No matter how many hours, days etc. you think it should take to be maximum level you will never reach that level. Why, because even though you reach the current level that the game ends at, you still have to continue to adventure to have some of the better gear. Then when you have reached that penticle as well something else like a expansion rolls out and you start the process all over again. How fast someone gets to the current end game material is on that player and nothing you do is going to slow the pace of that playstyle. I myself tend to get to end game material generally fast not because its in my DNA or I am getting there to raid content, but because of the amount of time I have available to play the game daily.
Does this mean I miss out because I race to the end, not exactly. I am a completionist and that means if there are quests in a particular zone, I will do everything I can to complete them all before I move into the next zone even if said quest is now grey and I get no experience. I will even back track to help other people which might mean little to no experience as well. But my overall time is spent solo doing quests and gathering materials to craft, not for profit but to generally help people out. I've been invited to guilds because people that learn to know me in a game find me useful because I pay attention to detail, learn my chracter and generally am nice to have along, but I tend to remain guildless alot because I stay away from cliches and people that are just in it to profit off others.
[Think my second paragraph went off topic]
Zohkar said:No matter how many hours, days etc. you think it should take to be maximum level you will never reach that level. Why, because even though you reach the current level that the game ends at, you still have to continue to adventure to have some of the better gear. Then when you have reached that penticle as well something else like a expansion rolls out and you start the process all over again. How fast someone gets to the current end game material is on that player and nothing you do is going to slow the pace of that playstyle. I myself tend to get to end game material generally fast not because its in my DNA or I am getting there to raid content, but because of the amount of time I have available to play the game daily.
Does this mean I miss out because I race to the end, not exactly. I am a completionist and that means if there are quests in a particular zone, I will do everything I can to complete them all before I move into the next zone even if said quest is now grey and I get no experience. I will even back track to help other people which might mean little to no experience as well. But my overall time is spent solo doing quests and gathering materials to craft, not for profit but to generally help people out. I've been invited to guilds because people that learn to know me in a game find me useful because I pay attention to detail, learn my chracter and generally am nice to have along, but I tend to remain guildless alot because I stay away from cliches and people that are just in it to profit off others.
[Think my second paragraph went off topic]
This I can respect. You're not just burning to the "end game" just for "teh lolz" and the "phat lewtz". It's still not my playing style, but at least I get it to a certain extent.
This question is completely personal depending on who is answering it, the answer is not set in stone nor is there any right or wrong answer and it will vary greatly between each community member but if the personal attacks and arguments over opinions continue, the thread will be closed.
Why do we need character levels at all?
Yes, you are going to progress. You will gradually be able to beat tougher mobs because you have improved your SKILLS and along the way improved your equipment.
People who are focused strictly on max-dingage might find that they stop and see more content along the way if there's no artificial metric of "level".
The world would be alot more exciting if you couldn't just con a mob from max line of sight to know whether it's likely to beat the tar out of you. Give that perception system a workout. Take note for next time that the trolls with the gold armour should be avoided or don't go down this hall unless you have a lot of well equipped friends along for the journey.
Celandor said:Why do we need character levels at all?
Yes, you are going to progress. You will gradually be able to beat tougher mobs because you have improved your SKILLS and along the way improved your equipment.
People who are focused strictly on max-dingage might find that they stop and see more content along the way if there's no artificial metric of "level".
The world would be alot more exciting if you couldn't just con a mob from max line of sight to know whether it's likely to beat the tar out of you. Give that perception system a workout. Take note for next time that the trolls with the gold armour should be avoided or don't go down this hall unless you have a lot of well equipped friends along for the journey.
This kind of intrigues me. Levels havew existed since the D&D pen and paper days. How do you propose that we measure progress if we don't have levels?
One way or another content needs to be gated / will be gated. I like the idea of skill based gating in concept, but I wonder if it gets too convoluted. Do different classes have different gates based on usage of different skills? How do you ensure that gets balanced. For example... how do you balance healer skill gating vs enchanter skill gating vs rogue skill gating. If not, do you have some common set of skills that are used for gating? And if you do - does that mean homogenizing classes?
I'm not against new ideas - but for me, I think tried and true level based gating works and is known/understood by all.
Liav said:Gating could just be done through a combination of PvE, keying, and gear acquisition to supplant leveling.
I think it's totally doable, but it will be a huge risk and it will take a lot of $ to get there.
Agreed.
And to be honest, what you state here is more or less how content will likely be gated at max (or at least a component of how it will be). I think overall, my ideal would be a level curve to max - and then a whole lot of horizontal growth with this type of gating prior to any consideration to raise level.
1 month for the most hardcore could easily balloon up to 6 months for some casuals
Likewise, imagine you're starting EQ today and have 15+ years of content to catch up on. How overwhelming is that? Modern MMO's are like WoW and FFXIV are really good at removing time sinks once new content is added. Part of removing time sinks means reducing the XP required by lower levels. In WoW it's kinda ridiculous at this point, you just race through the low-level zones at hyperspeed.
I realize this is really counter to VR's vision for compelling low-level content and at the same time, it's a real problem that they would need to deal with to have a long-lived game with a healthy base of new players I think.
Gating could just be done through a combination of PvE, keying, and gear acquisition to supplant leveling.
These are all timesinks, it makes sense for people in the "vertical tier" to need to spend 100 hours on key quest or do progression gearing, but does it make sense for the poor guy who's just trying to explore a 3-year-old dungeon or get up to gear level for the latest expansion? Probably not.
As long as these time sink mechanisms are adjusted over time for new players, you can put all the grinds you want in the vertical tier of content.
Full disclosure I havent read all the pages of this thread just the first one.
In my opinion the leveling should take long enough that anyone playing for 4 ish hours a day during the week and 8 plus hours per day during the weekend would be able to clear all raids / see all content before the release of new content.
This is a selfish time estimate I fully admit that because this will more than likely be my maximum play hours and my general goals for each expansion of the game.
So in closing I'd say the time it needs to take should vary based on the size of the initial game or expansion that is currently active. Thanks for reading hope I didnt repeat anythying that someone else did earlier.
Sorry to 'necropost' (man I hate that word), but reading through some of this thread (I think I might have even contributed to it in the past at some point with my own suggestions), something occurred to me.
Isn't making "how long does it take to reach level cap" a topic of discussion/debate at all underscoring the very thing it's intended to address (vis-a-vis people's suggestions for slower progression)?
In other words, why are we asking about "time to reach level cap" at all? We're talking about wanting a game that moves away from that "rush rush rush, go go go, get to level cap ASAP" mentality that's crept into the genre over the past decade. Yet here we are, still propping up "reaching level cap" as though it's "the ultimate goal", or even "a really important one". Still foucsing on "how long it should take to level up".
Put even more simply: Why should we care? We're looking for an on-going, long-term adventure, in a fantasty world we feel like we "live in", instead of just "passing through" like tourists, right? We - well, most of us at this point now that Alpha's happened - haven't even stepped foot in this world yet, or performed a single act... and we're already concerned about "how long it'll take to get to the top". That just seems counter-intuitive to me, and a bit silly.
The thing is, so long as "reaching level cap" remains an "important goal" to people in these games, people - ever competitive - are going to continue to seek faster and faster ways of reaching it. Which will quite likely lead to the same issues we've seen in other MMOs where "reaching level cap" was deemed "the one goal to rule them all", or "where the real game begins", deeming anything before that "magic number" to be meaningless, or "just a tutorial", or whatever. Certain content will be deemed "not worthwhile". "Preferred leveling spots" will crop up, which will lead to complaints further down the road of "you level up killing the same 3 monsters over and over and it's boring", even though there are plenty of other options, but they've been deemed "sub-optimal", and so "useless". Cookie-cutter builds will spring up, declared "how you're supposed to play" that given class, and anyone not following those guides will be told to "learn to play".
This isn't me making slippery-slope arguments, it's me recounting every single MMORPG I've played where "reaching level cap"/"end game" was treated as an important, even the most important goal.
I feel lucky to have never been bitten by that "get to level cap" bug. Leveling up and reaching level cap was never a 'goal' to me. It was a 'given'. As long as I played, and progressed and improved... the xp would come, and so would the levels. What was more important to me was how much fun I was having along the way, experiencing different content, having fun encounters and, ultimately, forging lasting memories that I'd recall fondly even over a decade later (such as I have for my time in FFXI and Lineage 2).
Some of those memories have nothing to do with leveling, or adventuring or even leaving the city; they're fun things that happened between other players and myself while hanging out in Jeuno (in FFXI) or Giran (in L2). I remember laughing at the antics and choreographed-emote routines of a pair (real life couple) of Tarus, named Dethevan and Dethevana in Lower Jeuno. But they're also experiencing a black-winged cloud of death descending upon everyone after a really bad pull in Garlaige Citadel, or chasing down PK'ers in a Catacomb with my Clan-mates in Lineage 2 to exact revenge, then running across the countryside, our names blood-red, as we went to a higher level spot to "wash" our karma. And so on.
Did I level as fast as others? Hell no. Nor did I care. Based on discussions I've had with friends, online acquaintances and others I've known who played those games, because I chose not to hop on that treadmill, I seem to have had a hell of a lot more fun than they did overall. I certainly have far better memories of it. A friend of mine who was all about "getting to level cap", and constantly linking me to guides to "help me play more efficiently", used to always call it "wasting time" when I'd tell him about those moments. He's one of those people who look back on his time in FFXI resentfully, incidentally. While I get all misty-eyed talking about some of the fun/hilarious/epic/terrifying moments I'd had, they resentfully complained about "the constant grind" and how it felt "like a second job" and "wasn't fun at all". There's something there, I think, and I think it comes down to how we each chose to approach the game and our focus (or lack thereof) on "reaching level cap".
That's not me standing on my own pedestal, talking down to others as though I'm somehow superior. It's just me saying "You know... maybe we aught not to be so concerned about "how long it takes to reach level cap", and focus instead on how much fun and mayhem and shenanigans we can experience along the way.
To answer the question of the thread, at this point, my answer would only have to be "as long as it takes me to get there at my own pace without focusing on it".
-shrug- Just my thoughts
P.S. Some might argue "well people have a job and family and career now, and don't have the time to play that they used to, so a slow progression wouldn't work anymore". This is really something to be unpacked in a separate thread, because it's awfully flawed and myopic thinking. The short-ish answer is: Yes, people do have time to play, because they're playing. What such people are really saying is, "they don't have the free time they used to, so it will take them longer to reach their goals than it used to, and they're not okay with that". Also, back when I played FFXI and Lineage 2, I knew all kinds of people who had jobs and families and college and such. They played, they progressed (some quite quickly), they had a great time. They just managed their time better, and set their expectations and goals realistically. Conversely, people these days want the developers to alter the game to meet the individual player's free-time, which is impossible without going down that rabbit-hole of "accessibility" and "soloability" and such that led us into the situation where a MMORPG like Pantheon is needed in the first place.
Wolfsong said:
P.S. Some might argue "well people have a job and family and career now, and don't have the time to play that they used to, so a slow progression wouldn't work anymore". This is really something to be unpacked in a separate thread, because it's awfully flawed and myopic thinking. The short-ish answer is: Yes, people do have time to play, because they're playing. What such people are really saying is, "they don't have the free time they used to, so it will take them longer to reach their goals than it used to, and they're not okay with that". Also, back when I played FFXI and Lineage 2, I knew all kinds of people who had jobs and families and college and such. They played, they progressed (some quite quickly), they had a great time. They just managed their time better, and set their expectations and goals realistically. Conversely, people these days want the developers to alter the game to meet the individual player's free-time, which is impossible without going down that rabbit-hole of "accessibility" and "soloability" and such that led us into the situation where a MMORPG like Pantheon is needed in the first place.
Exactly like you said man !
in everquest 1 many people already had a family/job/others hobbies and such and they still enjoyed everquest for what it was, a very long and deep game, they were not in a hurry to rush to max level and they were fine with the fact that reaching it was taking months of playtime. that what was great about everquest, the challenge was everywhere.
so yeah, i also think that the discussion about how long it will take to reach max level is very important and a core key for Pantheon. if people are here wanting to be max level within a few weeks, there are plenty of mmorpgs offering that.
we want a hardcore mmorpg, hardcore in all the possible ways.
If you look through my posts on this thread or look up my logarithmic curve thread, a method to eliminating the "max level asap" mindset is to have character strength and character depth develop at different rates. Once you hit the character strength plateau you can participate in the majority of the content but without the late level situational abilities you won’t be capable of challenging the highest level/reward content. Only if all the required situational responses were covered by other group members could lower depth characters participate in the high difficulty content. Eventually there will be areas where everyone needs to be at the top of their game and there is no room for low depth characters.
Most MMOs these days do this through gear tiers rather than levels hence the desire to push to max level as that is only the beginning of the game.
An example of character strength vs character depth would be as follows.
1) There is no level based cap on weapon skills, or perhaps no true cap at all, but a fairly brutal exponential increase in the number of attacks required to attain the next level weapon skill with certain bottle necks that require a quest or item to proceed past.
2) Your Melee Combatant skill is 1/10th of your total combined weapon skill for all weapon types. Secondary combat skills like block, repost, parry, double strike, triple strike, and armor pen unlock at certain Melee Combatant skill levels but still may need to be individually unlocked.
3) Your melee chance to hit and damage range is based on your weapon skill.
4) Your HP and stats are attached to your character level and increase on a logarithmic scale and class defining utility power and increase on a linear scale. Exp to level is also an exponential increase across the levels.
If you only ever used one handed slashing weapons then by the time you hit 100 one handed slashing skill you would reach your first skill bottle neck. Also by the point you would hit your first 100 weapon skill your HP and stats, naked, would have reached the logarithmic plateau. Your Melee Combatant skill would only be 10 though and your chance to block and parry would be low and none of the other Melee Combatant skills would be unlocked yet. Additionally powerful weapons are downgraded if your matching skill is not high enough to properly use it.
A full depth Melee Combatant would be one that has managed to level all weapon types to 300 skill can completed all grandmaster challenges as well as having gained all of their class specific utility powers that may also have their own skill ranks and Over Skills.
With this format you can get into the game with all your friends early but to be truly done would be a monumental undertaking.
Food for thought (and maybe development),
Trasak
(P.S. Edit: When you go back to work on your other weapon skills you will be forced to fight lower level mob and effectively de level yourself by having a downgraded weapon until your skill is high enough. With a plateaued HP scale you would be able to go back to the same content you did when your first skill hit 100 without trivializing it.)
I was very hardcore/(power gamer) in EQ.. playing 60-80 hrs/wk. I think OneForAll has the best assestment.. someone who does the minimum and only 'levels' their toon should be able to attain max level in 250-350 hrs. Dont forget leveling is just a part of your characters power.. Each tradeskill should take about 75-100 hrs of gathering materials and combining to grandmaster.. gearing your character with powerful items will take hundreds of hours in addition to the level 'grind'..
Its important the leveling process isnt too slow.. I have a strong feeling many of the people suggesting like 100 hrs per level will get burnt out with such a long process. The level cap needs to feel attainable. After reaching the cap, its important the players feel like there 100x other goals to achieve. The game doesnt end at the level cap.. being max level just removes roadblock to new ways to progress.
All I did in EQ was xp, raid, and hunt down the best gear from enemies and quests(minimal tradeskills).. if max level took 250 hrs, then maxing my characters gear took an additional 5,000 hours..
OneForAll said:250 hours played: 25 days at 10hours a day (power gamer)
50 days at 5 hours a day (gamer)
100 days at 2 hours a day (dirty casual)
250 hours is nothing for a mmorpg even for a power gamer. we need something like 10 times this. it's a mmorpg, not a offline rpg skyrim like, it's like a second life, and should seem like it.
you are saying all you did was xp, raid, hunt down best gear from the ennemies and quest, i think you can replace your "all you did" by "the adventures i lived led me to", well that's how i feel about my Everquest experience, for example for farming that haste belt in lower guk, i stayed in that room for days, and at zero moment i felt bored, the place was dangerous, a endless 10+ replacements group members list, dangerous pulls, some wipes etc, and i can say that for many many places in norath.
i do not think experience should be funnier at higher level that at lower level especially with group content, the higher level the harder they get but the better we are so it should be relatively all the same fun, meaning that a very long experience curve is not a bad thing unlike a short/moderate one who just brings rerolling toons, afk toons and so on.
Defector said:All I did in EQ was xp, raid, and hunt down the best gear from enemies and quests.. if max level took 250 hrs, then maxing my characters gear took an additional 5,000 hours..
From a game production standpoint this is actually kind of a failure. It means that 5% of your game time was spent on the content created for levels 1-(Max level -1) and 95% was spent on the max level content. For your game time to have the same amount of variations at max level as you did while leveling you would need 19 max level zones for every zone under max level. This also means that working on leveling zones has 5% of the return on development man hours as max level zones do.
The solution to this is to build the game in such a way as to make 95% of the zones relevant at max level or honestly make the game only one level which you sort of have anyway if you spend 95% of your play time at max level. The third option is my logarithmic power curve soap box and a brutal leveling curve which makes max level VERY difficult to reach but also not required to participate in the “end game” zones.
Arturo said:Liav said:EQNext was being designed without levels in the traditional sense. Purely horizontal progression with some tiered progression for verticality, but no levels.
And we all know how well that went. ;/
Couldn't agree more. Great ideas are a thing, but are they even remotely functionnal or pleasing ?
With no sense of powercurve, how could playing feel as desirable ? Any level sync tech ends up as a clunky solver (gw2, wow legion...).
Everytime developpers claims to "offer new exciting tech" that ends up away from the traditionnal levelling system, it ends up feeling less interesting, challenging, with level or progression loosing all sense.
Challenge is not grind.
Imposing grind is not increasing challenge, it's only imposing a selection on playtime ... and mostly a way for high playtime players to eliminate the concurence of lower playtime players on high end content.
Challenge is risk/try/explore, not grind, grind is not risky, it's just using safe ways to maximize xp gain returning on same spots again and again and again.
In EQ people did naturally tend to take less risk until they reached max level, that's just a fact. The more grind you'll impose to reach max level, the less risk people will take ... and the less challenging the game will be.
If you want challenge, add more horizontal progression based on exploration, people will take more risk, explore new areas. Challenge is being courageous enough to try new things, not to ever-repeat what we already mastered.
Khendall said:Challenge is not grind.
Imposing grind is not increasing challenge, it's only imposing a selection on playtime ... and mostly a way for high playtime players to eliminate the concurence of lower playtime players on high end content.
Challenge is risk/try/explore, not grind, grind is not risky, it's just using safe ways to maximize xp gain returning on same spots again and again and again.
In EQ people did naturally tend to take less risk until they reached max level, that's just a fact. The more grind you'll impose to reach max level, the less risk people will take ... and the less challenging the game will be.
If you want challenge, add more horizontal progression based on exploration, people will take more risk, explore new areas. Challenge is being courageous enough to try new things, not to ever-repeat what we already mastered.
Challenge doesn't mean Grind, but Grind can mean Challenge. Up to there it's a matter of personal opinion. Yours lay in the field of "Challenge is doing blind tests", which is debatable, but is far from beeing an absolute truth. I feel your idea on the matter is a bit flawed and cornered by a feeling of excessive competition, quoting specifically :
Khendall said:
Imposing grind is not increasing challenge, it's only imposing a selection on playtime ... and mostly a way for high playtime players to eliminate the concurence of lower playtime players on high end content.
This is only relevant if "High end content" is a thing of importance. We do not know yet if Pantheon will yield to some sort of "Velious era" where raiding is everything and competition for 1 week respawns is heavy. Clearly I took ten time less pleasure in games where "high end content" was the goal, than games where I had a few characters spread in level and had freely the will to log one and play a bit with him, advancing quests or experience, withouth feeling the urge of beeing max level to get into "serious business".
While beeing max level should be an aim, it should not be the only purpose of the game, neither feeling worthless (like in GW2).
*Edit -- Nevermind, this was already discussed earlier in the thread.