R11 Level Griding

I also need a full wipe to test out a gold exploit.

Or I suppose I could delete my current character but I don't think I can do that voluntarily yet. I may go insane.

 

That's a great point. But how about we let people that like to grind do that? I can be of more help testing other things like PVP, something l actually like.

 

Then you should have it on demand. Again, the internal testing team wouldn't say "well we'd like to test that gold exploit out but our Q/A guy is going to have to kill another 300 wolves first".

 

Because you have a good mind at critical evaluation and PvP has tons of testers while grinding is new

I truly sympathize with your desire to test things you are passionate about.

 

I think a good solution might be to create ALL pvp zones where levels are set. To make a PVP zone where any player that sets into the zone is automatically put at level 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc...

Then the game could randomly match you up with someone else based on whatever the devs were looking to get data on. 10 vs. 50....30 vs. 30...etc...

That way, people don't have to level to test PVP, and people that level like crazy can't use that against everyone else in PVP.

Oh and PVP does NOT have tons of testers. It has a small...VERY SMALL, handful of testers. I'll bet if we compare the number of people who have even tried pvp to the number of people that have played but not tried pvp...it's probably a ratio of 20 to 1 that have no tried pvp. (Please Chris, prove me wrong) And Kvow if you were joking, I missed it.

 

Brawls and tournaments abound! 4 releases of PvP with extremely passionate players doing video hangouts. Constant dev involvement in PvP events.

I'm certain I have met 0 devs while grinding in this one release.

There is a big distinction between experienced players play testing and reporting vs new players logging in, trying things, being confused, and leaving a poor but experientially valid review.

PvP has received rich feedback form great players. More of these players need to experience the pointlessness of skill point gain from level 40 to 50. I have no use for skill points anymore and there are 43 levels left!

If you made it too level 100 without losing your mind I know you would have relevant feedback.

(Not saying you dont now)

 

"It's Sausage, But it's Not Dinner Yet"

Just as the first Combat, as well as the first PvP does not exactly resemble what we have now, but seems to fit into the same family, every release is quite different in it's own special way. It's like what fashion models ware when they're walking down a run way in a fashion show, "there's more concept here than what will be any outcome". It's an Easter Egg Hunt and a bust to hang a pattern on and much to do about nothing, "yet something wonderful comes this way!"...

There's something to learn in grinding... and thus we grind ...
I'm learning about angles of attack and how certain weapon's skills perform, as well as getting a taste of what our world will become, as if tasting the batter that will later make the cookies once they're baked, "it's not yet baking time, it's time to grind!"...
The environment while fighting and over all feel seems right, yet as Chris has said, even our skill trees in the form of point distribution ability needs to be revisited, where the innate is not fitting the actual skills needed to have the project's outcome fit it's artist's concept of the final product.

Will there be a wipe, wiping away all out efforts in skill building, "I sure hope so", because I never expected to get anything from grinding, except a concept of where we are going and how that grind will be. I may be in the top 20 in skill points gained, but skill points retained was never in my thoughts. What was and is in my thoughts, are the things that will be needed to build skills (grind on) with in the form of developmental training grounds, where later we will tell our new people to "go here or there to build this skill or that"... and also how fun those places will be, or can be made more fun to the player who will later train on them.

Most players are not as simple as I am about their ways of grinding, yet every enjoyable play style needs it's way to be a part of our world's design. Where most players are now embracing fixed cards within their random, I am still embracing the random in it's most simple of play style, where a 4 card random draw is all I use, where other players may be treading the dungeons of the underworld or more exciting, exotic places, I am in the simple places where simple things can be found in order for our game to not leave those places behind, because they are a play style too.

I may be in the 60's now in the leveling, yet this is only a reflection of how much effort I've placed in the fine details that may not be the apparent. Unless we've done something enough, our opinions can become shallow, and the shallows can never depict the entire ocean, "it's just a place to get our feet wet, where the design of our flippers to go deeper and further are still in their design concept".

What our grinding efforts are for, is our ability to have a better opinion and better game. What this grind and leveling may give us, may not be seen as anything permanent at all, yet if we do retain anything of the points we gained, it should should only be a vehicle that empowers our more avid players to look deeper into the design and help polish it's workings. Those players that do not, or did not level their characters, still need to get their feet wet in order for their opinions to better help our game's details, because if those players haven't placed such efforts in, then their opinion can only apply to the concept, yet not more deeply into the particulars of helping polish what has been achieved.

Our grinding is nothing more than sausage before it's cooked...
~Time Lord~

 

I respect what everyone has said, and their concerns, but I do have a theory - with nothing to back it up but gut feeling and "common sense". The devs want us to "test" the progression system. So it has to happen, and in a release window (small time window). So experience points are huge, Time Lord is on level 55 at least in a few days.
It would not surprise me in the least if on release, you get - for a chest mimic - instead of 1200 exp points, maybe 120, or even 12. We have (hopefully) years to play this game. What's the point if you have maxed everything out in the first week?
So major wipes will be necessary

 

Basically what you do now is, go into the woods or the swamp and kill bears and wolves until your level is so high that you can sweep through the rest of the game. That's because of the grinding. If you take the time you can destroy the whole challenge of the game with this behaviour.
Therefore I hope that there will be no grinding in the final game and this also means that there should be no respawning as this would encourage grinding. Clean a forest of all the bears and there are no more bears - at least for you.
Grinding is also encouraged by getting EXP when you kill monsters. Getting EXP through combat in combination with respawning is an invitation for everyone to grind.
I hope that the devs come up with a solution for this, a solution that either does away with grinding or reduces it to an absolute minimum.

 

I agree Asclepius, I also agree with the Net !
It's an Easter Egg Hunt...
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that riches of wealth or riches of exp/lvl are meaningless here, other than the individual was able to accomplish it within the space of limited time we have to play. Yet it's by those experiences, that help the player, help the game. We all have different focuses of interests in our be everything game that our SotA wishes to provide, yet as players of an ever temporary world, it's our accomplishments that guide our developers opinions. In some ways we do have direct input, where our opinion may directly matter, yet it's our actions in the game that better influence where the developers can adjust to our needs, or more value an after the fact opinion.

Gold and Exp/Level are meaningless to have, yet never meaningless to our developers...

I'm just over 62'ish ... Others here may be more shy than me to say where they're at. I could be nipping on the heals of a few on that list as many of those characters are truly great players...

Is there any gain in being in a party while hunting?... I haven't done that yet... I enjoy the in-game sunshine too much to be trapped in a dark room somewhere beating off monsters in a box

I'm just doing what I will be doing in the future when our game has something we can save and come back to.

What would you want to do with all those exp points anyway? There's a very limited amount of things to place them in because it's still early in what we're getting to play with...
I'm currently shirtless and playing with 2 apprentice daggers

Because it's Fun
~Time Lord~

 

Hunting is a group to min/max xp has always been dubious at best, that is true in almost any game. When hunting in a group it's always tenous whether you can kill stuff fast enough to gain the same amount of xp when compared to killing stuff solo. In some games you got bonuses for being in a group, but it still comes down to the same critieria, can the group kill stuff fast enough so that you gain more xp than solo. In SotA xp for the mob is shared evenly within the group, so can the group kill stuff fast enough ... ?

Of course I'm ignoring the fun factor of killing stuff with friends.

 

I don't think so. There are different perspectives that are important here. If you only have people looking at the game through the eyes of a grinder, you miss out on the perspective of the people don't, won't, or can't grind for one reason or another.

I'm not going to grind, so you will miss out my perspective. If you don't care about my perspective, then perhaps you'll care about other people that are like me but do not grind.

Grinding may be fun for some people. Others may think the status quo is just fine. And still others may believe it's the only path to serious testing. But I believe that it's just grinding, and it doesn't really amount to anything BUT grinding.

 

It is faster if two equally quick players solo while in a party in a location like Deep Ravenwood.

Right now you get 800 an elf or 460 if there is two of you which is a 15% bonus. I didn't do the math on 3-8 players but it seems a creature gets an overall exp increase that is divided evenly between the party. Exp is zone wide so you can fight independently and efficiently while sharing the 15% bonus. Its inefficient to target the same creature at the moment or be in the same area because of the speed and overkill of any one player.

This is min/maxing exp at it's most lame.

I'd actually prefer to meet a friend who is a pure skinner/crafter. I'd trade exp sharing if they took care of loot and resource management which we could split evenly as well. Stop for some food. Tell jokes. Look out for each other.

Hopefully we are not all going to end up being demi-gods killing obsidian bears and wolves for a living. New content scaled to our abilites would be great. When do those little dragons grow up

 

"Mirrored Opinions and Reflective Reasoning" ...or... "Revisiting Aristotle's Rhetoric Where Every Opinion is of Good Use"

I do agree that there is more of everything by perspective, or the continents of the viewer from which all our perspectives come from. Just because I, or anyone has the time to spend playing, dose no devalue the opinion, yet to the particulars of the deep, the shallow of the opinion's information can lead to drowning. Such as, I am not a person to engage my opinion into things like what a spell is called or what it does, "I am more of a user in that way", where I depend on the knowledgeable of that and other subjects because my opinion only leads to my learning more about the subject, or understanding more deeply it's learning or purpose. This is where the experienced player or game designer is most all knowing, yet through demonstration we as players have effect upon the game's workings, such as with the minimalists spoken about by Chris. But this leads to what a shallow opinion true value is and that is it's ability to provide fresh ideas to the tunnel vision of the creator, or tunnel vision of the grinding user. Tunnel vision is very useful to achieving the aim onto target, yet must also disregard other things which would distract the needed focus. Thus, even the observing of that which is the distraction thus does serve a needed purpose. One being the focused and the other being the more broad perspective, we can see both are needed and of value, yet one is shallow while the other is deep. They both can't view what the other is seeing, such are our places within the greater of it all to bring better gaming product. "Take for instance how shallow and simple I went into R-11"....
(my connection here in Thailand is bad tonight, so now I have time to elaborate how lame I am, but with purpose)...

"The Future of All Our Newby Training Grounds?"

"The Story of Bear Pack's Hill and Bear Pack's Circle"....or... "Ben, Jerry, Larry, Fred and Barney, The Story of 4 Bears and an Extra"
Or how lame am I by the ~Time Lord~

It's difficult to have a conversation in a a pack of Kobold or while dining with Elves and many of us will not be using the same chat channel, or in my case, I never use them because it breaks my immersion or escape from reality, and this is where our story begins...
I call it "Bear Pack's Hill", the place where I acquired most of my exp/leveling, where there on the hill there's a circle, where if a single player kills all the bears circling the runes there and skin them, they will find that it's a never ending circle of re appearing bears. There is also a camping spot among the other runes there, where a tent and camp ground is, which serves as an additional spill over supply from the circle if 2 players are killing bears of the hill.
How lame is that? Portalarium knows full well that I have 6505 Animal Skins in my Backpack... But why?

"Training Areas for the Instructional, While Providing the Needed Resources of War"
It's all about linking what's needed all together. We need a newby wilderness training ground where we can teach or have available a place that has it's aggression turned down but not off in order to read an instructor's chat box, gain and have challenge from a larger opponent, while also providing animal hides. Wars and newbys all begin and end in animal hides. Leather Armor is light enough for everyone to use and thus equip an army with so they have less fear of loosing anything while in the blood bath of online war, where iron deposits will be in demand, yet not as plentiful or as universally wearable.

"Proper Dramatic Angle of Attack"
As that may sound like a very lame reasoning for applying myself for so long to this simple area, there's much more that can be learned there in the ways of combat. It's very difficult to play a piano, a key board or make a proper move while dancing, marching or... as well as fighting, unless you can practice that move in a safe environment "over and over again" until you get it right. Bears are large, which provides the viewer with an enlarged target area, where direction in which the opponent if facing is better displayed. We all know (or I hope we all know) that an attack to the rear of the opponent is more potent with inflicting critical damage. A bear's wide angle hips provide a way of dramatizing the "V" shaped area that is most vulnerable in everything... avatars of all types, monster and other players... Thus the bears of Bear Pack's Hill are also a great PvP training area, where a player can practice over and over again ether running across the target and thus less self damage from melee or, do the advanced move of the "pivot".

"The Pivot" <---<<< The best place to strike your opponent is from their rear end ...
This is where the rectangular shape of a bear is mist helpful. In much the same way as a tank is most vulnerable from it's rear, so are all avatars, yet the visual to practice such an attacking move in our game, is the boxy shape of the bear. You can easily notice in which direction he is facing, yet bears do turn very fast, just as everything here does unless stunned. In a PvP or more thin targeted avatar, this place in which to execute the pivot is invisible, yet within the range of the bear's buttocks. So when applying this to the more thin target, just imagine a bear's back side, and that is where your avatar should be in order to execute The Pivot. I practice this by entering the buttocks and then running to it's nose, or stopping my avatar's movement through the bear at the buttocks and then attempting to stop and turn (pivot) to help achieve more critical damage. There is also a sound that helps with the timing of it in the form of your avatar's auto strike, where just after you hear the auto strike has land, then attempt to execute the pivot while actuating the special chosen strike by way of the cards. The Pivot applies to all melee strikes that I know of and has better chances of striking a critical blow with all weapons. yet if you look at our avatars while they are in war mode, this area is where the right cheek of their buttocks is. just stand naked while some archer of any kind shoots arrows into your avatar, and then you can see where this "V" shaped target area is on your own avatar, "this is where to PvP strike"... other monsters that do a facing movement for war mode need to be tested, yet the rear (as the Marquis De'Sade greatly pointed out through his life), it's the buttocks where the most fragrant striking point is How else could that striking place be more discreetly described... "I just don't know"
Many players will also notice that the longer their sward is actually touching the target, the more damage it's doing. This is to mean that, while doing a Riposte, if you can keep the sward actually on the target (just as like pointing your finger or placing it as if to lay it down on the breature... it's a dance thing), if the sward can stay on the target, it's doing much more damage, even though it may not be a critical hit, even though it's not striking the target's rear... That type of damage will not show in yellow numbers, but the damage the attack is doing while the sward is kept on target increases.
Please let me know if I'm wrong on those... points of grinding interest

"Ben, Jerry, Larry, Fred and Barney"... all bears are not created equal
Yes I killed so many bears I decided to named a few ...
Some bears have 350 points of exp, while there are some who have as much as an Elf 900. After someone told me I was in the top 20 in exp leveling, I decided to focus on the 4 bears I named Ben, Jerry, Larry and Fred, who all had 900 exp points and a good re-spawn rate (always take the skins or they do not re-spawn as quickly), which helps gain some exp value. I hadn't come there for the exp, I came there in search of a nice less aggressive training ground, where there was some place to /AFK when I needed to and better accomplish my search, for what other good lessons could be learned or taught there when newcomers come asking questions. they don't all read the forums. Most passers by gave a bear a try and failed, thus prompting the questions of "how was I doing it?" A bear is much more difficult than any Elven or Kobold to take down...

So that's the story of what and why I was there, and will still be there practicing those moves until I get it right many more times to become proficient in "The Pivot"...
That's Lame for a lvl 62 Avatar Hu? Feel free to get over 62, because I'm just practicing my moves and have little interest in anything else because I suck at the computer key board. "The Dallas Deck", which was at first suppose to be for the simple of us is now the normal for most, yet I find better simplicity in the 4 card random draw, where I'm mostly hitting the " 1 " key, while pivoting because it's the same good move for all melee strikes, weapons and anything ballistic.

What has anyone learned from the dungeon-ing crawl areas of grind?

BTW; I'm now in search of our finest example of Wolf Training Grounds and... does anyone hunt spiders?
"Bear Pack's Hill and the Bear Pack's Circle there are very ~Time Lord~ Approved !
(Bear Pack's Hill is easily located near the entrance to south Ravenswood)

I may be lame, but I do so much am loving the game

~Time Lord~

 

"Wiped!"
I just deleted the Nystal TimeLord character who had achieved LvL 63, and began a new character Nystal TimeLord from scratch in order to more challenge myself, or put my new exp in fighting skills to the test. This is because many that came to the bears had told me that it wasn't possible at lower lvl 5+ levels to take on such a large target as a large grizzly bear. I can safely say now, that all those lessons in angles of attack and watching what special strikes did and at what angles they all worked best on (of which, each has it's own best angle of attack)... After killing 3 bears from totally new, that I've achieved LvL 6, and am quite pleased that all that hard work on "my own tactics" in the form of angles of attack and knowing where to place the blade.

We may be wiped clean many times in our world, yet it's the exp we take away from it in our brains and practice that will survive any wipe...
~Time Lord~ XLvL63 back 5... err umm... 6 now

 

Odd. I had no problems killing bears or even kobolds at the starter level 5 character.

One on one, no problem. Just don't get any adds and you are fine -- all with starting equipment and the starter "blades" deck.

 

Indeed well said Joviex!
I'm finding I'm enjoying being a starter character... It's presented me with much more new grinding challenge !
After the first 3 large grizzly bears (one of which large, and yes they come in 2 sizes yet both say large) I became over confident and died a few times. Yet when I was able to check my ego out, and getting the better part of my swordsman attitude back, I'm living quite more. I did modify from the first deck to have more swards ability and beef up my shield to some protection.
I found that I must believe in my own thought tactics and abilities to see better opportunity during each battle, yet more importantly, "I must believe in my abilities as a swordsman" or I'm dead meat...
Still Grinding Away.... !
~Time Lord~

 

Kiting with arrows and arrow skills worked from me. Whittle down their health to a low enough level where you can finish them off with melee weapons and/ or shields. With the starting mobs as strong as they are a good default archer deck should be part of the starter kit.

 

The Melee Meal

Indeed a good beginning tactic Numa,
When I fist began my newest avatar, I took everything magical out of the beginner's deck and enhanced my swards so I could test my new "dancing with bears" tactics. Yet while there with my chosen training ground to test of the bears, I've only seen "maybe" 5 archers during all my time of playing our R-11.

One of the other things about having a new character, is that new avatars have only 15 hit points. So I've been watching my dancing tactics while also watching the hit points incurred by my naked avatar. I'm currently using some riding pants, riding boots and some cloth gloves which offer little if no protection, because it takes my now LvL 37 avatar close to what a new avatar has. I have noticed that, "you can never evaluate a brand new avatar unless you are one because with every LvL they are gaining in other ways, which enhances all the avatar's abilities.

It's tough to not incur 15 hit points in damage in melee with a bear, as they can do much more with one of their blows. I find they range around 15-28 hit points a blow and can be even higher, into the upper 70-80s very quickly.
Even with a LvL 37 avatar now, I still find it very challenging to not incur a 15 hit point blow from them.

Yet, all of this points to some larger creature that will someday be in our game, where the avatar will be challenged by a large melee creature, such as was the titans of UO once were, and that is my current challenge, to develop the needed dancing tactics and weapons tactics that will be necessary to meet such an opponent.

Melee's Evolution
As we saw withing all the days of UO, there was always a gradual swing of where the magical avatar slowly overshadowed that of the pure melee avatar, until the melee avatar became a very small minority. Then thus being such a small minority, many of the things that concerned including things for them in the game, always became neglected thereafter. I believe that the reason UO's evolution took this trail, is because it's easier to zap stuff from a distance, than it is to entangle with it in melee... melee requiring a bit more hazardous dancing with the target at close range, thus less people took that pathway, and thus becoming the minority they became and loosing much attention from the developers of UO, because any developer loves to please the majority, because it sells games.

The First Auto Strike...
Currently I'm very happy with the "fencing style" movements that we have seen thus far. There does seem to be something just not right about the "auto strike" and how it's currently engaged. The first strike to a target, if it's a special strike, seems very weak with it rarely being critical when compared with the well landed blow of others thereafter. This is why the first "auto strike" is so important to mention here, because if it is the first strike, then this alows the following special strike more ability to be a critical blow if well placed.

Just observations
~Time Lord~

 

I might be in the minority in terms of my opinion on grinding, but pretty much having played most AAA MMORPG's and many indy MMORPG's, for the last 20 years I have seen just about every system out there. I started in the beta of UO which I played for 10 years. Under UO's skill based system it took my over a year to reach 7 times GM in my skills on my original avatar without using any macroing or exploits and I enjoyed every minute of the ride. Fast forward to Archeage, which I was able to reach max level playing 2 to 4 hours a day for a week and in 4 weeks I have reach max level on all 12 skill trees which allows me to be any of 120 classes. Archeage's grind comes from being able to get gear and not based on gaining experience. And because of that grind I am still into the game. If I was able to reach max level and get geared in a weeks time, then all the fun PvP I do in Archeage would become boring by now.

So what I am saying is grinding ,if done right, makes people want to play especially if you have content and a strong social community to back it up. I liked the feelingI got the day I finally hit 7 time GM in UO. I felt I accomplished something and the community was there for the ride. If I wanted to play a game that leveling wasn't as important I would play Counter Strike or Battlefield 4.