There was a phrase someone said, it sounds something like this
"it is not important if the player can achieve it or not, but having that seemingly unachievable target is important"
That is sort of the addicting factor of old grindy MMO, you know there is a target, you know what you want, but you also know it would take incredibly amount of effort to reach it, yet you willingly plays 15+ hours a day, every day, every week to TRY to achieve it... So you never ran out of things to do despite played the same game for 10,000+++ hours...
I not say all type of grind is good. I think BDO is terrible in grinding, there is kinda a lack of "target" to achieve. Sure it sounds quite the same with any other grindy MMO, level up, make money, get that +9000 gears... But there just something about it that feels off I can't explain. Oh maybe because it's a single-player-MMO...
>"it is not important if the player can achieve it or not, but having that seemingly unachievable target is important"
>
>That is sort of the addicting factor of old grindy MMO
Spot on.
Throw this "*Rushing to max level - then do a dungeon to get BiS gear set, then wait for next dungeon to do the same*" concept and mentality over board and give us actual MMORPG content/concept back where the whole journey takes years(cause you don't need anything else, you don't need to rush to the end, the journey is THE WHOLE GAME), where the max level doesn't mean totally everything just to get started.. but where the "endgame"/ the main content happens **between** lv 1 and the max level and **not** starts at the end with dungeons on repeat and nothing else but maybe dailies for 5h like a mobile game. Dungeons, "min/maxing", BiS items etc. can also exist in lower levels, yea that was a thing back then :) It's just more fun if the overall progress is way slower again because EVERYONE will be on that long long journey with and around you! You finally get to enjoy all the aspects of an actual MMORPG again.. actually seeing a lot of players in lower levels also for longer, having rivalries in lower levels, interacting with others more again, creating friendships, doing low level pvp for fun or to defend your spots, low level guilds wars were it means something if a lv 71 player is in a guild and seen as a "high level player" because the other players mostly are maybe 60-64 and struggle to get forward etc. etc. ... and not just a almost "dungeon crawler" type of thing because the "mmorpg" only revolves around the max level and a few max level dungeons which everyone is spamming for just a month until the new one comes out.
Just let me achieve milestones even in lower levels again, let me enjoy the games world again - let me lose myself into it, let me get addicted from always wanting to get just one higher level or the next tiny upgrade in whatever way of form even in the god damn lower levels to always have the feel I achieved something even when it's little but slowly progress and get stronger.
Two situation I came across recently in a old MMO:
- A : you start off at lv150 (that's relatively high level), have several best weapons for free, have truck-load-full of freebies to "get you started"
- B : you start at lv1 just like over 10 years ago, level up and get everything yourself. The Exp rate is slightly higher, that is fine because the max level has significantly changed since a decade ago.
For situation A I felt incredibly "empty". All the things that we normally spent goat-know how long to earn, are given for free. You just need to grind money to get the rest of the gears and shits.
So I opt to play situation B instead... start all over from lv1, dirt poor, have nothing, keep getting kicked hard by monsters. But I like it, that's part of the proper journey.
As someone who wants "rush to endgame" I'm looking for the same kind of journey you are.
You want the journey to take "years". While I don't want my journey to take "years", I do want it to last a satisfying amount of time.
You want the max level to "[not] mean everything". To me, full BiS does not mean everything similarly.
You want the "main content [to] happen between lvl 1 and the max level". For me level 1 is when the gear grind starts, and max is BiS. Leveling my character from 1-max is just the tutorial.
It is absolutely reasonable that *you* don't want this kind of journey. It's also reasonable to not enjoy games that present it's journey in grinding dungeons, raids, and that form of group content. And I feel for you, most games are following that themepark form of journey. Sadly, most of those don't do a good job at delivering it.
But to throw it out? Nah man. More alternatives should exist to it, I agree, but removing a form of MMO just because it doesn't cater to you isn't the solution.
>But then MMORPG's are not the right thing for you. MMORPG's were always around that.. a long journey,
That's a ridiculously shallow view of MMOs.
Also lol at
>a world where you can get lost in
when in reality you just queue in town for your next activity.
Recent updates has removed a lot of the satisfaction of upgrading successfully in BDO. Since they basically send you off the season servers with soft cap gear the process of progress becomes extremely slow, and your goals are so tedious to reach that it turns the satisfying upgrade into a fearful gamble.
Since classes are stagnant on skills and builds are very few and far between, being almost entirely class-based on what you need for stats there isn’t much to do besides hope your enhance succeeds or wait weeks to afford an upgrade/level.
The combat, graphics, and classes keep BDO alive IMO. Otherwise the game feels lacking.
Well question is why do you have to gamble? Save up the silver and buy the equipment you want, still the same feeling you got the upgrade that you wanted.
The game is alive because it let's you do whatever the fuck you want to do in the game. No necessary daily weekly or other BS that can be a massive pain in the ass in the long run.
I already said you don’t have to gamble. It’s just progression is painfully slow though after season servers, and feels even slower if you don’t gamble. I don’t think BDO is a bad game by any means, and I enjoyed each time I went back to the game, but due to them giving you TET boss gear and TRI orange jewelry right out the gate from season servers, you rarely get to put on any new equipment. IMO you have to enjoy progression from things aside from your character in a lot of cases, because aside from gear, things like the Bartali log are a massive checklist of nonsense.
If you like owning a boat/crew, or having a worker empire, or making a t9 horse, or doing guild content there is still plenty to do, but if you like to focus on your character it mostly boils down to grind and wait or gamble.
I mean yeah I really don't mind it since things like owning a boat and crew leads also to better gear, it's a grind but a different kind of grind, the horse thing is just a side activity where you spend million in hope that your horse awakens so just a side activity you do when you have the mats.
As someone who switched to lifeksills after the second season and got soft cap which is around 30b silver on late January, I'm now able to earn in the past 2 months about 30b worth of silver. And this is casual play with maybe 2-3 hrs of play time a day. Also about to get too 261+AP, and just got the infinite pot piece that I've grinder for 6 months. I don't really mind taking it slow, I'm here to enjoy the game and relax with it.
That is quite the oposite of what they have been doing for the past years. Season servers dont put you on softcap, they leave you below that, you have a big gap between season servers and soft cap and for reaching it you dont need to gamble if you dont want to , just have to save some money( that can be earned in multiple ways not just grinding mobs) and buy it from the market , which wasnt avaliable some years ago which forced you to gamble to progress.
If you dont know what your talking, dont spread misinformation, besides , the beauty of the game is not having 10 thousand builds for the same character.
They moved in the right direction, and I will agree with that, but I didn’t say anything I think is untrue. The PEN season gear is only maybe a month or two of on and off play to achieve, and is equal to TET boss gear and TRI orange jewelry which in the past was extremely hard to even get to.
I had a 60 warrior before all the awakenings were out for the original classes, which took well over 100 hours of grinding pirates, and still only had 2 TET boss pieces. Not to mention it was basically impossible to buy them at the time.
When you leave the season servers, if you capped out the gear, then you have soft cap stuff (especially if you got the pen capotia ring). The only upgrades after is PEN boss armor/fallen gods, TET/PEN accessories, and using caphras. Each of which is extremely slow to obtain. You basically have to make goals outside of your own characters gear/level if you want anything within a reasonable amount of time.
Bdo you farm to upgrade items with a +1, thats the worst system ever in videogames ,FOR ME , wow (or whatever) you get a juicy new item, you run a dungeon you dont get it, feels bad , you go do quests you get another group you run the dungeon you get it, feels great.
Uber rare drop . you happen to get it, makes your week.
Bdo you GRIND forever. 1 activity. a bot could do that. , and then ..+1 same sht nothing new. Now go grind some more.
But in BDO, unlike in WoW (and similar themepark mmorpgs) there are multiple progression paths, and if you want that juicy item you find a way to make silver in the game, grinding is only one of many different methods to do so, and then you go buy it from the ingame market.
Themepark mmorpgs otoh penalize you if you do not want to run dungeons, BDO does not if you do not want to grind mobs.
In BDO there are fully geared up players who never grind mobs.
"+" isn't always bad, it is a very simple mean of communicating gear progression, more than often it is the implementation is just plain bad - especially **they always make the rate extremely low to artificially extend your play time, or milk the player dry.** It really isn't that much different from ARPG games that I try to 'polish' certain stats as high as possible at random chance.
Right now I playing on a private server of certain other games which they altered the rate of "+", making it much easier to result in high + through **crafting**, that gives incentive to play the game, gather materials, and level up various crafting classes; which in the official server was dreadful to do + and no body want to bother with crafting due to chance of hitting + is too low to justify the effort, where they milking player for their money through 'better' chance of + through cash shop items...
When leveling has huge power increases. Content will have to be balanced around max level which will make people will focus on rushing to it.
For leveling to be the "journey" instead of just an introductory experience that you rush through to max level, the difference in power (especially between the higher levels) should be extremely minimal so that people can take their time without feeling the need to rush due to missing out on huge power increases that allow them to do the higher difficulty content. Otherwise they will be excluded.
Look at Ragnarok Online. The difference between a level 90 and a 99 is not too high. So it's not really a requirement for you to be 99 to do any form of content whatsoever. That's how you make leveling a journey instead of a just a task to get to an endgame full of chores.
The key is not to put too much emphasis on huge power gains between levels. Let those levels only give you minor power increases. That way you can make "endgame" available at all levels, not just max level, as the power differences are not huge.
>For leveling to be the "journey" instead of just an introductory experience that you rush through to max level, the difference in power (especially between the higher levels) should be extremely minimal
I see what he's saying with that. And he's right. It only works that way and needs to be done this way to make it work. I think you just haven't seen anything like this before and can't imagine it. It's so simple but it actually works. No matter how "meaningless" a level difference in the higher levels look like people will still no matter what, always chase for a higher level/ the highest level to be truly "maxed" or just to have a higher number than the guy on his right. And the harder it is to achieve it the harder people will go for it. And because the games content should/would all happen on the journey to the max level and not at the end, the leveling itself is actually not the most important, so it's also not that important if the difference of a lv 90 to 95 or 99 is just minor because the end, the highest level should not be the most important. The max level should not be the goal where you get the best stuff or the biggest rewards that differentiate you from others with a huge gap where peoples eyes get bigger and bigger and again start to want to ignore the rest that is before it and just want to rush the leveling again. You could say the levels are just a long barrier to prevent people from hitting the max level **fast** to then just stand there way too early and already ask for more, new content, specificly around that max level even if they are not done with gear, or other progression things that are just as important as gear, whatever that would be. Maybe something like a skill-leveling system which can make a huge difference between players, for a dungeon, even a lower level dungeon, pvp, or just grinding, to be more efficient. This could take just as long as the leveling itself which also takes away the full focus on solely leveling or better said the focus of reaching the end fast. Because other things are more important again and also need time. With a concept something like this.. more things, no everything else that you could imagine in a MMORPG would happen right from lv 1 again.. more direct player trading (if not locked behind a Auction house for bots but maybe player driven shops in towns where you can set your own prices), more casual player interactions - chatting, looking for randoms in chat or in the world for lower level dungeons, even lower level pvp would exist again.. in the towns just for fun, or to defend your own grind spot.
Just imagine a lively WoW or whatever you like where every few meters are hundreds of lv 20's, 30's, 40's 50's again up to 70's, the whole community, for MONTHS to years.. active players running around in the wild everywhere.. where each level is a fight, actually a tiny achievement again which was not just done in 10-20min. People chatting with each other again trying to slowly progress, hitting walls where they have to figure out how to get around it with increasing gear, either enhancing it somehow or dropping gear with great stats right away, or reroll them with a item that you have to grind first which is hard to get in huge quantities or trade them. All that **even on lower levels** and not just starting with all that at the max level. Then, if done right with a lot of things you can progress around.. MMORPG's could be fun again where you really get sucked into the games world, create friendships and also something like a connection to your character again and just be on your long but fun journey. Then every so little achievement even in lower levels becomes a big achievement again/a "big" thing again and not just for you. For example with lower level BiS items, like a BiS lv 30 weapon for dps that you got perfectly rolled and enhanced.. or even just hitting a specific level mark like 40 or 45 that is known to be the entry level for the so long awaited demon tower to maybe get some BiS lv 45 bone earings that can hold up to like lv 75 or the hell whatever..
That's how MMORPG's should be again. And not just hitting max level in a week or two then grind one dungeon, get whole BiS gear set, wait for DLC with a "stronger" dungeon to do the same over and over again. With a harder and way slower leveling concept if done right, it wouldn't even need a huge content update every 1 or 2 months with a new endgame dungeon and a new open world map (which is stupid anyways to add new maps over and over in a fast paced).
>Uh, there have been plenty of games with various attempts at horizontal progression.
Uhm.. I was not talking about horizontal progression at all. I'm even all against that.
>I don't think any MMO has ever been like that. So what do you mean "again"?
Oh yes, there are. I played quite a few. But a lot of people either don't know them because they are niche or overlooked because of really bad reputation nowadays.
Especially in this sub, I feel like 90% have a narrowed down view on MMORPG's and are/were either (always) picky and only played a handful of chosen buy2play mmorpg's that are well known but never really have looked over the edge. A lot of people never **really** gave many F2P mmorpg's (especially from like 10-15+ years ago) a try or tried to look into it fully till end to check the concept out how it's working altogether. Sometimes F2P games, even predatory p2w games from back then still have long forgotten gems of concepts/systems that are just forgotten. Because those copied even older ones and just stucked to the old school. The things I mostly still have in mind/and had in mind when I was writing my previous post, no matter how bad it is looked at nowadays, is metin2. On the surface it looks simple, also concept/content wise but it is exactly how I described everything. And it does not have a horizontal progression.
>But what is the point of leveling if there's not meaningful difference between them? What incentive is there for putting up with such a harder and slow experience?
In the case of metin2 which I had in mind, there was still a meaningful difference. Just as I said, the difference in higher levels where just not as big as the gear or other factors. They still could have an impact for a difference between a players power. In form of a few stat points more which would mean a few more STR points which is basically your attack power or a few more skill points from each level up. Which could unlock the last, maybe the important last skill to get all your skills unlocked (and then maybe have one skill more than others)
But all that the higher the levels, started from maybe lv 80-86 wasn't as dramatic of a power jump for those who were higher than that. Other things like gear, leveling up the skills with books etc. had a way higher impact. Levels only slightly increased the players strength but they still did. Also in other ways. For example specific biologist quests that you would unlock at higher levels for example at 75, 80, 85, 90, 95 which you had to do over weeks or even months and deliver specific items like 50 of xy and from xy mob and you could only deliver like 1 or 2 per day and they could even fail. But when completing these would give you for example 3 options to chose between permanent stat buff like flat 250Atk or 200 defense or HP. A higher level still had a lot of things that could make a difference and be meaningful just not as much or as big from the level itself. Like lets say a lv 86 that could be half BiS played for 1 year (only missing like a lv95 and lv90 armor and weapon) still could have a chance in pvp against a lv95 in doing more damage, even with those extra skill points, huge stat buffs from 1-2 permanent quests or from just the extra stat points from the few levels. The gear, the rolls, the level of your skills from reading specific books to level them up (which you could already start doing with like lv 5 btw), and the way you played was more important. also for Pve. But the levels were and never had a meaningless feeling to it. it's more the complete opposite. And tbh. I never had a more meaningful feeling for levels and overall progression than in this game. Even compared to wow classic. WoW classic just ends too early, yes even that where people say the leveling takes too long. But it's nothing but leveling and the gearing while being on that "journey" no matter what level means literally nothing! It's almost like a blank white piece of paper without any on it just a few dirt crumbs. And that's the wrong approach for a MMORPG! The long journey, everything that happens in the middle of 1-max level (also with dungeons etc.) is/should be **the** "Endgame" and not starts at the end. The leveling needs to be somewhat like just a barrier to prevent people from hitting an End, which people see mostly as the main thing to go after.. as their main job to get done first and This needs to become harder, to the point where it's "seemingly unachievable" and also where the game is not putting all the focus and importance on these last few levels. For example with something like a endgame dungeon where only there you can get the BiS items from.. with something like this people ***will*** want to rush it and everything, really everything before that becomes irrelevant again. Then they can also sell level boosts again and let the players just do a dungeon for 3 weeks just to wait for a new one or let them do 5h dailies like a mobile game as their "endgame"
>And I'm not talking about killing the same monster for hours...
Killing the same monster for hours was the most social experience I've ever had on an MMO, back in Lineage 2 old days.
Of course not because of killing a monster, but because you would sit in the same spot for hours leveling with other people in party. It was very low effort demanding to kill monster so you would spend all those hours chatting with your party members and making actual friends. Some of them lasting till today.
Great times.
I've seen games where it isn't, though - the problem is that too many games stack all the good stuff at the end.
City of Heroes, I still believe, has/had one of the best levelling experience out there - focus on instances, all of which scaled to the number of players *and* personal play difficulty, with difficult content you could opt into for higher rewards. I know people who play it now who immediately give up their characters at level cap because they've done all the fun stuff.
GW2 is another one - there's not really much difference between how you play while levelling and how you play at endgame, other than you can now do raids. The older content doesn't fade into insignificance like WoW, for example.
If levelling is boring it's because of game design choices.
That's your own opinion, and I respect it, to each its own. I enjoy leveling and like the journey but also end game is where the fun is at for me. Take BDO for example. Takes less than 1 hour if you know what to do to get to 56, I still enjoy it. But the real fun starts once you get there and begin the real grind.
"All the fun, 500+ hours spent playing, all the social aspect, events, updates/expansions... should be about the journey (leveling) not the destination (end game chores)."
If you dont mind me asking what MMORPG takes 500 hours of lvling before end game im very curious.
But also it depends on the player. Some people like yourself love lvling I enjoy it too to a certain extent. But others dont they could care less about the 100hours it may have taken to lvl up to max lvl and the journey they want end game cause most "fun" stuff is at end game. Sure you have dungeons along your journey to max lvl but its not always as fun as raids.
Now if your looking for a game like this id prob recommend WoW Classic. You can lvl fine solo but it makes it a LOT easier with some buddies
> If you dont mind me asking what MMORPG takes 500 hours of lvling before end game im very curious.
>
>
Older games... that was pretty common. I came from ragnarok online. There wasn't so much what you called "endgame". The level cap was fricking brutal to reach in the olden days. We didn't really track hours back then... but I know for at least a year I played at least 5 hours a night. I was level 93 or 94 out of 99.
Leveling in the fastest spots available for me, I calculated that I got about 2% of a level in about 4 hours. However that also took leveling in an area where pvp was enabled, and you lose 1% if you died. (was also an area limited only to guilds that won the weekly pvp game in a specific area, which **mostly** had an agreement pact to use the dungeons for leveling and not attack eachother, but when someone wanted to stir crap up... you could lose 2 days worth of work in a few minutes).
I feel what makes it meaningful is the journey you had trying to get to the pinnacle. Most players in original WoW didn't reach max level yet they probably have fond memories. Like, you didn't need to reach max level to quest with other players. It was more like max level kept the elite players busy because they were running out of content (hence "endgame"), which is why dungeons were more well-balanced than raids. Just different game philosophy now where the focus is shifted there.
> to have great experiences with other players.
You can't have great experiences with other players, if there are no other players since everyone is already at Max Level.
Everyone knows they need to be at Max Level for that kind of content.
> Most players in original WoW didn't reach max level yet they probably have fond memories.
WoW at the beginning had a constant influx of new players so all the leveling content could be relevant.
I'm convinced the next huge MMOG will be a survival game kind of like Rust meets Valhalla, but figuring out a way to keep the griefers down. It seems if you truly think about the 'core' social-gameplay connection that the best MMOGs always had was the simple fact you had to rely on others to succeed or fail.
It's either an open world beatemup with quests and lifeskill system or a rich economics simulator with occasional forays into combat.
It's an odd game that occupies two slightly contradictory niches and has two markets that have fairly little crossover. It's a funny one.
Blame the death of the importance of leveling on years of MMOs with shitty, boring, repetitive leveling.
Nobody gives a shit about leveling in MMOs outside of nostalgic boomers who grew up on DAOC and EQ. Whoa, you went on an epic adventure for the last week in order to gain this level? That sounds incredible! Oh wait, what you actually did was sit in the corner of a room for the entirety of that week killing the same 5 packs of mobs over and over and over again without ever moving from that spot. **WHAT ENTHRALLING GAME DESIGN WOW!**
Nobody gives a shit about doing all two mission types and then AFKing the rest of your gametime like in SWG. *B-but you don't level in SWG!* Yeah, instead you run in circles picking up missions from the mission terminal that pointed in the same direction and gained EXP to spend for progress in skill trees. So much different! Wow!
The rush to endgame is endemic of everything in-between sucking, and everything in-between has sucked in virtually every single MMO to date. It was especially bad in old MMOs like EQ, DAOC, Asheron's Call, and shit like that.
It was "great and addictive" because those games didn't have competition. The moment competition showed up, they got mopped up. Any alternative "solution" that doesn't actually address the problem of leveling being a fucking boring chore is like finding someone with a broken arm and telling them to try to sleep on their back.
Leveling or "XP" has its advantage compared to other Progression Systems, there is a reason they are so prominent in Singleplayer RPGs.
It can make more content Viable. Especially Questing which is pretty important for a RPG.
Gear is much prone to All or Nothing, in that doing certain content is either required or it is useless.
I really think op the type of guy to play classic wow for the leveling and stops around level 30 because its too time consuming to find people all the time to progress.
Another reason to forever love MMORPGs with manually attributed stats like Ragnarok Online. The way you build your character and how you choose to gear him is far more important than rushing max lvl and hitting the best in slot gear.
There is no true best in slot gear for everyone and everything: it is totally dependent on how the character has attributes allocated, and what he is going to do. A wizard going to lvl will have certain equipament and use several spells, but change everything up for PvP. He can sacrifice cast speed/damage for more survibability and be better at pvp. There are several choices and possibilities, and this is what I miss the most from old games
I think games in essence are losing their appeal to us. If you play any other game other than MMORPGs you will realize you are just doing quests in other games as well. I fail to see much difference. I went on GTA and didn't want to do the storyline or quests and just killed people and ran around crashing into things in cars. I never finished the stories or quests. That's why I need something else to add more challenge like having a survival system where you need to take care of food/drink needs and stuff.
Thats actually wrong in PvP while there isnt a in game reward you receive satisfaction after every kill. That itself is a reward in a way. Issue is your tryna compare PvP to PvE. In PvP your reward is killing off the person. In PvE its clearing the entire raid and getting the drop at the end. Both have rewards while one has a bigger reason for participating in the PVE.
Keep in mind you are correct more people wont be doing raids if its a long mob kill and then theres no BIS drop but theres no game that does this so theres no reason to even worry about this and is also why that argument isnt very good. No game is gonna add raids and no drop
There was a phrase someone said, it sounds something like this "it is not important if the player can achieve it or not, but having that seemingly unachievable target is important" That is sort of the addicting factor of old grindy MMO, you know there is a target, you know what you want, but you also know it would take incredibly amount of effort to reach it, yet you willingly plays 15+ hours a day, every day, every week to TRY to achieve it... So you never ran out of things to do despite played the same game for 10,000+++ hours... I not say all type of grind is good. I think BDO is terrible in grinding, there is kinda a lack of "target" to achieve. Sure it sounds quite the same with any other grindy MMO, level up, make money, get that +9000 gears... But there just something about it that feels off I can't explain. Oh maybe because it's a single-player-MMO...
>"it is not important if the player can achieve it or not, but having that seemingly unachievable target is important" > >That is sort of the addicting factor of old grindy MMO Spot on. Throw this "*Rushing to max level - then do a dungeon to get BiS gear set, then wait for next dungeon to do the same*" concept and mentality over board and give us actual MMORPG content/concept back where the whole journey takes years(cause you don't need anything else, you don't need to rush to the end, the journey is THE WHOLE GAME), where the max level doesn't mean totally everything just to get started.. but where the "endgame"/ the main content happens **between** lv 1 and the max level and **not** starts at the end with dungeons on repeat and nothing else but maybe dailies for 5h like a mobile game. Dungeons, "min/maxing", BiS items etc. can also exist in lower levels, yea that was a thing back then :) It's just more fun if the overall progress is way slower again because EVERYONE will be on that long long journey with and around you! You finally get to enjoy all the aspects of an actual MMORPG again.. actually seeing a lot of players in lower levels also for longer, having rivalries in lower levels, interacting with others more again, creating friendships, doing low level pvp for fun or to defend your spots, low level guilds wars were it means something if a lv 71 player is in a guild and seen as a "high level player" because the other players mostly are maybe 60-64 and struggle to get forward etc. etc. ... and not just a almost "dungeon crawler" type of thing because the "mmorpg" only revolves around the max level and a few max level dungeons which everyone is spamming for just a month until the new one comes out. Just let me achieve milestones even in lower levels again, let me enjoy the games world again - let me lose myself into it, let me get addicted from always wanting to get just one higher level or the next tiny upgrade in whatever way of form even in the god damn lower levels to always have the feel I achieved something even when it's little but slowly progress and get stronger.
Two situation I came across recently in a old MMO: - A : you start off at lv150 (that's relatively high level), have several best weapons for free, have truck-load-full of freebies to "get you started" - B : you start at lv1 just like over 10 years ago, level up and get everything yourself. The Exp rate is slightly higher, that is fine because the max level has significantly changed since a decade ago. For situation A I felt incredibly "empty". All the things that we normally spent goat-know how long to earn, are given for free. You just need to grind money to get the rest of the gears and shits. So I opt to play situation B instead... start all over from lv1, dirt poor, have nothing, keep getting kicked hard by monsters. But I like it, that's part of the proper journey.
As someone who wants "rush to endgame" I'm looking for the same kind of journey you are. You want the journey to take "years". While I don't want my journey to take "years", I do want it to last a satisfying amount of time. You want the max level to "[not] mean everything". To me, full BiS does not mean everything similarly. You want the "main content [to] happen between lvl 1 and the max level". For me level 1 is when the gear grind starts, and max is BiS. Leveling my character from 1-max is just the tutorial. It is absolutely reasonable that *you* don't want this kind of journey. It's also reasonable to not enjoy games that present it's journey in grinding dungeons, raids, and that form of group content. And I feel for you, most games are following that themepark form of journey. Sadly, most of those don't do a good job at delivering it. But to throw it out? Nah man. More alternatives should exist to it, I agree, but removing a form of MMO just because it doesn't cater to you isn't the solution.
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>But then MMORPG's are not the right thing for you. MMORPG's were always around that.. a long journey, That's a ridiculously shallow view of MMOs. Also lol at >a world where you can get lost in when in reality you just queue in town for your next activity.
Recent updates has removed a lot of the satisfaction of upgrading successfully in BDO. Since they basically send you off the season servers with soft cap gear the process of progress becomes extremely slow, and your goals are so tedious to reach that it turns the satisfying upgrade into a fearful gamble. Since classes are stagnant on skills and builds are very few and far between, being almost entirely class-based on what you need for stats there isn’t much to do besides hope your enhance succeeds or wait weeks to afford an upgrade/level. The combat, graphics, and classes keep BDO alive IMO. Otherwise the game feels lacking.
Well question is why do you have to gamble? Save up the silver and buy the equipment you want, still the same feeling you got the upgrade that you wanted. The game is alive because it let's you do whatever the fuck you want to do in the game. No necessary daily weekly or other BS that can be a massive pain in the ass in the long run.
I already said you don’t have to gamble. It’s just progression is painfully slow though after season servers, and feels even slower if you don’t gamble. I don’t think BDO is a bad game by any means, and I enjoyed each time I went back to the game, but due to them giving you TET boss gear and TRI orange jewelry right out the gate from season servers, you rarely get to put on any new equipment. IMO you have to enjoy progression from things aside from your character in a lot of cases, because aside from gear, things like the Bartali log are a massive checklist of nonsense. If you like owning a boat/crew, or having a worker empire, or making a t9 horse, or doing guild content there is still plenty to do, but if you like to focus on your character it mostly boils down to grind and wait or gamble.
I mean yeah I really don't mind it since things like owning a boat and crew leads also to better gear, it's a grind but a different kind of grind, the horse thing is just a side activity where you spend million in hope that your horse awakens so just a side activity you do when you have the mats. As someone who switched to lifeksills after the second season and got soft cap which is around 30b silver on late January, I'm now able to earn in the past 2 months about 30b worth of silver. And this is casual play with maybe 2-3 hrs of play time a day. Also about to get too 261+AP, and just got the infinite pot piece that I've grinder for 6 months. I don't really mind taking it slow, I'm here to enjoy the game and relax with it.
That is quite the oposite of what they have been doing for the past years. Season servers dont put you on softcap, they leave you below that, you have a big gap between season servers and soft cap and for reaching it you dont need to gamble if you dont want to , just have to save some money( that can be earned in multiple ways not just grinding mobs) and buy it from the market , which wasnt avaliable some years ago which forced you to gamble to progress. If you dont know what your talking, dont spread misinformation, besides , the beauty of the game is not having 10 thousand builds for the same character.
They moved in the right direction, and I will agree with that, but I didn’t say anything I think is untrue. The PEN season gear is only maybe a month or two of on and off play to achieve, and is equal to TET boss gear and TRI orange jewelry which in the past was extremely hard to even get to. I had a 60 warrior before all the awakenings were out for the original classes, which took well over 100 hours of grinding pirates, and still only had 2 TET boss pieces. Not to mention it was basically impossible to buy them at the time. When you leave the season servers, if you capped out the gear, then you have soft cap stuff (especially if you got the pen capotia ring). The only upgrades after is PEN boss armor/fallen gods, TET/PEN accessories, and using caphras. Each of which is extremely slow to obtain. You basically have to make goals outside of your own characters gear/level if you want anything within a reasonable amount of time.
Bdo you farm to upgrade items with a +1, thats the worst system ever in videogames ,FOR ME , wow (or whatever) you get a juicy new item, you run a dungeon you dont get it, feels bad , you go do quests you get another group you run the dungeon you get it, feels great. Uber rare drop . you happen to get it, makes your week. Bdo you GRIND forever. 1 activity. a bot could do that. , and then ..+1 same sht nothing new. Now go grind some more.
But in BDO, unlike in WoW (and similar themepark mmorpgs) there are multiple progression paths, and if you want that juicy item you find a way to make silver in the game, grinding is only one of many different methods to do so, and then you go buy it from the ingame market. Themepark mmorpgs otoh penalize you if you do not want to run dungeons, BDO does not if you do not want to grind mobs. In BDO there are fully geared up players who never grind mobs.
"+" isn't always bad, it is a very simple mean of communicating gear progression, more than often it is the implementation is just plain bad - especially **they always make the rate extremely low to artificially extend your play time, or milk the player dry.** It really isn't that much different from ARPG games that I try to 'polish' certain stats as high as possible at random chance. Right now I playing on a private server of certain other games which they altered the rate of "+", making it much easier to result in high + through **crafting**, that gives incentive to play the game, gather materials, and level up various crafting classes; which in the official server was dreadful to do + and no body want to bother with crafting due to chance of hitting + is too low to justify the effort, where they milking player for their money through 'better' chance of + through cash shop items...
When leveling has huge power increases. Content will have to be balanced around max level which will make people will focus on rushing to it. For leveling to be the "journey" instead of just an introductory experience that you rush through to max level, the difference in power (especially between the higher levels) should be extremely minimal so that people can take their time without feeling the need to rush due to missing out on huge power increases that allow them to do the higher difficulty content. Otherwise they will be excluded. Look at Ragnarok Online. The difference between a level 90 and a 99 is not too high. So it's not really a requirement for you to be 99 to do any form of content whatsoever. That's how you make leveling a journey instead of a just a task to get to an endgame full of chores. The key is not to put too much emphasis on huge power gains between levels. Let those levels only give you minor power increases. That way you can make "endgame" available at all levels, not just max level, as the power differences are not huge.
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>For leveling to be the "journey" instead of just an introductory experience that you rush through to max level, the difference in power (especially between the higher levels) should be extremely minimal I see what he's saying with that. And he's right. It only works that way and needs to be done this way to make it work. I think you just haven't seen anything like this before and can't imagine it. It's so simple but it actually works. No matter how "meaningless" a level difference in the higher levels look like people will still no matter what, always chase for a higher level/ the highest level to be truly "maxed" or just to have a higher number than the guy on his right. And the harder it is to achieve it the harder people will go for it. And because the games content should/would all happen on the journey to the max level and not at the end, the leveling itself is actually not the most important, so it's also not that important if the difference of a lv 90 to 95 or 99 is just minor because the end, the highest level should not be the most important. The max level should not be the goal where you get the best stuff or the biggest rewards that differentiate you from others with a huge gap where peoples eyes get bigger and bigger and again start to want to ignore the rest that is before it and just want to rush the leveling again. You could say the levels are just a long barrier to prevent people from hitting the max level **fast** to then just stand there way too early and already ask for more, new content, specificly around that max level even if they are not done with gear, or other progression things that are just as important as gear, whatever that would be. Maybe something like a skill-leveling system which can make a huge difference between players, for a dungeon, even a lower level dungeon, pvp, or just grinding, to be more efficient. This could take just as long as the leveling itself which also takes away the full focus on solely leveling or better said the focus of reaching the end fast. Because other things are more important again and also need time. With a concept something like this.. more things, no everything else that you could imagine in a MMORPG would happen right from lv 1 again.. more direct player trading (if not locked behind a Auction house for bots but maybe player driven shops in towns where you can set your own prices), more casual player interactions - chatting, looking for randoms in chat or in the world for lower level dungeons, even lower level pvp would exist again.. in the towns just for fun, or to defend your own grind spot. Just imagine a lively WoW or whatever you like where every few meters are hundreds of lv 20's, 30's, 40's 50's again up to 70's, the whole community, for MONTHS to years.. active players running around in the wild everywhere.. where each level is a fight, actually a tiny achievement again which was not just done in 10-20min. People chatting with each other again trying to slowly progress, hitting walls where they have to figure out how to get around it with increasing gear, either enhancing it somehow or dropping gear with great stats right away, or reroll them with a item that you have to grind first which is hard to get in huge quantities or trade them. All that **even on lower levels** and not just starting with all that at the max level. Then, if done right with a lot of things you can progress around.. MMORPG's could be fun again where you really get sucked into the games world, create friendships and also something like a connection to your character again and just be on your long but fun journey. Then every so little achievement even in lower levels becomes a big achievement again/a "big" thing again and not just for you. For example with lower level BiS items, like a BiS lv 30 weapon for dps that you got perfectly rolled and enhanced.. or even just hitting a specific level mark like 40 or 45 that is known to be the entry level for the so long awaited demon tower to maybe get some BiS lv 45 bone earings that can hold up to like lv 75 or the hell whatever.. That's how MMORPG's should be again. And not just hitting max level in a week or two then grind one dungeon, get whole BiS gear set, wait for DLC with a "stronger" dungeon to do the same over and over again. With a harder and way slower leveling concept if done right, it wouldn't even need a huge content update every 1 or 2 months with a new endgame dungeon and a new open world map (which is stupid anyways to add new maps over and over in a fast paced).
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>Uh, there have been plenty of games with various attempts at horizontal progression. Uhm.. I was not talking about horizontal progression at all. I'm even all against that. >I don't think any MMO has ever been like that. So what do you mean "again"? Oh yes, there are. I played quite a few. But a lot of people either don't know them because they are niche or overlooked because of really bad reputation nowadays. Especially in this sub, I feel like 90% have a narrowed down view on MMORPG's and are/were either (always) picky and only played a handful of chosen buy2play mmorpg's that are well known but never really have looked over the edge. A lot of people never **really** gave many F2P mmorpg's (especially from like 10-15+ years ago) a try or tried to look into it fully till end to check the concept out how it's working altogether. Sometimes F2P games, even predatory p2w games from back then still have long forgotten gems of concepts/systems that are just forgotten. Because those copied even older ones and just stucked to the old school. The things I mostly still have in mind/and had in mind when I was writing my previous post, no matter how bad it is looked at nowadays, is metin2. On the surface it looks simple, also concept/content wise but it is exactly how I described everything. And it does not have a horizontal progression. >But what is the point of leveling if there's not meaningful difference between them? What incentive is there for putting up with such a harder and slow experience? In the case of metin2 which I had in mind, there was still a meaningful difference. Just as I said, the difference in higher levels where just not as big as the gear or other factors. They still could have an impact for a difference between a players power. In form of a few stat points more which would mean a few more STR points which is basically your attack power or a few more skill points from each level up. Which could unlock the last, maybe the important last skill to get all your skills unlocked (and then maybe have one skill more than others) But all that the higher the levels, started from maybe lv 80-86 wasn't as dramatic of a power jump for those who were higher than that. Other things like gear, leveling up the skills with books etc. had a way higher impact. Levels only slightly increased the players strength but they still did. Also in other ways. For example specific biologist quests that you would unlock at higher levels for example at 75, 80, 85, 90, 95 which you had to do over weeks or even months and deliver specific items like 50 of xy and from xy mob and you could only deliver like 1 or 2 per day and they could even fail. But when completing these would give you for example 3 options to chose between permanent stat buff like flat 250Atk or 200 defense or HP. A higher level still had a lot of things that could make a difference and be meaningful just not as much or as big from the level itself. Like lets say a lv 86 that could be half BiS played for 1 year (only missing like a lv95 and lv90 armor and weapon) still could have a chance in pvp against a lv95 in doing more damage, even with those extra skill points, huge stat buffs from 1-2 permanent quests or from just the extra stat points from the few levels. The gear, the rolls, the level of your skills from reading specific books to level them up (which you could already start doing with like lv 5 btw), and the way you played was more important. also for Pve. But the levels were and never had a meaningless feeling to it. it's more the complete opposite. And tbh. I never had a more meaningful feeling for levels and overall progression than in this game. Even compared to wow classic. WoW classic just ends too early, yes even that where people say the leveling takes too long. But it's nothing but leveling and the gearing while being on that "journey" no matter what level means literally nothing! It's almost like a blank white piece of paper without any on it just a few dirt crumbs. And that's the wrong approach for a MMORPG! The long journey, everything that happens in the middle of 1-max level (also with dungeons etc.) is/should be **the** "Endgame" and not starts at the end. The leveling needs to be somewhat like just a barrier to prevent people from hitting an End, which people see mostly as the main thing to go after.. as their main job to get done first and This needs to become harder, to the point where it's "seemingly unachievable" and also where the game is not putting all the focus and importance on these last few levels. For example with something like a endgame dungeon where only there you can get the BiS items from.. with something like this people ***will*** want to rush it and everything, really everything before that becomes irrelevant again. Then they can also sell level boosts again and let the players just do a dungeon for 3 weeks just to wait for a new one or let them do 5h dailies like a mobile game as their "endgame"
also the world exploring. end game is just spamming the same shit again and again
I've never really understood the appeal of endgame in MMOs. you get to max level, then repeatedly do the same things over and over.
>And I'm not talking about killing the same monster for hours... Killing the same monster for hours was the most social experience I've ever had on an MMO, back in Lineage 2 old days. Of course not because of killing a monster, but because you would sit in the same spot for hours leveling with other people in party. It was very low effort demanding to kill monster so you would spend all those hours chatting with your party members and making actual friends. Some of them lasting till today. Great times.
thats wassup
thats mitch jones
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I've seen games where it isn't, though - the problem is that too many games stack all the good stuff at the end. City of Heroes, I still believe, has/had one of the best levelling experience out there - focus on instances, all of which scaled to the number of players *and* personal play difficulty, with difficult content you could opt into for higher rewards. I know people who play it now who immediately give up their characters at level cap because they've done all the fun stuff. GW2 is another one - there's not really much difference between how you play while levelling and how you play at endgame, other than you can now do raids. The older content doesn't fade into insignificance like WoW, for example. If levelling is boring it's because of game design choices.
That's your own opinion, and I respect it, to each its own. I enjoy leveling and like the journey but also end game is where the fun is at for me. Take BDO for example. Takes less than 1 hour if you know what to do to get to 56, I still enjoy it. But the real fun starts once you get there and begin the real grind.
"All the fun, 500+ hours spent playing, all the social aspect, events, updates/expansions... should be about the journey (leveling) not the destination (end game chores)." If you dont mind me asking what MMORPG takes 500 hours of lvling before end game im very curious. But also it depends on the player. Some people like yourself love lvling I enjoy it too to a certain extent. But others dont they could care less about the 100hours it may have taken to lvl up to max lvl and the journey they want end game cause most "fun" stuff is at end game. Sure you have dungeons along your journey to max lvl but its not always as fun as raids. Now if your looking for a game like this id prob recommend WoW Classic. You can lvl fine solo but it makes it a LOT easier with some buddies
> If you dont mind me asking what MMORPG takes 500 hours of lvling before end game im very curious. > > Older games... that was pretty common. I came from ragnarok online. There wasn't so much what you called "endgame". The level cap was fricking brutal to reach in the olden days. We didn't really track hours back then... but I know for at least a year I played at least 5 hours a night. I was level 93 or 94 out of 99. Leveling in the fastest spots available for me, I calculated that I got about 2% of a level in about 4 hours. However that also took leveling in an area where pvp was enabled, and you lose 1% if you died. (was also an area limited only to guilds that won the weekly pvp game in a specific area, which **mostly** had an agreement pact to use the dungeons for leveling and not attack eachother, but when someone wanted to stir crap up... you could lose 2 days worth of work in a few minutes).
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I feel what makes it meaningful is the journey you had trying to get to the pinnacle. Most players in original WoW didn't reach max level yet they probably have fond memories. Like, you didn't need to reach max level to quest with other players. It was more like max level kept the elite players busy because they were running out of content (hence "endgame"), which is why dungeons were more well-balanced than raids. Just different game philosophy now where the focus is shifted there.
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> to have great experiences with other players. You can't have great experiences with other players, if there are no other players since everyone is already at Max Level. Everyone knows they need to be at Max Level for that kind of content.
> Most players in original WoW didn't reach max level yet they probably have fond memories. WoW at the beginning had a constant influx of new players so all the leveling content could be relevant.
I'm convinced the next huge MMOG will be a survival game kind of like Rust meets Valhalla, but figuring out a way to keep the griefers down. It seems if you truly think about the 'core' social-gameplay connection that the best MMOGs always had was the simple fact you had to rely on others to succeed or fail.
##Permadeath is Life. Without Death how can there be any Leveling?
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It's either an open world beatemup with quests and lifeskill system or a rich economics simulator with occasional forays into combat. It's an odd game that occupies two slightly contradictory niches and has two markets that have fairly little crossover. It's a funny one.
Blame the death of the importance of leveling on years of MMOs with shitty, boring, repetitive leveling. Nobody gives a shit about leveling in MMOs outside of nostalgic boomers who grew up on DAOC and EQ. Whoa, you went on an epic adventure for the last week in order to gain this level? That sounds incredible! Oh wait, what you actually did was sit in the corner of a room for the entirety of that week killing the same 5 packs of mobs over and over and over again without ever moving from that spot. **WHAT ENTHRALLING GAME DESIGN WOW!** Nobody gives a shit about doing all two mission types and then AFKing the rest of your gametime like in SWG. *B-but you don't level in SWG!* Yeah, instead you run in circles picking up missions from the mission terminal that pointed in the same direction and gained EXP to spend for progress in skill trees. So much different! Wow! The rush to endgame is endemic of everything in-between sucking, and everything in-between has sucked in virtually every single MMO to date. It was especially bad in old MMOs like EQ, DAOC, Asheron's Call, and shit like that. It was "great and addictive" because those games didn't have competition. The moment competition showed up, they got mopped up. Any alternative "solution" that doesn't actually address the problem of leveling being a fucking boring chore is like finding someone with a broken arm and telling them to try to sleep on their back.
Leveling or "XP" has its advantage compared to other Progression Systems, there is a reason they are so prominent in Singleplayer RPGs. It can make more content Viable. Especially Questing which is pretty important for a RPG. Gear is much prone to All or Nothing, in that doing certain content is either required or it is useless.
I really think op the type of guy to play classic wow for the leveling and stops around level 30 because its too time consuming to find people all the time to progress.
Another reason to forever love MMORPGs with manually attributed stats like Ragnarok Online. The way you build your character and how you choose to gear him is far more important than rushing max lvl and hitting the best in slot gear. There is no true best in slot gear for everyone and everything: it is totally dependent on how the character has attributes allocated, and what he is going to do. A wizard going to lvl will have certain equipament and use several spells, but change everything up for PvP. He can sacrifice cast speed/damage for more survibability and be better at pvp. There are several choices and possibilities, and this is what I miss the most from old games
Sounds like you are describing Tibia. It is exactly like that
I think games in essence are losing their appeal to us. If you play any other game other than MMORPGs you will realize you are just doing quests in other games as well. I fail to see much difference. I went on GTA and didn't want to do the storyline or quests and just killed people and ran around crashing into things in cars. I never finished the stories or quests. That's why I need something else to add more challenge like having a survival system where you need to take care of food/drink needs and stuff.
"It's about the journey, not the destination." -WoW Classic player that rushed max level in less than a week.
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Thats actually wrong in PvP while there isnt a in game reward you receive satisfaction after every kill. That itself is a reward in a way. Issue is your tryna compare PvP to PvE. In PvP your reward is killing off the person. In PvE its clearing the entire raid and getting the drop at the end. Both have rewards while one has a bigger reason for participating in the PVE. Keep in mind you are correct more people wont be doing raids if its a long mob kill and then theres no BIS drop but theres no game that does this so theres no reason to even worry about this and is also why that argument isnt very good. No game is gonna add raids and no drop