What does everyone think should be the bare minimum /played to reach max level?
1,000 hours minimum, preferably 1500-2000 hours or more. The longer the better. I actually was talking about this yesterday in Discord, here was my comment.
Tylith said:I've seen the idea popping up multiple times that there will be players max level days after launch no matter how the game is designed, because that is the common trend in more modern MMOs. I'm one of those players that usually races to max level (To get to the "real" content,) however I am hopeful it will still take me weeks, or better yet months, to hit the cap. I don't see any reason players hitting max levels in days can't be prevented as long as exp requirements increase exponentially as you level up, getting to absurd amounts at higher levels where it should take dozens of hours of grinding per level. I don't see this being an issue though as there will still be plenty of content, including raid content, you can do despite not being max level. As a matter of fact I am hopeful that the majority of raid content will not require that the raid be comprised of max level characters. If players can get to max level in days, then that is a design problem, not a player problem.
This question was recently answered on the FoH AMA:
Q. What is your vision for typical time played to reach max level?
Chris (Joppa): At a highly aggressive/competitive pace, I’d like to see it take around 2.5 months, ~10 weeks. At a normal pace, around 4 months, ~16-18 weeks.
https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/pantheon-ama-responses.10091
Highly aggressive is obviously subjective. My guess would be 2-4 weeks for those who get there first.
Thanks 187! Highly aggressive could mean 1100 hours if we are figuring 16 hour days for 10 weeks, but considering he said 16-18 weeks for normal play (4-6 hours?) it sounds like he is saying 500-750 hours for max level which is a little low imo. I'm hoping for 750 for 1-40 and another 750+ for 40-50.
I hope it takes a good 2 to 3 months and even 4 if the mid game content is there. I also feel that these games that get everyone to max level in a week or tend to die off really fast. It will also allow them to continue to bring out new content and also allow the community to develope greater bonds with non combat sides of the game.
I have no concrete number of hours how long it should take to max level, but I’m sure the first ones will beat most of the expectations.
I don‘t mind leveling taking a long time, but only if there is enough content to enjoy. What I don’t like are senseless grinding session.
I think that leveling should be based on exp and time played. You should have to play a minimum amount of time to get to the next level and get an appropriate amount of exp.
Let VR determin these goals. After all home much "experience" can you get from sitting around aan orc camp with the group and getting enough points to level. Maybe you should have some geography under your belt.
1500 hour seems like a lot, folks.
I think at a hardcore player's pace, 1-2 months seems right. Call it 6 weeks of 12 hours/day average. That's an incredible amount of time on this game for a solid 6 weeks. 42 days at 12 hours/day is 504 hours.
A casual player would average maybe 4 hours/day? That seems pretty respectable still, considering that's average. 504 hours at 4 hours/day is 126 days, or just over 4 months. Seems like a lengthy grind to me. Casual players will take breaks here and there and probably average less than 4 hours/day, so this seems on the conservative short side.
Now, someone chime in if VR has anything like rested XP planned. I can't remember but haven't scoured the forums much lately.
maslo said:1500 hour seems like a lot, folks.
I think at a hardcore player's pace, 1-2 months seems right. Call it 6 weeks of 12 hours/day average. That's an incredible amount of time on this game for a solid 6 weeks. 42 days at 12 hours/day is 504 hours.
A casual player would average maybe 4 hours/day? That seems pretty respectable still, considering that's average. 504 hours at 4 hours/day is 126 days, or just over 4 months. Seems like a lengthy grind to me. Casual players will take breaks here and there and probably average less than 4 hours/day, so this seems on the conservative short side.
Now, someone chime in if VR has anything like rested XP planned. I can't remember but haven't scoured the forums much lately.
Very reasonable post. I like it.
I don't think most people genuinely want it to take more than a year to reach max level. Instead of making the leveling process absurdly lengthy, what the game will need are meaningful time-sinks to coincide with the journey. That's what I think people really want - meaningful content throughout, and not just in the scope of gaining levels.
After work/school/family, I think 4 hours every day is pretty hardcore (I used to play 30 hours EQ per week).
So, 30 hours per week for a year and that would be about 1500 hours.
I think a casual player should spend twice as long and there shouldn't be any casual players at max level within the first year and maybe even before two years
I honestly think there's a 0% chance that after 30 days from launch you don't have someone max level.
I also don't think the hardcores being max level 4 months before casuals makes a difference. If the gear is developed the right way, and BiS gear doesn't come from level 20 dungeons. Then it doesn't matter. Max level players will spend their time figuring out how to get acclimated to different atmospheres and farming pre raid bis items. While working on the upper levels of tradeskills and beginning the raids.
What Joppa doesnt say though is if those played times are Strictly grind grind as fast as you can doing nothing but leveling, no exploring, no searching for spells npc's etc just stricktly leveling or if this figure is accounting for SOME of the above because of course you cant account for everything.
oneADseven said:This question was recently answered on the FoH AMA:
Q. What is your vision for typical time played to reach max level?
Chris (Joppa): At a highly aggressive/competitive pace, I’d like to see it take around 2.5 months, ~10 weeks. At a normal pace, around 4 months, ~16-18 weeks.https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/pantheon-ama-responses.10091
Highly aggressive is obviously subjective. My guess would be 2-4 weeks for those who get there first.
I'm surprised how quickly you'll max out at that rate. 2.5 months doesn't seem long considering they said a few questions later they want you to play this game for years. It may take a year or two to get a decent sized expansion out.
But thank you for sharing that link. With no official announcement, I hope I have not missed other things like this in the past :(
Let's run some numbers...
Back in 2014 the a group called "NDP Group" did a study on what they called 'Core Gamers' who are people who spend at least 5 hours a week playing video games. https://www.npd.com/latest-reports/core-gaming/
Jacob Siegal wrote an article about this data: https://bgr.com/2014/05/14/time-spent-playing-video-games/
This says that on average these 'Core gamers' play around 22 hours a week (in 2014). Remember, this is only the average for people who play at least 5 hours a week. This does not include data for people who only play a few games every once and a while. So this average is for true gamer type people.
oneADseven linked us: https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/pantheon-ama-responses.10091
From said interview:
Q. What is your vision for typical time played to reach max level?
Chris (Joppa): At a highly aggressive/competitive pace, I’d like to see it take around 2.5 months, ~10 weeks. At a normal pace, around 4 months, ~16-18 weeks.
So assuming that these averages haven't changed much in 4 years (they may have but let's just go with it) this means that his "Normal Pace" is the average of 22 hours a week (just over 3 hours a day). 16 - 18 weeks at 22 hours is 352 - 396 hours.
If we convert this for his "Aggressive/competitive pace" at 10 weeks, this would be 35.2 - 39.6 hours a week or 5 - 5.6 hours a day.
Back in 2013 this site: https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/ had an informal poll on their forums that said their average play time was only around 12 hours a week, which is slightly more than half that of the other study. This gives us an idea of what the real 'Casual' type players can commit to when they have to factor in all their other stuff like Jobs and School and such.
So with this 12 hours a week (~ 1 hour and 45 minutes a day) with the numbers above it would take ~29 - 33 weeks. This is ~6.5 - 7.5 months.
I found this site: https://www.statista.com/statistics/448427/time-spent-in-european-countries-per-week/ which says that the average play time for the UK is 9.5 hours a week. But remember this is a total average for the whole country and not just core gamers. So our above numbers are probably more accurate.
For those who suggested 2000 hours.
For the Aggressive players at 35-40 hours a week, this would take 50 - 57 weeks.
Normal players at 22 hours a week, this would take 90 weeks.
For Casuals at 12 hours a week, this would take 166.6 weeks.
For referrence, 1 year is ~52 weeks. So at 2000 hours it would mean Aggressive = 1 year, Normal = 20 months or almost 2 years, Casual = 38 months or just over 3 years.
I understand not wanting it to be too quick, but to suggest that casual players would not reach max level for over 3 years is maybe a little bit too much.
bigdogchris said:I'm surprised how quickly you'll max out at that rate. 2.5 months doesn't seem long considering they said a few questions later they want you to play this game for years. It may take a year or two to get a decent sized expansion out.
But thank you for sharing that link. With no official announcement, I hope I have not missed other things like this in the past :(
Yes the design goal is for people to play it for years. And I'm sure many people will. But a long grind just to get one character to max level isn't the only way to keep people engaged for a long time. I don't think that was ever the intention. The people that play for years will probably have lots of alts, and several alts that are at max level, some of which are absolutely geared to the max. And then spend another several months leveling up their Crafting profession. And then there's the Progeny system. That all takes some serious dedication. Looking back at how much time we spent playing EQ (or whatever game you played), a few years may feel like nothing. But in reality, when you're actually playing, it'll feel like a really long time. It'll still feel like a huge accomplishment to get to max level and become a veteran of the game.
Am I wrong in thinking Joppa answered a "time played" question with not a 'chronological' but a 'total' figure? He gives two figures because more casual players don't do hard XP camps all the time, they do a lot more slow XP and non-XP activities.
When people talk about time played they talk about the /played stat, no?
So 10 weeks = 70 days = 1680 hours.
For a 'hardcore' player maybe doing 8 hours a day 6 days a week that's 35 weeks.
And 16 weeks = 112 days = 2688 hours
For a 'casual' player maybe doing 2 hours a day 4 days a week that's 336 weeks! 6 years... Hmm...
You are right disposalist... techincally the question was "How much time played" (which could be interpreted as /played) and Joppa answered in a # of weeks and months. So if you assume he was answering the question in actual /played time then this is a huge time investment. But I think everyone is guessing that Joppa was answering in Real Life time, not /played time. But if you take his answer as /played then yes 10 weeks of /played time is 1680 hours. And that's the aggressive players number. 16 weeks in /played is 2688 hours.
So let's put this into perspective of actual time it would take an average player to get a /played of 2688 hours. Using the average played time of 22 hours a week (see my previous post in this thread) that would take 122 Real Life weeks which is 2.3 years. And that's assuming that he kept up his average of 22 hours a week playing only Pantheon the entire 2.3 years.
If I spend 16 hours a day playing (retired, unemployed, school break) and get to level cap in a month does that mean that VR has gofed and content is inadaquate?
Someone with no real world obstacles will be able to get to level cap in a ridiculously short time.
Someone whose goal is to be the first one at level cap and doesn't care about seeing content will be able to get to level cap far faster than others.
If the game allows more normal players (note that this is not a value judgment - playing in a way different from most people is not necessarily wrong or bad) to work their way through all the content in a year whereas 5% of the people get to level cap in two months isn't this kind of differential absolutely unavoidable? The 5% can create alts or find new interests like crafting or grind any maximum level content that is there after a month or leave the game. Without a store to tilt things VR will care about the great majority of subscribers since we will be providing the revenue. They will also care about the 5% of course but not as much as if the raiders and "no life" people were providing a store - Gods curse all in-game stores - with half of its revenue. So whining and complaining about running out of content in a month will *not* get the attention it would in a game with a store.
Content is king. It's the very first tenet. Citing a lack of content should never be considered whining. The game should be designed in such a way that hardcore people don't run out of stuff to do in a short period of time. There are many ways to do this. Progeny is a great start but we also need deep layers of horizontal progression. Beyond that, there are other types of content that can't be rapidly exhausted and they can be implemented in a way where hardcore players can invest a ton of time and energy without contributing to a massive disparity in vertical progression. These are things I care a great deal about and I have shared a few examples of how it can be achieved. The Gauntlet of Diffusion dungeon I shared in the "Ideas" thread is one example that would absolutely be a huge difference maker. It's the kind of dungeon that players could invest over a thousand hours into (with high replay value) without spiraling their standard progression out of control.
disposalist said:Seems off both ways hehe. 10-16 weeks is not enough. 10-16 /played weeks seems too much.
That's really relative to the value of a "week". Even with a work, a GF and multiple animals, I usually play 7 hours a day and around 15+ on weekend (more often on sunday, I work half the time on saturday) and that can be defined as hardcore by many. However I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer, for me a hardcore is someone playing the whole day withouth the need or will to work, and no one can compete with that rythm.
Even with 7 hours a day, I don't expect to spend them all grinding exp, I'll probably sometimes travel, harvest, craft, roleplay, procrastinate or just watch the sky.
The true meaning of my post is : Whatever your playtime is, how much will you commit to grinding and how much will you be able to bear ?
A 4 hour a day playtime with friends coordinated can be more efficient at grinding than a standalone 7hours a day player that has to travel a lot and find parties, or that likes a wide spectrum of activities.
Couting it in hours of play is not totally relevant, I'd say "hours of grind" would be a best feature, but then the grind efficiency factor would kick in...
Lets take real life perspective into this. If you were to take an FMLA leave and have 12 weeks to just play the game every waking moment. You should get close to or hit max level if all you do is level. It shouldnt be days. It should take weeks. So i would say more around the 1500-2k hour mark give or take about 400 hours for a 4 hours a day nap.
Someone that takes a vacation should not hit max level even if they didnt sleep. They should literally only be a 6th of the way there. Depending on how the levels ramp up based on complex algorithms. You should hit like level 15-20 at the end of a 2 week vacation starting fresh. Say you are 55 going on 60. 2 weeks should be enough. Something like that.
As far as casual gamers that do 2 hours 4 days a week, god bless thier hearts, but they will never experience the game fully unless they put in some grind sessions on the weekends.