Leveling early on feels too slow

jb3ll

I started playing AOC this weekend, and the initial experience was fantastic. As a Fighter, the first five levels were well-paced and engaging, with plenty of groups to join and new skills to unlock. The combat felt great, and my abilities were coming together nicely.

However, hitting level 8 felt like running into a wall. Early levels took about an hour each, which was rewarding, but now I have to kill 147 elites just to gain one level. With quests feeling almost nonexistent, the grind is excessive and discouraging. It would make more sense for the heavier grind to come later when more abilities are unlocked.

I understand the game is in early alpha, but it seems the developers would want players to experience more of the combat system without needing to invest 200+ hours.

Is this really how to game should feel?

Pham

Couple things:

1. the current quest system is basically placeholder atm so yes, that presents some issues. This will likely vastly change once all the quests are in the game, fleshed-out and working properly.
2. the xp-required-to-level curve is not consistent. There are "milestone" levels which are intended to be more difficult than the levels surrounding it. Honestly not sure why they did it this way? Reasons..
3. i think even in its current state, leveling is not too bad. I think it only feels bad when you compare it to the hardcore try-hard crowd and how fast *they* level. I don't really feel the need to hit max level within 5 days of a server going live or anything like that so I'm ok with the current pace.
4. If you can get in a leveling group which is farming 2-to-3-star elites, it will go much quicker. It's just kind of monotonous, IMO

Mahes

Pham wrote: »

Couple things:


2. the xp-required-to-level curve is not consistent. There are "milestone" levels which are intended to be more difficult than the levels surrounding it. Honestly not sure why they did it this way? Reasons..

They have somebody on the Staff that worked with Everquest. They did the same thing at the beginning of Everquest. Nobody liked it then either and it was evened out. Its a stupid idea. There are many things this game seems to not be learning from when it comes to what people enjoy.

Terranigma1

Pham wrote: »

3. i think even in its current state, leveling is not too bad. I think it only feels bad when you compare it to the hardcore try-hard crowd and how fast *they* level. I don't really feel the need to hit max level within 5 days of a server going live or anything like that so I'm ok with the current pace.

So far I thought - or at least hoped - it's a mere balancing issue that will eventually be addressed in the beta when they start finetuning the numbers. I certainly hope it's no designed intentionally that way, because the mere idea of perceiving reaching a certain level to be more "difficult" than any other level is absurd in the context of an MMO. The basic gameplay loop is identical whether you play a level 8, 16 oder 23 character. You go through your skill sets and kill mobs which doesn't require you as a player to become better at playing the game. There is no difficulty in this regard; there is a mere time investment, but there's nothing inherently difficult about sitting in a chair and pressing the same rotation of buttons, but simply for a couple of hours longer than you did previously.

So, I hope you're wrong in this regard that this is intended as in a similar manner I also assume, so far, that the item progression - there is basicially no lvl 2 to lvl 9 or lvl 11 to lvl 19 gear - is a mere placeholder system, and the power spike at lvl 10 and 20 isn't intended to work this way. Because that's quite ... weird?