THIS GAME IS GREAT!! well just not right now.

[jackmor]

The game was realy realy fun at first. Leveling my char. at the speed of light was great but, somthing was wrong. I knew it couldnt last because the skill cap was 250 and at this rate even with the tree I would max out in less than a year. I figured somthing had to give. So rather than continue fighting
I decided to round out my char whith all the other skills. In the meantime my fellow guild mates zoomed past me in melee. They even pasted the crafters and started fighting without armor. Now, I knew there was somthing wrong.

Then came news of the patch. Well this will be great I thought. I'll be able to fix all those mistakes I made with the sp training.

Then came the PATCH. After fixing up my char I decided to go try it out. You all know the rest. So now I have forage and craft to work on and my guild mate are screwed. While I can group forage with a friend I convinced to follow my lead my guilds mate are running around desperate for armor, weapons, and help.

The way I see it the problem is'nt so much the patch (It does need fixing) as it is with the way the game started. People are pissed because they got addicted to the leveling and not the game.

My advise is to just hang in there and round out your char and try to be happy that you were able get your char way past where you would have if the game started this way because. I don't think it will ever be that fast again.


P.S. The game has just begun. There is a long way to go yet don't get scared now.

[yy48n19]

The way I see it the problem is'nt so much the patch (It does need fixing) as it is with the way the game started. People are pissed because they got addicted to the leveling and not the game.

The game has just begun. There is a long way to go yet don't get scared now.

**nod** Excellent point. Click here to see my similar take on things.

[eschiava]

A mere 3 or 4 days ago there was near ecstacy on these boards over the responsiveness of the devs for this game. Then came patch 1 and some are now convinced that Nevrax doesn't care at all about their customers. Um...is that realistic? I urge those who are about to leave, give Nevrax, the most responsive MMORPG maker another chance. And if you have played a few MMOs in the past, you know you won't find this kind of responsiveness and care from one of the biggies like SOE. (ever play SWG? LOL!)

What I have seen is that Nevrax released patch 1, and found that it was a mistake, it went further than it was intended to. People complained that Nevrax should never have releasesd such a sweeping change, but made smaller incremental changes. So, since patch 1 hey have made 2 small incremental changes and people are now complaining that they haven't fixed what is perceived as a large list of problems.

I guess what I am saying is, can we have just a little patience and see what Nevrax will do? I'm guessing that with another patch or two that Nevrax will have reached a happy medium that many, many players can be happy with.

[stellus]

It's partly because we were spoiled on fast leveling.

But for once, put that thought aside and think about the raw game mechanics for a second. There are several ways the problem of speed leveling can be dealt with. The first and foremost would be increasing the amount of experience it takes to level up. It's the easiest, yet laziest. It creates a "grind". Next, is to reevaluate mob placement, experience gained per mob, and the rate of spawn. This of course can take a lot of time and may not always result in the way you want it to.

What the developers did was increase all mob damage two-fold. This is a good idea IF you do it gradually. What I mean by gradually is that - as the mobs get higher in level and therefore more difficult, they start doing more and more damae.

What we're seeing in Patch 1 is EVERY mob doing extraordinary damage, across the board. 2 Lv. 15 mobs can wipe out 1600HP in a matter of seconds. What does this do? It forces Harvesters to stay at bay. It makes teams hunt on the perimeters of the lands rather than venturing into the wild like we did before. And it also makes soloing near impossible.

I agree that character progression should slow down, but there can be a better way to doing it than crippling anyone who steps foot outside of the cities.

[jesder]

A mere 3 or 4 days ago there was near ecstacy on these boards over the responsiveness of the devs for this game. Then came patch 1 and some are now convinced that Nevrax doesn't care at all about their customers. Um...is that realistic? I urge those who are about to leave, give Nevrax, the most responsive MMORPG maker another chance.

What we need to see is that they stop swinging from one extreme to the next. We need to see that this quick responsiveness does not cause more problems than it solves. We need to know that Nevrax not only acts quickly to players needs/demands but that they also think about the changes and how they will actually effect the players. We need to know that they will not push code that they already know will have a huge negative impact on the players (which is what they did with patch 1).

We need more open communication with Nevrax. They have pushed changes in without even a mention in the patch notes. Did anyone see any mention of the major change to mission payouts anywhere? All I saw was that they were fixing some copy and needed to reset everyone's active missions.

I am not as upset with them as I was when they first pushed Patch 1 ... but I think they still have a long way to go before they earn my praise.

[jjm152]

Honestly people, the only reason why anyone was "speed leveling" was because of blind. Blind was the sole factor for people forming large 3k xp hunting groups and churning mobs 40-60 levels above them into "xp" 1 every 20 seconds. Remove blind from the equation, and your leveling slows down.

Secondly, people were fighting without armor not because they couldn't get any equipment, but because the decay rate on their items were so obscenely high that most people saved their armor for when they had to solo. I know I did.

Lastly, Taking a year to reach "max level" would be about 3-4 times longer than any other RPG on the market. If thats what you saw and that bothered you, the I guess you have much different expectations of the vast majority of people who play other RPGS. Even then, given the fact that after you obtain max level in that *one* skill branch, you have atleast a dozen other ones to raise as well...

Leveling in this game to "maxitude" or whatever, already was going to take a huge amount of time. Now that huge amount of time has increased 10 fold.

It may come as a shock to some people, but many of us actually enjoy advancing our characters. I don't need a level every 10 minute ala blind, but I do actually need *some way to gain exp*. Over the last two days I think I have gotten 7 levels of forage and about 40 levels of crafting experience. I have gotten 1 level of elemental magic during that time.

Using the original posters logic, if once the crafters start "out leveling' the melee/mages on the game, will the developers then see fit to nerf crafting? I mean, we can't have people maxing out a single skill in under a year can we....

o.O

Patch 1 is obviously a screw up. They made the game so hard that they had to *emergency patch* the newbie mobs on the newbie island. Yes, the weekend of their big free trail they had made it so that a new player couldn't defeat a yubo in melee combat. That speaks volumes of how little they tested this stuff.

Seriously think about it... would you make it so that it was impossible (or nearly so) for a brand new player to your game, that you are hoping will subscribe mind you, cannot even advance their characters fighting past level 1 without a team?? Even the most rigorous forced grouping game I know of (EverQuest) gives you a break on that for most classes up to atleast level 20 for melee folks and much higher for mages.

And its so obviously not a design decision, because they backed it out the very next day after someone pointed it out to them.

People *shouldn't have to point that out*. That is such a collasal blunder it boggles the mind. The rest of the game right now is also in that same state. It's not fun, grouping makes almost very little difference to your survival. For instance, I cannot heal someone faster than a monster 20 levels below them can do damage. Do we now need 2 healers for every 1 melee fighter in a party? My afflicion spells never land anymore, and when they do they hardly do anything at all. Attempting to fight anything above level 70 or so is just asking for death penalty sooner or later.

I would like to atleast have the *illusion* I can always win, even if thats not the case. Right now I know very much as a fact that sooner or later I am going to die, and generally before I remove any DP. So why bother?

[jackmor]

Wow jjim. that was longer than the original post. However, I think your reading more into my post than I intended.

First one year meant all branches in all trees. And I spent three years playing EQ and they never leveled that fast.

Second if you want to fight without armor thats fine but, then whats the point in having so much of the game devoted to crafting.

Lastly the patch was over kill but they are trying to fix the mistakes.

And if your looking for a game dedicated to bash and level might I suggest Worlds of Warcraft I heard thats the kind of game it is.

[sonion]

I think people were leveling at an accelerated rate because well there is little else to do in the game.

Because of the lack of content players did what they could to pass time and feel as if they were accomplishing something, anything.

Content conducive to game play, suspension of disbelief, yet not geared to strict gain of exp is what’s needed/needs to be addressed. Given some form of entertainment that brings enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment not necessarily solely derived from exp and leveling would go a long way towards making the game better.

[jjm152]

Wow that was longer than the original post. However, I think your reading more into my post than I intended.

First one year meant all branches in all trees. And I spent three years playing EQ and they never leveled that fast.

Even with the way things were before the patch it would easily take 6 months to level just a single combat tree out to the end for a really hard core player. For an average player easily over a year. For one single branch on a tree.

Also, spending three years playing EQ and not reaching max level is probably only possible if you are a terrible player or rarely play at all. Most people who play EQ put in about 15-20 hours a week on it. My ex-girlfriend did that and in one year she was running around in full planar gear. A power gamer who devotes his entire time to just leveling (and puts in more hours mind you) could acomplish the same feat in a couple of months.

If you're comparing EQ's leveling rate to Ryzom then you're far off the mark.

Second if you want to fight without armor thats fine but, then whats the point in having so much of the game devoted to crafting.

You need to re-read my statement. People fought without armor because it was degrading so quickly. My QL100 armor was turning into mush after 2 hours of fighting. It used to take me like 2 hours to gather the mats for a single suit. If I had to outfit all my friends in the hunting party it would easily take me a day of harvesting/crafting to for us to all play for about 2-3 hours.

They seem to have fixed this in the patch since I managed to be in a team and defeat a couple dozen monsters and only lost a single hp off my gear. This is a big improvement over before when after an hour of playing people would start randomly having pieces of armor fall off their characters.

Lastly the patch was over kill but they are trying to fix the mistakes.

And if your looking for a game dedicated to bash and level might I suggest Worlds of Warcraft I heard thats the kind of game it is.

The patch didn't do a good enough job. It didn't even come close to it. We haven't heard a peep out of the devs for over 36 hours and in all likelyhood they are gone for the weekend. That is complete and utter crap. Take it as you will, but that level of devotion to their player base is laughable in the face of so much outrage.

And finally, assuming that I'm some sort of "Bash and level' person just because I don't agree with your pollyanna-esque view of the situtation is just flat out wrong. You don't know anything about me or what I enjoy in the game or how I've developed my character. Trying to denegrate or slam me as some mindless hack and slash drone is just a cheap ploy and what people usually resort to when someone disagrees with thier opinion.

You can infer whatever you want about me, it doesn't make me wrong and it certainly doesn't make you right.

[eschiava]

I know this is only me and that not everyone feels like I do, but I get the same enjoyment, satisgaction even, from making attacks as I can and surviving. For me, the game mechanics are not all about leveling. I do have fun, even post-patch 1.

Miy's player