Double xp does not solve the feeling of grindy.

Personally I like "grindy" games including this one.

I dont think dbl xp is a good solution, if the amount of xp is too low then just fix it. I think the xp is fine with out the dbling effect.

The real issue where people have the grindy perception is the lack of progression goals with the unlimited leveling system. There are no notable bars or real sense of achievement in your journey to greatness.

Crafting example, in uo you had to make a bunch of short swords to unlock being able to make a long sword and the more longswords the better you got at making them. Here you can salvage a ton of items and end up a grandmaster blacksmith. Sure xp is the only real factor but you could have generated that by skinning or cooking. There is no real sense of accomplishment so its either all or none with no real steps to celebrate in between.

You can be a "grandmaster" in a skill every 30 mins in upper tears with never even using that skill except on practice dummys, there is no sense of reward for effort into a skill, each step should feel like you accomplished something. When I hit 80 in a skill in uo I felt like I achieved something, I think this game needs more of that then the here take all this free xp and go to town with it.

Anyways just my take.

 

I would like a chance of recipe discovery when do related crafting... e.g. chance that crafting a copper ingot will give you insight on the creating an iron ingot, or an iron ingot on metoric iron, etc.

 

True Weekend is family time anyway ;-)

 

2x solved it a lot for me and should be the set XP rate. In 2x xp, I only have to bounce into a tears group for ~20 minutes and hour to gain 1 mil xp and then I have 40 minutes on my own.

In the 3 months of 2x XP my toon has gone up dramatically in skills (101 GM's with my main build at 115-125 in its core skills) which I feel is my end game. It took me 2 years to go to lvl 100 and 3 months to hit 110. This is perfect. 2 years to make adv lvl 100 as a casual (thats still plays a lot but works 50 hours a week and must deal with family first). I surly didnt feel proud of my time spent. I sure do now in 2x XP.

But this is important, this 2x progress only helps in tears. When I go into Ulfeim to kill critters to skin for crating (mixed xp), its still pretty terrible even with 2x. Not everyone wants to grind tears. XP should be 4x in anything other then tears lol.

So now in 3 months Im at the point where I had to grind a bit (with great breaks) and I am happy where my char is and dont feel like I need to any more. In 3 months...



Crafting on the other hand even with 2x XP is only functional for the 1% of this game who can spend 18 hours a day grinding yellow lines. I have been burning through 30,000 wood pulp... hours upon hours upon hours on an alt. Could you imagine if I didnt have alt and that was my main. Who do you think would enjoy sitting at a computer for 8 hours to make 3000 wood pulp (to eventually make scrolls)???

 

Like I said if the amount of xp is the problem then just double it, tripple it, start everyone off with 250 gms whats missing is the real feeling of progression.

When it takes 20 mins to achieve "grandmaster" it makes those gms worthless from a feeling of u earned something.

 

I disagree with you saying that double has a lack of progression at all. you are still limited to 1 million xp an hour period. Without 2x xp, most tears groups Im in barely do it in an hour and with 2x xp its usually 30 minutes. Its still 1 million xp an hour. yet... it still took me a fantastic amount of time in tears to go from 100 to 110.

 

Level up sound fx is weak. Grand Master fireworks show and notification is non-existent.

 

But 80ish is thier target for the casual and you can achieve that in a weekend, 110 isnt the goal of the casual player it should be hard to achieve that level.

 

I think you both are correct. Lack of real feeling of progression and double xp has cut down the length of time it use to take which was ridiculous.

 

I was wondering how long it'd take for the playerbase to acclimate to the higher rate... especially with how frequently they were deploying it.

 

I personally like the idea of a power hour than 2x XP - especially for casual players. All 2x XP means is I spend 15 minutes in Upper Tears per hour then do something else. Would much prefer to have an hour to jam stuff in to get great XP then move on to something else. Plus for people that cant play much I feel it would help more than 15min of XP and nothing the rest of the hour.

 

I don't think there is really any way to make a game not grindy other than by not having long term progression, like a sim or a shooter or something with super restrictive caps. I'm also not so sure that things like achievements really change that much, even though achievements are fun.

Really the bottom line is that a game is fun when the things that players spend most of their time doing are fun. It doesn't matter if there are huge time sinks if the game play of those time sinks is enjoyable. I think SotA already has some things that are pretty fun, and it also has some that are super boring and tedius. The trick is to incentivize the fun stuff and make more of it.

 

They should just set double xp as the normal rate.

Hell, just do it as an experiment for a release.

 

The frequent double has definitely affected the player dynamic in various ways.
A lot of people are feeling "what's the point" in playing, grinding, doing anything when double isn't on because its quite literally twice the effort.
Going to grind XP? Wait till double. I need to do some mining, I'll wait till double so at least I'm getting good xp gain for it...etc. etc.

The other notable change is that when double IS on, nobody wants to do anything else. Trying to get people to do non-grind stuff when its optimal grind time?
I mean, as a joke, Scoffer and I hauled the crafting table to our guild meeting and plonked it in the middle of the guild hall floor so we wouldn't have to stop.
At least, it was mostly a joke....:X

I think the double "gain rate" is a lot more comfortable across the board for most people, and really helps ease new folks in. I'd be fine if that became the new normal. Should mitigate a lot of the complaints, too.
I don't feel "cheated" that I invested 5000 hours playing before they ever did a double - I call that early access period. Moving forward we'd all be in same boat.

 

Power hour is a sweet idea!

 

Some locations like Ruined Keep are great fun to grind even without X2. We need zones like it , dragon nest with drakes and wyrm in the rock in the sky would be so cool, same with Phoenix - Sun location(perma fire dot in this location) and Chaos Abyss(perma confusion in this location with 10 sec rewrite couldown) with small and large Daemons. Also would be great if random waves could appear when you grinding. Like you fighting with couple of Trawls - dragon in the sky comes and crits you for 700 from the sky, if you died he fly away, if not - you farm 2 trawls and a dragon

 

Exactly..I've said this a few times.. But...

when I went from playing UO to SotA.. First thing I wanted to do was make a tammer, start out at the start of the game with what I thought would be the toughest skills to get, cause you know.. In UO, for me at least, it took several months to get a good tammer. As soon as I found out how easy it was to get the tamming skill tree up in SotA, first thing I thought was.."this skill tree is going to suck ass, and not in a good way."

I was expecting GMs to take months, maybe years.. And once you hit GM there isn't anything special about it, might as well stay at 80 unless you want to show off your skills.

Way too easy way too fast..GMs are a dime a dozen. Nothing special about it..

 

I agree with all of that, but 60,70 80 all need to feel like worthy step. Currently 100 feels like the first step, then 120 the last step in skill progression (unless ur crazy like mac and aj).

 

Before persistence, there was a daily "bonus" - for both adventurer and producer XP. The first X amount of XP you earned was doubled, and X was higher based on your overall level.
It meant that the first 30 mins or so that you did "stuff" you got bonus for it, and it reverted to normal rates after that.
I really miss that, because it encouraged me to log on and "at least use the bonus" when days I otherwise couldn't be bothered, and it meant that even if you could only play a couple hours a day that time was generally more lucrative.

I caution against "rested XP" though, as you don't want to incentivize players to log off / not play. Although if rested accumulated in town (rather than just offline) that might be nice, too.

 

Completely agree. The 2x should be the norm, especially when considering crafting but also combat. Not everyone can do Tears.... unless you want to pay for it. New players are basically forced into paying for exp or getting lucky enough to find a guild willing to carry them through. This game is about as anti-new players as any game can be and it's sad to behold.

If it wasn't for RMT being allowed and options for power-leveling I wouldn't be here anymore. Why? Not because I can't progress on my own, I certainly can, but in order to be able to do anything beyond the easiest content at a reasonable rate of return I'd have to grind grind grind. No effing thanks. This game isn't appealing enough to the masses right now to bring in enough players to make girding fun (as in groups being available). It get's boring very quick.

2x helps alleviate some of that and should be the norm. I'd suggest doing away with 2x, make it the norm, and instead implement 2x cap weekends where 2mil is the cap instead of 1.