So what you are saying is... groups will push hard until they reach the threshold where they can't maintain the chain anymore and then when they fail and the chain breaks, they will all stop and take a break and have time to chat before starting up again to build up the next chain.
They wouldn't always try to pull another mob and extend the chain. XP was a very precious resource and if you were trying to acquire it the last thing you would do is intentionally put yourself in a position where you would lose what you already worked for. Good old fashioned loss aversion at it's best. It was always a judgement call. If your group felt confident that you could kill the 4'th or 5'th mob while being low on resources then you would give it a shot. If not, you would take a short break and regen to full. For me, this is the exact "sweet spot" that Joppa alluded to. You're never engaged in combat for more than 10 minutes before needing a full rest and it's usually much sooner than that. Besides that, this kind of grind always took place at an "XP Camp." There were tons of organic XP camps found around the world and none of them had a named boss attached to them.
There was no such thing as a never-ending pull fest because there were only so many mobs available in the area where you established your foothold. Even if there were unlimited mobs you would still run out of resources. It was pretty amazing how this feature encouraged players to communicate and squeeze a little more efficiency out of their resources to see what their limits were. But that's it in a nut-shell ... tangible and meaningful risk vs reward at your fingertips even when you're doing something as simple as grinding. I really can't explain it better than Eriugena did. I want dynamic combat with high replay value while grinding. I love truly emergent gameplay ... especially when it replaces something that is often considered tedious and boring.
Going to try to tie this up today. Sorry for posting all my thoughts in small bits. Time is not my ally this week.
So, just to try to keep continuity - I've been trying to break down what 1AD7 and others are *really* looking for, independent of whether the game supports XP chains or not. What I believe that thing is, is an adventuring experience that is challenging and meaningful, where every level is one that you feel like you've earned, and where skillful play is rewarded. I have talked in really broad terms about what I think the components of that experience are - starting with aspects of how combat can and should be challenging, how group synergy should work, and how area design plays into combat challenges. I think there's a final piece to providing a challenging/meaningful combat experience and that is Encounter Design.
Encounter Design
I've alluded to this a few times but to reiterate: An encounter is a mob or set of mobs that players face in combat. Rather than just randomly seeding mobs around the map of a dungeon or overland area, game designers can (and often do) intentionally place mobs to generate more meaningful encounters. That cave with the big bear in the woods is an encounter. Those bandits that patrol around the edge of their camp are an encounter. The four gnolls in that room in the dungeon are an encounter. The Troll Lord and his cronies sitting in the Throne Room are an encounter.
Encounter design is a big component of the combat experience. If you think about other games you've played, you probably remember the bosses a lot more than you do the fights you had in getting to the bosses. In fact even if you're still playing, you're probably inclined to call everything that's not a boss "trash". Ever think about why that is?
I think that it happens because the boss encounters are specifically designed to be memorable and unique. We call that other stuff "trash" because it doesn't feel special or meaningful. Those encounters don't do anything different from most other encounters - they don't push us to learn or adapt. At best they're just a bar we have to clear and once we've done that we can handle any other similar encounter in the same area. Over the years we've gotten used to this approach for encounter design in games, and so we're trained to expect it.
What if Pantheon were to change that? What if, instead of having "trash" and "bosses", every encounter were built to be uniquely challenging in a different way? Whether that's the mix of mobs and abilities involved, or the terrain and location where the area occurred, or unique abilities or conditions. Sure, some encounters might be bigger or higher risk (because risk/reward), but if every encounter were built to try and be uniquely challenging, wold it change our perception of how our characters progress and the journey that we're on? Would it make that overall journey more fun and meaningful? Would it make the experience we gain matter more?
Given the amount of content that needs to be built, I don't think that Pantheon can make every encounter we face completely unique. But, I think more can be done than we're used to. And this in turn will help core combat gameplay feel much different than what we're used to. I used to sit on the zone wall in the Dreadlands with a group and pull random mobs for hours for experience. We called it a grind because every fight was basically the same. Tank grabs the mob and turns it, dps lays into it, healers heal, CC happens if needed, stun it if it tries to cast, snare it if it tries to run, rinse, repeat. Our goal was often the experience, rather than beating the fight itself, and so we found the most comfortable, expedient way to do things, and we did that over and over again. More recent games have relied more on quest objectives for advancement, but the general encounter design remained the same, primitive kind of fight that we were doing back in 2000-2001. If we want Pantheon to be about having a really memorable and challenging journey to max level, then ensuring that the game is chock full of uniquely challenging encounters and opponents is a big step in doing that. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd love to see zones where I had to change my approach to things based on where I was and what I was fighting, and dungeons where clearing every room on the way to the boss or named felt like a real victory, rather than just a speedbump that I have to roll through.
Anyway, all of that brings me to the last thing:
XP Gain and Loss
1AD7 started off this thread talking about XP gain and XP loss. While those are important, I think they've also taken away from what he was really trying to get at. The truth is, it's the overall journey through the levels that's important. Systems that impact how much XP we gain (like XP chains or passive group bonuses) aren't there specifically to add to how meaningful that journey is. They're just tools. Contrivances designed to encourage players to approach the game's content together, in groups, rather than taking the smallest number of people that would be effective. Likewise, XP loss via death penalties is just a tool to introduce risk into the system - to steer players into approaching things in a more realistic way (since permadeath is a non-starter).
We have talked a lot on this forum about the pros and cons of XP chains vs. group bonuses or XP loss on death and how it should work - and I submit that while that stuff is important, when it comes to creating a memorable and fun experience as players level up, it actually doesn't affect that experience one way or another. A game can have group bonuses and XP loss and leveling up can still be a boring grind. I think it's important that we make the act of gaining experience challenging and compelling first, and then and only then should we look at whether something like XP chains might need to be implemented on top of it, or how that or any other system should work. If we're all sitting here in Alpha and we're saying "leveling is kinda boring", then making changes to how we gain or lose XP isn't really going to fix that. On the other hand, if we're halfway through Alpha and we're saying "The optimum group size is four people because you lose more experience than you gain by having five or six in group", then *that* is when we need to look at whether XP chains or bonuses or what have you might encourage more full groups to happen. The same thing goes for XP loss. If we're all sitting at the end of Alpha and saying things like "Once you get to level 50 just bind yourself at point X and if you need to get back quick just die because you won't lose anything," then *that* is where we need to look at the death penalty and what it involves. Don't get me wrong, all of these aspects are important. But they sit on top of everything else, and that other stuff needs to be buit well first.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't feel like debating the merits of XP chains is really productive if our goal is to make the "XP Journey" meaningful and fun. If that's what we want to accomplish, let's talk about all the other stuff that actually influences that. After all, you have to bake the cake first before you figure out how much icing you need to put on it.
I hope all these words I've written the past few days have helped provide some perspective, or at least given ya'll more to talk about (even if it's just about how completely off-base you think I am).
Nephele said:I hope all these words I've written the past few days have helped provide some perspective, or at least given ya'll more to talk about (even if it's just about how completely off-base you think I am).
It certainly has, thank you, and I agree with you all the way.
Being in the industry, I can say that I have tested a HUGE number of titles. The ONE thing that really concerns me in almost every single test is the following:
XP gain during testing. It really DOES need to be at a greatly increased rate so that a lot of different testing can be completed. Either that, or there needs to be a way to artifically "poke" a character to a specific lvl range for that designed testing (both leveling up and leveling down). I always seem to find the sweet path to leveling up in evey title. Just lucky I suppose. When I feel my characters has leveled up too much for specific testing I simply delete the character and start over. Anyhow, the one thing that I always notice is that the leveling rate for the title during testing is pretty high. In every instance, at the end of testing, I suggest the same thing: Lower XP gain to about 10% of that of testing. And in almost every case, they ignore the suggestion. And the result is max-leveled characters in about 4 or 5 days. A lot of folks decide that this is just too easy so they don't even pay for a second month of play. That's not even enough time to get to the first update and is usually only enough time to get through the first-month patch.
I believe that the problem is that a person can not feel connected to his character if it is just too easy. Most folks don't recall Ultima Online. It is the first "Zombie game". I am not referring to the zombies within the game, I am referring to the fact that YEARS after the game launched, and even operates today (I think). All of this despite attempts to shut the game down. It simply will not die. One of the reasons is the sheer number of people who feel so strong about their characters that they have no issues with paying $14 a month to keep their characters "alive". This game launched in 1997 and has very dated graphics and a lot of other shortfalls compared to todays titles. The servers are still up because it is still generating income after all of these years. It still makes more money than it costs. There have been a LOT of titles that come and go because people simply do not feel that special relationship with their characters. It is hard to get to that level if it only takes you 4 days to get to max.
We need to manage the XP gain so that no one is maxed so fast that they no longer care.
The recent topic about encumbrance helped reinforce my thoughts on leveling. I really hope it takes forever and a day. When leveling up takes serious time and effort, it's much easier to justify paying attention to the little details that surround the earliest phase of playing. Whether it's spending time trying to get a new weapon or spell, work on a faction, gain access to an area, etc. Most games have a pretty awful early game that many players will try to blaze through in the name of efficiency. Not everybody will do that but if the risk/reward spectrum is barely existent then the gameplay can be viewed as a boring time sink for veterans or a pseudo tutorial for new folks.
The 1-5 experience is particularly awful. I would much rather see players start off with 3-4 abilities and for level 1 content to be balanced around that. I want every level to feel meaningful and offer some sort of challenge. I think we should just scrap the traditional 1-5 experience where players have access to 1 ability and spend the majority of time auto-attacking things and then shift the amount of XP it would take to go from 1-5 to 1-2. I think that would also allow for grouping to feel more natural even at level 1 because roles would be a little more defined when characters have access to a few abilities.
There should be consistency and we may as well introduce players to a group-focused mentality early on. The conning system feels extremely sketchy when players can easily solo even-con content at level 1 but by the time they get to level 10, even-con mobs feel dramatically more powerful. I think we can stretch the value/relevance of the beginner zones by making the 1-10 experience more challenging and memorable, to the point where every ding feels like an accomplishment. The typical 1-10 experience feels like more of a cellphone game that is designed to provide quick bursts of progress and growth to get people hooked. I consider it throwaway content. Going from level 25-26 usually feels incredibly more satisfying than the entire 1-10 journey and I would like to see that perception changed.
You only get one chance to deliver the first impression. Nearly every MMO I have played employs the same garbage time 1-10 experience. What do others think? Are the early/easy dings that we are used to worth keeping around? How many players actually feel a dopamine rush when they hit level 2, 3, 4, or 5? How many players would prefer a more meaningful experience, where beginner content is tuned around each player being able to fulfill a role and having access to multiple abilities? As a warrior, I would like to have access to taunt at level 1 ... a role-defining ability that is completely worthless if my first 5-10 levels are balanced around solo play. I want my very first ding to feel special in Pantheon.
A few things to consider from the FAQ and Game Tenets/Features:
"Likewise, some game mechanics often associated with earlier MMOs involved inordinate amounts of downtime, overly severe penalties, too much competition over content and resources, and even downright boring or overly repetitive gameplay. Our intention, therefore, is not to bring back ‘everything’ from the old days, but rather to pick and choose those which make sense and are needed to make a fun, social, cooperative, and challenging game."
A requirement that classes have identities. No single player should be able to do everything on their own.
A commitment to a style of play that focuses on immersive combat, and engaging group mechanics.
An understanding that a truly challenging game is truly rewarding.
A belief that an immersive world requires intelligent inhabitants.
A sincere commitment to creating a world where a focus on cooperative play will attract those seeking a challenge.
A belief that the greatest sense of accomplishment comes when it is shared - and earned.
An agreement that player levels should be both meaningful and memorable.
Immerse yourself in group-focused, intensely social gameplay using classes that complement each other, encouraging teamwork.
Play classes that have meaningful and defined roles such as Tank, Healer, DPS or Utility (crowd and encounter control). Class identity and group interdependence is key!
"Pantheon focuses on challenging content and social aspects of gameplay, encouraging groups and guilds, forging new relationships, and earning a reputation in the community."
"Because Pantheon values the paradigm of great risk vs. great reward, the player will always be encouraged to push themselves out the door and to embrace exploration, adventure, danger and the community of players alongside them."
I almost entirely agree with oneADseven. A few points come to mind.
1. For the health of the game the earliest levels need to work well for new players that are not veterans of Everquest or Vanguard or perhaps any MMOs. They will give newcomes a chance to see how the mechanics work in action (even a good tutorial is something many players even those that need it most skip through quickly to get into the game). Simple things like walking around, talking to NPCs, fighting relatively easy soloable mobs, finding merchants to sell very basic starter equipment and crafting items, learning that killing enemies gives you items that can be sold, and the like.
I agree with the concept that it is good for Pantheon to show some of its distinguishing features from the beginning. But I emphasize that for players brand new to the concept it is best to have them not too obtrusive. Ease into things. Do not have a really new character need to group to kill a rat 30 seconds from the starter town. Maybe have a group of wolves that a new player does not *need* to fight a bit further away - and when he or she reads in chat that a dead wolf can give really good rewards (by level 1-2 standards) but takes two or three people to kill the player gets some incentive to group up.
My concern is that a brand new player trying the game on a free trial that may be open to the ideas Pantheon represents may still not have the tolerance to put up with immediate frustration and death (of the character). Ease them into things rather than have that rat two-shot them because it takes a group to kill.
2. Levels should come much more slowly than in other MMOs even early on but not TOO slowly. If grouping is something that becomes more and more useful as you gain experience and levels you do want people to get to that point reasonably soon. Thus - assuming that by level 3 or 5 as much as half the content is something that is hard to solo for most classes - you don't want it to take a week or a month in the "real world" for a player to get to that point. Not the 10 minutes of other MMOs to be sure but maybe hours not days.
3. One not entirely obvious benefit to making levels come slowly expecially after e.g. level 5 is it encourages players to try many different things, go slowly, and "stop and sniff the roses". If two hours of rose-sniffing means I have lost out on 10 levels of progress for my character I may think only of the thorns. If that same two hours means I forego the chance to gain 1/10 of a level I may enjoy the beautiful petals more.
4. Don't rely solely on chat to get people together. Have guild and group NPCs standing around in the starter towns to talk to new players about what guilds and groups are and their benefits.
5. Class distinctions - yes it is good to give each class at least one major ability that focuses on its role in a group. Immediately - a level 1 ability. But every class without exception should be able to solo as well. Certainly at these starter levels. That same frustration factor may drive a good healer away from the game if a level 1 or 2 healer is so weak that he or she can't kill the rat without help. No classes like the Midgard Healer from DAOC please.
The following from oneADseven represents what I consider a critical point.
"There should be consistency and we may as well introduce players to a group-focused mentality early on. The conning system feels extremely sketchy when players can easily solo even-con content at level 1 but by the time they get to level 10, even-con mobs feel dramatically more powerful."
Some of us argue that the game should start as it means to go on - highly group-centered, very difficult, with death being both relatively common compared to other games because of the higher difficulty level and also more punishing. I very strongly disagree. The game should have *some* of these elements even by level 2 or level 3 but it should ease into things in order to protect its very lifeblood. Not us - the dedicated and mostly very experienced supporters. New players that aren't from these forums and haven't played any of the early MMOs.
To expand on my previous post, I just want to be clear that I wouldn't want to see solo play completely eliminated from the 1-10 experience. The pain point that I would like to see addressed is the type of combat and gameplay that is usually associated with having only a single ability. You can't really tune the super early content to be challenging when players have nothing but auto-attack and a single ability as part of their kit. The only real thought process that players have is whether or not they have enough HP to engage something and win the battle of attrition. It's mostly an RNG thing where the outcome is based on how often you hit/miss with your auto attacks, regardless of what class you play.
I think it's particularly weird to make casters heavily reliant on auto-attack early. I don't want to see grouping forced at level 1. I just want gameplay to be interesting and don't think we should waste 1-10 levels that ultimately feel like something that is primarily solo-oriented before giving players the tools to allow them to fulfill a role. Solo play is fine in the beginning but it should be dangerous/challenging rather than thoughtless and RNG-based. Grouping doesn't need to be forced but it should definitely be superior to solo play from the very beginning. The sooner players realize that it's worth seeking out others to work cooperatively with, the better. It would be great if there was an emphasis on each class being able to fulfill a role, even at the most basic level, during those interactions.
A class can have some versions of some of their unique abilities at level 1.
Or
A class can have very very weak versions of all of their unique abilities at level 1.
Or
A class can have one or none of their unique abilities at level 1.
Or something else entirely. :) Personally, I think each class being able to perform their group role from level 1 seems reasonable, if it's a group oriented social game. Seems easy enough to do, provided unique class identity is a real design goal.
Certainly, by level 5, in some gameplay frameworks, classes are almost entirely unique and can uniquely perform their role.
I agree in principle with everything that 1AD7 is proposing, but I wanted to throw out a couple of cautions:
1) Taking this approach with classes and the early levels means that starter zones can't simply be loose collections of monsters to fight like we have seen in so many games. There's going to have to be work invested in providing actual group content and challenges appropriate for solo, duo/trio, and full groups of players. I fully support this happening but we should all remember that it's very different from what we're used to.
2) I understand the dislike for early levels being mostly autoattack, but I want to point out that button mashing isn't a great idea either. If you train players to simply spam their best abilities over and over and over, you're not really emphasizing the idea of meaningful tactical choices in combat. Someone would probably need to evaluate each class independently to see how this could work but I think what you would have to do is to try and introduce the playstyles that you want that class to have early on. So for example for rogues, you need to force them at low levels to be relying on their stealth abilities, even while soloing, and for wizards, you need to reinforce the idea of that big nuke being something you use at the right time due to it's mana cost. Anyway, what the goal should NOT be is just to give people buttons to press because "standing there autoattacking is boring". If you give someone a button to press you need to make sure that they have to think about when to press it, and the answer should NOT be every time it's off cooldown.
Nephele said:I understand the dislike for early levels being mostly autoattack, but I want to point out that button mashing isn't a great idea either. If you train players to simply spam their best abilities over and over and over, you're not really emphasizing the idea of meaningful tactical choices in combat.
This is a fair point and I certainly wouldn't want button mashing to be emphasized. The point is to bring tactical / role-defining play to the equation as soon as possible. By giving players 3-4 abilities at the very beginning, you're basically allowing whatever style of gameplay that would exist somewhere between levels 5-10 (11-15?) to occur immediately. If the situation you describe occurs then it's an underlying issue that was going to happen anyway. As someone who plans on playing a warrior, I think these 4 abilities would capture the essence of my role:
Taunt -- Timing this ability should be critically important to the flow of group-based combat.
Shield Bash -- If you're fighting something that casts spells then managing this ability would be important as it would allow the warrior to interrupt the cast and reduce incoming damage, incoming CC, or even healing being applied to the NPC's. If you're fighting a melee mob there are still opportunities to use this kind of ability strategically. (Before they try to run away, or while the warrior is low-health to buy an extra second or two for the healer.)
Shield Block -- Based on the description of this ability, timing it correctly should be emphasized.
War Hero -- This is a peel ability that can be used to save an ally or potentially reacquire threat. (Maybe this ability is unlocked at level 3, 4, or 5.)
Nephele said:Anyway, what the goal should NOT be is just to give people buttons to press because "standing there autoattacking is boring". If you give someone a button to press you need to make sure that they have to think about when to press it, and the answer should NOT be every time it's off cooldown.
This was never the goal but I appreciate you bringing it up anyway to make sure that everybody is on the same page of what is being discussed. By having the above abilities at the very beginning of the game I feel that the warrior class would be properly recognized as one that fulfills the tank role from multiple perspectives. None of those abilities should be spammed as there is an opportunity cost for having them available in the right moments. DPS classes would obviously work a little differently, just like you suggested for the rogue, but I feel this same basic principle could apply to all classes. DPS classes should be mindful of spamming their abilities for rapid burst as it would likely put them in grave danger, even if they do have a tank with taunt/peel and a healer backing up the team.
There should and most likely will be plenty of solo play. I should not be penalized for solo play either. Leveling in a group should just be faster. Alienating a good chunk of the player base because you are nervous you wont find group members fast enough is a mistake.
If you cannot find group members the server is either dead, its a slow time of the day or nobody likes you. If the game is as centered on groups as you seem to want it to be why bother logging on if I dont have time to sit down for a few hours and grind with a group? If i have say 45 minutes to kill before work I should be able to log in and grind for a bit with clearly slower but meaningful gains. This also gives me time to chat with guild members and form these "bonds" everyone seems fond of.
In the end, the game will be what it will be. These useless threads saying what you think the game should be only serves to poke a stick in some peoples sides. No dev is reading this stroking his chin and thinking "interesting".
beautifully said:There should and most likely will be plenty of solo play. I should not be penalized for solo play either. Leveling in a group should just be faster. Alienating a good chunk of the player base because you are nervous you wont find group members fast enough is a mistake.
If you cannot find group members the server is either dead, its a slow time of the day or nobody likes you. If the game is as centered on groups as you seem to want it to be why bother logging on if I dont have time to sit down for a few hours and grind with a group? If i have say 45 minutes to kill before work I should be able to log in and grind for a bit with clearly slower but meaningful gains. This also gives me time to chat with guild members and form these "bonds" everyone seems fond of.
In the end, the game will be what it will be. These useless threads saying what you think the game should be only serves to poke a stick in some peoples sides. No dev is reading this stroking his chin and thinking "interesting".
You have pledged to the wrong game apparently.
Well the Devs have actually said the content will be guaged to be for grouping, but obviously depending of your own skill, and other things to consider you could still be able to solo certain content, might not be abel to solo mobs in a dungoen or whatever but soloing will be a thing, they might be 4 levels higher than the mob, but you can't actually "take out" soloing, that is pretty much impossible, but you can make it challenging, and extremely time consuming if you wanted too.
beautifully said:There should and most likely will be plenty of solo play. I should not be penalized for solo play either. Leveling in a group should just be faster. Alienating a good chunk of the player base because you are nervous you wont find group members fast enough is a mistake.
If you cannot find group members the server is either dead, its a slow time of the day or nobody likes you. If the game is as centered on groups as you seem to want it to be why bother logging on if I dont have time to sit down for a few hours and grind with a group? If i have say 45 minutes to kill before work I should be able to log in and grind for a bit with clearly slower but meaningful gains. This also gives me time to chat with guild members and form these "bonds" everyone seems fond of.
In the end, the game will be what it will be. These useless threads saying what you think the game should be only serves to poke a stick in some peoples sides. No dev is reading this stroking his chin and thinking "interesting".
Alyonyah is right you know. And from what you've said it's evident that you don't follow forums and streams regularly - devs knows what this game will definitely be and what it won't be, but they certainly listen to community and change their stance if one can give convincing argument (like it was in the case of multiboxing) and they incorporate ideas from the community that they haven't even thought of themselves (two heads are better than one and devs+community beats devs by themselves anytime) - and this community can come up with some really marvelous ideas!
@1ad7, I resonated with everything you said. I hate how meaningless the first 5-10 levels are in most MMOs. 1-10 takes 3-4 hours is a lot of games.
That being said, I think the best solution is for the devs to find a balance between 'all in Pantheon vision from level 1' and the fact that new players DO need a little bit of a softer intro (as @dorotea highlighted and added some great suggestions on how to do it "right").
And I think it can be done. Every champ should start with some sort of damage ability and utility ability. Healers get a heal, rogues maybe an innerupt or trap, and warriors a taunt, etc. That would allow the veterans to group at level 1 and it be meaningful, yet new players would not be overwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, I think it's going to be "easy" in the first few levels, but at least we can start to get that Pantheon feel from level 1.
The first 5 or so levels need to go moderately fast. Still slower than all the MMOs out there though... maybe 5-8hrs to solo to level 5 (half that for a group of 6 maybe). Making those first few levels quicker will allow for the game to transition it's tuning and difficulty a bit as the game starts to really begin. <<--- And I know maybe you don't like the way that sounds, but I don't see it as a bad thing. We need some sort of intro and ease of getting into an MMO. There are tons of new players that are use to easymode or never played MMOs that are going to try the trial. We don't want to drive them away from the game in the first few hours, as we need to get them invested in the story and their character, so they stick with it once it does get tough.
As long as the overall time between levels is signifcant enough to warrant invested of items/gear/exploring beyond level 5, that gives us 45 levels to really dig in. I can throw away the first 5 in that sense if it makes it easier for people to learn and enjoy their first experience. To reiterate, it can still be done in such a way that groupcentric / experienced folks can level faster and have meaningful group skills 1-5.
As i also agree with 1AD7, i think looking at leveling in a time prespective is a bit boring, especially when you consider the first 5-10 levels and i do hope leveling to max will be a very long road, i fel like grabbing at a few core abilities quickly would be much more engaging and fun to play, if at lvl 5 i only really get lets say a total of 3 abilities to really use i wouldn't want to use them for 8 hours just so i can get more abilities to use,
i believe after level 10 is whenyou should actually make leveling longer that way you have more than enough abilities to start to see what does what and what does what matter in certain situations and than add to it once you keep leveling.
But i dont want to get stuck if limited ability to play my class simply becuase you want my level 1-10 seem more meaningful than it is when the drawback of it is feeling like im playing a class thats imcomplete for a really long time for no reason at all.
This is merely my opinion, but if you actually want the newer players to actually enjoy them game let them get their core abilities til level 10 a little quicker and maybe give them a chance to leave the front gates of their home a lil faster and maybe they might stick around a little longer.
It is one of the biggest disappointments of the genre over the years that needing to group has become diminished to almost non-existence.
That you have no need whatsoever to group up is what I miss the most from 'old school' MMORPGs.
When I went back to play EQ (Project 99) last year I was so disappointed to realise (well, be reminded) that even in EQ you can solo for so many levels. Of course because you can, everyone does, and no one groups up. I would ask to group up just for fun and to get to know people and, even in this niche of players clearly wanting an old-school experience, was largely ignored, because, "Why would you group?", and in the time it takes to explain they could have levelled up twice.
Later you suddenly get to content that kills you quickly if you aren't grouped and everyone is useless at grouping, so there are several more levels where you need to group, but people are awful at it.
I think you really should be encouraged, by whatever means, to group as soon as possible and content should be designed to need that as soon as possible. It would be so easy to make early encounters tough enough to at least require a duo or trio, even if just for DPS to get used to the concepts. People would start to practice healing the tank and controlling the adds, etc, etc.
It is the biggest defining point of the finest the genre has to offer and it would simply be a shame to 'waste' 10 or even 20 levels on a lesser experience.
I have no idea if this was directed to me, but i never said anything to discourage grping in my post, nor would I, but giving people able to gain a few levels and gain a few core abilities so they feel liek they are at least playing a class at all doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
I remember play around level 5-8 in many grps killing orc on "Orc Hill" right outside of Crushbone, it was a lot of fun and it did in turn speed up the leveling process, and it got you to that point of getting to level 10 a little bit faster, and i can say back than that even though i know it took me a bit of time to get to level 10 it didn't take me 20 hours roughly to do it, whihc by average is what some were suggesting, and all i was trying to get it is that it would be unesscary to do such a thing, especially if you cant really do anything at all.
And once they got to Crushbone, whcih most did around 10 it felt like the whole world started to open up, which is exactly where i was kind of getting my ideas from but it didn't only happen there for the Elves in Gfay.
Humans had Orcs camps, and a small part of Befallen if i remember correctly, along with some mobs in Sro.
Ogres and Trolls had UGuk
Dark elves could farm the same Orc Camps and Befallena s Humans , if not on a pvp server or lavastorm mountains if you were.
Barbarians, Erudites and Human of Qeynos had Blackburrow
Halflings had Runnyeye
Dwarves and gnomes joined in with most elves to kill Orcs in Crushbone.
And basically all of these new and exciting areas all pretty much opened up around lvl 10, whcih i believe is important, now i wasnt saying that they simply log on and can get level 10, but i also don't believe it should take so long and feel like your playing a class that almost feels like it does nothing for 20 hours til you get to level tena nd it starts to feel a little bit better, you could esily just have getting 10 not as painful as your suggesting and had the diffculty to leveling afterwards and gain the same result, and probably keep more people playing simply necuase they got tired of pushing 2-3 abilities for 8 hours simply becuae someone thought it was a good idea.
>If you cannot find group members the server is either dead, its a slow time of the day or nobody likes you. If the game is as centered on groups as you seem to want it to be why bother logging on if I dont have time to sit down for a few hours and grind with a group? If i have say 45 minutes to kill before work I should be able to log in and grind for a bit with clearly slower but meaningful gains. This also gives me time to chat with guild members and form these "bonds" everyone seems fond of.<
All of this is quite true. The difference between group-centered and entirely or almost entirely for group play is enormous. The latter will support the people that *only* want to group and do nothing else - but will drive everyone else away, providing a far lower population and much *less* chance to get groups. The former will attract people that aren't totally committed to group-only play and if they group half the time it will vastly increase the number of people available when the group-only crowd is looking for more group members.
>You have pledged to the wrong game apparently.<
Nonsense. VR has said that Pantheon will support both group and solo play - with group play being somewhat more rewarding precisely as Alyonyah said. People that want everyone to leave that doesn't intend to play in the exact same style they intend to play are a threat to Pantheon's success. Pantheon needs to have a lot more of what the core supporters want. Emphasis on grouping, robust support for guilds, slow leveling, slow travel, challenging content than most MMOs. And it will. But if it appeals only to the hardest core of its hardcore supporters it will fail. What good will that do you - or me - or Alyonyah? None.
>I think you really should be encouraged, by whatever means, to group as soon as possible and content should be designed to need that as soon as possible. It would be so easy to make early encounters tough enough to at least require a duo or trio, even if just for DPS to get used to the concepts. People would start to practice healing the tank and controlling the adds, etc, etc.<
This is *also* entirely true. If we do not have a substantial emphasis on grouping and other core tenets why bother even releasing Pantheon? But rewarding group play and encouraging group play is not the same as *requiring* group play. If people cannot play at all if they only have an hour available (assuming they don't want to craft or do other things that can be done alone) they won't subscribe - at least quite a few will never subscribe or will abandon the game. There is a word for a game whose exclusive focus is people that can and will play in 2-4 hour chunks of time uninterrupted by real world considerations.
That word is failure.