I know I know. Another Exp thread. Just throwing my opinion out there anyway, because, well, whats feedback for if its not given?
So, I played the beta. I experienced combat, and the grind. I fully understand that the rates were low and they may be increased later. I’m here to offer my input on what I personally see to be reasonable rates. I for one am actually happy they have 600 levels. It seems like a Lot, but it allows room for consistent progression and rewards relatively frequently. I think it offers room for enjoyment for casuals and hardcore alike, and was a very smart move for them.
With that said now, here’s how I feel leveling should work:
The early levels - they should be fast. Getting to 20 shouldn’t take more than a half hour to complete.
For the 20-50 range - mobs shouldn’t start being over your level until you’re getting closer to 50. Levels 20-45 should be altered to take approximately 30 minutes to level up (including using cards).
Beginning around level 45 - this is where levels should begin to slow down, once classes can be expected to reach rank 3 and begin getting more of their core skills. From this point on each level up to ~300 should only take an hour to reach (can’t say an exact number since we do not yet know what rank we will reach by 300).
Levels ~300-600 shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half each.
Now for someone thinking this is stupid for whatever reason you can come up with, lets do a little math here:
1-20= 30 minutes
25-45= 750 minutes (12.5h)
45-300= 15300 minutes (255h or 10.625 days)
300-600=27000 minutes (450h or 18.75 days)
= 42.37 days to hit level 600.
Thats of course assuming you’re a robot and can stay up for 24 hours at a time to grind/quest. Which you’re not, so you wouldn’t reach max level in that time. For the casual player, they can still hit the midway point in about a month (and max in probably 4-6 months). The hardcore player should still be able to hit max level in about 2 months. That is a pretty decent amount of time spent leveling. If its set to an hour/1.5 hours per level at the higher levels, it still offers incentive because you will be more inclined to stay on that extra time because you’re “only a half hour away”, or “only 15 minutes away”, etc. It still offers that reward for time spent even at higher levels, and would continue to give people motivation to press forward instead of despair as they realize it could take 3578327850 hours to their next level.
Just my thoughts and suggestions.