Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
You can do it in less then 2 hours!?
Up to Level 50, yep.
Not the additional Champion Points that kick in after that, but yeah, people sell Power-Levelling Services for new players.
Could we argue that then, only "the first" Character should take about 80 to 90 Days ?
And that after You levelled your first Character to Level 50 - no matter which Character of all Characters created that would be,
you would then afterwards get a certain Stat, Buff, whatever - for your remaining Characters - so that they can level somewhat faster than your first Character ?
Just a Suggestion.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
True that.
It might differ a bit regarding of how the Gameplay feels when playing the different Classes - but once You levelled up a Character once, you are familiar with the levelling Process.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
There is one concept however that always perturbed me, and that is reputation grinding. I just find it incredibly dull, lackluster and monotonous. If MMOs introduce reputations, I hope that they are excessively thought out in order to be enjoyable for the player experience.
With almost everyone agreeing this is something that should be seriously looked it, now would be the time to get LOT's of opinions. Thanks all, and thanks again to Flanker the OP for this awesome post!
No. A level 1 will have close to zero effect on those systems, if they can even participate. The game needs people who can pull their own weight.
Yup, the thing is there is a bias on the forums for people that have infinite more free time or will be taking time off work. And are saying slower for the sake of saying slower.
We can already see there is going to be spikes from leveling (on paper) based on the bonuses skills get , skill tree, and augment system.
I see a lot of vocal elements on the forms on weird elements that is leading to try hardcore pvp guilds controlling whole servers. Anyone not in those guilds are going to be pvped or forced to join / listen to them like peasants.
no one wants leveling to be in one or two days obviously it should feel chunky. But it needs to make sense and not become so long that a casual player never reaches max level reducing their effect on the server and further giving hardcore guilds more power.
There are definitely some levels needed to progress a certain way (understand lvl 1 is an exaggeration just the overall point of its not as free and some levels are going to be needed)
The things is, it doesn't matter how long it will take to reach level cap if you look at it from the perspective of Hardcore vs Casual players. If player A plays 2 hours/day while player B plays 6 hours/day, it doesn't matter whether it takes 200, 500 or 1000 hours, player B will always reach it 3 times faster; and it's not only about level. By the time casual player reaches the max level, hardcore player (even though he has the same level) will be equipped much better as he didn't spend 66% of his past hours grinding XP, he was getting a better gear and enchanting it. Hardcore players beat casuals under any circumstances.
“High level”places are just more challenging to defeat with one 8-person group.
But, “high level” places and “low level” places change as Nodes rise and fall.
A low level group is probably going to want to be alongside high level allies when in a “high level” area.
Haven't seen this mentioned yet. Your leveling speed relative to the nodes around you could be very fast, who knows if you'll even see a Metro before reaching level 50.
I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes.
You are completely missing the point.... People saying im going to play 16 hours a day or not go go to work for a extended amount of time is not what the leveling experience should be based off of. Making a leveling experience so slow because you have a small amount of people wanting to no life is not heathy for the game.
This is why you have the end game gameplay loop where people are the same level but working towards smaller gains. And still giving players something to do and not having a mount of gear / level difference between players even more so when there is pvp involved...
Someone reaching it 3 times faster (because they choose to do nothing but play a game the entire time) shouldn't be where the bar is set artificially inflating a leveling experience. And honestly there should be no world where we are talking about spending 1000 hours to reach max level.
I never said that hardcore players should be taken as a baseline. Moreover, I said that it doesn't really matter how long will it take to reach the level cap as hardcore players will reach it faster than casual players anyway.
But it shouldn't be TOO fast like it was, for example, in New World. Even on launch, it took maybe 3-4 days to reach level 60; maybe a week for an average player. And yeah, current 200-250 hours may be a lot of playtime comparing to single player games, but it's definitely not much when it comes to MMO.
P.S. This is just my subjective opinion, don't take it very much to heart
I never said that hardcore players should be taken as a baseline. Moreover, I said that it doesn't really matter how long will it take to reach the level cap as hardcore players will reach it faster than casual players anyway.
But it shouldn't be TOO fast like it was, for example, in New World. Even on launch, it took maybe 3-4 days to reach level 60; maybe a week for an average player. And yeah, current 200-250 hours may be a lot of playtime comparing to single player games, but it's definitely not much when it comes to MMO.
P.S. This is just my subjective opinion, don't take it very much to heart
[/quote]
1-2 months if you are playing every single day is fine for hitting max level. That isn't where the game ends as I expect there to be a lot more progression for people. While being more evenly scaled in terms of pvp.
The average player most likely won't reach max level for half a year.
Why is new world being used as an example when the fastest way to level was giving mats to tower for towns of xp and not questing. Seriously confused on people using bad elements of new world as an example in mmorpgs.
At this point are we going to assume AoC will be like new world and you can level by giving mats to town and basing are arguments off that for leveling speed? Are we going to assume you can quest in AoC and you can't get max level from questing.
If peolpe are going to be talking about examples use ACTUAL mmorpgs Rift, swtor, city of heroes, everquest, etc. Stop using new world as examples for what is bad.
1-2 months if you are playing every single day is fine - playing "every single day" may be different for different players. It can be 2 or 10 hours per day, so the time it takes to reach max level may vary.
The average player most likely won't reach max level for half a year. - well, it may be true if "average player" plays for 1-1,5 hours per day or around that (if we take the statement that it takes around 45 days of playing 4-6 hours per day into account). Pretty sure that average MMO player plays more than that.
It doesn't matter what was the fastest way to level up there, it's totally irrelevant. I'm talking about the outcome and consequences of reaching the cap fast. I was amongst the first players who reached level 60 on my server and the first one on my server to reach the max level 200 across all trade skills (and I did that solo). And there wasn't much else to do there after you reached that. I participated in 95% of wars, did PvP mission runs etc., but... that's it. Fortunately, AoC has more has way more to offer in terms of content and various activities but why take good old XP grind out of equation? I feel like many people have an impression that you can "truly" start playing the game only after reaching level 50 and I doubt that it's the case.
I'd use Lineage 2 as an example then, but I'm not sure you'd like it. On official or classic servers it took many months and sometimes years to reach the max level. And people still had fun playing it.
Moreover, if we speak about private servers, there was always a direct correlation when it came to server rates and server life span. x1-x3 servers could live for years while server with x100-x1000 rates rarely lived longer than 1-2 months.
Are you trying to indicate a average mmo players playing more than 6 hours every single day? I think you really need to reevaluate that statement and not include your own time to spend playing. I honestly feel because you view you can spend a lot of time you think other people are doing that and naïve to the other things going on life for people.
Your statement you were one of the fist to hit max level shows your sense of time is warped and you most likely don't have an understanding what the average playing is playing based on your previous statement. The way you look at xp should not match what the games goes for.
There is a different between good xp experience, and a xp grind that becomes a barrier to entry and simply feels like a bad grinding experience. It has everything to do with leveling in new world, the experience was bad from top to bottom. Getting max level has nothing to do with no content to do, that is a game issue. Your issues with a bad mmorpg should not be brought up as an example. If New world took longer to level it still wouldn't have made it better. That is just you wanting something to play longer because you have more time on your hands. There is a reason why that game died off before people were hitting max level.
From my understanding with linage 2 is it is different than western style mmorpgs and more akin to grinding kr games. So effectively you are wanting to extra levels for the sake of just grinding that give you little to no gains?
From my understanding with linage 2 is it is different than western style mmorpgs and more akin to grinding kr games. So effectively you are wanting to extra levels for the sake of just grinding that give you little to no gains? - Yes, it is a Korean MMORPG. My point is that achieving something that is difficult to achieve feels much better. Beating a boss in Dark Souls feels better than killing a boss in some casual game because it's not an easy task. That's what I mean.
I hear what you say and I don't disagree with you. I just think we are not really talking about the same thing. Peace
After leveling many times during alpha 2, after wipes or to test, I will not care for the fresh players in the released game.
That isn't difficult though that is just grinding a lot. If you only gained xp at a certain point while pvping and loss xp on death because of that or pve encounter (in a constantly fashion), than we can start talking about difficulty.
Levels will matter more in AoC, for the fact you don't get your full class till level 35 and how the leveling system works all together. So it would mean the power from levels would be an even bigger deal and causing issues within the pvp based component, ontop of the other gearing that will be involved.
If you want to advocate for a hard cap being lvl 50 and able to get more levels after at an extremely slow grindy rate I don't see them doing that since i feel the expectation is in expansions they will increase level cap. At the end of the day I don't see this as meaningful leveling its just people that have infinite time want to level forever.
There should be plenty of elements progress at max level that are smaller gains but you spend far more time doing.
Fair enough. Let's hope for the best then
From what I can tell Ashes will not have too many of these "high level benefits". Even higher level character require resources found in lower level zones, zones in general aren't fully isolated from one another where you just won't run into players of a certain level in a specific place and most importantly: things in Ashes take more time. Goods take more time to be gathered and transported, Nodes take time to grow, strong communities with social bonds and trust take time to form and it takes more time to learn about the far more complex systems of Ashes. So really there would be no benefit to rush players through the levels when everything else moves at a much slower pace.
In my opinion there wouldn't be an issue to say it should take around 300 hours to reach max level (That would be 4 months of playing 3 hours 6 days a week) especially since even lower level characters contribute significantly to the growth and maintenance of their Nodes, meaning being slower than others is not bad either.
AoC isn't rushing people through levels since they are going for more traditional time. My issue is people will say at 300 hours or even 500 hours it should be longer. And those same people won't be working and that is what they are basing their desire off.
AoC will have power benefits in regards to levels on top of pvp (ie you don't get your full class till lvl 35, augment system changing how your skill work and increasing their power is tied to your level in their ranger show case you can also see this).
My issue will always be people asking to unreasonable leveling times and expecting content around that which reduces content that could be at max level. (That means creating a lot of content players won't ever experience or if they do they will be overleveled) And then you get the people saying there is nothing to do at max level from a pve perspective the same ones that no lifed the game and wanted a longer leveling experience.
This would also let Intrepid take their time with making more max lvl content after release rather than before, because majority of people would be still leveling.
No matter how much max lvl content you have, people who can play 10++h/d will eat through it in no time, so imo it's pointless to have an end-heavy lean in your content. PvP already gives a ton of content for hardcore people and additionally slows down the overall pvx progression.
Having shitty grindable max lvl content just because "we gotta have smth at the end" is a bad approach imo.