Experience gain

I know all the folks that will take exception to this, but it has to be said. Normal experience is just not enough if you are a high level player, especially one who plays only 3 or 4 hours a day. There is essentially no reason to play any more except to decorate or service a vendor. When it takes literally days to advance skills one tic (millions of exp points) it seems hopeless and pointless. I really do not know the solution to this. I am a founder player, been paying subscription since the first day of subs, so have some real skin in the game. Lately I just have to decide every day whether to log in or not because I just feel like I am treading water here. Gave most of my things away already with plans to just wrap it up and don't know why I am hanging on. It is like I have an old sick dog that needs to be put down but putting off the inevitable beyond reason. The new content is interesting and appreciated, but is really just the same old same old if you know what I mean.

 

100%.

When New World launched and I started playing it, I streamed it a little, and Chris asked "What kind of things could I take away from New World", and the answer I gave him was "A sense of purpose."

When you play New World, the end game is relatively similar to New World, Although your progression is capped, Shrouds "endless progression" doesn't feel true, because like you said, exp rates become so small compared to what you need, and to be honest, past 2b exp I dont even feel like you need the exp that much. So what makes New World a bit more playable? Reputation grind, you can grind for your faction, for different settlements (towns), for a PvP "track" (kind of like if there was a PvP skill that you trained and got rewards in the process). This is what is lacking in Shroud, we have so many NPC towns (and NPCs) but they barely have life, you don't go there unless you have a specific reason to, NPCs are all the same except some give you quests and some have a (useless for the most part) shop. We need something to work towards outside of just general exp, we need factions (not PvP wise!!!), and for the PvPers out there, a little bone with a similar system.

All in all, I agree, new scenes don't usually help that much, they just give another size/color of mobs we are already used to hunt, with maybe a few extra items that wont serve much purpose.

 

What they should do ( for EVERYONE, not just us "high-level" players ) is move our current "Normal" xp to what is currently 2xp. With the 2xp rate becoming the new norm, what currently seems literally impossible, would at least "feel" doable .

Lets not lose any more veteran/subscription players to what is so easily solvable .

 

Increasing xp just leads to burn out. We need more purpose.

 

I agree. It's not enough to require players to invent their own purpose.

 

XP underwent a rework starting in Summer 2020. Double XP was to be used as a stop gap until it was finished, at which time double XP would be removed as it would no longer be needed. Talk of the rework happened during streams, gradually fading away. It hasn't been mentioned in over a year. Presumably it is dead.

Going back in time, high level progression was never to be an issue originally with the death penalty, which really started to hit with skills at level 100 and above. Which is why level 100 is "grand master". XPs were increased-- doubled, I think-- from their original values to help keep up the points in the pool that were expended to cover the death penalty, if that was set in skill. Then they were doubled again. This was done to allow some skills to go over 100 to an appreciable amount. Then the death penalty gimmick was removed, and here we are.

 

I come around here now and again, to keep tabs on things. Once (if) we get ep2 story content added, and it has been in long enough to have some portion of the bugs worked out, I'll come back for that. But after about 4-5 years of regular weekly play, I don't see much need to be here in the meantime. Anything's possible, of course, but I doubt I'll return to SotA as a daily/weekly player.

 

As a beginning player I had the other experience - I felt the first dozen levels of skills to just fly by instead of being earned.
e.g. milling or blacksmithing increased for a long time every single time I crafted something or salvaged something for every single item

I never had too few XP to spend, especially with quest XP and the daily XP gained from the Oracle and the daily 10000 that are given out at the moment for logging in.

If veteran players have lost the emotional connection to the game and the only reason left to play is to get to the next skill point that needs millions of XP - then once they get that point they have the same problem again. If you do not know what to do with your character now, then you will not have a purpose for that character with skill points of X+1.

I hope that I´m still far from that as I still wander the zones in wonder of the scenery and become excited at the next recipe to craft and improve my gear. After around level 40 skills started to slow down a bit, rising only ever other or every four uses of skills which felt much more natural than for every use like at the start and now at level 70 I do not pay atttention to how often I use skills to gain a level, I simply use them and they go up after a while.

 

What would you suggest that would appeal to all players regardless of level, @Anpu ?

 

I would like a powerhour option that we turn on at the oracle maybe once a day. Grants double xp for an hour. That would give players a big boost to log in daily. And since it's only an hour, having double xp during holidays and other occasions would still be special.

I would also like to see different titles at 120,140,160,etc.

Some kind of faction system, so we can compete and have some kind of meaningful pve.

And meaningful pvp, but I gave up on that dream for now.

There have been countless ideas on the forums over the years to help bring players in. It's just so hard to figure out which things will work best. We all want different things and have different visions for what this game is and can be. Implementing popular game mechanics is not an easy task.

 

As I have PVP disabled a question: Doesn´t the Oracle say that players who foregoe her protection aka enable PVP will get more XP? Are all veteran players already PVP or do they want more XP yet shy away from that?

 

Creating some variation of the power hour would be pretty easy and is something that's already been proven successful in other games. There's probably still people logging into the original EQ just to use their daily xp ability. It's also a casual-friendly mechanic that gives a relative boost to players that can't play all the time.

 

I love all 3 of these, @Adam Crow . Brilliant !
Make it so, @Ravalox

 

If you are a high level player, then you can solo adventure nearly everything in the game, not requiring XP because you wouldn’t need skill advancement; because you are awesome. If you haven’t reached this benchmark, try to figure out how you can accomplish goals by utilizing different skills and combat methods to achieve victory. I find the aspect of a skill based game with a limited number of skills per combat deck, plus the ability to make many decks the challenge of playing without having to be a “high” level character.

 

Can you solo everything in the game?

 

Oh, it's on now!

 

This phrase is often credited to Einstein and Vaz:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different output.

Devs are still listening to the same players they listened one year ago (and probably longer). And they'll keep listening, hoping something will change.


I personally have low hopes of any meaningful change, even persistent 2x XP seems unlikely despite being a simple, straight forward change.

 

I agree so much to sense of purpose needs to be worked on for all systems in the game. I've been here since 2013 and I have given myself purpose to keep playing from creating themes and other past times. Like the school of rock of course for example. I always wanted pvp to get a purpose in this game even tho I'm not really a pvp person. I enjoyed Wow's Wintergrasp Experience of getting the flag and running with it and had hoped for something like that but hardcore pvp'ers I know may not have that in mind but just mentioning. I also tried to vote for a faction system and I truly believed in getting a PVP quest system going as a few additions to inspiring play. Something that tracks and rewards kills and strategy of players. Perhaps now that we have so much more of a game someone will step up and give some great effort to the chore of pvp. Here's hoping. As always I'm rooting for all systems of the game but I do believe this system needs much improvement too.

 

Double XP made me alt-f4 this game. I didn't feel it was an honest attempt at anything productive. Had the opposite effect.

 

Yeah, I don't think double-double-double xp is the answer. For me at least, it just means going nowhere faster.