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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grisu

And then there is Secret World with the most horrid combat, but damned that story and questing.

I think an actually story/-ies that guide you through the levels is all it needs to keep you engaged and happy.
Look at DnD, people don't play once a week for 4 years to finally reach "max level end content" with the coolest spells in the most difficult situations.
They play for the story that is created with them, the company and having fun together. They could just start at 20 every time, nothing holds them back and some certainly do for various reasons like a different kind of adventure that just needs that kind of character right now, but most will start over for a new campaign and just level up through adventures again.

That's probably the secret sauce, having actual adventures that take a while, not just a "hey we have a gnoll problem, kill me 20 and get some coins". I don't think it needs to be harder or challenging on a skill level, but I definitely wouldn't say no to an actual narrative.

WoW is a bad example for me personally. Retrospectively I might be able to say it was boring to level up there, I'm not sure I'm the right person to talk about that, but at the time I was just to entranced with the world. I loved the Warcraft games, I read so much lore about it and finally diving into that world for myself carried me probably through the whole of classic by itself.

"I know that place!" "I know that person" "Oh that's what happened" "omg this looks so much cooler here"

I definitely didn't notice that it might have been a slow slog back then aside from a very few famous quests like getting 10 troll ears and 1 hour later you had 5 of them. To me it felt like it all fit together. I always had quests to do and points to go next too. Maybe I was put into an illusion of always being busy. I'm not sure.

I do have to say tho, at least retrospectively I am noticing and very much dislike tuning down the leveling experience a lot more than being busy leveling up slowly.
Vindictus and Tera are the two sore points for me in that regard. I played them both on and off when they were fresh for quite a long time. I revisited them both years later and felt that both feel like a joke now and misrepresents the game. I actually couldn't find it in me to keep going and level through it all. It felt so cheap and even tho the leveling pace was alot faster I felt discouraged and never reached max level again.

That's me personally, I didn't just revisit the game for nostalgias sake, I actually wanted to introduce people to them and in both cases none of them couldn't get into it at all just like me.

I guess the best I can tell from that is that leveling should introduce you to what kind of experience awaits you later on. If you already feel bored now, it will feel like even more of a waste of time later on.

I could literally slog through days of permaleveling Tera as a mystic to get server first. As a healer, solo through some long ass boring grind sessions at a time without quests cause there was a weird void of 2-3 levels that had no quests whatsoever.
None of us could keep our attention on the easy variation of it for just 2 hours while we have each other to chat with.

Jignutz

"Make the levelling too hard and you'll drive away newer players and the playerbase will dry up."

I've been playing MMOs since EQ and I've seen no evidence of this. Both new and vet players quit when they aren't challenged. Few quit due to being too hard, no matter how much a vocal minority might whine on the forums to the contrary.

consultant

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o4HuOi01x-Y

This is a video about Lord of the Rings MMO. Talks about a feature that is basically a difficulty setting for the Open world. Skip to 4:56 seconds that is part were it talks about adventure mode. Think it is pretty cool.

KingDDD

Id say fewer quests but more meat for the quests you do have. Saving one village is significantly more interesting than saving 1000.

Asgerr

Best I can say is that once you level an alt, to try doing so from a different Divine Gate, starting you off in a wholly different area of the map.

Since grinding levels will ultimately be the same no matter the go around, then at least do so in new areas, with new quests, lore, mobs, etc

Yenn0war

If I read it correctly few months ago, there will be different behaviors for mobs present in the game. Some may stalk you and some will ambush you. I think that adds an extra layer of being careful when you are traversing the world.
Events will help with that too. Especially the ones that trigger suddenly and without warning. Open world pvp is a thing too, so that will keep you on your toes at all times.

I dont think that this will be a type of game you want to play alone nor that will be easy for veteran players.
Maybe it will be in the first 10 levels, but then it will turn into full on Stranglethorn Vale on steroids.

akabear

I do not remember this well but the analogy is more important than the example, there was an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares whereby he reviewed to improve an Italian Restaurant in the countryside of the UK.

The owner wanted to be authentic by doing all Italian foods only. Ramsay stated that that was all good and nice but not all groups that will come to the restaurant will want Italian only and to be successful the menu still required some basics, standard, common non-Italian food. Standard basic UK food. This was so that there was choice for those that did not like Italian.. suggesting such things like the minority in groups that did not like Italian may influence the majority not to come and that there was a large portion of local community that just wanted to come because the restaurant is local and convenient and join friends for dinner, rather than being an elite Italian.

In that sense, I strongly believe that Ashes does need some core common elements that satisfy the regular mmo player to maintain the "bread and butter" range of subscriptions and the sustainability.

Aszkalon

Please don't hit and stone and lynch me (lol),

but i MUST ASK !!!!!! : how exactly is "levelling" supposed not to be interesting or exciting for Everyone involved ?

I try reading through all of the Opening-Comment and now i feel like a complete Idiot. Am i really THAT stupid ?? And ignorant ??

How can levelling NOT be a Fun-Experience ? Please someone tell me.

I am aware if some of You have done this SEVERA (endless ?) feeling of times, it is just a grind at it feels not good anymore. But there are still mechanics and limits in which "levelling" should be good.

NateDogg187

They shouldn't be making it easy for newbies is my main concern. This likely won't be someone's first MMORPG because it is monthly credit card based, unless your friend drags you into it. At that point the veteran friend and your guild should be teaching new players tips and tricks. If players want to be lazy and not use their skills, then reality will hit like it should and they will be forced to figure it out and try harder.

I'm not thrilled with it only taking 45 days to hit max, unless that is 24hrs x 45days. Leveling needs to take longer. Don't like grind, find a casual MMO. That's what MMORPGs are. How can the devs be expected to spend 7 yrs average on a MMORPG that can be beaten in a month or 2? What good is the sub if you are going to not retain half your players a few months from now? I can remember multiple days at Beast Farm in L2, 5 hours each day, trying to get certain recipe drops (S80 i think?). To think that that small experience will have been 4%+ of the time to level to max in AoC is disappointing (assuming 5/hrs day x 45 days = max level). I played L2 for almost a decade total w/private servers. From C2 to High Five, there were very few max level players if any, legit. The reason I played so long was that I wasn't max level, nobody was, and we were all still working to unlock new skills. And trust me people would know when you leveled up when you pop Mirage or Vortex Slug on them.

Edit: On the body of the post, you need to have many different areas with different mobs, increasing in number as the difficulty to level increases. Different areas also as in play styles - solo-duo, polearm/aoe party, group, hardcore group, ranged etc. Doing the same thing for hours on end will get boring regardless after a few weeks. It is on the players to break up the grind. This is the beauty of clans, clan wars, events, nodes, caravans - there will be some days you log into a clan dispute pvp and don't even get around to xping that day. Clan events/node leveling/clan caravan is another thing that could eat half or more of your daily play time. Crafting, gathering, making money, your home... If you enjoy everything it should be easy to break up the grind.

Butkus

NateDogg187 wrote: »

They shouldn't be making it easy for newbies is my main concern. This likely won't be someone's first MMORPG because it is monthly credit card based, unless your friend drags you into it. At that point the veteran friend and your guild should be teaching new players tips and tricks. If players want to be lazy and not use their skills, then reality will hit like it should and they will be forced to figure it out and try harder.

Agree with this. I like an mmo where you can die at younger levels rather than your first time at level 40. I loved the original everquest for that. 14 in highpass keep was rough.

Aszkalon

George_Black wrote: »

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.

I read this in the Voice of "The Critical Drinker" from YouTube. 😁 . 😆

Also i think You just perfectly described the State that WoW-Retail is in, for Years now. So many People i know on my Roleplay Server, have +3 to +7 Characters, all different Classes - usually also different Races,

unlocked all good-looking Class Sets and the racial/Heritage-Sets, are geared up with Items partially only their own Class can wear and which makes them look awesome as Hell in a Role for - well - Roleplay,

but at the same time many of them barely come together for RP-Events from time to time, because that involves sacrificing Time for something else than to feed the own Cosmetics, Titles, Mounts, Items, etc.

It is a bit sad. 😅

On Alliance Side,
so many Worgen-Players, Human-Players, Dwarf-Players, Void-Elf-Players and Kul'Tiran-Players have one "OR SEVERAL" RP-Character designed for cool Lordaeron/Warcraft III~ish Roleplay - but no one really knows Three to five more People so they "HAVE" a handful or above Players who specialise in it.

oOKingOo

I think you can make it more interesting by making it less important. Your main strength should come from your gear, skill, augments, religion, crafting and gathering, etc., instead of your character level. That way, the main goal becomes not leveling to 50 fast because you will be a weak level 50. Instead, the goal would be to grow your character in those different areas, which makes you also level up.

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