Double xp does not solve the feeling of grindy.

No new player will stick around to hit GM in this game. None. Suggesting that advancement should take longer (not that that's exactly what you are saying mind you) would just be another nail in the games coffin.

This game NEEDS to be revised to appeal to new players. There's a laundry list of things that need done and it's not "new content". I've sat with several new players and observed their experiences in game and it was uniformly horrible. If it wasn't for the few guild friends that were around to help them (and myself) past the initial very poor experience I wouldn't be playing any longer. If this game is to survive then it needs to address much more than the experience/progression rate. Just saying. Bit of a rant there so my apologies

 

I get what you're saying. I too, like the OP enjoys grind. I've played and enjoyed a few Korean mmos, and to some, those can be the most grindy.

So.. from my experience playing mmos I've gotten a better sense of reward when I achieved something or leveled something up, more so than when I do in SotA. I had to work for it and the pay off felt great. To me, even getting something to 120 in SotA doesn't really mean that much to me.

I don't consider myself to be a power gamer..but I can't help but think that maybe people are somehow doing things the wrong way?

 

Problem is to gm an adventure skill is about 30 mins thus making gm level worthless.

The skill should feel valuable all the way up, each single point I gained in uo felt like I achieved something.

 

Perhaps increase the XP pool new players start with? Get them a bit more of a headstart?
I think going to GM in an hour is only for people like others have mentioned, already high level or have high level friends. I think it took me 6 months to get my first GM in this game - long ago albeit. Frankly increasing overall XP gained helps new players probably more so than experienced - at the high levels it takes a LOT of XP to move 10 points in a skill above 100.

 

For me, every point I gain in a skill is a sense of achievement.

Having said that, gaining xp's only becomes a "grind" if I'm "forced" to do the same content over and over ad nauseam .

I believe that many more areas like Upper Tears would remove 90% of the feeling of being a "grind" . (hint/hint @DarkStarr )

 

How will that help? If you had 100 different "tears like" zones you'd still be excluding new players unless they were lucky enough to have people carry them for free. Highly unlikely. I don't care about current players I care about new players because without them this game is dead. Getting them past the initial hurdle, both from the advancement perspective as well as the poor usability/interaction experience...is key.

As for more areas like Tears I do agree that we need more, I'd welcome them myself. However if we introduce more high end grind areas before fixing the glaring new user experience (and the overall UI/Quest/frustration level for everyone) then it's a very bad decision.

 

Just to comment on your "wrong way" comment. I agree someone is doing things the wrong way... but it's not the players.

 

One of the great benefits of being an established player - for myself and many others - is in being able to "carry" (as you put it) both new and casual players so that they can do the same for others in the future.
To "pass it forward", so to speak.

Fixing the new user experience and quests is exactly what Port is doing at this very minute, if you simply listen to what they've said they are doing.
Take a chill pill, @SantiagoDraco

 

Fantastic. When's the first group? I'd be happy to join and will have some others who'd be very interested How do new players find these folks?

Take a chill pill? I'll take a chill pill when the game is fixed. If you don't like well founded criticism well then sorry but you're going to continue to be annoyed with me.

Based on what I've seen so far I don't have the confidence that "we're fixing it" is good enough. I want to see my investment in the game mean something and I'll continue to provide feedback, critical and (if warranted) positive. Glossing over these problems and relying on faith hasn't worked so far. Until there's more specifics on how things are going to be improved I'll continue to be skeptical. Stating we're fixing the "new users experience" does nothing to alleviate my concerns until specifics on those improvements are shared. There's plenty of reason to not take things on faith, unfortunately.

I don't have an axe to grind against the developers, quite the contrary, I understand the challenge of what they are trying to accomplish. I do think, however, that more of the same isn't good enough. Specifics are necessary and some validation of proposed changes against the player base is key. Additionally these things need fixed before episode 2 launches, not after. If Episode 2 isn't a "restart" of SotA (meaning significant changes in many areas) I think we'll be back at square one. That's my concern. The game needs steady income to continue to operate and I'm done putting money in until I know it's going to be well invested. Episode 2 needs to be an improved game + content. I know that's part of the goal but hearing "sometime after" for some of these improvements is worrisome to me.

I happen to really enjoy the game but I don't enjoy seeing new players, and existing, throw up their hands and walk away...missing out on the many fantastic features it has... which is why I'm posting here and why I will continue to provide feedback (and suggestions) on how to improve things. From my perspective at least.

As for current initiatives fixing "quests" is not going to fix the problem. The entire quest system needs a complete overhaul. UI, indicators, interaction... the old way of clicking words or knowing what to type... is (to most of today's players) frustrating. The experience of questing should not be tedious and I'm not referring to the quest bugs themselves. I'm not saying this needs to be WoW.... but it shouldn't be old school EQ/UO either.... unless you only want to appeal to a very very small percentage of the available market.

So take a chill pill yourself there Frostll. I'm sure that the dev team are big boys and can take the criticism. If not they are in the wrong business for sure.

 

It would be great if they gave us some titles above GM to work for and have them similarly increase the speed of training for lower level players. Say every 20 levels or so above gm is a new tier. That would give people a goal to achieve without changing the current game system which I like and enjoy. I love double exp and think it should be the norm so that the peaks and valleys of play based on double exp smooth out more.

 

i think the biggest difference if it comes to grind, is that we are shown numbers, and we cant get them out of our heads. you never knew when a skillgain would happen in UO. here you know... ok im close to hit it. and we prepare for best resource/time/gain management. basically thats powergaming and thats always tedious. i did it in almost every game after my initial time in UO and its always been a grind. (bonewall in deceit aint been much fun, casting deamons on a boat aint been fun, and so on.)

if it come to adv xp i dont worry that much anyway. but crafting xp IS horrible! knowing that you would have to harvest ~14k nodes to start masterworking without going broke, is frustrating before even attempting it. higher harvesting levels should also increase the yield (before met.).
and there should be 3 levels of enchants and masterworks, with lower benefits but also lower requirements (resource (like 1,3 and 5 ingots and success rate). some smaller steps between the goals...

 

Some good points with the crafting, however there are people now with just about everything gmed, I would have prefered a hardcap to stop the everyone can make thier own everything. Im not sure the anwser but im also not so sure they should losen up crafting xp.

 

An intelligent adjustment to the skill system that gives us incentive to have less skills above 100 would be a great idea to focus development on.

Obviously increasing skill decay is not what I have in mind.

I'm thinking of something more along the lines of combat skills first. With regard to combat skills, let's come up with something that gives a bonus to having less GM skills, but doesn't punish for choosing a few circles, and gives you a detriment for having heavy experience focused outside of those circles.

Granted, this is a patchwork, fixer-upper method to work with the existing system. One that would require less effort to make what we have significantly more fun.

Since I only have begun to think about it, forgive me, we could have a cap on skills outside of "chosen core skills", like X magic, 1 armor, 1 direct combat, 1 strategy. This sounds like the Specialization system, but I feel this should be a skill cap system that is soft. It should give a benefit that can grow with the existing diminishing returns when focused on core skills, but if core skills are chosen for the benefit, other "Jack of all trades GMd skills" should become less effective or mute the original benefit.

I'm out of ideas on this for now. Please help me develop this idea.

This idea sounds like it could see us having an XP pool that we don't want to spend immediately, but rather horde until we choose to level everything to say Max 120, or, be selective and level 25 skills to 140, and have a larger effectiveness due to the specification.

 

Can you be a bit more specific, @SantiagoDraco - and tell us what you would replace and with what ?

 

I will be providing more specific suggestions in another feedback post I'm working on, so yes, I will once I have my thoughts together in a cohesive sensible fashion

I'll say at least that when we hear the quests are being fixed my concern is more around this meaning fixing back links and quests that cannot be finished due to missing steps/etc. My view is it's all aspects, the quests themselves (ie the content and triggers need to work), the NPC interactions (ie the idea of "discovering" who has quests by random conversations should be a thing of the past) and the UI (you should be able to look in a quest log and see a clear informative and well organized presentation of your current quests and your progress in them.) This isn't rocket science as there's tons of good quest systems out there that show how to do it properly.

 

I think crafting needs the better XP more than adventuring does. I'm AL90/PL84 (I think) and that gap continues to bother me. There is no Upper Tears of producer XP. Mostly it's because there are very few options that give more than 500xp other than new recipes and skinning bosses like dragons.

Or you could, you know, get social and join a guild. I have felt no need to do UT so far except one evening just to have done it, and I've seen guildies start UT groups all the time. I'd rather NOT do UT on a 2xp day, when I could be crafting instead. And this is one thing where party mode keeps a few groups from monopolizing the current hot XP zone.

It would certainly be something worth trying.

I'd also like to see a Monday-Thursday 2xp tried, to encourage play in the middle of the week when it's lower.

 

I've been playing for 4 months about 2-6 hours everyday and I am only level 75 with 1 grandmaster skill, Judging from alot of the comments here I am clearly doing something wrong.

As for the double Xp this is how I feel.

Double Xp: With the double Xp I feel a sense of progression

Normal Xp: With normal Xp I feel a sense of regression

As for if double Xp helps the game be less grindy I do feel it does relieve the feeling of that to some degree.

Well that is my opinion anyways.