New Grind Solution

There are definitely WAY more than 50 people. There were more than 20 at a single event this afternoon.

 

It's probably fair to say "tons of people" if the comment is based on the fact that many people played WOW and EQ and those pvp environments were every bit the grind fest that SOTA currently is (if not much more).

But I didn't play EQ or WOW because I didn't have any interest in being on a grind treadmill and arena style pvp has no interest for me. I wanted to come to SOTA because I thought it would have more of an open world pvp (more like UO) system that did not punish people by making them grind endlessly where 98% of their time was leveling and only about 2% was actually fighting stuff.

 

If only this one person would not claim to respect other playstyles while making suggestions to actively punish them in order to draw them down towards the middle where he thinks everyone should be! I have yet to see you make one single suggestion to aid your playstyle that doesn't actively diminish mine. If your best solution is to hobble other players so you can "compete" then yes, I have no respect for it.

If you feel you are in the majority, then gather up all the masses and form a low level pvp test group of your own. I'm sure the devs would love the data. I see your point that people who dislike the grind are at a disadvantage in leveling for pvp purposes, but those of us who you call no-life powergamers are just playing the game as intended for now. If you can think of a way to remedy this that doesn't involve a direct punishment for me, I'm all ears. Until then, please stop saying you respect me while insinuating that I have no life because I've figured out how to reach a high level doing something I enjoy.

 

I came here for the same reasons. I did however like the 40 vs 40 battlegrounds in wow

 

@Chris @DarkStarr
I'd love to see...

1. How many individual people were involved in PVP over the last 3 releases?
2. What percentage of the total population is above level 50?
3. How many PVP battles were won by lower level characters?
4. How many PVP battles were won by lower level characters that were 20+ levels lower?
5. How many people total will PVP flagged in any release?
6. How many people stopped playing this game (or virtually stopped playing this game) the moment their experience modifier stopped working?
7. How much time the average High Level player actually spends killing AI?
8. How much time the average player (total population) actually spends trying to reach level 40, 50, 60, 70, 80?
9. How many of the highest level players are in the same POT or Guild Together?
10. How many people reached level 70+ without grouping?

I think that would show exactly what the problem areas are in this system.

 

Maybe it's just me.. but you might want to rephrase that.

 

I don't know why you're focused on me personally, it would be nice if you talked about the idea in the OP and not me as a player.

Also, perhaps there are other people that think like me but they've already written this game off? I think the numbers would support this to some extent. But again, I can't know for sure.

 

actually fight in pvp

 

What about people who like pve but don't like grinding

 

Indeed. What about them?

I'll let them fight their own battles. I wouldn't be supportive of buying levels in the add-on store, which is where I think that would end up. But I do have empathy for people that like PVE but hate grinding. Grinding is very very frustrating to me. It's a complete waste of time, imo.

Once I kill a few skeletons, ok great I did that. Let's move on. But that's not how SOTA works. It's find something you can kill and then kill that thing until you don't get enough XP and then go find another thing you can kill. It's really a horrible game (for me).

 

Why would it end up like that? Single-player games aren't grindy like MMOs, and they have slow level progression.

 

I can see them selling levels in the add on store for another reason. Being that you can group/follow with alt characters and get exp bonuses, I can see people leveling accounts and selling them. Portalarium could counter this by selling levels in the add on store.

 

Also, I love it when people say things like "You could've been level 40 by now if you stopped posting on the forums and just went out and leveled!"

It's like someone saying "You don't like the way mashed potatoes taste? Well you couldn've eaten them all by now if you didn't complain about it!" No kidding. So the answer to whatever we don't like is to just do it and get it over with. Which is why so many people don't want to participate in pvp and should instead just do it and get it over with...because.

 

Some are, and some aren't. There are certainly parts of Pillars of Eternity that felt grindy to me. But not SOTA grindy.

I think for the most part SOTA COULD be a lot less grindy and once you complete a quest or kill stuff out in the woods it just wouldn't show back up again - therefore no grind. But that hurts people that like that kind of thing. The solution in the OP was designed to allow people that like endless WOW type grinding to do that. But to allow people like me to avoid it and still be able to compete because the power gamers are slowed down a bit. They're not stopped by any means, they're just spinning their wheels a little and advancing more slowly compared to people that are much lower level.

 

Again, I'm not suggesting they sell levels. But I will say this, if they sell them I'm buying them.

If they told me I could be level 200 tomorrow if I bought levels I'd gladly do that. I'd gladly pay to avoid the meaningless stupid grind that is this combat system.

And all the powergamers that tell me how much skill is involved in this system should be fine with that because obviously there's no imbalance to be concerned with.

 

If I may interject my own personal opinion here. Rather than trying to get the devs to make the game conform to you. Would it not be better to focus on ways of making ALL combat more fun? How do you remove the grind.. from the grind?

For that matter what makes it so 'boring'? I assume it's the repetition and dull AI.. and how can the combat itself be tweaked? more fun = less tedium.. but less tedium does not mean more fun..

 

Why are we settling on endless WOW type grinding? That's the problem.

Yes, I think if the game is going to be played even when the story is over, some things need to respawn over time, so the game can continue to have content. But the point of the content shouldn't be an endless grind, so IMO it shouldn't cater to that.

But aside from addressing things like respawning, part of the issue is not even progression and leveling itself, but how much of progression is innate and passive. Right now in the game you can reach a high level and, in light armor even, stand around in a scene and let skeletons or wolves group on you, go out for some coffee, come back in a few minutes, and still have full health. Because your character is automatically dodging for you.

That's really bad for long-term playing of the game.

 

Well I'm not really trying to get the game to conform to me. The OP is not my idea of perfect fun by a long shot. It's a compromise.

But to your question, how do you remove the grind from the grind. From a PVP standpoint, you try to make the game more skills based and less level (or chance) based. That doesn't appear to be what the devs want to do. I've asked for YEARS if we could have COUNTERS and BLOCKS and despite a few things named that, we really don't have those things in a meaningful way. They impact combat positively, but they don't add much SKILL to the game.

So beyond that, I think the devs are looking to find ways to lessen the gap between levels so that more people can participate and have fun in pvp. The OP is a way of doing that.

 

I agree, but I've been trying to compromise. I don't think the devs have shown a want to scale back their EQ/WOW content.

Regarding standing around and letting things miss you....the higher level you are the more they will miss you. Watch the next time you level up a few times, what used to hit you a lot will suddenly stop hitting you and you'll see miss miss miss miss over and over again. They removed this from PVP a few releases ago, which was great. But it's still there for PVE and I agree it contributes to the problem.

 

This sounds Draconian, not fair at all.