I personally don't have expectations for how I will play Pantheon when it releases. I'll be in no rush to the top, but I won't purposedly slow down to "smell the roses" either unless I'm really feeling adventurous that day. I just want to jump in with both feet and have fun, however that fun turns out to be will be decided at that time. Maybe I end up spending my time crafting for a whole week without leveling my character (which isn't likely as I'm not usually one to spend a lot of time crafting, but maybe it will intrgue me!). If it was fun and I enjoyed it, then I won't feel like I got behind; I still progressed my character in one way or another. It's when I feel like I'm not progressing unless I'm playing hardcore all the time when I feel obligated to rush to the end game or rush through my levels. If that feeling doesn't arrive, then I won't really care so much what level I'm on or where my character is at in progression, I will just enjoy the game and what it has to offer.
Kilsin said:Would You Rather - Race to end game to raid and compete in high-end content or slow down, take your time and enjoy everything the game has to offer when Pantheon releases? Please explain why. #MMORPG#CommunityMatters
The leveling process means nothing to me. It's only a way to learn my class slowly and perfect the usage of my spells and abilities. The game doesn't truly start until you hit max level.
Sorry, not sorry.
Take my time. I want to enjoy the experience. I don't want to rush to the finish. Find the areas that stimulate the joy. Add a little wine, a little conversation. Have some laughs and explore all the sweet spots and sensations. The release at the end can be thrilling but the journey and shared ecstacy is what keeps me coming back again and again and again and again. Whoo baby we are gonna have a good time. What were we talking about?
Depends on how busy I am with family/work. If I only have an hour or two per week to play, I'm likely going to be trying to rush as much as possible just to get to a place where I feel that I will be able to maintain a "slower" playstyle in which all of the friends I am making aren't being forced to play with other people because my equipment or level is incredibly inferior/obsolete/inadequate for the content they are trying to complete. If there is some system that allows me to play with my friends regardless of their level/gear, then I would much rather take my time and enjoy the game - but if my friends are going to be max level several months before me and I can't play with them (without them simply babysitting/powerleveling me) then I'm going to rush through content so that I can do things with my friends...
I usually push myself to level quickly while taking occasional breaks from grinding to joke around, explore, and experiment. So, I guess technically I'd be taking my time and enjoying the experience since I'm racing to open up content rather than racing to endgame.
In the other MMOs I've played, unless I end up in a chill guild that is pushing for endgame content, I usually put no effort into advancing in endgame. I'd rather make an alt and experience the leveling again in a different area with a different class.
For me it is definitely the journey. I will play slowly and have a lot of alts. I want the first five levels to go relatively fast say in two to three hours for average. And then slow down. But that should be known when creating your toon. The game should state that right off. But by level ten I want to have most of my slots filled. Now I don't expect good gear by 10. Indeed far from it. But I want there to be avenues to get gear. People play to get gear. Gear is fun. I know VR wants gear to be memorable but if an Average player gets to L10 and has hardly any gear, I don't think they will stay with the game. Drops or crafter made gear is important. I want to start out being able to pick my first weapon right out of the gate. When I make my toon. Nothing over powered. Just for my shaman to have say a spear, or quarter staff, rather than everyone starting with a club. I want every class to pick their starting weapon upon creation, and just start with your weapon, shirt and pants. When I'm creating a toon I want for the game to tell me what adding a point in each category will do for my character. Cool. Maybe a +1 to one stat. I have watched every stream and I know Pantheon is headed for greatness. I want every spell that is for my class to be worthwhile. I do not want to have useless stat buffs, just so I can say my Shaman has six spells. +2 to Agility is something I won't bother with. If I'm not adding 10% as a buff it's not worth my time. If my debuff can't reduce a mob characteristic by 10% I won't bother to get it. As a Shaman my melee is gonna suck, unless the game changes a lot. So my first weapon should reflect being for a Shaman. I want to explore everywhere. Climb everywhere. Be a keeper. Know most of the lore, from talking to NPCs. I want to read every thing an NPC says. Be a Crafter. Do as many quests as I can. It's the journey.
I plan to take my time, take it slow, etc. It's definitely fun for me to be the first to experience certain things, figure out a boss fight, master a craft, all that stuff. But it's not realistic for me time wise these days so I'll go at it with a different approach and enjoy!!
With a game like Pantheon, I am truly hoping that it becomes a home. As such, I have no desire to race anywhere but fully enjoy the rich world of Terminus. My guild mates and I don't want to treat Pantheon as a game to be conquered but as an ongoing adventure to be immersed in.
Wow, I agree with most here...
It really depends on the game design. In most games, I prefer to rush to Max level so I have the class's full kit! Then I go back with my main and finish up the quests that I felt were interesting. (Game design choice here). I like to "complete" everything.
If fast leveling would exclude me from getting clickies (Spells usable by an item might not be available to my class), Keys, Trophies, Factioning(Gaining Good Faction), then I'd spend more time at lower levels. However typically all the gear you can get can be gotten easier when I'm at max level and raid geared.
Leveling while doing quests that make me feel valued might slow me down. (Basically, it's a game design choice) do all the items I get from low levels not matter when I can be geared in RAID gear, are their level locked items? Stat Locked Items? (Although a certain level of strength makes sense for a stat lock, most other stat locks make 0 sense). A person with crap DEX/AGI can still hold a hula-hoop they'd just fail most of the time when trying to use it; however, if you can't even hold the weight of the item (pull strength on a Bow before we had our advanced bows (Compound) a longbow could require up to 200LBS https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-longbow-draw-weight#:~:text=The%20heaviest%20longbow%20draw%20weight,yew%20wood%2C%20backed%20with%20hickory. I'll say the Average is in the 40 LB draw range, with hardcore/strong archers in the ~70-75LB range.)
TL, DR: Due to most games mechanics I'll default to heading to Max level then enjoying on a (Twinked) Alt a slower leveling grade. Unless the game mechanics lead me to level slower!
disposalist said:Lol. Assuming levelling is fun (which if we don't, we may as well give up now) then I 1,000,000% want to take my time and enjoy everything I can.
I really urge VR to pick as slow a pace as they can and encourage as much horizontal progression as they can and then make it a touch slower and more sideways to err on the side of caution - they can always tweak it upwards later if they really have to, but tweaking it down would meet a lot of resistance (as it always does, even if healthy, unfortunately). Not sure if combat time is long (tactical) enough? Not sure if levelling is long (meaningful) enough? If you're not sure, please double it and go from there!
I think the pace of the game is fundamental and vital to everything VR (and most backers?) want. Challenge: Time to make tactical choices as well as timely reactions. Community: Time to socialise, strategise, etc. Exploration: Literally time to stop and smell the roses. Find the perception pings and wonder what they mean...
If the game is slow, then - even for people used to pushing for progress, progress, progress - all these good things wil feel like something they can 'afford' to indulge in. They won't feel they are constantly missing out by not levelling at 100% efficiency for 100% of the time if they know the next level will take them a week; they should feel they can afford a few hours to do 'other things'.
And for those, like me, who are *tempted* to rush by the enjoyment of progression, but know they get more out of it if they take their time, it will be easy to enjoy a satisfying amount of relaxing 'down time'.
If people find themselves thinking "OMG this (whatever it is) is so slow!" maybe they will stop obsessing about 'that' and just enjoy the game they are playing? Mindful gaming! hehe
It makes me laugh when some worry about the 'combat loop progression impact' of things like being a Keeper. Perception and Keeping is finally putting a meaningful (and hopefully enjoyable) structure around something fundamentally outside the 'main game' progression - Lore - and some folks are instantly assuming/worrying it must be something they *need* to do to advance faster.
Even if it does have some minimal tangable impact, the fact that you are taking time out to appreciate the lore as well will surely mean you A) Don't overall 'advance' any faster and B) Are encouraged to slow down and appreciate something other than levelling?
I don't know... Anyway... I'm greatly looking forward to feeling I can enjoy the lore of a game without what has historically been a very dry experience (reading books found in game). It's a great example of VR indicating they place importance on immersion and atmosphere. An indication that the end-game isn't the point.
One question, though @Kilsin? What do you mean "end game to raid"? I thought we were getting raids throughout the levelling experience, eh? If VR don't want the end game over-emphasised, they need to remove the traditional bias.
I agree. For exmaple, another perspective to look at 'slow' is lvling in the starter some, say, FP in EQ. You miss, literally hit a mob for 1, hits you for 1, etc. It's low, maybe too low for today's WoW et al. games hitting a mob for 40 at lvl 1, and so on. I'd really like to see everything low: stats, armor, hp, resist, to see the proression slow down and to really see a huge different in your character. Getting an exyta 10-25 hp extra in EQ at lvl 5 was huge.
I agree in terms of leveling speed. I do not necessarily agree in terms of combat speed. If a fight with a giant rat takes 5 minutes that has probably crossed the line between slow and deliberate and unbearably tedious.
Giving the rat 5 xp instead of 100 does the job - we can fight at normal speed and still level twrnty times more slowly.
I don't think it matters whether I race or not. Everyone talks about the journey, which is great, but what matters is who you game with and what your goals are. I'd prefer to level casual, but after a point, it becomes a matter of lets just get this done or get this alt done so we can get more money, more loot, more raid power, more guild power, etc.
You could get to 60 in less than 3 weeks on P99 because you knew how, where and under what conditions to level fast. Most of why leveling was so slow back in the day was because we knew less, nostalgia has a way of lying to us. Leveling was never fun, but what was fun was the community and friends you made a long the way. I subscribe, leveling would be more fun with a less involved character (Pulling a mob, shaman slow, someone dots, melees beat it to death) than any newer game because you would be talking and BSing the entire time or watching a movie. Something... So long camps were never super dull, there was always somewthing to do in game or out. I used to clear so many TV shows back in the day while leveling in EQ lol.
Now a days, I have work, relationships, hobbies, etc. Depending on the situation, I may race with guild so I have something to raid and make money with. Then again, if VR handles the raid scene as piss poor as Everquest did, I may just decide to take it slow since raid politics will drive me to quit early again. Garaunteed I can only deal with raid guild politics for a limited time and with raiding being likely the only end game... Well... Lol.
So I don't think it matters. Sure, the journey is great, so is the destination, but everything depends.
It really depends on the game but one of the reasons i really enjoyed the older MMOs is that there is actually cool and fun content for most levels throughout it. City of Heroes has raid/dungeon encounters with good rewards starting as early as level 6 and you can honestly enjoy a vast majority of the game around the 30s since thats when your character "turns on" so to speak and one of the best design decisions IMO was that new content was sprinkled throughout the various Zones where one update might add a level 20 arc and a level 40 arc while another might add a whole level 50 zone. EQ2 for all its issues had some pretty nice dungeons throughout the early days (i played up to KoS).
This is more for later but a big issue i've had with modern MMOs is that expansions tend to create a "race to cap" mentality thanks to immediate power creep. It actually makes me sad when huge expansive dungeons and encounters are just ignored because "well these questing greens are gonna mostly invalidate that" and any time spent going into epic encounters could be better spent leveling for the same reason. One of the reasons i always prefer horizontal progression over vertical.
Everything in moderation - I prioritize exploration, but if I'll find some strong and/but rushing party in which exping is a breeze I'll stick for as long as possible - especially that when you are higher level exploration becomes easier and you can see more things without worrying
Kilsin said:Would You Rather - Race to end game to raid and compete in high-end content or slow down, take your time and enjoy everything the game has to offer when Pantheon releases? Please explain why. #MMORPG#CommunityMatters
"its not the destination but the journey to the destination" this sums it up for me. Sure end game is is fun but you miss so much as you leveling.
Alot of high-end content is not available to lower levels, such as higher quality weapons/armors, and certain guilds that have level requirements. Also certain dungeons and/or quests. So while exploration and harvesting/exploring is definitely a symbol of love for game and its realm, unfortunately the greater things aren't available to greenhorns.