Should Quests Take You to Level Cap?

In modern MMOs, we don't really grind the last levels anymore, but in older games we had to. I can't say I have much of a preference but I want to see what other people think. I do like grinding mobs for XP, and those last levels definitely feel a lot more rewarding if good XP sources are harder to come by. (Or if the good XP quests are harder to do or required a group in the late levels.) Anyways, what do you guys think?

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Vissox

Noaani wrote: »

IMO, yes, quests should be able to take you to the level cap, with gear that is of a quality that makes that possible (but is by no means good).

However, that quest line should have many situations where players are presented with other activities (harvesting, processing, crafting, running trade routes, glint, building a boat etc), so that if they want to deviate from the path they can.

Grinding mobs should be faster in terms of experience gain than questing, but should have almost no gear directly associated with it. However, if a player opts to grind for experience, they can use the coin they have (likely largely from glint) to buy gear that is on par or slightly better than what they would have obtained from following the quest line.

This is what most games I have played have done for the last 15 or so years - and older games have been changed to basically follow this. it seems to be the accepted middle ground that gives players the most viable options.

Do you think that some (progression/story)quests should be impossible to solo until you upgrade your gear? I think hitting a wall where you have to work on crafting/acquiring better gear can give players a break and relieve the urgency that everyone gets when they are trying to get ahead of the level curve.

Vissox

Otr wrote: »

I prefer to grind mobs, caravans and nodes rather than quests.
So I would prefer quests and story based leveling to be optional.

Do caravans actually give xp? I was under the impression that was a more economic feature.

Dygz

Seems like you can just offer quests to improve gear, rather than make it "impossible to solo" because of low gear score.
By design, Ashes is balanced for an 8-person group.

Dygz

Aszkalon wrote: »

Actually it would be the nicest, fresh Wind of change for me EVER - if i could reach a Level-Cap for once WITHOUT grinding things like Plants and Ore's like crazy or kill Ten Million Mobs or so.

I mean okay, through all the Years i also hit Maxlevel a few Times with Quests. But i am always reminding the nearly endless grinds. Like in WoW Vanilla, lol.

What kinds of Quests are you hoping for that do not include Resources and Mobs?

Otr

Vissox wrote: »

Otr wrote: »

I prefer to grind mobs, caravans and nodes rather than quests.
So I would prefer quests and story based leveling to be optional.

Do caravans actually give xp? I was under the impression that was a more economic feature.

I will grind caravans even if I don't get XP.

They give some progression as an attacker or defender but no XP as far as I know.
3 months more to dream and hope.

Vissox

Dygz wrote: »

Aszkalon wrote: »

Actually it would be the nicest, fresh Wind of change for me EVER - if i could reach a Level-Cap for once WITHOUT grinding things like Plants and Ore's like crazy or kill Ten Million Mobs or so.

I mean okay, through all the Years i also hit Maxlevel a few Times with Quests. But i am always reminding the nearly endless grinds. Like in WoW Vanilla, lol.

What kinds of Quests are you hoping for that do not include Resources and Mobs?

Use item quest, discover area quest, crafting quests, there are constellation quests, get quest item quests (not always the same as a resource) kill X players quests, talk to X npc quests, ect.

Nerror

I hope questing is enough to get to max level. I would also hope some of the more rewarding quests are group-based ones. In a well-designed quest you can "hide" a decent amount of mob grinding along the way, as long as it doesn't involve staying in one spot killing the same mobs over and over.

I REALLY hope they get some amazing quest-lines made for the game. Quality over quantity always. Comissions are great for those who like to do the simple kill/gather quest grinds, but in a perfect (game) world, I think we should be able to level to max doing only cool, interesting quests of both the solo and group kind, and of course the story-lines.

Diamaht

Vissox wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

IMO, yes, quests should be able to take you to the level cap, with gear that is of a quality that makes that possible (but is by no means good).

However, that quest line should have many situations where players are presented with other activities (harvesting, processing, crafting, running trade routes, glint, building a boat etc), so that if they want to deviate from the path they can.

Grinding mobs should be faster in terms of experience gain than questing, but should have almost no gear directly associated with it. However, if a player opts to grind for experience, they can use the coin they have (likely largely from glint) to buy gear that is on par or slightly better than what they would have obtained from following the quest line.

This is what most games I have played have done for the last 15 or so years - and older games have been changed to basically follow this. it seems to be the accepted middle ground that gives players the most viable options.

Do you think that some (progression/story)quests should be impossible to solo until you upgrade your gear? I think hitting a wall where you have to work on crafting/acquiring better gear can give players a break and relieve the urgency that everyone gets when they are trying to get ahead of the level curve.

Yeah for sure. I would definitely like to see some leveling walls in place that require me to engage with the player economy in some way in order to progress.

I don't want the quests to provide all of my leveling gear. FFXIV and SWTOR both do this and it makes leveling feel hollow. I didn't have to do anything, it just handed everything to me. Not a good experience.

Noaani

Vissox wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

IMO, yes, quests should be able to take you to the level cap, with gear that is of a quality that makes that possible (but is by no means good).

However, that quest line should have many situations where players are presented with other activities (harvesting, processing, crafting, running trade routes, glint, building a boat etc), so that if they want to deviate from the path they can.

Grinding mobs should be faster in terms of experience gain than questing, but should have almost no gear directly associated with it. However, if a player opts to grind for experience, they can use the coin they have (likely largely from glint) to buy gear that is on par or slightly better than what they would have obtained from following the quest line.

This is what most games I have played have done for the last 15 or so years - and older games have been changed to basically follow this. it seems to be the accepted middle ground that gives players the most viable options.

Do you think that some (progression/story)quests should be impossible to solo until you upgrade your gear? I think hitting a wall where you have to work on crafting/acquiring better gear can give players a break and relieve the urgency that everyone gets when they are trying to get ahead of the level curve.

My opinion is that quests like this should exist as one of those other activities I mentioned above.

It should be presented to players as "if you get some friends together and do this thing, the rewards will be large".

I can also see them adding group quests where if you complete it, you can skip a few hours of the solo quest chain - so it acts as a shortcut.

The thing to keep in mind with leveling quests though, is that after even as little as a few months after launch, you can't guarantee people will have others leveling with them. The leveling process needs to be built (long term, at least) with solo players in mind the whole way through.

Dripyula

I would like to be able to have more quests in the game that reward XP than what is needed to reach the official maxlevel.
Or alternatively to have all kinds of mobs give so much XP that I can truly feel like quests are not everything.

In WoW Vanilla I remember how I leveld up to lvl.55 by doing quests.
And people said there was only enough quest-XP in the game up to lvl.58.
And that was only IF you also killed mobs in the world in the meantime of course.

But I powerleveled the last 5 levels while ignoring all quests. And not because I liked it.
Simply because I lost my patience, the whole progress was so slow I grew bored to hell

and so "anyways I started blasting" basically.
I think this is pretty much... yeah... 20 years later irl.
AND I STILL REMEMBER HOW GOD AWFUL SLOW IT WAS - this is how much I remember bad experiences in games that I actually enjoy. *sigh*

Dunno how Ashes will handle that. But I hope that either quests give lots of XP or the "braindead" variante of just dyeing the ground of Verra red with all the XP creatures blood.
If people wanna go slow that is okay.
That is up to them.
But I be honest here I will take all the shortcuts I can find.
Other people can powder their ego with stupid stuff I don't care about like doing things "the tough way".

Like playing a FromSoftware game without a shield & blocking, using a twohanded weapon probably and dying three up to eight times as much as I did in the entire playthrough.
Just because they wanna feel like badasses. Gods I hope all those streamers suffer more than they show. ^^

willsummon

While leveling itself is a bottleneck, the options to level should not be bottlenecked. Such as leveling by killing monsters, completely quests, exploring dungeons, large monster raids, nodes, caravans, or various types of PVP.

Apok

I liked what FFXI did, currency or xp rewards were extremely rare in quests instead were used for unlocking areas, maps, gear, jobs, and some other things like job specific progress or level cap increase, if you wanted decent experience you had to form an optimized 6 person party due to the game not just having tough overworld mobs they also cut your experience off once you're so many levels above the mob.

one other thing they did with FFXI is gave people weapon skills that chained together. huge list of combos that chained but limited at low levels so you had to go over what you had for a party comp and figure out your weapon skill combos are. Depending on the combo element you adapt to the world as you leveled and played with other people. there are the usual leveling spots but the system created a little more depth and diversity in finding places to level up

Xeeg

Dripyula wrote: »

Dunno how Ashes will handle that. But I hope that either quests give lots of XP or the "braindead" variante of just dyeing the ground of Verra red with all the XP creatures blood.
If people wanna go slow that is okay.
That is up to them.
But I be honest here I will take all the shortcuts I can find.
Other people can powder their ego with stupid stuff I don't care about like doing things "the tough way".

That's not how I view mob grinding. The fun part for me is practising my rotation and adjusting builds/gear to try and more optimally defeat the monsters. Maybe if I open with the long cast, then land a dot, get a mage shield up before the mob gets to melee range, then wand them down so that by the time they die and I engage on the next monster I have my mana back. Oh, now I am in a new zone and maybe I need to add another spell to my rotation and it makes me start to run out of mana over time and need to drink. Maybe if I upgrade my mana regen slightly I don't need to drink, better go to town and see if there are any gear upgrades I can get.

There is a rhythm to mob grinding that can be fun to try and lock in. Like playing an instrument or something. I can easily spend an hour in combat with an enjoyable character trying to find and maintain that rhythm.

Dygz

Vissox wrote: »

Use item quest, discover area quest, crafting quests, there are constellation quests, get quest item quests (not always the same as a resource) kill X players quests, talk to X npc quests, ect.

I expect to see most of those as Battlepass Tasks.

Dygz

Diamaht wrote: »

Yeah for sure. I would definitely like to see some leveling walls in place that require me to engage with the player economy in some way in order to progress.

I hate player economy and try to avoid it as much as possible.
Gamers are greedy.

Aszkalon

Dygz wrote: »

I hate player economy and try to avoid it as much as possible.
Gamers are greedy.

This is why i gave away at least One Kael'daelar Sword-hilt for free on a Deathknight around Cataclysm in WoW, when everyone tried to extort SIXTY. THOUSAND. GOLD. out of every single Swort-hilt that started the Questline for that Runeblade.

Just to piss off all these People who think they can extort and "press out" so much Money from People with Rare Items that these People need.

But it was a "Human Deathknight", so to say Warcraft III Lore Race for Deathknights - "AND" he had a decent Name and not something like Banana-pie or something else.

This is why he got it for free. Around Thirty People in the Trading Chat blocked me that Day when he and i made my Deed public.

It was glorious. I enjoyed the Salt and regretted nothing.

Tyranthraxus

I could go either way on questing to get me to max-level.

Will definitely go through the full questline the 1st time through the game, though. It'll be *new*; The 2nd and 3rd toons I'll be more-open to alternative-means of levelling - especially if it's faster.

Hopefully there'll be things like dark/light and mean/nice options, in questing. If we're to do the SAME quest-line to level each time, it'd be more-interesting to be able to play it different ways.

Diamaht

Dygz wrote: »

Diamaht wrote: »

Yeah for sure. I would definitely like to see some leveling walls in place that require me to engage with the player economy in some way in order to progress.

I hate player economy and try to avoid it as much as possible.
Gamers are greedy.

Dygz, its kind of a major focus of the game.

We'll be seeing a ton if it everywhere.

Vissox

Dygz wrote: »

Vissox wrote: »

Use item quest, discover area quest, crafting quests, there are constellation quests, get quest item quests (not always the same as a resource) kill X players quests, talk to X npc quests, ect.

I expect to see most of those as Battlepass Tasks.

Tf you mean battlepass? This is an rpg game, if there is an immersion breaking UI hub where you get the same exact quests/progression as everyone else, I'm quitting day one lmao. This ain't fortnite shun.

SnowElf

Hmm.. Good question.

Do I think quests alone should get a player to the level cap? Naw, not even including the Main Storyline Quests incorporated into the pool if considered also. There are multiple ways to earn experience. I personally love to grind dungeons repetitively to help gain some levels, or even engage in lots of PVP also.

I actually wonder how Intrepid is going to balance the experience between all of the sources which yield experience, I think that's the most important thing to consider when answerin' this question.

From what I remember though during one of the livestreams on Twitch, it's going to be an arduous task to reach max level and you will have to put in a hefty amount of effort to reach that threshold.

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