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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
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.
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Leveling is too slow. I'm new. I'm quitting until it's changed.
joelthunder
Member, Alpha Two
I'm not going to harp on the point but the leveling in this game is WAY too slow. To put it in perspective, I bought the game, wanted to like it, grinded to level 10 then realized I wasn't having fun. The leveling needs to be massively increased. Probably cut down by 75% for me to ever play the game. I'm going to uninstall it now and will watch to see if they correct it. This method of engagement is very 2000s and doesn't work. Thanks.
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Comments
This is statement lacks any kind of self awareness.
The speed at which you level has no bearing on how fun the game is. Increasing the speed at which you level would only change the level you quit the game at.
You need to be more precise with your criticism. What is boring? The combat? Not enough quests? Too narrow enemy options? Something else?
But Berserker is correct, your issue is not with the speed of leveling, it's with the gameplay itself, so if you want the game to change for the better - write out your issues with the gameplay.
There's also a high chance that your issues will already be solved in the future, because the game is simply nowhere near finished, so the gameplay is trash right now. Though, from what I've heard, the PTR's first 10 lvls are getting more and more streamlined.
The boredom comes in running to the board, getting the bounties, running out, killing 10 of X thing, running back. I love that you bring up self awareness since this is actually a core tenant of game theory. I am voicing a concern that many other players have. The content can not be the grind unless it's supplemented by content. Right now the game is a very simple kill grind. This is exactly what EQ was but EQ had no competition in the market. You can say UO or AC but 95% of players were on EQ. What killed EQ? WOW. I'm not glazing WOW here but the numbers don't lie. The pacing of levelling was MUCH better and not everyone quit once they hit max level. You know what they did? Played the real game. The real game in MMOs is the end game community and the content they have. If the developer's don't solve the leveling problem they will have no players for end game. I'm also not that interested in appeasing players that are on the forums. Your opinion matters the least. I'm not being rude there just stating a fact that opinions against yours have already left the game. You need to understand that the current player base will never give you valuable feedback to attract and retain players because they think it's "great". So, the the developers, you have a major problem here and you know if. Reduce the level grind by 75%. Add content that isn't kill X. You the Witcher III or Red Dead Redemption. The world needs life. Right now it's just boring.
This is a HUGE red flag. Game theory says the game MUST be fun first. If at any time the gameplay loop isn't fun you're building the wrong game.
Could be that would be ammeliorated by acquisition of Augments, but those have not been implemented yet.
The problem is that for us, who like to play these games for long periods, to go 'slowly', and even 'to grind' in some cases, we don't share the understanding of what is fun in going faster.
You did answer though, for you it's the endgame and the endgame community. If you have time, please give a few examples of what about that is fun but not accessible during leveling, because for me, at least, that's what I don't usually understand.
There definitely are many reasons in design why 'fun ends up at endgame' for many games, but the Creative Director of this game intends for leveling to be slow, and therefore even if you don't play, the way you can help the most is to clarify what would make that slow leveling more fun or let it integrate more of whatever you are enjoying at 'normal MMO endgame'.
(Disclaimer: My bias is to believe that mostly, MMO Devs just need to trick players by hiding a bunch of progression they don't see/understand until they are hooked, at the supposed endgame, so the only thing I could give feedback on to Ashes that would line up would be 'how to put that into leveling')
I probably prefer faster over slower - but it does depend on what is meant by fast and what is meant by slow.
One of the major hooks for me in the Kickstarter campaign was Jeffrey Bard stating that, by design, Ashes doesn't have an Endgame.
That has now been resolved in the games I enjoy playing by Seasonal Updates as opposed to yearly Expansions.
The first is that the game isn't fun.
It isnt fun as it currently stands.
The second issue the OP has is that leveling is also slow.
Faster leveling can indeed compensate for a game being less fun, as there is always the thought that perhaps the next level opens up new content that is more fun. This thought can keep people in games substantially longer.
Obviously that isn't Ashes though.
Ashes, it seems, is dead set on being both not fun, as well as slow.
I personally feel how it has improved already from last Year ... ...
It's no longer so cruel and slow.
The short Test of mine with the Summoner a few Days ago on the NDA-Server was cool. Wait is it okay to mention this here ?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
I am in the guildless Guild so to say, lol. But i won't give up. I will find my fitting Guild "one Day".
a good game is a game fun from the start and at all stages, the end game being "the actual game" is bad, if i could give an example i guess elden ring maybe you dont care about the end game you are just exploring and having fun as for mmos maybe GW2 not perfect but close enough and maybe elder scrolls tho i didnt play that to know but i heard its leveling is fun or maybe the dungeons and dragons mmo ..etc
being slow and grindy is not good neither being fast , you can be slower but you need to be fun and rewarding and that is something ashes is doing the opposite of because they just seem to have no idea what they are doing or wanting or they just refuse to actually improve the systems and stay stuck in the horrible design
Ok but this still doesn't tell me anything relative to an MMO because it kinda assumes I have played GW2 (whether I have or not isn't the point, just as you've pointed out that you didn't really play ESO).
For example, I like games with slow leveling, yet my current main game is Throne and Liberty, and I could go:
"Even though I prefer slow leveling, here are the reasons why I don't feel really negative about the fast leveling in TL" and then give some reasons.
This would help a different Dev who wanted to appeal to someone like me even though their game design is based on Fast leveling because they could then decide 'Oh, she might play if we add this' or 'oh, we shouldn't target this person because they will never be happy in our game' or even 'we can't target this person because adding the thing she wants would ruin our game'.
But it's good to at least know. Devs really can't assume just 'a good game is good', because people like different things, and would help if they explained 'em.
I'm playing WWM right now and I'm taking it in the slowest way possible, only exploring and doing random side-quests, while the main quest would've already taken me much much higher. But the enjoyment of the game is still at a constant peak, even though several game mechanics are LOCKED behind the main quest, which prevents me from doing parts of the exploration and has already locked me out of a few side-quests.
The game simply has so much stuff that no matter how fast you go through it - it's all good and there's a lot of it. And I haven't even touched the multiplayer part of that game, so there's EVEN MORE STUFF.
But judging by the PTR's change to faster lvling and previous changes to XP gain from non-mob-grind sources - we ain't ever getting a "you can take it slow" option. Things will be equalized as much as possible, because there'll always be people who scream "I only play 0.5h of dancing in a tavern a day but I NEEEEEED to be the same lvl as dudes that grind bosses 20h/d".
So you're complaining that a game in Alpha doesn't have enough content...
Maybe not rude but definitely ignorant. All I do is try to get them to modify how they have/plan to implement things in the game. I rarely compliment the things I do like. There are a lot of things this game can do better. Some things they can do it as well as it is possible to do it and it will still fail.
Leveling is too fast. You can get to 25 in a couple of days without much effort. Solo in a solid week or two depending on time played. If leveling is made fast like new age mmos, this game will fail so quickly. If there's no struggle or or value to the leveling process then your character literally is only valued as a number in a guild. No BOP no BOE, what you bring to the table in a team/guild/settlement/ect is a leveled character, gear can be passed around as needed.
You should have read this before buying in.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Level_cap
You should have looked up L2 and it's leveling speed and methods before buying in also.
Maybe this game isn't for you, but maybe you'd like it if you actually put some effort into it. I don't know, but I do know there are a handful of games that have rocket ship leveling you can play right now.
sure but you can go by the general opinion of most people and thats generally what'd you'd hear about GW2 leveling , i played TnL and its leveling was Boring on top of horrible combat so being fast made it tolerable and at least it looked pretty, at the end of the day the game being "the end game" is a bad design
This is precisely why you can't do that 'general opinion' thing though.
From my side, nothing you said is even remotely true.
I'm not arguing that you're wrong, I'm saying that when someone pops up saying that Ashes sucks, the leveling is boring, the combat is bad, and it's ugly, if you can't have a more nuanced conversation, you have as much chance of convincing that person as I would have of convincing you that TL is good for me.
If I explain 'no, for me personally, all these things about TL are cool and good actually' and you respond 'whatever, most people don't think that and I think it was bad', then at that point what would be the difference between you and OP?
Not to mention that by your logic, GW2 leveling is very fast, and the game has Level Scaling almost the whole way, so it doesn't even belong in this conversation.
different opinions sure but if one person came out and said ashes sucks,leveling is boring,its ugly...etc ,sure he'd have to explain himself but when the majority say that lets not act like everyone need to explain since by that point most people would be more than knowledgeable about why they think that, i myself said that stuff and explained it many times in discord and in the forums and even on reddit and a lot of people had similar thoughts to me and considering we are in the forums for said game i dont think i need to explain myself everytime i have to mention these type of things.
if you say TnL was good for you when you are in the minority and to someone who played the same experience as you but didnt like it so did the majority of people like yeah i wont agree with you but as someone who is in the minority of that you probably need to explain why you liked it , will i agree with you after probably not ,maybe i will change my mind about some things but not about the over all experience.
same thing with the OP , he came here said he bought it ,played till level 10 ,it sucks and need to be faster and the game stuck with systems from the 2000s, is that the greatest explanation ever NO, would it be better if he explained more ..obviously but does him only saying that makes us oblivious and having no idea what he talking about ...of course not . in fact we probably exactly know his whole problem and its not even the leveling speed its the grindy af,tedious and punishing systems for literally everything you do in the game among the dozens of other things the game try to punch you in the nuts with specifically as a solo player when all you want is to have fun and have some good progress which you can almost never do in ashes.
we all know that dont we, also GW2 leveling wasn't fast not for me at least ,when i got to level 80 in GW2 i spent like 2~3 weeks taking my time ,exploring ,messing around ..etc and it took that while i still skipped a lot of stuff to do,its probably a little faster now since you get a mount if u are a new player and it can be decently faster if you just focus on getting to max level but not as fast as you think it is and yes it had level scaling but that dosent mean it was easy ,it was challenging the whole way even when i went back to lower level areas i almost died there and the expansions beat my ass hard even tho i had crafted a good armor by then
Throne and Liberty doesn't encourage players to take their time leveling (anymore), GW2 kinda does. So there will be more people that play GW2 and have the slow leveling experience as fun, than people who have that experience for TL.
But Ashes does encourage players to take their time leveling in most ways, except one. You took your time in GW2 and enjoyed it, there was a lot of stuff to do.
I took my time in TL at launch and enjoyed it, there was a lot of stuff to do (Events, at least, had Level Scaling like how GW2 does)..
People are forced to 'take their time' in Ashes Alpha, and there isn't a lot of stuff to do, but OP was talking about levels 1-10, the part of the game where there is a lot of stuff to do. So why does OP want it faster?
I want Ashes 1-10 to be faster because:
These are my only reasons because everything else that is boring/unfun about Ashes Alpha right now (moreso 'when last I was able to seriously test') isn't related to leveling speed, for me, and I know this because I happily did the 1-9 grind in Alpha-1 like 8 times, I didn't even change area or generally do quests.
Intrepid 'needs' to understand if OP wants leveling faster because the content is lacking, because the premise doesn't suit them, because they just like rushing to endgame no matter how fun the path is (like someone who would level to 80 in GW2 in 18 hours), or because they just don't like the content that's available, or they almost certainly will end up 'hollowing out' their game like nearly every other MMORPG (Neverwinter and GW2 are excluded) does.
at the end of the day its because unless you play a certain way which ashes want to force on everything (grinding with a guild from the start for hours on end) that is also still boring and inconvenient for many ,you wont be having any fun since everything in the game is built around that, you want to make your own boat and go fishing ..well good luck making that boat and even if you somehow by a miracle did manage to do it someone can just come destroy you and your boat and now its gone but wait thats not the end of it you also lost your fish if you had any,half of your materials in your inventory,gear durability, you have XP debt now and to end it off you also lost a big amount of your time from traveling...congratulation
now compare that to say Archeage, you can teleport so you already can cut the traveling time, i then summon my boat take 5~10 at most finding a fishing spot, fill my ship with fish in 20-30 minutes ,take another 5~10 minutes going back and selling them, in an hour or less than an hour i went out , had a positive experience and progressed by gaining xp for my fishing trade and getting 300 or so gold too and if someone comes and kills me the only thing i lose is the fish and a little bit of time, i keep my boat , i dont get xp debt nor lose half of my materials in my inventory nor did i have to take half an hour at least to even get to a place i can summon my ship at.
same with the pack runs/caravans but even better because in that you get back enough money from the stolen crates to cover a good amount of the cost you used to make the crates since you put money into getting those crates unlike the fish which yes you bought chum and fishing rod for but those are long term so their benefits outweigh their costs by a lot in the long run.
it had an actual balance between risk vs reward and the reward was always and easily recognizable for anyone even noobs that it was better than the risk
OP had an experience from 1 to 10 in a game that makes everything punishing and over complicate the absolute F out of everything and makes it grindy af, if he was leveling while doing different stuff that rewarded him and he was having fun i doubt he'd of felt it was slow but even knowing how to do anything in the game is a tedious and annoying experience , like you need an encyclopedia open in a different screen to even begin to understand how crafting work and that is just one of the many artisan system problems, i mean even looking at the UI will give you a headache alone lol
this is a game that is built for no one not a game that is not for everybody
If the game did want people to slow down then we would get all the stuff to have fun leveling then put short term goals inside the game. Things like improving gear, completing certain quests that give new abilities, and other stuff like that.
I obviously agree with this, that's why I play a game that does that.
But that game is also full of people who have what I personally experience as some of the weirdest complaints, stuff that I'd never want the Devs to actively listen to.
And in response to you @GreatPhilisopher - yeah basically, just beware of 'siding with' people who don't actually want the same thing you do by maybe projecting that they have the same, sensible reasons for wanting it... cause when they don't, you might find yourself in the usual 'wait no, not like that!' situation.
Basically I also agree with everything your last post actually said, even if many of the individual things that 'frustrate' you are fine, I can see 100% how they don't work together.
But for all we know, OP just doesn't believe that games need to even have leveling (yes, this is not how that works, Devs just hide the leveling somewhere else, but that does genuinely work on people and we are going to hear from a lot of those people pretty soon).
yea of course , people could share the same sentiment but not want exactly the same thing however if said thing was changed to something that might be perfect for one but not for another and so on if it was changed to what the majority had in mind in general it will be fine for most of them as long as its good enough.
yes the game will be reviewed to hell obviously and sure OP might want the leveling to be entirely gone or as i said if there was actual fun and rewarding stuff to do during leveling he might of not felt the same way
One of the main things that attracted me to Ashes in the first place all those years ago was the fact that it is based on those old "2000's mechanics". I have played most (if not all) of the major MMO releases since EQ and a ton of the minor ones as well. I very much miss the early days of the MMO genre. I personally do not want fast leveling, I very much enjoy investing in my characters. Vanilla WoW was not a fast leveling experience, unlike the Live or Classic versions available today.
I honestly do not know if there are enough gamers out there like me who want the old school things that EQ/AC/DAOC/UO had that by today's standards would be considered punishing, but the promise of a game that returned to do those days of MMO gaming is what keeps me interested in Ashes.