Kind of a random grab-bag, but stuff I've been wondering about (and the search funciton didn't turn up anything):
-Will players be able to get experience from killing anything, or just certain things? I've always thought the idea that you stop getting experience after a certain level gap is weird in games. It's just...contrived, artificial. Getting so little as for it to be pointless, I get, but getting none is just weird (insomuch as the concept of getting xp at all from killing things isn't weird to begin with...) If a player level cap -1 kills a level 1 rat, will he get 1 xp, or 0 xp? I think I remember even in Baldur's Gate at max level, low level mobs still gave xp, just at the point where you have 1 million xp to level, 12 xp is worthless...but hey, if you kill it with a low level friend, at least you both get something out of it (or you could slaughter waves upon waves of rats, mwahahah!!) I mean, who doesn't want to try imitating that South Park episode of getting to max level by killing endless waves of level 1 creatures? XD (Don't answer that...!)
-The level cap has been mentioned at 50, I'm just curious what all goes into that. This is more a philosophical question to me, but I've been wondering for a long time about level caps in games. Particularly, why even at launch they seem so high. No matter the game, it's always 50-60. Personally, I think fewer levels that are meaningful is better, but I'm not a designer. :) I just notice that in games with a high cap, you end up with a lot of basically "filler" levels. And it gets worse over time as games release expansion and raise the cap. WoW for example, once removing spell ranks, there are dozens of levels where you don't really get anything for the ding. It's basically a meaningless exercise. "You've reached level 23! Enjoy +15 health and +5 mana!" I mean, is that really meaningful? Then you have the flipside where FF14 had level 50 as its cap, and in the expansion added 10 levels (to 60), with a new class ability every 2 levels. Basically, your initial 50 levels you get about 10 common combat abilities, and in the 10 levels of expansion, you increase the number of buttons you have to press by 50% - which often leads to abilities that don't exactly fit in with your rotation or that seem tacked on (like "grants +20% haste for 20 seconds" type of abilities.) Granted, there are some cool ones in there, but ability bloat is real.
...so to get a question/thought in here - I'm just curious if I'm alone in thinking this? I'd almost rather see a game with a mere 20-30 levels that just take more time to get to, where each gives you an ability or some meaningful milestone. Where each feels like an accomplishment in itself. I understand giving people a level or two in the first day of gametime (get them hooked on that "Ding!" and excited to do more), but there seem a point to me where a lot of levels are just...fillers. Just there as fluff to be another number so you SEEM like you're progressing, but it's just another number between you and level cap and doesn't really give you anything. Imagine had Vanilla WoW just been 30 levels, but taken the same amount of time to get to. Considering each level gave you a talent point and every even number level gave you a new spell rank, they could have just had 30 levels and each given you two talent points and ended with the same result. Further, level bloat and the item level inflation (and eventual "squish") wouldn't have been as prevalent.
Not that I have a problem with it, per se, I just want each level to FEEL impactful, fit the lore, and make a difference in the feeling of progression. To be something to look forward to excitedly and be thrilled when it arrives. You know, like Christmas when you were a kid or some package in the mail you've been waiting on. :)
-I think this has been talked about before, but I just wanted to say I DO love the devs idea about less-than-max level raids. Things to break that mindset of "Have to get to max level before the REAL game begins". I would say that lower level caps would also help with all that, but I do like that they're at least addressing that issue. Because there are few things more dispiriting than bringing a friend into a MMO and then seeing that it's going to take them months or even a year before they can actually join you in doing content. The thought of there being things to do before that, and of lower level people being able to contribute meaningfully to tasks, has always been something I liked. I had a little friends & family guild in WoW (LITERALLY everyone in the guild was brought in by someone they knew in real life, so all had that intrinsic connection with each other of "I may not know you personally, but James is my friend, and he knows you personally."), and we as late as Cataclysm or Mists would be running level 60 raids with the lower level members and having a blast. Sure, the level 85s were able to stomp through the zones, but if you've ever been in a raid like that, the excitement comes from running around with a dozen or two other people in these massive zones with enemies that can roflstomp YOU even if that epic level 80 Paladin tank can shrug off their blows with relative ease.
So I absolutely LOVE this idea being incorporated from launch as an intentional feature, not something that just comes about due to several expansions later, what were ONCE max level raids no longer being so. I'm hoping this idea trickles down the levels, because the biggest draw to me to MMOs, what got me started with WoW back in the day, was seeing my roommate at the time raiding MC. And that was after hearing my friend (a woman with cerbal palsy who was my boss at the math tutoring center at my community college...and also some kind of crazy epic priestess in EQ who would always regale me with stories of guild drama and raid nights) talk about her guild's latest triumph (or failure) in taking down some massive world boss or another.
I'm all for giving people a "taste of epic" to keep them coming back for more.
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I guess that's it, really. Thought I had more, but maybe next time. :) And sorry if any of this has been talked about before, like I said, I tried the search for my initial question and it didn't point me to anything talking about it.
Something that addresses some of issues you've mentioned is the way Guild Wars 2 automatically scales your level to something appropriate to the zone you're in.
Bascially, zones can be too high level, but are never too low level. Lower level friends in another zone? Just go join them. You get XP like you did back then (which is probably nothing compared to the XP you *need* now, but *shrug*). No content is trivialised.
I like the GW2 method, but I don't think it'll get into Pantheon.