For the love oF all That is Holy

Who cares how much XP you get, when they will just nerf your build when it becomes better than the content they built? I am still very butt-hurt about the nerfing of the meteor shower and the lame excuse that it was broken. I don't buy that for a moment. Players figured out how to maximize damage and actually feel like they were really an Avatar , so they claimed it had been broken all along and nerfed the damage. This is just one example of how they easiest path is to break the character rather than continue to build challenging environments for our " uncapped" level system. I am sure others have similar stories to tell.
To add insult to injury, being told that I can de-level the skill and pick another makes me want to punch someone in the face. What about the 20 or so hours I have into leveling the skills I WANTED to use? What about the identity I built for my character? You going to give me those back too? Double XP, Triple XP, No XP, it really doesn't matter when the characters we build in this "Open System" are constantly being forced into an ever narrowing sausage grinder of builds the Dev's like and haven't destroyed yet. I keep losing good friends as they drop out one by one because they just got sick of trying to stay true to the amazing dream we were sold on this game back in 2013. No one wants to spend their leisure time feeling like a mediocre weak nobody. Most people get enough of that in RL. We play the game to wreck sh1t and have FUN! There are too many other options for the ever dwindling free time.

 

Yeah the Rise in Double EXP feels about right, feels good. It's fun.

On normal it's a grind, feels like sucking my life away.

 

I like that I can take breaks and still attenuate. I love I can do different things and still get the same XP. I love I can group with more people and still get the same XP.

Either make it the norm or make other zones I can get more XP at, especially in parties.

 

on the double XP weekends, in a group we attenuate in the Rise. I bet in Ravensmoore and the lost Vale you could attenuate as well (on the double XP weekends).

 

You'll see a lot of people log in again in a few days with the next release. As a level 99, I think the xp I am getting is fine. I am not in a rush to GM all of my skills and get bored with the game.

 

Agree completely, @Sara Dreygon .
Whether it's my guild or a LFG, the ability to attenuate in less than an hour has been a great way to not burn out on any given area and have time to do other things while waiting.

A huge plus for SotA.
Grouping is what, in the end, will save this game and make it great.

Both Sara.

Make 2xp the norm, so atten can happen in less than an hr for the much enjoyed breaks.
And.
Give us more zones to explore and do the same as we currently do in UT.

Make the most xp/hr something that can only happen in groups.... The bigger the group, the more xp's available.

If you think LFG is popular now, listen to what Sara and I are saying, pls.

If the best xp experience is based on group size, then think of the new friends that will be made every day.

I know I'll get blowback from the Solo crowd, but frankly - it's groups and friends that will make SotA a success.

But, only my opinion, of course.........

 

They should just start us all off at level 100. That way we could all bypass the really boring bit of having to play the game.

 

Um, I believe all that has been said, has been said by people who enjoy the game and would like to enjoy it even more.

I'm guessing that you also don't like the recent R57 changes to CP's, universal banking, etc... ?
Ok, that's off topic ... sorry.

 

Yes I'm a philistine, as you imply. As you also wittily and very cleverly suggest, I don't enjoy the game and therefore don't have its best interests at heart and therefore I don't have the mindset to come up with new ideas to enjoy it 'even more'. Have you a new name for us types? We've used up naysayers, whales, trolls, a few others. Any suggestions?

 

Some individuals here on the forums aren't even happy with ADV Level 110+ and demand a very quick leveling up to 120+

So let em start as ADV Level 120 instead i guess

 

As its such a small team, maybe we should just cut to the chase and make the total conversion to Wizard 101 straight away?

Seriously though, I really enjoy Wizard 101 (honestly), it's just that I hoped (still hope?) SOTA will be something a bit more robust, effort vs reward, input vs output..

I think 'the battle of the forums' for hardcore old skool vs modern MMO insta-gratification is however lost and on reflection was inevitable anyway as more newer players came on-board (quite perverse really ) and the old skoolers and original backers lobby became more diluted.

I would however like to believe that Starr, Chris and LB are super smart and knew this all along and that the battle, as the game grew (or didn't), was to see how much of the original vision they could reasonably retain without killing it and hope that SOTA remained SOTA by the end, at least in some semblance.

 

Never suggested you didn't enjoy the game or have it's best interests at heart.
I simply disagree with your concept of what will make SotA successfull.

How about "Out of the mainstream" ?
Oh, and btw, the "mainstream" is what will - in the end - save SotA from.... what did you call them.... the whales?
Some of them, at least.......

 

which one was that then? I didn't state one.

In very brief summary here it is (assuming everything else is fixed, performance, quest log, junk loot, alignment, new user exp, features) -

- No quest markers, retain conversation option to progress quests, but improve the clues in the textual presentation (colours, highlights..whatever)
- No epic loot: retain similar levels of gold and drop loot as now, so no loot farming, but introduce rare drops (weaps and crafting) for high level mobs and bosses
- Regional economy: which in my view means reversing the global bank at some stage. This can still be done as they could 'sweeten it' by promoting all the lovely regional trading game mechanics they develop
- No runes or teleports - The OverWorld Map should be what it was intended to be: the playing board. To stop people complaining (if that's even possible), develop loads of fun content on the playing board, as was heavily featured in Lord British's early demos.
-enable dash and/or sprint and stealth on the overworld.
- Regional harvests and mobs.
- introduce trade caravans, for transport of regionally stored goods, that can be raided (PVP)
- Keep experience gain at x1 for all zones have a rare x2 double experience event very occasionally. (NB: I don;t much care what 'x1' actually is, it could be today's x2 if people prefer it, all this does is speed up or slow down end game builds).
- Remove decay altogether, increase gear damage instead.
- Stop harvests from neon flashing and fix the Survey skills instead.
- Make all towns multiplayer
- Get rid of harvesting, gathering and crafting failures
-Utilise weather, time of day and the awesome SOTA Astronomy more (for harvests and mobs), as they are now doing so with aether mobs via the comet.
- Head for Realm vs Realm PVP combat ('realms' tbd)
- Allow a second account-type character purchase for subscribers (one that can have a different alignment, so a totally different Avatar family)
- Others, but I don't have time right now, but I keep going back when I think of 'em

I wonder if I am? There is certainly a vocal group for 'QOL improvements' right now vocal majority or vocal minority? hard to say, but probably not relevant as they will become the majority as you suggest. But yes, you're right here, as I said subsequently, SOTA will likely become another mainstream cookie cutter MMO. SOTA will be saved from uniqueness and survive through emulation.

 

When it was a one-time thing, it was great. But who didn't see the playerbase becoming spoiled when it was applied over and over and over? Okay, so we make it permanent 2x. Then what? Within the blink of an eye, everyone gets used to it, and stop logging in, and starts whining about how it's not enough. So they insist that we start doing 3x-4x weekends... until people start complaining that it's not enough.

This should never have been a thing.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing a permanent double XP format with a daily cap. What ever that cap maybe. 1-5 million maybe? This would draw people to log in daily and it could be beneficial to anytime zone or Day.

 

Maybe exp bonus scrolls could be purchased with COTO's that sound like people are stashing away as there's nothing to purchase with them bar paying rent / repairing armour etc.

The 2x exp burnt me out tbh as I felt I had to play to stick with my guildies, now bar @E n v y we've all taken time out as it wasn't the fact that 2x exp wasn't great, its that the content available was so pitiful it sapped the living out of you and the thought of nothing to challenge you bar those areas for decent exp returns was way too painful. Also said farming areas got to the point that once we were of a certain level it wasn't even worth being grouped up, address the lack of meaningful content and 2x exp might seem a boon again unlike the current status quo.

 

I would agree there needs to be some balancing in xp gain, but I don't think double xp all the time is the way to do it. Most of the systems in this game are under developed (e.g. reward for exploration, sieges, goal oriented pvp, storyline, etc) to the extent that the only people left playing are those that enjoy staying in one spot, repeating the same content over and over again in an infinite leveling scheme. Double xp simply encourages those types of players (no offense to those of you that are) and does nothing to bring in the explorers, the crafters, the raid style players, the organized pvp players, etc. I think those are the players we need to bring back.

Double xp breaks the softcap. People who are Adv Lvl 120 can all the sudden feel substantive progress with double xp. One aspect of the softcap is that it intentionally is supposed to cramp your progress because of the enormous xp need at that level. Now we have double xp and people get to 140 and complain again. Quadruple XP? While during that time, those of us who don't play that way, and never attenuate, have made a quarter of the progress or less. The idea of the soft cap is that over a long enough time period, non-hardcore grinders can catch up to the 'negligible power creep' phase of the game because the difference between 120 and 125 should be negligible and take huge amounts of time to achieve. There has to be some point at which grinding no longer produces 'meaningful' advancement. Otherwise, there's no hope for other playstyles to feel competitive. I don't mind if it takes 10 times a longer to get there, but if you keep scaling up xp, it breaks the softcap.

If it gets to the point where content is then designed for that 1-2% of the player base, well that will be a tough sell for folks if they are told, 'sure you can run that quest, you just need to stay in one spot and repeat the same content for 2,000 hours first...thank goodness for double xp.'

I've been playing regularly, but limited to a couple of hours a day, since persistence. I'm now at Adv Lvl 91. For a while after 85 or so, it felt pretty good, like I could pretty much access most of the game. But as I see the xp flood in and the super high levels and new completely unsoloable (for me) mobs enter the world, I'm beginning to feel cut off from content again. It's beginning to feel like the softcap is rising and therefore not working.

Introduce scavenger hunts each release for big xp payouts, introduce crafting quests for big xp payouts, etc. etc. Give us something to do other than stay in one place repeating the same content over and over again. And always be mindful of the leveling curve which is intended to flatten and make meaningful progress slow to a crawl.

 

Do away with 2xp period. My understanding is that this is a sandbox but seems we are approaching themepark status just like every other mmo

 

Here is the Pirate’s two cents on double xp:

1) Power hour (2x xp) on your first two hours per day, use it for either adventuring or crafting. Your choice.

2) Get rid of death decay and xp loss. You die and receive 25 percent damage to your weapon/armor,

3) Realm vs Realm (Obsidian vs insert your choice here). Like I have said before, what is the purpose of all this leveling, tweaking decks and Obsidian trials except as a means to an end. Let that end be the endgame we want and will lure new people in. Let’s have politics, alliances, betrayal and Novian domination via ground and sea.

“Steps off the soapbox”. R/Boris/El Pirata

 

I don't think double xp breaks the soft cap, contrarily it closes the gap between low levels and high levels players cause of the soft cap: you need around 10x xp from lvl 120 to 130 than to 1 to 120, so it just helps the player base to be high level and reach other player even without grinding in a same spot over and over. I am high lvl but lately I am not grinding anymore, I can just explore, do random things and I always gain xp, I can also attenuate without even doing UT or The rise, double xp just makes the game more funny.

What worry me most is that people spend all their time grinding in friend mode and this make feel the game empty, what I would suggest is resureccting the old 10% bonus for being in multiplayer and 10% bonus for being in PVP mode that now are meaningless, changing those in raised caps like : 1.2kk xp cap if you are in multiplayer, 1.4kk xp cap if you are multiplayer PVP.
I hope double adventuring xp becomes the normal one because it's frustrating seeing ppl login just in the weekends, everyone have to enjoy the game everyday.

At the same time I think we don't need double crafting xp the normal one, because it doesn't help crafters but penalizes them, since with double crafting xp everyone can easy lvl up his crafting skills to 100-120, and it loses the sense of uniqueness that is realy important for the crafting world, if everyone is able to produce high-end gear there is no longer a reward for being a skilled crafter.

If you think people get bored and ask more cause the normal 2x exp I suggest to keep anyway the "speacial" weekends, maybe keep the double crafting xp just on weekends, so people use those to lvl up their skill without being too much for the market and the crafting world.

The double adventuring xp weekends like they are now are just ruining the game and make it populated just on the weekends, because people feel like they are losing time playing during week days cause their efforts are not rewarded properly.

P.S. I enjoy this game and I play also during week days, not just in the weekends, that's why I hope to see more player around all the week, and not having people closed in private istances on Saturday and Sunday grinding as much as possible because they need to take advantage of the "specials weekends" before the double xp ends.