Tree of Savior Forum

Understanding the EXP situation [Strawpoll Added]

General Gameplay
#41

Did you purposely ignore the rest of my post.

If we translate these numbers, I’m a level 7 novice and it’s taking me half a day to level up once. Getting to job change is going to take me 2-3 more days. I remember it taking an hour or two of casual grind to hit job change in RO as a Novice.

The amount of grind I’m facing so early on is about as high as you’d face as a lower mid level player in RO (level 60-70s). Which would be around level 300-350 in TOS.

And yes, levels do matter. I cannot do this or that or play as the class I want to without leveling up. Most of the game is hidden behind level requirements. Without reaching certain levels I cannot experience or enjoy large parts of the game.

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#42

Why would grinding be the only thing you do? That would only be true if you had maxlevelitis and felt some immersurable pressure to just keep leveling.

This is not how early MMOs with this leveling style worked. You played the game because it was fun, not because you -had- to reach max level. If you get tired of grinding, hang out with friends, socialize a bit. Help lower level people. Craft. Hunt rares. This is exactly the kind of gameplay ToS, and other games with this kind of leveling style, try to engender. A relaxing slow grind that gets you invested and absorbed in the world, it’s activities, it’s people and your friends.

If the community is anything like those in these older games, we’ll see all kinds of classes, skills and builds, because a big draw to these games is playing unique and fun characters. Original RO had battle priests and everything, despite them not really being supported.

Like I said before. No one is saying the EXP curve is perfect as is. It should and will be changed before release.

But talking about changes to the EXP system in the context of “It’s only level 30 out of 600+” and complaints about quests running out is the wrong way to criticize the EXP curve, because it simply -isn’t that kind of system-.

2 Likes
#43

the grind isn’t that different from vanilla RO

When I played the games, people went all over the world to level as soon as they started playing, everyone has their own favorite leveling spots, creating their own adventures. Different jobs and character types have different leveling spots. People who solo have their own places, people with party have other places. Now in ToS, I see everyone at 3x bunny hope around in the chapel, not much else to do.

The point of designing a game is design it to be enjoyable, not to be hard so please don’t say meaningless stuffs like “in the old days we used to grind, kids nowadays are spoiled by spoon feeding games…”. I am pretty much a grindy palyer, I grind hours upon hours in RO just for 1% exp but even I think the current EXP rate is bad design.

4 Likes
#44

My wall on RO was at level 60~, more than half way to cap. I not only had way more maps to grind, cards to search and stuff, but I had more shiny skills to use and distract me.

I don’t know how people are saying players will be entertained in ToS by hitting the wall at 5~10% of the final cap with limited reasons to farms monsters and only 3~4 usefull skills until you reach Rank 4 or higher (which is at level 80).

kCBT has done it right as I said before. It’s not quest driven, but also not so-early-grindfest.

3 Likes
#45

No, but you clearly didn’t read my earlier post that I referred you to, which already completely addresses everything you’ve said in this post. Lets try not get caught up in derailing bullshit here.

1 Like
#46

Lets not pretend anyone is saying ToS is perfect how it is. It is beta, it will need adjustment, of course.

Hence the entire point of this thread.

But what people are complaining about here isn’t the grind, it’s the potential grind to max level, and it’s the lack of quests holding your hand through every level.

Not ONE of the posts here says anything about wanting more quests or wanting to make the game quest-oriented. Not one. Why are you making things up?

No they’re put off by a single hour to level in the context of a modern MMO culture that says “max level is everything” and max level in ToS being 200+ levels away.

Have you read anything I said? Actually, have you read anything in the entire thread? The reason max level is relevant isn’t because people want to rush to hit it. It’s the exact opposite. Max level is relevant because it represents a proportion. Roughly, level 200 means you’ve experienced almost all of the game’s content. 30/200 would tell you that level 30 means you very little content available to you. I’m not going to keep repeating myself about why the lack of content is significant to the grind.

Nobody is concerned about reaching max level. It’s pathetic that I even have to say this because you’re just not even reading the thread.

Your posts are directed an audience that doesn’t even exist in this thread, and I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re trolling.

5 Likes
#47

Why would grinding be the only thing you do?

Because what else to do? Tell me. :expressionless:

Monsters get much stronger from place to place so not much to wander around. People want to get into the later class ranks as soon as possible because they are the main attractive contents of ToS, so no one wants to do nor has any other thing to do rather than grinding. You want to set up a camp, sit down and chit chat with your friends? Then you will have to grind to rank 5. You want to start collecting stuffs and craft items as an Alchemist? 6 ranks of grinding awaits you.

4 Likes
#48

You said grinding and level do not matter. You are wrong. I cannot do anything unless I am high enough level, which means I need to grind.

You tell me to go and do other stuff. Do what? I’m not high enough level to do it. I’ve got to go and grind first.

3 Likes
#49

And yet this doesn’t really have any bearing on whether ToS should have:

  • EXP curves that are designed with reaching max level in mind
    or
  • A quest line ala modern MMOs that will guide you from level 1 to level max.

ToS can fix the problem you bring up here by making fields more like RO or by tweaking the EXP curve slightly. Like I said many times, I’m not saying don’t change the EXP. I’m saying don’t change it with comparison to max level, like MANY people here are suggesting.

1 Like
#50

Like I said many times, I’m not saying don’t change the EXP. I’m saying don’t change it with comparison to max level, like MANY people here are suggesting.

Don’t understand what you mean. When people discuss they bring everything related to subject on the table to find a better view of the situation and solutions. The level cap is one of these related things, it shows how many contents a player may miss because of the grind for example.

I think you misunderstand what others mean.

2 Likes
#51

The first post directly points to falling behind on your main quest as a reason the EXP curve needs to be changed.

I’ve also already addressed why proportion means nothing in old style level progression where max level isn’t really intended to be the end goal.

I really don’t appreciate this kind of derailing, especially when you refuse to understand the point I’m making. If you don’t understand or otherwise disagree with my stance on why proportion doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t mean I’m trolling or not reading the thread. These kind of comments only serve to distract from the conversation at hand, and thus derail the topic.

#52

I’ve just taken a look.

There is actually a huge bug with level scaling.

Going from 44 to 45 takes 118,000 exp.
Going from 45 to 46 takes 7200 exp.

That is not a typo. It takes less exp going from 45 to 50 than it does to go from 35 to 40.

2 Likes
#53

The game should let players easily enjoy its contents while forcing them to put serious amount of time and effort (and well… money in case of a little P2W) if they want to go into the competitive stuffs. The competitive contents are often in late game.

Forcing players to grind first to reach the enjoyable contents later is just wrong. if players can’t enjoy the game at first they will just quit, they don’t care and don’t know if you have a lot of contents, interesting classes, creative skills later to ofter, they just know that they are getting stuck being bored out from grinding with mediocre skills of the first basic classes.

So make players enjoy the game first, if they like it they will grind later. Don’t make the players have to grind first in order to reach a point where they can truly enjoy the best contents the game can offer.

2 Likes
#54

I think you mistunderstand what I mean. When you design games you have particular goals that you set out in design documents. Games like PSO, RO, Ultima Online, original Everquest, and, indeed, Tree of Savior have leveling systems that are not designed to provide an end goal. In these games, not everyone is expected to reach max level, or even anywhere near max level, and the game is designed around that fact.

Contrastingly games like World of Warcraft, and every other WoW clone (basically every modern MMO) have leveling systems that are designed to introduce you to end game content at maximum level. In these games, everyone is expected and, indeed, pressured, to reach max level (and reach it as quick as possible).

By constantly mentioning and referencing how small a proportion 30 of 200/600 is you’re implicitly looking at it from the point of view of the second kind of leveling curve. Because you would only ever care about the proportion if you were designing from the point of view of “Everyone should get to the end and experience all the content”. That is a perfectly find way to design a game, but ToS has so far been different. It has been like old games where access to parts of the game is achieved, not given. It’s fine if some people want ToS to be just like those other games, but given how many of those games exist already and given that a lot of people want ToS to be like RO. I think it would be better to adjust it with little consideration as to max level issues.

1 Like
#55

Interesting stuff, thanks for doing the research!

#56

So make players enjoy the game first, if they like it they will grind
later. Don’t make the players have to grind first in order to reach a
point where they can truly enjoy the best contents the the game can
offer.

I wanted to add this point but got disconnected. I believe I don’t misunderstand anything. I never said a single word about “Everyone should get to the end and experience all the content”. I said at this rate players will get stuck in the early game with not so interesting contents compared to all of which the game can offer. Many of them will never know how good the game is because they will quit before reaching anywhere truly enjoyable (of course compared to all of which the game can offers).

1 Like
#57

Sure, but I’m addressing everyone in this thread. Not just you. So if you reply to my points and disagree I have to reiterate what I mean in the context of who I am addressing. That is why I thought you misunderstood me, since I didn’t really disagree.

I fully agree it’s probably a bit slow now and needs to be increased. But many in the thread are mentioning the time it takes in the context of max level, or the time it takes in proportion to max level, as if that is a good metric to analyse the problem by. The simple fact is the only good metric for assessing the level curve of a non-max-level concerned RPG is subtle things like gamefeel. Exactly the sort of thing that will be addressed by the x1 rates on iCBT.

I’m not disagreeing with the idea that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, I’m disagreeing with the design philosophy that the problem is being analysed by in this thread.

#58

Several days at one level when the level cap is 600? This is 2015 not 2005. The majority of people don’t like it taking several months of leveling at least 6 hours a day to get max level.

#59

Is there a particular reason you feel you need to get to max level?

2 Likes
#60

Even if it’s not a good metric, it’s still not an unreasonable one. People have their point in bringing that out to seek more insight into the situation. No one said the developers should make the game so that everyone can reach all the game contents but at least don’t make them miss so much of it. There is no such thing as a single only simple fact as you said sorry, it’s your just opinion as anyone here has theirs including me.

1 Like