Less Grind?

[Minks]

* Minks grins and hands LigH a beer to counter the dry humor. 

edit: Oh, and I voted snorks. Becoming perfect in something should take a lot of time and work.

But I think the work should be less repetetive, maybe involving a special quest every 10 or 20 levels, very
much like the starting quests for the crafting skills.

Another issue is the balancing (*kicks the dead horse*). Training crafting e.g. should be possible
without hours and hours of hunting and/or mining. Sure, many students irl work to finance their
studies, but most of them have "normal" jobs, very few of them are bounty hunters or pitmans. 

[Mathy Stockington]

I am sorry LigH

[Prolix]

The biggest problem with the grind is the amount of available levels, with more to come apparently. You say max out character but from what I understand (possibly in error) is that ultimately stats will be extended far beyond what is currently available. Anyway I do not understand why anything over 100 is needed. Reminds me of a system a guy I know designed for a table top rpg He wasn't satisfied with a system that used percentile dice (2 10 siders) He required Permillage (3 10 siders generating a number from 1-1000). It seems excessive. At any rate you can have any number of graduations between 1 and 100. That is another thing why not slide the character stats so that the lowest score possible is 1 and grow from there? The highest possible to generate through CC could be no more than 20. the numbers here seem inflated as well.

[zanzibar]

I think leveling shouldn't have so much focus on it.

Also, I agree you should be able to level up without a trainer.  Training should simply speed it up.

I don't like the idea of requiring players to complete quests in order to open up trainers.  You can solve quests without caring about the settings or interacting with other players.  Also, the players who care about leveling so much will just use spoilers.  For players who don't use spoilers, sometimes quest solutions are so unexpected (or they need to be worded so exactly) that they're really difficult to solve or can't be solved at all by certain players without help.  Look at the tutorial as an example of that.  You wouldn't think anyone would have trouble with the tutorial because the quest solutions are very straight forward, but countless people have needed a spoiler for it.

I agree with Bilbous that the benefit doesn't seem to increase as you get to the highest levels, so maybe that can be looked at as well.

Max stats to all roleplayers! -- They don't use them anyway.

I've known many roleplayers who level their characters.



If PlaneShift is going to leave the door open to players becoming as poweful as they want to be, then you'll have to have enemies that are as powerful as the players.  What I see happening is PlaneShift becoming a typical rpg game where you have different towns that players migrate to as they get more powerful.  Each town has more powerful enemies to face.

If players are allowed to max out, but are less powerful by levels alone, then they'll need to WORK TOGETHER in order to take down tougher enemies.  I think that would be wonderful, if the main focus of PlaneShift was teamwork rather than soloing and grinding.

[Mathy Stockington]

Mostly I ignore most of your posts zanzibar, but this was well thought out and well written. I applaud your efforts here.

What I see happening is PlaneShift becoming a typical rpg game where you have different towns that players migrate to as they get more powerful.  Each town has more powerful enemies to face.

If this happens to PS I think it would be a total shame. I hope it does not. Though there has to be quests and leveling to even keep the interest of even the best role player. How that system works in game is an important part of PS so it stands out as a game like none other.

[zanzibar]

It takes no effort to post like I always post.

[Mythryndel]

I'm not going to get drawn into the back and forth over this, and so have not read any responses so far. My thoughts are my own, and as follows:

1. Stats - are fine where they are. It takes a bit of time and trias... but the level of effort is fine as-is. There are several tweaks that could be done to make the effort more enjoyable or meaningful, but really... the level of effort required is fine.

2. Skills - These need a LOT of work. Some skills, like combat skills allow for a fairly good cost/benefit ratio and are not too difficult. Crafting... where to start... one level took me over 1.5 hours to train (level 14 sword making)... gave almost no benefit over the previous level... and gave me no way to recoup the cost of training. Magic is similarly expensive without any real benefit per level and takes forever to train each level.

I think that skills should be broken down into roughly thirds. The first third is reasonably easy to obtain... factor cost in if you want it to be more difficult, but the time for the first third should be 10 hours or less of actual time to train. The second third should be more difficult... maybe 15 hours to train. The last third could be 20 - 25 hours to train. This is per skill, time dedicated only to training. What the first 10 hours represent would be apprenticeship, learning basics of an art/skill. The second bracket would represent someone trying to make a living by their trade... so once they get into the second tier they should be able to make something of value that people will want to recoup the cost of their apprenticeship, and be able to earn a living or further their art/skill. For those that really want to excel at their skill/art there is the third tier where they attempt to master their art/skill. This again should have a whole different level of ability to bring in money, perhaps being able to train an apprentice too.

I've said my piece... If anyone wants clarification of anything i've said, please ask via PM. I've said all of this before in different other threads and do not want to get drawn into another argument.

[zanzibar]

If leveling becomes easier, that doesn't mean that your character is the best it can be once its levels are maxed out.

Power / expertise could be further determined by the items your character has, knowledge provided through quests and books, and values that haven't been added to the game yet but have been thought about.  At one point I started a thread about a stat that would give your character a general bonus and was determined by the age of the character.

Also, a big big thing to keep on the table is the idea of stats becoming worse over time if the skills they're connected to aren't used.  So if you grind crafting until you're maxed out, and then you decide to take up the sword, by the time you max out your fighting skills your crafting skills will be rusty.  This would force players to think about their strategy on which stats to work on instead of simply maxing out everything they can.  The one downside of this might be that even more attention would be placed on leveling rather than less, however the good thing about it would be realism and making play more strategic.  It would also be a way to make leveling an ongoing thing without the levels themselves being without limit.  (So even after characters max, they would keep leveling as their skills get rusty or as they decide to explore different professions.)

[Tuxide]

I chose Snorks, but I kind've want to see more reward between the individual levels and a near-impossible to reach max.  For example, take Castle of the Winds.  Every time you level you you are rewarded with more HP, more mana, and a new spell unless you know them all, and the max level in the game is 30.  But reaching the max means killing the final boss 31-78 million times depending on difficulty level, and the final boss gives the most experience.  Although you can learn every spell in the game before you get anywhere near 30, it is unlikely you will max.

[Xanthan]

I've posted on this before.  Basically, grinding is not fun and has no place in any game as far as I'm concerned.  HOWEVER:  I still think there should be levels and challenges to increasing one's abilities, I just don't like this mechanism, or at least not having other options.  In the past I've posted ideas for using quests to gain levels, and there are many ways this could be implemented.  I want to see role-playing and challenging and interesting tasks required to level up instead of boring repetitive tasks that are simply not fun, not interesting, not conducive to role-playing, etc.

I only gain levels because I want to explore the magic system.  Very small gain for much pain right now.  The idea that the few and mostly low-effect spells that we have are going to be impossible for me to get without buying into the endless grind makes me sad, and will probably drive me from the game.

That said, I'm excited to see this thread because I know the developers do listen, and there are several people giving similar feedback on this request from Xillix.

Here's my post on possible ways to make leveling more fun and roleplay-oriented:
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=34319.msg393861#msg393861

[khoridor]

First, good luck in balancing not only the game mechanics but also players' opposite expectations.

My answer: No.
Reasons are given by many people already. To keep it short, to me, a player should feel very happy already if he manages to max one thing, and to keep it maxed.

I'll just insist a bit on the stats: contrary to skills, you can go from a wimp to all maxed out in just a few seconds. All it takes is money. Big oddity IMO. (Sure, it takes a bit of traveling to the trainers as well, but you get the idea.)

[Mathy Stockington]

I only gain levels because I want to explore the magic system.  Very small gain for much pain right now.  The idea that the few and mostly low-effect spells that we have are going to be impossible for me to get without buying into the endless grind makes me sad, and will probably drive me from the game.

I do truly hope that this does not happen Xanthan and that other people do not feel this way.

Then again if PlaneShift is really a role play game I think there should be a system in place for role playing leveling, but what about the others that do not want to role play? Would that mean there would have to be two leveling systems for each server? I imagine this would be difficult to do. Also I think it would make the divide between the two servers even deeper so that potential role players would not even think to join the role play server at all. Also once a player maxes out would that person leave to find another game? Then the community has no stability of which partly why PlaneShift is so great. This is a difficult decision for the developers to make in this case I think.

[Dajoji]

I think that instead of making leveling easier, we should try to make it more enjoyable and less repetitive. And regarding stats, it doesn't make much sense to me that you can go from weakling to musclehead in a minute just by talking to an NPC trainer. Stats should be more difficult to increase, imo, after all, it takes a good deal of effort to naturally become a just a tad stronger, smarter, or more attractive IRL. Stats should be linked to the skills you learn somehow.

Anyway, I guess this is a sort of yes/no from me, so... snorks!

[Donari Tyndale]

Levelling should be harder but in a more roleplay supporting fashion.

[zanzibar]

I think that instead of making leveling easier, we should try to make it more enjoyable and less repetitive.

Same thing IMO.

And regarding stats, it doesn't make much sense to me that you can go from weakling to musclehead in a minute just by talking to an NPC trainer.

That's why we need to get rid of progression points.

Stats should be more difficult to increase, imo, after all, it takes a good deal of effort to naturally become a just a tad stronger, smarter, or more attractive IRL. Stats should be linked to the skills you learn somehow.

Better yet, your stats should increase as you use skills connected to them.

Levelling should be harder but in a more roleplay supporting fashion.

Define harder.  Leveling is already too hard IMO, especially magic.