Do something about leveling.....

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Flaffen
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Do something about leveling.....

Post by Flaffen »

Ok, now we can all agree that lvling past lvl 70 is slow, and past lvl 80 is EXTREMLY slow. One thing is that the XP needed is increased by a lot, but the fact that monsters become less and less efficient (xp compared to the time it takes to kill them) and that at higher level more and more stats are needed, just makes the whole equation redicoulus. When a high level player is happy to have gained 3-4% xp with one days worth of grinding I think that somethings wrong. The point is that its a game, its not life, people should not spend large parts of their life playing just to progress in a game (wich people obviously do because games a addictive, i'm not going to go into the reason why they are addictive cuz thats covers a lot of ground). Its supposed to be entertainment, not a life style. So I have come up with a few suggestions to help this out.

1. Add an additional XP bar under the original one. This goes from 1-100 but only covers 1% of the total xp (so 1% on this xp bar will only be 0.01% of total xp). This way lvling will be more enjoyable because it will be much easier to see your own progress.

2. Add more good items that you can work towards. It diddent take long before i had all of the best items ingame. So why not add a few new items that can be gained thru the quests from the blacksmith like the iron shield. For expamle that you can upgrade your leather gloves/boots/pants to a chainmail version if you give him an infantry helmet and a few iron ores per item. For example: Leather Gloves + Infantry helmet + 3 iron ores = Chain Mail Gloves ( 7% defense), Leather Boots + Infantry Helmet + 3 iron ores = Chain Mail Boots ( 5% defense), Jeans with snake chaps + infantry helmet + 6 iron ores = Chain Mail Leggings ( 10% defense). If you add these and more items, people can work towards these and free up some points spent in vitality and spend them on other stats instead. Adding bracers and magic rings would also be an idea.
I also think there should be added new weapons, like a 2handed sword (cant be used with shield ofc.). For example: 300 dmg 1.5 second attack delay (assuming setzer has 1 second attack delay). Also upgrades of the forest bow or new better ones, new one handed weapons (better than setzer) and some other 2 handed weapons, like spears 2 handed axes polearms or such. Or different items with same dps as setzer but with different stats.

3. Start stat point cost at 1 instead of 2, and increase by 1 for every 10 points spent (think this increases a lot more at very high stats, like at 90 stat points it costs at 11 for a new one). This will free up a bit of stat points so people can grind faster. This is needed because the amount of dex or accuracy is way to high. At lvl 72 i specced 99 dex and could barely hit the skulls. I need at least 70 dex at lvl 75 to be able to hit snakes at a decent rate, and this sucks up most of your available points.

4. Increase the spawn rates of monsters, this is pretty much the only reason people are not grinding only low level monsters. They are and will allways be the best xp considering how much time you spend trying to kill them. The only problem is that you run out of monsters very fast.

5. Add an alternative method of progressing apart from leveling. For example: Alternative Advancement points: You redirect your experience into a new experience pool, this pool is set at a fixed value like 10-20k experience. Once you fill it up, it resets and you gain an Alternative Advancement point.
These points can be spent in the normal stats like Str, Dex, Agi, Vit, Int and Luck, or into more specific areas like Accuracy, Defence, Attack and the rest (these would of course cost less AA points than the stats since they are more specific). For example 1 AA point per 1 normal stat (Str, Dex, Agi ect.)
or 1 AA point per 2 "substats" (Accuracy, Defense, Evasion ect.) There could also be additional stats like haste and dual wield specialzation (if you decide to implement dual wielding, wich i hope you will).
It could also be used to later purchase skills like "whirlwind" or whatever you may come up with.
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5t3v3
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by 5t3v3 »

1. Remember that the game is still in development, currently there's only content/monsters up to lvl 70-ish if you're beyond 70, the current monsters are in a way "to weak" for you, and it'd make sense that you can't level fast with them. As new monsters will be added gaining exp will become easier again.

2. The problem with new weapons and so on, is that the animation is still no completed.

3. I like the current statpoints. Yes they do become very expensive after a while. But if you're smart you wouldn't focus on one single stat, but instead seek the benefit of multiple stats and balance your character. Again, as the game develops and new content will be added I'm sure peopel will eventually be able to max out all stats, because the higher your level, the more points you get for a level up. So if the 99 stats are insanely expensive, thats the price you gotta pay for not balancing your character.

4. there are already some places with high density monsters (snake pit, mines). It seems to make perfect sense to me that caves have more monsters then teh outside. I do think maps with lots of spawns (like for example evil mushrooms, grassnakes; black scorpions and so on) are a good addition. But that would preferably be in new maps then.

5. This idea seems to easy, there will be an infinte amount of statspoints available and everyone could easily make "perfect" characters. In my opinion each good ability should have it's drawback ( like how maxing out stat to 99 should eat up all your points so you have few left for other stats). Part of the fun and challenge of the game is deciding which abilities you choose and at what price it comes.
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Flaffen
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by Flaffen »

Well i do try to balance out the stats, problem is that i'll end up missing almost all the time. If i have less than 70 dex at lvl 70 i keep missing monsters like black scorpions (i still miss, but not that often). Thats the problem, the accuracy requirement prevents you from balancing out your stats unless you want to fight really low level monsters, wich you will run out of very fast. Also, there is content past lvl 70, like skulls and Jack O. The problem is that you will miss them constantly, making it take forever to kill them and thus the exp will be crap. Just lowering the amount of agility of certain monsters or other stats will make them viable to grind. The Mountain snakes for example requires a lot higher luck, a lot of dex and lots of defence to kill. But they only give like 100 more exp than normal snakes. This means that you can kill like 3 snakes in the same time it would take you to kill a Mountain snake (with the apropriate stats). To me it seems that the devs think that if you double the damage and health of a monster you double its difficulty. Thats not the case,
if you double its health and damage, you make it 4 times as hard, not 2.

Also, you dont neccicarily have to use new animations for new items. If you add a sword with dps equal to setzer (only with more dmg and slower), you can still use the animation for the short sword. Same with bow and dagger, the schyte is in the game, that can be animation for polearms. Adding new items doesent neccicarily require new animations, just use the old ones.
Flaffen
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by Flaffen »

Also idea number 5. the alternative advancement point, should obviously be capped at a certain number of points. Forgot to write this, kinda thought it was obvious.
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radiant
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by radiant »

Point 3 really just comes down to "How good should the game allow any given character to be?"

Right now, on a 2-11 schedule, even a level 99 character (with 1592 stat points, 48 of which are used upping stats from 1 to 5 whether you like it or not) can only max out 2 stats at a time--the best they can do is 5-5-6-69-99-99. If the cost schedule drops to 1-10, that coincides almost exactly with the max point on the third stat, 5-5-7-99-99-99. It comes down to a philosophical matter...should the endpoint of character development be able to get you to 50% of the original blank slate, or some point less?

For 2, equipment power creep is a dangerous tightrope to walk. One thing that still hasn't been settled is how good the best available set of armor should be. Right now it's at 78%, which--as long as JackO's still hitting from 100 all the way up to 500--is insufficient to allow any character, even the most resilient builds possible in the game, to absorb its attacks on their own. A crude calculation I just ran tells me that it averages 9 damage per hit (with extreme variance) on such a character, whereas it needs to be under 6.9 to be subsumed by automatic recovery. Of course it is still possible to take it on alone right now, provided you have enough luck to break through with some number of criticals before it wears you down, but there's another point of the game's philosophy to be settled here--do we want to marginalize an entire character class?

1 can already be done in a way (look for a patch that puts decimals in the XP bar), on 4 there's a history of lowering spawn rates in many places to their current levels (so don't count on them being rolled back), and 5 is, as described, far too easy.
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Goku
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by Goku »

Flaffen wrote:
1. So this is pretty much useless? Just breaks down the overall "100%" to smaller portions so you can feel your getting somewhere?

2. More items will come in the future as the game progresses, atleast I hope. Getting the best items might not be as easy seeing as how the red slimes in the mines were changed.

3. This is the whole point. You can either choose to be a high hitter at a low rate, or a low hitter at a steady rate, and so on..

4. Increasing the spawn rate will only be asking more and more people to start camping.

5. I'm pretty sure a lot more things will be added to the game before the staff team is satisfied. Magic should be coming to the main server soon, then more quests, items, things to do, etc..

As for the main reason you posted this.. I think spawn rates/lvl'ing and having to grind is okay at the moment. Once you get to lvl 70+ it should be hard to lvl.
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doorsman
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by doorsman »

I am sorry Flaffen, but gaining levels is much more easier than what it once was. As i said on another post already, ask the old timers how it was let's say, 6 months ago, or even more further back. There is no need to complain about leveling now. I think the balance is there, Low to Mid levels can get High levels soon enough if they know where they should train. If you are not sure about what you should do, just ask. People will give you advices :D
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Goku
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by Goku »

And even though doors is busy being a GM he will gladly take time to help you fight some monsters, isn't that right doors? :lol:
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doorsman
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Re: Do something about leveling.....

Post by doorsman »

Indeed Goku. If those are skulls or snakes I will gladly help :evil:

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