Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Zaide said:

I think Dullahan is right on the money. The leveling process should be slow. I think the best scenario is about 250 hours of grind time to max level which will have players moving around exploring and trying out multiple zones in each level range as well as experimenting with quests and tradeskills to break up that grind.

With 250 hours your average player will reach max level in about 90-120 days if they play daily. This assumes an average of 4 hour sessions with LFG time, travel and some bs inbetween.

On the other end, hardcore players will see cap in 10 - 13 days.

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I'd bet Alpha access money that you just put more thought into the "time spent grinding to max level" idea than all of the Pantheon devs put together.

I dont personally like or care for the horrifyingly long grind time you guys are suggesting. I enjoyed BDO, but the extreme grind and RNG in the later levels ruined it for me and I just stopped logging in one day. I can only envision a 250 hour grind working for your average player if they didnt have any other games to choose from. The player will make a choice, rather early, if they want to invest that type of time or just go find something else to play thats fun "now". If I was a designer, I wouldnt make my players knowingly face that decision, ever.

As far as Brad goes.. his name always comes up from the same people over and over. Some people just care way too much about shit that they cannot effect the outcome of anyway they go about it.

I'd think they ease you into your character with about 20 levels of relatively easy grind before slowing down once you're invested in your character, your friends and your guild.

Locnar said:

Question for you all:

Brad has said he is in favor of alt-ruleset shards. If one of them is a "hard core" shard that includes a much longer grind, harsher death penalty, corpse runs, item decay, etc. Would you play on that or stick to standard ruleset shard?

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I’ll play where the majority of players play. Except PvP. Because fuck PvP servers in MMOs. They always ruin my PvE.

Have any of you ever actually kept track of time grinding? I did once for SWG Jedi (village era), and it was about 1100 hours. It also felt much quicker than 50-60 in original EQ but that may have just been that I had a job during the EQ.

I did 2 extra force sensitive branches so 4/6 * 1100 would be your raw jedi time, but there was a delay before the village phase that allowed the final quests so I did 2 extra branches to get the ones I wanted (the starting ones were bad or something?).

Flipmode said:

I’ll play where the majority of players play. Except PvP. Because fuck PvP servers in MMOs. They always ruin my PvE.

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same, if i want pvp, i play my shooters i got plenty of them.

Kharzette said:

Have any of you ever actually kept track of time grinding?

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I always have a predicted time and track my adherence to it pretty meticulously. I usually pass the time during long grinds by recalculating projected time to max level based on current progress.

Daidraco said:

I dont personally like or care for the horrifyingly long grind time you guys are suggesting. I enjoyed BDO, but the extreme grind and RNG in the later levels ruined it for me and I just stopped logging in one day. I can only envision a 250 hour grind working for your average player if they didnt have any other games to choose from. The player will make a choice, rather early, if they want to invest that type of time or just go find something else to play thats fun "now". If I was a designer, I wouldnt make my players knowingly face that decision, ever.

As far as Brad goes.. his name always comes up from the same people over and over. Some people just care way too much about shit that they cannot effect the outcome of anyway they go about it.

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Progression is what games are about, and progression in an online world has to take time if anyone is to play long enough to get attached. I found "the grind" in a lot of mmos fun because the process was rewarding and enjoyable (especially when highly cooperative).

BDO grind was horrible, because BDO was horrible. The combat was super repetitive, solo focused, the itemization system was trash to encourage cash shop purchases, and the mobs were more stupid and predictable than even those of first gen tab target mmos. No one honestly enjoyed that shit for more than a week.

Kharzette said:

Have any of you ever actually kept track of time grinding? I did once for SWG Jedi (village era), and it was about 1100 hours. It also felt much quicker than 50-60 in original EQ but that may have just been that I had a job during the EQ.

I did 2 extra force sensitive branches so 4/6 * 1100 would be your raw jedi time, but there was a delay before the village phase that allowed the final quests so I did 2 extra branches to get the ones I wanted (the starting ones were bad or something?).

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I've not kept track, like a log book or anything, but I've done some pretty fucked up grinding in MMO's over the years. I unlocked Jedi in Pre-CU SWG, profession grinding! See, in SWG, you became a Jedi by first becoming a Doctor, or a Dancer, or a Chef! Very epic path to the force, let me tell you.

I mastered 18 professions in 28 days to unlock my Force Sensative Character Slot on January 22, 2004. I was so fucking invested into unlocking Jedi that I wrote macros to spam almost everything, like "Image designer" eye-color changes on a 2nd account for exp. I used every trick in the book and played SWG like 16-18 hours a day until I unlocked it by mastering fucking Entertainer. I shook my ass for the Force, they never show that part in the movies.

I also took a full week of vacation time when I was working for the railroad to grind my Ultimate Online character to Grand Master Magic-Resist. This involved sitting alone in my UO house and casting Lightning and Energy Bolt on myself all day for 5 days straight. I even had an Origin employee visit me in game to make sure I wasn't AFK-grinding! He popped into my house and engaged me with questions, so I instantly asked him to sit down and stay a while, and if he might go fetch me some more spell reagents so I could continue nuking myself, for sexual pleasure. Told him I was a sexual deviant who loved pain. He left pretty quick.

Anyway, this is a wall of text sorry, but yes I've ground (grinded?) my dumb ass off many times over the years. I'm also semi-retired on a medical now though so as long as my hands don't cramp up from my joint problems, I'm ready for another.

Dullahan said:

Progression is what games are about, and progression in an online world has to take time if anyone is to play long enough to get attached. I found "the grind" in a lot of mmos fun because the process was rewarding and enjoyable (especially when highly cooperative).

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Grinding is fine if its disguised so well that you're on the verge of not even knowing you're grinding something. Games that assigned factions to quest completion for the area are a hell of a lot better imo, than just calculating that you need to kill 2000 mobs at 20 rep.

If you strip away the rng rng shit of BDO and put a system in similar to Dark Souls where your progression is based on what boss you've faced and accomplished - you're disguising the leveling tread mill. In an EQ like game, you would just be lvl 48 at the Yak camp. In a DS like game, you would be at a quest that lines you up to face the King with much more engaging combat.

But like Ive been saying, if Im having fun.. it doesnt matter how much time it takes. But developers going out of their way to make the game longer by time gating is.. well.. fucking lame.

Daidraco said:

Games that assigned factions to quest completion for the area are a hell of a lot better imo, than just calculating that you need to kill 2000 mobs at 20 rep.

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Why not let players do either or? Some quests fucking suck and I love having the option to turn my brain off and just merc shit for a while. Forcing me to collect bear asses is much more annoying if it isn't engaging (it usually isn't)

I guess at that point, you're just arguing if you want that pile of shit over that pile of shit.

The key is variety. If someone wants to grind bear asses because they have a personal beef with bears that terrorized them at level 5, then go for it. Everyone else should be able to change scenery on a regular basis and have alternatives to any one item so they're not sitting around waiting for a particular camp that they absolutely need. Those situations should be few and far between and intelligent design needs to be utilized to avoid both monotony and bottlenecks.

The leveling and gearing process should only be as long as their ability to provide that variety.

Daidraco said:

I dont personally like or care for the horrifyingly long grind time you guys are suggesting. I enjoyed BDO, but the extreme grind and RNG in the later levels ruined it for me and I just stopped logging in one day. I can only envision a 250 hour grind working for your average player if they didnt have any other games to choose from. The player will make a choice, rather early, if they want to invest that type of time or just go find something else to play thats fun "now". If I was a designer, I wouldnt make my players knowingly face that decision, ever.

As far as Brad goes.. his name always comes up from the same people over and over. Some people just care way too much about shit that they cannot effect the outcome of anyway they go about it.

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BDO's grind is the only reason I don't play that game anymore. Classic EQ's grind was different. It was more of a journey and there was a lot to do, gear to get, etc. And there were plenty of players at all levels back then.

If Pantheon does a good job of making the middle levels enjoyable then I probably will be ok with another grind. But I'm not a kid anymore. My memories of the last few levels before maxing out in EQ are of hell levels, no sleep, and wave after wave of spiders in Velks. Don't really want to do that again.

Grim1 said:

BDO's grind is the only reason I don't play that game anymore. Classic EQ's grind was different. It was more of a journey and there was a lot to do, gear to get, etc. And there were plenty of players at all levels back then.

If Pantheon does a good job of making the middle levels enjoyable then I probably will be ok with another grind. But I'm not a kid anymore. My memories of the last few levels before maxing out in EQ are of hell levels, no sleep, and wave after wave of spiders in Velks. Don't really want to do that again.

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You never had to do it that way in the first place though. I never spent much time in the same place leveling, and due to school and jobs, I seldom spent ridiculously long sessions in the same spot. Those are choices we make.

What they could do to discourage grinding a single spot, if they wanted to, is have area bonuses that encourage the player to move around. That way we aren't as likely to subject ourselves to those levels of monotony and then look back on it as a painful experience.