Character Growth: Leveling is part of RPGs

[Soukyuu]

Except that latter 30 beating them into the ground actually represent the current majority.

On these forums, maybe. Ingame? Who knows.

Case in point - the fact that there are several threads discussing one topic right now, something that should be locked down upon, but the people who want to raise a stink about being outvoted didn't seem to get the hint in the last round of thread-locking.

The thread-locking didn't have much to do with the topic but with the attitude of several people unable to handle others expressing a different opinion in a calm and objective way.

As far as the 'interview' stating that leveling is going to be faster. I'll beleive it when I see it. But more importantly, we don't know how the curve extends past level 50, and let's remember that, since Yoshi-p is encouraging leveling multiple classes, any increase in the curve grows exponentially across all jobs.

I agree. It still is a point worth keeping in mind though.

[Hyrist]

On these forums, maybe. Ingame? Who knows.

Other way around. Majority of poll voters were not forum members. So it may very well be the majority in both cases. Difficult to tell as SE did not release total game population numbers nor total poll numbers.

The thread-locking didn't have much to do with the topic but with the attitude of several people unable to handle others expressing a different opinion in a calm and objective way.

I'd like to agree, but experience has lead me to believe that this is more a mannism of a minority who cannot bear having their opinions regulated to a single thread. They want attention on the issue even though their point of view could be seen as damaging to the majority.

I agree. It still is a point worth keeping in mind though.

To keep in mind yes. But the root problem, as I stated before, isn't leveling. Leveling itself is merely a transition, and the slower it is without substantial content to support it, the worse of an experience it is. Thus a grind.

But what people who are pro-slower leveling are neglecting one major problem, development wise, with their argument.

There is a catch-22 problem involved with creating low-level content. I'll help analyze this now so people can understand that's going on.

There are two major types of of low level content. Repeatable and Non-repeatable.

Repeatable low-level content, suffers two primary problems that cannot easily be addressed without worsening one the other. The first is the feeling of grind. Any repeated action will eventually be boring, so the longer you use the content, the less it feels worth.

Secondary and contary to this is dead content. Once you outlevel the range, that content loses play use. Compare to creating an endgame dungeon which can be designed for long term goals, repatable leveling quest end up having no long-term use or goals for them. Only way to counter that is to make difficulty scaling for levels, which in turn makes it more of a grind.

Idealy, scaling content that has different goals, monster placement, and loot could counter both of these issues, and SE has stated that this will actually happen in their dungeons ('Normal' vs 'Hardmode' runs.)

The other type of Quest, Non-Repeatable, have to have worthwhile goals to be attractive in the immediate term, such as good gear yeild, decent story, exp rewards, etc. You really can't do that without speeding up the process of leveling we already have - and the same thing with doing worthwhile repeatables.

Leveling is going to speed up not because of a lack of content, but rather because content, and therefore rewards, are going to be more plentiful. You will be doing more, and therefore be getting more back for it. The only way to counteract this is to increase the curve, which would be pointless when the level cap goes up anyways, as that will already extend the curve exponentially.

They want players to level multiple jobs and classes. In order to do this, they're expediting the process of leveling by meeting our other requests for more content.

While I am not in agreement with the potential consequence of loss of character and player identity by over-encouragement of multiple leveled jobs. I do see the purpose for it. It's just my hope that in the release of new jobs, players can settle into an individual character identity while still being variable in the types of roles they can fill - but that is another discussion entirely.


To summarize - players wanted more low level content. So they're more one-off quests and storylines to accompany that.

They also want to get people involved in dungeons early adn throughout, but not done at the waste of created content. So they created tiered difficulty instances and dungeons.

The consequence of this is more content to level with, and as a result, faster leveling all around as there are multiple sources to level from that are impossible to tone down without making one of these elements not worthwhile to do on their own.

Therefore, leveling will be faster, but we're likely not going to care as content will carry us up, rather than flat out grinding. What will matter instead is that there is enough endgame content to sustain the playerbase at the end of the level rise. Which, between Legatus, Dungeons, Primal Fights, Primal Hunts, Relic Weapons and PVP, I'd say they've got a good starting point for 2.0.

People are going to still argue, however, as they view portions of this game in isolation from each other, with little to no information to go on. The augments will change once everyone is in the beta.

[Soukyuu]

Other way around. Majority of poll voters were not forum members. So it may very well be the majority in both cases. Difficult to tell as SE did not release total game population numbers nor total poll numbers.

I feel like we're talking at cross-purposes here (is that how you say it in English? lol).

The majority from the poll wants the speed to stay the same as in 1.x, the minority wants it to be faster than in 1.x. YoshiP making it sound like the leveling will be faster in 2.0 means the majority wants it to be slower in 2.0 (=same as it is now) and the minority wanting it to be faster than now.

To keep in mind yes. But the root problem, as I stated before, isn't leveling. Leveling itself is merely a transition, and the slower it is without substantial content to support it, the worse of an experience it is. Thus a grind.

But what people who are pro-slower leveling are neglecting one major problem, development wise, with their argument.

<snip>

To summarize - players wanted more low level content. So they're more one-off quests and storylines to accompany that.

They also want to get people involved in dungeons early adn throughout, but not done at the waste of created content. So they created tiered difficulty instances and dungeons.

The consequence of this is more content to level with, and as a result, faster leveling all around as there are multiple sources to level from that are impossible to tone down without making one of these elements not worthwhile to do on their own.

I agree with what you are saying, and with the recent clarification that "reaching lvl50 in short time" doesn't mean it's going to be as fast as people might think (see Rein's translation thread), I think we can rest assured it won't really be much faster than it is now, if at all. Or maybe it will just seem faster with less grinding on mobs and more questing.

If that's the case, I hope they won't go the way Tera and some other recent MMOs are doing it, by making you move to the next area once all quests are completed, leaving half the world deserted as time goes by, with quest largerly consisting of "kill x mobs" or "go to y, kill x, bring back z"