Shattered Kingdoms

Peso makes me laugh.

Glad you got a chuckle, but it wasn't directed at you specifically. Regardless of who you play or played, you're whining about the time sink called levelling. I feel levelling is easier today than it was years ago: new areas, new skills, weapons, spells, NPC behaviors, resources, etc. have all essentially streamlined and improved the levelling process. Go with the flow, be creative, and enjoy it, its all part of the game. Have a good day. N_G

To be honest, I think level-grinding has become so second nature to the older players of this game that it can be hard to appreciate just how much toil it actually is. It is, in fact, pretty much toil to level up in most RPGs, it's just a matter of the RPG fooling you. SK makes very little effort in fooling you. In the case of WoW, which fools 90% of people, I'll save you some space Adder:

It's all based off of a frequent work ---> frequent reward system, a system that acts on most minds similar to something like heroine. Hence the game's popularity. The kind of system they use may be impossible to implement given the current nature and shape of the game, but certain ideas from it may be useful to the game, I think? Leveling will always be a relatively mindless activity, as it is in any RPG. It's fine that you don't want to make it any shorter D, but making it more palatable (in the sense of creating a more fluid, addictive, and less frustrating experience) is definitely a worthwhile ambition (which I'm sure is being pursued.) With that said:

In WoW: Player talks to NPC. NPC gives quest; quests are one of a handful of menial tasks which repeat themselves over and over throughout the game, nothing special. The key however is that even this small variation in objectives exists, which is enough to keep the average mind mildly entertained. The lesson you might derive from this is the slight, repeating variation in purpose/activity. At the end of these quests is a quick but seemingly substantial reward: a piece of EQ slightly better than your last perhaps, gold, significant XP, etc. Enough to move some reward juices in your brain.

Compare this to current leveling in SK which is simply marching out to some player-recommended, mob-filled cave that you endlessly kill things and sleep in again and again until you are rewarded, in far longer intervals, with a level. This is rinsed and repeated without variation (except for the acquisition of new skills) until you feel it is necessary to find a cave with slightly stronger NPCs to kill. Speaking as my current character in terms of small rewards, my character has been using the exact same chance-found weapon since about expert level, and up until recently was wearing the exact same armor he wore since apprentice. That is all from many, many hours ago.

*These quests are also used skillfully to introduce the player to every area, with minor quests exploring the little nooks of areas and major, more over-arching quests exploring large structures as well as, most importantly, eventually forwarding the character to a new area (or sometimes, giving the option of one of several new areas) to begin more quests in. These quests also introduce characters to the purpose of areas and their histories. **** I think this sort of thing can be very important for a game. SK, with its development staff, obviously doesn't have the time to code in the amount of quests that would be necessary to change the entire format of the game to some kind of WoWish format. That's not my suggestion as it's clearly absurd. However, maybe a series of these more over-arching quests, which in turn might direct players amidst leveling to going to new cities, countries, unconventional places (i.e leveling zones and puzzle areas), what have you, along with learning various things about the world, well it strikes me as a very nice possible project. It would be something intuitive that all players would be inclined to go through, i.e not hidden behind a bookshelf or requiring any large amount of PC help in going through.

In the past, PCs filled everything out anyway. They told you everything and made everything easier. When the average count was double this size, the system was sufficient for me at least just because meeting/grouping with other lowbies and interacting with them (especially the good ones) was fun and interesting enough. We are now looking at a game that is trying to recruit more people while having few, and it can't really rely on that stuff anymore imo... so more self-sufficient and intuitive methods for progression seems like a good idea.

There are some good ideas in that.

I agree with Adder, I see a lot of responses from "vets" or jaded players that basically amount to "lol u sux noob". Anyone who played SK several years back knows that Adder is no scrub, nor am I. He brought up several valid points in his posts, mainly the suggested routes to quick leveling.

OOC contacts, roll a warlock, or follow some sort of Atkins diet for leveling areas. Once you consuming exactly 3291 calories of exp, chew 32 times then move to this specific meal over here, for another 4422 calories, etc...

That's kind of [REDACTED], I for one really don't like getting any OOC help, especially with leveling it takes away what minimal fun can be found in it. It's also [REDACTED] to be funneled towards playing one class out of thirteen, or however many there are. The last option links in with the first option really, it's incredibly boring following a routine for each and every character, but that's really sort of what it's gotten to. Depending on your alignment, you always go to the same spots every time, for the same statuses, simply because that's where the best EXP is. Variety is far more enjoyable than following one set leveling path each and every time.

The last and largest problem in my opinion is the master-GM leveling. I played two characters after my 2-3 year break. I GM'd a mercenary in fairly decent time, but that was only because I was rolling around with a small group of friends, and we could do things like make our own groups to level in the ToM, Beo, white dragon caves, etc... Once my friends got bored and quit the game, I made another character, a scout. I leveled him to mid master solo, and then got absolutely stuck. With the population on SK dwindling so much, I could never get a single ToM/Beo group at any of the times I could play, and abusing the twink leveling areas like the archery butts in Seawatch and the NPCs on Griffon Island was even more boring that grinding rangers in the sprite palace, and waiting for a respawn.

Point being unless you have help it's a long and very tedious process to GM a character, and with the small player base, it's very hard to get help without ooc friends. Even harder if you don't play at peak times, try getting a ToM group with 7 people online.

I doubt any of this will get changed, but Adder did bring up very valid points, and has run into a lot of the same problems I ran into when I first came back, and if old players find it rather difficult to level without help, I imagine the new players aren't having any easier time with it. Perhaps that works to their advantage though, at least every area is new, so they aren't bored with seeing the same old places time and time again.

Variety huh? There are very few differences in the leveling paths of most characters, I've found at least. Should I fight goblins in teron, or sewer monsters in Exile? The difference in minimal, it's just the same grind, different colors coming at you. Some areas are slightly more conducive to classes than others, but that's about it. And in the end, as you did mention, nearly everyone just ends of having to go to the ToM, which I think is crap. Basically 90% of the pbase going from champ to GM is required to patrol a small bracket-shaped hallway for hours on end, in this wacky dimension that probably hasn't been explained to them at all.

Anyhow I'm not talking about putting you on a choiceless rail to GM. Even if I was, that would be an impossible amount of work. Some level of coherent questy guidance, however, for the newbs and perhaps the entertainment of older players would be useful. Something that intuitively shows where things are and what they are, a little task and a little reward mixed in for incentive, etc. The pain is that these over-arching guide quest would at least begin differently in every city (but ideally, eventually converge into a narrower set of options for higher level chars). Something like that. This isn't some fix-all thing, to be sure. If you consider a thing like that OOC (and I feel it's pretty IC), I'd say it's way less OOC than typing in "area" and then asking a PC where that place is...

First of all, thank you Sypher for backing me up. I'm glad some people out there (and I know there are more, even if they don't post) appreciate the fact that even though the level grind has been around in SK forever doesn't make it any more pleasant to do.

Second, I also agree with Sypher that I HATE and DETEST getting OOC help. How many offers in this short thread alone were there for me to simply PM somebody for OOC leveling advice? Five? Six? Hey guys, why don't you post me the portal stone keywords, the ender activation command and where I can get the waterblade? Thanks!

Third, instant karma reinforces a great point. Why do people read the forums instead of playing? I will not even attempt to claim that I know all the reasons, but I'll say mine.

It is more exhausting to play the game than it is to sit here and debate about it.

No matter how fast I level, it will still be work. It will be unpleasant. Shortening the time doesn't make it any less so- it just shortens the amount of time that I need to spend doing it. That doesn't encourage me to log on any more than if it took me ten times as long.

I would also like to point out that nobody has actually pointed out why they are against faster leveling. The exception is D, since it's his game he obviously does not need to justify his reasoning to us, but that would be nice.

"It is already easy enough" is not a reason. That's a relative opinion. How easy is easy enough? What are you basing that off of?

Ultimately, I see it as people being proud that they had to spend less time being miserable than people who weren't as knowledgeable or abusive. It's like hazing. Nobody really likes it, except the people who have already been through it and thus want to subject it on others and laugh.

As for Enishi's post, I'll separate that out into a different thread, because this one is already degenerating.

After 12 years, there is rarely going to be a truly new topic that I have not already addressed in the past.

In terms of actual new information, we didn't add anything but the sextant coordinates. But in terms of usability, the difference is massive. Sorting and color coding just made a world of difference. All the suggestions for the improvements were also made by a player, which just goes to show that good ideas from players certainly do get implemented.

I agree with everything Enishi said about making the levelling experience easier and how quests are involved. In fact, while that is a great summary of the solution, there is nothing there that the staff does not already know. Shocking but true - I played WoW for a couple months when it launched and I recognized the same things and I've been trying to utilize a lot of those ideas to improve the SK experience.

We've implemented the quest tracking system to make it easier to start and maintain interest in performing quests. We are trying to make more and more quests that cross zones and introduce you to the next appropriate levelling zones in your region. We now give you experience simply for discovering a zone as well. And while this is a controversial statement, the familiarity system makes levelling more interesting by both giving you incentive to travel around and giving disincentive to the grinders that you are competing with who would otherwise force you to stick to only the 5 most lucrative levelling zones in order to keep up.

Again, not saying there is not room for improvement. But we are working on making things better with current systems AND coming up with new ideas like cohorts as well.