Nephele said:disposalist said:So Joppa said mentoring would be post-launch. In the related discussion I highlighted my concern that it would have made playing with friends of different level progression speeds much easier, so it's ommission will make things quite difficult for me/us.
What just struck me when commenting about death penalty and XP loss is this: -
If mentoring is too much development effort to fit in before launch, how about a simple switch to turn off XP gain in the meantime?
For people like me, it would be very handy, since I care much more about being able to play with them than I do about racing to max level.
Even multiple friends all with different playing time can coordinate via social media these days and just agree to stick to a particular level cap until they can all get together again.
What do we think?
I just wanted to bring it back to the original suggestion, which I support. Setting up this would allow people to advance at the pace that they prefer.
Will it be needed? Hard to say. I find that in something like 95% of the MMOs I have played, I level faster than I really want to, and content becomes trivial/unrewarding to me as a result.
Even better than being able to toggle it off would be the ability to throttle it somehow. Maybe say "adjust my experience down to 70% of normal". That allows me to "soft-lock" my level so that I'm still progressing, just not as fast. It also provides a key data point that could be leveraged statistically by VR. While many players will probably just leave it at 100% because they feel that leveling is the point, being able to see how many people reduce their experience gain, and by how much, would provide a lot of useful information for VR to leverage in future content design.
As I stated earlier, I’m not against the idea of stopping or throttling XP, but I do think it indicates at least for that player that Leveling is to fast, and if enough players are slowing down the pace then maybe VR should make adjustments.
On the other hand, if a Throttle to slow down the Rate of XP is added, then what happens to that left over XP. Your example of 70% would leave 30% to the abyss? Or saved for later?
A couple of ideas come to mind.
1. Excess XP goes into a player XP bank to be used at a later date, where the player can increase passed 100% to say 125% and slowly rake in that unused XP to slightly speed up the leveling when needed.
2. Excess XP goes into a Global XP bank to be used by the community for those player who feel the leveling is to slow and would like help from others, allowing them to increase their percentage passed 100% to say 125%.
Food for thought.
If the overall exp curve is too fast then that is a different problem than mentoring not being in at launch. If leveling is too fast that needs to be addressed in testing hopefully.
Turning off leveling exp as a means to group with friends / family seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. It hurts no-one else. It doesn't have the balance concerns and dev time associatied with a mentoring system. Yes it has drawbacks and isn't perfect but if mentoring isn't in, it's the next best thing and simple to code or is already there and only needs UI. I would say mastery exp should remain on to give the paused player some progress still. I guess this would be a problem on PVP servers so just don't allow exp lock or make it lock both.
Since a player is doing this by choice in order to stay grouped with family/friends or to perhaps keep content from going grey (if there are trivial loot rules) I don't think Any of it should be put in to a pool. You are making the choice to cut that exp off, it should be cut off and go to the void.
Yes using it for farming purposes is a bit ominous but Mentoring systems are historically problematic more than I could ever see locking down your level. Mentoring seems to always be overpowered. Locking your level with the associated lvl scaling that has been mentioned in streams about more powerful equipment seems much safer imo. Unless of course they do mentoring right as has been suggested and make you some average player for that level instead of godlike scaling that is always too high in other games.
Ranarius said:Idea: What if when you turned off your own exp, rather than that exp going into a void, it gets split evenly amongst the rest of your party?
Go ahead and tear the idea apart...just a brainstorm :)
Not sure if you have read the posts. This is simply a passive form of mentoring, except you're now designating your group to get your XP, instead of a specific friend/character or alt.
Ranarius said:Yes, I've read them...and I understand what it is. I'm asking you to tear it apart. As in, explain why it's a bad idea. If there is no mentoring would this be an alternative?
/say to server "well equipped tank and healer -both lvl 10- offering all our XP for 3 hours of grinding to highest bidder"
/say to server "well equipped tank and healer -both lvl 10- offering all our XP for 3 hours of grinding to highest bidder"
Ok, it does sound like a cool idea to me, but I can totally see the problem. I guess that would turn into the norm in the long run, which would not be good at all. Oh well, good bye fun idea. On to the next!
Ranarius said:Yes, I've read them...and I understand what it is. I'm asking you to tear it apart. As in, explain why it's a bad idea. If there is no mentoring would this be an alternative?
So multi boxers can super power level 1 character by giving them all of the exp? No thanks
Ranarius said:/say to server "well equipped tank and healer -both lvl 10- offering all our XP for 3 hours of grinding to highest bidder"
Ok, it does sound like a cool idea to me, but I can totally see the problem. I guess that would turn into the norm in the long run, which would not be good at all. Oh well, good bye fun idea. On to the next!
In a non-pvp mmo, it was fine. I and friends used it in Vanguard w/o any impact on other players.
I'm a proponent.
everquest casting was related to skill and its hradly from no where, a lvl 50 trying to cast a lvl 60 spell is going fo fail alot if they could ast it at all, anyway there is something theyre supposedly doing projeny system, wether they actually do it we shall see, it should help solver your worries about lvling
I don't really want a toggle to turning exps off. If the arguement is that you wanna stay the same level as your friend(s), you should have a character that you only play, when they are playing. When they are not playing, you go play a different character. Even if you play Two wizards, from what I have seen, mastery points and which spells you happen upon can make each one very different.
I also don't want to see a toggle that switches all the exp gains to mastery. I see people finding a lev 9 dungeon with little to no risk to grind out all their mastery then going back to leveling after having maxed out their mastery points. pseudo twinking.
if there is a way to exploit any system in a game, gamers will find it and use it.
I don't want to see camps where a pet class gets as high level as possible (before trivial loot code turns on), then they sit and farm that item for 3-4 months because they aren't gaining exps. I want people to be FORCED to move on.
I almost wish that each Character level had mastery tied to it where after you gained a character level, you then had to gain a mastery level (or two?) before you could gain another Character Level. That way levels would take a while but you would still always be benefiting from each level gained even if it was a Character level or a Mastery level.
I already do not like the "2 hour window" Pantheon keeps talking about where you gain a level every 2 hours if you are grouped. People will be level 50 in 2.1 days after launch if that's the case. I know they were a mistake, and I know people cried a lot about them, but that is Why i LOVED "hell levels" on EQ1. It made it where every 5 levels, you got slowed down even if you were racing to the end. I would love hell levels or the Character level / Mastery level gains where every "level" was really 2 or 3 levels like in the above example.
But, i know people would also cry about that too, so whatever. I know my opinion means squat at the end of the day.
I am glad to see some stuff being Side-lined to a POST launch. Get the game out. Add stuff later. We need this 6.5 year old game (pre alpha test) to be a real game more than we need mentoring.
i would give VR so much more money if i believed Pantheon would ever be anything other than Pre alpha Vaporware. sorry, still not convinced this game will ever release. and more Pre Alpha (5) will not change that opinion. Chronicles of ... nm....
Flapp said:I don't really want a toggle to turning exps off. If the arguement is that you wanna stay the same level as your friend(s), you should have a character that you only play, when they are playing. When they are not playing, you go play a different character. Even if you play Two wizards, from what I have seen, mastery points and which spells you happen upon can make each one very different.
That's fine if you have just one friend and you like playing alts. There are lots of people that don't play alts. There are lots of people with more than one friend.
Flapp said:I also don't want to see a toggle that switches all the exp gains to mastery.
Nor do I, really, but it's an interesting concept.
Flapp said:I see people finding a lev 9 dungeon with little to no risk to grind out all their mastery then going back to leveling after having maxed out their mastery points. pseudo twinking.
if there is a way to exploit any system in a game, gamers will find it and use it.
Why would mastery points be easier to obtain at any particular level than another? And since mastery is about power, why would someone stop themselves from leveling up and gaining more basic skills just to get more mastery points?
Flapp said:I don't want to see camps where a pet class gets as high level as possible (before trivial loot code turns on), then they sit and farm that item for 3-4 months because they aren't gaining exps. I want people to be FORCED to move on.
Hmm not sure. If people are fighting level appropriate content, then they are going to have to share that camp with other players, so is it really a problem if they stay there a long time? Maybe they never got the drop they wanted at all, never mind 'farming'? I think there need to be other ways to stop perma-camping than just hoping the camper out-levels the content and the loot becomes trivial before they become a blockage to other players.
Flapp said:I almost wish that each Character level had mastery tied to it where after you gained a character level, you then had to gain a mastery level (or two?) before you could gain another Character Level. That way levels would take a while but you would still always be benefiting from each level gained even if it was a Character level or a Mastery level.
Isn't that effectively what is happening in Pantheon? You gain a mastery point each level. Assuming that leveling progress it at a nice slow pace, it's the same effect no?
Flapp said:I already do not like the "2 hour window" Pantheon keeps talking about where you gain a level every 2 hours if you are grouped. People will be level 50 in 2.1 days after launch if that's the case.
What? Where did you hear that?!
The 2 hour window I've heard of is all about allowing you to make 'meaningful progress' in a 2 hour session. No one has mentioned leveling every 2 hours, that I know of.
By 'meaningful progress' I believe they mean they won't be making zones/encounters/raids/whatever where it takes more than 2 hours to travel and fight your way to somewhere you can safely log out and start again next session.
Flapp said:I know they were a mistake, and I know people cried a lot about them, but that is Why i LOVED "hell levels" on EQ1. It made it where every 5 levels, you got slowed down even if you were racing to the end. I would love hell levels or the Character level / Mastery level gains where every "level" was really 2 or 3 levels like in the above example.
But, i know people would also cry about that too, so whatever. I know my opinion means squat at the end of the day.
I was always fine with hell levels. The final stretch to max level should be hard. As long as there is enough content to not end up grinding the same stuff for a very long time, it can be as slow as you like.
Flapp said:I am glad to see some stuff being Side-lined to a POST launch. Get the game out. Add stuff later. We need this 6.5 year old game (pre alpha test) to be a real game more than we need mentoring.
The whole point of my XP switch would be to avoid any time-consuming development but still give us something that approximates mentoring while we lack mentoring.
Flapp said:i would give VR so much more money if i believed Pantheon would ever be anything other than Pre alpha Vaporware. sorry, still not convinced this game will ever release. and more Pre Alpha (5) will not change that opinion. Chronicles of ... nm....
*rolls eyes* Yeah, nevermind... Let's not go there... You know very well it is nothing like that situation. If you don't, watch the YouTube LazyPeon made.
Nanfoodle said: Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level is a big mistake. Even a down level system like GW2 has works well. Sure you can't play everything with anyone. But getting down leveled to the area you are playing in, makes all areas a challenge and IMO that's fun.
And that would be why EQ needed to limit the number of players on the new Aradune server that made this "big mistake" to the point that we are now dealing with 2-4 hour Queue times. I love the way people come up with things like "this will ruin it" and "that will be the end of it" or "is a big mistake" when the same thing is successful on other games and nobody even notices the "big mistake" being made. As a matter of fact were litterly standing in line waiting to get in.
Zorkon said:Nanfoodle said: Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level is a big mistake. Even a down level system like GW2 has works well. Sure you can't play everything with anyone. But getting down leveled to the area you are playing in, makes all areas a challenge and IMO that's fun.
And that would be why EQ needed to limit the number of players on the new Aradune server that made this "big mistake" to the point that we are now dealing with 2-4 hour Queue times. I love the way people come up with things like "this will ruin it" and "that will be the end of it" or "is a big mistake" when the same thing is successful on other games and nobody even notices the "big mistake" being made. As a matter of fact were litterly standing in line waiting to get in.
Queue times are bad because there is a limit to the number of concurrent users an open world game can support. SOE/Daybreak/Darkpaw has determined what that number is for EQ and over time have set a hard limit to the number of logged in accounts. The long queue times really just mean there are more users that want to play than the server can handle. Whether or not you can downrank/mentor/stop-level/exp-shunt will not affect the number of accounts logged in, just which character you are logged in with. With Darkpaw there may also be a hardware limitation as they are trying to milk a rehydrated dead cow without any investment.
If you are worried about queue times, then figure out ways for more accounts to use the available content concurrently. Mentoring actually helps use lower level zones rather than always being in the most crowded max level zones. Sharding/instancing/folded space all are tools to open up the same hand-crafted content to more people than the original number of groups a hard open world zone can support.
Trasak said:Zorkon said:Nanfoodle said: Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level is a big mistake. Even a down level system like GW2 has works well. Sure you can't play everything with anyone. But getting down leveled to the area you are playing in, makes all areas a challenge and IMO that's fun.
And that would be why EQ needed to limit the number of players on the new Aradune server that made this "big mistake" to the point that we are now dealing with 2-4 hour Queue times. I love the way people come up with things like "this will ruin it" and "that will be the end of it" or "is a big mistake" when the same thing is successful on other games and nobody even notices the "big mistake" being made. As a matter of fact were litterly standing in line waiting to get in.
Queue times are bad because there is a limit to the number of concurrent users an open world game can support. SOE/Daybreak/Darkpaw has determined what that number is for EQ and over time have set a hard limit to the number of logged in accounts. The long queue times really just mean there are more users that want to play than the server can handle. Whether or not you can downrank/mentor/stop-level/exp-shunt will not affect the number of accounts logged in, just which character you are logged in with. With Darkpaw there may also be a hardware limitation as they are trying to milk a rehydrated dead cow without any investment.
If you are worried about queue times, then figure out ways for more accounts to use the available content concurrently. Mentoring actually helps use lower level zones rather than always being in the most crowded max level zones. Sharding/instancing/folded space all are tools to open up the same hand-crafted content to more people than the original number of groups a hard open world zone can support.
You totally missed the point!
Arudune Server = No mentoring = Still crowded
in other words not having mentoring or "Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level" is closer to irrelevant that "a big mistake" or all those people trying to cram onto Aradune would be on one of the other servers that DO offer mentoring.
Zorkon said:You totally missed the point!
Arudune Server = No mentoring = Still crowded
in other words not having mentoring or "Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level" is closer to irrelevant that "a big mistake" or all those people trying to cram onto Aradune would be on one of the other servers that DO offer mentoring.
Ah, you are correct. I did not realize that’s what you were trying to say. I agree that not having mentoring will not doom Pantheon. I do think having mentoring, if done right with plenty of thought and balancing, could be a real boon to Pantheon both for community reasons and for title longevity. Ultimately though its my thought/belief and there is no real way to prove or disprove it.
Trasak said:Zorkon said:You totally missed the point!
Arudune Server = No mentoring = Still crowded
in other words not having mentoring or "Not having a plan that let's people play together no matter their level" is closer to irrelevant that "a big mistake" or all those people trying to cram onto Aradune would be on one of the other servers that DO offer mentoring.Ah, you are correct. I did not realize that’s what you were trying to say. I agree that not having mentoring will not doom Pantheon. I do think having mentoring, if done right with plenty of thought and balancing, could be a real boon to Pantheon both for community reasons and for title longevity. Ultimately though its my thought/belief and there is no real way to prove or disprove it.
IMO this type of system is not a back-seat item. It took forever in EQ to have guilds members all in the same situation that teaming was fluid. Trying to help lower level players was hard work, so they would learn the game it was best to roll a new char and catch up to them. So you could play and not PL them. You would sometimes lose raid worthy players because they had a friend join EQ. When the friend played they would play because level gap problems. MMOs are about communities and having a system where you don’t need to dump your main char to play with guildies and RL friends and not hamper their play experience, is NEEDED. From the start. Will the game fail if they don’t add this? No but would it make a better community and keep friends playing together? Yes.
Alternative take: Not being able to always play with the same/specific people causes players to branch out and meet new people and make new/more friends.
I was rarely the same level as RL friends and most guild members in the EQ days and it was never something that hurt the experience or felt bad. I met far more people that way and was still able to chat with friends. It's even less of a problem/concern for me these days since now voice chat is so prevalent and I can sit in discord with friends while playing in a completely different part of the world instead of just using /tell.
I'm on the fence about mentoring. I think it's back seat because we want a game out sooner rather than later and the leveling curve is flatter than normal by all indications anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue so quickly.
Im against, generally, leveling bonuses because of multi boxing exploits create power leveling groups. But the idea of manual leveling makes a lot of sense to me...it's essentially leveling with stored XP just like mastery and no one gets there faster than they should.
This also helps prevent quick clogging of later game content imo since there are multiple starting zones funneling upward
Baerr said:I'm on the fence about mentoring. I think it's back seat because we want a game out sooner rather than later and the leveling curve is flatter than normal by all indications anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue so quickly.
Im against, generally, leveling bonuses because of multi boxing exploits create power leveling groups. But the idea of manual leveling makes a lot of sense to me...it's essentially leveling with stored XP just like mastery and no one gets there faster than they should.This also helps prevent quick clogging of later game content imo since there are multiple starting zones funneling upward
And then there are people like me, who play more then my wife and friends and end up trying to maintain 3 - 4 chars so I can play with my wife and friends when they log in. For many, playing with their friends, is why they play MMOs. In 2020 its been proven there are way to make that happen and not breaking the game. Pantheon staff keep going on about making a modern game with modern features... well here is one. This is not just a few asking for this. VR talked about the mentoring system early on. Even talked about coming down to lower level dungeons to play with friends. I backed thinking this was a feature thats ment for launch. So ya, hearing this now. Not impressed.
disposalist said:Jothany said:Manouk said:I still think alot of this will go away with the match making system, becase you wil find others that have the smae play times as ytou and, by default, will be leveling at roughly the same rate so this will never be an issue.
Either I'm misunderstanding you, or you are misunderstanding the OP.
The point of the thread is for one or more FRIENDS to always be able to group together when they are all on, despite some of them having more time to play then others. Being able to find some stranger or PUG to play with on any given day isn't remotely the same thing.
Exactly. Sure the matchmaking system (if it's in at launch...) will stop you having *nothing* to do, but a lot of my RL friends only play these games to play games with each other and me.
Some of them aren't really into MMORPGs, but would play if they get to play with the group of friends.
I mean to say, those "others" are your friends. So you would already peg them in the matchmaking portal and so pegged, you would not outlevel each other. there may be other, non-friends or strangers around at the same times with similar schedules that you may see, but not actively group with. But if youa re consistently grouping with your friends at roughtly the same times and one has a little more time that the others, their level wil not outpace yours to the point of being detrimental, unless its like, they have all day to play and you and your other 5 friends have 2 hours to play a day. yes they that one friend woudl outlevel you. But if you are all on the same schedule, and so "matched" then I dont see it being an issue.
Nanfoodle said:Baerr said:I'm on the fence about mentoring. I think it's back seat because we want a game out sooner rather than later and the leveling curve is flatter than normal by all indications anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue so quickly.
Im against, generally, leveling bonuses because of multi boxing exploits create power leveling groups. But the idea of manual leveling makes a lot of sense to me...it's essentially leveling with stored XP just like mastery and no one gets there faster than they should.This also helps prevent quick clogging of later game content imo since there are multiple starting zones funneling upward
And then there are people like me, who play more then my wife and friends and end up trying to maintain 3 - 4 chars so I can play with my wife and friends when they log in. For many, playing with their friends, is why they play MMOs. In 2020 its been proven there are way to make that happen and not breaking the game. Pantheon staff keep going on about making a modern game with modern features... well here is one. This is not just a few asking for this. VR talked about the mentoring system early on. Even talked about coming down to lower level dungeons to play with friends. I backed thinking this was a feature thats ment for launch. So ya, hearing this now. Not impressed.
Im right there with you in some respects..My wife is not going to spend nearly as many hours on her character...maybe my son will spend more hours in a few years when he's old enough.. I think mentoring is a helpful mechanic and it has lots of benefits. Maybe multi boxing could be inhibited in other ways that I'm not familiar with.
Either way, working out schedules remains much tougher than it was for us 20 years ago, and my plan was to use an alt to play with them when they do play. The rest of the time, if I'm playing, I've got to have my friends in a guild to be able to play from what I'm hearing. I'm hoping the leveling curve is fairly flat and there are lots of people like me playing that were young when EQ came out
**EDIT**
I hope there aren't arbitrary guild limits that promote dropping of less active char's
Baerr said:Nanfoodle said:Baerr said:I'm on the fence about mentoring. I think it's back seat because we want a game out sooner rather than later and the leveling curve is flatter than normal by all indications anyway, so it shouldn't be an issue so quickly.
Im against, generally, leveling bonuses because of multi boxing exploits create power leveling groups. But the idea of manual leveling makes a lot of sense to me...it's essentially leveling with stored XP just like mastery and no one gets there faster than they should.This also helps prevent quick clogging of later game content imo since there are multiple starting zones funneling upward
And then there are people like me, who play more then my wife and friends and end up trying to maintain 3 - 4 chars so I can play with my wife and friends when they log in. For many, playing with their friends, is why they play MMOs. In 2020 its been proven there are way to make that happen and not breaking the game. Pantheon staff keep going on about making a modern game with modern features... well here is one. This is not just a few asking for this. VR talked about the mentoring system early on. Even talked about coming down to lower level dungeons to play with friends. I backed thinking this was a feature thats ment for launch. So ya, hearing this now. Not impressed.
Im right there with you in some respects..My wife is not going to spend nearly as many hours on her character...maybe my son will spend more hours in a few years when he's old enough.. I think mentoring is a helpful mechanic and it has lots of benefits. Maybe multi boxing could be inhibited in other ways that I'm not familiar with.
Either way, working out schedules remains much tougher than it was for us 20 years ago, and my plan was to use an alt to play with them when they do play. The rest of the time, if I'm playing, I've got to have my friends in a guild to be able to play from what I'm hearing. I'm hoping the leveling curve is fairly flat and there are lots of people like me playing that were young when EQ came out
**EDIT**I hope there aren't arbitrary guild limits that promote dropping of less active char's
I’m said wife and I agree with my husband’s post. Not being able to team with friends and family because of level gap. EEK! Please let there be some content that you can join anyone with.
I always enjoy playing with friends when I'm higher level and they are lower level.
Buffing them, letting them try content that might be to difficult for them but being able to step in if they are about to fail. Guiding them to where the loot is etc.
It's a different play style than actually grouping at the same level but I find it to be very enjoyable.
There is nothing that says you have to be the same level to play the game together.