R11 Level Griding

smack, I don't think James is doing it. I don't think we should have to do it more than once. This game is going to have plenty of new people joining the farm each day. They can test it just fine. That's the beauty of testing with a massive audience, you can use your resources wisely.

 

We can only guess at what James is or isn't doing specifically in terms of progression. As far as new backers testing progression, sure. But there is a lot of value from the perspective of an experienced tester restarting progression vs. a completely new one. You need both perspectives.

But as far as your situation, not sure what else can be said except: take a break? I mean, think about it...you're already burned out after a weekend of play testing.

 

I thought of testing that way, zero out the skill points and I'm at Level 1. But it's not that easy because you've gained str, int, and dex which attack the base skills. The only way to test at a level is to level up to that level. Unless of course you know the magic formulas and can reset that whole mess of skills shown by the 'V' key to what they need to be. And yes some magic could be done behind the scenes if they let us pick a level but how many people would pick the max level if they could.

 

Ha! smack, I'm not burned out from testing. I'm burned out from grinding, and I WILL take a break from grinding, as I'm sure others will too. So why I would someone force me to grind in the first place? I'm not going to do it anyway. It really proves my point, it's a waste of time.

The only reason I put this thread up was to give my perspective. It's the same reason I put most threads up on the forums. There shouldn't be any reason that I have to take a break from giving feedback and testing if I have this perspective.

 

That's not true, you have the same str, dex, and int at level 1 as you do at level 100...if you don't use your skill points.

 

There are a lot that people experiencing a game can contribute by replaying the system multiple times. First is bugs. Second is design changes. For example without seeing the level progression and its effect on minimum deck size as you level, many opportunities would have been lost to make comments on what the impact is yes. Yes it was the first time we saw it. But if minimum deck size was added in R12 inside of now, those effects would never have been discovered.

 

You're right. I could have sworn I saw my str growing with each level increase without point points into str skills. I just removed them all and found myself back at 10/10/10.

 

Oh don't get me wrong...I'm not denying you your freedom to give this feedback. I'm just commenting on it given the nature of testing and the bane of repetitive testing. I would agree with you that grinding doesn't need to be done unnecessarily. But if there are balancing changes that requires retesting from ground zero, that is the price we pay for enjoying the sausage before it's cooked and done.

I'm ready for more, as I've yet to test as much as I would have liked so far. I didn't even touch crafting this release as I split my time between questing (yes, redoing the same quests yet again), conversation system, and yes, even some combat

 

Here's my basic problem smack...and it's a personal problem (other people may relate or not relate to this problem).

I like PVP. But to be effective at PVP, you have to be a high level. Relatively speaking in the current build you have to be about level 30 to "get in the game". This is going to change over time and there may be some builds where you need to be level 50 or even higher. But right now at level 35 I have no problems beating people (with equal gear, read: Platemail and a two-handed something) at high as level 50. I literally can't tell the difference between level 35 and level 50 in PVP.

So what's that mean? It means that anyone that really wants to test PVP...has to grind. That's lame. So the end result is that you don't get as many people to test out PVP because they don't have 2 or 3 days to spend grinding just so on Sundays they can finally PVP.

That's bad for testing, it's bad for my personal playstyle, and as I said before, it's a waste of time because I'm not going to grind anymore so why pretend that I am? (devs) If it were me, I'd just let everyone stay where they are, and if for some reason they ever need "all hands on deck" to test lower levels, fine...just CAP ALL LEVELS at 20 or 30 or whatever makes sense...then your pool of testers is where you need them to be. After you have enough data, push the levels back up.

 

Yes, totally understood.

And this is where the concept of preset characters come into play. As we have multiple characters per account now, they can give us the level 0, level 20, level 40 characters after any required wipes. The different levels should have the corresponding correct number of skill points and other attributes as if they progressed naturally.

This way you can avoid grinding up to the level necessary, and you avoid problematic builds where after rebalancing, certain characters wouldn't have more (or less) skill points than they should. Sure they can nerf if they knew which way was appropriate for your specific character. But to solve your problem, preset character levels seems like the way to go.

 

I Just Hit LvL 55 ... and I'm Pooped
So, How high does this go? and who has a higher LvL so I can keep going for the challenge?
~Time Lord~

 

Can you add higher level content? I made it to level 46 and got bored. I need a bit more of a challenge. Dragons? or maybe some Dragons. White Wyrms. Red ones. Grey ones. Green ones. They'll all look the same to me. (Color Blind Mode pls!) But yeah, I wanna kill/tame/loot some dragons. I also like the idea of saving some progress. Starting at level 1 will be a little disappointing but I understand it if that's what needs to be done. Oh and dragons!

P.S. Dragons =)

 

I asked a Dev and there currently is no cap, but he mentioned that it will probably be 100.

 

Power Leveling Was an Art Form in UO, "and it will be the same way here in SotA"

The Past
In old UO, There was a hill to fall off of for healers to train their skills up on and fighters would trap 4-8 Bears in a room and have them attack a player in the center, while the healers healed both the bears and the fighter.... There were many different ways to do this back then, but power leveling was an art form all it's own, to discover new ways and locations that had an advantage to leveling up faster.

I like Bears in SotA. Bears offer a very good amount of exp, if you can kill them. How to kill them with lower level characters is the key to look for...

New Player Tips...

~Time Lord~

 

It is easy to grind to level 20, it is not that hard to get to level 30 or even 40 if you find the right spot and have a plenty of free time. Level 50 took ages and after running for hours with party and killing things I am still level 50.

My main issue is that only rewarding activity is combat. To be exact, killing NPC. We should be rewarded by each spell, whenever we heal ourselves or someone else (the bigger reward the more we heal and the lower their health is). We should get rewards for crafting and gathering as well. And most importantly we should be rewarded for not dying! There is no punishment on death (well it zones you at zone entrance). And there is no reward for staying alive. I think that if you earn experience on hex without dying there, they should double or something when you exit it.

Also XP per monsters are totally wrong. Elf and Kobold mages are currently weakest and cause no damage at all and they give so much xp. Liches are not really worth fighting...

And it takes ages to kill anything with magic (or arrows). It is best to chase things in plate and with big melee weapon (and all points in strength). There is so much to improve.

 

That are exactly the thoughts I had during R11 ...

I am completly shocked by the character progression system that is in place now!
Why just another level / skillpoint based system again? This system feels so wrong ... gain a level ... get skill points ... use skill points ... rinse an repeat!

Why not going for a use and gain system?

The more often a skill is used ingame, the better a char should be and at certain experience levels a char gets perks for individual skills.
Instead of this we have to spend skill points to various skill trees and unlock the perks. That feels so wrong to me ... please tell me this is not the final system!

I really hope the actual R11 system is not what we will get in the final game. Most likely I am done and gone if this is the case.

 

I think that some features cater to the classic MMORPG crowd.
For example the skills. Why do we need all of those different combat skills? Why a whirlwind attack and all the others? In other games you attack and maybe you can do a power attack. That's it. In the Ultimas you didn't have so many different skills. Those diverse skills came up with the advent of the MMORPG genre. But I still don't get it. We didn't need those things back in the day. In Ultima Underworld we attacked and there was no different skill for different types of attacks.
Even in the The Elder Scrolls series there are no skills for different attack types and this series has a lot of skills.
The skill system of SotA seems to be overly complex and without purpose. It's not as if you can do a whirlwind attack when you want to or when you think it would be tactically good. You do it when the glyph shows up.

The system of The Elder Scrolls would have been much better imo. Less attack skills, but more RPG skills and you advance the skills by using them and you advance your character (getting attribute points) by doing quests.

 

according to a pretty large amount of people, UO IS the classic MMORPG.

so what is exactly catering to that? It isn't skill progression from use.

 

Maybe not UO but Everquest and WoW etc.

 

On Sunday well past level 50 while grinding I found and exp exploit.

No I wont explain it.

Yes I spoke to Chris & DarkStarr about it.

That is the point of experienced players grinding & more importantly paying attention.