It has finally been made sufficiently clear to me that there is a problem with boredom at high levels. As near as I can tell, it's not that people actually run out of stuff to do; it's that they run out of -fun- stuff to do.
Consider the plight of a total 118 or higher. When it costs you a billion experience per level, you pretty much have three options:
1) Run experience for weeks straight to get one measly level, ignoring anything dangerous like EQ or quest runs
2) Do EQ and quest runs and forget about getting a level
3) End up halfway in the middle without incentive to get more exp and not wanting to do anything else because you'd lose the exp you already have
Of these, option 3 is the worst case, and unfortunately probably the most likely. Fortunately, all of the above have an easy solution: microlevels, also known as level staging.
In short, it's a way to bank off experience or whatever the level requirement is in the short term, and give people the ability to work on the level at their own pace. It's even better if you can display that somehow, so that others can see them making progress. Everyone likes feedback about how they're making progress.
This brings me to a whole slew of ideas:
- display of the microlevel on the who list somehow?
- more use of fame for microlevels?
- use of quests for microlevels?
- abandoning exp completely for microlevels?
- going to levels 33-40
- limit rate of acquiring microlevels and levels?
All of these things are something to think about, but either way we're looking at opening up level 33 this year. Whatever I set up, I'd like to do it such that we only open at most one level per year - it's far too easy to get massive inflation otherwise.
For the display thing, the current display model is something like:
[30 32 23 32] Jerk doesn't exist
Suppose Jerk has 16 microlevels on his way to level 33 warrior:
[30 32 23 32] 16 Jerk doesn't exist
I like the way this looks; perhaps other formats would be prettier. Microlevels for each class, with only the highest being displayed sounds like a reasonable way to handle it.
I also really want to do more with requirements other than experience. We did some of this with fame, in requiring fame to gain levels, but right now a quad 32 only has to use 700 fame to get there. The current level requirements for fame right now are:
30 - 25 fame
31 - 50 fame
32 - 100 fame
33 - 200 fame
Note that the level 33 setting has never been used, but 200 fame sounds like a good value for it. For a dual-32 having used 350 fame, another 200 to get to level 33 seems fair. Pro-rating this per microlevel would help people to know where exactly they stand.
Other possibilities for level requirements could be as simple as explorer tokens, or some periodic event. I'm definitely open to more ideas in this area.
For implementation of this, if I had my way I'd make microleveling required for any level higher than 30. This still might be doable, so long as the level and other costs associated with it don't go out of bounds. Microlevels seem kinda stupid and redundant if you can get 15 of them in an hour. 50 million exp spread across 30 microlevels to get to level 31 leaves only 1.6 mil per microlevel; perhaps the real cost for it should be more along the lines of 300 million, or 10 million per microlevel.
This would be a huge increase in the cost of level 31, but with the idea of giving some bonus for each microlevel it might be well tolerated. Consider a temporary bonus for each microlevel, perhaps hp for each of the 32 microlevels on the way to warrior 33. When the final level is actually attained, the microlevel bonus goes away and is replaced by whatever the real level gives you. Players can then start accumulating another set of microlevel bonuses.
Ok, enough ideas for today. Feel free to post back.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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9 comments:
At the moment, a quad N player has access to any and all class restricted areas. Although there are few, I prefer it like this, naturally.
If you release only one 33 / year - does that mean one class or all four. Coz if it's only one class, I'll wait for the others to come out first!
One off (system) events are no good for leveling, imo.
Finally, remort!
The options are open, either one level or all four. Ideally, I'd want to make the upper levels hard enough to get to that you can't reasonably get all four before the next one comes out.
I'm not a big fan of class restricted zones. In my opinion, they don't make much sense, and I may simply nuke them or make any level difference within about 5 be considered legitimate. For class specific quests, it should be easy enough to allow people to choose using exclusive quest handlers.
What do you mean by one-off system events? How does that fit into the conversation?
Having reached quad after 8 years of work i can only give you my perspective oh how life was from tot 118 and upwards.
To answer your options on leveling getting to the tri- 32 stage was okay, the first 2 billion experience level is always a hard one but you tend to run it down by mentally putting stages in like every 100 million, which at them levels can be run in a day and surpassed as well, it can take months but it was not so bad i found.
Even logging on for a 10-25 million run a day if busy in the real world helps over time.
This choice to run equipment or quest in the middle to spice life up or say a reboot forces you to want to do them it all depends on you rating your chances of survival and making the choice, usually a loss of 10 million is nothing at this level to an experienced player who can run it back within 10 or 15 minutes.
Getting to the half way mark and losing incentive can be a problem or even wanting to start another 2 billion specially on the last class to the quad path. This is the grinder one although with the right bot its been proved to also be a minor inconvenience. I myself got fed up a few times at level 125/126/127 which resulted in me taking breaks from the mud for 1-6 months to just forget about xp and get the incentive back but this was not a bad thing as there is always new things to do when you return or plenty to catch up on.
your micro level suggestion would probably help up and coming high level players not have the problems i did, although its more about personal dedication. i do not think its a bad idea at all being able to display them, would be a nice brain soother.
Now the new level 33 or re-mort idea i not so keen on, first of all what do we need them for, quads generally can kill anything on the game they wish already and have access to impressive equipment and a lot of friends to help, why would they need to improve with another level, what would they gain, it would mean making equipment maybe as an incentive and we have already powerful sets. it would mean making harder areas than there area already and more of them with equipment and quest's to go along as well as more fame maybe. The path to quad is a long one even today and how many quads are they even.
The things that stop me getting bored at moment are mostly new areas which are probably the biggest factor to keeping my interest when a new one is added, one off events which are always fun even if not really taking part, finishing those last super hard fames or little bits you wanted to tie up, helping new characters which at this level i find quite gratifying and just generally watching the social side on channels and auction etc.
Maybe let a few more builders in (wink-wink).
If there needs to be something for a quad to do the original re-mort idea about a new character type choice with benefits for each was a lot more appealing to me, by choosing a warrior type say, you could have the strength to get around the new strength and dexterity code and wear older items as you have put the effort in and made the choice to hit like a crazy man, choosing other types who maybe have a few new skill or spell trees would be appealing to me to want to level against having to add a whole new level system to 40 as to be honest after 8 years i do find the word EXP a nasty word and i am glad its over.
Maybe have the choice at level 128 to be able to pick a character type that gives new skills/spell trees on micro-levels up to 33. with maybe an immediate benefit and reduction to strength, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom. charisma dependent on type you choose. Then you have willing to want to level stats again and run the micro-levels, combine it with adding more high level areas, quests, and equipment to specifically match the new character types and i think boredom would drop and we would have have the chance to create some diversity.
I would say most of my final levels where mostly solo run experience but by reducing my power in some areas yet gaining in others i would be more inclined to group again as well which i think is a big help to new players staying attracted as a good group and leader is a great place to learn
New fame title's are required for 600 and above as i have also suggested before.
Finally i just like to say the 8 years path to quad and people i have met on the way and the things we or i have accomplished have been amazing, i still here after so long and still have interest even with very little at the moment left to do in a time when graphics rule the gaming world so i must thank dentin for that.
I don't think people should be able to microlevel until total 100, or 110. Any earlier would be kind of pointless/stupid. I also want to know why Dentin doesn't get some real builders, like me. He has builders that have built like 1 or 2 areas in about 6 years. He also has tons of builders that haven't built anything for years and years. I think also there is an issue with him porting over areas, he seems to take forever doing that. He told me there were no more builder spots, but that is probably because he doesn't trust me or something. I think you should just make me a builder but watch me carefully. Just because I am an asshole to people sometimes, doesn't mean I would screw anything up. I only treat others how they treat me. Ask all my little mud buddies about that one.
Microlevels sound like a good idea, but I do hope they don't transform exp too much. The original suggestion of being able to "bank off" experience is good, but I think I'm just so used to the current exp system that any major change could throw me for a loop. Also, I think microlevelling should be done based on total levels rather than the class's individual level. In your example of the level 31, it would indeed be silly to have 1.6 mill per microlevel, yet a character spending 2 billion experience on his quad 29 wouldn't be able to use it. It should go by total levels, or maybe even just the cost of the level in question, like for example any level requiring 200 million experience or more can be microlevelled. That way you don't need to tamper with the cost for level 31, as 300 million would be a huge jump and would take a very long time for a total 99 character to accumulate (assuming that character levels to 31 as soon as possible, which I believe most players do).
About the bonuses for microlevels, I'm wondering how that would be implimented fairly for all classes. High warrior levels would work with 1 hp per microlevel, but for something like mage where you gain 1-2 hp and 3 mana only, that could be a problem - You can't give a player 1 mana per mage microlevel to be replaced with 3 in total at the end, but the only other option I can think of would be to vastly change the amount of mana mages get.
Lastly I think 200 fame for a level 33 might be a little much. Right now as you stated quad 32's need 700 fame. 4 level 33's alone would more than double that figure, bringing it up to a whopping 1500. A lot more fame mobs would have to be introduced as the highest amount of fame on one character I've seen is 1100, and I don't know how many more fame mobs he has left to kill.
I'm not sure on what's best for everyone, I'm just saying what I seem to be picking up from this idea.
I've actually been turning over various options for the fame requirements, and haven't come to any real grand conclusions on it. 200 fame per level would mean an effective halt in leveling above triple 33, at least until more areas come online.
On the other hand, 100 fame per level would get us to around double 34.
I kinda want to use fame to slow things down, because fame is pretty good at doing that. But at the same time, I don't want to rely on fame either.
I'll probably pick either 100 or 150 going forward, though players like Watery and Smith already have all or nearly all of the fame required to get quad 33 at 100.
A final note - I had intended to have only class levels 31 and higher be microleveled. For the lower level ones, the cost would be lower than higher level ones. Still need to work out exact details.
Craig, thanks for your comment. I don't really have anything to say on it, other than it's very good feedback from a high level and has helped me understand the high level situation better.
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