Do You Like Slow Or Fast Leveling ?

Flyte27 · August 2015

Leveling slow is OK for a certain type of game. It's good for a game like EQ that keeps you playing in certain areas for long periods of time. You find different camps, different groups, and different areas to grind/explore. There are likely a lot of different areas and dungeons for a level range (like 1-10). Usually slow leveling is geared towards groups, but people can solo with difficulty and don't get as good of loot.

I like the idea of having a large range of levels that don't have a lot of impact. Mass Effect 1 had a nice leveling speed for a single player game and there was a lot of levels. The levels didn't increase your power much individually. Mass Effect 2 went the opposite direction. It was also a fun game, but more for the stories. It reduced the amount of levels/skills by a large amount and also vastly reduced the amount of items. The later I didn't mind that much. It's nice to have a small carrot sometimes even if it doesn't make you much more powerful. I also like a large array of skills. I feel this is a good system for single player content oriented games.

phantomghost · August 2015

Overall the answer for me would be it depends... but yes.

My favorite aspect of an MMO is character development. A large portion of that comes from the initial leveling from the starting level to the maximum level.

Of course there needs to be much more included that will last longer than max level. Skill and spell gains (not necessarily just a skill level but possibly skill ranks and improvements).

I think EQ did a great job with alternate advancements which allowed me to further progress my character but at a different pace than the actual character's physical level. (You could gain some while still leveling or wait until you were max but overall most people did not max out for quite some time without exploiting or just simply playing the game forever.

Then of course another aspect of character progression would be gearing up. However, this is where I find most games fail. Gear comes very easily. You see upgrades so often that they are worthless. PvP gear has very competitive stats with PvE gear... obviously PvE gear gives you an edge in PvE specific environments, but the PvP gear can easily suffice or replace a lot of the progression I would prefer to see. (Solo/Small group gear and bought items, group and small raid gear, followed by raid gear and eventually high end raid gear). -Not white, green, blue, purple, orange garbage that has a item level on it where you can easily skip past a major time sink for a game. Also, it will mean a lot more when you see upgrades become less common and huge upgrades become rare.

So overall, I would say I prefer long leveling- but only if there is a reason to make the grind worthwhile. The worst is when the leveling required is 95% solo and 5% partner/small group leveling. I do not typically enjoy games that I can finish very quickly. (For example ESO- which took 1 week (or less- sorc was the fastest for me- but also the last class I played) to go from Level 1 to VR12... followed by one more week to get full player crafted gear- making the only upgrades full sets of Heroic dungeon gear - at the time I quit at least)

I loved the grind of EQ... but after years of it, when I go back now- I typically want to fly through the levels because I have done it all numerous times now. Although I did thoroughly enjoy doing 1-60 on P99. But I would thank having a grouping community for that enjoyment.

tupodawg999 · August 2015

Although slow vs fast is part of the argument I think the majority of it is probably going to be slow vs no leveling as all the people who want no leveling will - if they're forced to level - want it to be as fast as possible.

It would be interesting to see how the votes for three options would look: slow, fast or no.

And I think it's easy to see why - for example if you want to pvp why would you want to level first? It would make more sense to start it straight away.

Alders · August 2015

Leveling speed doesn't matter to me if there's content there to support it.

It could take a year to max out and i wouldn't care if the leveling is complex and involved.

At the same time, if there's no content there then i'd like to be done leveling quickly. I despise meaningless fetch quests.

Axehilt · August 2015

rojoArcueid said:
Thats the thing, best in slot everything isnt a requirement to finish a game. And taking all bosses down either if the bosses are not part of the main game but just a separate instance with the sole purpose of acquiring new gear.

Top tier gear acquisition and instanced boss takedowns in an mmo is as unnecessary as finishing a single player game with 100% completion. Only power gamers care about that. And every mmo out there wants to cater to that group of players.

"This journey was too short" complains the man who drove 50 miles down a road (with mile-markers) and turns around without taking the 50-mile mountain trail (without mile-markers) that he reached.

Turns out if you deliberately ignore half the journey, you might end up considering the journey too short.

Anireth · August 2015

Loke666 said:

Mtibbs1989 said:

To put it short, if your player base finishes the game long before the one month recharge. I for one call that a failure in terms of leveling progression. What's the point of a subscription game if many players can complete it and leave long before the first month of release?

Well, the problem really is that devs there more or less consider leveling a tutorial for the raiding endgame. The players on the other hand often consider the game done when they hit max level.

Isn't it more the other way round? Developers think you beat the game when you finish the last main quest. They usually show you the credits there. There is more content than just the main quest at max level, just like there was more content than just the main quest at every other level, but basically, you are done. At this point, you can do said optional content, start over with a new character or stop playing. Maybe there's PVP, but thats basically "optional content".

Players on the other hand think the hundreds of hours of content before max level is just fluff and/or tutorial and expect to find more content at max level then the game has as a whole. So they skip 99% of the game and wonder why there is no game.

Thats like throwing away the actual ice cream too see if there's ice cream at the bottom of the waffle, and then complaining when there is none.

rojoArcueid · August 2015

Axehilt said:

rojoArcueid said:
Thats the thing, best in slot everything isnt a requirement to finish a game. And taking all bosses down either if the bosses are not part of the main game but just a separate instance with the sole purpose of acquiring new gear.

Top tier gear acquisition and instanced boss takedowns in an mmo is as unnecessary as finishing a single player game with 100% completion. Only power gamers care about that. And every mmo out there wants to cater to that group of players.

"This journey was too short" complains the man who drove 50 miles down a road (with mile-markers) and turns around without taking the 50-mile mountain trail (without mile-markers) that he reached.

Turns out if you deliberately ignore half the journey, you might end up considering the journey too short.

Sorry but my journey ends when the story ends. I dont consider time fillers/ time wasters "part of the journey" they are just that, time fillers. It is an option, not mandatory content to finish a game. Not saying its bad, just not required.

Loke666 · August 2015

rojoArcueid said:
Sorry but my journey ends when the story ends. I dont consider time fillers/ time wasters "part of the journey" they are just that, time fillers. It is an option, not mandatory content to finish a game. Not saying its bad, just not required.

Many players see it that way, I think it's the majority. Sadly, they don't really make MMOs for those players nowadays.

user547 · August 2015

What if games were actually fun to play instead of being excuses to increase a number next to your name?

Alamonzoro · August 2015

bad bad cope cats.

waynejr2 · August 2015

Loke666 said:

rojoArcueid said:
Sorry but my journey ends when the story ends. I dont consider time fillers/ time wasters "part of the journey" they are just that, time fillers. It is an option, not mandatory content to finish a game. Not saying its bad, just not required.

Many players see it that way, I think it's the majority. Sadly, they don't really make MMOs for those players nowadays.

I am part of that group and am disappointed with things like Daily Quests. The OP's question is good but does not encapsulate the right point. Given two games where all other factors are equal, I would prefer the game with 40 hours of game play over the one that had 20 hours of game play.

Alamonzoro · August 2015

voting isn't over kids.

Axehilt · August 2015

rojoArcueid said:
Sorry but my journey ends when the story ends. I dont consider time fillers/ time wasters "part of the journey" they are just that, time fillers. It is an option, not mandatory content to finish a game. Not saying its bad, just not required.

These are videogames. Everything is optional. But if you didn't achieve best-in-slot-everything you definitely didn't finish a MMORPG, and claiming that you did finish it is ridiculous (and claiming that you finished it and it was too short is even more ridiculous.)

Also raid content is typically part of the story.

fivoroth · August 2015

Renfail said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

It'd be amusing to know how many people who voted "slow leveling" actually play a game with slow leveling right now...

I'd vote "no leveling at all" if the option was available.

That's precisely why none of our team is playing any current games, but instead kept falling back to EMUs before we decided to go our own way.

Even the recent progression servers for Daybreak only provided a partial throwback to that era, and the leveling speeds are roughly double what they were back in the day. Hell, I went level 28 - 45 on my Necro in just a week of Guk groups. That is NOT early EverQuest speeds.

However, of important note is just HOW MANY people jumped on board with those servers because they WANT that old-school experience and leveling curve.

P.S. I voted for slow leveling. I grew up with hell levels and remember it taking me a couple of years to get to 60 on my ranger back in the day as I was learning the game and growing up with my guild. I distinctly remember playing a 19 hour session to get through level 45 in the Dreadlands at one point.

I didn't hit 50 before Kunark came out, despite starting in May of 1999 just a couple of months after the game launched. It was slow, slow, slow going back then, and our guild took our time. I still played every damn day for several hours, but there was a ton of crafting, roleplaying, running around and helping other guildies, and exp was the last thing on our mind. More important was community and having fun within the world and exploring, not racing to the cap.

Also being involved in things like buff stations at the newbie areas just to help players out, having language-learning sessions, working on building faction, and so many other things that never once moved your experience bar forward, but were instead things you did just to be part of a group and help out your fellow players.

The exact opposite of today's entitlement generation where it's all about "me me me" and "faster faster moar moar"

Are you sure? I haven't played vanilla eq2 but I hear the XP gain is comparable if not slower. Also bear in mind you are playing the easiest most face roll class. I found that people who play the easy classes always seem to say it's too fast.

Also why not try to quest as opposed to dungeons. The same number of levels will probably take you 5 times as long if you don't spam dungeons 24/7. But then again necro iskp kinda faceroll.

fivoroth · August 2015

Vorthanion said:

rojoArcueid said:

Mtibbs1989 said:

To put it short, if your player base finishes the game long before the one month recharge. I for one call that a failure in terms of leveling progression. What's the point of a subscription game if many players can complete it and leave long before the first month of release?

while i agree with you, i think that is why mmo progression and longevity is fundamentally broken. They keep making mmos with the sole goal of racing to the end. They are just setting themselves up for disaster because they cant put up new content that fast so people leave.
I say remove the race from the game and keep existing content fun and varied.

Perhaps the problem is that the current crop of developers seem a little too keen to cater to power gamers. It might be good to have some games out there where the vocal power gamers don't set the pace of the games they have invaded, especially when they weren't the original target audience of the game.

Agree if anything the developers should cater to casuals and people who take their time as those people will be playing much longer as opposed to the hardcore power gamers who burn through any kind of content in 1-2 weeks.

AAAMEOW · August 2015

I played one of those korean grinder where after 3000 hours of game hours, I still haven't reach the level cap.

I don't think the problem is with the leveling. The problem is with the power creep and uneven leveling field where no life players dominates against other player who actually have a life.

I suppose the weird thing is many people on this forum seemed to think their journey ends once they reach level cap, so they need a level up button to have fun.

Akulas · August 2015

Doesn't matter I just like time wasting on equal terms with others whether it's slow or fast as long as there is noticable progress with no p2w option.

Alamonzoro · August 2015

Don't Forget The Voting.

mmoguy43 · August 2015

Both options concern me when there is no context.
Super fast. It feels like I'm cheating. Content gets bypassed or out leveled too easily.

Dreadfully slow. Wishing botting was permitted. Maybe in a week I can get another level but I might forget why I'm trying to level by then.
Neither have meaningful progression.

I want to experience all the available content without out leveling it or the option to do just the main content and progress at a acceptable pace.

Valentina · August 2015

Fast, because most games aren't interesting enough for slow leveling.

tupodawg999 · August 2015

If the distribution of fast vs slow among players follows what is called a "normal" distribution

http://www.regentsprep.org/regents/math/algtrig/ats2/normal67.gif

then it makes sense for developers to aim somewhere in the middle.

On the other hand if the distribution of fast vs slow is bimodal

http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios101/genes1/img009.gif

then it makes absolutely no sense for developers to aim somewhere in the middle.

That was the point of the closed poll - which was starting to hint at bimodal although not enough votes to be sure.

MrSnuffles · August 2015

The question can't be answered without context. I can level fast but there are 2000 levels or 100 categories with 100 levels. It's relative.

What is important is if the leveling is meaningful. Does it mean something to level and does leveling up change gameplay enough to make a difference.

Leveling up in games like ESO, GW or WOW means nothing since it does not change gameplay a lot and only every X levels you get some small change in the form of a new skill. The rest is fluff.

In other games where you get key skills that define your role, make you more flexible or strengthen your role that one level can mean everything.

Leveling should be meaningful and have an impact, not Ability+1 and Stat+1.

Quizzical · August 2015

No, I don't like slow or fast leveling. But I'll put up with either so long as they don't disrupt things excessively.

kemono55 · August 2015

I feel like the majorities of mmo today uses levels as a 60 hour tutorial for your class before you reach the endgame.
In those case, I can't see why you couldn't just compress that into 5 hours, its not like mmos classes are particularly difficult to play.

But I would prefer leveling to be where the actual game happened, so I had to vote on long leveling time.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, when you reach max level you kind of feel you have completed the game.

Axehilt · August 2015

tupodawg999 said:
That was the point of the closed poll - which was starting to hint at bimodal although not enough votes to be sure.

Wasn't the closed poll just a 3-option variant of this poll (with no-leveling added)? You do realize that wouldn't have given us any impression of the shape of players' expectation, right?

You'd need a poll that had 8+ options, including no-levels and "the amount of mile-markers on my highway doesn't matter, only the gameplay matters", and also a range of leveling times from extremely short to infinite. Only with a range of options would you start to get an actual distribution of player preferences (and even then, (a) it's a vocal minority and (b) it would be strongly influence if the topic was still named "do you like slow or fast leveling?" as that naturally encourage voters to pick one extreme or the other so you'd want to word it more neutral "How long should leveling take?" and have the poll options be times (with major MMORPGs marked at their respective options, so players have a better idea of how long "4 days" actually is.))

I'm sure someone better versed in scientific surveying could provide even better guidance, but at a minimum we can avoid the obvious fallacy of the implication that the other 3-option poll would've shown us the shape of players' preferences when it definitely wouldn't have.

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