What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

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What is your sentiment on Arelith's current leveling speed and rate of xp gain?

It is too fast
144
37%
It is fine
184
48%
It is too slow
57
15%
 
Total votes: 385

False Nibble
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by False Nibble » Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:33 pm

Kenji wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:30 pm
fulminea wrote:
Fri Feb 18, 2022 4:17 pm
I've lost a handful of characters very dear to me to nerfs. The character you are referring to I do not consider "lost", but I do understand that from your personal point of view that seems to refer to this character. That particular character was salvagable, I'm just not playing it due to her entire "community" rolling or disappearing after the nerfs to orog specific gear/classes and race probably added up to a signifant loss of powah. But the char itself is okay.
The point remains:
Those characters are lost as a personal choice in the end unless you can answer a later question with a “No”. (See the bullet points below)

I don’t mean to sound callous, but this is also a large overreaction to the Orog community’s part that points out the need to address this even more.

The majority (not all) of the Orog builds lost 2 AC, 1 uni save, and 1 dmg but gained 30hp from the adjustment - very much justified. Two specific types of build lost something slightly more:
- 24 Str/Cha CoT Orog smiter builds: had to become 22/24 split, so it lost 1 more AB and dmg
- Cha caster such as FS or Sorc: lost 1 DC if it doesn’t have between 12 to 14 str at start. They get grandfathered otherwise

But at no point does any of the changes invalidate any build to the point where the character will require a rebuild.

So why did an entire community of Orog decided to stop playing after losing 2 AC? Are mechanical numbers that central and integral to the roleplay? (This is a rhetorical question)

Let’s now go back to your lost characters: have you truly exhausted every rebuild option or spoke to anyone to look for an alternative build? Or did the build had to be built a certain way to cater to the RP at hand?

If the answer is the latter, then we’re about to delve into a whole rabbit hole of how Roleplay and Mechanics exist on a different axis that may or may not be independent of each other. But before that -

The few times I can think of how certain concepts are truly changed due to adjustments are take this one particular case for example:
Death Knight RP: with PM 10 crit immune changed to 15, a barb 16 bard 4 PM 10 build (with terrifying rage and mighty rage and EDR) can not be rebuilt into anything remotely similar.

Now, I felt the loss for that one concept and was actively looking for ways to adjust Palemasters further to enable such a cool concept again. And this is after communicating with certain players and receiving feedback from them.

If all of the “characters lost” to adjustments can be explained with the following:
  • Character Concept
  • Initial Spread
  • Adjustment that makes that spread no longer viable
  • Any recourse from other spreads to justify the concept
Only if one can answer point 4 with a resounding “No” can they truly say the character being lost is not their choice.

I’d otherwise be inclined to believe that the players who “lost their characters due to adjustments” didn’t exhaust their option of looking for more options to build their character. There are so many resources out there, all one needed to do was to simply ask.
To have this addressed so we can leave it behind us,

Yes, the characters are 'lost' as a personal choice.

Yes, most of the builds were not invalidated by the changes and mostly lost what you said above (plus a round less of Divine Might / Shield duration if they didn't swap 2 STR for 2 CHA which is what is assumed).

What it comes down to, to me is this:

What made Orog mechanically attractive as a race was,

- +1 AC over most other races.
- Being able to start off with +4 STR and +2 CHA, something no other race could do.
- Having truly exclusive, powerful Orog weapons no other race could use (they were not bypassable by UMD).

After the adjustments,

- The AC was removed.
- They can either start off with +4 STR +2 CON or +2 STR +2 CON +2 CHA, as far as Divine Builds go. If you go human you essentially trade 30 HP for 34 skillpoints. I would argue an extra maxed skill is worth the 30HP hit when you consider building on one race or the other.
- Their weapons were nerfed and the racial restriction was made bypassable by UMD.

I have already gone into great detail about Orogs and their weapons in another post under the 'Winter Balance Adjustment' thread so I will not do this again here. I commented on the +2 CON Orogs got since then above. The other change was a further -2 WIS dropping them down to -4, which just made Orog the worst race to build a WIS based class on.

The pre-nerf Orog has been what players have known and built around for many years. This is also the first time a forced stat redistribution like this has ever been done on any race, as far as I know. If we assume most Orogs were Div/Str builds, this was essentially a retroactive nerf in one of the main build attributes of the majority of the race.

Why was this necessary? I can only assume the main reason being Orog in its Divine Build variants had +1 AB, AC and Damage over Humans. The argument of Orogs having access to powerful racial weapons is invalid in any build that has access to UMD, and I don't consider adjusting racial stats based around the weapons a race can craft but everyone with UMD can use logical to begin with. Was this so game breaking that required this drastic change? Apparently, it was.

Imagine if all elves suddenly lost 2 DEX and replaced with +30HP. One could say all this change did was give them -1 AB and AC and, in most cases, doesn't invalidate their builds anyway. Despite this I would still expect many would quit, roll, or shelve their characters and move on, simply because the new forced racial characteristics are not what they had in mind when they decided to make their build around that race.

In the above case I would also expect a huge Forum / Discord backlash, considering the number of players who play them, something that is not true for Orogs since their playerbase is much smaller. A good example of this is when Humans were briefly moved up to ECL +1, a change that was reverted immediately likely due to the forum outrage it caused, despite not affecting existing characters.

So no, I don't consider this reaction to be for any RP aspects of a specific build either. It is all about the mechanical aspects of the race and its gear that was suddenly changed after players have built around it for years.

I don't consider most of these 'balance' changes to be implemented for the sake of RP in the first place, except in some rare cases like with Dragonshapers.

As was mentioned, the team wanted to expand Orog into DEX and Weapon Master Builds too, but in doing this they no longer make superior Divine Builds compared to Human or make the best Weapon Masters either (greater detail about this in my previous post too).

For the reasons above, Orog doesn't feel that special anymore, at least not to my eyes. It is not invalidated as a race, but it is not what it used to be either. If the Orog community has truly decided to stop playing as a whole, as is mentioned above, I imagine most just moved on to play something else. With this easy levelling they can make any character with any build in a few weeks anyway, as long as it doesn't require 3 stat gear to function.

Perhaps the next generation of Orog will know and love it for what it is now.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Kaeldre » Mon Feb 21, 2022 6:32 pm

I have never felt so free to roleplay since the first writ changes a few months back, when experience was abundant. I suspect part of the reason was that I could exert less energy for sufficient gain, and give more time to roleplay both during and after dungeon runs. This is still true, but to a lesser extent today.

Sidenote, the rate of experience gained seems to differ between the surface and underdark, mainly because you run out of writs faster down below.
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Kenji » Mon Feb 21, 2022 7:33 pm

-XXX- wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 7:01 pm
The poll asks precisely that in the C option.

If the hypothesis here is "everyone's getting too much xp", I don't see how asking players whether they'd like less/same/more could present us with any relevant data for it.
As expected the majority of respondents selected what they interpreted as the "I don't care, just don't want to miss out/give up stuff" option so far (evidence for this claim presents itself in the comments).

Kenji wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:48 pm
Can you explain how the inflation analogy works again, I don’t see it.
The idea is that most people would spontaneously jump on the opportunity when offered free money, regardless of whether they'd end up being able to get exponentially less for it as a result.
As pointed out by Ork, experience points are not the “only currency” to purchase subjective fun for players involved. The analogy itself is flawed as the “currencies” in comparison have far different intended functionalities.

Another thing to point out is there is nothing in the original post that points to an over abundance of experience points, but it is still at the stage of determining whether or not the players feel that experience points are inflated. The analogy jumps ahead and assumes that there is an over abundance of experience points as felt by the players, but the statistics thus far disagrees.
False Nibble wrote:
Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:33 pm
What it comes down to, to me is this:

What made Orog mechanically attractive as a race was,
What about the Orog’s lore or its place in the Andunor as a contender among the other UD races?

I can assure you elves aren’t popular because of their +2 Dex -2 con. The comparison here is hardly adequate as Orogs as they were were overpowered with extra stats littered all over the place.
False Nibble wrote:
Mon Feb 21, 2022 12:33 pm
Perhaps the next generation of Orog will know and love it for what it is now.
I would hope so, too, now that the draw of Orogs isn’t purely mechanical anymore. Maybe this will promote a healthier mindset when it comes to racial selections.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Quidix » Mon Feb 21, 2022 9:17 pm

Vote: "Too fast"

However, I don't think the solution is as simple as reducing writ rewards. The issue is that doing 3 writs per day is a 2-3h commitment for most people. That means, to be 'efficient', I must first do those writs, if I then have time to spare, I can start to RP. How we get xp is very important here.

I'd suggest to:
  1. Limit it to 1 writ / day, but still keep it as high xp / writ (possibly even increase it) - this gives more free time for RP
  2. Increase the tick xp gains by 2-3x when the character has not been in combat for the last 5min - this encourages taking the time to RP instead of going on a killing spree
  3. Epic sacrifice - reduce the chance for good rewards if the character is less than 3 months

False Nibble
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by False Nibble » Mon Feb 21, 2022 11:08 pm

Kenji wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:48 pm
I can assure you elves aren’t popular because of their +2 Dex -2 con. The comparison here is hardly adequate as Orogs as they were were overpowered with extra stats littered all over the place.
This wasn't meant as a comparison but as an example to player disappointment when mechanical power is taken away. Elves can be replaced with any race and DEX with any primary build stat. A true comparison would be a race losing primary build stats, hard AC and exclusive weapons at the same time, which is quite a bit worse than my example there.

I never denied Orogs were powerful, but it was what players built around, and no matter how much one loves their RP and Lore, they can still feel disappointed when what made them mechanically special is suddenly taken away.

All in all, it shouldn't come as a surprise if Orog players are moving away from them, given what was said in my initial post.

Perhaps they will come back to them later.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Drowboy » Tue Feb 22, 2022 1:03 pm

Too fast. I don't think a choose to nerf yourself option fixes anything, as it feels like part of a broader cultural shift towards throwaway characters that's been barreling along since, idk, EE maybe.
Many people have already given the spiel on why that's bad (to my/their perception, anyway) so I'll skip it- but I do think the speed of leveling combined with the way the epic sacrifice system works is getting, maybe, more wacky than intended. One of them needs correction so that the life cycle of a player isn't conj druid conj druid conj druid tiefling warlock that lasts longer than two weeks.
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by legionetrangere » Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:22 pm

Archnon wrote:
Thu Feb 17, 2022 9:09 pm
The reality is, while we all have hopes an dreams about what RP should look like, and how to build relationships, and what level RP should begin (level 1 for the record), the reality about leveling speed is we shouldn't be looking at in game mechanics or anything like that. What you need to think about is the OOC factors people confront and the goal of preserving a diverse player base.

Reality is, players range from 5+ hours/day to 2hours/week. Our RL ages range massively. Some of us are balancing college, some of us are balancing young children and careers and at this point, some of us might be introducing our children to the game. All of these types of players bring something to the culture of Arelith and all are capable of important RP contributions to the server, no matter how often they are logged on. RP doesn't necessarily mean building a long drawn-out story. It can also occur in the day-to-day interactions of characters both adventuring and sitting around a fire.

The current system of leveling does a great job of accommodating lots of different players styles, with this specifically in mind. The low-play-time player won't ever keep up in leveling speed with the constant player. However, extensive writ-work means that the low-time player can log in and run some writs and advance some. There are enough writs around the island that you can spend 2 hours and walk away with a good chunk of XP, all the better if you find people to do them with. Or they can choose to sit about a fire and chat and rack up tick XP. This alternative is key. The heavy-time players, well they will level quicker if they choose to. However, if it is going too fast, as many have pointed out, you can 1.) not take writs 2.) not click level up. Or they can just level up quickly, and roll when their stories are done. We have lots of different people, we should create opportunities for different speeds.
Couldn't put more plainly. Great choice of words
Mattamue wrote:
Fri Feb 18, 2022 12:52 am
Slower leveling doesn't increase or decrease rp any more or less than the other half-dozen contentious topics that have come up recently.

All slower leveling does is make you repeat leveling content.
Exactly. I know a few people who would despair at the thoughts of going through all that grind again with a new toon. They sit comfortably at 30 doing just RP with their time available.
Slapstick wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:58 am

Just spitballing here
Minor reward: Reach level 30
Normal: Complete 3 different runic dungeons
Greater: Complete all runic dungeons
Major: Complete all epic dungeons + something RP related (but not requiring DM attention) if possible
Not a very good idea I think. If you can't solo runic dungeons, not very active players with few OOC friends would be deadlock from ever achieving the aforementioned goals for pretty much most of the time. The current award system isn't perfect, but at least offers a chance to everyone to shine if they're lucky enough.
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Amateur Hour » Tue Feb 22, 2022 5:00 pm

legionetrangere wrote:
Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:22 pm
Slapstick wrote:
Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:58 am

Just spitballing here
Minor reward: Reach level 30
Normal: Complete 3 different runic dungeons
Greater: Complete all runic dungeons
Major: Complete all epic dungeons + something RP related (but not requiring DM attention) if possible
Not a very good idea I think. If you can't solo runic dungeons, not very active players with few OOC friends would be deadlock from ever achieving the aforementioned goals for pretty much most of the time. The current award system isn't perfect, but at least offers a chance to everyone to shine if they're lucky enough.
Also means that a traditional commoner would likely never be able to roll for more than a minor, even though commoners can contribute greatly to RP.

Rolled: Solveigh Arnimayne, "Anna Locksley"
Shelved: Ninim Elario, Maethiel Tyireale'ala
Current: Ynge Redbeard, ???


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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by TurningLeaf » Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:03 pm

Way too fast for my taste when doing writs. Because of this I don't do many writs. ECL doesn't seem to slow it very much. Just to be clear I don't care how fast anyone else wants to level, have at it by all means.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Whosdis » Tue Feb 22, 2022 9:53 pm

Thank god writs go up to 30 now, the recent changes would have been beyond draconian if that change had not been made.

I can't really fathom the 100k cap on adventuring XP, in the old system I relished that I could get to a point where, if I wanted, I could forego writ work and comfortably level passively. Now I won't get that because normal writs only give a 25% reward. It is lost on me that they attacked adventuring XP and put a cap on it: That just means more writs, not more roleplay.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Eyeliner » Tue Feb 22, 2022 10:43 pm

I'd guess the cap is so you don't bank enough adventure XP to coast to 30 early on with easy dungeons/crafting/etc and to make you keep doing level appropriate writs? I get the sentiment but to veteran players all this stuff becomes busywork when they have the system down so I don't know how much all this fiddling really accomplishes (nor do I think slowing leveling down would have any effect on RP, it would just mean more time on the busywork for most of us).

Let's be real, the leveling process is a false perception of earning something through time spent on an activity that's mostly repetition. I know that's the deal here and I am happy to buy into it because you can't just hand out level 30 characters and it's too difficult to come up with an alternative that actually rewards true accomplishments. But please don't slow it down, a character isn't more earned because I spent 4 months instead of 2 getting to my comfort zone.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Mattamue » Wed Feb 23, 2022 3:18 am

A little off topic, but a relevant question occoured to me. Are there any PWs that give you max level? I've read that fixed level did, but it also essentially replaced xp with gold as far as I could tell.

Are there any level-less PWs out there?

Who is the audience for this post?


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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Nurel » Wed Feb 23, 2022 10:28 am

Mattamue wrote:
Wed Feb 23, 2022 3:18 am
A little off topic, but a relevant question occoured to me. Are there any PWs that give you max level? I've read that fixed level did, but it also essentially replaced xp with gold as far as I could tell.

Are there any level-less PWs out there?
The star wars LOR mod is a skill based classless/level-less PW. Its interesting but very grindy, and somewhat buggy at times.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Sincra » Wed Feb 23, 2022 10:46 am

Exchanging one xp system for another doesn't really make it instant cap.

Fixed level had exponential growth issues, where gold technically made it infinite xp as long as there were feats accessible to you.

The star wars server has skill levels that give core points you can spend in any skill you want, provided you met a pre req level or other skillbuy. These skills then confer feats or mechanics.

Both of these were and are levelling by another name.

I'm not sure I've heard of any full rp servers that gave max level, probably because people enjoy a sense of progression.
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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Whosdis » Thu Feb 24, 2022 9:26 pm

jomonog wrote:
Thu Feb 17, 2022 11:55 pm
I believe its too fast. I think the solution though is to make PVE harder across the board to effectively adjust the rate (rather than changing xp gains).

At the moment though IMO PVE all the way to 30 is just too easy to solo for too many people. Groups are unnecessary for almost all content so people speed level alone. Making PVE harder across the board would not only slow down levelling, it would encourage RP, make obtaining high level a real sense of achievement and also normalise the economy as solo rune/addy grinding slows down.

High levels should also not be able to assist low levels through writs either like it used to be, although given how easy most PVE is to solo at level anyway im not sure this is currently that much of a problem (but it would be if PVE gets harder).
The amount of people doing writs and the like is down, perhaps due to the sailing craze going on lately.

Just over a month back, there was a craze of people doing Skaljard, it was like a zerg rush, I daresay, and even when not doing writs, there were plenty of people to interact with. There were shall we say witch-hunts for forbidden magic practitioners, plenty of groups of different races interacting, and so on.

When I made a new character a few weeks ago after the sailing stuff was tweaked, Skaljard was a ghost town. I'd wait around the campfire and only a few people would waltz by, and I couldn't get help doing writs: I already did that writ, I'm leaving the cave

And that was some of the more generous interaction I had. Skaljard was essentially in line with the surface in general at that point, because I'm certainly still facing a dearth of fellow writ-goers until I caught up to the level range of my friends.

I don't believe this solution is good for that reason. It seems a good idea to encourage group-play, but if you don't have a group at your beck and call, you simply can't do anything in such a system, I know I would have been screwed levelling this most recent character with that sort of system.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by fulminea » Fri Feb 25, 2022 7:02 am

Personally it seems to me that with the increased leveling rate, alot of content from the crafting table has become obsolete, especially anything more directed toward mid levels.

Looking at many Player Shops I also notice that there is no demand for 1st and 2nd Tier Rune materials, as these things sit around forever in Shops.

So generally I feel like the leveling speed does not synergize with the contents of the crafting Table anymore either, affecting the Shops and also impacts the Profits from taxes, since many items just dont sell, limiting the effective ways how to run a Shop to consumables.

I do like the idea that someone else mentioned to make pve content more challenging. I think the Max Level dungeons should all be raised in difficulty as well.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Good Character » Fri Feb 25, 2022 1:59 pm

fulminea wrote:
Fri Feb 25, 2022 7:02 am
Personally it seems to me that with the increased leveling rate, alot of content from the crafting table has become obsolete, especially anything more directed toward mid levels.

Looking at many Player Shops I also notice that there is no demand for 1st and 2nd Tier Rune materials, as these things sit around forever in Shops.

So generally I feel like the leveling speed does not synergize with the contents of the crafting Table anymore either, affecting the Shops and also impacts the Profits from taxes, since many items just dont sell, limiting the effective ways how to run a Shop to consumables.

I do like the idea that someone else mentioned to make pve content more challenging. I think the Max Level dungeons should all be raised in difficulty as well.
I believe this is a case of confirmation bias. Lesser and Greater runes were never used beyond case-specific scenarios (e.g. Lesser Blade on loot-obtainable +4 weapons, Greater Etched on Enchanted Shield, etc.). There's also subjectively an overflow of those runic components being accessible.

People also never seemed to purchase Steel or Masterly Steel weapons before, either, despite their lv 2 access.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by fulminea » Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:29 am

Maybe this is another issue that could be looked at independently of leveling speed, then.

I think its a shame that most craftable items are obsolete.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Irongron » Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:50 am

fulminea wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:29 am
Maybe this is another issue that could be looked at independently of leveling speed, then.

I think its a shame that most craftable items are obsolete.
It's a point I've raised a few times in relation to this. A lot of our low-mid tier items are useful for only days, sometimes just hours on a standard writ character, characters who also spend little on their way up because they simply don't gain enough gold in so short a time to afford the end game gear they will very soon require.

Fast levelling affects crafting, gold economy, player shop and loot utility, quarter uptake, PvP, and makes a good 85% of area content redundant after a few weeks of casual play.

A great deal on Arelith has codependency with other systems, and whether one agrees with it or not, a rapid increase to levelling speed over the last years threw a great deal of server content out of balance.

Something I hear a lot now is that I need to make a lot more post 30 content, and I can see it is a problem - but it's also one very much of our own making.

I guess of all the comments I read on this thread it was the (somewhat hyperbolic) comment that Arelith had become little more than a 'PGCC +' server that keeps rattling around in my head. We're all building for that level 30 planned loadout, which I just don't think is as fulfilling as it can first seem.

Still, with the writ options now players can vote with their actions, and not their words, and I still feel a majority will choose the rapid levelling option.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Floral Shoppe » Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:57 pm

This has more to do with most end game gear being usable at level 16 or 21 than how long people take to level. If you had to wait until level 26 or even 30 to equip the best stuff you'd see the mid-range used more but now you're better off saving the money for the item you'll use the rest of that character's life.

I'm not saying this because I want level requirement raised but there's more to it than speed of writs. Slowing down leveling to force a market for mid-range stuff is not going to work because there's little reason to invest heavily in it even if you take your time. Nobody is engaging in competitive PVP vs others of the same level in the teens and PVE isn't so difficult you have to optimize all of your gear. All of it is temporary by nature and certainly not worth the trouble and expense of runing when that coin could go to the premium item you'll inevitably replace it with.

I don't think that stuff sold all that well in the pre-writ days either at least not to players who knew the game. Selling steel weapons and armor depends on a new player buying something they think they need but don't actually need all that much. Experienced players know you can craft it yourself or get someone to do it for free since the materials aren't difficult to acquire or you can just even hold off entirely and use dungeon loot and usually do okay early on.

If you want players to linger in the teens then make it fun to be in the teens with some exclusive stuff you lose when you level out. The only reason to hold off on leveling right now is because you don't want to leave Skal. Otherwise everything in the game is aspirational and pushes you to advance instead of rewarding stopping and smelling the roses.
Last edited by Floral Shoppe on Sat Feb 26, 2022 8:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Whosdis » Sat Feb 26, 2022 8:19 pm

As a pretty new player myself, I think there's more going on than what you might think. When I brought friends onto the server and we were levelling as a group, we did get mid-tier gear when we found ourselves struggling against certain content: Not only that, we had to pool our money to afford gear to do so. So it may seem that "fast levelling = less use of medium-tier gear", but you have to keep multiple things in mind:

What can the characters who would get the most use out of this gear afford, what are they willing to pay?
What are the people who have the crafting points and resources willing to sell these items for so that it is worth the crafting points and resources?
Why would the character who is able to make this mid-tier equipment make it if the characters who could get the most out of it can't pay what would make it worth the crafter's time?

I think there's a mixture of brainworms going on (the PGCC+ comment) and other things trying to justify slowing things down, but is there a legitimate reason to do this, other than rose-tinted glass to the "good ol' days"?

Now, on other servers, I have had good experiences with low level content: The New Character Week for PoTM comes to mind, as well as a few alt-beginnings on Amia.
But this precludes interactions and events curated to newer characters, and is one major reason (among others) that people want to get to level 30 to begin with: They get to have curated adventures flavored up by the DM's.

Now, one can obviously have fun roleplaying and doing dungeons, but that's not always the most engaging roleplay, especially to do it constantly until epic levels, because on some level it is fluff: You'll fight standard enemies, get a standard reward, and by the time you're done the beginning of the dungeon will be filled with enemies again, and the boss will be back again in 20 or so minutes. These dungeons can very, very seldom ever be a replacement of the experience of an epic level event.

Now, I must ask, why must the levelling experience be based around writs and circle grinding anyway? One of my friends who is more disinclined from doing writs would probably be served well if there were a more roleplay-oriented means of levelling. I think the adventuring XP simultaneously enhances and undercuts that.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Good Character » Mon Feb 28, 2022 3:01 pm

Irongron wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:50 am
It's a point I've raised a few times in relation to this. A lot of our low-mid tier items are useful for only days, sometimes just hours on a standard writ character, characters who also spend little on their way up because they simply don't gain enough gold in so short a time to afford the end game gear they will very soon require.
What if items took the same route as the Variable Whip? The pinnacle of the whips that requires each of the previous tiers of whips to made first. It gives relevancy to those low and mid-tier materials. Could either make only the Masterly versions qualify for Masterly, or make everything qualify but the lesser versions require more materials to transform it into the Masterly damask version.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Hunter548 » Tue Mar 01, 2022 2:54 am

Irongron wrote:
Sat Feb 26, 2022 11:50 am

It's a point I've raised a few times in relation to this. A lot of our low-mid tier items are useful for only days, sometimes just hours on a standard writ character, characters who also spend little on their way up because they simply don't gain enough gold in so short a time to afford the end game gear they will very soon require.
I think the biggest contributor to this is the difficulty involved in crafting even starter gear. It's not a new phenomenon - iron gear is the "basic" form of full plate/tower shields/weapons/etc but no one ever seriously makes the stuff, and no one ever did back in the halcyon pre-writ days. Iron's actually not that easy to get as a level 3/5 (Especially back in the aforementioned halcyon pre-writ days), the DC to craft them isn't terribly achievable for a lowbie without the crafting gift, and (most importantly) steel isn't that much more investment to make than iron. A few more lumps of coal, and two higher DC, and you get something you can actually use for a decent chunk of your character's life rather than something you'll abandon almost immediately. This is was as true ten years ago as it is now. It's true of tailoring goods too; Fine leather armor is just not trivial to make at level 10 unless you're good friends with someone with cooking investment and art investment or happen to find a shop that sells it for something that won't bankrupt you.

Honestly, I think the biggest change to this sort of thing is the random ore change. Nowadays it's very possible to never see an iron deposit until you're well past the point where steel armor/weapons feel like a cool item to be acquiring. I've had melee characters who could make their own gear skip straight from steel gear to adamantine, not because I leveled like a fiend but because the most reliable places to find mithril are also the places where adamantine spawns, and I just got slightly unlucky (and it really only needs slightly bad luck for this to happen).

I think in general people frame this issue in the wrong way (which is an issue for another post), but with regards to economy/crafting issues, I think the far bigger issue is just that iron gear is near-worthless, steel is fairly basic, and it's fairly difficult to acquire either at level 5 without a higher level character's help in either crafting it or acquiring the materials. You can't rely on higher level PCs to stock shops with this stuff either; their market is smaller, their profit margins smaller, and it needs more crafting points and resources to make the same money their friend does selling mithril/masterly steel/adamantine gear.
UilliamNebel wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2020 10:24 pm
You're right. Participating in the forums was a mistake. Won't do this again.
Anime Sword Fighter wrote: I have seen far too many miniskirt anime slave girls.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Cowbot » Fri Mar 11, 2022 3:14 am

As long as there are a host of bored level 30s, the level 30s will always solve all problems no matter how mundane.

Nobody is going to go to a level 12 cleric to lift a curse if there is a level 30 who can do it better/faster.

Nobody is going to ask a level 8 wizard to design an arcane ritual if a level 30 can do it better/faster.

Nobody is going to ask the level 14 fighter to defend their town if there is a level 30 who can do it instead. If both come, the level 30 will become commander and hog the interaction.

Forgotten Realms solves this problem by making the scarce high leveled people like Elminster so busy that they can't be bothered with low-level problems.

Arelith has 10 Elminsters hanging out in Cordor's Square bored out of their minds at all times of day.

So, while low leveled characters can do these things, why would you ever ask the less skilled person to do it? The level 30 is more likely to succeed and they have far more options.

This is why "RP starts at 30." Below 30 RP is doable but niche, and usually only viable when in a relationship with a level 30, a la apprentice RP.

In an environment with a scarcity of plotlines, you need every advantage you can get to hope to get in on the action.

The other option is, of course, to create your own plotlines and hooks. This can be done at any level. However, the problems you can cause and stories you can tell increases the higher level you become.

If you slow down leveling, you lock new characters out from RP unless you also reduce the number of level 30s. Epic sacrifice does this to some degree, but if leveling is harder I think you'll see fewer people roll.

If you want lots of low and mid level RP, you need a server population shaped like a triangle: Lots of lowbies, some middle, and a small number of high leveled folk. Then people can't just ask the epics to solve all of their problems because there aren't enough epics to solve them all, or not enough diversity of epics to guarantee one of them will care about you.

This is not possible on Arelith. We have far too many players at max level. That ship sailed a long time ago.

The leveling speed as it is is fine. It gives people enough experience with their character that they know how to play them. They're familiar with their abilities and equipment, they bump into enough people during writs that they have a good introduction to various factions etc. Then when they hit 30 (or 26?) they have a firmer grasp on whether they want to continue or what direction to take.



Someone asked about servers with max level characters. Back at the beginning of NWN, there were local-vault PW servers. I enjoyed them more than the others because it was all story and no tedium. However, none of them lasted through the hungry years before NWN:EE came about.

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Re: What is your sentiment towards the rate of which levels and experience are gained?

Post by Ork » Fri Mar 11, 2022 9:20 pm

I don't think we need to have a triangle population of characters, and I also don't believe the statement that players won't use a L12 cleric vs. a L30 cleric. The truth is that players respect gravitas created through roleplay a thousand times more than mere levels.

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