Is leveling "fun"?

i really dont get it.. I like nearly everything in this game.. but is it possible that this game developed in a INCREDIBLE spezial direction? That i am just not the "type of gamer" for the core concept of sota?

As i sayed, i really like the most parts of the game, but in my opinion sota got 2 major issues, and i dont get why the devs dont see them:

1. The Skill system. You can have way to much skills without a really hard penalty. Dude... as a pure mage i have all bludgeon passives >60 and one of it nearly gm.. cause: meh.. why not? (I want a hardcap *cry* i hate "i have all the time in the world, i level everything!" chars)

2. PvE leveling is extremely repetitive and boring. Its not just grindy, it takes "ages".. You stay for days/weeks at the same spot.

so the combination of thouse two issues leads to:

A pack of really really active and efficient gamers rules them all. And the "lesser aktive" players dont even have a target to head for. Its not like it was in UO or in every other game where you could tell a player "do xyz for a reasonable time, and you will be competitive in PvE and PvP" its morge like "you will never be as strong as one of the PvP players with much time.


All i see is that they make things harder, so you dont get your million gold or 150 GM's. But in my opinion they completele forgot who "making it harder" hits the most.. The "casual gamers"...

Am i just doing it wrong? Because it pisses me off! I play since final wipe, and i still have money issiues and are completely useless in eny PvP situation. Yes i play casually, but even casual players should reach a point where they are competitive with the "middle field" of the community. The most new players i see, are really hyped for 1-2 weeks and get super bored of the leveling.. than they go inactive and "wait for the release"...

 

I play, on average, 5-10 hours a week. I agree that wealth acquisition for the casual gamer is a bit limited. But also, the need for great wealth for the casual player isn't all that high. Unless you maintain a taxable property. In which case, if you are casual, you should probably be sticking to Row or Village (if you can get a deed, that is. Still not a fan of the lottery system).

More quests will help with the grindiness of leveling, I hope. They did hire someone at least.

When I do play though, I do recognize myself advancing. It is easier to see if you only focus on one or two skills at a time. When I was playing with all of my interest skills turned on, it did start slowing significantly above level 50. Swapping to advancing a couple skills at a time and I really am feeling the progression. I would really advise players to boost the skills they want to use to 40, and then start swapping them out to take turns getting to 60. And then do a round taking them up to 80.

 

Yea, a lot of us have been complaining that the game as currently stands centers too much around grinding.

The amount of time it takes to level I don't think is really a problem. The problem is that all the game is about outside the story is grinding your level up, or grinding your gold up. Making this take less time wouldn't make the game better, and making it easier wouldn't make the game better, either. Both would just end up making the game more boring. If I leveled to 200 in one day, it would be pretty boring, and if enemies respawned instantly it would be pretty boring. Personally, I think a lot of things players have asked for, like eased encumbrance limits, eased travel, constant spawns, easy death penalty, etc, etc. add to this and make the game grindy. I would like to see the game turn in the other direction towards being a classic RPG. (Like Ultima)

Added to that, level matters too much, so the safest way to play (since the only end is grinding) for XP is to find the appropriate zone for your level. Then, when you get to the next level, move to the next appropriate zone. If you're grinding for gold, on the other hand, certain scenes remain best, so you stay in the same scenes forever.

Decay is supposed to serve as a soft cap. I don't know how well this works *shrug*. I personally wouldn't like a hard cap, but maybe they can make it so that the more skills you learn the harder it is to progress.

 

Personally i was bored after initally leveling up.
Now after playing less.. i actually look forward to killen ****.

Sli cant do 6 hours of mining anymore. Cant do 3 hours of grinding anymore.
But 1 or 2 hours here n there? Yes i am still amused.

 

This summed it up for me in a nutshell. I went to Serpent Spines Mine for the first time yesterday and fully explored (I think) most of it. Having said that, I was scratching my head trying to figure out what turning on the water did. Then I fell ALLLLLL the way down to the bottom and now know why!

That was very cool and I really enjoyed playing this scene. Of course after delving a little deeper at the bottom I soon realized I was WAY outta my league lol, but it was hella fun!

 

Scenes need something story related in them, and they need to point to other scenes, and convince you to go to the next appropriate area.

 

I'd say leveling isn't very fun at all in SOTA. For me the most of my leveling was deep ravens wood. Once I was able to kill all the groups of spiders all other zones became pointless at the time. When your level means all in a "endless" leveling system. Only the most efficient experience gathering is worth your time. That lead me to spending 90% of my time or more just killing red spiders. I could have gone to other zones but why would I no zone had as much exp in the same time. Even grouping cost more exp then you gain with the grouping bonus.

The system promotes this play style in my opinion. Why do anything besides what's the most exp per hour if you never cap out?
Things have changed from patch to patch but I still see only the newest exp location being visited. For good reason

 

@Belgtor I doubt you would have stayed in only one spot if there were things to do, see, talk to, find in all the scenes.

 

@Vladamir Begemot
The only thing to do is level thus stay in best exp spot.
Things to see, I check out newly added zones but if exp can't be framed at a higher rate why stay?
Talk to.... I'm not sure what you mean? I talk to lots of people in guild and PM.

However I understand your overall view on this I believe. I would be going from zone to zone looking at all the different things if it didn't effect my overall game play experience. What I mean is I only play MMOS for pvp. If I spend time look at the different zoned I'm not getting stronger. This wouldn't matter for a hard cap system because no matter the rate of exp I gained I would in time be strong enough to fight anyone. That isn't the case right now. I go to a zone and kill mobs at a slower exp rate I fall behind more. Given that I work to much to ever get to the level of the "top" players. It's just how the system makes me play. I want to win at pvp fight so I have to keep getting exp as fast as possible. I don't like it but that's what it is/WAS. I really don't play much these days because of the current leveling system.

 

@Belgtor, no, I mean the reason everyone focuses solely on the grind is because, with a few exceptions (mining) its the only thing to do in almost all of the zones.

Theoretically all zones will one day have such things as quests, NPCs, happy mushroom people, fairies, and whatnot.

At that point it starts to be worthwhile to go ride some unicorns for a bit, just for the fun of it. And you get some XP for it too!

So the grind is no longer so "appealing." You still do it, but oh look, fairies, let's check that out! "Sure fairy queen, I can dance! "

Suddenly the grind is broken up, and it's not such a grind.

 

Important part being that you get some xp for dancing with the fairies until you die.

 

I see what your getting at. Just seems to far off for my taste. Hopefully devs ful release goes well with such added content. Given I personally don't see the game surviving in its current level system even with added quest and such.

 

I get what you're saying too. And that's a tough one. If we're in infinite leveling mode, the combat has got to be damn good(!!!) to keep you playing it until the end of time. And you've got to play it to the end of time if you want to be a God at PvP. Very tough to make that all happen right.

 

If you replace "lesser active" with "lesser capable", this is the problem I have with the game. As I recently posted in another thread, the game seems to have no more achievable goals for me.

 

Oh sorry Belgtor. I hear what you're saying. In my opinion we are seeing just very recently some things that are shifting.

Tonight I was with a friend who is fairly new to the game and we were exploring together. I have been here a long time since 2013 so my level is higher, but we had fun exploring the new mine. And leveling was forgotten but happening. I had been there before. In this mine There are jumping puzzles, a tightrope to walk (scary lava below if you fall), sturdy roots to climb, ladders to climb, flooring that falls through, a barrel that explodes, and blows up a bridge. My point is that this game was always meant to be this type of game. One of The parts of development happening now is to get some fun in. It has to happen.

Before so many got here there was not any of this no traps, very few surprises, etc. It was disheartening to play and watch this type of world for years and wonder if ever we were going to see things that were fun.

We are starting to see it now we have log rides, mine carts to ride, elevators, and air pocket and geysers two that shoot us to the sky.

Now this is just Tech and not all that will be fun once you see it a few times maybe, but if the reasons 4 exploring and seeing these things are added instead in as well having to make up our own which is fine sometimes imo then we will really see a game. So we keep rallying for fun and giving ideas and how that looks for each of us so that grinding is an option and fun is just there. Sorry not just at you.

 

The capless system and the actual softcap by XP loss on death don't match the min max'ers and the casuals / normal players.
The gap between powergamers and casuals is far to big to have people participating in PvP or begin Crafting, creating a economy.
The strive for the max is a problem because if we don't want to have a divided playerbase where powergamers define the standards and everybody else is far behind everything then normal players loose motivation and feel worthless.
Of course it is also a thing of complacency, but while in real life you haven't to compete with the 'upper class' to be satisfied and have fun, in a game satisfaction comes from beeing capable of playing all content.
I don't need a Indian or a Mercedes or a Yacht to have fun I don't need all the luxury to have fun in real world and to be locked of of real life "content" doesn't mean I cannot have fun or are satisfied.
But in a virtual world it's all compressed and i allways need to check self critical what I want to achieve and if I am capable to do that.
This said, a casual is maybe by nature never the top PvPer , but he should not be damned to be allways the looser and therefore locked off of this content if he want to participate in PVP.
A casual is maybe never capable of keeping a taxed Townlot or higher, but he can easily keep a row or a village.
He should definitely not locked off of beeing a Crafter or a important and meaningful member of a group or a guild and shouldn't feel worthless.
He should be capable to make a significant contribution to feel satisfied and not like the 5th wheel of the wagon, forever seen as an optional extra.

ATM i just have fun playing with people around my level and at my pace, for it is more important to immerse and roleplay than leveling, min maxing etc....
And any RPG should be more focussed on Roleplaying people than on bet zealots!
There are other Genres for that and I don't accuse this, I just want to adress what the focus of a RPG should be instead of Football Manager, Street Fighter, Racing Games, Sports Games etc... where it is by nature a competition.

PvP is for sure a competition and i was allways glad to RP some conflict and take it to a duell or the open world. Fun, essential fun and part of cool Roleplay. But then this need not to be this min maxing powerlevelling thing we have atm, but a balanced system where all playertypes are matched. The hardcore gamer and PvPer will be still the best and the most casual will be still most of the time the looser and in between the normal players have fun sometimes loosing, sometimes winning, sometimes take out a hardcore as a group in the open world.
It should not be that a hardcore player is that powerfull to take out a bunch of casuals , they should be capable to overwhelm him.
We need some limits, some better diminishing returns, a softcap aka decay that punish hardcore way more than it actually is and is way more forgiving to the casual players .
Maybe referring to game time and XP gathered in this time and total XP of that character.
If someone who plays 4 hours and earned 20k XP why should be punished that hard versus someone playing 10hrs gathered 1.5 Million of XP,
if we consider both are level 80 ?!?

 

That sums up, what i mean.

Because there is no really level cap, and leveling itself is slow/repetitive without really cool rewards. There is a huuuuge gap. Further is the playerbase (maybe because of this?) so low, that nearly every PvP'ler is one of the "top tier" players. This means, you dont have a mid class or lower class to compete with in PvP situations.

Compare it to UO:

There where no quests. It was pure grind. BUT: You could go everywhere! Every dungeon, every place on the world had different loot and even rares to collect. And: you had a target! You knew when your char wars ready. And you could compete to top tier PvP players, even when your char wasnt finished.

In Sota it is:

All the people who have 20 gm's now, will have 50 gm's when i have 20. The econemy is so broken, that i need to farm 1-2 hours to buy me a TABLE... and so on... its exhausting to try to explain what i mean, because like i sayed in my innitial posting: I more and more get the feeling, that porta wants it to be exactly how it is right now..

 

I like this
Compare 20 year old game (with tons of content and mechanics) is little silly...
Important how actively game in development ...

 

Yea, the "you could go everywhere" part may change. The leveling mechanics and the cap/soft cap are core mechanics.. and: sota will be released this year.

EDIT:
And when i say UO, i mean 1998 UO no 20 years of development...

 

@Bulveigh yes, looks like the game has become a gigantic time sink. Its the only way they found to "restrain" the top players : make things last longer, encourage the grind and so leaving the 95% of players on the side.
Lum said one day :"get out of the hidden Vale!"(one year ago or even more) but you cant if you want to lvl up >> you have to go to deepravenswood and farm the spiders.... or buy armors and weapons at an incredibly, tremendously, ridiculously high price from "crafters" and go to the rise or the fall. They (the devs) know that and do Nothing about that. Ofc you can go explore but you wont get as much xp. Even worse : when they see (Chris) on the stats they are tracking that a zone is too exploited for xp farm they look at the skills used and just nerf them or boost the creatures in there or nerf the ressources usage (focus nerf): thats their way to make things last longer in the name of "balance".... Im so disappointed about that.
Looks like addon store items (many of them just taken from the unity store : https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/ >> i encourage you all to take a look at it) has become the top priority. Dont get me wrong, i dont blame the business, i just blame the fact that it has become so important. Im so surprised to see that so many things are coming from the assets. I was thinking that everything was an original creation .... but no..... Its just taken from a Library and place in a zone ....