Warning the following content contains a mindless rant cause by boredom.
This could have been one of the best games on the market if it was released 10 years earlier and spend ages developing ranks and content with the community.
It basically did too much prior to release resulting in a game which falls short from it’s potential.
Imagine this scenario, the game was originally released with a level cap of about 120 going up to rank 4. This would allow testing and verdicts to be given on the lower ranks, making them balanced and making it so all the classes are viable and entice people into playing them.
Then at each instance of a new rank being released they raise the cap by about 30-40, with new bosses and quest lines and new ranks for each job. People would then have time to test out the new classes and new ranks. (Basically how we have it now.)
Doing this would make people more inclined to play classes that are likely completely ignored right now, and would allow for balancing throughout the game, not just for endgame.
Another benefit would be you’d have content for every level, rather than focusing purely on end-game content because everyone is already end game.
It’s an issue like with MpleSory (Used to play that ages ago), it was good whilst content was slowly introduced and as a result there was content for every level range.
Since major revamps have occurred in that game, they keep releasing endgame content whilst also removing early game content to allow for more end-game. As a result early game is horrendous, one of the things leading to it’s downfall and decreasing player base.
You need to draw a person in from the start, if you focus purely on end-game you’ll be keeping in old players but you won’t be gaining new ones. As a result the player base will slowly diminish, if once a week a person has to quick due to not having the time to play then eventually nobody will play because no body is willing to join due to how horrendous early game is.
I’ve played multiple characters, clocked over 350 hours in game and most of that was spent early game. Want me to tell you what I was doing?
Making a character
Doing klepedia Main quests until tenet garden
Grinding in tenet garden due to the considerably higher spawn rate than any other map
Doing level 50 dungeon
Going to Maus… Ma… That place with the insane spawn rate if you trigger the beacons. (I know I could google it but meh)
Doing dailies.
Don’t get me wrong, I do main quests and side-quests when I have done my daily dungeons but they generally don’t take long and are only done for the bonus status points. (My current highest level character the only quests I’ve done are job advancement quests. Takes a lot less time to level up if you ignore quests simply because the map spawn rates are horrible)
But due to how much of a pain in the ass it is to level outside of this routine it’ll put of new players. Yeah you can easily get 100 in a day. Yeah if you’re willing to spend money, even on a completely new account with no prior items, you can get level cap within a day. (Well nearly, there are live streams of people doing it)
But for a new player, who knows nothing about the game and can only go off the instinct of following quests is the easiest way to level you’ll find yourself hitting a brick wall and getting about level 60 before thinking "This is getting boring"
Using the exp viewer addon you can get a rough, though poor, estimate on how long it’ll take to level up.
Going to the mausoleum and training at the beacons gives you an estimate 2-3 minutes per level up.
Other maps run closer to 20 minutes.
Oh and fix movement speed. I’m playing a cataphract at the moment purely because it has extra movement speed. Easiest way to bore a person it to make it feel like you’re spending more time walking to monsters than you are killing them.
Attributes, they exist. Why not make it so you can get an attribute at each rank up that’s something like +1 movement speed costing 50k, 100k, 150k etc for each level up.
At-least then you don’t feel like you’re a snail unless you play something with extra movement speed. Not broken because +10 movement speed at rank 10 isn’t that much.
