players to play and immersive themselves in the world.
Leveling is effectively a revisitable evergreen tutorial that anyone with a pulse can complete.Some people may enjoy it and while it adds variety in gameplay many many people currently and historically hate it.
The question is why do I need to participate in a 6 month mandatory tutorial?
I think that there needs to be time investment to level. Certainly would like it to take 3 or 4 months on average to reach max level. What I would also love is that leveling is based off of ability to play and perfect one's rotation/trade/crafting abilities/etc.. Have quests or training moments that a player needs to perfect, in order to gain xp faster, or even level to the next level! As opposed to it just being a grinding slog of kill 6,000 boars.
Leveling to me, needs to be more than just sitting hours in a zone grinding out trash mobs gaining small amounts of xp.
I also do not like the long tedious grind just to learn spells. Again maybe stressing more on perfecting the use of those spells to level them up. I liken it to a chess game. Imagine playing chess and you have the king.... then you get a pawn, then another, and another. Eventually you get the castle and a knight. That is not a rewarding system at all. It takes a person 6 months to get all their chess pieces just to play chess.... all the while competing against people who just started and maybe just have a king and pawns. Then trying to pretend that somehow they are the superior gamer, when in reality they just spent countless hours grinding a mob that was not hard to grind, it was just tedious and time consuming. Saw it oh to often in wow. Bad gamer started game before another player and grinded to reach max. They then act superior to everyone else. But the moment you caught up on all your spells you slapped them around because you had all your "chess pieces". And actually perfected how your class, spec, and rotation functioned.
My suggestion also fits perfectly with the planned node interactions. A node has fallen and now you don't have that lvl5 node content that was meant for only higher lvls? Well now you have lvl1 node content that can still appeal to those high lvl players.
This would potentially help people not leave the game when their preferred node falls and they then have to either relocate or spend a ton of time not doing good content in their preferred location and instead go farm someone else's stuff (which would also help those people's node instead of yours).
If Steven wants Nodes to be the highest loyalty feature, it would make sense to create deeper roots in a single node rather than, after a siege, telling players "well, your node is gone so just relocate. You made friends and know npcs and locations here? Ah, get over yourself, you can do that elsewhere as well".
You do realize that Steven is literally inspired by 2 korean mmos, right? And Jeff is gone, and we've still gotten 0 clue about Bill's investment into the project cause they didn't even mention him on the latest stream.
Right now there is 0 indication that the game will not be similar to those korean mmos. As Dygz would tell you, after Jeff left the game became waaay closer in design to said korean mmos than how it was before. Funny how that is when Steven becomes an even bigger influence on the development than he already is.
I dont remember any of the quest givers of L2. Not important. Players make the stories, the grind sets the time and place.
It's just a different preference (leading towards a different genre of game).
Some people see it as "sitting hours to clear trash mobs in a spot".
But it is more than that.
1) You prepare your consumables in town (craft/economy/trade with friends/guild).
2) You assemble your group with good supports, good healers, good tanks, good dps, and good PVPrs because it's an open world pvp mmo.
3) You make your way to the destination that may combine:
Good xp per hour
Good profit outlook
Relevant mats that can be found
Related quest
4) as you make your way there you may encounter caravans, rivals, friends or just play /zone chat drama
5) once you get there you compromise with other friendly groups and you deal with enemies
6) during the grind you catch up with friends, you talk socially. Not just "heal!", "aggro!", "minions!". This is NOT, unfortunatly the case in eso, ff14, w0w, instanced treadmil.
7) there is a time and a place for organized friends/guildies to take on challenging content and act out a mechanical scenario. Instanced dumgeons with lore and hard mechanics and OW raiding and the pvp threat from rival raiders.
8) during the grind you may fight enemies or you may duel with friends
And again... all of the above could be cancelled if:
You encounter enemies,
Spot a caravan
Being asked for help by a guild member (not a stranger in a zerg guild, for which you dont care).
NONE of the above happens in end-game mentality mmos. You just queue at the groupfinder with randoms or guildies, you shout "aggro" "heal" "minions" rinse repeat over and over and over.
NONE of the above happens in games driven by npc quest givers.
You treat NPCs as ppl and ppl as NPCs, ignoring them completelly since:
They cant pvp you
Overland content isnt challenging in order to request/offer help.
The /zone chat is just a memefest without any ingame/gameplay implications or drama.
You don't remember them because it's super boring and questing itself loses importance as you complete more quests. Your alternative, grinding mobs, is about as interesting at facilitating story as watching paint dry.
Your allowed to like whatever you want, but forcing everyone else to participate in your preferred content isn't good game design.
Rewarding exploration says hi.
Everything you want is easily solved by making interesting things in the world players want to explore and have rewarding progression components tied to them. Make a specific forge found in the an abandoned city the only way you can smelt iron ore into special iron ore. The abandoned city is haunted by fire spectres rewarding the acquisition of fire protection pots/auras/gear.
Grinding is all about seeing a number get bigger, exploration is about having a damn adventure.
In addition the class, +class, nobility, olympiad, epic raid quests of L2, even though I dont remember the npcs or the damn background story, had real gameplay rewards and increase the power factor of the organized players that stood head above shoulders amongst the rest in a server, not to mention unique previledges/skills/gear for the best 34 or the strongest 4000 players in a server.
Compare that to mount skins char skins and titles you get from wow eso ff14......
So you remember none of the lore or any world immersion garnered by completing the quests, but you fondly remember the number value increase associated with the reward?
Skinner boxes aren't really all that fun to me, but you do you!
It'd be ironic if I was advocating for the game to have some version of pve only.
I remember all the 60-90 member guilds, their flags, the alliances and the enemies. I remember the strong players the famous players and the encounters.
I remember my inrl smallscale group, one of my friends playing his dark elven knight like a piano, taking out 5 players and 10 mobs all at once (same gearscore etc), another friend PKing 15 ppl when I gave tje signal
I remember the raid runs and the pvp, the castle ownerships and betrayals.
I remember my inrl being introduced to a 50yo guild ldr inrl and the course we took to revive his once legendary guild.
I remember the crafts the over enchants the gifts and so much more.
You want story? Go play
Dragon age
Witcher
Batman
Assassins creed
Rdr
Gow
Soulslike
Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
I played world of warcrafr 3 + frozen throne, the original dota and the likes, but I never touched wow and it's themepark content, forced faction pvp blue v red.
Why? It wasnt an mmo.
You can have fond memories of players, server social structures, pvp battles, etc, but none of that is created by leveling itself.
As for story, I want a shared world where players interact and build a collective story of villany, piracy, and heroism. Where real people act the roles, much like what you described above. Time investment centered leveling is not necessary to create this. There are better ways to facilitate positive/negative player interaction through exploration.