Hidden "level" question.

Last night I was near Soltown, and in one area, I was absolutely owning everything.

I went next door to another area, and immediately got owned.

So I thought "Ill just go fight the easier guys for a while."


But here is my question.

If I am fighting really easy guys, am i still gaining experience? Any at all?


I think hiding the level of enemies is a cool, and fun idea, but I want to know that I'm gaining at least a pinch of xp.

 

Well, before it was hidden, the easier guys gave much less experience. I assume it is the same. However, assumptions are probably not reliable. Take for instance, you recycle two swords. The first is broken, rusty and has 0 value. The second is broken with 70 value. Recycle the first and you may get 15 metal scraps and the second gives 5. You would assume the first sword is worse, based on the facts you see and you would be wrong. Hopefully assuming easier instances give less learning experience remains a valid assumption. Without the numbers, you will have to spend a lot of time in both to confirm what seems logical. At this stage of development, lots of things make no sense. This is why the all too popular "remember this is alpha" is the standard statement for explaining discovered illogical mechanics.

 

IMHO, there are two paths forward:

First, the developers join the 21st century, and put in options to show all the numbers, for everything, while hiding them as the default.
Second, the developers continue down their 20th century path, and the numbers are hacked out of the client, data stream, memory, or simply derived from representations/symbols instead of literals, rewarding everyone not playing by the rules.

Seen it before, will see it again, completely predictable and avoidable. All modern games are spreadsheets with fancy GUI's. Hiding that fact is just varying amounts of insult to varying amounts of your target demographic.

 

Then there's the third option of not making levels matter as much, and making the skills, tactics, gear, size, etc. of the enemy determine most of the combat, and not some arbitrary number which you have to guess.

 

Joseph raises a great point that myself and probably other players that started pre r21 have overlooked, which is that newbies won't know where to go in order to level. Let alone, level effectively. This wouldn't matter so much if levels, did not matter and that people could kill, hunt and destroy whatever they wanted. Instead we are still being tied down to some arbitrary experience point/leveling system.

 

It's still all numbers. It's a computer game. You can't escape the numbers.

 

I think when the game becomes more story-driven, this will be less of an issue. Even if you decide not to pursue the full story and just play in the 'sandbox' there will be clearer beginner-level quests and advice so that at least you have an idea where is good to explore with a newbie character. Also when the world is more finalised there will be more useful guides online, especially player contributions.

 

I like the non labeled mobs, although color coding something (grey, green, blue, red) would allow the equivalent of looking at a foe and sizing it up.

I do think that the intro quests should suggest appropriate zones to do the newbie things in.

After that, learning by experience, or learning from others should help,you figure out where to spend your playtime.

 

I would use the difficulty that you have with fighting mobs the metric you should use for experience gain, sometimes it's fun to rush through an area but for the most part I find the fun in the challenge so moving on to new territory with tougher mobs is the route to go, also you'll notice when you're experience pool has points to spend as your skills will start to level up at a faster rate.

 

I think I read somewhere that at some point, instances will be rated with a "star" system to indicate general difficulty.

 

That was mentioned in one of the hangouts (I believe the R20 one). The devs were musing adding a series of icons over the overworld map, based on the Tier of the scene.

Didn't seem to make it into R21 though... So not sure whether it was voted down or simply pushed to a future release.

 

I like the idea of some sort of indicator of strength. I've seen various good ideas in this thread. For me, seeing the level or such wouldn't be a problem but for others something less specific might be acceptable and still help those who are starting out or new to an area. For a little obscurity I'd suggest a relative range. I have no idea of the numbers but for example, you are around level 20 (determined by level or some sort of equation based on your skill levels), a possible enemy is about that level, say within a +/- 3 or 5 level tolerance. In this case of near equality, a neutral color to the enemy label, either the characters of the label or next to the label is a spot for an arrow. No arrow for near equivalence. If you are less than the tolerance, the label either turns red or the adjacent arrow shows up in red pointing up (or down, pick one). For you being higher on this scale, blue would be used.

A halo or aura around the enemy could be used, but I suspect many would find it unacceptable. I do suggest that whatever might be done that it have an option to switch it off for those who don't like the idea.