In EQ it was considered the path of least resistance to grind out levels into your 50s before attempting most of the horizontal progression.
And I'm going to ding EQ here. It had a wealth of horizontal progression in the form of class armor quests and the collection of drops. However, you had to be at higher levels in order to efficiently obtain those items or do those quests.
Take the ranger IVY armor quest for example. The sugested minimum level to start that quest line is 35, and thats really not high enough to do most of it. You wouldn't even get into groups that can do this content until your in your 40's. By the time you are high enough to do these quests you likely have better gear bought from players anyway and the groups your running with won't want to do that content. So why even do it?
This actually encouraged racing to the end.
So to the question. I do want a long level time, and ~1000 hours played to max seems appropriate to me, if all you did was grind. But I really want the horizontal progression to start earlier and be more accessible in your 20's and 30's plus have even more horizontal progression through the 40s and 50s. In which case maybe that ~1000 hours may take you a very long time indeed due to all the horizontal progression.
In a way it might make sense to gate content behind environments that require horizontal progression to enter. Then at various points along the treadmill you would be forced into more of a horizontal direction in order to access the content that would allow you to progress virtically to the next tier of levels. For example: at 20 you can get to a really cool XP area IF you can brave the cold. But to do that you have to do some questing/crafting/bartering/trading first in the realm of aquiring gear and other items/spells to be able to survive and take advantage of the XP gains found in this area.
TLDR: Make horizontal progression occure more often and at lower levels by having it provide items required to exist and thrive in higher virtical level regions. Thus spreading out the time required to grind to max level.
In DAoC, I played about 40 hours a week and max leveled in 4 months (2001 DAoC not the more modern pace). I was by far not the slowest but also refused to do the "path of least resistance" methods available. I think I played the game and leveled the way the designers wanted us to. I am fine with 4-6 months at 40 hours a week if we also are playing the game the way the designers intended for vertical progression. Throw in horizontal progression then it should take more time and effort. Side Note: Crafting should take even longer than leveling if crafting is to be truely relevant, challenging, and rewarding.
There is a big difference between someone who plays 18 hours a day and someone who plays 18 hours a day efficiently.
There will be entire guilds/groups of people who will be committed enough to log in at the same time and play none stop for crazy amounts in one sitting; 40 hours+ etc. If they’ve done all their research from alpha and beta too (which of course they will have) and have the path of least resistance planned out, the optimal group etc they’ll be essentially speed running the game and will hit the level cap ‘extremely fast’ compared to 99.9% of people’s standard.
The question is when talking about how long it should take who are we talking about? If you make the game slow for the true hardcore players it will be absolutely gruelling beyond belief for the 5 hours a day people.
No matter what you do, how much you gate content and force horizontal progression if you tune the game for the truly hardcore you risk it being too much for everyone else.
I’ve played EQ back in the day ‘casually’ and it took me almost a year to hit level cap and get my class epic. I also got hooked on p99 (in 2016) having not touched EQ or much thought about it since Luclin and went nuts playing 16+ hours a day and hit lvl 59 in a month using path of least resistance. Both was fun in different ways.
I personally hope Pantheon is tuned much better than EQ and they do gate SOME progression via horizontal content having to find class skills that are absolutely mandatory, attunement quests or needing certain gear to be able to progress so that I can’t just sit in one dungeon for 20 levels (Castle Mistmoore I’m looking at you)
But ultimately one thing is certain, no matter how long it takes to hit level cap or how it’s achieved there will be angry nerds complaining about it on the forums!
Thallium said: But ultimately one thing is certain, no matter how long it takes to hit level cap or how it’s achieved there will be angry nerds complaining about it on the forums!
I was just thinking the same thing. Either you're gonna have the "It takes too long..." or the "It's not long enough..." and if they do a really good job of balancing it, then you'll probably get both :-) I guess maybe that will be the litmus test on how well they do at getting the length of time right. If they get both sides complaining about it, then they probably did alright :-)
You have to strike a balance. Give optional things to the people that want to take a while. Artificial barriers that make things easier. But dont require them, allow the people who want to rush to max level to get there. You want as many people as possible to stick around. Some people dont care about the leveling process (I look at 1-49 as a job. And level 50 as the actual game).
You also dont want the process to be too long, I would imagine a majority of the people that will be playing the game will be in the middle of the long vs short spectrum. The last thing you want it to make someone play for 3 days and not have any accomplishments to speak of. The more optional "suggested" paths you can take the better.
But allow the people that want to be max level to get there and play the game they want to play.
There will be people maxing out their levels pretty quick no matter what is done. I would like to see steps being taken that make those same people unable to ruin things for everyone else. The two main things that I see as potential problems are demands for more content for those that rush ahead and seeing those higher level players taking content away from those that are in the right level range to be experienceing it with a challenge.
I don't want to see people screaming for more max level raids 3 months after the game hits. Especially when the game isnt going to be raid focused. In alot of the other games I have played over the last 15 years or so that always happens. Leveling is too easy so eveyone blows through it in a few weeks and there is nothing to do. If this game really does have a focus on horizontal progression then everyone but those guys that race to the end will be happy. Let them race to the end, I just hope VR puts them on mute when they start demaning more content 3 months out.
I also would love to see some way to prevent (or at leact discourage) all of those bored max level characters from farming the crap out of zones made for level 20's or 30's. Nothing is as lame as a max level guy taking up space in a place made for lower levels. I see this as a maybe problem when they say you can race to max level but will be horribly underequiped to do anything there if you skip the horizontal progression part of the game. Seems like that might cause some to level out to max then go back and run all of the content that everyone else is running that took a more natural leveling progression. Probably no real way to stop that though. And that may not even be an issue. It will depend on how many people actually race to the end. If it's not alot then they won't cause many problems.
The easiest way to prevent higher levels from impacting lower levels would be to have a well thought out loot system. Dont have pre raid bis gear that drops from level 20 content and the like. If most of the max level gear drops from the 45 to 50+ content you won't see a huge impact to lower levels imo.
There is no value you can pick, in hours, that will satisfy both the volume of subscribers required to keep the game afloat and sufficiently challenge the hardcore niche. One of those two groups will be disappointed, and one of those two groups is vastly SMALLER than the other. Guess which one will be disappointed? :)
Which is why games like Project Gorgon don't attempt to satisfy the subscriber crowd. But they only two devs and one server, and are content with ~300 concurrent players. (Yes, I'm aware it goes higher than that, but never exceeds 1000 concurrent)
If it exceeds 300 hours, it will drive off too many paying customers. Most subscription MMOs pander to the large paying majority, proportionately. In this case, that means a minimum of 10k subs, and setting this value will certainly have an impact on retention.
I played EQ 24/7 for 2 years from launch Mar. '99, literally. I rolled several characters and played them long enough to get a feel for what they were and could do. I found that was a good way to find out what a pvp encounter could do to me with different combinations. Then I settled on what I wanted and went full speed ahead. After maxing out, I wondered what to do.
So I rolled another avatar and then I slowed down. I rolled several and played them to the max. or close, over the next 6 years.
As has been said, content is where its at. If there are places to explore, quests to do, fun dungeons, raids to run, crafting and specialy crafting, fishing all over the world, and Epic gear to win, then why blow through all this in 2 months? The games been in development for 5 years +/-, enjoy it.
So many games out there. So many that you can 'beat' in a week or two or four.
I love the challenge and the exploring ect. Guess I'm getting old, bu I don't think I'm going for the Crown as fast as I can go, not this time around. I'm going to enjoy each and every thing I can explore. I think.
Make it a commitment. Take a year to max. out. Bwahahaha!
Porygon said:That's the thing. I honestly think more people who want shorter leveling (ie hardcore gamers) would be ok with longer leveling, than the opposite.
I hate leveling but if it takes 1000 hours it is what it is. I don't ever play alts, so I only have to do it once lol.
Leveling was arguably the best part of EQ.
Keno Monster said:Porygon said:That's the thing. I honestly think more people who want shorter leveling (ie hardcore gamers) would be ok with longer leveling, than the opposite.
I hate leveling but if it takes 1000 hours it is what it is. I don't ever play alts, so I only have to do it once lol.
Leveling was arguably the best part of EQ.
In WoW (which I loved) I never made an alt and just levelled once and raided for 3 years. Levelling was boring and a waste of time. Raiding in WoW was where the challenge and social aspect was.
EQ was different having to group and be social during the levelling process made it actually enjoyable and the group interplay was more entertaining than the raid content.
So, if Pantheon has a fun levelling experience Id be happy with it taking 1000 hours; if its’ trash and the end game is where it is at then I hope it doesn’t take that long.
Personally, I’m hoping for Pantheon to have it all; fun levelling content, some sort of mandatory horizontal progression as you level then a great end game with lots of interesting loot to find and a good epic quest or two + good raid content. We’ll see though.
Keno Monster said:Porygon said:That's the thing. I honestly think more people who want shorter leveling (ie hardcore gamers) would be ok with longer leveling, than the opposite.
I hate leveling but if it takes 1000 hours it is what it is. I don't ever play alts, so I only have to do it once lol.
Leveling was arguably the best part of EQ.
The first time. Yes.
Not any subsequent times. It's just not fun for me. anything I can do at level 30 I can do at level 50, just easier. The game for me starts at max level.
It's been that way since eq. Wow, rift, swtor etc. Leveling is a chore. I just wanna be done.
I would not mind seeing rested xp, that builds up when you are not online, this way the casual players can get a xp jump when they have time to play. and it also evens out the player level a bit. the players who are rushing through the content wont get the same amount of rested xp, since these players are online all the time.
i hope to see 1500+ hours to hit max level, with a dedicated group, who is triharding all the way to 50.
The longer the better, i hope we see the content VR has spoken so much about. Raid mobs and fun dungeons all the way to 50. So its wont feel like a job to get to max level and only then you can play and join the hard encaunters or raids ect.
GoofyWarriorGuy said:I understand not wanting it to be too quick, but to suggest that casual players would not reach max level for over 3 years is maybe a little bit too much.
Agreed. That would be way overkill.
To be honest, some MMOs I have played so casually that it does actually take me years to get to level cap (in part because the cap keeps getting raised with expansions lol). However, for an MMO I want to actually invest regular time in, I'd start feeling stressed if it took me more than 3-4 months to get to cap. I don't necessarily play every day, but on the days I do play, I generally dedicate a good number of hours (would estimate 4-5).
Hours played to max is a vague measure.
Do you mean 1000 hours played by a top guild grinder? They may hard grind 30 hours a week (some much more) and max level in 33 weeks or 8 months, which realistically means someone will be max level in 6 months.
a casual player would spend some of his time chatting, crafting, tryinng to find a group since you cant solo, etc. Maybe they average 20 hours/week played, but 10 hours adventuring. Also, since they are in pick up groups, they are far less efficient. They take 2,000 hours of adventuring to max level or 200 weeks. that is 4 years.
The point being the thought of hardcore grinders can gain xp 8x as fast casual gamers rate, is not unreasonable.
If you feel that it should take 6 months for anyone to max, then you are saying that someone that playes 3 hours a day EVERYDAY should take at least 3 years.
If you are saying that the 'normal 3 hour player, should take a year, you are considering the top players to take 2 months, top.
(Numbers vary of course, But I know, in vanguard, the second group of max level players took about twice as long as the first wave. These were not truly casual players, but players that played quite alot, just not constently in chain pull groups.)
alephen said:Hours played to max is a vague measure.
Do you mean 1000 hours played by a top guild grinder? They may hard grind 30 hours a week (some much more) and max level in 33 weeks or 8 months, which realistically means someone will be max level in 6 months.
a casual player would spend some of his time chatting, crafting, tryinng to find a group since you cant solo, etc. Maybe they average 20 hours/week played, but 10 hours adventuring. Also, since they are in pick up groups, they are far less efficient. They take 2,000 hours of adventuring to max level or 200 weeks. that is 4 years.
The point being the thought of hardcore grinders can gain xp 8x as fast casual gamers rate, is not unreasonable.
If you feel that it should take 6 months for anyone to max, then you are saying that someone that playes 3 hours a day EVERYDAY should take at least 3 years.
If you are saying that the 'normal 3 hour player, should take a year, you are considering the top players to take 2 months, top.
(Numbers vary of course, But I know, in vanguard, the second group of max level players took about twice as long as the first wave. These were not truly casual players, but players that played quite alot, just not constently in chain pull groups.)
This is a good post. People tend to not think about the time spent looking for a group. Running to the group. Finding a camp etc. Hardcore gamers are going to have groups premade, log out in the same place and are all in all more efficient.
I've even seen instances where a "power group" will find another player to go buy them food/drink, spells etc. These are the levels that hardcores go to be as efficient as possible.
As long as the game is fun during all levels and leveling isn't only a hassle to get through before end game, the longer leveling time the better. It sort of equates to more content and longevity, I suppose, IF the whole way is fun. Whether or not I am max level, the point for me in a game like this is always character progression through gear or xp. I'd rather play more than less.
Though, if the leveling just feels like a drawn out time gate to the real game, then I'd rather have a quick leveling curve.
Spluffen said:As long as the game is fun during all levels and leveling isn't only a hassle to get through before end game, the longer leveling time the better. It sort of equates to more content and longevity, I suppose, IF the whole way is fun. Whether or not I am max level, the point for me in a game like this is always character progression through gear or xp. I'd rather play more than less.
Though, if the leveling just feels like a drawn out time gate to the real game, then I'd rather have a quick leveling curve.
Agreed 100%. If leveling is nothing but a chore to knock out to get to the "real" game, then it shouldn't take very long. If, however, leveling is actually engaging and provides things to do, then it's fine for it to take a while.