Hope we do!! Tier 5+

Some of us don't want every zone in the game to be balls-to-the-wall grind. Especially since different players will have a different idea of what they want to fight, and what may be good to someone with a ranged build may blow away someone with a mage build.

One of the places I like to go is the back of Grannus (Grind-us?) Colossus. It is much more difficult for me to fight two or more things at once, and this is one of the few places where I can consistently fight one at a time. I can go there and consistently pull lone archers. It's really satisfying to chase those bastards down and beat on them, without their buddies either beating on me, or putting holes in me from half a mile away. Then if I get bored after a few, I may go off to a safe corner, read some internets for a while, and then come back.

The one important thing about this game's instancing design is that you never have to worry about running out of "camps" with someone already fighting there. In FFXI that was a big thing, the places where it was easy to repeatedly kill the same mob without it having annoying effects like stuns or other debuffs got camped all the time, with a group doing nothing but mob after mob for 2-3 hours or even longer. Other places that might be almost as good were ignored, because few people even bothered to look for new odd places. Then again, with potentially infinite monkey rooms divided up to a dozen players at a time, nobody is forced to go anywhere else, and they are more likely to complain about always fighting the same thing!

 

Agree, there's so much potential here just not being tapped.
For example, in a Tier1-Tier2 scene, add a coal mine with 20-30 coal nodes in it (these already exist in a couple places, but its like, a single node). Make coal nodes drop 3-4 coal per go. While it certainly isn't super lucrative to mine coal for negligible xp, its a timesink vs. cash sink trade and it would add some reason to go to a low lvl area and get something.

Add cultivated fields of various crops. I'm not talking 1-2 nodes here, but full fields for a player to go harvest. Its going to be slower and a lot less lucrative than planting, but would be an option for those who don't have real estate and a reason to go to a particular scene.

As with above, howabout a salt mine yielding salt ingots for cooking AND curing salt for crafting? Again, negating a sink but costing player time that would otherwise be spent grinding cash to buy these things. As long as these things are reasonably dense / worth a player's time players will have a reason to revisit a scene for said items.

Quartz in sequanna colossus is the right idea for a unique-to-scene or even just unique-to-biome harvestable, but there needs to be more of it if its going to be the draw.

Repeatable quests, such as are found in the outskirts scenes, which award xp / money for turning in acquirable heirlooms or equivalent, would make a lot of the tier 3/4 scenes worth doing (with appropriately scaled rewards) instead of everyone grinding the same 4-5 scenes all the time. It'd be something different to do.

We have the 'tech' for all of the above as they exist in game in some form more or less. This would reduce the 'grindy' feel of "enter zone, kill all monsters, run in circles, repeat", too. Its win/win.

 

Very good thread, I applaud the OP!

I started a new char for release, it's now higher than my main char having focused on grinding levels out as that's what I personally enjoy to do after a day at work. I respect that others want to dance, roleplay or craft, but I don't, nor really even bother questing as it's not me. I prefer to test myself on high end content be it high at Adv lvl 10 or Adv lvl 100 in a situation that makes your combat deck selection count.

I grouped with two other people and we skipped T2&3 zones completely, worked through T4 to enable us to go to the Rise, we trio'd it, duo'd it and now are forced to solo it and basically chat in Discord while playing as there isn't anything bar CP's or Lost Vale to test us on and I'll be honest the latter two whilst fun for a few hrs are very restrictive being a room / open space doing exactly the same rinse and repeat over and over.

Last night (still hungover from a weekend of excess at punk festival) I stuck to Deep Ravenswood, all green mobs and hoovered up loot / junk for 3hrs, sheesh I couldn't do that night in night out now it's too easy and meaningless.

Someone suggested level scaling which would be wonderful so we get to see the zones that get updated, making it worthwhile to venture in them opposed to bypassing because it's a low level zone

Another suggestion was re achievements and for me I'd rather stick pins in my eyes or dare I say go to a dance party, that's just chugging for the sake of it, give us on going challenges. It's not a new concept as it's something all MMO's have had to adapt to over the years to keep the player base engaged. Worrying about new players having somewhere to go is finite, they have to have places to go once they outgrow T1,2 3, etc. so ensure the whole player base has options.

Oh and do away with instances, there's nothing more annoying than being grabbed by a green skelly and sucked into a pointless zone or make it so it's an option with a tick box for those folks who enjoy it.

Recall runes would be nice too..... just saying

 

Double XP is a doubled edged sword. If more of the mid level zones were of the quality and density of content as the outskirts they'd be more worthwhile.

 

even with my regular character on launch I did not explore any of the world because I didnt want to die in control points. So I stuck to tier 2 then grinded my ass off and jumped to twins foothills I still to this day have not explored hardly any t2 t3 t4 zones because whats the point. There is a million of them and more to come and no reason to go there. Give me an end game or give me death!!!!!! I cant even imagine how quickly everyone flys through the tiers now with all the double xp out there. Don't think its a terrible thing.... If there was more to do at the end.

 

Yeah this stuff would be cool but I am talking about combat cause that's already here. Lets fix whats out before adding more broken things is my opinion but hey that's just me.

 

I'm on board with the original poster. I've only been playing for approximately two months, and I now only get decent experience from The Rise. There are multiple player types responding, but a large component of any MMORPG is combat-based development (in some fashion). This was the same in UO, EQ, and the gamut of other MMOs over the last couple of decades. Those of us who are experienced in this genre are generally adept at gaining XP quickly, and seek more challenging venues. There is currently disproportionate development of low to high level content as voiced by the initial poster in the thread. To keep the hardcore gamers, or at least keep them engaged in a non-sporadic fashion, this will have to change or these players will seek thrills elsewhere. I can't tell you how many UO accounts my little brother and I created over the years as the content became stagnant and we moved on to another game only to create a new UO account months to years later when more challenging content was added. We, my brother and myself, are a subset of gamers that generally make up a large demographic in MMOs.

As alluded to by others in this thread, this game is particularly easy to reach high-level content in a very short amount of time. I work a full-time job, and still have a 12 million XP pool and 4x GM. I realize the double experience over the past two months skews my point a bit. I could see a whole separate argument made from the perspective of PVP players. This is a tough balance, and I applaud the team (and the original backers) for their contributions/work thus far. One way to keep the content fresh, especially with the specialization skill limitations, is to permit alts which, as I've read in the forums, is planned for 'date unknown.' I must choose to min/max in very specific ways so it would be a good, and most likely lucrative, goal to implement that functionality as an add-on as soon as possible.

Notwithstanding, it will be interesting to see where the developers take the game in the next few months, and the aftermath of those choices.

 

Tier 7

 

Leveling is exponentialy slower. That means that it would probably take 4 hours to get from level 1 to level 20~30 when it will take 700~800 hours to get from the level 110 to the level 115.

As a result, new players won't stay for long in the easiest zones when everyone else stick in the same hardest ones. Those easy zones are necessary for those who just start their adventures in Novia, but also under exploited.

The only way to compensate this would be to create activities for experienced players in the easiest zones : it would help the new players to feel like in a living world and it would allow old ones to enjoy more diversity.

For exemple, place some fortress control contests in tier 1-3 zones (with 5 skulls at the gate).

 

You can't really disagree that more entertainment in lower zones to make them worth revisiting would't do any harm, especially if SOTA is about levelling and experience points, and little else, to a particular player style.

Maybe its just me or maybe its a crafter thing, as I have loads of zones I go back to for minerals, plants and critters that are found in abundance there or else are found in only a few rare spots. There are areas I go to which I like for sulphur, rock salt, coal, hides, specific gems, ores, meat etc that are now not challenging, but are part or the wider SOTA experience and immersion for me.

 

Out of my perspective it is sad that you chose this path…but to each their own and if you like it that way you might had some fun but not everyone is playing this way. During the last weeks I actually enjoyed the outskirts (tier 0) a lot and spend some hours in each of them till I had the feeling that I had explored everything. Was that the best way to get a lot of gold or experience…I don’t think so but it was a lot of fun following the quests and to explore the scenes even if the enemies are no challenge.
Play the game as you like but let others play the game they like and offering in each region a set of scenes that fit to all possible playstyles or avatar levels is (as I think) a good way to do so.

Just curious…where do you read that they are creating a lot of new low level zones? Maybe I missed it but all I read about are reworks of already existing scenes to get them a polished and more unique look.
The few new created scenes I can remember are already for quite experienced avatars. (e.g. the new shard fall at launch)

 

Great post by the OP, I will add my two cents. I prefer farming Crag Foothills and that and other scenes can be raised from T5 to T6 easily. The humanoids there are “hardened elves and skeletons”. It would be easy to have one out of every three humanoid mobs be “Elite” and increase the number of them by 25 percent. Add some Obsidian wolves as well, finally add copper, gold and silver to the standard iron ore veins in alternating fashion and you now have a T6 plus zone. @DarkStarr and @Chris, considers this as an easy tweak while you also consider new T6/T7 zones. R/Boris/El Pirata.

 

I’m going off of the messages and posts that say we will continue to work on new player experiences and zones.

 

Right, I had always thought the plan was to create little areas of high level mobs within the lower level scenes. It would be great for scenes to remain relevant to players beyond their core tier level.

But without this, I agree with other posters that the balance in the amount of lower level scenes is a little weird. Like, there is hardly any tier 5 scenes in Drachvald, and how many nooby players can even get to Drachvald?

 

We need less content, we have already too much, I cannot even keep up!!!

 

lol you don't have to keep up. Who are you trying to keep up with? I am not really doing the quests right now for example I'm doing my own things. They will be there when I want to putter with them. . I would love it if we finished some areas and features we already have. There is much that can be upgraded and embellished such as Hidden Vale areas do need love and fishing and agriculture need their turn too since they are Episode one features.

 

I think these are just the polishes of the low level scenes and no new ones…even if the devs change and polish all existing scenes the areas new avatars arrive must be in the best possible state and thus they get a little more love until they are “perfect”…e.g. a fence you cannot jump over is for an “old” avatar in a T5 scene no big deal and he will run around it but in a starter region this might be enough to let a new avatar stop playing…sounds crazy but it seems to be that way.

Really? I think there are already quite some T5 scenes available, right?
- Indirect Drachvald has Blood Bay and Vauban Pass as passages to enter/leave the Drachvald region that are both T5.
- Then there is Graff Gem Mine and Ruhn that are both T5…and I’m not sure what tier Malice is.
- By entering the Graff Gem Mine you can also enter (I think) two T5+ scenes.
- Additionally many encounters remote from roads are T5 or even T5+ in the second stage.
I’m sure they will add over time some more high level scenes but I do not think “there is hardly any tier 5 scenes in Drachvald” is even today the right wording.

 

The only T5s actually in Drachvald you mention are Rhun (which is PVP), Graff Gem Mine (which is actually just a sub area of the 'mine entrance', which is T3), and Vauban Pass, which is technically the 'entrance' to Drachvald. I think Malice is T5, but it is very small. Compare it to the rest of the map: most regions have at least a couple of directly accessible overworld T5 PVE areas. The point, really, though was how many players that make it to Drachvald are level appropriate for T2 or T3 scenes?

 

Just the Graff gem Mine Entrance is T3 the whole mine itself is T5…but of course subtracting random encounters, not direct accessible T5 or T5+ areas and the access points to the regions than just Rhun remains…but there is a lot of empty space in Drachvald und till EP5 there can happen a lot…maybe the Drachvald is getting someday even the only T50+ dragon lair dungeon in the most north eastern corner of the map with a world boss dragon on the top of a mountain guarded by hundreds of “normal” dragons…we will see but I think the currently direct accessible or by walking through other areas accessible T5 scenes are sufficient for the Drachvald region in a just launched game.
Oh and regarding players in T2-3 scenes well I think there is at least a handful of German speaking avatars with a fitting adventure level active in Drachvald and as far as I heard even some stronger avatars visit low level regions simply to collect resources without the need to fight against strong monsters.

 

I think one issue is that the original zones are too small and with most of them, they were uncloaned and not expanded. Especially early zones, there is no space to throw in some high level stuff. Some of the new "outskirts" zones are huge. With a huge map, they could make most of it tier1-2-3-4 and then carve off a corner (one quarter of the zone) for high level quests and mobs. This would get a lot more people in them.

One of the reasons I still farm Ulfeim is that I can take reaper runs or take runs through the high level cultists in there to have higher level content in between farming prod xp which is also abundant.