Upper Tiers.

This is why they raised attenuation to 2 million this release, so they can identify and adjust "problem" areas. To all: if you have never done UT then this is the release to do it.

 

I'm a player with limited time (Or at least a player who plays other games), and I've walked away from SOTA several times because I felt like I was getting shoehorned into very grindy and repetitive content to not waste my time in the game.

You're not wrong that these big payoff grinds help new players feel like they can catch up, I did them for a while every time I got back precisely because I felt like if I finally had a more defined character I'd enjoy the game more. But then a week or two later I realize that I'm not falling into a play habit that I actually enjoy. I log in, I know I have to go to the same area, doing the same thing, for as many hours as possible to advance at maximum speed. I get frustrated when my friends want to go to a party or do a little fun event instead of just helping me grind, since I can't solo those areas. I realize I don't even know where upper tiers are, despite having spent at least a few dozen hours there, because the most efficient way to play the game was to just teleport there and then not move until it's time to teleport home. I still haven't done the quests, because the rewards are meaninglessly small, and what I really need to build the character I want is tens, if not hundreds of millions of XP. Doing those grinds starts to feel exhausting because you know any hour you don't do them is an hour you're not moving forward. Having fun in the game feels like cheating on your diet, watching Netflix feels like skipping a workout, playing another game like slacking off.

I hit the inevitable day where I go "Alright, I'm taking a break from upper tiers, one day off won't hurt", and I fire up something from my comfort food library, and play a game I really enjoy, or buy something new to play, and then the next day comes and I think "Well, I had so much fun yesterday, I'll do that again", and then before I know it it's a year since I logged into SOTA.

 

Very well said Aetrion. I truly love this game but I have never seen a game so needlessly complex. Since I got here I have been amazed how few players are actually here, as compared to how many should be here for an incredible game like SOTA. I believe the primary cause for player attrition in SOTA is exactly as you so succinctly stated.

 

The one solution I have for this, is find the right group/guild. My guild likes to have fun mess around with content, with the many zones allowing us to attenuate. Sometimes we will go to UT, but it is once in a blue moon. I also watch Fzol, streamer for the House of Mangar, who goes and attenuates in a different zone every hour or so, but he is PvP flagged 5 days per week, so Tuesdays and Thursdays are safe with them.

Many other groups do the same, be it mysterious swamp, control points, the rise, Tartarus, there is many other zones that give as much or more exp than UT, and force you to move around, you just have to find the groups who do those instead.

 

I'm in a great guild, and the contact I keep with them is one of the main reasons I keep coming back. But even the best guild can't help you past the fact that progression speed in this game is so all over the place that most of the content isn't worth touching if you feel pressed to optimize your XP gains because your character feels too weak and poorly defined.

 

It's a good point, and one I hadn't really thought much about. If more-or-less the same XP could be earned in every scene that is "tier x" I might not be so bored with this game. As it stands, there's a few good spots, and a lot of places I went once. Some of the scenes are really well done, but I can make 10x the gains in those few good spots. Maybe if some of those scenes were uniquely good for gathering certain materials, it'd be different. But just like adv XP, with a few exceptions, most areas are meh, and a few stand out. It'd be really nice if there were some good XP scenes with good resources, so I could do double duty. Maybe get a little less of each by doing both, but good enough to not just pick one over the other. Though, I'd be happy to be able to just get a few more good resource scenes. I'd love to really crank up my crafting XP, but even the best scenes are so slow I get bored too easily.

 

I have high hopes that the update to Ulfheim will make it fun for groups to get experience (and loot too).

 

If "a new scene" is the solution to this problem, why didn't upper tears solve the similar problem as it existed with the monkey room? From my perspective, UT made the overall situation worse.

 

How so, @eli ?

 

well, its working out, but the house is a lil messier lol

 

It's a good place to grind XP but it's not super fun. I'm just hoping that the Ulfeim update will be more fun.

 

Upper Tears doesn't really seem to be your problem then? The issue is that you don't have or want to invest enough time into SOTA to get you character to where you want it to be. That's not a criticism by the way, I can perfectly understand the desire to play other games and I also think SOTA is grindy.

SOTA doesn't really seem to be any different to other MMO's though. If you invest less time in any MMO you will always be behind the curve of people who invest more time. In this game the good thing is that it doesn't really matter. You can group with anyone of any AL level as long as you are careful in a few high level scenes.

There is a feeling of "I can't do this or don't want to do it so no one should" in this thread which seems weird. It's a game with no level limits and you can just get there when you get there. Your character is always progressing and will never be finished. I'm sure even the highest level players are always investing XP into something to progress or try out new builds.

If one of us logs in and feels under pressure to do UT's over other things we might find more enjoyable then maybe that is our issue and not UT's or SOTA's. This is not like a level based game where if you fall behind your friends you can't group with them. It makes no difference. If people want to grind UT for numbers let them, we should all be able to play how we want and not have others trying to nerf things they can't or don't want to do.

It really does not make any difference what your numbers are in this game apart from what you make it in your head.

 

I have stopped 2 or 3 times now for approx. 6-9 months at a time as well due to the same reasoning. I have many games i have bought and played a little but even with the issues the game has i find myself drawn back here. I do love the game/world/ and the potential that can still be realised, so I've decided that although i have not got the time or inclination to play 12 hours a day and be the best at everything that i will concentrate on one specific specialisation for which even with my limited playtime i can be one of the best in that field by channelling that limited time/high xp.

I do agree with your post, all of it really, and even though i wish areas of high xp were never bought into the game ( Dragon slaying should have been top draw) they are in and unfair to remove/lessen as advantages have already been given to many and i do now see how it can help players like me/you and new players keep realising their goals even if the goals are less broad than they would have been.

Anyways enough of this chatter...its wasting my UT time

 

It's not so much about power as it is about having a defined character. Reality is that in SOTA you aren't actually uniquely qualified in anything until you've invested an amount of time building it up that most characters can't match. Getting all skills in a tree up to 80 is something you can accomplish in a day or two when you're grinding in the really profitable spots, so almost every veteran of the game has essentially every skill they ever even remotely found interesting, or can get it in a day if they want it. It isn't uncommon for people to have 80s and 100s across the board in every magic school just for the resistances. The problem is where that leaves a fledgeling mage for example. How do you define that character? You have months of work just to get to that baseline of universal competence every veteran character has, and only from there, when you're pushing skills in the 100+ ranges can you really crystalize out something that not everyone can do. Your equipment also matters of course, but again, as a new player the one set of gear you have is probably worse than the multiple suits veterans carry to swap from one deck to the next.

That's why it's annoying to get into this game late, and why it feels like you have to grind so much if you have limited time in it. You're not necessarily concerned with being the most powerful or versatile character that ever existed, but you have a gigantic "debt of incompetence" to work off before you're even a normal person and can start to develop skills that make you stand out in the world of SOTA.

It doesn't feel like your character has strengths until you enter that realm of skill levels where absolutely nobody has time to learn them all. You just have an big list of weaknesses to get rid off before you can even start with that.

 

Is it that you want your character to mature quicker?

I don't think the answer is to prevent the people currently playing that way and enjoying it from doing it though. It doesn't make it any easier for you really but harder as when you do reach a fair place experience costs for skill raises are incredibly high and slowing it down will just put you off anyway eventually. I think it is worth pointing out also that many of us got there the hard way. I have soloed 99% of my time and it has taken me since release (the initial server permanence release) to get to a point where I can solo UT or Tartarus for example.

What you are describing seems to just be MMO's do you think? The veterans are always going to be ahead and I haven't played an MMO where it doesn't take months of works to get the character you want. You say for a fledgling mage for example it would take months to get to the competence level of a veteran player but, and I am just repeating myself, for me that's just how MMO's work. Especially here as because the general focus is on everything but PvE content, the content and loot systems are very shallow for a game that has been in development this long and the only thing some players have that keep them going is the grind to gain XP and try out different skills against essentially the same content.

I would also argue that as a mage myself, and if that is the way someone wants to go, you can specialise fairly cheaply XP and time wise and then go from there. You don't need everything. Resists tied into Attunement was something that always annoyed me as I felt I needed everything but in reality I have found very little reason to have high resists outside of certain mage encounters. And when I became high enough for those encounters I had the resists anyway. If you want to get ahead of the game specialise Fire, raise the attunement and your intelligence as high as you can, chuck in a few defensive skills and then farming XP to feed other skills becomes fairly easy. I've seen players make archery and melee viable after a reasonable time period as well and not using UT to power level.

 

I don't think it's the same as other MMORPGs actually. Let's say you play Ultima Online, from the second you create your character you will have skills that not every character has, because even maxed out characters have skills at 0% in UO. You can then work on just those skills without having to allot time to raise all other skills and spend your entire progression being the thing you wanted to be, no matter how fast or slow you take it to 100. In SOTA on the other hand it's very common for people to have almost every skill at 80 and a few dozen of them at 100. The benefit of this is so significant that it's only when they hit the point where they start putting down 100+ skills that they really start to specialize and forego other skills to cover the huge XP costs of it. So in SOTA you don't really start out at the point where you start to distinguish yourself from other characters, you have to spend a lot of time working up to that point. Sure, you can theoretically just ignore all skills except your chosen career path, but the cost of raising skills to 80 is so much smaller than the cost of even pushing them to 100 or beyond that you're leaving huge amounts of power on the table if you don't build up at the very least every passive skill and your attunements, without getting significantly ahead in your chosen field. Despite the fact that the time to advance to 80-100 is comparatively small to the kinds of XP veterans put away over months and years it's still a significant barrier to entry into the game to someone who's not that committed yet.

 

I'm not sure where you are character wise, but this is just not my experience, assuming you are talking PvE. I haven't done any PvP at all.

You could come into the game as a new player and just concentrate on Fire magic (you'd need some Life with Fire) or Death magic and be capable of gaining XP really well. Outside of a couple of defensive buffs which you only need to take to 80 (it makes sense to put some points into Int I guess) you can specialise to reach a point where you are gaining XP easier and then fill out your character from there. The PvE content, outside of a few encounters, is not challenging enough that you need all those skills. I also find it hard to just do this and not level everything, but they really aren't require imho to get to a point where you can gain XP comfortably. You might not want to play Fire or Death I suppose, but there are ways in. I have also seen sword and spear players as well doing well without any magic skills at all.

I would have liked a skill cap like UO but it was never on the table and so we have to work with what we have. I stand by my point that SOTA doesn't take any more time investment than other MMO's up to the point when you start pushing skills beyond GM. I haven't played many newer MMO's since WOW though so I am comparing it to UO, EQ, AC etc. I guess maybe Black Desert or GW2 are more accessible character progression wise? The only other MMO I am playing at the moment is Project Gorgon which is also old school grindy.

 

All I can say is…if you don’t like it doesn’t do it…as there is more than one way to play SotA even if the UT-playstyle is and probably will be the most common one.
I personally like the comparable slow progression aside of UT-like scenes as this way the world stays a long time a quite dangerous place with many challenges and death lurks around every corner.

 

Well, that's what it feels like to me at least. My character is heavily specialized in life magic, so when I'm healing, even in high level groups I'm very useful, but I neglected everything else, so I can't do much of anything by myself until I put the time in to raise everything else up. Meanwhile people need to be taking pretty heavy damage before they can't just heal themselves.

 

SOTA doesn't seem to lend itself to a support or healing specialised character sadly does it. The combat is very quick, almost ARPG like in the vein of a Diablo, and so there is little need for nuance or tactics and preparation. It's generally DPS steamrolling outside of a few encounters and most of the tactics come from deck building before hand. I don't think you need to level everything to be somewhat self sufficient though honestly. Fire would supplement your Life spec really well although I understand it might not be how you want to play.