What do you guys think about the 4x bonus on post R26 wipe?

If the 4x XP continues after the "Wipe of All Wipes" it will be VERY bad for the game. Everyone will be (almost) maxed out after 3 months and there will be little incentive for people to play because the designers won't be able to create enough content to keep people engaged. The rate at which players can consume content is always faster than creating that content (if you don't believe me, try to build a maze or a racecourse in game, then compare the time to make it vs. the time to run through it), so putting the brakes on the CRAZY experience gain we've all gotten used to having is a MUST to keep this game from being a bright star that burns out too quickly.

 

I agree with this. The point of the wipe is to clear the board for everyone to start at a level playing field when the game goes permanent. Having bonus XP and quicker leveling during testing makes perfect sense, but not once it becomes the actual characters that we will be actively playing.

 

So grinding is what you're looking forward to most?

Again, everyone who gets 4x exp has already put in the time.

 

Okay, so the people who gained their current XP bonus through exploits and other bugs have "earned" the right to have the advantage over a player who waited to play the game until it was persistent? Exploits and bugs have allowed MANY people to have a huge 4X pool at this point in the game (and I include myself in that list, I killed scores of Ferocious spiders from the rocks in the cave, too), and we're allowed to keep that for the very reason that it will all be wiped away before we play the game "for realsies". When the game is persistent, if there are major bugs and exploits to gain gold and experience, there will be consequences, such as banning and roll backs. There has been none of that so far because we are testing.. not building something lasting in this moment.

And no, I am not a lover of experience grind by any means... But "gold stars" shouldn't be handed out just for showing up, either. What people blanket along with grinding is honing your skills. Practicing and gathering your crafts.... Putting in the effort to be better than you were before you started playing for the day. It's only a "grind" if it's meaningless. And it's meaningless to quickly advance to end game and run out of content before you can blink. I don't want this to be another single-serving throw away game that is done in a month or three months.

 

Given this quote from here, on February 10th, 2016:

People being maxed out quickly is going to happen no matter what.
As soon as the world is persistent (July 28, 2016), a few players will play non-stop until max level/skill, some rarely stopping to sleep or eat.
Now, it's true, that's a rare/extreme form of player, but given the current design is targeting 40 hours a month (1hr20min per day), and many players will play 10 hours per day, with some playing 4 hours per day, well, it's pretty easy to see that content isn't what's going to keep people engaged.

The real problems begin when developers start balancing and tuning for the 10 hour a day player. Then the casual/average gamer just walks away.

 

The way I understood things was that this was going to be a long and difficult game to play. I'm kind of anticipating a marathon style leveling system with most casual players not breaching adventuring level 70 in their first several months.

Am I mistaken in that assumption?

 

While I agree and hope your right.. im afraid that I was able to level to 67 without the 4x xp bonus last release from November until wipe. So as I asked for once before I hope the adjust the amount of xp it takes to increase a skill rank slightly to help lengthen this out some.

 

I'm curious to find out how did everyone else working on the leveling. Did you guys actually go into each zone and kill wolves and bears like in Themo Lock's guide or did you just use the place like spider cave in R25 to level up?

 

I'd like a significant ramp up period where you see a lot of lower level pvp and natural growth within player owned towns and I think removing all XP bonuses will do that.

I think the power gamers who are able to max their character in a very short time will get very bored with the game a few months in unless they have alternate motivations they can focus on afterward.

I know I will spend at least the first few weeks of launch collecting materials to build up Dragon's Fall, so I hope no one expects to see me out in the dungeons any time in the early release unless it's as part of a community event.

 

I actually did all the quests I could find then farmed greymark forrest till low 40's them Soltown Catacombs till 67.

 

The lazy part of me would enjoy the 4x gain but I'm actually looking forward to leveling up at a much slower pace. Much more satisfying. And most of us are in this for the long haul; leveling too quickly would take away from the overall experience. The game begins when the last wipe happens. Everything before then was just practice and testing.

Meanwhile if someone wants to play 10 hours a day and level up faster than everyone else, more power to them. You get out what you put in.

 

Right now the 4x is fantastic. Touch the sky. I hit level 90 kiting those spiders for a month last release. I appreciate that I'll hit 90 this month and get to push the envelope for the next two. R27 will be my 20th release tested and I don't care to grind more then I must.

I'll be okay with crying in my beer when the final wipe happens and exp slows down to a crawl. As Budner said,

 

I'm always surprised by how many players are just ready to grind, again and again.

 

We all knew that the game was in testing phase, and would not be carried over with the Final Wipe. There will need to be some challenge and effort towards building our characters, especially since the game still has quite some time to go.

I'd also look back to the days of UO as comparison to most current day MMOs. The "rush" to max level was always something that bugged me, especially when new expansions came out. This is a new open world for exploration, take some time to smell the flowers along the way

 

As an answer to OP - definitely not. The 4x XP gaining rate is just insane.

I'm not sure what you mean by "stuck" here. Most likely it has little to do with slow XP gains, that quite frankly feels impossible.

I'll try to explain what I mean, at the same time attempting express the plain numbers of skill leveling in terms everyone (including the absolute beginners) will understand easily. So please bear with me a few introductory statements (for those beginners, not for you). Also I'm going to cut a few corners - this is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of all the aspects of leveling.

The actual numbers are without the 4x bonus.

One does adventuring (kills things, does quests) and gets XP from it. Sooner or later this XP is going to be spent on skills that are used actively. No matter how by the way, it's strictly quantity over quality here.

This means that strictly from skill improvement perspective, whacking a gustball or a training dummy is just as "fine" as whacking a dragon. One is just spending XP already earned. Of course, training with dummies or gustballs mean a lost opportunity to get more XP during that time, but that's beside the point. I find it quite sad, but that's just how it is currently.

Now, how much XP is actually needed to reach level X in some skill? I'm going to use EWE (Elder Wolf Equivalent) as the unit. I define 1 EWE as the amount of XP one currently gets from killing an Elder Wolf. So another way of expressing this would be "how many Elder Wolfs do I need to kill to get enough XP for proceeding from level Y to level X?" I'm going to go in 10 level increments, starting from level 10.

• Several skills from level 01 to level 10: One can get about 8 skills to level 10 with 1 EWE.
• Several skills from level 10 to level 20: One can get 4 of those skills to level 10 with 1 EWE more.
• 1 skill from level 20 to level 30: about 1 EWE more.
• 1 skill from level 30 to level 40: about 2 EWE more.
• 1 skill from level 40 to level 50: about 5½ EWE more.

So at this point we have killed a total of 9 Elder Wolves to get to this level, on this one skill. Let's continue advancing this one skill:

• from lvl 50 to lvl 60: about 14 EWE more.
• from lvl 60 to lvl 70: about 37 EWE more.
• from lvl 70 to lvl 80: about 96 EWE more.
• from lvl 80 to lvl 90: about 250 EWE more.
• from lvl 90 to lvl 100: about 650 EWE more.

So to sum up, to get from level 1 to level 50 in some skill, one needs an XP equivalent of killing 9 elder wolves. If one wants to proceed from there to level 100 (GM), one needs to get an XP equivalent of killing about 1050 more of these noble creatures. Expressed as percentage, the total level 50 XP investment is about 0.9% of the total level 100 XP investment.

So I conclude that if one feels stuck at level 50 in some skill, it most likely has little to do with slow XP gains, and everything to do with something else, possibly that numerous innates are eating up all all the XP earned. Skill decay is definitely not an issue at those levels.

On some general big picture level this might be true, if only because one misses the opportunity to gain more XP while training with the gustball. On the other hand, some skills are next to impossible to train "naturally" to any meaningful extent, for various reasons (depending on the skill).

Case in point -- I wanted to test the latest addition to the Ranged skill tree - the Multi Shot attack. At lower levels the skill was so bad that it was not of much use in anything (at least when comparing to my other ranged skills) so I decided to level that up to GM to see if it's any good for anything (and if it's OP at that level). However, due to that skill being so bad, upgrading it the natural route would have taken (by my back-of-envelope quick estimate) at least several weeks if not months (you cannot rely on it to kill high level mobs, and if you don't rely on it, it does not develop). So I went the gustball route, took some 50k arrows, started with a 1.6m exp pool and leveled it from level 23 to GM in about one day (the skill was still bad at GM level but that's another story). It's totally insane but that's how the current game mechanics work. So I lost about 1 day of XP gathering (would have played maybe 2 hours actively that day).

So I guess I could reply to you "It all depends."

EDIT - typo fixes

 

@helm, thanks for the explanation. That is my concern here. I feel like it all come down to us having to understand the meta-gaming in order to progress at the satisfactory trend. While most of the veterans are ok with it, I still think it's a big turned off to new players who have been used to leveling in different games where your progression always "go up higher". I know a player who made substantial amount of XP from questing, then got stuck because he used all the XPs he got from the quests on too many skills. I and couple other guys had to explain to him that his adv level always go up, it's just the pool XP that goes down because his skills consume more XP than he gain from killing the mobs.

When players are at the point where they spend too much XP from using too many skills or swings to kill the harder or not getting enough XP killing easier mobs, it generates the perception of feeling stagnant. While some may not feel that way, but there are others who do. Which is why I think it might be worth while to do something about it instead of just brushing it off and tell the latter group to "learn how to play the game".

Maybe my concern might just be premature at this point since not everyone started on the same group (either with 4x or nor bonus) yet. Maybe if we have a UI that actually show the progress of adv level and move the pool bar to the skill gump and show it as "available training XP", it may give more positive feeling on the grinding.

 

You all need to also understand above level 80 your pool size is relevant, there is no set number of anything to kill to get up a level . . . .

It is dependent on the size of your experience pool, understand it or you will lose your minds.

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...n-for-skills-98-100-ranged.45692/#post-506675

 

OMG TEH DRAMA!

Ive always found it to be weird in MMOs, where you see this small pool of low level players that are new, a couple people here and there midway, and then a huge population of everyone at the maxed out level. I get it that a 6 year old game might be that way, but after year 1? The world would be cooler if we're all around mid level, and only a tiny handful of people are "Grand Masters of XYZ."

There is nothing to wait for, too many people are doing this now

You learn the game by playing it. This is the most funnerific way to play. Because I said so. I mean, if some people can just declare that not being able to click-to-win in an few hours is not fun, why can't I just say the opposite? Grinding is always a choice

No, it does not mean that. It means people who are only concened with getting to the max level in the quickest time possible will do this. Those of us who enjoy the scenic route will not be plagued by such needs.

Agreed!

Some of us see this as a feature.

Disagree, as this is a matter of perspective. You choose to see it this way. I dont see it this way at all. Have you ever actually learned swordsmanship in real life, by the way? Its not exactly a swipe-to-win experience.

I certainly hope so! If the struggle to become "GRAND MASTER" in something is fake and trivial, it seems rather pointless. Also you, again, are the one choosing to grind, and choosing to say "high level = fun." You could give other things " ... = fun" a try, like exploring, helping new players, building things, organizing a tea party, or publishing a guide to help other people learn to level faster. Personally I dont think clicking my mouse a bunch and instantly becoming GM EVERYTHING is fun.

Grinding is a choice. You choose to grind, and you choose to see it as misery. You choose to see the only point in playing to be maxing out your level of XYZ.

... which is usually about when I quit most MMOs

I wander around every new zone in the game and kill whatever attacks me. To this day, North Naryad Pinelands is a resource goldmine because literally no one chooses to come wander around here. Youre all stuck "grinding" in the same zones youve always been to. You havent bothered to explore. Im having a blast, plus I got all these trees, copper, and cotton wads all to myself (not going to mention the huge pile of gems in this zone... ).

I digress... walking around just killin mobs suits me fine. Being limited to a single zone sounds really dull and default-MMO-experience-like. I can think of like 4 zones appropriate for my level, and theres a high chance zero players will enter 2 of them because no one seems to be exploring much. And people cant figure out why the Ardoris crafting merchant disappeared

I am surprised you do it at all! It sounds like it sucks for you, but you keep on doing the same thing.

Also, my skills level at an appropriate pace, because I enjoy managing them properly, and focusing on what I want to train on a given day or moment. I wouldnt call this "micro managing," I mean its not like I am learning every single possible skill tree at once, just a few key branches of about 6 or 7 of them (and thats cuz I am a hybrid character to boot). Once I figured out the technique to keep my PAE flowing, its pretty easy. I am highly enjoying leveling my avatar, and I will highly enjoy it once the final wipe happens and there is no XP boost.

 

I like this guy and agree on every single one of these points.

+1

I think after almost 2 years of alpha we are just simply starting to feel and fear the repetition, so none of these comments really suprise me, but it is all a choice as Stratigos pointed out.

 

OK just to clarify -- the amount of XP required per skill is absolutely fixed. It is a set number, and it also appears to be exactly the same for all skills. How quickly one is going to fill up that requirement depends on many factors, one of the most important ones being the size of the XP pool. Skills also decay, and this becomes relevant at higher levels (more so the higher one goes), and this decay is the only thing preventing a player from eventually advancing a skill.

EDIT - typo fix