The Path to 115

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Gnomereaper, Apr 10, 2020.

  1. Gnomereaper Augur

    The quest system in Torment of Velious is good. The long term questing has solid rewards. Completing the expansion has a good tradeskill quest to coincide with progression.

    One of the problems with the expansion has been the quest system for experience. This requires grouping in certain areas to gain access to basic leveling. By slowing down regular experience, there has been a loss in cultural zones such as Frontier Mountains.

    Quest based leveling is not really a part of the traditional Everquest experience. By slowing down leveling, this creates a problem by creating an artificial time sink for completing content. While the game's name is Everquest, there is also the tradition to have zones where many people gather to group for pick up groups. Through the new quest system, in part this is lost.

    A hybrid of the two systems, where grinding and questing are both rewarding experiencing. More traditionally, quests are more gear and reward and the experience rewards were rather weak.

    I believe that completing quests should yield both experience and reward, while retaining the traditional option to grind experience in the game. So those who want to grind experience and in the traditional way in a reasonable amount of time, while those who quest are more rewarded for their time.

    Having zones such as Lake of Ill Omen or more recently Frontier Mountains created small communities where people would create experience groups together. Under the current system, the quest based system has placed the experience grind zone communities at risk and are foundational to the game. Experience grinding people tend to be the social type of people, and that is one aspect of the system that in part is neglected with the current rewards system as compared to the old system.
  2. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    You get a one time bonus for completing certain achievements.

    There is NOTHING LOST. Quit LYING about this over and over and over.

    Go do grind groups camping named or keys or whatever and the AA exp is JUST AS GOOD AS IT EVER WAS. The regular exp on a grind is JUST AS GOOD AS IT EVER WAS.

    The only difference between now and 110, or 105, or 100 is that the exp needed PER LEVEL scales much more APPROPRIATELY so that leveling is actually an accomplishment, like it was for most of the life of this game, as opposed to a couple hour speed bump back up to max level.

    This is INTENTIONAL.

    Gotten so tired of people whining about this and constantly creating this strawman argument to go on and on about how things need to be "better" or how things are "different" or the exp gains in ToV are any different than ever before.
  3. Buri Augur

    It's not that you're getting less experience in TOV, it's just that much more experience is required to level 111-115.

    The other day, we had a rare spot for one of my bots in TOFS, he was 106 when he joined our group, and 2 hours later he was at level 108.5! So yes, he did have full fellowship vitality, and exp bonus and lessons, but 2 and a half levels gained in 2 hours, just from killing stuff, no tasks. That's pretty damn good, IMO.
    Yinla likes this.
  4. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Ummm not relevant to the 111 and plus game though. Exping in ToV at those levels will not give such an amazning bonsu.

    So just saying your reply isn't overly relevant. I am sure a level 85 in ToV if he was carried by a group would get wonderful exp too.

    As you mention its the much higher exp needed 111 plus that is the issue so the exp rate grinding exp is terrible for toons in the intended level range.

    Grinding exp for levels 111+ is horrible in ToV because it costs so much exp per level. The problem isn't for level 108's. Its level 111+ just saying.
  5. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I went from 110 to 113 by helping my friends do EoK progression, it was fine. I also got the last 2 levels doing ToV-mission-achievements, that was much faster.

    Back in the old days grinders were used to hell-levels, looks like they are back. grinding demanded patience back then, looks like it still does. :)

    Only difference, is that now we get an optional shortcut. :)
    Yinla likes this.
  6. Nivek Journeyman

    Agree!
  7. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    A cultural zone like Frontier Mountains? What does this even mean?
    Celephane likes this.
  8. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    That is literally traditional EverQuest.
    Yinla likes this.
  9. Tappin Augur

    The dev team literally put more effort into a P2W micro transaction system, then to make sure content people already bought and paid for launched and functioned properly. If people are going to allow nonsense like this to occur then it’s going to get worse.
  10. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Why do people think "hell levels" is a bug? :confused:

    Or do people think huge xp rewards for questing is a bug?
    Yinla and Celephane like this.
  11. Triconix Augur

    Have you like...ever played EQ before? Leveling through grinding used to take forever. Grinding for a day an being happy to get a couple blue bubbles is not what I want to go back to. EQ leveling years ago was nothing more than a wasteful time sink. I'll take this "new" system that's not that new any time of the day.
    code-zero and Tarvas like this.
  12. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    My mood kinda determines what I want to do. I do miss the old days though when it took forever to get from Kelethin to Highpass Hold. I wouldn't dream of waiting on a boat today though. /shudder
  13. Petalonyx Augur

    Amen!

    When it gets too hard to level, just use Overseer. It's about 10% exp per day for me on my 113 alt.
    Jumbur likes this.
  14. Laronk Augur

    I leveled my warrior alt to 115 without any quests...

    /flex
    Yinla likes this.
  15. Nadisia Augur

    In my humble opinion, the leveling is not TOO long.
    A 110 character (with XP bar already full) will be 115 just by doing the mercenary/partisan arcs.

    And the classic AA XP grind is still great.

    The problem comes for characters which are not fully maxed.
    In that case, the merc/partisan arcs won't give you enough XP to reach the lvl 115.
    And for alts, because sometimes, you don't want to follow the exact same route and routines, particularly for poorly implemented quests (like Lake-Effect Snow Devils for instance, aka. the stupidly rare snow dervishes in Great Divide :p ).
    So yes, the regular XP grind is maybe *a little bit* slow in ToV, without XP potions/fellowship vitality.

    But it's not impossible, and it's far from the old school hell levels, like killing frogs in Sebilis for ages to ding 60 in the past.

    But ... seriously :
    So the solution when it gets «too hard», is to play an offline gimmicky mini-game, a click fest without any gameplay nor any strategy involved?
    A WoW garrison/followers missions clone ?
    Hint : Imho, it was/is a bad idea in WoW, and it's still a bad idea in EQ, at least for XP/progression.

    There are some other possible ways or solutions to explore : add more dailies, reduce some replay timers for some XP only quests (not missions), tweak the XP reward values a little bit for replayable quests.
    (O.M.A.D in GD or Find the Survivors in Kael give roughly 1.2% regular XP. Round it to 2%, it shouldn't be game breaking. Just 2 examples.)

    Someone was mentioning the Vanguard Diplomacy system in this thread.
    Frankly, I would love something like that in EQ.
    I'm not a «card game» player at all, but diplomacy in Vanguard was one of the best auxiliary sub-system I've ever seen in a MMO game, and with the huge EQ lore, it would fit perfectly well.
    And on top of that, it was FUN, really fun.

    But Overseer, really? For Xp?
    EQ is one of the last real group centric MMO.
    Overseer is ok, and philosophically I don't have anything against it, for ornaments, tradeskill items, collectibles, etc.
    You can even add some mounts if you want, or illusions, I don't care ... as long as it's NOT required for progression.

    But, in my opinion again, for experience and progression, this game deserves maybe some adjustments, but way more than «Click on this facebook game to get 10% XP».
  16. Mediik Augur

    .


    This...

    I don't really mind this new quest for exp system. I got to 115 much faster than I would otherwise grinding traditionally in past expansions. For my main char it was fine. For my secondary box toons, it sucks. I'll explain.

    I enjoy having a few box toons to run around and do some menial things things with my main like farm trade skill items.. hunt collections etc. I don't usually bother to do progression on my boxes as I don't really care about them too much. I get them up to the level they need to be and scoop up gear as I can so they can better serve me. I also suck at boxing, so I don't try and pull off anything too complicated which means most missions are out. That said, I do enjoy the traditional XP grind and farming named camps etc.

    Now this expansion. I started looking at how much time it's going to take to "grind" my toons to 115 and I decided that even with double XP it's going to take so much time it's not worth it to me to keep boxing. To me, this is a pretty significant change to how I've been playing eq for over a decade. I don't understand why XP changed to make the time sink for xp grind so HUGE. To me it seems like a situation where devs can have their cake and eat it too..

    At any rate, I hope they reconsider making adjustments.
  17. Tappin Augur

    Poor game design at it’s finest. They are going to end up bleeding subs if they continue with this change.
  18. Velisaris_MS Augur

    They seem intent on keeping this xp model for the next expansion. How exactly is that going to work? I mean, if the pattern holds, the next expanstion will be a non-level increase xpac.

    What is the point of putting the bulk of xp on quests/achievements for an expansion that doesn't increase the level? People who are already max level will do progression and just watch the xp gain vanish into the ether.

    If they go forward with this moronic design, it would seem more beneficial to players to just skip buying the no level increase expansion and wait for one that DOES raise the level cap...and then go back and do all the tasks/achievements in the previous expansion so that one-time xp gain doesn't go to waste.

    Unless they plan on not putting any xp on the quests/achievments at all. I suppose they could change it so that the quests give out glyphs like CoTF did, where players can click it at any time to get the xp. But then you'll have people saving them for the next expansion, click for the xp, do some progression tasks, and be max level in a day. Which sort of defeats the idea of slowing down levelling, which I think this new xp model was designed to do.

    No matter how you look at it, there is nothing about this type of xp model that even remotely makes sense.
  19. Fcseven XIII Journeyman

    Historically I just bypass all quests and find an out of the way spot to peacefully grind exp to max level each expansion. The thought of being forced into a linear path to get exp goes against the foundation of EQ.
  20. Manluin New Member

    I agree with the sentiment of progression quests required for both decent leveling and also spell/item advancement (TBL and ToV). It's a sticky situation in today's Everquest. The population isn't what it used to be, and now the progression quest system requires grouping to accomplish. Six boxers are now the common group type. If your coming back and don't have a solid group of equally leveled friends, your not going anywhere. Yes you could always buy your way to the top with krono and RMT, but that's not the point. The grouping game is not getting any healthier and progression server after progression server are thinning the numbers even more.