Trasak said:Kalok said:That's where this "argument" falls apart. There is no defining "end" to this game, so there is no "finishing all content".
Yah, its a rough generalization. I am really more trying to allude to the "end" being when the player feels its time to start another character as outside of huge time sinks there is nothing significant left to gain on the character from a mechanical standpoint.
I'm "unusual" in alot of aspects. I don't like playing alts nor switching classes. Every MMO I have ever played, I have only ever played one class; Rogue. Even my "trading alts" were Rogues, even though I didn't really play them at all. I am definitely not the norm. The biggest "downside" for me with Pantheon currently is that there is no Half-Elf. Every character I have played has been a Half_Elf. I'm going to have to re-create my "backstory" based around being Human this time around. I won't "re-roll" my character if they introduce Half-Elves at a later date.
I have rethought my stance and I’d really wish it would take the average of about 200 hours to get to level 50. My breakdown...
1st ten levels (1-10) take about five hours. A half hour per level
2nd ten levels (11-20) take about 20hours. Two hours per level
3d ten levels (21-30) take about 40 hours. Four hours per level.
4th ten levels (31-40)take about )60 hours. Six hours per level.
5th ten levels (41-50) take about 80 hours. Eight hours per level.
I would never Cap experience per day. That’s penalizing someone for their focus and drive, which seems just wrong. If you can devote 200 hours in a month, I say good for you.
I loved every hour of EQ I played. Sure raiding was great, but playing with friends was epic. Every camp was fun, every drop was celebrated, every spell drooled over. In Terminus, I will spend a lot of time wandering around, and playing alts. Lots of crafting to try. I know there will be players hitting 50 when I’m 20. I don’t care.
Wandidar said:For comparison, the way I got to 50 - 60 days PLAYED in my original post was to try and pick a middle ground amount of time played each day by folks in the Pantheon player base... and I THINK some reasonable estimates are:
1 - 2 hours per day
3-4 hours per day
5 - 7 hours per day
Some small(ish) set of people playing more than 7 hours a day...
Middle ground for me there was 3 - 4 hours... SO...
(3.5 hours per day x 365 days per year) / 24 hours in a day = roughly 53 days played - with the idea of reaching max taking about a year.
I went a little less than that (50 days) to a bit more then that (60 days)
I am thumbs up'ing this formula... (HoursPerDay * 365)/24 = DaysToMaxLevel ... best formula ever.
The more you play, the harder it is! .. the less you play the easier it is! ... Hell if i don't play at all I'm already max level ... (0 * 365) / 24 = 0 ... :D I win EQ! .. errr PRF!!!
Kalok said:I'm "unusual" in alot of aspects. I don't like playing alts nor switching classes. Every MMO I have ever played, I have only ever played one class; Rogue. Even my "trading alts" were Rogues, even though I didn't really play them at all. I am definitely not the norm. The biggest "downside" for me with Pantheon currently is that there is no Half-Elf. Every character I have played has been a Half_Elf. I'm going to have to re-create my "backstory" based around being Human this time around. I won't "re-roll" my character if they introduce Half-Elves at a later date.
You corner case you . . .
I actually tend to focus on one character at a time unless there is a massive mechanical advantage to having a second or third character of a specific class/craft on the same account. I do tend to play front line characters but in some ways I'm fairly flexible as to what flavor.
The real question for you though Kalok is, if you can level a Human rogue and through game play aquired an Elf significant other would you consider Progening(TM) to a Half-Elf rogue? Sort of kidding and you may have already answered it by saying you wouldn't reroll if Half-Elves were added..
Trasak
Kargen said:I am thumbs up'ing this formula... (HoursPerDay * 365)/24 = DaysToMaxLevel ... best formula ever.
The more you play, the harder it is! .. the less you play the easier it is! ... Hell if i don't play at all I'm already max level ... (0 * 365) / 24 = 0 ... :D I win EQ! .. errr PRF!!!
I read his post as saying a player who plays 3.5 hours a day on average should take one real life year to hit max level. If you look through a lot of the opinion in this thread that's pretty close to the most common answer though there is still only say 20 of us who have actually posted in this thread.
Trasak
Trasak said:Kargen said:I am thumbs up'ing this formula... (HoursPerDay * 365)/24 = DaysToMaxLevel ... best formula ever.
The more you play, the harder it is! .. the less you play the easier it is! ... Hell if i don't play at all I'm already max level ... (0 * 365) / 24 = 0 ... :D I win EQ! .. errr PRF!!!
I read his post as saying a player who plays 3.5 hours a day on average should take one real life year to hit max level. If you look through a lot of the opinion in this thread that's pretty close to the most common answer though there is still only say 20 of us who have actually posted in this thread.
Trasak
Yes... was based on taking roughly a year to reach max (which is what I said in the post).
The absolute most hardcore grinders should hit max level in 2-3 months. The rest of us at least a year or two of casual playing.
2-3 hours a day, probably a year to year and a half. 8-12 hours a day, 2-3 months.
IMO it's reasonable, possibly a bit on the high side just because some will want to play multiple classes. But assuming power leveling isn't highly restricted there's always that to speed the alts along.
I want time to explore a location, I don't want to just move from quest to quest to quest, going to a completely new area every day because I out leveled the old area.
If I can get to max level in a week, I will surely do so. I enjoy being max level as fast as possible. The world isn't going anywhere.
This is not 1999. The people and players in this genre are not like we were back then. We have untold resources that we simply didnt have back then to share information about an MMO. Wiki's, Reddits, Discords, etc...the game will be disected and fgured out in a matter of days and splattered online for anyone that wants the information.
I was there at the launch of BDO. That proved to me that you cannot underestimate the modern MMO players ability to grind/level up. I think a lot of you old folks from 1999 are in for a shock! Hell, they even gamed in shifts if they had to, it was unreal.
Also, let me add this...the genre is not the same either. I understand this game is designed to be a niche game for a select playerbase, but if you want the game to truly thrive, you are gonna need to draw in modern gamers. Shitty, stiff combat and nothing to do at end game will make this place a ghost town in a matter of months. There is too much competition and other online distractions that simply were not there in 1999 as well.
All this being said, I look forward to Pantheon...but the people here saying that leveling should take months or years...you are in for a rude awakening when you see this game sliced and diced at launch. I personally cannot wait!
Hateborn said:If I can get to max level in a week, I will surely do so. I enjoy being max level as fast as possible. The world isn't going anywhere.
This is not 1999. The people and players in this genre are not like we were back then. We have untold resources that we simply didnt have back then to share information about an MMO. Wiki's, Reddits, Discords, etc...the game will be disected and fgured out in a matter of days and splattered online for anyone that wants the information.
I was there at the launch of BDO. That proved to me that you cannot underestimate the modern MMO players ability to grind/level up. I think a lot of you old folks from 1999 are in for a shock! Hell, they even gamed in shifts if they had to, it was unreal.
Also, let me add this...the genre is not the same either. I understand this game is designed to be a niche game for a select playerbase, but if you want the game to truly thrive, you are gonna need to draw in modern gamers. Shitty, stiff combat and nothing to do at end game will make this place a ghost town in a matter of months. There is too much competition and other online distractions that simply were not there in 1999 as well.
All this being said, I look forward to Pantheon...but the people here saying that leveling should take months or years...you are in for a rude awakening when you see this game sliced and diced at launch. I personally cannot wait!
Good luck with that.
One of the things that the devs have already said is that they WANT this to be a niche game and that it's not for everyonee.
Kalok said:
Good luck with that.
One of the things that the devs have already said is that they WANT this to be a niche game and that it's not for everyonee.
I am not sure why people bristle at the idea of grinders/powergamers wanting to conquer this game. Obviously it is a niche type game, but I bet if you asked, the developers would enjoy a steady influx of new players that never even played Everquest. The idea of 5,000 people. all older gamers that played EQ and Ultima Online making up the entire playerbase is just silly.
If I could rush to the highest level possible in say, 10 days..but all the content is still around for me to run about and check out at my leisure, then that is a viable option. It seems that both here and at the reddit, anyone with this mindset is shunned and ridiculed by the "old guard" that wants to take 14 months to get to top level.
All I am saying is that, again, this is not 1999 and games/information/sharing are not the same, they have advanced to the point that the only real way to stop the hardcore crowd would be to have some kind of daily xp limit...and that, my friend, would kill this game quicker than you could say Everquest Next. ;)
You play your way, ill play mine. That is the beauty of a brand new MMO. (And i hope this one thrives)
I honestly think that people put too much emphasis into achieving level ups and reaching max level as soon as possible. I hope (as some others have mentioned) that a single level will take a long time to get through and that there is enough interest while doing the level for it not to become a chore. As long as there is new enough content for a given level, then "moving on" becomes less of a big deal. VR have always said it is about the journey and not the destination. The game will not "Start" at max level, so why rush to get there? I would go further, and not include XP boosts. They just foster the idea that there is better content at a later point.
I also hope that there is enough change, progression, enhancements, etc. between levels that mean the actual act of moving to a new level is not a huge deal (i.e. making the character significantly better than pre-ding).
There are plenty of games out there where everything happens at the highest level. VR have said they want to break the mold, lets make every level as good as the end level is percieved to be!
In my experience, it is always more fun grouping with people who really know how their class/race characters perform that someone who has rushed/power levelled or (worse) bought a high level character and doesnt know the first this about how to play them. Yes that skill can be quickly learned, but I guess they just dont get the point of RPGs.
It doesn't matter how many paragraphs people write about how "it's about the journey, not the destination". There exists a subset of players who view the game as a race, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop that short of daily xp caps or some other draconian method of stifling natural progression.
It is necessary to discuss how long it will take. I'm not sure why it's so difficult to stay on topic with this.
I propose that anyone who logged on during a 24 hour RL day cycle, gets 1,000 xp, and that you don't quest, kill or adventure for xp, just loot. then as long as everyone logs in each day we will all be the same level all the time and have no trouible finding groups, and we will all reach max level at the same time. ;) /sarcasm off
As the scope of this topic has obviously grown from:
“How many days played to level cap?”
To:
“Based on playing an average of 3.5 hours a day, how many real life days should it take to reach maximum character level?”
The most common answer appears to be in the 50-60 days played which is around a full year. Someone who plays 7 hours a day will be able to hit level cap in 6 months. Someone who “only” plays 2 hours a day will reasonably be able to level to max after 2 years. A team leveling characters in shifts will be able to hit maximum level in 1.5-2 months.
The team levelers are Racers and make up a very very small portion of the gaming community and move from game to game like locusts. Nothing VR can do will keep their interest for very long but hey, if they buy the game and pay for a few months that’s money in VRs pocket.
Very hardcore players who play +7 hours a day are usually focused on end game or are alt-oholics who want to try everything. Keeping these players happy is most likely the goal but will be difficult just due to the sheer consumption of content that they represent. I would argue that extreme challenge raids and dungeons as well as crazy difficult collection/completionism achievements are for this crowd.
The serious casual/Light Hardcore players will make up the bulk of your players and raiders. The journey matters but so does the destination. A year to hit max level is fairly reasonable but then they will likely want to spend at least a year at maximum level doing the challenges that the Very Hardcore players have already been doing for 6 months. This group is also the group most likely to dive into the story and appreciate how dungeons and quests are constructed.
The light casual players will also likely make up a large group of players, possibly even larger than the Light Hardcore group. The light casual players will benefit the most from a rewarding mentor system that allows them to play with their Light Hardcore friends and family members who encouraged them to play. The light casual players are also those who are most likely to just log on for the social interaction and RP as their goal is not remotely to raid challenging content but just want to explore the world, their characters and their community.
Guest players make up the final primary group. These players will constantly shift in and out of the game as people try Pantheon for one reason or another. Capturing their interest, and as much of their money as reasonably possible without scaring them away from the game (possibly a first time bonus discount on 6 months of prepaid game play), will be vital to the ongoing health of Pantheon. They will be the blood that replaces the Racers after the locusts leave for new fields and the very hardcore players as they leave for new challenges.
A very punishing early game will detract from the Guest players becoming one of the other three categories. You want those players to get hooked into the game before the true slow down begins. For this reason it would be better if the later levels took proportionally longer than the early levels but without making the early levels feel too shallow. I would target the slow down to levels after a player can fairly easily get from one capital to another and has the ability to max out trade skills if materials are traded for. That way guest characters that are only interested in RP and crafting/trading will become long term paying customers without ruining the feel of accomplishment that comes with hitting maximum level.
I feel that this is a good base line design where you tweak the light hardcore target to control the general population leveling speed and focus generating new content based on the Light Hardcore consumption speed. I believe this would make a profitable and sustainable business model without making it too easy.
Trasak
P.S. Log power curves by level tends to combine all three primary groups into one gaming population rather than 3 different ones.
Hateborn said:If I can get to max level in a week, I will surely do so. I enjoy being max level as fast as possible. The world isn't going anywhere.
This is not 1999. The people and players in this genre are not like we were back then. We have untold resources that we simply didnt have back then to share information about an MMO. Wiki's, Reddits, Discords, etc...the game will be disected and fgured out in a matter of days and splattered online for anyone that wants the information.
I was there at the launch of BDO. That proved to me that you cannot underestimate the modern MMO players ability to grind/level up. I think a lot of you old folks from 1999 are in for a shock! Hell, they even gamed in shifts if they had to, it was unreal.
Also, let me add this...the genre is not the same either. I understand this game is designed to be a niche game for a select playerbase, but if you want the game to truly thrive, you are gonna need to draw in modern gamers. Shitty, stiff combat and nothing to do at end game will make this place a ghost town in a matter of months. There is too much competition and other online distractions that simply were not there in 1999 as well.
All this being said, I look forward to Pantheon...but the people here saying that leveling should take months or years...you are in for a rude awakening when you see this game sliced and diced at launch. I personally cannot wait!
Here's the thing though. Gamers are also used to everything before max level just being fillers to get the player used to playing the game. Hopefully this game will change this. Make leveling fun not just a chore to enjoy the end game content. I expect that people playing this game will feel a bit less in a rush to get into the end game content because there will be enough group content pre endgame that players will get to enjoy being in a group often without having to hit max level to find groups often. Dungeon running in a game like WoW or FFXV got boring because every 5-10 levels you MIGHT get 1 or 2 meaningful grouping zones and those were all instances where the only people you saw and interacted with were your chosen group. You had to get to max level to really enjoy having a decent number of instances to play around with and possibly some real group content.
Most games don't have the support structure to support leveling taking months or years, if you have the structure it it's not so bad.
I fully expect the game to get sliced and diced at launch for it's non-casual features, t hat's fine. I also expect that player who want this kind of game, who want to play a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG and not just some Multiplayer RPG disguised as a MMO to enjoy this kind of game and to flock to it. I don't expect the game to get the subscriber numbers of a normal MMO. I do however know that there are enough players who will enjoy this kind of MMO that as long as they make a good one they will get enough players to make a profit.
@Trasak
Your post is probably the most reasonable breakdown I've seen so far of what the OP is actually asking. I like it. Only thing I might do is relax the curve a little bit, but for the most part your post answers the question better than any reply I've seen so far.
I think 30 days played might be a better target than 50-60. That would be about 3.5 months for someone playing 7ish hours a day, and almost exactly a year for someone playing 2 hours a day.
Two hours a day is pretty casual, but that's still 14 whole hours dedicated to a hobby per week. If we assume the average player is at 3.5 hours per day, you're still looking at over half a year to get to max.
That's still incredibly slow compared to P99, maybe as slow or slower than classic EQ. I don't have actual hard data with regards to classic EQ, but I have heard that the experience on P99 is relaxed compared to actual classic.
Well i know i can be one of the few that played first MMO's around the same time Brad, etc all started to develop them. It isnt so much about days, as it is about how complex the game can be.
If i am able to reach just a simple level cap in under 365 days, i better make sure i have enough content to supply the rest of the characters life. So you need time syncs.
Questing, progression, and exploration. Many of us are used to the old days of when it took you 1 yr to get to max level. It wasnt just about the experiences, but to actually see the content completely and move forward with tradeskills, and progression.
If i am only killing mobs for xp, then i better make sure i slow the characters down so that it lasts more then 6 months. IF we dont have that, we will end up with copy and paste expansions with no ending.
If you really want to understand more? go look at EQ since 1998 to 2017 and see how badly the game has become since 2003 and onwards. MAx caps, max issues and no choice but to scale it all downwards.
Nerfs!!!!
Liav said:@Trasak
Your post is probably the most reasonable breakdown I've seen so far of what the OP is actually asking. I like it. Only thing I might do is relax the curve a little bit, but for the most part your post answers the question better than any reply I've seen so far.
I think 30 days played might be a better target than 50-60. That would be about 3.5 months for someone playing 7ish hours a day, and almost exactly a year for someone playing 2 hours a day.
Two hours a day is pretty casual, but that's still 14 whole hours dedicated to a hobby per week. If we assume the average player is at 3.5 hours per day, you're still looking at over half a year to get to max.
That's still incredibly slow compared to P99, maybe as slow or slower than classic EQ. I don't have actual hard data with regards to classic EQ, but I have heard that the experience on P99 is relaxed compared to actual classic.
It was indeed a good post. To be honest, I'd be stunned if the target ended up being 50 - 60. Heck, I'd be sort of stunned if it ended up being 30. What I really think it needs to be, though, is this:
1) They need to have some idea as to how much time they think the bulk of their base will play in a given day/week.
2) Apart from reaching max, they need to have some idea of how long it will take that same player to churn through content available at max
3) They need to have some idea as to how long they think it will take to clean up any post launch big issues as well as simultaneously creating the next bit of content
4) They need to be reasonbly close to on target with a date of release for that new target based on items 1 and 2
I don't so much think that it's the people who fall away early (either because they don't have enough interest in the game to stick around and level, or because they burn through it all too fast) that they should be concerned with... although for sure they want to try to minimize players falling away if they can... it is, instead, those people who do level to max in essentially a big mass group (within a couple to a few months of each other).
In the end... I think content consumption rate needs to match that group's rate of play.
The majority of players you'd want to see dinging 49 and 50 around the 9 month time frame. This gives the majority of the player base 3 months of working on, defeating, getting proficient at defeating the end game raid bosses (and gearing up the majority of their raid force) before expansion pack #1 is relased at the 1 year anniversery.
Expansion pack #1 should be released with the knowledge that a good majority of your player base reached max level 2 or 3 months ago and have a good few peices of raid gear. This raid gear is needed for the next expansion because it has better stats and without that raid gear defeating begenning level mobs in the expansion pack will be very difficult.
But, common gear found from common mobs in the expansion pack aren't better than raid gear from the last release, because this would cause people give up playing when the expansion is announced and they just wait 2 months to log on and play the new exp pack and get gear that is intantly better than raid gear of the prior....
Liav said:@Trasak
*snip*
I think 30 days played might be a better target than 50-60. That would be about 3.5 months for someone playing 7ish hours a day, and almost exactly a year for someone playing 2 hours a day.
Two hours a day is pretty casual, but that's still 14 whole hours dedicated to a hobby per week. If we assume the average player is at 3.5 hours per day, you're still looking at over half a year to get to max.
*snip*
I could see both speeds working. As others have also said it depends on when and how the rest of the content is experienced. If the zones, dungeons and quests are split pretty evenly across the level range, perhaps normalized for the amount of time spent in each level, then a slower leveling speed would be the optimal way to experience it. An example would be if you do every camp in every zone once you will likely be at level cap baring excessive deaths and possible experience penalties.
If about 50% of the zones, dungeons and quests are intended to be experienced at level 46-50 then a faster leveling speed would make plenty of sense as you would not want to bunch up too much in the early zones and presumably they would also be easier and less interesting from a mechanical standpoint.
Now if a level 1 character had 100HP, a level 30 character had 1000HP with gear, and a level 50 player had 1200HP with gear then level 30-50 could group together in the same zones without ruining the experience of anyone. With a fairly quick leveling speed from 1-30 but a slow one from 31-50 players could get into the meat of the game, without rushing too many levels, while still having a very long way to go to the true cap. That way an even distribution of content per level could be created based on time at level. If it takes 1 hour + lvl/4 hours to level from 1-30 and it takes 10 hours + lvl/2 to level 30-50 then level 1-30 would take 140 hours and 30-50 would take 620 hours. 80% of the content could be appropriate for level 30-50 players without over loading the early zones.
A light casual could enter the meat of the game after 10 weeks which will still be before the Very Hardcore players reach level cap. This btw is what I keep referring to as log power progression if you have seen me mention it before. It’s my soap box.
Trasak