If we currently need 1 full bar instead of 100 full bars to reach skill level 100, it means skilling up currently is 100x the speed (considering xp needed is linear).
Leveling speed in the beta
- Thread starter Woody
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If we currently need 1 full bar instead of 100 full bars to reach skill level 100, it means skilling up currently is 100x the speed (considering xp needed is linear).
I think that with re-roll, the reputation and current standings should be kept and not wiped. That way you cannot run away from your griefer status, etc.
Good point - thank you! I've updated the OP. I still hope this thread is helpful in clarifying to those that the current rate of exp gained hasn't been modified, and that the experience bar will more than likely still represent the exp required to gain 1 skill point.
I know many people in game and in chat have been under the assumption this bar represented the amount of exp required to reach 100 when the game went live, and that the exp rate had increased by 100x.
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Rates have to be much lower in release, but still low enough to not be a grind fest.
And when I say low enough, not as low as they were in UO, where to be Grandmaster something you needed to grind your ass off for months in each skill specifically.
Its 2021, nobody cares for a bit of grind but having to be months to get to 100 in something would be a bit too much for today´s standards and the avg gamer.
And when I say low enough, not as low as they were in UO, where to be Grandmaster something you needed to grind your ass off for months in each skill specifically.
Its 2021, nobody cares for a bit of grind but having to be months to get to 100 in something would be a bit too much for today´s standards and the avg gamer.
Of course not. Which is why I said I want to see economy and territorial control. Tedious grinds for character skills have done nothing for the MMORPG genre except kill it though. And PvP MMOs have suffered from this the hardest.
I don't mind working with guildies to mine the stone for a castle or chop the wood for a ship. But killing 10k walkers so I don't hit like a wet noodle is a form of "content" that has long since ceased to be fun for many of us. Hell, it was NEVER fun TBH.
That's absolutely not true. Rust is not comparable at all, since there is no persistence, neither with the players nor with the world. Long term social interaction is a fundamental part of MO. Look at these forums, a significant chunk of the posters have been around for a decade, sharing the same world. You'll find enough grind in things like logistics - now even more than ever since the world is so much bigger. SV has to make sure that there is an actual need to transfer goods across the map, this is something they fucked up in MO1 with everyone eventually being self sufficient.
There's also the "grind" of learning the game, the map, the people and obscure things like alchemy, to a lesser extend this is even still true for quite a few "veterans".
Excessive use of timers (and that includes the time it takes to macro a given skill) are artificial time sink bandaids and a sign of bad game design.
You definitely don't have to macro to skill up a character. You can actually just play the game to skill them up. Even in mo1 there were several skills I would read the books and then over time skill up (crawling etc).
I respect your opinion to want instant gratification but this is not the game for that and never has been. Things take time and there has to be some sort of balance. There are a lot of older players who aren't going to 360 no scope you, but are willing to put in hours to get good. They shouldn't have to worry about a brand new character who just spawned in and was given a steel weapon to slaughter them immediately. Character building is and always has been something you must do in every MMO.
I'm just saying ... there is no need for grind in the the traditional MMO-esque sense in a game like this. You'll feel meaningful progress in different, much less mundane ways than just numbers going up. It's not about "instant grafication" at all and It's not like I want to get rid of the skill system alltogether.
RPG stands for Role-Playing Game, not Ridiculous Progression Game. I don't know about you but actually practicing to get better is much more effective at putting me in the shoes of my character than turning most of my game experience into monotonous tasks just to feel competitive. A LITTLE grind for skills (Such as what was in MO1) is fine but that's not what is being suggested here. What is being suggested here is 10k times the effort to level that we currently have.
I think its fine to have certain luxury skills take awhile to level. No problem there. Like passive regen, subsisting, etc. But core skills shouldn't be a tedious grind...because like I said earlier that just means more macroing and material dump.
It's a long ways off if they ever do it, and I doubt they ever will. But on the crafting end there are MUCH better ways to make leveling meaningful beyond the concept of a material dump. Mat dump is a symptom of cutting and pasting the standard MMO crafting system. In games where crafting takes a bit of effort/time it's replaceable.
Using Wurm again as an example (Because it is prettymuch the only example of a well done crafting system in an MMO) when I was working on a fine carpenter I wasn't even capable of cutting the wood needed to produce items at the quality I made. I would occasionally fill my ships hold with high quality logs from good woodcutters and the go back out and focus on making high quality furniture/tools/wagons that brought me back many times the silver I invested in the logs.
But this was only possible because making a wagon or a 80 quality ropetool or something wasn't a process of:
Put Items Into Window > Hold Button 2 Seconds > Item Finished
I would spend HOURS at each job and that + my high skill are what people paid me for. Time is the missing component every MMO but Wurm lacks to turn crafters into something more than glorified gatherers. (Well, time+effort. EVE has time without effort and it's created a factory management simulator rather than a crafting system.)
Using Wurm again as an example (Because it is prettymuch the only example of a well done crafting system in an MMO) when I was working on a fine carpenter I wasn't even capable of cutting the wood needed to produce items at the quality I made. I would occasionally fill my ships hold with high quality logs from good woodcutters and the go back out and focus on making high quality furniture/tools/wagons that brought me back many times the silver I invested in the logs.
But this was only possible because making a wagon or a 80 quality ropetool or something wasn't a process of:
Put Items Into Window > Hold Button 2 Seconds > Item Finished
I would spend HOURS at each job and that + my high skill are what people paid me for. Time is the missing component every MMO but Wurm lacks to turn crafters into something more than glorified gatherers. (Well, time+effort. EVE has time without effort and it's created a factory management simulator rather than a crafting system.)
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Isn't this just a case of them working on time-gating more of the crafting actions then? We see this in the process of refining, where having higher refining/lore reduces the time it takes to complete the action?
I don't think we need to worry too much because even at 100x slower, there's probably still going to be a significant enough grind assuming that they do have an exponential exp cap growth for each level. Right now, this variable is unknown, however, I'm going to assume that this will be the case considering most games implement progression in this manner, making low to mid levels easier to attain, and increasing the time investment at the higher end.
So long as the power gains from this approach across all levels are on a linear scale, then the system will be good and you will get more value out of the stats low-mid than you do at high levels. This creates a nice trade off between your character investment matters and viability when it comes to the player's actual mechanical skill. When this is applied to combat stats, it makes pvp viability less of an issue as even someone who creates a new account or rerolls out of other stats can easily close the power gap through the low to mid levels but will still reward players who stick with a character/stat/build with a marginal power gain for their time invested. See:
No. If say, rather than taking 2 seconds to click a button and an item spitting out it took 5 minutes, that's time, but it isn't effort. You'd just have a bunch of people AFKIng at crafting benches like they do at extraction ones currently.
Wurm worked in that it engaged people with the process. These were my major breadwinner when I played the role of a fine carpenter:
Wagon - Wurmpedia
Each component had to be added separately.
I sailed to my jobs in a ship full of materials I needed to do my work. Moderate quality nails from well-known blacksmiths, sheets made by tailors, logs cut by the best woodcutters, I even had apprentice carpenters saw my planks and carve my shafts for me before I went to a job when I could find people willing to do so so that I could spend more time building the actual wagons.
On site I would assemble two wheel axels, build the base wagon, then begin the assembly process. When I first started as a fine carpenter this entire process would take hours. By the time I quit, it took 20-30 minutes using decent materials. Another huge breadwinner of mine was large crates which served as storage containers to allow the wagon to carry more. I would get orders upward of 50 crates and they took hours to assemble even with the materials on hand.
The other big seller I had was tools. Tools only generally had a few components. For instance one of my most popular items was rope tool:
Rope tool - Wurmpedia
Comparing that to a wagon you see the assembly process is FAR less detailed. But it still took time. In Wurm each item would have like 5ish actions used to improve it. Each time you successfully improved an item a new action would be randomly generated. So I would sit there filing, carving, polishing, hammering (with a mallet), and adding more high quality wood to my rope tools until they were high enough quality to meet customer specifications. It took time.
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The exact system of Wurm Online doesn't need to be copied (though I personally would be elated if it was). But the idea of time+effort need to be copied if you want a real CRAFTING system and not some glorified gathering system. Once you have logged into a game, engaged in a single profession such as a carpenter or blacksmith all day, and logged out without using a single mat you gathered yourself but still made a huge amount of silver, you'll understand why all other crafting systems are utter garbage. If you have the heart of a crafter that is.
If the idea of spending an entire day crafting and making money DOESN'T sound fun to you, then you shouldn't be playing one. Be a gatherer or just be a fighter/merc.
Even just turning item creation from a 2 second action timer to 3 minutes of this:
Would be a VAST improvement over the standard MMO crafting system clone IMO.
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I mean, look at Runescape. At it's core it's legit just a grind. If the game gives you a reason to care enough to grind, then grinds can work and people can and do enjoy them. They aren't for everyone though and MO isn't runescape. So any degree of grind here needs to be done carefully and for a reason, e.g. as it's been said, to timegate or help mitigate against some of the more gameable systems (rerolling your character out of a bad rep, changing instantly to suit the meta, etc)
It's pretty gratifying to me to achieve a goal in an mmo with my character. I mean I love pvp but mortal Royale wasn't exactly super popular because there's no risk for reward system.
If the focus of Runescape was PvP I never would have played it. Same for Wurm actually.
The difference between a fun grind and a bad grind is this:
A fun grind isn't a grind. It is a reward for doing something fun by getting better at it. This is why I didn't mind grinding fine carpentry in Wurm Online. My mentality was "Lets go around and do jobs for people" and then by doing a lot of jobs I got good. Good enough I was a top player in my chosen profession.
A bad grind is when you need to do something you don't want to do in order to get to something you consider more fun. In ArcheAge I always wanted to be out PvPing, but due to the endless grind I was trading, doing dallies etc. 95% of the time to feel competitive. The sad part is I actually enjoyed trading but feeling forced to do it when I wanted to be PvPing ruined it for me.
This is why EVERY grind that stands between a player and being viable at PVP is ALWAYS a bad grind. Because at least for me, if there is an obstacle between me and 100% competitiveness I focus HARD on getting it done until it is done.
The difference between a fun grind and a bad grind is this:
A fun grind isn't a grind. It is a reward for doing something fun by getting better at it. This is why I didn't mind grinding fine carpentry in Wurm Online. My mentality was "Lets go around and do jobs for people" and then by doing a lot of jobs I got good. Good enough I was a top player in my chosen profession.
A bad grind is when you need to do something you don't want to do in order to get to something you consider more fun. In ArcheAge I always wanted to be out PvPing, but due to the endless grind I was trading, doing dallies etc. 95% of the time to feel competitive. The sad part is I actually enjoyed trading but feeling forced to do it when I wanted to be PvPing ruined it for me.
This is why EVERY grind that stands between a player and being viable at PVP is ALWAYS a bad grind. Because at least for me, if there is an obstacle between me and 100% competitiveness I focus HARD on getting it done until it is done.
I would agree a more fun way to build up certain skills would be a great addition to the game but having characters almost instantly pvp ready would be a much worse situation than a little grind, in games like MO you always have to think about how players will try to exploit the systems in place.
But what you're referring to is preferential and very specific to your use case. There are plenty of grinds in Runescape (to continue the analogy) that people find "fun" like firemaking and woodcutting that aren't fun because you get better at doing it. All you do is chop harder levels of trees with different levels of axes. In these examples, they're just time gated activites and you just do it for the sense of achievement, satisfaction, and the ability to flex on your friends. Maybe it helps you complete a quest etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of fun grinds. Fun grinds all the way. The point is some people like these kinds of gameplay loops, others dont. Balance is key!
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