Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

What changes players from blasting to max level at launch?

    • 668 posts
    February 14, 2017 12:35 PM PST

    The main issue that comes up is level of the character is a major defining symbol of someone's advancement.  It is an easy visual flag that most players can boast about...  It is going to be very difficult to stop most players from wanting to power levels to be considered top of the game for a short window.

    I, on the other hand, will be taking my time, enjoying all the dark corners to discover, dying many times, creating as MANY memories as possible.  I will do my best to not get caught up in the rat race of powerleveling.

    • 238 posts
    February 23, 2017 2:28 AM PST

    As stated many times by the devs the anchor that slows people down is the need to get gear before you can progress “efficiently”. In games that hand you constant gear you never need to stop the exp train because the gear just flies to you. That’s how those games were built. Quest hubs basically just handed you the gear needed to keep going without even trying. Gaining spells magically as you level also plays into this “never needing to stop” problem.

     

    Now imagine if you are trying to power to max but the gear needed to get the next five levels was spread out over large areas (across the zone or even multiple zones on different parts of the world). That new DD spell you need is found in the vampire’s castle library.  But the healing spell drops in the temple and the taunt abilities drops in armory. So in theory you could set up your group in one spot and pound the exp but soon you going to need to move around to keep going at peak. It’s not very fast to use a DD that is last tier when the mob HP increases.

    What happens when the next best exp spot is in the bottom of an ice cave. To get there you need some good vs cold but because you where pounding exp in that vampire castle for days you have none. Now in this scenario you are on the forefront of the leveling population and you can’t simple buy it so you will need to go find some camps to get that stuff. Camping cold gear for your entire power level team might take a while and you will wish you had worked on it as you leveled.

     

    The key to slowing people down is to spread what people need over different areas and making the gear important for playing. A normal person might hop around every few nights to different locations/camps but a power gamer really just wants to stay in one spot as long as they can, especially if they have no idea where gear/spells even drop.

     

    This only slow people down, it does not stop it. Nothing stops someone that has 10-20 hours a day to play from leveling faster than someone with 2 hours a day.

    • 279 posts
    February 24, 2017 7:19 PM PST

    I just want to log in and kill crap and make jokes... for excessive amounts of time everyday. Some of these suggestions sound unpleasant, but not to daunting to just facegrind through, however the more unpleasant you make the overall experience in an effort to slow down 1%ers the more unpleasant the overall experience is for the 99%. It won't bother me much though, maybe I'll have to take a week or two of vacation (doubtfull its necessary) after launch (barring repeat of Vanguard/EQ launch problems). No big deal.


    This post was edited by Sunmistress at February 24, 2017 7:21 PM PST
    • 2 posts
    February 25, 2017 8:51 PM PST

    Stephen said:

    Liav said:

    @Dhampir

    It's going to take people months to find out that level 50 is the release level cap? Lol, no. Your expectations for how long it's going to take are very unreasonable. I expect level capped players inside of a month, unless we're going full-Korea levels of grinding.

    Believe it or not, the past two decades of experience with MMOs a lot of us have will be pretty applicable to Pantheon. It isn't such a different beast.

    While Dullahan has a point of horizontal progression, I somehow doubt there won't be at least one relatively speedy route to cap.

     

     

    This. There will be people who no life the beta and plan the route to max level before launch. I doubt it will take 5 months playing 8 hours a day like it was back in classic EQ. Not because it will be easier but because mmo's are not new like they were for a lot of people back in 2000 and the mmo players nowadays have a much more focused and planned approach pre-launch than they did back in the day.

    The different gear for different zones is something I forgot about aswell so thanks for the people bringing that up. That is a good point.

    Btw I should of mentioned in my post but I have been following Pantheon for a couple years and only just started posting today so I'm not completely clueless about most things, I just wanted people to voice there opinions on what they think will happen. Regardless it doesn't matter to me if people decide to rush or take their time, to each their own I say.

    • 52 posts
    February 27, 2017 4:49 AM PST

    People will be max level in sub 15 days almost guaranteed. Guilds will do one of two things:

    Have group members sleep in shifts while members box eachother, providing literal 24/7 grinding until max level or if this is not feasible due to the nature of combat they will have their groups playing for an average of 20 hours a day with 4 hour scheduled sleep breaks.

    As Enitzu has mentioned, optimal leveling/gearing paths and even group compositions will be mapped out before launch. You also have to factor in the fact that after the first day these guilds will face almost zero competition for mobs during the grind because they will have gotten ahead of the leveling curve.

    If we can do 24 hour coverage and we estimate a 250 hour "grind" then it will take us 10 days 10 hours to hit max level. Even if you're a dedicated player and you play every day and only try to grind while you're online it's still going to take you roughly 60 days to hit max level. If you factor in days off, time spent looking for groups, reduced mob density due to other groups, wipes, and all the exploring/crafting/questing/socializing you're doing it's going to be closer to 80 or 90 days. All to do what the most hardcore guilds will have done in 10-14 days.