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(NPE) I want to hear a legit reason for: Why I Should Take My Time Leveling?
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,387
With news of the NPE flooding GW2,
I saw some arguments in favor of the NPE.
What these arguments usually consist of is the idea that
people should take their time leveling and features like this make people take their time .
But I had to stop and ask.
WHY should I take my time leveling? I mean give me a legit reason...
excluding developer made mechanics that limit leveling progression.
Why should I take my time?
usually people say, you need to level slow so you can enjoy the world design. But why do I need to do that? Doesnt Gw2 allow you to return to any zone you want to play in? so whats slow level have to do with that?
Some people also say slow leveling is needed to learn how to play. But how so, if a new player can still level by using auto attack or simply tagging mobs till max level and still not learn the full mechanics of the game. slowing the game level speed wont change that. in fact, that would likely bore players and make them leave before they even reach max level.
in fact, the reason I tend to speed level in MMOs, is because I want to play the game in full, not in pieces.
Using Gw2,Rift,WoW for examples, when I am leveling my character, he gains more skills to use as my character levels up, and gets to go to more zones, to do more things in the game world.
why would I want to spend long periods of my gaming time, leveling and being locked out of more skills to play with, and locked away from more zones to explore? being locked away from gameplay features because I am not a certain level, would most likely make me wont to level up faster not slower.
In vanilla WoW, the Large Scale PvP (Old AV) was at level 51-60. Well if I like large scale PvP, why would I want to take my time slowly playing level 1-30 and 30-51? why?
This logic doesnt make sense to me. Somebody here, give me a legit logical reason for why I should take my time leveling, when levels only limit my fun in the first place.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
if mmo companies made fun games starting from lvl 1, then people would take their time more often to enjoy the game world and all its features. But no, they focus so much on max level content that they make abysmal lvl 1 through max experience.
If they are going to continue focusing on max level content only and making the other 99% of the game irrelevant then i expect instant max levels at character creation and all areas in the game be max lvl too.
EDIT: Or hey!!! save up some development cost and dont make character levels! and their respective content!.
Nothing wrong with speeding through leveling but just make sure the endgame is good if you do it. You see a lot of people who are like "I'm going to hit max level as fast as possible!" and then two weeks later "Oh. Now endgame sucks and there's nothing to do. Unsub."
You're right though. WoW and its ilk encourage this kind of behavior. A game could be designed that would give much more incentive to people to take their time levelling.
You really shouldn't take your time leveling. All the advantages are in place for max level. Max power, best in slot armor, and all choices are opened up at max level, including but not limited to pve content, character customizations, pvp content.
You should blow right throw the leveling process as fast as possible to get past the gimped version of yourself and right to the main idea of the game. Zip right through it and give yourself the advantage that max level toons have. The content at max level is the only content that matters, the other filler content is a waste of developer resources. The content I see at level 5, 10, ..... up to max I only see once and then I never return. Max level content is at least replayable or should be for that matter.
If you don't just blow through the game and get to max level you may end up like me
SWTOR - quit after level 27
Rift - done after level 37
Wildstar - made it to level 20
AA - stuck at level 22
GW2 - can't get past level 27 ...... and so on and so forth
I can't max out a toon because I get burned out doing the boring leveling crap before I reach level cap and the games open up.
I am tired of seeing this argument. How many MMO's are there where everyone says " the game doesnt start until you reach Max Level ". Personally if the leveling content isnt fun and is basically there to teach you how to play your character, I would rather skip most of it.
When I sit down and read a Dresden novel, I enjoy the first page just as much as the 300th page. Your analogy simply doesnt work. Its more like you telling a kid " I know you dont like the bread crust but you have to eat it to get to the good parts of the sandwich ". I would quit being an asshole and buy my kid crustless bread...
^A great perspective IMO
The old MMOs had you from lvl 1 and made you earn the rest. I enjoyed that.
^You are the ruin of MMOs...have fun with your games while they last.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
I guess I need to use simpler statements. A game is used for entertainment. You are entertained by something I'm not. Why should I convince you differently?
If you read the rest of what I wrote, it's basically what you just agreed to, but worded differently, but you cut that part out and just took two sentences.
I don't believe I am the ruin of mmo's - if you like doing the same things over and over again all the way through level 99 then all they need to do is make that game for you. I don't like doing that, I just want them to make a game that appeals to me.
What rule is there that mmorpg's must have a boring leveling grind in place?
Take your time leveling if it's fun, otherwise rush through the boring stuff to get the fun part.
That statement makes much more sense.
MMO's are the only form of entertainment where I see a large group of people skip a large part of the content. My wife simply like to craft and do housing stuff with a bit of PvE. I skip all that stuff, make her craft me gear, while I PvP with a bit of PvE. I am surprised that there isnt many options for MMO's out there that use a more flat curve to level progression because it seems that there is a big market out there for it.
Imagine if a game such as WoW has a system set up where 2x lvl 30s where equivalent in power to 1x lvl 60. Where 99% of your power didnt come from farmed gear. People say that they dont like a grind (repetition) but I call foul on that. People dont like a grind (repetition) when its something they simply dont like doing. If its fun to do, people usually dont call something a grind even when its repetitive.
Me personally, I dont care to PvE for 3 months just to get where I can reach viability in PvP. Sadly, how many games fit that bill...
I will use EQ2 as my example of why I leveled slowly:
I played EQ2 since launch and leveled slowly. Why? Because I enjoy the EQ lore and read the quests. I followed the story and enjoyed specifically the heritage quests.
I leveled slowly because I wanted to do every dungeon at its appropriate level for an actual challenge. I know seems crazy right? Someone actually wanting a challenge in this day & age.
I leveled slowly because I wanted to try every class before investing an immense amount of time at end-game. Trying classes up to mid 20s gave me a quick picture of that class's mechanics. I did not want to power level to end game then find out that I spent all that time on a class I would not enjoy.
Most importantly I leveled slowly because at that time power leveling wasn't widespread important, nor did playing EQ2 feel like a race to end game. Other people were playing at around my pace as well and it was fun from level 1 to end-game.
I play the way I want to play, perhaps you should play the way you want to play and stop worrying about others.
You can't have it both ways...
You said it one way...now another.
Either way...you shouldn't rush through any game. It only hurts you and your wallet.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Back then during the Eq2/WoW days, MMOs were new to people, so they didnt know that the Levels were really gating content.
As time went on, and the mechanics behind MMO levels became more known, is when people started power leveling in masses.
the masses, see no point grinding levels while taking your time, when the content you are doing will become meaningless when you hit the next level. on top of that, when the interesting game features are locked behind a level wall, you want to reach that wall to play it. no point doing the level content slowly, when you can do that same task as a higher level, while having access to more features o the game to have fun with.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I understand you are just bringing up a topic to discuss. It's nice to have topics that aren't about bashing games/people on this forum, thanks for that. Please don't take anything I type as a personal attack. I am just making points & observations. Some of those points are opinions, whereas others are just a change in trends in the games we play today substantiated by facts.
The day we do away with levels or meaningful progression is the day we might as well play re-skinned versions of COD. One instance, no massive open worlds, and everyone the same level.
So the real question in this topic is not "why should I take my time leveling" but instead "why should i play MMORPGs if I want to get to the ending on day one."
these two arguments go hand in hand. If an MMO has 100 levels, the first 99 levels should never be about learning your character or the game mechanics. That is easily done in a 10 minute long tutorial before jumping to the action. MMO companies dont make fun leveling content, so why make them boring chores instead of not making them at all? that is beyond me. If your idea of content progression is old and boring, dont add it to the game, come up with something fresh and a bit different.
To me it feels like MMORPG companies arent learning how to develop new things anymore, only learning to recreate existing stuff to make money out of it.
I disagree. Its not that the content becomes meaningless once you level past it. Its that how many times can I do kill X boars and not be bored of it. The 1st time you encounter, kill X boars, you are like this is OK. The 9000th time you encounter kill X boars, you power level as fast as possible because it simply isnt fun anymore.
The real killer to MMO is challenging content. A Pro athlete competes with other Pros because otherwise where is the challenge. MMO's simply havnt evolved. You have a huge section of the MMO market that are looking for a new challenge and not having their hand held for the first 50 levels, yet again.
Archeage is a good example of wasting most players time. There is nothing difficult or challenging about the questing so there is almost no point to it besides Lore. Some people enjoy the story and some dont. For those that dont, leveling becomes a waste of time due to no challenge to be had. You get 1 skill point every other level so what is even the point of half the leveling process. You could cut the leveling in half in Archeage and I doubt anyone would really care because what do those levels give, no skill points, nothing meaningful to modify your character...
For PvE in mmo's to evolve we need challenging content. This is why there is a decent sized PvP market because other players are the only real challenge. If you released a game that had challenging content on a somewhat flat power curve I am all in. The somewhat flat power curve reduces gated content due to level. Gated content would be based on skill and group size, which is fine by me...
I love how enlightened people act.
Like all of us that played MMO's during the early days were just a bunch of blithering idiots and "didn't realize" that this was just "gating content".
Guess what, we're not stupid.
There is a saying, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Its also commonly stated that nothing worth having comes easily.
MMO's when they started were about 2 things, 1. Persistent world, things happen when you log out, etc. 2. Actually needing more than 1 person to accomplish certain goals (something im sure you guys also view as "gating content")
Secondarily, they were RPGs, a core tenet of the RPG is progression. Since i'm pretty sure most people don't actually know what means, im going to define it for you:
pro·gres·sion
noun: progression
1. A movement or development toward a destination or a more advanced state, especially gradually or in stages.
See, what has happened is WOW ultra casualized the genre, especially in later years, to the point where they are basically single player games, played by people who are NOT rpg fans.
These are the same people who play these games the same way they would something like Street Fighter, where logically having to unlock fighters, etc, is dumb.
So you have a huge portion of people who are angry that a game they're playing isnt like another game they're playing, when it was never intended to be.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
There are many people that want a persistent world that can evolve while having some sort of progression. I am sure todays WoW is probably not what the original developers intended it to be. MMO's evolve which is one aspect that people do enjoy that you give no credence to. Most single players games do not evolve like an MMO does.
People debate over which direction a game should take. Since these games can go in a myriad of directions, this debate is important because everyone wants the game to cater to their style of play. Now based on your opinion you assume to know what the developers intend a game to be and not that players took the time to research and the game promised was never given or the developers changed their goal for the game. AoC is a good example, bar fights was on the box yet did it ever even make it into the game?
You also speak of progression. Progression can exist in many ways: new gear, leveling, skill leveling, crafting, etc. Progression can also vary based on time and amount progressed. When I look at WoW, I see progression gone awry. One level you could have 50k health and the next level 400k health is now the new goal. For me, I do not like WoW's type of progression.
So the answer is not as simple as " you dont want to play an MMO, you want an FPS ". The answer is more like " this mmo is probably not right for you, time to look for a new one ".
Norton Power Eraser.
An MMO by Symantec. Guaranteed to have more bugs and less functionality each patch. Used to be called ESO before Zenimax got bought out.
You are so see through....
Everything you post is what some light weight review would post. Not having played or experienced any of it.
We...the ones that played those games....experienced YEARS of it. A TOTAL DIFFERENCE than you did. When EQ was new was WAY different than WoW. Was way different than AoC/AO/DAoC/ and so on. But you don't want to mention those for some reason.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Finally an answer I agree with.
Would also add, it's a freaking game, level, don't level i'ts all about how you want to play the game and what you enjoy.
Isnt the point of MMOrpgs is that they do not have an ending and isnt the goal to get to that part of the game which you enjoy?
Why should you take your time levelling? Lack of end game content.
Once a game has been out long enough for there not to be a lack of end game content then if you want to speed level, go for it.
However, no game releases with 'enough' end game content. Therefore speed levelling in a new game simply leads players to run out of content and get bored. Then they invariably head to the forums and start bitching.
Devs cannot simply not release the game until there is 'enough' end game content as that would push the release back gods know how far, increasing development costs at a time when there is as yet no income from the game. They need the game to be released and drawing income to be able to build the end game content.
So, if you want to speed level in WoW or SWTOR or GW2, knock your socks off. If you want to speed in level in MMOX that released yesterday: You're still more than welcome to, just don't bitch when you get to max level and there isn't 'enough' end game content.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D