You mentioned a lot of the mistakes I believe our devs have made in making the leveling process meaningless, and this is just the latest one
As you say, there are now so many ways to speed level to 70 that the expectation seems to be that players just skip it, I suppose
Like your guild, we also help new 70s with gear, mounts, enchants, important quest lines they missed, whatever they need to at least get into T1s, and then a couple of us start running groups of new people through dungeons to show them the ropes
Since you do this too, I’ll ask if you have noticed with many players that this is appreciated less and less these days?
How many new players are hanging around to keep playing and contribute, and what percentage leave a week or two after you guys hear them up to help get them started?
Have you been doing this long enough to see any trends? Does your guild seem more social these days or less?
There is no longer any investment in playing this game, so the first challenge new players find is the terminal grind of dailies and speedrunning dungeons for cash, and for as long as I continue to hang around to build up resources for my guild, I will object to any new changes that further this descent into Facebook game boringness
@kayclo2 I agree completely, the problem I found is that the game play changes significantly at 70. The beginning of the game is quite simple you go to Knox and get a quest to go to a zone and you follow the story in that area and complete the quests, and this progresses the same through level 70. So my question comes down to is, are the developers concerned with players skiping content? If that is the case then why not put prerequisites in order to go to the different areas? This would also include accessing campaigns. As you said the mob balancing is completely messed up at level 70 all of the campaign quests open up, and the difference in mobs is staggering you can go from being able to take a few hits in the Dread Ring to being one shot in the Well of Dragons. So as I ask would setting some kind of prerequisite to access those areas help curve the player fall off from the change in game from between level 60 to 70 and after.
Valina Darksbane, CW 70 That Guy You Know, OP 70 Main, Valora GF 70 14.3k That Guy who hastes, DC 70 Chopper, GWF 70 Hel, SW 70 Sora, HR 70
Getting a player to end game quickly is not normally the problem. The problem is getting a player to end without knowing how to play their character. This update should only impact accounts if the account has a character that is level 70 and has EE completed on at least one character.
Well, it's hard not to agree with you on that. It is true that newcomers come, and mostly go away after few weeks. And, its also a true that sometimes I got a feeling that more we as guild helping them less appreciated help is. But at least some of them stay, and few in time become very dedicated guild m8s and skilled players. My guild is quite social, helping and still growing, but general tendency with new players is as you desribed. I guess I am lucky to be a member of such a guild. But I guess we could talk for ages about social side of a guilds.
Only thing is that I really doubt that speedleveling change a lot. No matter how long its gona take, new player finally gona hit lvl 70 and then.... well he will see a sea of grind before him, not to mention that, well, he can count, so can see amounts of AD he need to get to be on resonable level (even if its lot easier than leats say a year ago). And I guess we miss one more thing - that so called "ready to play" character slots to buy for ZEN.... that alone points that for devs leveling is not that important. In such conditions hard to blame player to skip it asap. And as I said befor its a pity - so much content, so much great places abandoned. But who am I to say....just a veteran heavy grinder....nah, not a adventurer any more
There is always an option for the players who want to level up via Quest progression as well as the constant dungeon/xp boost concept or, rather, powerleveling.
- It's easy to powerlevel, but you won't be visiting all the pretty areas in the game. - If you appreciate DnD and the work put into the game by developers, you'll go to play quest-by-quest.
You may also powerlevel quest by quest and I've managed to finish every quest in six hours back in MOD5 with a MoF reaching level 60.
The premise is : you may choose what you want to do.
I really do not see any issue there and, in fact, see no reason or necessity to rush into level 70, unless it's a double xp event and you really want to test/build a specific class.
Point is, take it easy, enjoy the game.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
I see no issue with the change. If a player wasn't going to learn their class before this change, this minor speedup isn't going to change anything.
It's not like people weren't already using Guild boons, azures, etc to speed up leveling. Quite frankly, it was a tactic recommended by many people to level faster.
Now the dev's want to make this change and some people have a little fit over it. I wonder how many of those people didn't use boons or azures when leveling their toons.
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
let's be honest... EE campaign is stupid. it have no storyline, and even if it had the questline used to advance through EE campaign feels the same like it was in its launch [i.e mod 6]. if the campaign was more like dread ring [easy and smooth] insted of those vigilance quest system "updated" IMO it would be better.
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
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lordseth1985Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 319Arc User
They do that now... Decreasing difficulty by leveling them up faster trivializes the content
Its more important for players about to reach level 70 to experience challenging gameplay
You guys are making this all too easy and turning the game into a boring grindfest... you should just give xp and gear for hitting practice dummies and be done with it
In our testing, if a character doesn't have XP boosts on, they will have to work their way through the EE campaign to get from 60 to 70. The difficulty of the content did not change. I would recommend to anyone that they take a level 60 and play through at least some of EE to get a feel for the changes and the rate of advancement.
I got what you say BUT even with those changes I would wait the 2x Xp events to lvl up my chars from 60 up to 70... the zones per se are boring.
Avestruz.Q.T.Seduz - Rogue, natural born assassin.
I see no issue with the change. If a player wasn't going to learn their class before this change, this minor speedup isn't going to change anything.
It's not like people weren't already using Guild boons, azures, etc to speed up leveling. Quite frankly, it was a tactic recommended by many people to level faster.
Now the dev's want to make this change and some people have a little fit over it. I wonder how many of those people didn't use boons or azures when leveling their toons.
So then who asked for it? What was the problem it was solving? Personally, my problem with this has nothing to do with people learning their class, as I have said already... Neverwinter might as well be a log ride now where you pass by monsters along the way from the tutorial to 70
As far as I can tell, this completes the changeover from a game where players kill monsters for XP and loot to a game where you see monsters fall down and you have to run around a lot and perform repetitive tasks and do "puzzles" (eg: learning to avoid/ignore mechanics) in order to progress, with the main goal being to settle down into a humdrum routine of grinding the same things over and over until... I dunno... you get sick of it?
I guess at least the scenery changes
In a proper game, the pixels on the screen are supposed to provide the challenge, not the underlying code
Everybody has already figured out what feats, powers and other elements are broken and players have already written up step by step guides to functional builds for each class, so the only thing left for a player to figure out is how to accumulate the cash required to buy all that stuff, because it surely isn't going to be found in a dungeon chest or mob drop anywhere
That's our game now: Do I perform easy but interminably repetitive tasks every day forever or do I break down and buy Zen?
...and no, I'm not saying this tiny little change to XP gain is the cause of this... Its just the latest part of the transition from a game that used to offer some challenging fun in exchange for your time to an application that tests your ability to withstand boredom
But, hey... sure... feel free to hurry as fast as you can to the top item level possible so you can grind the newest dungeon over and over until your eyes bleed... those guys seem happy
This game is not about getting to 70 it is about the content after 70.
Maybe the problem is really this. We have tons of beautiful content under level 70 completely unuseful, at this point because don't we reach level 70 with only blacklake quest... @oroness If you enter in a dungeon with the right level it have a equilibrate level of difficulty(try to play spellplague or karrundax with a lv 55 pg with lv 55 gear and kill a boss with one hit ). at lv 70 with green or blue equipment enter in esot or every epic dungeon grant you an ista kill... Is that normal? if you don't have a guild that support you in quest and campaigns the overall difficulty is harder and with problem of mob balance. I've see a lot of player entusiastic in play the 1-60 contents that has left the game because they hit a wall at lv 70.
You don't have enough IL to enter esot or any epic dungeon with just greens, just for starters. You need blues and some artifacts... So what if he enters ESOT and dies? that's how it's suppoed to be, he has to die hundreds of times and repeat the dungeon to farm for seals and items and learn the attack patterns, how else will they learn? buying every piece of equipment from the AH and going from 5k IL to 11K il in just a creditcard swipe? No, the way is farming, dying, repeating the same instance until you master it. Of course they enter malabog and esot and elol and vt wearing crappy stuff... how else are they going to equip themselves if not running easy epics??? You can cry all the rivers you want, but in the state the game is right now, at lv 55 you learn nothing about your class because you are using a character that has a very different layout than it does at lv 70.
A simple simulation, just by doing all level appropiate quests a level 40 cleric is way stronger than a lv 40 CW whereas a lv 70 CW is way stronger than a lv 55 DC. you can finish a solo imnstance almost twice as fast. Why? because balance is achieved at lv 70. The rest of the game is just... trivial at best. the power-increase curve of a CW is not the same as that of a GWF. While a gwf can just left click anything from level 1 to level 70 with the exception of 65-70 a CW has trouble starting from level 20 until mid 40s because it all the skills deal low damage, important feats are not unlocked, class features are not working to their full potential, etc.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I want this class in NW.
0
klangeddinMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 882Arc User
I wonder why they're doing this now... if one had to be guessing, the motive would be a level cap increase in the -not so remote- future, perhaps by mod 14 or 15?
I wonder why they're doing this now... if one had to be guessing, the motive would be a level cap increase in the -not so remote- future, perhaps by mod 14 or 15?
I copied over some of my characters that were somewhere between levels 60 and 70.
My level 60 OP is now suddenly level 66, while all my characters of level 61 and higher got bumped up to 70. This is going to result in a flood of badly equpped level 70s, with even less understanding than before of how to play their class.
My main got a ton of level up bonuses when logging in the first time, including 11 Powerpoints, a lot of black opals and such. Sure, it is appreciated, but really - it feels overly generous.
Even a "mule" alt of level 60+ who only does Leadership tasks will now reach 70 in no time.
Bottom line for me: Too much of a good thing.
Would you mind PMing me the name and @handle of either of the characters that were below 70 and jump in level when they logged into the test server? That will help us figure out why that one happened and get that fixed.
I can see that being a problem also for those of us who are trying to do all of the skirmishes before we are too high-level: level 70 characters cannot enter Aberrant Assault, whereas level 69 characters can.
(as a side note, it would be super-duper-awesome if we could enter any skirmish and just get downleveled like we do in the leveling dungeons)
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
0
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
Would you mind PMing me the name and @handle of either of the characters that were below 70 and jump in level when they logged into the test server? That will help us figure out why that one happened and get that fixed.
PM sent. There is an interesting difference between the .2 version and yesterday's .4.
It seems that the leveling curve was changed so that experience that previously would give you level 63 or so is now sufficient to reach 70.
If you log in a character of level 63-69, they will now immediately jump to level 70, while a level 61 character may for example jump to 68. The difference is that this now (in .4) happens quietly - you do not get a series of level-up messages.
Also, there is a difference if you copy over and log in a character who already is level 70 - previously you would get a ton of level-up bonuses, RAD, Power points etc...now you don't.
Hoping for improvements...
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adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
I can see that being a problem also for those of us who are trying to do all of the skirmishes before we are too high-level: level 70 characters cannot enter Aberrant Assault, whereas level 69 characters can.
(as a side note, it would be super-duper-awesome if we could enter any skirmish and just get downleveled like we do in the leveling dungeons)
Since you brought this up, even though it is off-topic for Preview - I am going to repeat an earlier suggestion - have a weekend event where maximum level restrictions are removed for skirmishes - allowing people to go back and do any skirmishes they outleveled.
Hoping for improvements...
3
adinosiiMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,294Arc User
edited January 2018
Another thing I noticed:
Some of my characters now have a negative number in "Experience to next reward" (this is from Tanya 37@adinosii)
A simple simulation, just by doing all level appropiate quests a level 40 cleric is way stronger than a lv 40 CW whereas a lv 70 CW is way stronger than a lv 55 DC. you can finish a solo imnstance almost twice as fast. Why? because balance is achieved at lv 70. The rest of the game is just... trivial at best. the power-increase curve of a CW is not the same as that of a GWF. While a gwf can just left click anything from level 1 to level 70 with the exception of 65-70 a CW has trouble starting from level 20 until mid 40s because it all the skills deal low damage, important feats are not unlocked, class features are not working to their full potential, etc.
Hmmm...I find this a little hard to believe. I was speedleveling a CW (I have 4-5 of CWs myself) only via quests and it was super-easy.
Point given though, I do main a CW and that class is the one I know how to play with the best so I'd think that's the biggest contributing factor that there is. I know how to maximize damage at each level. Once I do hit 60-65+ that's already a good character who only needs lvl 70 for the sake of the equipment and bis artifact weapon which you may upgrade so easy...
Every single time in the Guild there was always this "DC who needs help clearing something". You don't really get DC soloing HOC either... With Mulhorand weapon DC is solidly ok for leveling up.
I think that DCs mechanic gets progressively better the more recovery and power it possesses, given that no lag interferes with the quick casting. Collect and unleash. Repeat. Super-easy.
It's a fun class to play and I'm sure that it's one of the two classes for the CW loving fellas to go to, the other being TR.
The least problems I had with a GWF. Really easy class to play, no stress situations or anything, but needs a good weapon the most and an appropriate weapon enchantment.
TL:DR : CW's easy to level up if you know what you're doing. In fact one of the easiest classes to levelup in quests due to the controlling options.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
Would you mind PMing me the name and @handle of either of the characters that were below 70 and jump in level when they logged into the test server? That will help us figure out why that one happened and get that fixed.
PM sent. There is an interesting difference between the .2 version and yesterday's .4.
It seems that the leveling curve was changed so that experience that previously would give you level 63 or so is now sufficient to reach 70.
If you log in a character of level 63-69, they will now immediately jump to level 70, while a level 61 character may for example jump to 68. The difference is that this now (in .4) happens quietly - you do not get a series of level-up messages.
Also, there is a difference if you copy over and log in a character who already is level 70 - previously you would get a ton of level-up bonuses, RAD, Power points etc...now you don't.
Thank you for that information, we have someone looking into it and hopefully they can pin down the issue soon.
As of 1/23/2018 8:42am CST I copied my lvl 64 OP with inscribed shirt/pants to the preview shard. When I logged in I was lvl 70 with multiple xp overflow rewards. OOPS: just noticed this was already noted in the post before. Just ignore
Besides the current bug that is versioning players to a higher level, I think there may be some confusion as to what this change actually is.
We adjusted the XP it takes to gain a level in the 60-69 range. We also adjusted the XP given out by quests in that range. On live, if you are level 60 and complete a quest in whispering caverns, you will barely see your XP bar move. But if you go over to one of the Elemental Evil zones, you will see a decent jump on your bar when completing a quest.
This created confusion and frustration for players as hitting level 60 rarely perfectly matched up with completing all other zones. Players weren't well instructed on where to go to get the proper XP, and it can be disappointing to leave a zone unfinished because the XP is no longer worth being there.
To smooth this out we adjusted the curves so that big jump no longer existed and instead it followed the same smooth curve that existed from 1-60.
To go along with that, we adjusted EE by removing several quests in each zone that brought you back to the same area of the map over and over, and made sure the existing quests had enough XP to carry you through that zone. We think this makes EE feel a lot less tedious and like it has more of a natural flow through each zone.
All of this combined should make the transition from 59-60 and the progression from 60-70 feel a lot better to players.
To go along with these curve changes we had to adjust overflow XP since quests now give out lower XP than they used to with all of the adjustments.
This wasn't simply a case of lowering the XP required in the 60-70 range and leaving all quests awarding the XP they did before the change.
This isn't exactly OT but while you are tweaking EE, it might be good to examine the drop rate of quest items for the final zone of Spinward Rise, in the Cloud Giant area. The amount of grind to complete those quests is out of line with drop rates throughout the rest of the campaign. In other areas, 1 pack of mobs may yield 1 or 2 drops. In the mentioned area, it might take 2 or more packs for 1 drop.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
My main frustration with EE came from blindly following the "sparkly trail" which often led me back to the gate, as it assumed I'd rather stop what I was doing and head to another zone
Besides the current bug that is versioning players to a higher level, I think there may be some confusion as to what this change actually is.
We adjusted the XP it takes to gain a level in the 60-69 range. We also adjusted the XP given out by quests in that range. On live, if you are level 60 and complete a quest in whispering caverns, you will barely see your XP bar move. But if you go over to one of the Elemental Evil zones, you will see a decent jump on your bar when completing a quest.
This created confusion and frustration for players as hitting level 60 rarely perfectly matched up with completing all other zones. Players weren't well instructed on where to go to get the proper XP, and it can be disappointing to leave a zone unfinished because the XP is no longer worth being there.
To smooth this out we adjusted the curves so that big jump no longer existed and instead it followed the same smooth curve that existed from 1-60.
To go along with that, we adjusted EE by removing several quests in each zone that brought you back to the same area of the map over and over, and made sure the existing quests had enough XP to carry you through that zone. We think this makes EE feel a lot less tedious and like it has more of a natural flow through each zone.
All of this combined should make the transition from 59-60 and the progression from 60-70 feel a lot better to players.
To go along with these curve changes we had to adjust overflow XP since quests now give out lower XP than they used to with all of the adjustments.
This wasn't simply a case of lowering the XP required in the 60-70 range and leaving all quests awarding the XP they did before the change.
All of this must've taken a lot of time to fix and test and seems like a good improvement. Basically, this was managing the zone quests to better suit the player experience in terms of the progression story-wise. Thank you for damage controlling some of the issues that came along with MOD6. There's a lot more to do, but this is already good as it is.
All the changes so far are making MOD13 to look like the best MOD update since forever, basically. I may notice a solid communication between the developers and playerbase here on the forum and I just want to say - thank you again for taking the time to explain everything in detail.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
My main frustration with EE came from blindly following the "sparkly trail" which often led me back to the gate, as it assumed I'd rather stop what I was doing and head to another zone
Press "J", track-untrack quests. How lazy can you be?
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
I have maintained a pair of characters on the preview server, one copied and a free level 70. I posted in a different thread that the amount of content from Whispering Caverns upward seemed appropriate for going to a level 75 or 80 as the new max. After completing "Finding Honor," the PC is not bound to the story line. So, your scaling the XP isn't going to maintain the story flow alone. Currently, Whispering Caverns, Maze Engine and Elemental Evils overlap from 60-63. Maze Engine, Sharandar and Elemental Evils overlap from 64-69. At level 70, Tyranny of Dragons restarts in the Well area, and Dread Ring, Icewind Dale, Storm King's Thunder, Cloaked Ascendency, Land of Chulr, tenatively, Lost City of Omu open up to all. Per that previous message, changes are needed, but messing with the XP looks less and less helpful.
In track with this, the in-game structure for Maze Engine on the live server is still behaving as a max level campaign, and needs to be adjusted, if possible. Elemental Evils can use some story line tweaking, and the XP levels can be left alone from 60-69. You can use the current level reward value to expand the character levels higher. Dread Ring, Icewind Dale, and Well of Dragons can be tweaked for levels 70-73/75, as current content accommodates. Storm King's Thunder and Cloaked Ascendancy can open between 73 and 75 up to whatever the new XP cap becomes. Tomb of Annihilation and Lost City of Omu open up at the new XP cap. In the spirit of Gygax, the XP for each level is a guide and can go as many levels as the imagination of the content can provide.
Comments
Nope. Sounds like the same game to me
You mentioned a lot of the mistakes I believe our devs have made in making the leveling process meaningless, and this is just the latest one
As you say, there are now so many ways to speed level to 70 that the expectation seems to be that players just skip it, I suppose
Like your guild, we also help new 70s with gear, mounts, enchants, important quest lines they missed, whatever they need to at least get into T1s, and then a couple of us start running groups of new people through dungeons to show them the ropes
Since you do this too, I’ll ask if you have noticed with many players that this is appreciated less and less these days?
How many new players are hanging around to keep playing and contribute, and what percentage leave a week or two after you guys hear them up to help get them started?
Have you been doing this long enough to see any trends? Does your guild seem more social these days or less?
There is no longer any investment in playing this game, so the first challenge new players find is the terminal grind of dailies and speedrunning dungeons for cash, and for as long as I continue to hang around to build up resources for my guild, I will object to any new changes that further this descent into Facebook game boringness
I agree completely, the problem I found is that the game play changes significantly at 70. The beginning of the game is quite simple you go to Knox and get a quest to go to a zone and you follow the story in that area and complete the quests, and this progresses the same through level 70. So my question comes down to is, are the developers concerned with players skiping content? If that is the case then why not put prerequisites in order to go to the different areas? This would also include accessing campaigns. As you said the mob balancing is completely messed up at level 70 all of the campaign quests open up, and the difference in mobs is staggering you can go from being able to take a few hits in the Dread Ring to being one shot in the Well of Dragons. So as I ask would setting some kind of prerequisite to access those areas help curve the player fall off from the change in game from between level 60 to 70 and after.
That Guy You Know, OP 70
Main, Valora GF 70 14.3k
That Guy who hastes, DC 70
Chopper, GWF 70
Hel, SW 70
Sora, HR 70
Well, it's hard not to agree with you on that. It is true that newcomers come, and mostly go away after few weeks. And, its also a true that sometimes I got a feeling that more we as guild helping them less appreciated help is. But at least some of them stay, and few in time become very dedicated guild m8s and skilled players. My guild is quite social, helping and still growing, but general tendency with new players is as you desribed. I guess I am lucky to be a member of such a guild. But I guess we could talk for ages about social side of a guilds.
Only thing is that I really doubt that speedleveling change a lot. No matter how long its gona take, new player finally gona hit lvl 70 and then.... well he will see a sea of grind before him, not to mention that, well, he can count, so can see amounts of AD he need to get to be on resonable level (even if its lot easier than leats say a year ago). And I guess we miss one more thing - that so called "ready to play" character slots to buy for ZEN.... that alone points that for devs leveling is not that important. In such conditions hard to blame player to skip it asap. And as I said befor its a pity - so much content, so much great places abandoned. But who am I to say....just a veteran heavy grinder....nah, not a adventurer any more
- It's easy to powerlevel, but you won't be visiting all the pretty areas in the game.
- If you appreciate DnD and the work put into the game by developers, you'll go to play quest-by-quest.
You may also powerlevel quest by quest and I've managed to finish every quest in six hours back in MOD5 with a MoF reaching level 60.
The premise is : you may choose what you want to do.
I really do not see any issue there and, in fact, see no reason or necessity to rush into level 70, unless it's a double xp event and you really want to test/build a specific class.
Point is, take it easy, enjoy the game.
It's not like people weren't already using Guild boons, azures, etc to speed up leveling. Quite frankly, it was a tactic recommended by many people to level faster.
Now the dev's want to make this change and some people have a little fit over it. I wonder how many of those people didn't use boons or azures when leveling their toons.
I have no idea how relatable that expression may be to non-English speakers, so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_flume_(ride)
As far as I can tell, this completes the changeover from a game where players kill monsters for XP and loot to a game where you see monsters fall down and you have to run around a lot and perform repetitive tasks and do "puzzles" (eg: learning to avoid/ignore mechanics) in order to progress, with the main goal being to settle down into a humdrum routine of grinding the same things over and over until... I dunno... you get sick of it?
I guess at least the scenery changes
In a proper game, the pixels on the screen are supposed to provide the challenge, not the underlying code
Everybody has already figured out what feats, powers and other elements are broken and players have already written up step by step guides to functional builds for each class, so the only thing left for a player to figure out is how to accumulate the cash required to buy all that stuff, because it surely isn't going to be found in a dungeon chest or mob drop anywhere
That's our game now: Do I perform easy but interminably repetitive tasks every day forever or do I break down and buy Zen?
...and no, I'm not saying this tiny little change to XP gain is the cause of this... Its just the latest part of the transition from a game that used to offer some challenging fun in exchange for your time to an application that tests your ability to withstand boredom
But, hey... sure... feel free to hurry as fast as you can to the top item level possible so you can grind the newest dungeon over and over until your eyes bleed... those guys seem happy
So what if he enters ESOT and dies? that's how it's suppoed to be, he has to die hundreds of times and repeat the dungeon to farm for seals and items and learn the attack patterns, how else will they learn? buying every piece of equipment from the AH and going from 5k IL to 11K il in just a creditcard swipe? No, the way is farming, dying, repeating the same instance until you master it. Of course they enter malabog and esot and elol and vt wearing crappy stuff... how else are they going to equip themselves if not running easy epics???
You can cry all the rivers you want, but in the state the game is right now, at lv 55 you learn nothing about your class because you are using a character that has a very different layout than it does at lv 70.
A simple simulation, just by doing all level appropiate quests a level 40 cleric is way stronger than a lv 40 CW whereas a lv 70 CW is way stronger than a lv 55 DC. you can finish a solo imnstance almost twice as fast. Why? because balance is achieved at lv 70. The rest of the game is just... trivial at best. the power-increase curve of a CW is not the same as that of a GWF. While a gwf can just left click anything from level 1 to level 70 with the exception of 65-70 a CW has trouble starting from level 20 until mid 40s because it all the skills deal low damage, important feats are not unlocked, class features are not working to their full potential, etc.
I want this class in NW.
(as a side note, it would be super-duper-awesome if we could enter any skirmish and just get downleveled like we do in the leveling dungeons)
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
It seems that the leveling curve was changed so that experience that previously would give you level 63 or so is now sufficient to reach 70.
If you log in a character of level 63-69, they will now immediately jump to level 70, while a level 61 character may for example jump to 68. The difference is that this now (in .4) happens quietly - you do not get a series of level-up messages.
Also, there is a difference if you copy over and log in a character who already is level 70 - previously you would get a ton of level-up bonuses, RAD, Power points etc...now you don't.
Some of my characters now have a negative number in "Experience to next reward" (this is from Tanya 37@adinosii)
Point given though, I do main a CW and that class is the one I know how to play with the best so I'd think that's the biggest contributing factor that there is. I know how to maximize damage at each level. Once I do hit 60-65+ that's already a good character who only needs lvl 70 for the sake of the equipment and bis artifact weapon which you may upgrade so easy...
Every single time in the Guild there was always this "DC who needs help clearing something". You don't really get DC soloing HOC either... With Mulhorand weapon DC is solidly ok for leveling up.
I think that DCs mechanic gets progressively better the more recovery and power it possesses, given that no lag interferes with the quick casting. Collect and unleash. Repeat. Super-easy.
It's a fun class to play and I'm sure that it's one of the two classes for the CW loving fellas to go to, the other being TR.
The least problems I had with a GWF. Really easy class to play, no stress situations or anything, but needs a good weapon the most and an appropriate weapon enchantment.
TL:DR : CW's easy to level up if you know what you're doing. In fact one of the easiest classes to levelup in quests due to the controlling options.
OOPS: just noticed this was already noted in the post before. Just ignore
We adjusted the XP it takes to gain a level in the 60-69 range. We also adjusted the XP given out by quests in that range. On live, if you are level 60 and complete a quest in whispering caverns, you will barely see your XP bar move. But if you go over to one of the Elemental Evil zones, you will see a decent jump on your bar when completing a quest.
This created confusion and frustration for players as hitting level 60 rarely perfectly matched up with completing all other zones. Players weren't well instructed on where to go to get the proper XP, and it can be disappointing to leave a zone unfinished because the XP is no longer worth being there.
To smooth this out we adjusted the curves so that big jump no longer existed and instead it followed the same smooth curve that existed from 1-60.
To go along with that, we adjusted EE by removing several quests in each zone that brought you back to the same area of the map over and over, and made sure the existing quests had enough XP to carry you through that zone. We think this makes EE feel a lot less tedious and like it has more of a natural flow through each zone.
All of this combined should make the transition from 59-60 and the progression from 60-70 feel a lot better to players.
To go along with these curve changes we had to adjust overflow XP since quests now give out lower XP than they used to with all of the adjustments.
This wasn't simply a case of lowering the XP required in the 60-70 range and leaving all quests awarding the XP they did before the change.
All the changes so far are making MOD13 to look like the best MOD update since forever, basically. I may notice a solid communication between the developers and playerbase here on the forum and I just want to say - thank you again for taking the time to explain everything in detail.
Quest-giver: "Go kill 15 of those things"
Quest-taker: *Kills 15 of whatever*
Quest-tracker: "Oh, now you should go check in with the Masquerade Guy in PE!"
Quest-taker: "Ha! I'm wise to your tricks! I will open my Journal and reset this buggy garbage!"
Next Quest...
Quest-giver: "Go to the Mine and kill all that stuff in there"
Quest-tracker: "Oh, now you should go check in with the Masquerade Guy in PE!"
Quest-giver: "Go these 5 places and collect 5 of these things"
Quest-taker: *Goes to first place, collects first thing*...
Quest-tracker: "Oh, now you should go check in with the Masquerade Guy in PE!"
Quest-taker: *Resets Journal Quest-tracker*
Quest-taker: *Goes to second place, collects second thing*...
Quest-tracker: "Oh, now you should go check in with the Masquerade Guy in PE!"
Repeat three more times.
To bring this back on topic: I think it is a good thing that the climb from 0-70 will be a smooth progression. But then that is just my preference.
Years after launch, we're still dealing with these little old things.
In track with this, the in-game structure for Maze Engine on the live server is still behaving as a max level campaign, and needs to be adjusted, if possible. Elemental Evils can use some story line tweaking, and the XP levels can be left alone from 60-69. You can use the current level reward value to expand the character levels higher. Dread Ring, Icewind Dale, and Well of Dragons can be tweaked for levels 70-73/75, as current content accommodates. Storm King's Thunder and Cloaked Ascendancy can open between 73 and 75 up to whatever the new XP cap becomes. Tomb of Annihilation and Lost City of Omu open up at the new XP cap. In the spirit of Gygax, the XP for each level is a guide and can go as many levels as the imagination of the content can provide.