leveling speed and experience gains

[Yaliskah]

Oki. My answer will just be about levelling, and will be general to anyone have issue with RoR choices.

I fear you all forgot the real server.

We all paid to play for YEARS to level our characters. I spent atleast more than 6 years to be well geared and max level on my mains. 5 FICKING YEARS. Some paid chinese guys and risked perma ban to pl. Remember?

So when i read on forum, or when my guildies are complaining about the poor reward on a 100% free WORK IN PROGRESS (yes still alpha) project, cause they can't hit max RR in 3 months it makes me laugh...

Leveling/collect stuff on RoR is MUCH FASTER than AoR whatever you think.

I call that selective blackout don't you think?

[Hargrim]

Oki. My answer will just be about levelling, and will be general to anyone have issue with RoR choices.

I fear you all forgot the real server.

We all paid to play for YEARS to level our characters. I spent atleast more than 6 years to be well geared and max level on my mains. 5 FICKING YEARS. Some paid chinese guys and risked perma ban to pl. Remember?

So when i read on forum, or when my guildies are complaining about the poor reward on a 100% free WORK IN PROGRESS (yes still alpha) project, cause they can't hit max RR in 3 months it makes me laugh...

Leveling/collect stuff on RoR is MUCH FASTER than AoR whatever you think.

I call that selective blackout don't you think?

I guess generations X an Y were infected by millenials instant gratification needs too .

[Theseus]

You are of cause right Yaliskah, but it is a fact, that we, at least the old live players, play mostly out of nostalgia, or at least we came back for this reason at first, to be fair. So can you really blame us for gloryfying the golden days? Whatever they were? And it is quite frustrating to have to compete with 200 guys for 2 Bags, even when I know, that it was the same on live. Even as I know for a fact that this will change in the nearest future.

I guess we are just that irrational.^^

[Egoish]

I mean, i was r40 before headstart finished cause i realised the quest xp was poor and ground mobs while waiting on SC pops. My DoK hit r32rr25 ish and the SC pops stopped so i just hit 40, after headstart t4 started to get more populated but by that time i'd joined a guild/premade and farmed enough anni pieces to do the city dungeon. I think after 2 months we had the wards for LV and a couple of months after that i had full DP, though to be fair we switched server and rerolled in that time due to low pop.

Not sure how anyone can complain about how long it takes to level and gear. Having a viable r40 rvr toon shouldn't take longer than a week if you get it done.

Aoe to 29, pq farm for xp/ruin, scavange and sell stuff to fund talis, get winds impervious, do epic quests, buy or inf farm belt/cloak/accessory...

At this point you are viable but under renown ranked, pvp for renown and start working on beastlord/next set up.

[th3gatekeeper]

The only 2 cents I'll throw in here is I think the quests for winning SCs should award way more exp than they do now. When I first joined this server the cap was like 28 or something. I remember logging in and thinking it was going to be a massive grind and it deterred me from wanting to play until my buddies showed me you used to be able to grab tier 1-3 SC quests and get massive gold and exp each win. (Might have just been based off kills I can't recall now). My point being. It sped up leveling to a point I thought was reasonable and for me, it encouraged more alt play.

So you mention not wanting to go through every quest etc.etc. I don't want you guys wasting time on that either.... but you COULD bump the SC exp and RvR quest exp up so those become very via me leveling options.

Idk about you guys but I would rather play with people who leveled via RvR and SCs tham someone who grinded npc mobs for hours.

Based on my experience leveling characters, the current exo rate is too low which is why everyone is saying "go grind champs, aoe farm, etc.etx" that should be an indicator that maybe the exp from the play you should incentive (PVP) isn't lucrative enough.

[Thelen]

Oki. My answer will just be about levelling, and will be general to anyone have issue with RoR choices.

I fear you all forgot the real server.

We all paid to play for YEARS to level our characters. I spent atleast more than 6 years to be well geared and max level on my mains. 5 FICKING YEARS. Some paid chinese guys and risked perma ban to pl. Remember?

So when i read on forum, or when my guildies are complaining about the poor reward on a 100% free WORK IN PROGRESS (yes still alpha) project, cause they can't hit max RR in 3 months it makes me laugh...

Leveling/collect stuff on RoR is MUCH FASTER than AoR whatever you think.

I call that selective blackout don't you think?

I guess generations X an Y were infected by millenials instant gratification needs too .

I mean, I think for a lot of players its more about now that you've merged the tiers lower level players are at an extreme disadvantage. Before you'd only be down a few abilities or a tactic slot from your opponents. Now, new players to tier 4 have to overcome:

- 1-3 tactics fewer than the opponents they have to fight
- No or little access to crit (or block for tanks), which is essential to being effective to most classes
- Lack of access to the most powerful abilities/tactics/spec points that are gained as you get to r40
- lack of stats due to smaller set bonuses on lower level gear (bolster helps, but doesn't get you near what a 40/40 player has)

It makes a lot of sense for people to not want to go out and be free pickings in RvR. You and the rest devs have done a lot of great work on reducing the powercreep of gear and say you want everyone on a relatively even level, but seem to scoff at the idea of helping lower-level players in RvR. Keeping RR and RvR gear grind the same, but increasing XP in RvR would increase the enjoyment for new players and not really hurt the ecosystem you're trying to establish IMO.

[Hargrim]

But such threads were cropping weekly before the merge took place, so ppl want the same thing, but it's just the resoning that changes?

[Dabbart]

Yea. Cause RR80 toons aren’t easy pickings right? That’s why Avocetti is such a terrifying toon to see....

Players at low level aren’t at anymore of a disadvantage than the normal PUG. I’ve played low ranked toons with a decent group before, and laughed as I went from r31-35ish rr12-41 in one day/night of PUG farming. I’ve also brought extremely low ranked toons(16-20). They weren’t entirely useless...

Most players kinda suck. AoE spam and smash W. Targeting the Tanks with your mdps, and magic reps to attack only those classes that inherently stack disrupt... Gear, tactics, and mastery points won’t help the avg Zerg surfers or PUG queuers.

If you don’t want to rvr at low lvl, then don’t. Oh, and feel free to explain out a system that’d be better, other than wanting the desert wasteland that was the mid tiers previously....

[wargrimnir]

I mean, I think for a lot of players its more about now that you've merged the tiers lower level players are at an extreme disadvantage. Before you'd only be down a few abilities or a tactic slot from your opponents. Now, new players to tier 4 have to overcome:

- 1-3 tactics fewer than the opponents they have to fight
- No or little access to crit (or block for tanks), which is essential to being effective to most classes
- Lack of access to the most powerful abilities/tactics/spec points that are gained as you get to r40
- lack of stats due to smaller set bonuses on lower level gear (bolster helps, but doesn't get you near what a 40/40 player has)

It makes a lot of sense for people to not want to go out and be free pickings in RvR. You and the rest devs have done a lot of great work on reducing the powercreep of gear and say you want everyone on a relatively even level, but seem to scoff at the idea of helping lower-level players in RvR. Keeping RR and RvR gear grind the same, but increasing XP in RvR would increase the enjoyment for new players and not really hurt the ecosystem you're trying to establish IMO.

The bolster is sufficient. There are still elements of leveling that are going to be a part of the game for the long run. This is not a MOBA, things are not fair. Everyone needs to do their time leveling, whether that's grinding, RvR, Scens, Questing, however they want to go about it, they have options.

If you enjoy mass RvR, you'll do RvR.
If you prefer balanced PvP, you'll do Scens.
If you want to r40ASFASTASPOSSIBLEOMG, you'll be grinding mobs.
If you take your time to explore the world, Quests and PvE.

Most people bounce between all of the above as their mood suits them. RvR is not the only way to level, and the drawbacks you listed are simply drawbacks. You get some help with the Bolster. But you're not going to be a gamechanger like a full 6man group wearing BiS gear. One of the great equalizers of RvR is that numbers matter. Yeah, half your warband might be sub-30 players, but they're still going to be using skills and distracting the enemy realm. They're far from EASY to kill since the bolster leans more heavily on defensive stats.

All the benefits from leveling are going to stay in place, because it's an MMO, and leveling/advancing in gear is a BIG part of what an MMO is. We're not trying to turn this into some massive MOBA where everyone is exactly the same. Put in your time, and you'll catch up to everyone else.

[Thelen]

Thats fair enough, I guess. I just think you're going to lose quite a few new players once they hit r16 and aren't relevant except as WB fodder for a few weeks/months (depending on play time). An issue that didn't exist before the tiers merge (they just had to deal with feast or famine population in lower tiers). Doesn't bother me, as I've got 8 r40s already over the course of the last few years, but just something I've heard from friends and people from reddit that have tried out the game for a couple weeks and left.

@Dabbart, I get it that you have a strong group that can insulate you and make it easier to play a sub-r40 as you farm PUGs, but that is not the case for the vast majority of the playerbase and i don't think it should be the standard for how balance is determined. But to each their own.