Making levelling interesting for veteran players

I'm sure I'm not alone here when I say that as a veteran mmorpg player I find levelling new characters very easy and very tedious. I honestly can't remember the last time an mmo challenged me while levelling and typically the only thing that drives me through it is the thought of end-game content or an engaging story. This is understandable because developers need to cater the levelling to brand new players. Make the levelling too hard and you'll drive away newer players and the playerbase will dry up.

In single player games you often have various difficulty settings to cater to lots of different players. This is great but doesn't translate well to mmorpgs where you could have a veteran and a newbie questing in the same area. You can't just increase the stats of the mobs for the veteran player because then the newbie would struggle. You could decrease the stats of the veteran but this would cause issues of scaling at end-game, plus this wouldn't necessarily make the game harder but just the levelling to take longer.

This is the other problem. You can't just alter the base stats and expect that alone to engage players. Anyone who has played WoW Vanilla/Classic will tell you just how boring it is. It's not even that it's harder, it just takes a lot longer to kill anything and level up. I don't know about anyone else but I'd love to see mobs that force me to use my entire toolkit. The game gives me CC? Make me use it. The game gives me interrupts? Make me use them. Of course if they added these mechanics in, new players would struggle. You could potentially make it so that the mobs only use more advanced tactics on veteran players but what happens when a veteran player groups up with a newbie?

Has anyone got any ideas on how to make levelling engaging for veteran players? Or is it just something we have to put up with?

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George_Black

I dont remember how long it would take for a dedicated AoC gamer to reach max lv, but let's asume that it would take 6 months and let's asume that max lv for the first year is lv 70 and that after 40lv the lv up progress becomes gradually slower. Hypothetical numbers.

If a player leveling a Fighter/Fighter get some strong abilities/passives, one new at lvs: 56 59 64 68 69 70, that means that this veteran needs to incorporate these new strong, class defining abilities in their PvP or PvE toolkit.
Some players will make better use of them by understanding how to make the older abilities work around the new.

Then every 6 months or year new Chapters should be released at a cost. A bit of lore. 1 epic boss, 3-4 new hunting zones.
Max lv becomes 76 and new armor sets can be equiped at 72.
The least popular abilities of lv 40-50 should become two-in-on and a new ability at 74 and a new passive at 75.
It should take about 4 months to get from 70 to 76.

Then a new Chapter from IS.

These keep the veteran players interested.
The new abilities. The changes to the classes. The new hunting zones. The new armors and weapons and their theme.

Every mmorpg out there right now is: get to lv 60 (max lv) in 5 days. Oh boy this is where the end game starts!!!
In 5 days a player has unlocked all of a classes abilities and killed noob mobs.
And then they proceed to enchant their gear up to +16 then +EXTRA +MEGA +TITAN. That is boring.

No wonder people are altoholics in mmorpgs now and all they do is farm cosmetics for their firemage character, for their bard character, for their rogue character, for their fisher character, for their real estate character, for their chiropractor character.

George_Black

I miss the days that NapoleonDynamite from the PublicRelations guild was the most known Elven Archer in the server.
Not because of his youtube channel, but because it took that player 6 months on the same toon and he was one of the first skilled high lv players getting involved in the guild sieges and wars out in the open, making a name for himself and his guild.

Oh now he is playing a Summoner. They are not OP in this new Chapter but oh well, I guess the guy likes archers and simmoners. He will be known as LittlePony from now on if he is still rolling with that guild.

Ravudha

vanqor wrote: »

To me, the solution seems to be to have variable difficulties in the mobs, and I cannot see why this is not done more often.

Almost every MMO has some type of "Elite" mob. These are usually distinguishble from other mobs. This system could be elaborated upon to provide several degrees/types of difficulty.

This is one of my pet peeves with MMOs - elites. It would be fantastic if elite mobs had degrees of difficulty in their behaviour, but often they're as simple-minded as regular mobs but with 5x hp and damage so you need 5x players to face them. It's like artificial difficulty scaling.

Lalli

Ravudha wrote: »

vanqor wrote: »

To me, the solution seems to be to have variable difficulties in the mobs, and I cannot see why this is not done more often.

Almost every MMO has some type of "Elite" mob. These are usually distinguishble from other mobs. This system could be elaborated upon to provide several degrees/types of difficulty.

This is one of my pet peeves with MMOs - elites. It would be fantastic if elite mobs had degrees of difficulty in their behaviour, but often they're as simple-minded as regular mobs but with 5x hp and damage so you need 5x players to face them. It's like artificial difficulty scaling.

I agree. Different mechanics and such would be cool. Almost like a mini world boss type idea.

Noaani

Lalli wrote: »

Ravudha wrote: »

vanqor wrote: »

To me, the solution seems to be to have variable difficulties in the mobs, and I cannot see why this is not done more often.

Almost every MMO has some type of "Elite" mob. These are usually distinguishble from other mobs. This system could be elaborated upon to provide several degrees/types of difficulty.

This is one of my pet peeves with MMOs - elites. It would be fantastic if elite mobs had degrees of difficulty in their behaviour, but often they're as simple-minded as regular mobs but with 5x hp and damage so you need 5x players to face them. It's like artificial difficulty scaling.

I agree. Different mechanics and such would be cool. Almost like a mini world boss type idea.

In the same way solo group content should have it's base population and boss type encounters, group content should have it's base type population and boss type encounters.

I've never played an MMO that didn't have the occasional boss thrown in with the basic base population.

I mean, I totally agree that leveling content should have it's bosses and mini-bosses (both group and solo), but it should also have it's base population.

And all the elite tag is in most games is a way to tell that the mob is designed for a group of players, rather than a single player. It is there so solo players don't go off killing the level 33 elite mob as a level 33 character, thinking they should be able to kill it because it is the same level as them.

Elite and boss are different things, and need to be kept apart as different things.

consultant

well one of the problems for leveling challenge is that some classes are really good for leveling like hunters with pets and sometimes healers have a really hard time leveling. Do not know if you play the same class over and over again but was leveling my third hunter and well the process was mechanical and tediious.

Plus even in games were the floor is really high from the ceiling I can usually kill mobs 5 to 10 levels higher than myself have done up to 20 and 30 levels. i can always go to zones that are designed for one tier higher.
Cannot expect the company to buff the entire world just because of that. So to start off hunters really good at leveling add some skill to that and well I found the process to be mechanical and more about effeicency really no danger of me ever dying.

But let me Ask you ladies and gentlemen a question. One of the metrics used to measure difficulty is the amount of times that you die or wipes for dungeouns and raids. If people are wiping like 80 percent of the time then most likely needs to be toned down.

Now if you never die then really cannot be that challenging so about how many times so you think the average player should wipe while leveling. Maybe you are thinking well if they are good enough zero, But if it is zero then abviously not hard enough so....may sound weird to put it this way but a good metric none the less.

Noaani

consultant wrote: »

If people are wiping like 80 percent of the time then most likely needs to be toned down.

That depends on the content type.

If you are talking solo content of any form, I agree.

If you are talking about an end of content cycle raid boss encounter, I disagree - and would in fact consider that to be very low.

Ravudha

consultant wrote: »

But let me Ask you ladies and gentlemen a question. One of the metrics used to measure difficulty is the amount of times that you die or wipes for dungeouns and raids. If people are wiping like 80 percent of the time then most likely needs to be toned down.

It doesn't need to be toned down if raids and dungeons are meant to be difficult and/or considered a pinnacle of player achievement, which they generally are.

Bringing it back to the thread topic, if we are talking about dungeons/raids below max level that people do during their levelling, I think making them difficult (low success rate) is a great way to challenge veterans (and give them great xp) while also providing a content option for less skilled players to revisit a few levels later when it's easier for them.

Jude

I don't know what games did you play and I never played a MMO where leveling is easy and making leveling hard would put players off the game and make it boring not to mention it would bend players backs and waste their time more than average leveling.

consultant

Well was talking about the open world and leveling dungeouns original post was about leveling process being more challenging for veteran players.
But one idea that is far fetched is having servers for veteran players were everything is harder thing is might get tired of that so....

Sarevok

I think the norm where the game doesn't really start until you hit max level needs to be done away with. I rather enjoy the journey to max level so if the journey to max is not engaging, very short and really has no substance then the game isn't really worth the time to play. If a developer puts very little effort into their game for the first sub max levels then how much effort do you think they put in to the game for max level? I think having a fun and rewarding leveling experience is probably key if you want to make the leveling process long. I think it was said it should take ~45 days to reach max and that's a decent amount of time for an average player. Probably will be <30 for someone that can dedicate even more time.

Lalli

Sarevok wrote: »

I think the norm where the game doesn't really start until you hit max level needs to be done away with. I rather enjoy the journey to max level so if the journey to max is not engaging, very short and really has no substance then the game isn't really worth the time to play. If a developer puts very little effort into their game for the first sub max levels then how much effort do you think they put in to the game for max level? I think having a fun and rewarding leveling experience is probably key if you want to make the leveling process long. I think it was said it should take ~45 days to reach max and that's a decent amount of time for an average player. Probably will be <30 for someone that can dedicate even more time.

I agree 1000% (as a former Runescape player lol)

unknown

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Noaani

ekadzati wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Has anyone got any ideas on how to make leveling engaging for veteran players? Or is it just something we have to put up with?

I like the idea of carryover benefits, but these can quickly becoming unbalancing.

I like the idea of unique play through paths, but without something like SpatialOS driving, the complexity would be, I think, unmanageable.

I continue to be nonplussed that leveling remains such a cornerstone of mechanics. I think they are stuck with it until they find a way to make "death and restart" palatable (hard sell, in a domain that chose MTX).

The way this veteran keeps games engaging for herself is to deliberately avoid whatever rail has been placed.

I rarely alt, mostly because few games make the idea of replay attractive. What times I have done so have been directly related to unique paths by class or race/class combination (i.e., access to more story or a different take on the story I first experienced).

I have never replayed for mechanics. Ever.

The only players I know that have rolled an alt specifically for mechanics are top end raiders - and even then it is only because their friends need someone with a specific mechanic, and they are in a good position to be able to provide that mechanic on an alt.

I like the idea of a distributed computing network for hosting an MMO, in theory, but I'd stay away from SparialOS myself. As far as I know they have had three games heavily based on it cancelled so far, and none released.

I'm not sure how switching leveling with a "death and restart" mechanic would work, the two things are put in games or not put in games for different reasons. I also have no idea what relation either of those two have to MTX - and in fact I could give you the name of a game that contains all three of these things, if you'd care to expand on your reasoning here in return.

unknown

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Balrog21

I think this is almost impossible to do unless you make a stand across the board and do away with fetch quests. Story driven quests are much better imo. ESO did a great job with this, it's just ALL those loading screens...ugh...immersion killer for me.
The only way to maybe do this is have an option when you take the quest is to set the difficulty mode of the quest, but then it's going to be iffy.
I would much rather go on a quest and have to read something that has knowledge and you would need that knowledge in order to go into the next part of the quest. Where the next part of the quest chain gives you two options to choose....IF you read the thing you were supposed to read you would know where to go. If not...well it's still some xp for going on a dead end.

Noaani

ekadzati wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

I like the idea of a distributed computing network for hosting an MMO, in theory, but I'd stay away from SparialOS myself. As far as I know they have had three games heavily based on it cancelled so far, and none released.

Sorry, you are incorrect: https://improbable.io/blog?category=0/24/30

I don't see anything about any released game there. All I see is integration in to UE4.

However, since Intrepid have spent years working on their network code - and designing the game around it - attempting to switch to use it would scrap all of that work that has been done, require a redesign of the game engine to function with distributed computing, and all up would delay Ashes by at least a year in order to make use of a technology that is unproven in this area.

My point that 3 games based on it have been cancelled and non released still stands, regardless of whether is is now integrated in to a game engine or not.

noaani wrote: »

I'm not sure how switching leveling with a "death and restart" mechanic would work, the two things are put in games or not put in games for different reasons. I also have no idea what relation either of those two have to MTX - and in fact I could give you the name of a game that contains all three of these things, if you'd care to expand on your reasoning here in return.

I'm not sure what you're attempting to argue in this paragraph.

I am pointing out that the three things you have mentioned in the paragraph I quoted are in no way inherently connected to each other. You claimed that you believe MMO's are stuck with leveling being a cornerstone mechanic until they can make "death and restart" palatable, which you then backed up by saying you thought that would be "a hard sell in a domain that chose MTX".

What I was attempting to do in the paragraph you quoted - especially in the part where I said I could give you the name of a game that contains all three of these things, if you'd care to expand on your reasoning here in return - was to point out to you that there are games with all three of those things, and to encourage you to expand on your reasoning as to why you think MMO's are stuck with leveling as a cornerstone mechanic until they can make "death and restart" palatable, and also why you think that would be "a hard sell in a domain that chose MTX".

Honestly, since that is literally exactly what I said, I didnt thing it wasnall that hard to understand.

unknown

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Noaani

ekadzati wrote: »

You aren't interested in understanding this perspective

Actually, I am.

I specifically asked you to expand on it, yet you have refused.

This makes me wonder if even you think your perspective is valid. You absolutely have no intention of defending it, that much is obvious.

Either way, I will ask it again.

I'll make it easier for you, I'll drop one of the three systems you seem to think are all connected.

So that leaves the question as - what makes you think that in an MMO setting, the advent of "death and restart" is in any way connected to using levels as a core mechanic?

Plateau

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