The Sooner we stop getting 4x Exp and starting bonuses the better

I think they'll need to have a leveling curve because of the use based skill progression system they are using. The skills could all look great and work fine in temporal isolation. But a big issue would be how those skills compare relatively over time. i.e. we have to "level" to give assurances the level progression is engaging and workable. Having said that ...

And I hate to go all negative, because that's all I seem to do lately. To me there's a pervasive sense of entitlement humans adopt if you let them. And it stinks of it around here. Good players and good people seem to wake up one day and prioritize personal relative advantage over game balance and plain old fun. The devs better be careful with this stuff. Is the goal here to have a small sandbox that a small group of hard-core fans enjoy? Or is the goal to blow the world's collective mind again? Get yer priorities in order. Make it clear that there won't be any pay to win advantage involving pledge rewards, at all.

That horse is well and truly dead now. Back to my usual gentle self.

 

I'm having trouble following. Are you saying that, as pre-alpha testers, we should not be given any tools or 'entitlements' to help us to test the game, because it might turn the game into a small sandbox only a small group of hard-core fans would enjoy? How and why could it possibly do that?

The problem today is that: Nobody wants to test the game, because we're having to start at the beginning and having to grind repetively over and over, and start it all again every three months. Turning off the 4x exp would mean even less people will bother 'testing' because we're not really given any tools to test the game, we're just thrown into it like we're players and having to repeat and grind over and over again. i login, i die. i die again. and again.. i log out. that was boring. next week i give it another go. die. to baby spiders this time. last time it was wolves in a 'random' encounter. Next I try to gather stuff.. it fails.. i die. I finally kill a wolf! i kill 3 wolves.. try to loot the first one after finally killing the other 2.. and while physically dragging the loot over it disappears into thin air, along with the corpse. *write a bug report*.. then I die again. die-hard fans are the only ones who will keep logging in for this kind of torture.

So I'm just not sure what you're trying to say. How do you think the devs should be getting players to test during Pre-Alpha?

 

No, I like the ex bonus as is and cant believe someone is actually complaining about it. If I had to start each wipe fresh with no xp gain I will just stop playing until the game is finished. I don't have the time to play the game as some do, I can only log in for 2-3 hours if that a day since I work and have a life outside of the game. I do try to play when I can and test things when possible.

 

No, but I see why that was confusing. I took a hard left turn there, huh?

Testing is testing and I've done a ton of it. Testers should have tools to test some systems. Others require that they play the game just as the general player base will play it. Basically just testing progression.

Then I went on a mini-rant on a topic that's near and dear to my heart. The OP is related to it, but not exactly the same. Sorry for being so confusing.

 

YES I wanna be 5 GM and kick you Kvow !

 

I love slow progression usually just like in UO, but in alpha and beta let me feel a little like the Alpha Avatar please... I'm descended from the divine for testing purposes with a quite good plate and a magic sword that appeared out of the blue in my bank, don't make me die to a timber wolf please.

I think a simple solution is to just let me start at a level where I'm not afraid of a regular bear so I can "get going" quickly. I understand the need to test low level progression but the math from mid level will also be valid and as others have said a few of the last beta releases (with the true "starting level") should suffice to extrapolate.

maybe the bonus could only work on innates only, we should have a few basic things going on as "the Avatar"... things that might not be taken for granted because "insert shardfall lore here" which will apply at launch.

What I don't want people to take me as is : a guy who's trying to get it the easy way, I will love adventuring and crafting and taking my time ; hence at release my focus is roleplay and in no way a race to end game.

So please understand : Don't stop giving love and more choice and more variety to the lower levels, the experience of arriving without a big pledge as others have said must be fun.

Give high level players a handicap when fighting non-pledge low levels, incite them to take part in PvP...

We must completely eliminate those kind of disparities for the testing phase IMHO.

Thanks for the reply @Chris

 

I am another person who will not be playing/testing without bonus exp, I will choose to just wait till live.

 

For testing I would believe 4times xp should be given to all without a cap on what level you were, the real test is when players have skills reaching max cap anyways and I don't see a lot of players reaching that goal... perhaps they might just as the servers get wiped again..

 

We're currently on (roughly) 3-month cycles. Wipe, start over, progress for three releases, repeat.

With a 4x boost, that kinda compresses time, so that by the end of a cycle, we've roughly covered a year's worth of progression. Play styles are unaffected, so power players are much farther along than casuals, and people have focused on what's most important to them.

I find that a reasonable compromise.

It is understandable that people are pushing more and more for "launch conditions", so that they can get a taste of what the actual gameplay will be like on Episode 1 Day One Ground Zero. However, that doesn't help the Devs test in a timely fashion. Also, folks who say that players won't be used to the slow pace of the game are kinda forgetting that at this point last year, the game was in a much different state, and (at this point in November 2014) we were only getting to play for four days at a time, with a wipe in-between each session. In those four days people raced to high levels so that they could dump points into whatever "best build for <PvE/PvP/PvZ/etc>" there was at the time. One year ago, plus two weeks, the Steam launch and the advent of 24/7 server uptime changed the playing paradigm significantly, and we haven't looked back since.

The sky is not falling, we're not being spoiled by anything. Rather, folks are acting spoiled and should reset their expectations and perceptions. Remember, even when Episode 1 has launched, after all the dust has cleared: We'll still have a monthly release cycle, adding new features, content, and balances.

Faith is defined as "a complete confidence or trust in a person or thing; or a belief not based on proof."

I have faith in everyone at Portalarium, and I had it long before I ever visited their offices in Austin. If anything, seeing "behind the curtain" has done everything to embolden my faith. This game, regardless of any specific feature(s) that I may wish for it to contain, will be full, rich, and amazing.

I encourage everyone to find some of that faith, and give it to everyone as contagiously as possible.

 

The only real issue I have with removing the xp bonus is that you only get a month to get the hats from the automatons.

Even with the bonus, it's the 2nd week of the month and I'm still not powerful enough to kill a single bandit in the Soltown sewers.

 

They like to make us run like idiots and die a lot. That's not how I would ever want to play the game for real.. but that's what's expected of us for these awful quests. This is one time where we can say, 'It's Pre-Alpha', the real quest development is going into real game quests, lets not have them waste too much time on these - it's fine that the hat quests suck as long as we can get the hats and help test the new areas out in the process. Just run as fast as you can, don't fight anything and talk to the guide before you're killed.. that's the game here. No it's not fun, but you want the hat? You could get some friends to join you and fight off the monsters for you as a distraction. Chalk it off to being Pre-Alpha, smile and take the beating and say 'yay! i got another hat..' Let's save the time spent making good quests for the actual game I say. ;-D

 

Pretty much.

I just wished I had the time to dedicate seeing and testing new areas. I normally rush to the guide when I'm running out of time. I guess I could do it on the first day and get it over with.

 

Weirdly enough, since you can't talk to the tour guide with a weapon out, I keep thinking these runs are meant to be made without killing anything. And most of the time this seems to hold true. Run, heal, potion and pray if you're low.

 

Isn't that forcing me into a HEALER CLASS ?! hehe I'm kidding

Seriously I played last night, and even though I'm victim of a very stange bug that makes my mouse not register input and clicking on the desktop constantly (which tabs out or crashes my game every 30 seconds)... I was able to finally get going quite fast with the 4x EXP. Strangely when I don't use the mouse, the game is running well. If anyone has tips please help I tried everything, I suspect windows 7 for being too "sensitive" to the game not responding immediately (it will react to half a second delay and bring a popup that says "game is not responding do you want to wait or close the program ?"

The only thing is that really when we start fresh, being unable to kill a few spiders and a wolf with a full set of armor makes a little too obvious that levels are affecting the damage we receive way too much. Once I was past that critical level stage I SUDDENLY was able to take on 3-4 skeletons and 2-3 bears at once.

Just give a little more skills when you start... points to spend on innates maybe ?

So overall my gameplay experience was much better, the feel of the game was much better and it is starting to look very nice.

Thanks for not having to kill undead twice anymore, thanks for upgrading many creatures AI @Scrambler the spiders look and feel better, great work !

Thanks for listening to the feedback I'm honestly starting to have fun

 

If for a single bandit you mean the Ebon Cultist Champion, he's one of the toughest non-boss mobs in the game, in the same league as elite skeletons and obsidian animals.

 

Nah, I'm getting my ass whipped by any bandit in those sewers. It doesn't help that they like to gang up on you but even if I manage to get into 1-on-1, I remove less than 5% of their health by the time I'm dead.

The elves in... Solania (?)'s sewers and at Greymark Forest are just as deadly.

... and that one bear in Owl's Nest.

... and the really large spiders (not to be confused with the tiny and medium sized spiders).

To my knowledge, I haven't encountered anything obsidian yet.

 

Just to have a change of pace, head over to Ardoris and go for the bandits in those sewers. One can handle those fresh out of Soltown. Beware of the slimes though...

 

It would be nice to have option to max any skills in no time just before final release, so we could improvise with different builds.