The Grind

This much seems clear to Captain Jack also which is why he posted on limits to general and group pushing not long ago. If Captain Jack were in the game today, he would no doubt have to sign up a bunch of scurvy dogs to help.

 

What I understand from this thread is that all PVPers should be on an equal footing without having to grind to reach a high competitive level.

What about the players who enjoy being evil characters who level up in order to prey on newbies who have a much lower level than they do? What about players who enjoy grinding to become powerful avenging heroes who go after such evildoers? Is there anyone sticking up for their rights?

 

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
LLaP

 

Damn, I playing Albion Online beta atm and I can say that: SotA is a baby grind game vs Albion Online.

So, Albion got a good PvP.

 

LOVE THE GRIND!

 

When you design a game, do you design that game for a small group of people with lots of time on their hands? Or do you attempt to make it fun for as many people as you can?

I don't like or support Crowfall, but man do they understand one of the major problems with MMO's. Watch this video where they talk about "Uncle Bob".


Uncle Bob is not going to enjoy SOTA very much when he's the only one playing it.

 

I skimmed through this thread, so I apologize if I missed this. But what solutions are you proposing?

Other games have tried to adjust under-leveled people upwards in PvP zones to make them competitive. This could be something that SotA does on a scene by scene basis. Scale everyone up to say level 200?

 

Whatever makes the levels mean far less than they do right now.

I've proposed a couple of things within this thread. But here's a new one. How about giving every Avatar the same amount of hit points and ability to regen those hit points? It would be easier to scale all the mobs and balance the game in both PVE and PVP. Then make all the characters have the same potential for damage output. Problem solved.

You can still have all kinds of progression, you simply remove the barrier to playing in PVP and PVE (level gating).

 

I really believe you would be happier playing a first person shooter Baron Drocis Fondorlatos, you don't need to work for anything in those normally, unless you want to work your way to the top of a seasonal ladder.

 

Also, I don't want something for nothing, I want a fun game. I like progression, but not at the expense of roleplaying and not as a barrier to pvp.

It's one thing to have an amount of reasonable progression that helps define the depth of characters through skills and experiences. But it's another thing entirely to stand around killing stuff for hours on end so that your character can have 50 times more HP than someone else that doesn't play very much. If you're not planning on competing with other players in pvp or you enjoy roleplaying a weakling character that is constantly killed and looted by everyone he comes into contact with, then perhaps this doesn't seem like a bad game to play. But for me, this is not how I enjoy spending my time.

I would prefer to balance out the progression so that the competitive curve did not require what it does now - abnormal amounts of playing time and min/maxing the game to death.

 

Drocis, I'm very sorry that I don't understand what your after really. if you remove progression, what are we playing? The sims?

 

That's a fair question.

I'm surprised you don't understand already, but I'll try my best to answer you sincerely.

First, I'm not trying to remove progression. I'm trying to curve it so that a small handful of players don't dominate all the areas of the game I actually enjoy because they have progressed much faster and more efficiently than I have. You see, progressing is not roleplaying, it's progressing. It requires time and that time is often (I'd argue almost 95% of the time) spent NOT roleplaying and NOT being involved in PVP (although once you level to a certain point you can do basically whatever you want to).

What I'm trying to get to is a progression system that is not the determining factor in who wins and loses in PVP, and that isn't so out of whack that someone that wants to roleplay a specific type of character has to spend months playing the game doing something else completely unrelated to roleplaying.

Imagine for a moment if before you could ever achieve anything you wanted in the game you first had to arbitrarily roleplay? Would you enjoy such a game? I don't know if you would or you wouldn't. But the point I'm trying to make is that what we're doing with leveling feels like that to me. I feel like I can't RP or PVP until I've done these arbitrary tasks for many months that I simply find almost zero enjoyment in. I'm trying to change that so the achievement side of the game is not ruling over everything else that a player can do in SOTA.

I'm trying to make the game fun for more than just people that enjoy achievements through grinding. I'm not trying to make the game less fun for achievers. But we should seek a balance and right now I see this game being about 3/4 achievement based, and anything else is a tax on that achievement cycle.

Want to RP? Well you can't really earn levels doing that. Want to work on your POT? Can't get levels doing that. Want to PVP? You're not high enough level!

Do you see how frustrating that could be to someone that doesn't find leveling enjoyable?

 

Captain Jack reads his desire as that of having a much more level playing field. Between those that can put in five hours a day and those that could perhaps put in an hour a day or only a few hours a week.

 

Can you give Captain Jack some examples of any games that play like how you wish? Captain Jack has played lots and even the PvP focused games, which SotA claims not to be, force you to level in some way. Either by killing other players at or around your level or come other combined form of XP/Level gain. Captain Jack would be interested in checking out a game like that, as it would seem to indicate it was a true sandbox and that is very fun.

 

Alas, Captain I can't say that I'm aware of any game that plays like that.

The one game that comes to mind most is Planetside. Yes, it's a first person shooter and not a roleplaying game. But it was an MMO. Even though you "leveled" your character, you would still contribute quite a bit in pvp the moment you walked into the game. A new person could kill someone that had been playing for years and years and it was great fun. But there wasn't any roleplaying going on there, and the persistence was meaningless so it's not a model that I'd want to emulate here.

Still, it does provide a backdrop for conversation in that it was 1. Successful, 2. Fun, and 3. provided a relatively balanced pvp environment. For example, it never mattered how long you played you never ended up doing more damage and taking more damage than your opponents. You just got access to more types of attacks and moves and vehicles and abilities. You weren't going to stand there mass slaughtering everyone that moved who wasn't at your level. It was more skill based than it was level based, and obtaining those levels wasn't the most important part of the game. That's probably the best way to explain it.

 

Drocis, is the current quest line not requiring me to roleplay with the npc's? maybe this is how you will compete with your progression

 

I'm not sure it's comparable. I did finish a few quests and because I was still on the 4x XP modifier my pool went up a lot. But it wasn't really anything to write home about. It probably saved me an hour of killing things. Are there enough quests out there that my character is capable of completing solo (don't forget this is a game that HAS to be completed solo since we have single player and single player online modes)? I don't know the answer to that.

If the quests will get me to level 100 then sure, I have no problem with that because then I'd only need to put in 40 hours (that's how much content is going to be in the game at launch) of playing time to be pvp competitive. But based on my experience in game I don't see that happening. I haven't heard the devs even suggest that to be the case.

 

I was watching a video by Technical Director Chris Spears from early October, and this issue raised by the OP was covered in that video (in fact he refers to it as the BDF show I believe!)

One pertinant point Chris explains was that lvl 40 is half as powerful as lvl 100, but it is only 1% of the XP of lvl 100. So there is an exponential curve regarding levelling to even the playing field regarding the grind.



watch from 19:30 mark

 

I just lol'd at this note I found in the game.

 

I don't see how you would have any sort of progression if everyone had the same hit points, ability to regen hit points, and damage output. We would all essentially be clones of each other but with different animations depending on the skills we pick - all of which do the same damage. A master wizard doing the same damage with Fireballs as a 2 day old wizard casting Fire Arrow? That doesn't create much incentive for a player to become that master wizard. He's have a cooler attack animation, and maybe a cool looking robe, but I don't see myself playing a game that is essentially cosmetic only advancement.

If you're looking for balanced progression game-wide, and not just in special scenes that do auto-scaling, perhaps a better solution would be to implement a system where you can passively train skills over real-world time. Similar to EVE Online, where skills progress at the same rate whether you're fighting, RPing, crafting, at work, or sleeping. It takes 8 hours of real time, no matter what you do, to improve your sword skill to the next level. The downside to this system is that players coming into the game a year or two after launch will always be weaker than those who started the game. A hybrid system, with active-use and passive gain perhaps could work, so new comers to the game can play hard to catch up?