With the amount of content EverQuest has, I feel it would be a huge quality of life addition to be able to toggle off experience gain. The rate of experience makes it's truly impossible to be able to go through the low level game without out leveling the vast majority of options available. I get that most people want to reach end game or are just leveling alts. In that sense, rate of experience is fine as it is. But for those of us that want to spend a significant amount of time in low level zones, this would make it actually possible to enjoy at the level it is intended. Currently, if you camp any old school gear for your character, you will out level it before you are able to play with it. Truth is, if you are camping an item, you'll probably out level it before you even see the drop. This is true for epics as well. I would absolutely love to be able to lock my level at various points to be able to experience the vast amount of content choices. It would be amazing to be able to camp a full set of era appropriate gear and go exploring. I know there are work arounds, such as dying, sac'ing with necro, or buying useless AA. But, AA aren't even available till 51 and by then you've missed out on multiple expansions of content. Dying etc is just a complete hassle with the frequency you would have to do it at lower levels. Part of the beauty of a toggle would be the immersive aspect of not even having to think about it. I know EverQuest 2 had this option 10+ years ago when I played. So, the precedent is at least there. Maybe it's a minority of players that would appreciate this, but it seems like a very small ask. And as I started the post, it makes sense with the amazing amount of content the game has to offer.
I would like this as well. I know most people want exp to be as fast as possible (and I do at times as well), but there are times when exp does come too fast. Like with personas, I'm enjoying using them to do older content on very casual basis, but I end up leveling past the content before I can properly explore it. One way they could accomplish this is to use the same system they use at the higher levels: expendable AAs. As you may know, you can spend your AAs on expendable things like fireworks and runes. After 51, players can slow or stop their exp gain by directing their experience to AAs and then purchase expendable AAs as their AA bank fills up. They could do the same thing at the lower levels. To enable slow exp at the lower levels, all they would have to do is enable gaining AA's from level 1, have the AA bank be capped 1 AA until level 51, and have an expendable AA that costs 1 AA. Then players could direct X% of their exp to AAs and level as slowly as they like using the same method from level 1 that's used for 51+.
This. Nah. Let folks grind at that General Tab whenever they want. Max runspeed in tutorial? Yes thank you. Dump some points into Dex/Int instead of outleveling my melee/casting skills? Please. Stack some HP on an ubertwink? Go for it. Imagine actually having some innate hp/mana regen in EQ! Maybe even give players a chance to be stronger than the mercs that are carrying them xD
If you are wanting to stop and smell the roses like I do that sounds like a great idea - also being able to divert XP to mercs would be nice. At low levels they are more useful, so if you want to stop, why not be able to channel your XP into the merc's bar?
Would a stop gap measure be offering to eat some levels as you go to a necro? Is that still in the game? Never played a necro myself but I recall they can syphon exp to create res gems correct?
After reading another thread where someone wants things to be SUPER easy T1 encounters I realize I can see why Daybreak may not want to let folks turn off exp. Free to play folks like the lower levels to play because they can do so easily. Leveling out of that range is another way to encourage them to make paid accounts. I feel that to keep the game going we can't have Free to Play being too convenient. And fair enough folks who dont want to pay or cant pay feel otherwise. But to keep the game going we need to keep mechanics that encourage subscribing. But that is just my opinion and folks are welcome to their own opinions.
No - I was saying you could put your XP into the merc bar to make it go up faster. So don't allow it for F2P players. I am a perma-lowbie, but I pay as I want prestige items available + AA + better mercs etc. For me, I'd be happy to level-cap f2p somewhere a t 50-75. Might even create some community at those levels.
I think it would be nice to throttle/stop exp at lowbie levels. You level SOO fast you cannot even finish a set of quests before its trivial. No benefit should be gained from this (somehow banking exp for AA if a non-autogrant server or whatever). Simply a way to stay at your lower level to enjoy the content at that level. This is a simple way to provide more content to the game. Lower level content is almost inaccessible by those of appropriate level, because you cannot stay the correct level. I know that I've personally set aside alts because I Wanted to do some lower level stuff (say adventure through Sol A, do the lvl 10 armor quests, ect). However by the time I started, it was all trivial and got progessively greener/grayer. I wasn't able to play the content unless I repeatedly killed myself to drop exp.
They could slow down exp at the low levels and have an option to start at level 75 or maybe as a level 85 heroic. That can all cause other problems though. I dont think they should slow exp down otherwise though. Many players want to level fast and get in range of where everyone else plays. From Daybreaks side they probably also like exp going by faster at low levels because that is the sweet spot for Free to Play and I assume they want to encourage subs. The fast experience of leveling gives folks a more limited FTP experience which would encourage paid subs. One way to do it would be to allow paid subs to slow exp gain but not FTP subs. Then DB might do it if they thought there was enough interest in it. I do know a few folks in my guild who would like it but I am not sure enough folks (exclusive of FTP peeps) would be interested in it. And don't get me wrong I think folks wanting to be able to do more for free or have a better free to play experience is fine and being for or against that has nothing to do with being morally wright or wrong. But I always come back to what is good for keeping the game going.
With the relatively simple way for players to manage this themselves (losing exp through dying), I don't think it would be worth it to make disabling exp too complicated. If players have to jump through hoops or spend money to get the feature, they'll just stick to losing exp the old fashioned way. It's a minor hassle to take a few deaths to lose a level. One benefit of slowing exp through expendable AAs starting at level 1 is that it may encourage subscriptions. F2P or Silver players have a low AA cap of 250/1000. If they burn up AAs on slowing their exp rate, they'll have that many fewer to use for actual AAs when they get 51+. That may encourage them to subscribe to get more AAs.
A lot of AA already have a level minimum (and/or expansion minimum) so enabling AA gain and the slider from level 1 really wouldn't have that much of an impact for subbed accounts. On TLPs, AA aren't unlocked until Luclin is unlocked so it wouldn't even have an effect on the original to Velious TLPs. The AA/XP slider isn't available to be moved for F2P but is 50/50 and F2P is already limited in how much AA they can spend as well as hoard so they would just hit those caps a lot sooner. And, since F2P also does not get auto-grant, it might actually be more incentive to sub.
Changing Vitality to Share Receive Share and Receive OFF Could work for this if share turned off gaining EXP. I know when I get to the stage where I want to share EXP with my fellowship I don't want to be reveiving it as that defeats the purpose of me giving EXP.
Or option to divert gained xp to a different character on the account, or to a persona? Or give us option to purchase Glyph of Stored Experience (Heirloom). Getting greeted by the "Please spend some AAs" window whenever I log in when there are no AAs to purchase is annoying.
Locking level experience and letting it flow into AA experience would be my way to solve that. When the AA pool is full, just let experience gain stop completely. The chances are not high that this will ever happen because of monetary reasons. The game is way to much dependant on selling top level expansions combined with subscriptions, which does result in bonus experience and OPed catch-up equipment like Defiant gear everywhere, only to bring the toons faster to the top. Currently it is not wanted that the players can level their toons slowly, or even stop leveling. A better concept is needed since a long time.
The ability to level quickly persists because it seems to be what is most wanted by most players. In this case, the company is just giving the customers what they want. Having leveled several characters without the heroic route I have little interest in doing it again slowly.
That would be cool to be purchasable for AA, especially if it didn't count as 'spent' AA to make it available for F2P, too. If the glyph was just 1/2 of the XP needed for level 51 (i.e. 1/2 of the XP needed for a single AA) and was stackable it wouldn't be very exploitable when an expansion launches but could be helpful for lower level characters.
You are right that most players want to level fast, and that is typical for returning and new players that want to catch up to the top, because they have illusions about what is happening there. They then often regret that they have missed most content in doing so, and want to explore more of the game and the lower expansions. They then restart with existing or new characters/personas. There is a growing segment of players that want to explore expansion by expansion until continuing to level up. Players that want to see as much as possible of EQ. Especially HoT is favoured for that, and the large level range of TSS does also come in handy. Several fast route options are already there: Conventional playing without an experience lock, PL, and buying Heroic characters.
