Avoid the Slippery Slope

[Diput]

I apologize if anyone felt that I was attacking them personally in the other (locked) thread. This was most certainly not my intent. The discussion however touched upon a topic about which I feel strongly enough to begin my own rant. It is a downward plunge that many MMOs slip into as they age so I hope that Istaria can avoid starting down the slippery slope of 'making things easier for the new players'.

I don't know why it is, but it seems that as a game ages and gamers are tempted towards the newest toys instead of the old standards the long term players with an investment in the older games get the idea that the reason new players don't come (or don't stay) is because the game has somehow become too hard at the lower levels. The developers must get the same idea because they start reworking the starting zones to 'make it easier for new players to get into the game', which translates to faster XP and faster levels to get them hooked. Of course, it can't stop there. These new players can't hit a wall after the starting tier where they suddenly have to work harder to level, so either the next tier gets made easier or, more frequently, the developers introduce XP enhancement items and have 'bonus XP weekends' so that the new players can join the old-timers at level cap in record time. Unfortunately, that does not create the same level of investment in the game as the old-timers have. It was too easy and too fast and now they are bored with the game and move on to the next one anyway.

I have seen this process happen in a number of games as they start losing players to the new offerings on the market and in each case it has significantly degraded the game. I sincerely hope that this is a route Istaria never chooses to take. Simply giving new players a little more information sooner would go a long ways, like making them aware that there is content in Kion and on into the rest of Lesser Aradoth that is available and appropriate at the same levels as New Trismus. The quest-giver on New Trismus should be sending people to visit Kion long before he sends them into the New Trismus deadlands. This would keep the new players from getting the 'I'm still on Noob Island and I'm getting trashed in the quests they give me' feeling.

In short, Istaria does not need to be made easier for new players - it just needs to point them more effectively towards all the level appropriate content that exists outside of New Trismus and break the 'Noob Island' syndrome.

[Romirez]

agreed. making it easier for new players kinda dumbs the game down.

[Sigi]

I agree too!

[LOVWYRM]

Concerning me, I did not feel attacked at all, Diput.
I appreciate dispute about this issue , so the devs have enough input for their decisions.
But I still contradict .

I see/saw new players drop in, who vanish after hours(!)or days.
I have seen them joining our various chat channels asking for advise or help.
And I see/saw them leaving in frustration because of no- or the given answers.
I know we all do our best to support them. Some of us spend hours or days
of precious ingame time helping noobs or low-level players.
We send them to CD side or istaria wiki.
But that is not enough it seems.
What new/lowl evel players want and need is company.
They want to SEE someone. They want active help.
Someone to play with.

But due to the low player base we cannot provide them with that company
As long as this is a fact we need to look for other solutions.
Making it easier the first 40 levl is a solution in my eyes.
I mean-let them hit a wall (like Diput says) at 40.
Its like in rl: When childhood is over the facts of live have to be faced^^

Any other ideas/opinions?

[Sigi]

I have a different view (experience). New players who don't want to read the tutorial text, who don't want to listen when you try to explain, who have no patience what so ever and only want to level fast.
My conclusion, Istaria is no game for that kind of players. No problem, you can't make everybody happy, there is a game for everybody somewhere out there.
But I think it would be a mistake to try to please them by changing the game. I'm afraid they will leave anyway, leaving us with a dumbed down game.

[Dragonboy]

I have to agree with Sigi on this matter.

Many times have I accompanied a hatchling back to Skalkaar to show them the NPC’s to talk to, the locations of the mobs, resource locations… Only to have them leave shortly after. While I do not consider it a total waste of time, it just makes me sad that many people start the game but so few actually stay.

Maybe quest wise new players should be send more to Kion and back to New Trimus so they know from start that another tier 1 area exists, but making the game easier is not the way to go. For example an Imperial Assessor of … dedicated to researching how energy of the gifted react to using the teleporter system from NT to Kion, while having an
assistant waiting next to the arrival pad to complete the quest. Or making a quest forcing players to talk to various NPC’s on Lesser Aradoth with clear directions which way to walk.

This game is not for everyone, it takes a certain amount of dedication and endurance to keep playing… Some have this, others have not, but please do not change this game to make things too easy for new players, when they are not dedicated in the first 20 levels, they will never be dedicated about all the other levels…

[Frith-Rae]

Well I think there are two points to make here that the OP mentions (btw, also did not feel attacked in the other thread either way ).

There's the "trend" towards all games making the new-player experience eaiser/faster/more friendly/whatever term.

And then there's the Istarian situation.

And I consider the two a bit seperate - because Istaria is a unique game in many ways. So it IS its own "situation."

And I agree with Sigi in that there is a certain type of player that just won't like Istaria unless you take away everything that makes it unique. Since noone's going to do that (I honestly don't think the devs would either), there will always be a type of player that just won't like this game.

But that's ok, there are players who dont like other games too - all of them. There's no game that makes everyone happy and that is OK!

To me, Istaria still has things it needs to work out in order to make things more UNDERSTANDABLE (empahsis, not yelling with caps) for hte new player instead of assuming its an alt or someone who's be playing a few years. This isn't necesarily making the game "easier" for new players - but it IS saying "Hey you know we're not saying this was well implemented 7 years ago so it still needs working on."

There are many changes, many new aspects, of the game that have been intorduced over the year that DO need explanations/guidance/introductions/tutorial/tracking systems whatever. I don't even pretend that as a dragon I have any clue if I have all my OWN formulas and techs and recipes, not even going ot begin on what a biped requires to play.

These are all things that need to at least be explained/demonstrated/understood by a new player who is starting out. This isn't "making it easier" this is simply allowing players of all "experience" types to know their FULL options in a game that has MANY options.

To me, that is entirely different from other games making the beginner areas faster/less exp requirement/ramped down/etc. in an attempt to hurry that player through those areas into the levels where everyone else is. This is the nature of an end-level heavy game, and most games out for more than 2-3 years, or have at least one expansion, to me usualy need to do this to prevent player burnout before they get to where "everyone else" is.

And I don't see Istaria doing that. Flushing out tiers with more quests isn't making things faster/easier - its just making more content. That's a good thing! The return of "atunement" for players to get anywhere isn't making anything easier for new players. The loot revamp didn't make anything easier for new players, it moved some RNG around, but nothing's really easier (to me it seems like).

I just don't agree that explanations and added content are "Dumbing" anything down. Where is the dumbing down here? I don't see it at all.

Other games maybe, but that's another topic from "The Istarian Situation" =D

when they are not dedicated in the first 20 levels, they will never be dedicated about all the other levels…

I highly disagree with this statement. In fact its usually the opposite. The longer you get them to play the more dedicated they are - thus the LATER levels are actually benefitting from, and requireing, more dedication - because the person has played longe,r theya re more likely to stick around because of time already invested.

If you frustrate and aggrievate and annoy them in the early levels, that time investment is not there. YOu give them no desire nor reason to stick around for "another 30/40/50/100 levels of this."

The beginner levesl in a game have to CATCH the player, not show them what it takes at level 90 to stick to it. EVERY game HAS to do this. If you go to play a game and are bored the first 20 levels, odds are you quit - you don't go "ok well I'm bored for this 20 levels but let's see how the next 20 go!" unless that game is offering a particular thing you aboslutely love (dragons, dynamic content, all pvp, whatever floats your boat).

So no - I woudln't use that argument at all to keep early levels "Just as hard" as later levels. The early levels are what keep people wanting to play, or not. Most players are NOT dedicated in the first 20 levels because really they are there in a week or two (or even a few hours) - within the free-trial period of most games - and if you've not given them fun reasons to stick around, they won't. Dedication is not a factor this early in the game, "woo hoo this is cool" is.

[Jorev1]

I don't play MMOs that are easy. I don't use cheat codes or shortcuts with mods and add ons or by multiboxing. I try and play the way the designers intended the MMO to be played.
I find myself playing MMOs less and less these days because the market isn't offering what I like.
I will give up playing MMOs altogether before surrendering to the WoW factor of gaming.

[Dhalin]

One thing I would like to know...

What exactly does one refer to, as "Challenge" or "easy"?

To me, pure repetition is NOT by any means a measure of "challenge", and to take Jorev's post, in which he ridicules WoW (I am trying to stay away from this subject as much as possible, but it is unavoidable), I would like to say this:

Endgame is where the challenge has always been, in any MMORPG.

Pre-Endgame is where you truly learn how to play the MMORPG. Your character gains level as the player gains experience and knowledge with the game.

Dragging out the journey to Endgame only frustrates people and Blizzard understands this. They know that nobody wants to be stuck at Level 40 or 50 when all of the action is at 85. That is boring, and it is disheartening.

It is "easy" from Level 1 to Level 85. Once you get to 85, though... the challenge is easily found. As much as people like to bash WoW, I know for a fact that a good portion of them could -not- handle the challenges that the harder endgame activities presents. They would get killed in short order in PvP, and they would be failing to kill the harder bosses in PvE. Even I, a several-year experienced WoW player, finds some of those bosses downright -hard-.

WoW bosses are hard because they were designed to be difficult, and not difficult merely because "it does too much damage" or relying upon shoddy game mechanics to make something hard.

Bosses have mechanics that cannot be ignored, for instance an older (simpler!) boss involved this magic caster who stands on a raised platform in his room.

The rest of his room is a bunch of rocks floating on a pool of lava, and periodically throughout the fight, the lava bursts into flames in three of the four sections. If you stand up on his platform while this is going on, he has powerful spells that will kill you very quickly, so you mustn't stand on his platform at the wrong time. What you have to do, is you have to move from Section A, to Section B, to Section C, to Section D, back to C, B, then A and keep doing that until he comes down off his platform to start fighting you again.

They called this the "Safety Dance" way back in the day.

Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Tell that to the countless people who died to the flame jets, because it is MUCH harder than it looks. Even I, got caught in a few of those flame jets ill-prepared on my first few attempts. The said flame jets do A LOT of damage. Nearly enough to one-shot all but a tank.

So, my point in all of this...

Making something more grindy and repetitious does NOT increase the challenge; it merely tests our patience, and if I'm drumming my fingers on the desk, I am NOT having fun.

However, giving us fun and intelligent boss fights where the bosses have mechanics that you have to overcome, IS fun. If I die because I was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, or I failed to do something that I needed to do (some bosses in WoW have items in the battlefield you have to interact with during the fight), then I accept it, I died for a valid reason.

But to die because the boss has a near-unavoidable AoE attack that hits for 30k+ damage when your average character only has 5 health and the answer is to "Just throw more bodies at it"?

That's not challenge.

That's a cheap way to try and make a mob "hard". Same thing when they give bosses utterly ridiculous health pools to extend a fight.

I understand that Istaria has engine limits and there's just so many things they can do with the tools that they have, I'm not saying Istaria should turn into WoW, but what I -am- saying, is that you're looking for challenge in the wrong places.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuVX8x5dq3g

That's a decent video of the "Safety Dance" I mentioned.

[Diput]

Lots of good points made. I'm on the road with not much time so I won't respond to everything, but I do want to say that this conception that playing an MMO is all about the highest level content and the rest of the game is just grind to get there is the one thing that has come closest to getting me to quit MMOs altogether and has usually resulted in my wandering the world solo while everyone around me rushes past so that they can complain about the lack of high level content.

Almost every MMO I have played has had challenges at every level that are just as hard and just as much fun as those at the top levels, but they get completely ignored because they aren't on the path of maximum XP/hr. If the content at cap were all that mattered then why bother with levels at all? Just give everyone a max level character and let them jump into the 'real' game right away. If you did that though, people wouldn't stick with the game. There is something about building up a character through levels that builds an attachment, and much as some people complain about slow leveling the fact is that the more one has invested in the process, the more one is attached to the character. The point is that leveling should not be a grind - an as long as there is interesting and challenging content at all levels it doesn't have to be. Unfortunately, there is this notion out there that learning how to do the 'safety dance' to beat a high level opponent is more difficult/challenging/worthy/whatever than learning how to kite and kill a lower tier boss and his minions using only your sharpened stick and best set of rags.

Unfortunately, I learned years ago that this particular rant does not receive a warm welcome so I spend most of my days on alt after alt that level too quickly through the lower tiers while I explore and learn. I am still firmly of the belief that if I start a new game and have a character reach level cap within a year then the game is a failure. Not saying that it shouldn't be possible to reach cap within a year but I want to have enough things to do, places to explore, etc. so that it doesn't happen either by default or by necessity. If the game is designed as a railroad to level cap it is not going to hold my interest.

[Shinkuu]

I find myself nodding in agreement to most of what is said here honestly.

The exp grind for Multiclassing Peds is a pain in the tail but it can be done eventually and forces you to decide what you really want to DO with that character instead of going scatter brained and having a worthless character in the end.

If they do not want to deal with that they can always go with a Dragon instead and just play "Easy" Mode.

If there is anything about EXP that I would think needs touching at all it may be craft grinding which is insanely boring but I would be just as happy if instead of doing anything to make it easier they just eventually came along with something to make it more fun or interesting. Not sure what yet but if I ever think of a good answer I will be sure to suggest it.

I do not foresee them making the game any easier for leveling TBVH. It does not seem to be the way they are going and if a New Player can find the quests and the available things to do in the game they can level just fine.

I do agree Istaria is NOT going to appeal to everyone but that is easily said of EVERYTHING.

I also agree that what they DO need is a bit more information given out by the NPC's at some point. I get the feel that they are and have always been hoping that the Player Community will be there to answer questions and help make it a living world. As LOVWYRM previously pointed out: If you get into a Guild of knowledgeable helpful people then your experience in Istaria is much more likely to be very pleasant and fun. If you do not then it is likely to be very confusing and frustrating.

The BIG problem I see is that people are not really trained to reach out to others much in the USA. So what they are TRYING to do is to get people to go against the Independence Streak that has been hammered into them since they were young in my Country. That is VERY hard to force on someone.

So who stays? Those folks who DO reach out and ask questions. Those who find the New Player channel and ask. (I have NEVER seen someone not get the answers they need there. We are awesome about helping people IMO) Those who find a guild and dig for info. I would say that the first few MONTHS I did little but utterly GRILL the Scions for information and I am glad I did because it made the WHOLE game make sense and work. Without that information I would probably STILL be playing only 25% of the game and trying to figure it out.

So perhaps more information or more prodding by NPC's to talk to their Fellow Gifted or the like. One of the two could really be used far far more than any sort of dumming down. This game needs no dumming down it needs smarting up LOL.

[Shinkuu]

Almost every MMO I have played has had challenges at every level that are just as hard and just as much fun as those at the top levels, but they get completely ignored because they aren't on the path of maximum XP/hr. If the content at cap were all that mattered then why bother with levels at all? Just give everyone a max level character and let them jump into the 'real' game right away. If you did that though, people wouldn't stick with the game. There is something about building up a character through levels that builds an attachment, and much as some people complain about slow leveling the fact is that the more one has invested in the process, the more one is attached to the character. The point is that leveling should not be a grind - an as long as there is interesting and challenging content at all levels it doesn't have to be. Unfortunately, there is this notion out there that learning how to do the 'safety dance' to beat a high level opponent is more difficult/challenging/worthy/whatever than learning how to kite and kill a lower tier boss and his minions using only your sharpened stick and best set of rags.

Unfortunately, I learned years ago that this particular rant does not receive a warm welcome so I spend most of my days on alt after alt that level too quickly through the lower tiers while I explore and learn. I am still firmly of the belief that if I start a new game and have a character reach level cap within a year then the game is a failure. Not saying that it shouldn't be possible to reach cap within a year but I want to have enough things to do, places to explore, etc. so that it doesn't happen either by default or by necessity. If the game is designed as a railroad to level cap it is not going to hold my interest.

Firstly, let me say that I am cool with getting rid of levels. I really LOVE the Elder Scrolls style of Skill Progression more than ANY OTHER I have EVER come across. Where you LITERALLY get stronger in any given skill by... waait for it... Killing Monsters?... Nooo... Slaving in a Mine?... Nooo... Using that skill a lot just like IRL even if that means shooting Arrows at a Target to increase your skill with bows? DING DING DING! We have a WINNER!

So yeah... Levels are an Evil and not one that is really required. WoW treats them like a Necessary evil that must be there and be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. They got it partially correct IMO... but missed the real truth.

What I think YOU are getting at in part of this is you enjoy the challenges and experience along the way. Again this was awesome in Elder Scrolls because there was a main storyline but there was also a HUGE world to explore and you could stumble upon quests all along the way that really made you use your head some times and other times you could all but make up your OWN quest to go raid some village, plunder some lost tomb, or explore some distant dungeon. THAT is what I call epic fun.

Now in Istaria we have a LOT of quests... IF... You can find them. I think there needs to be a wee bit more help with finding these guys some times but otherwise there are a lot of quests and you are right to call shame on the lvl 100+ folks who complain about no content when they probably never even bothered with those quests.

Some of the quests are hard and I personally HATE Magic Spot quests because the spot you need to stand is always very precise while there is usually no real way to know exactly where that is. Besides those quests though I think the Istarian quests are doable and generally enjoyable. You can often do them in a number of ways which I consider to be a real plus.

In Istaria I do not feel like Adventure levels are QUITE so rough that there is a need to skip past them. The reward system of getting a new ability roughly every 2 levels is a good solid structure that keeps you wanting more and there is a fair bit to explore. The Craft Grind is another beast altogether which feels more like a necessary evil undertaken to do otherwise fun things...

I do often find myself wishing I was at the end level though so I could play with all the high level people. The low population means that there are mostly absolutely new Players, for whom I ruin their EXP and otherwise make things too easy for them, and end level People who I cannot do anything to help because I suck too much to participate int their activities due to my level. That sort of thing is frustrating and is the REASON why the other content is often ignored and seen as more of a problem than a good thing. So consider that as you will.


However, on the subject of "Challenge" I tend to agree with Dhalin as I so often do. What Dhalin is getting at is a Boss who is "Hard" because it is uber powerful compared to you and essentially cheats is not much fun or an honest challenge. That is like saying "Here I will fight you and we will see who is the better fighter... Oh but I get a Gun and you have to use your fists... Oh and we need to start from 20 paces."... Yeah... Not fair and not a real test of skill.

I prefer enemies who use Strategy to defeat you. Now in Istaria if we are speaking of the Aegis then it seems very fair that the Boss is going to be a powerful General of their massive armies and that you may need to bring a fairly substantial force to bear because he has an ARMY of undead on his side. Now a Boss like that who had a decent amount of HP and well coordinated troops who healed, attacked, defended, and essentially acted more like real players would be an EPIC challenge to write home about.

WoW does this a bit but uses stage elements a fair bit as well. They offer a different sort of Strategy where you as the player need to figure out the way the battle goes and adapt quickly to be victorious more than the Boss itself being overly strategic. Both are valid methods of getting the same result but I prefer the prior to even the WoW version.

Now you talk about luring out the Boss away from his minions and killing him there. That is you using some strategy buuuut the only problem there is that it is the same strategy you use on EVERYTHING in the game which makes it a bit weak for use on a tough boss as well. It may be HARDER to accomplish with a boss but it is still the same routine when a more complex solution like: "Kill the Spiritists and Wizards first so they do not kill and Stun you to death. Then you can move in and take out the Healers next. THEN you take on the warriors and Melee Combatants because they will guard the Boss so much you cannot hit him without clearing them first. Finally, with the army out of the way you can attack the Boss." is a lot more satisfying to me and I suspect to a fair number of others.

[Dhalin]

Firstly, let me say that I am cool with getting rid of levels. I really LOVE the Elder Scrolls style of Skill Progression more than ANY OTHER I have EVER come across. Where you LITERALLY get stronger in any given skill by... waait for it... Killing Monsters?... Nooo... Slaving in a Mine?... Nooo... Using that skill a lot just like IRL even if that means shooting Arrows at a Target to increase your skill with bows? DING DING DING! We have a WINNER!

The problem with Elder Scrolls games, though, is this:

While it looks good on paper, the execution of it is a bit off.

First off, you don't get skill from shooting bows at targets -- you have to shoot bows at mobs. Try it. Be a "low-level" character, get a bow and some arrows, and shoot all of your arrows at the target, then look at your Archery score. You'll find that it hasn't increased at all (at least not in Oblivion... don't know about Morrowind).

Same goes for Destruction spells; you get nothing if you cast a spell and miss.

Also, it just simply takes far, far too long to get levels once you get into the 25-30 range, I once started down in Leyawiin and swam clear up as far north as the river would allow and got -1- level of Athletics for doing so, and swimming gives you more athletics skill than anything else in the game.

Did I also mention it took me nearly 15 minutes to do this? Of doing nothing but swimming in a straight line (well I had to swim around the Imperial City, but whatever)?

Also, I made a destruction spell, 1MP cost, fire damage on self. I counted, I picked a level in the 40s, I counted it took me about _50 casts_ to gain 1 level.

Do you have any idea how many mobs you would have to kill to gain 1 level on 1 skill?

The skill gains were far too slow once you got out of the 'pathetically weak' area.

Or how about the worst offender, Mercantile? Someone calculated that to get to Level 100 in Mercantile, one would have to buy or sell over forty-thousand items.

Actually, it might have been 400k. I forget. It was either 40k or 400k, and 40k is sounding a bit small, because I remember selling a whole stack of 200-some arrows, one-by-one, and barely getting 1 level after several minutes of click click click click click.

And that leaves me to another point: Abuse.

Some people recommend running your character up to a wall, and duct-taping a heavy object on the Move Forward key and then going AFK to level Athletics, and then doing the same using a Turbo Controller with the Jump Key to level Acrobatics.

Or, as I mentioned above, selling cheap worthless items one-by-one like arrows.

So yes.....good on paper.... not so good when you actually get it in a game.

Why do you think they chose not to use that system in Fallout3? They thought of a better one: Kill stuff, get XP, gain level..... put points into what skills you feel your character should have, and then pick a perk from a list of perks you qualify for.

Build your character to your tastes.

[Riaken]

The only reason I come back to this game is cause it is so complicated and involved. No doubt about it, this game has a long learning curve. And for some of us old timers that invested a lot of time in game probably don't want to see it become easy. But let's face it, todays gamers want to power level to end game and be the first to do it.

[LungTien Temeraire]

I'd suggest to keep the current level for this game, because I think it encourages playing with groups, or help given by elder players to new players, whether it is advices, support, ... it depnds of the players, but I really have a nice memory of the time when I started the game, to see an elder player waiting at NT, and helping me fighting, or showing me paths, towns and stuff like that.
With the fact that Istaria is a MMORPG in which we can play dragons,
having been helped like that as I brought my hatchling dragon to NT was one of the major things which hooked me to the game, and to the community.

[Dhalin]

But let's face it, todays gamers want to power level to end game and be the first to do it.

Making generalizations only succeed in insulting those who are not part of the group you describe.

Yes, there are people wanting to "power level" to the Endgame to be the first to do it.

But yet, that's not true for everybody.

Some people want to reach endgame in a reasonable time-frame (what each person sees as 'reasonable', varies), some people want to have fun on their way to max level (again, this varies from person to person), and some people just don't like long grinds, they like their leveling grind masked by doing a variety of tasks.

Sitting down in some area, to kill several hundred mobs for a level or two with no real reason or rhyme makes the game feel grindy. Doubly so for crafting, spending hours watching your character digging gets old after awhile.

That's why newer games mix it up a bit, especially with quests. Now, Istaria -has- been getting better in the quest department, but it still has a long way to go (and sometimes quests can be harder to find).

The old "Grind grind grind" MMORPG model is obsolete and out-dated; better systems have been invented to make MMORPGs still take a long time (remember, everyone bashes WoW for being 'too easy', but yet players play the game for years and years and still haven't run out of things to do), but yet, still be fun and entertaining.

Istaria is an aging game, it uses an outdated engine, and it was made way back when games like EQ and FFXI were considered standard-fare for MMORPGs.

The MMORPG genre, like all games, evolve. If Istaria doesn't evolve with it, it will eventually fall, it is only a matter of time.

[Shinkuu]

The problem with Elder Scrolls games, though, is this:

While it looks good on paper, the execution of it is a bit off.

First off, you don't get skill from shooting bows at targets -- you have to shoot bows at mobs. Try it. Be a "low-level" character, get a bow and some arrows, and shoot all of your arrows at the target, then look at your Archery score. You'll find that it hasn't increased at all (at least not in Oblivion... don't know about Morrowind).

Same goes for Destruction spells; you get nothing if you cast a spell and miss.

Also, it just simply takes far, far too long to get levels once you get into the 25-30 range, I once started down in Leyawiin and swam clear up as far north as the river would allow and got -1- level of Athletics for doing so, and swimming gives you more athletics skill than anything else in the game.

Did I also mention it took me nearly 15 minutes to do this? Of doing nothing but swimming in a straight line (well I had to swim around the Imperial City, but whatever)?

Also, I made a destruction spell, 1MP cost, fire damage on self. I counted, I picked a level in the 40s, I counted it took me about _50 casts_ to gain 1 level.

Do you have any idea how many mobs you would have to kill to gain 1 level on 1 skill?

The skill gains were far too slow once you got out of the 'pathetically weak' area.

Or how about the worst offender, Mercantile? Someone calculated that to get to Level 100 in Mercantile, one would have to buy or sell over forty-thousand items.

Actually, it might have been 400k. I forget. It was either 40k or 400k, and 40k is sounding a bit small, because I remember selling a whole stack of 200-some arrows, one-by-one, and barely getting 1 level after several minutes of click click click click click.

And that leaves me to another point: Abuse.

Some people recommend running your character up to a wall, and duct-taping a heavy object on the Move Forward key and then going AFK to level Athletics, and then doing the same using a Turbo Controller with the Jump Key to level Acrobatics.

Or, as I mentioned above, selling cheap worthless items one-by-one like arrows.

So yes.....good on paper.... not so good when you actually get it in a game.

Why do you think they chose not to use that system in Fallout3? They thought of a better one: Kill stuff, get XP, gain level..... put points into what skills you feel your character should have, and then pick a perk from a list of perks you qualify for.

Build your character to your tastes.

Umm... I actually got my Marksman up quite a bit on my Khajiit Assasin on Oblivion by shooting the Arrow Targets in the little practice yard of the Fighter's Guild. I was playing the X-Box 360 Version. (not sure which you had or if they changed that in a patch or what) (Not sure it worked in Morrowind though. It has been some time since I played it...)

It DOES take time but IRL you do not get skill over night. The only Skill I ever tried to power level was Sneak. The rest I just let grow as I went around and did things. I never found it to be an issue. Before I knew it my Acro was insane and my Athletics from running all around the world was going up like it was on fire.

Mercentile was annoying but on the flip side it was a relatively throw away skill anyway. You do not need it that high and I got it fairly high just selling junk as I adventured. (And buttering up the merchants with Speech Craft which was one of my skills. Muahahahaa)

Honestly, I went through the entire game 3 times and did the Shivering Isles and the other expansion dungeon and found all the God Shrines and everything. I never felt the need to power level anything out side of sneak. All my skills came along slowly but surely and you learned to fight against harder opponents carefully until the day came you could just waste them with little to no effort at all.


Fallout 3 is just too darned different of a game. I mean it has guns for crying out loud. It is like an RPG and a FPS thrown into a Blender. I can imagine they were scratching their head as to exactly how to implement that well and settled on that method.

[Dhalin]

Umm... I actually got my Marksman up quite a bit on my Khajiit Assasin on Oblivion by shooting the Arrow Targets in the little practice yard of the Fighter's Guild. I was playing the X-Box 360 Version. (not sure which you had or if they changed that in a patch or what) (Not sure it worked in Morrowind though. It has been some time since I played it...)

Was playing on PC, the version right out-of-the-box.

I looked it up on the editor -- Marksmanship only gives you skill if your shot hits and damages an opponent, same for Destruction Magic. Actually, ALL magic is like this -- the magic must strike, and affect, the target.

It DOES take time but IRL you do not get skill over night. The only Skill I ever tried to power level was Sneak. The rest I just let grow as I went around and did things. I never found it to be an issue. Before I knew it my Acro was insane and my Athletics from running all around the world was going up like it was on fire.

I had a character that I played for a long time, too. All guilds cleared, Shivering Isles cleared, Perma-Run turned on.

His athletics skill was 50-ish. Finishing the entire game, only got me halfway leveled? Why did they even put the 75 and 100 perks in the game, when they are nearly impossible to attain?

Mercentile was annoying but on the flip side it was a relatively throw away skill anyway. You do not need it that high and I got it fairly high just selling junk as I adventured. (And buttering up the merchants with Speech Craft which was one of my skills. Muahahahaa)

Speechcraft... the useless skill. It is easy to max out an NPC's disposition towards you, even with a Speechcraft of 15.

Honestly, I went through the entire game 3 times and did the Shivering Isles and the other expansion dungeon and found all the God Shrines and everything. I never felt the need to power level anything out side of sneak. All my skills came along slowly but surely and you learned to fight against harder opponents carefully until the day came you could just waste them with little to no effort at all.

Until/unless your skills cause levelups too fast, like for many a newbie who had to re-do their character from scratch because they chose the wrong skills. That whole "Major Skill, Levelup" system was horrible. Before they knew it, they'd run into Bandits wearing Glass Armor, and greater Daedra while still wielding Iron weapons, with many Sub-25 skills, when you should have 40+ to fight those.

Fallout 3 is just too darned different of a game. I mean it has guns for crying out loud. It is like an RPG and a FPS thrown into a Blender. I can imagine they were scratching their head as to exactly how to implement that well and settled on that method.

Fallout3 could have easily supported such a system. You shoot something, get guns skill. You lockpick something, get lockpick skill. Same thing. They chose not to use it though, because the NEW system works Better.

The only real difference between FO3 and Oblivion:

The Character Advancement System.
The heavy reliance upon Guns/Ranged Weapons.
The Lack of special melee weapon moves.
Lockpicking/Hacking is different than Oblivion Lockpicking.

Everything else (including the FPS aspect) is pretty much the same, Engine-wise.

I wish some fanboy would re-make Morrowind and Oblivion with Fallout's SPECIAL/Skill/Perk system.

THAT would truly rock.

[Thicklesip]

Hrm. Two notes I wanted to throw out there:

1. I totally want to say something insightful about the relationship between difficulty and challenge but a few weeks back one of my favorite bloggers made a great big monster of a post discussing upcoming changes to dungeons in The Other MMO from that angle and I don't want to make people suffer through the entire thing so I'll just quote the parts I think apply.

As I emphasized when talking about Ripsnarl, there are elements of a fight that are difficult and there are elements of a fight that are challenging. Difficulty is inevitably dull – it is about having the “right” combination of classes, or hitting the “right” level of gear criticality, or having a PC powerful enough that it doesn’t start stuttering when the boss does a graphically-intensive AoE effect. Challenge is where it’s at – that is the thing you can influence by playing well, by communicating, by learning to work as a team, even if you’re just a team of five strangers brought together for three hours some random Thursday evening.

...

A geekademic friend of mine (sorry…“friend”) once tried to browbeat me into liking Braid by arguing that my frustration with the form (fiddly platform elements, actually hindering my engagement with the apparently amazing story) was actually integral to the experience. Game theorists, he explained pompously, call this aporia. Chas, who doesn’t have much truck with this kind of thing, countered this line of reasoning by observing that aporia is basically the feeling of pleasurable relief you get after, for example, taking an enormous ****. I feel I should apologise for Chas now, but, chosen rhetoric aside, he does have a point. By making things – intentionally or otherwise – arbitrarily frustrating, it is very easy to induce a sense of aporia in players. However this is still a cheap substitute for the feeling of achievement you get by overcoming, through skill, teamwork and determination, a genuinely balanced, challenging and well designed encounter.

The thing is, I think it is our automatic response to view these sort of changes as “nerfs” that came about because stupid people who aren’t us QQed about the game being too hard. But the proposed changes aren’t necessarily about making the dungeons easier, they’re about refining the challenging elements.

Obviously specifics don't apply, but the distinction between difficulty and challenge is one I think is important to make in video games.

(The entire post can be found at http://www.righteousorbs.com/?p=2977 for the insatiably curious.)

2. I hate whipping out the "Science Says So" card when I have absolutely nothing to hand to people as reference, but it's a pretty well-documented logical fallacy of humans that the more a person invests in something, the more they feel they HAVE to keep investing because otherwise you wasted what you already put into it! (Nevermind if we're talking about a tanking stock or the beat up car you're dropping $5k a year to keep in barely running condition rather than getting a new, $4k-a-year-for-loan-payments-AND-maintenance car.) After a point people start to feel obligated to keep going whether they really want to or not, and it's always interesting to see that mechanism kick in to video games. I'm pretty sure I don't like it much, but then again I am hilariously obligation-adverse and will frequently drop whatever I'm doing and walk away just to prove I can. I might not be the best example.

3. Not actually a point, just an epiphany. After explaining the crystal system to a newbie in New Player today for the nth time, and then reading this... good lord, I warn my friends away from this game just because of how much information there is to frontload. On the one hand, so many things being available from the get-go is nice. On the other hand, I definitely feel that if I invited a friend to this game, I'd need to babysit them for the first week, doing nothing but explaining all the systems and processes because otherwise there's a significant danger that they'd get bored/frustrated and wander off. And then I'd have to listen to them casually disparage this game forevermore.

There's a compromise between difficult and challenging. Nothing lasts forever. We can't hurt the old playerbase we have in Istaria-- where would we be without the old timers? They're our most precious resource!-- but unless we plan on eventually paring the game down to something run across a LAN for the twenty people still playing, adaptations to make the game appeal to more newbies seem necessary.

Oh well. Not like I have the answers, either. Just the questions.

[Dragonboy]

The exp grind for Multiclassing Peds is a pain in the tail but it can be done eventually and forces you to decide what you really want to DO with that character instead of going scatter brained and having a worthless character in the end.

If they do not want to deal with that they can always go with a Dragon instead and just play "Easy" Mode.

Devs should just remove the experience gain from trophy hunter quests above rating 160+ and force players to actually choose their headings in life like it was instead of allowing all biped gifted to become rating 278 Demi-Gods…
These quests have been part of the slippery slope on which Istaria slides now. Dragons only became easy mode because Bipeds got their trophies to grind

But let's face it, todays gamers want to power level to end game and be the first to do it.

Making generalizations only succeed in insulting those who are not part of the group you describe.

Yes, there are people wanting to "power level" to the Endgame to be the first to do it.

But yet, that's not true for everybody.

I for one felt insulted, I remember the Istarian days when hatchlings and bipeds alike were taken to the satyr island in a group of highlevel bipeds and dragons and got easy experience by sitting on the side lines… A huge stream of high level bipeds and dragons appeared all long dead and long gone who had multiple 100’s, but didn’t know how to play their character. This form of powerleveling is at least taken away from the game… at the cost of no high levelers being able to group with a low level player, but we all know the saying… The good suffer because of the bad.