No sense of progression

While the new system seems interesting and fresh we are left with a overall sense of despair at the end of your gaming session saying did I actually advance or not? yes you can see your adventure level but frankly that doesnt mean a thing.

At level 30 last go around I was already taking down obsidian wolves and skelly packs left and right now 1 obsidian wolf will hand me my head and any skelly archer can kite me to death, oh and all that time I spent taming that obsidian bear pfft he is less then worthless now, dies to anything without a problem with me spam healing him.

I actually started feeling good that I got my blunt 1st box progression over 100 until I realized that everything else is stuck pretty much in the 30's except for a couple defense skills and I havnt been able to go anywhere with my gathering side, its soo slow I keep checking the green lines to see if they even budge on a harvest.

Im hesitant to even say this for fear it gets nerfed into the ground but right now Auto Attack is KING, you dont even need other skills, auto attack spam will wipe out any mobs in front of you with amazing efficiency. unless of course there ranged type mobs that can run away and kite you to death. I have fun watching a half dozen+ wolves/bears chase around stags around the map, takes em forever to bring em down because mobs move WAY to fast now.

Bottom line is we need some way of seeing advancement, we need a sense of achievement, we dont know if the things were killing or harvesting are progressing us or if we need to move onto something bigger.

Oh and btw obsidian bears were pretty much the baddest things on the block last go around, I laid into a wolf for a complete focus bar with 50-70 hits and his health didnt budge, did we go a little overkill on these this time?

Frustrated....

 

The only thing I would of recommended was for you not to run a skill to 100. I find working 4 or 5 skills at the same rate is better then going all in one and gimping yourself in other areas.

 

Balance was thrown out of whack this patch. It will take some time to get it back.

 

yep, totally expected this.

 

The problem with that its automatic, the skill that is at 100 is the autoattack first skill in bludgeon, it finally stopped progressing at 105 even though I gained 10 more adventure levels since it hit 100.

 

All the math for combat needs to be reworked. The numbers for damage and defense are not accurate or final.

 

Weirdly enough since I just stay at a low level (under 20) through all these release (14 onward) I don't really feel too much of a difference really?

My sense of progression this release has mostly been due to turning one of the chat tab on with only the misc filter selected. I can see as I progress what skill is going up each shine. It's kind of nice to see what's increasing instead of visiting a trainer, in some ways.

 

The problem I'm having is that I don't know if I have any EXP left in the tank or not. So when I use a skill or a spell and don't see the green bar move up, I wonder if all the work I'm doing is pointless or not. I have one skill that's been at 74 forever and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I think it might be bugged, but I don't know because I can't see if I have any EXP to begin with.

 

I sorta agree that having an indication of what the pool is would be helpful. As far as you not seeming to be moving at 74, I kinda remember reading in Chris' post on the changes that skills will raise fairly steady until 60 and from 60 to 100 it will take really long as level 60 is considered to be mastery level of a skill.

 

If people didn't know about the XP pool and the wipe had been full things would be a little different. You would go out and adventure and gain skills as you do. Those who then decide to macro would probably see skills increase and then suddenly stop.....a bit like an anti-macro mechanism. The only reason people want to see this XP pool is because they know it's there and that's how it works. I really hope it stays hidden.

 

I don't mind the Xp being hidden but I'm at adventurer level 17 and I'm still having trouble with attackers that gave me trouble at 1. I can barely bring down group of small wolf spiders. All of the defensive abilities and especially passives take far to long to gain even the first few levels in and offer almost no significant advancement(some don't offer any ). I'm finding myself grinding out skills in town just to have a chance outside which I really don't want to do because it's boring but the only other option is death every 30 seconds or to stop playing.

 

Im loving it so far. It does take a while to get to where we can kill stuff. But I really found it much more interesting. Like finally killing my first Grizzly bear when my bludgeon skill got to around 47. It was satisfying. Also watching things raise up was really interesting and trying to figure out what was doing what. I really liked it. Of course there are things to get tweaked but I feel we are on the right path. So yaaay.

 

While I do sympathize with the feeling that advancement is slow.. I'm experiencing a bit of that myself.

I've died a couple times sure. A bonehead archer did a 161 one shot kill on me the other day with a piercing shot. Gave me a whole new respect for the buggers I can tell you. But you need to know what kind of trouble not to get yourself into and know when to get the hell out of Dodge.

I'm at a point right now where one or large grey wolves are effortless but regular timber wolves are just too risky. I killed one earlier with 3 health remaining.. I would've kicked myself if I had known it was going to be that close. Still.. better to train up on low level mobs than in town. At least you're getting SOME xp.

Still.. I don't have a sense of not progressing.. Quite the opposite. It's just different from before and feels slower. We're not used to it and as noted before the balance was thrown off.

 

I am in this for the long haul and love the idea of things slowing down and taking a while. The idea of getting most skills to master/grand master level in a short amount of time doesn't appeal to me. Not saying this is what the OP wanted, just wanted to point out that I love the slow progress. So how much progress can we expect if a skill is over 100? How long should we expect each level to take at 10, 20, 60, 100? All things will be adjusted I am sure because this is such a huge change but is there a goal on how long or how slow things will get at certain levels? Does having the bar for each skill cause an issue in that at higher levels we don't see a progress? Would it be better to have a numeric number if we hover the mouse over a skill so we can see the change more clearly or better not to have any kind of indication on where the skill is or how close it is to the next level?

I am only level 21 adventure (does that really mean anything now) and am loving the skill system and the progression. I am using Polearms and my main skill is only 57 so I still am seeing decent increases. I am dabbling in a lot of things (mixing in death, fire, earth, and life) so that is probably slowing down my progress but over all, I am very happy with the system. I have also been doing a lot of crafting which has taken away a bit from, the adventuring and showed my progress in that area so I may be seeing more progress overall than someone who just adventures because of the abundance of skills being used...I know leveling crafting isn't the same as leveling adventuring but progress is progress and it is fun to see the increases.

I too have put all my misc stuff in a separate chat so I can see what is leveling and when.

 

I know my opinion isn't the only valid one, but isn't it better to just focus on having a good time, experiencing content, crafting something, spending time with friends, etc., instead of focusing on "leveling?"

 

I believe 40 is considered 'competent'
When you find opponents and you keeps missing would be good with some feedback after you flee what you should improve to be able to hit them better