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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Leveling process changes needed.
Githal
Member
The way i see AOC - leveling should be an afterthought.
Leveling should be in the way of achievements!
For example you gain 1 level up every time you complete 1 of the following FOR THE FIRST TIME.
* you complete some big quest story line
* participate in upgrading node to town / city / metropolis (1 for each)
* Level up your profession
* explore region
* complete caravan run
* kill world boss
* clear dungeon
* win node war / guild war / siege
* get 50 pvp kills
and so on. Ofc the number of ways you can get levels should be more than 50. so you are not forced to do an activity you dont like.
This doesnt mean that the leveling will be fast. It can even be made slower than it is now. just it will be much better than farming the same spot of mobs for hours.
The game should incentivize you to explore the world and do different activities all the time.
Leveling should be in the way of achievements!
For example you gain 1 level up every time you complete 1 of the following FOR THE FIRST TIME.
* you complete some big quest story line
* participate in upgrading node to town / city / metropolis (1 for each)
* Level up your profession
* explore region
* complete caravan run
* kill world boss
* clear dungeon
* win node war / guild war / siege
* get 50 pvp kills
and so on. Ofc the number of ways you can get levels should be more than 50. so you are not forced to do an activity you dont like.
This doesnt mean that the leveling will be fast. It can even be made slower than it is now. just it will be much better than farming the same spot of mobs for hours.
The game should incentivize you to explore the world and do different activities all the time.
0
Comments
Therefore, opposed. Not really a discussion-worthy type of opposition. I understand your wish and won't be upset if it is changed to be done this way, but don't like it.
Not that i dont respect your opinion, but would be more constructive to say why you dont like it.
What are you seeking to accomplish?
Is the idea that if a player completes say 50 of 150-200 things in the game they reach max level?
I don't see any value in the idea either.
If this change was made how would this effect the overall game?
Sure, it's just that these turn out to be long, I'll try not to go into too much detail though.
For me, MMORPGs are about 'definition', whereas for many people (not saying you) they're about 'checklists'. Even if you're not a 'themepark' MMO enjoyer, games where the thing the game outright incentivizes is 'do a little of everything to progress' takes away from the experience, for me.
I like when players distinguish themselves by following different paths, and part of that is choosing specifically to not spend their time on certain things.
Like the 'loner' player who plays an MMO solo because you can't really be a 'loner' in a game without other people, it's not the same (credit for this snippet goes to a YouTuber, moreso).
Incentives to do different things, especially incentives as strong as 'gaining a level', is a nightmare to balance while also just not sitting well with me, I don't even like the idea of getting better at Adventuring level because you collected 3 million Daffodils.
But ofc, if the game turns out to not be good enough quality in economy, content or challenge to give people a reason to move around and not just kill the supposedly 'most efficient' farming spot, then I'd probably prefer your suggestion, assuming I was still playing.
Ye thats why my idea was that there will be more than 50 things that can give level, so you can still choose what you want to do and what you dont want. But you are right, it sounds like a checklist.
At the moment it just feels like there is no reason to anything than farming mobs. And yes maybe if they buff the quests rewards it may improve this somehow. But the real problem will still persist.
Like if you want to gather/craft - you are being left behind by levels, This leads to not being able to gather/craft better equipment. So it will always be going for max level first, and then focusing on crafting.
Same with node / siege / guild wars. People will be rushing levels so they can easily win those events vs any player that didnt rush for max level.
Caravans - same
World bosses? - The biggest level group will always get the boss.
So in the end it will not be about how you like to play the game, but you will feel forced to farm levels and do nothing else, otherwise you fall behind those who only farm.
And tbh if i have to start a game that tells me that i have to farm these mobs for 10 hours, then swap to killing those other mobs for 12 more hours and this repeats again and again till you reach max level for 80 hours, I wont be excited to play this at all.
Yeah but we're still early in, and the problem isn't solved this way exactly, because each thing is supposed to have its own progression, conceptually.
Yes, right now it seems blatantly obvious that rushing to max level is always the correct thing to do first, but changing how we get the exp will just lead to the BDO problem. It'll be good for maybe a week...
I just think that this will allow for different play styles, and still be rewarded for it.
For example:
You may be able to get to level 20 just by focusing on gathering and crafting. Then you may want to run some caravans to sell your mats/crafted equipment, Then focus on developing some nodes with those mats. and so on and by this you can reach some reasonable level. After this you may need to do other stuff since i dont like the idea of only doing 1 thing to reach max level, but at the moment if you do what i said above you will be stuck at some low level with exp debt of thousands from deaths
Another question, if your suggestion has 'specifics', in your mind.
Is it actually 'level' or 'a chunk of exp', or what? Here's an example of why I ask.
In BDO, when you're in a certain level range, doing certain quests will give you 1% of the exp toward the next level.
The optimal action is always to level by fighting, or main story, right up until the point where you will get the maximum benefit because it's a percentage, then run around doing the quests. Doing it the other way means that if you don't like grinding, you're grinding more than you would like to.
In Ashes this would be 'even worse' depending on the exp values per mob.
So, in your suggestion, when you say 'get exp', do you mean 'a percentage of a Level Requirement', or 'a specific exp value'?
Because the first thing means that people will grind, and then use this system to boost through the 'rough/slow patches', but the second thing means that people who like grinding and skip doing these activities, will get much smaller benefits for doing them later.
What i had in mind is neither of those 2. Its a whole level. For example you do this long quest chain of 10-15 quests and after you finish it you gain whole level.
And for those who like grinding mobs, there can always be checkbox for lets say: kill 50 3-star level 20 mobs, when you complete it you gain level.
People will just look for what path is the shortest/easiest and do that, just as people are grinding mobs rn even if they dislike that.
You can level with artisanry right now. It's just slower than grinding mobs. Your suggestion will not change this. It'll simply change "grind mobs" to "grind this activity". And as Azherae said, balancing all those activities to be "the same", in terms of how quick they are, would be a massive pain in the devs' ass.
Sadly this would kill my motivation for this game. I prefer a slow grind for glint than do "tasks" for levels.
Embrace the grind.
Grind is joy. Grind is life.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Expect Leveling to change significantly after the start of Phase 3.
I of Course plan to do a bit of levelling with a Dunir in Phase Two, but jeah the levelling process must get improved somehow. I don't even care how exactly. Just something. (lol)
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Maybe i look after a Guild sometime soon
there can be enough things you can choose from for everyone. And it doesnt even matter if 1 thing is bit faster to accomplish than the other, because the point is that you shouldnt be able to get max lvl by doing just 1 thing. Imagine you have 150 ways to get level and doing only crafting/gathering can give you 15 levels. And after this you need to do something else (you still choose what you want to do from the remaning 135).
Some may be faster to level, other may be more rewarding trough the process of leveling (more items, gold and ect).
There will always be guides for everything no matter what it is. And if particular group of players want to follow a guided to min max thing - then thats fine. But those that dont follow this guide should not be with 15 out of 25 levels behind for the same time, just because they doing something they enjoy like crafting/pvp/developing nodes/caravan runs and ect..
The point is: i dont think just buffing the quests exp rewards will be enough to make the leveling system good, because AOC is supposed to have numerous activities that keep you involved in the world trough the leveling process.
And you are like: Well you need to dedicate 100 hours in a FARMING SIMULATOR / QUEST SIMULATOR. And after this the game will be good.
And here the problem are not hte 100 hours. The problem is doing the same thing for 100 hours.
For example: First day at launch the cap is lvl 10, And after this every day the cap increase by 2 level. So after 20 days you get max level.
Pros:
* New players that join later have chance to catch up to older players (not age, but time played
* Easy to make ALT characters, without the need to spend 100 more hours
* The time it would take to reach max level will be same as it is now
* No lifers wont have that great of a level advantage than average working people with few kids
* More time to spend on other activities like Caravan runs/ developing nodes/ PVP / killing bosses and ect
* More fair environment where most players will be same level, so all other activities + the pvp will be a lot more fair
* Chance to experience more of the AOC world, Since atm you rush levels, meaning you skip doing a lot dungeons and other mob zones. Or even if you dont skip them you will be too high level to have a good experience there.
* You wont feel pressured to farming levels, and wont have the feeling that you are being left behind, just coz you do something you love that is other than grinding levels.
Agreed.
Mindless grinding has never been a draw for me.
I love story based chain quests.
https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxy1o6r5ZVskH1YD_DdITPjlL6y37eqKYj
I will never get tired of reposting this clip.
Blown past falling sands…
Steven's vision has sginificantly changed since that clip from 7+ years ago.
But... we shall see what they actually deliver.
Touch my XP by grinding and I will put you through a window
I don't think Steven has changed at all. It seems more likely that Jeff had a conflicting vision for ashes that was incompatible with the old school games Steven is inspired by:
Eve, Lineage 2, Archage, Star Wars Galaxys.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
This sounds like a lot of work that would be better put into an achievement system than levelling system. Just grind to cap and then do the activity you want like we've been doing for the last 20 years. I don't want a new, fancy system. I, and I suspect others, want something similar to what I played when I was younger, which is what we're being offered. I think you might be confused about the target audience for this game.
Jeff definately did have a different vision to Steven.
Jeff's vision was built from the perspective of wanting a financially viable game and having a solid foundational understanding of what that means.
Stevens isn't.
For better or worse, Steven wants the game Steven wants. There is very clearly little to no thought put in to whether game systems are a good idea, the only thought behind them seems to be if Steven wants them or not.
Milestone leveling doesn't work in a game as open as Ashes.
It works in a linear game, where players are going to hit the same milestones in the same order, or where a person can oversee the whole process for each individual player to decide if they have done enough to earn a level or not, but it absolutely does not work with a competitive open world MMORPG.
I would wager that with a system like you are proposing, people would very quickly learn how to level to the cap in a day or two, leaving those wanting to play the game as they wish well behind.
I see absolutely no benefit to it at all, and in fact see many drawbacks (dungeons being run exactly once, PvP kill trades etc).
It's for better.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
They are an anacronism from the earliest days of pen and paper RPG's, and have completly outlived what ever justification they originally had in both settings. Even today most table top DM's don't even use them or only pay lip service to the concept and advance all members of the play group in synch at the completion of a 'worthy' boss fight or narrative point, or a finite number of play sessions.
We should view leveling up as a learning process, not a grind. Levels should be gained upon demonstrating mastery and SKILL against relevent benchmarks aka PvE. This would some what resemble 'achivement' systems so many game now have. These should be thresholds of performance pertinent to your character class, so a Cleric is gonna have a goal like 'heal for 5K over 30 seconds while in battle' while a fighter would have 'deal 10k damage over 30 seconds while in battle'. They can even be tailored to your specific build and what skills your unlocking on the class tree (showing full incorporation of your latest skill into your combat being the goal here). Obviusly they should scale with gear to prevent twinking a character through a challenge, just multiply the challenge by the players current gear multiplier to eliminate it as a variable. And a character could be provided with more then one active achivement goal at a time to give flexibility, upon leveling up a new set of goals are provided.
Will players try to find the easiest way to blow through the achivements YES, would it have been impossible to adjust the achivement thresholds to the desired balance and rate in earlier games, YES. But Intrepid now has ENORMOUSE DATA SETS from a huge number of Alpha testers, automated tools to just ramp a challenge value up or down based on mass data is a very viable method to continualy (even after launch) adjust things on the fly to keep leveling at the desired pace overall, will some people level faster, will players who already KNOW how to play level faster, YES, (that's the point), but that's already the case and always WILL be the case unless your leveling system is a Timer that runs when players are offline.
When players hit the same milestone in same order is how you create the best guide that people can follow to min max.
When you are in 1 part of the world and the guide is for some other region with different objectives available, you have to figure some stuff by yourself.
The point is that you dont need unification for every single person to have the same experience. And this system can work exactly because its open world. Since you can just choose to do whatever you like. And it doesnt matter that for 20 hours you will be lvl 18 and someone will be lvl 20. Thats not that big of a difference, and a lot of people will choose the lvl 18 route if they find it more enjoyable.