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I think this game levels way to quickly. The rewards needs to stay the same but the XP required to level should be doubled at least. By the time you get geared you are ready to hit the next rank.... it's a pain and it takes away from the game and creates frustration.
Perhaps it's faster on tribble on purpose, i don't know. One mission from a story arc should not get you 80 percent through a level. Additionally, I made it halfway through Cmdr by aggressively playing the DOff system over two days... again... half a rank in just 2-3 days worth of maxing out my number of assignments some of which gave A LOT of XP.
I'd say double the XP required to level and increase the XP boost percentages by double as well so you still get the same or greater value for what you pay for. Otherwise, you don't even have any time to enjoy the story arcs and tier X.5 ships since if you can level past them in two or three days (talking life days here, like after you get home from work) of casual, distracted, watching tv/sleeping at the keyboard, not even trying play! Then you go back to catch up on the story arcs and because you're flying a T5 and you just freakin roll them even though they are level matched now.
And of course as I write this... I've just shot my own argument out the window with a thought: It took forever to level my first toon... but now it's cake because I know what I'm doing.... maybe a middle ground should be found.
Perhaps it's faster on tribble on purpose, i don't know. One mission from a story arc should not get you 80 percent through a level. Additionally, I made it halfway through Cmdr by aggressively playing the DOff system over two days... again... half a rank in just 2-3 days worth of maxing out my number of assignments some of which gave A LOT of XP.
I'd say double the XP required to level and increase the XP boost percentages by double as well so you still get the same or greater value for what you pay for. Otherwise, you don't even have any time to enjoy the story arcs and tier X.5 ships since if you can level past them in two or three days (talking life days here, like after you get home from work) of casual, distracted, watching tv/sleeping at the keyboard, not even trying play! Then you go back to catch up on the story arcs and because you're flying a T5 and you just freakin roll them even though they are level matched now.
And of course as I write this... I've just shot my own argument out the window with a thought: It took forever to level my first toon... but now it's cake because I know what I'm doing.... maybe a middle ground should be found.
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As it stands, with the normal missions, FE's, PVP, Patrols, Exploration Missions, and the implementation of the DOff System. That's quite easily six different ways to level. As it stands now in the beta. Most of us are either RA or higher and still doing lower level missions ranging from the Klingon Front to Romulan Front missions.
The current exp rate you guys have on Holodeck would be a good thing to stick with imo. Quite frankly, levelling in Holodeck is pretty easy as it is, /especially/ with the xp boosts from Q every now and again, /and/ the C-Store xp boosts.
I dont see them doubling it, maybe a 25% increase but i doubt that as well. It probably is higher on tribble on purpose to facilitate testing, who knows. Anyway highly doubt theyl do anything to increase leveling xp on holo when this goes live as thatd just make it easier to dilithium fund a new ship which is not what Cryptic wants. They want you to buy one in the Cstore to avoid the grind.
Leveling is fast. Ship progression is not. The two forces are in opposition with eachother.
Without this, you would notice gaps where you have no missions. Now you always have missions but you hit progression stumbling blocks that force you to slow down without ever noticing a shortage of missions.
Additionally, befopre, most players never made it to Commander. Cryptic's said before they want everyone at endgame so they can focus new content rollouts to be at endgame.
Completely agree with this, faster leveling, with harder to obtain gear, which makes leveling no longer the number one concern.
But I pray that they would make all mission rewards scale to the rank you have when you play them.
I also pray that they will not tie in the Featured Episodes the way they did. The Breen episodes whould be much much earlier, even though its close to Cardassian space, you can get to it from Eta Eridani as well. It would be much better as an end of the Klingon front missions.
Yes, but that gear (like the ships, etc,) will be on the C-Store. Isn't that what they want? Isn't that why they are having a mad rush to put purchasable ships at every lower tier and rank? Because the in-game free ones will be nigh-on impossible to obtain?
Also, is that why they are holding back the feature episodes until after F2P? And it's probably why you will see more feature episodes after the lauch, because it is going to make you progress more quickly under the new system, more quickly than you can obtain in-game currency.
Sorry, but it only dawned on me today what this whole new economy is actually trying to achieve, and I'm really quite staggered about it.
If a mission carries you a full level, then that reduces the number of KDF missions they need to createby about 15 or so even if KDF started at the same level as Feds.
The Klingons need equal missions added from a live server perspective because Feds don't even have enough to get to the cap without frinding themselves.
From what I can see, the new system makes about 10-15 of the Fed missions unnecessary, which reduces the number needed to make Klingon leveling complete.
I feel the same way. I don't usually enjoy the leveling process... though there are some exceptions. I'd much rather the developers spend time on end game, where everyone gets anyway, than middle game because it becomes irrelevant.
I would just like some freedom to do the quests I *should* have that I might actually get some leveling gear to help me along... nothing kills my motivation like getting a handful of EC for my efforts because the item is ranks below what I have looted in the quest. Level 30 says I have access to the Cardassian sector missions, yet I don't have access to them.
One thing I don't like, it seems that you can only do 1 "episode" arc at a time, and since I leveled way past them, the rewards to them are moot (but the XP earned scales with levels).
Yes, we will all get to end-game quicker and it may cut out missions Cryptic has to create but there are some downsides to it. As I stated in another thread, we still have a race to end-game and very little endgame developed. Everyone will be at the top with a handful of things to do. Now that exploration went to a daily, that took out one of my end game activities.
You don't really get enough time in any of your previous ships (I am lucky if I spent a day in each).
You end up fighting without level appropriate gear. I know I can go back to any ship I enjoyed playing, and that comes as some serious gimping, but for the costs of the ships in dilithium, I would expect to be in them for at least a week of 3-4 hr game sessions.
If you stop to obtain level appropriate gear it will only be good for 5 or so missions. With the pace leveling is at it becomes a constant gear chase. Now I thought I was taking my time and was going through each mission on up the chain, do one expo and one defend, do the story arcs, the patrols, a few Borg encounters, the doff system. But in two weeks of easy playing, I am at VA. Now that is with taking ~12 hours out to gther anomalies to max my crafting and gear my end game ship and Boffs with full rare crafted pieces.
If you hit RA or VA before getting the "clearance" to transwarp you do not have access to B'Tran which means you cannot get you allotment of daily exploration dilithium, nor can you get those anomalies to craft you end game gear. This is a realy problem as you are then "forced" to go through every mission before and fight level-scaled mobs for gear that is not scaled. Let me know if I am wrong, but last night right after obtaining VA I was going to do some anomaly hunting, I flew up to the gate and got no interaction option. So I must surmise access is granted in the questline when it should be granted with rank, just like you are told to meet with T'nae, etc...
So there are problems with the current pace.
I was using a connie till captain, and lvl IV and V gear leveling up. With the introduction of the Multi-phasic event, finding resources of ALL levels isn't that hard. Go to the area you're needing to level in that hour and just grind it out. I've spent maybe 2 hours grinding for the resources and can already craft lvl IX gear.
I made Cdr, and then only did three more missions between then and VA, because of levelling via the DOff system. That took 3 days to get from Cdr to VA. In the meantime, I'm so far behind any of the missions, I don't even want to touch them, the task is so daunting. I like the Breen and Romulan Arcs, but I'm so far from them (okay, only 6 missions away from the Romulan arc...) that as a new player, I would be turned off from them completely. Either they need to adjust that seriously, or take each story arc off the required progression track with the others, because that will wind up with new players never seeing some of the better content the game has to offer.
I can too, and craft an Aegis set and some RAU gear. But the point is, if you have to wait for the multiphasic event to get that handful to maybe craft one or two more items, it is silly. Just open up the story Arcs based of off rank and provide access to B'tran via rank not mission like all the others. It makes no sense how they have it set now. I am fine with having to do the arcs in order but not fine with having to do all the missions in order and have the FE's just tossed in there because they "break" the flow of the story arc.
I don't know if ranking is accelerated for Tribble so we can try stuff, but if not then this is seriously bad for the game.
It's extremely accelerated on the Tribble Server for the purposes of getting people to push on through and get the higher level stuff tested as well.
I have to point out something:
The missions scale but only give insane SP the first time you play them.
What's the point in making them scale if they don't give more skillpoints?
I'm really convinced they want to lessen the amount of content needed to cap out substantially in order to reduce the number of Klingon missions they'll need to create and alleviate the problem where most of the playerbase gets stuck at Lt. and Lt. Cmdr when they want everyone at 51 so they can focus on making level 51 content.
Even Stahl said they were struggling to get everyone at endgame and to complete all story missions so they could focus on follow-up stories and progressing the game's timeline at endgame.
But then you have problems with more skill points, its a trade off and I dont think you can have crappy rewards and level scailing or people will feel like its wasted time.
Most people who aren't on the forums aren't leveling as quickly.
Beyond that, the very idea of leveling hurts the ability of development teams to focus on new, progressive content.
There are non-level based form of progression. I maintain that the ideaof leveling in an MMO, beyond a tutorial phase, is daft. I know, I know, it gives you that RPG feel. Well, I think MMOs need to kick some RPG elements to the curb and numeric leveling is one of those things for me.
Right now, for instance, they have a story arc blocked out that requires everyone to be an max level. There's no such thing as leveling too fast in that sense because that content requires that everyone has played certain prior missions and is level capped. You can have endgame or you can have people leveling but if you think le3veling is too fast and there's nothing to do at endgame, the ONLY way to have more to do at endgame is to start insta-leveling players so that the audience is at endgame.
Cryptic can't develop endgame without shortening the leveling process even further because most folks aren't making it to endgame and they have to develop for where most of their players, current or former, are.
Either leveling has to be dramatically faster or the idea of endgame has to be abandoned indefinitely while they continue to devote content team to leveling or levelless content. If you want endgame content, it means everyone needs to be at endgame and spend a minimum of time leveling.