Grinding Levels Isn't Fun
KingDDD
Member
Giving players a way to progress their character in a solo friendly manner isn't bad, but locking a combat/crafting role I want to play behind a significant timesink isn't good design or frankly fun. I hope the leveling timesink isn't required beyond a tutorial system to introduce players to the game world and systems in a meaningful way.
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Edit: also they stated it will take a substantial amount of time to reach max level
Follow this guy to the daily treadmill after reaching endgame in 2 weeks and make sure to enjoy it.
why it isn't good design? care to elaborate?
fun is subjective. killing mobs to level up or get gear is fun for me.
progression implies a timesink
Warhammer, WoW, AoC, I've played most of the major ones at some point in the last two decades. Wasting my time (and the studios) adding numbers next to my name in order to play the role I want to isn't fun.
For example, I want to play a tank. What level ranges can I play the game in the role I desire? Can I play with my friends, or must I invest more of my time to get anywhere. At what point is my class fun in moment to moment gameplay, meaning I have a rotation of abilities to maximize my threat, minimize my damage taken, and support my group in ways beyond basic combat. Investing days worth of time to get to the fun is nothing more than a time sink
Having a full swath of class abilities doesn't mean you have to grind dailies. Knowing all wizards have a polymorph means a studio can make mobs that actually need to be polymorphed.
If you're playing a dps role you need to have the necessary abilities to kill mobs. Jumping through artificial hoops doesn't add anything but jumping through artificial hoops.
currently it's 45 days casual grinding avg to hit max level, which is too short imo. I hope they extend it.
Pacing matters - the slower things are, the significance things begins to feel. Milestones should feel like miles, not inches.
Players or young gamers have become impatience and addicted to constant dopamine - slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life or in-game life.
It's not a race, it's a marathon. It's not reach the end, nor should there be an end - it's the journey along the way.
substantial my butt. Still too short
You could have a game w/o lvls but it would require you to repeat the same actions to lvl up your skills, so at the start you'd still have limited gameplay. And if you don't want to have that limit - don't play rpgs. Yes, Intrepid can give all the tools right at lvl1, but those tools would still have to be limited in their uses, because otherwise there'd be no progress of your character.
If a potential runner started said marathon without legs and had to knit 45 days worth of sweaters to get your prosthetic legs would anyone run said marathon?
The fun in an MMO is exploring new environments with a team of people who all have specific roles.
Its a problem with levels in general. Not to mention it makes portions of the content irrelevant outside of the leveling process. In a ruin is balanced around a level 23 adventuring there, what happens with a 30?
Having access to abilities that are necessary to complete content doesn't equate to completing that content. If an 8 man group is in a dungeon and a mob has a casted ability that puts significant strain on a healer limiting the ability to interrupt said cast because a member doesn't have access to their interrupt doesn't make for a fun dungeon. Its about limiting progress through player skill vs artificial barriers.
So don't grind the levels. Do what you like and is fun for you, and eventually you'll get there. It's not a race. Play with some friends and have fun and XP will trickle in. If there is absolutely nothing that is fun for you on the way to max level, I dunno what to say other than the game might not be for you.
I want levelling to take a long time, even for the no-lifers. I would also like to see a generous rested XP system for the more time-casual players to get a leg up.
I want to be a pirate. The social aspects are engaging and my friends and I want to RP while we plunder the seas. Why must we spend time doing something none of us find fun in order to compete in the part we find interesting?
Do you want a game with 0 character progress? This isn't a shooter where your avatar is a direct conduit of your irl skills. This is an rpg, where you must bring your in-game character on a journey, where it'll learn a ton of stuff and grows with that knowledge.
And you either do that through lvl progression or through repetitive actions (which are still kinda "lvl progression"). If you dislike that kind of gameplay - you dislike rpgs.
You have a new adventure in a new zone with new challenges and emergent ways to solve them. Character progress isn't limited to incremental statistical changes stemming from time investment. Acquiring the ability to make different character builds, both animation and gear-based cosmetics, cooperative and competitive politics, node building, animal husbandry, crafting, among many others. are all means of character progression and roleplaying beyond leveling. If RPG stands for Role Playing Game, why are you locking the RP behind a timesink?
You can participate in politics at lower lvls too (I've seen this done in L2 years ago). I'd assume there'll be quests/actions for cosmetics that won't require you to be max lvl.
But direct power of your character must come in some form of progression in an rpg. If you're a full-blown "Hero" right from the first minute of your game, you have all your abilities available to you, you have all the gear available to you (just need to go get it) and you can take on any kind of foe - to me that sounds like a bad rpg with 0 character progression.
I'm sure you and your friends will be able to go cut down some trees, process them into logs and then craft them into a ship from very low lvls, because artisanry is separated from adventure lvls. But if you want to be able to win in pvp on the open seas - you'll have to progress your character to a point where you can win against other people who'd progressed their character.
I'm sure there'll be other low lvl pirates too, but not for long, because a guild or two will just have a few people making ships while everyone else just goes up in lvls. And when they go out to sea, they'll have high lvl pvpers sailing ships made by high lvl artisans.
None of those things will require you to be max level, but all of them will be balanced around you being max level. Tell me how farming ore in any MMO goes when a level 1 heads into a level capped area.
You can participate in politics, but unless bring something outside the game (money and or prestige) youll find yourself lacking the ability to have any sway.
Being able to make low level ships and dying instantly isn't gameplay. Again this does nothing but artificially limit me from ROLE PLAYING in the game. Why do you hate Role Playing so much in this RPG.
You want to become a pirate - well let's look at One piece.
Luffy wants to be the king of the pirates... 1050 episides later, he still isnt the king of pirates yet... 1050 episodes.. tinksinks... training, getting friends, making allies, learning, growing, making mistakes, drawbacks and all... everything he has done has been a tinksink but not wasted time. RPG isnt - I want to be a pirate and go arggh and just pew pew pew people. Make a name, grind, get the best gear, learn the mechanics, the routes, etc.
grinds, timesinks, slow paces is a good thing and ppl want to be immersed and escape as well into a fantasy land
Are you equating a sandbox MMO to a single player like storyline? If you want that WoW just released an expansion that you can play.
I've personally known several people that made huge fortunes just playing the market in L2, while being super low lvl. Again, if you want to circumvent the character progress - go play something like Sea of Thieves. And like I said, I'm sure there'll be low lvl pirates too, just not for long.
And even outside of that, we don't know how exactly the open seas pvp will go down. There's a chance where all that you need to win is just a good ship and several people on it. And at that point, I'd assume you can do that with just a group of highly skilled players who make their own ships and then masterfully control them at sea.
Wow this is the wrong genre for you. You are looking for a sim game not an MMORPG.
If the low level stuff is worth the time to farm, it'll be gobbled up by high level players. As much as I enjoy asking other people for help that have zero incentive to help me, I think Id rather see content not restricted from me.
Anyone can flip items in an auction house/trade chat, where did their financial start begin and how?
Your character disappears from the world while controlling a ship/cannon would completely eliminate a potential pvp strategy from the game. Not to mention it would make alt accounts the best way to control ships.
What does leveling have to do with Role Playing?
In MMORPGs, one of the main tropes is progressing your character from being a weak and clueless novice to LEVELING up gradually to a master adventurer or even a "CHAMPION!" depending on the game design. Ashes is looking to be more along the lines of progressing to a master adventurer instead of some ultimate savior.
An MMO is more than just role playing. If that all you want go play a sim.
Yes, character progression is very important in any RPG (including mmorpgs). However, does that progression need to involve mindlessly grinding mobs that take little to no effort to kill and just take huge amounts of time?
Seeking the area with a cluster of mobs that awared the best xp contributes to exploration.
Fighting over such areas creates conflict of interests, which leads to rivalries guild wars and server stories.
If you make leveling a breeze that can be completed within two weeks you get no gameplay.
Then, you need daily grinds, instanced content for fear farms, luckluster content such as ez, npc questing storylines.
All of that is found in mmos today.
People say grinding is a bad thing. I guess they are used to crap like bdo, another solo game.
Grinding is a word I will replace with this:
Play the mmo with your friends, since AoC will be challenging (and not mindless quest grinding for solo players) discover areas, farm mobs for xp, farm resoyrces for crafting, seek diagrams and key items, fight other people, encounter bosses, in the open world, for more than just two weeks.