Why level-agnostic dungeons are going to fail...

The xp is terrible.

Everything else about them is wonderful, but (sadly) the vast majority will still spend a couple hours powerleveling to 90 and bypass them completely. What could have been awesome is just going to be another forgotten and mostly unused feature in a couple of weeks. The queues are already starting to lose steam on AB.

I truly believe that most people would prefer to group rather than autofollow their way to max level, but it's never going to happen unless something is done to improve xp gains for normal groups.

Something along the lines of a cumulative 50-100% xp bonus for each non-mentored person in the group would be enough incentive for people to put together real groups. Cancel the bonus if a mentor steps in. That still isn't going to be as fast as PL, but it would be enough for me to consider dropping the boxed 95 for leveling alts.

It would be nice to group with real people to level again.

Really? You're the first person I've seen that says that (not saying you're wrong). From the people I've talked to, they have all thought the XP gain rate was wonderful, especially when lower level or 100% AA.

What are you comparing it to? I made 2 levels in one run tonight. Last night I made 4 levels in about 2.5 dungeons. Given that, plus gear, I thought the experience was actually pretty good and seriously more entertaining than spending another night in Seb or DM grinding (neither of which give gear I can use, nm the etyma)

What I'm getting at is this...

I can log on a 95 and powerlevel 1-70 in an hour, give or take. A sub-par group in DF can take nearly that long for one dungeon. Even carrying a group on my locked 87, DoV geared toons - the xp per hour doesn't come close.

Keep in mind that I'm not asking for group xp to match powerleveling. The point is that group xp needs a very significant boost (pre-90) to be relevant. Otherwise, all attempts to encourage grouping at lower levels are going to fail.

It boils down to wasted dev time, both in actual development of things like level-agnostic dungeons and in adjusting abused features like DM.

Most people don't have access to that sort of PL. Sure, the more hardcore types do, but then, they've probably got multiple 95s (meaning both a high vet bonus and less interest in the low levels). The agnostic dungeons aren't really meant for those sorts of people, the ones in a rush to get to max level, but rather for those that want to play the game, ideally with other people, and smell a few flowers along the way.

That said, the case you are making isn't for grouping to get an xp boost. What you're really saying is that it is currently possible to get way too much XP by PL'ing. And it'll be that which gets changed.

Personally, I expect the main things that will cause a lowering of interest will be lack of variety. Doing the same five dungeons for 69 levels... And beyond that, that the loot lacks sparkle. By which I don't mean that it isn't worth using, but rather that the formulaic loot items lack that something that makes them interesting and unique. Which means less interest for people to chase after a particular something...

A few points in response:

1. Everyone has access to that sort of PL. It's being sold in channel at all hours, day or night - at least on AB.
2. It won't matter who the dungeons were meant for if there aren't enough who queue for it regularly.
3. Powerleveling has been around since time began. It's a very safe assumption to make that it will never, ever go away.

As for the last bit, group xp needs improvement across the board, not just in DF. The only reason there's even a small spike in interest for grouping is because it's brand new. In a month it will be like it never existed.

I do not enjoy powerleveling, but it's an unfortunate and necessary evil if I want to play alts with other people.

LOL, for me the reason that they will rapidly loose audience is the level range. When this looked like it was coming soon I started a couple of alts in order to take a look. Because of the delay, by the time they came out the two alts were over 90 and no longer qualified.

1) Not everyone does, no, because some lack the plat. Most players are pretty casual, don't know what to sell on brokers, spend plat on other things like gear, use loyalty tokens for something other than plat, and so on. Also worth noting that the amount of PL selling has dropped drastically since the totem nerf. And on Unrest, well, pretty much never saw a PL offer even before the nerf.
2) But it also doesn't matter if the "must get to 95 types" don't do the dungeons if plenty of others do. Casuals outnumber the power gamers. Quite badly. And this is content meant for them.
3) It won't go away, that much is true. However, how effective it is and how easy it is to do impact how common it is. Your argument of "raise the xp" is based on that idea. If regular grouping gets you more xp, then there's less reason to get PL'd. But the opposite holds as well. If PL'ing gets you less, then there is also less reason to get a PL. Now, imagine you're a designer. Which of the following are you more likely to adjust:
1. The ability to PL from 1-70 in an hour.
2. The ability to get 2 levels in 30m.

Hint: if you think the answer is anything other than #1, it's time to check into rehab.

I do agree that interest will drop long term. Heck, even around 10 PM PDT on AB last night it took a while to get a group. I don't think xp will be the primary reason though. The real cause will be that the dungeons and the loot within them lack spark, lack sizzle, coupled with group formation issues, and there currently only being five of them (doing the same 5 dungeons over and over for 69 levels...*yawn*).

Now, sure, they could artificially create interest by boosting xp, but would that be good for the game? I mean, if they're going to do that, to trivialize getting to 89, then they might as well just start us there. I'd say the rate of xp as is is fine. And if everyone goes and gets PL'd instead of playing the game, then the problem isn't the group xp, but the PL xp.

Features like these agnostic dungeons are a good start to getting rid of the need for power leveling. If there is a larger player base to group with at these lower levels, there isn't a need to plow your way to the end just to find a group.

Yeah, drawing the line at 89 is something that makes me wonder "are they thinking?" Nope, didn't accidentally leave out the "what". 90 is a point at which a lot of characters hit a wall until they get that 280 AA... and they draw the line right before that. It's a face-palm worthy design decision.

I dare say the reasons for the wall you're talking about and the LA DF cutoff being just before it have a common source. That being from 90 the scaling on everything seems to go crazy. Designing level-agnostic dungeons to work on a linear or even logarithmic leveling/xp/gear/reward curve would be difficult enough, I would think. Balancing them from 90 onwards probably just got thrown into the too-hard basket.

The line was drawn at 89 for a few obvious reasons.

It's nearly impossible to find a group for 20-89, even for 'mandatory' quests like Epic Repercussions.
Massive stat inflation on 90+ gear makes scaling problematic.
People already group for 90-95 because acceptable experience can be had elsewhere (SS / KD / DM) - which brings me full circle to my original point.

Crazy scaling on gear starts at 85, actually, not 90, yet they didn't cap there. And at 90, it isn't super easy to find groups on lower population servers, especially something other than SS. Loot-wise, they could just give the 90s the level 80 loot. Sure, it wouldn't be great, but so what? They'd be there more for the xp than anything else, as handcrafted gear is pretty awesome at 90 anyway. Or they could make loot just for 90 that is near the same stats as that 90 HC'd stuff. Whatever, the loot doesn't really matter, since once you do hit 280 AA, you can push on to 95 (and soon 100) and you'll be replacing everything anyway.

What does is that people hit 90 and still need to make a bunch of AA... and they didn't think to include those people, people who would love to have extra options, in level agnostic dungeons.

It is a rather huge oversight, a failure to understand the situation many of their players find themselves in. And one they seem to have made because they locked their mindset in on "must have tiers of loot that go from X0-X9".

No, it is not a necessary evil. Not one damned bit. I get sick of people making dumb claims that "I HAVE to powerlevel" or "I HAVE to blah blah grind blah blah". People who power-level, regardless of whether they think they HAVE to or not, contribute to the lack of mid-range leveling groups. It's amazing that they tend to be the same ones who complain about there never being any mid-range leveling groups too eh?

God forbid anyone play and enjoy the game or anything..

Making group content that is appealing to both leveling players and topheavy max-level endgame players is the ideal dream for an MMO community, since it means that newbies aren't stuck picking at crumbs as the game ages and the playerbase becomes more topheavy and established.

A level 32, a level 40, a level 21, and a level 77 wanting to run the same content as a level 95 in raid gear for whatever reason (Daily Quest currency grinding blahblah whatever) is ideal, because then it doesn't matter if you have 10,000 level 30-70 players and 25 level 100s, or 25 level 30-70 players and 10,000 level 100s — there will be consistent content for everyone rather than the dreaded Lonely Solo Wasteland that turns players off to older MMOs (or just underpopulated ones that had poor launches cough WS cough).

I rarely find games that achieve this, though. Even in most very modern games, there's a hard split between "not max level" and "max level" players in terms of content barriers, queue mixing, etc.

So I'm guessing it's just very difficult for game devs to reach a comfortable point with design tuning when it comes to mixing those 2 groups, because otherwise the "big" MMOs would be doing it more consistently.

Some thoughts on this:

SWTOR is a good example of a currently-popular MMO with a very similar Level Agnostic system. (Yes SWTOR crashed and burned relative to its pipe dreams, but it's now doing very well for itself as a humbled F2P game with a good population size)

SWTOR's level-agnostics are also very low-variety — for 15-55, you have one choice: Kuat Drive Yards. Again. And again. And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. And... again.

Now KDY is broken up into small "mini-instances" which are randomly-selected, but ultimately the variety isn't much better than EQ2's first stab at this. And KDY also doesn't even drop loot — you get a handful of tokens which you can go spend on Vendor gear when you save up enough.

However, KDY is still very popular for leveling, because

• The XP rate is insane relative to other options
• It's instant-queue since it's also Role Agnostic, meaning DPS players aren't waiting 30-60 minutes between pops
• There is no ghetto alternative like Dungeon Maker PL spam — it's either KDY, the "real" dungeons (not level/role-agnostic), or good old MMO questing.
• KDY is easy and simple for people who just want PvE Group gameplay while leveling — hit this, heal that, avoid circle on ground, yay we won.

I'm bringing this up because it's an interesting comparison, which suggests that people are very willing to accept a low-variety, repetitive, un-sparkly-loot experience in MMOs if certain other factors are controlled.

IMO the contrast suggests the key factors here are:

• Tokens and choosing your loot gives people more of a "minigame" to work on than strictly generic repetitive drops, and keeps them upgraded more consistently.
• Being a stand-out source of XP, even for experienced / wealthy players.
• Being reliable and possible to complete with or without a Tank / Healer — no one is afraid their KDY queue will pop, and they'll get stuck with an incompetent Tank or a Healer who drops group before the 1st boss, and have their time wasted.

Of course, EQ2 is a very different game with a very different (and longer-playing) playerbase. So the comparison isn't identical and can't be taken as a 1:1 thing. But, it does offer some interesting things to think about.

It's fun to read half of a sentence and then go off on a tirade before you finish it, amirite?

Read the last nine words of what I wrote.

"...if I want to play alts with other people."

Show me the midrange groups and I'll gladly join them. I have plenty of alts to go around, but the groups are just not there. Hence, the necessity of powerleveling to enable group play at or near max level.

I've been queuing for the DF since it was patched in, and it's great. I hope it continues, but I know better. People are spoiled when it comes to xp gains and they aren't going to stick around once the 'new and shiny' wears off if the xp doesn't improve.

As to the mention of stat inflation above, yes, it starts at 85. The level 85 gear, however, is only slightly better (sometimes worse) than the gear that these new dungeons were scaled around (the drops inside.)

The only gear that could be considered overpowered in level-agnostics is the 87 gear from Drunder / Kael zones and it is VERY tedious, and in some cases very difficult to acquire. Compare that to spending a few plat on the broker for a full set of handcrafted at 90. It was an acceptable design decision.

This is mostly why. But this isn't necessarily a good thing. When you provide such an option, players tend to flock to it, at the expense of other things. They'll do it even when it kills their enjoyment of the game. When CoH introduced their version of the dungeon maker, it pretty much killed grouping for similar reasons, and marked the beginning of the end for the game (although admittedly it was a game built around leveling characters, rather than the usual "end game raiding" route most games take).

Luckily, while EQ2 has some insane power-leveling possibilities, many players aren't aware of it or lack the easy access to it, so its impact tends to be limited (even on AB now that the totem's been nerfed).

I think for your typical player, the DF dungeons are pretty much the best option. The xp is better than they'll likely make solo, and the loot is as well. So in that regard, I can see them lasting long term. But the repetitious nature could still bite them, as there are lots of other options available and you don't exactly need the loot. That could be problematic on a low population server.

That said, with a few tweaks, I think they could increase the appeal a bit. Potentially dangle some low level interesting loot (stuff with a proc, for example) for some of those etymas the lowbies can now earn. Potentially add the rarer fabled drop to the loot boxes (again, with more interesting, less formulaic stats). That bit of rarity could spark some additional interest. More dungeons would help as well, including some that provide multiple paths to completion rather than being the "kill these 5 bosses" the current ones are.

You're exaggerating the xp gain. 1-70 can't be done in an hour, even on double xp.

I've PLed 8 toons and 1-20 is super quick but then it does slow down due to travelling to your new dungeon and the fact vitality has gone.

On a double xp day, I can do 1-70 in maybe 4 hrs. I'm not the most efficient, but I'm not 4 times as bad as you. You have to move every 5 levels to a new dungeon to get yellow/orange cons, and it takes a clear or two of a dungeon per level. And this is at 100% to xp, not AA.

I do it regularly. I assure you it can be done.