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Fast Leveling?

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I've been playing for about a month now, and just made Rear Admiral. That's VERY fast for me. I tend to level very slowly in any game. My Star Wars Galaxies character took 6 years to make it to L90. My Lord of the Rings Online character is L48 now after three years of play, and sat at L26 for over a year. I have played City of Heroes for 4 years, and don't have a single L50 character.

Why do I take so long to level in every game other than this one?

Down time. This game has none. In all the other games, there are things to do when I'm not adventuring.

In Galaxies, I spent time sightseeing, exploring planets, visiting points of interest and collecting resources. I park my ship at the starbase over Tatooine and wander around my ship, chatting with other ships as I watch them fly by through the windows. I spend hours searching for just the right piece of furniture to use to decorate my house on Corellia, or drive all over looking for just the right spot to put the house so it has a nice view, and is close to a starport for convenience.

In Lord of the Rings Online, I spend literal DAYS writing abc music files, then spend hours and hours just playing them in the Auction Hall while socializing and helping new players with questions or problems. Sometimes, I'll go explore new areas (though, this is hard because there's hostile creatures every 6 inches), or go searching for crafting materials.

In City of Heroes, I'll explore, visiting landmarks for badges or I'll tinker with the costume maker. Often, I'll hang out under the statue of Atlas and socialize, watching costume contests, or what have you.


In Star Trek Online, there's practically nothing to do except adventure. I can go to the various nebulae and star clusters gathering "crafting" materials, but there's nothing really to DO with it. By the time I can craft anything worthwhile, I've already outleveled the item I'd be making. There's nothing to really explore. I can go to Vulcan or Andor and wander, but there's really not much to see, and nothing to do.

Outside of that, there's nothing to do with your downtime.


Further, the rewards for adventuring are excessive. Simply put, you get too much experience for your adventures, especially at higher level.

One of the points of needing more experience to advance at higher level is to make it take longer to advance. This goal is undone, however, if you start giving out more experience at higher level. A lot of games make this mistake.


So what to do?

Reduce the amount of xp rewards, expecially at high level.

Make all the planets and systems explorable (and make them larger, if possible), with points of interest, towns and various lore-accurate vendors or whatnot. Badges for visiting systems (they dont' have to DO anything, just for bragging rights - "I've been to Vulcan!")

Games within the game. It's been suggested before, poker, dabo, Parrises Squares, and so on. When I ran a pen & paper Star Trek game back in the day, one thing we occasionally did was have whole game sessions devoted to the crew enjoying their off-time; one time we spent a whole night playing out a game of Parrises Squares (which we made up rules for) between the players and another ship's crew. Even on DS9 they played baseball with that vulcan crew...


I'm sure I'll come up with other ideas, but I welcome any additions from the community.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Good post!

    I feel your pain... STO has no "feel" to it. you are either slamming your spacebar or fitting gear, not a lot of in between...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Very good points. This game is either "level" or "don't bother". Back when I played WoW I would go a few days doing only minimal questing, and spending my time just exploring the zones (because they were worth expploring), sitting around in Org messing around in trade chat (while doing occasional dungeons), or anything else, and feel completely satisfied.

    I feel the biggest reason STO is lacking in this way is the overdone instancing. This doesn't feel like an MMO to me. When I would sit on Org bank and look around I was seeing EVERYONE in that realm who was currently there. I shared that with everyone else there. In STO, when someone in zone chat says "check out the weirdo swearing and dancing in Club 47", I can go over to Club 47 and see SFA unless I happen to be in the same instance. This bars any sort of true player culture in the game, and any feeling of community. If there's one thing I could change it would be to get rid of all the instancing (outside of STFs).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    The problem is the half the forums would erupt in a chaotic bowl of vitriol if down time (they'd call it a time sink) was put into the game.

    I was quite surprised given the minimal downtime that it still took 80+ hours to hit cap.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    The trick is to put it there and not require us to use it. Just the immersion junkies and badge hunters would go do these things, perhaps, but it would be something.

    As I say, every single system should be open to everyone, and should have an explorable planet in it. There doesn't have to be any adventure, necessarily, just a place to visit and explore.

    Some places could have multiple beam-down points. For instance, when visiting Earth, they could allow beaming to Paris, New York, Tokyo Los Angeles and especially San Francisco (which is where the Academy is). You wouldn't have to DO anything there, it would just be a place to visit and hang out.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    How many hours do you "fast leveling" people play this game? I've been on it every day since the 2nd week of February - hours on end - and my highest ranking toon just made Commander 3 on Monday. Maybe it's all the PvP I've been doing and maybe it's because I have more than one character, but I don't see how everyone who's said "it levels too quick" gets to Admiral as rapidly as they do unless they are playing nonstop with only one toon, doing little by way of PvP, and never revisiting missions (re: Fleet Actions.)

    :confused:

    Reduce the amount of xp rewards, expecially at high level.

    Make all the planets and systems explorable (and make them larger, if possible), with points of interest, towns and various lore-accurate vendors or whatnot. Badges for visiting systems (they dont' have to DO anything, just for bragging rights - "I've been to Vulcan!")

    Games within the game. It's been suggested before, poker, dabo, Parrises Squares, and so on. When I ran a pen & paper Star Trek game back in the day, one thing we occasionally did was have whole game sessions devoted to the crew enjoying their off-time; one time we spent a whole night playing out a game of Parrises Squares (which we made up rules for) between the players and another ship's crew. Even on DS9 they played baseball with that vulcan crew...
    I think all these ideas are great.

    :cool:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Well, I play basically two characters, a Federation officer and a Klingon. My Federation Officer gets a lot more playtime. I also don't PvP, and I spend a lot of time in the "Exploration" zones.

    Granted, I've been playing a fair bit, but no more than in other games...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    Ok, then I can see where it would go "fast." I just edited my post to respond to your suggestions, but like I said, I think you have some great ideas that would make this game even better.

    ;)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    very nice post. I 100% agree with everything you said. This game is in dire need of stuff to do that does not involve leveling.

    mini games are coming so that is good.

    Mission replay will be nice.

    each planet really does need a map added to it that one can access after a mission is complete. or at least a few places so that we can go back and visit.

    a ton more repeatable quests that gain us access to ...well...whatever, just stuff.

    i am excited about season 2 since it apparently has a ton of content. but I hope they put some resources into adding a lot more fluff stuff.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited April 2010
    I just posted a thread about an idea for randomly generated missions that might be applied to the many otherwise unvisitable planets. Check it out!

    http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=154254
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