Vet Levels Going Away?

RizaHawkeye

The things you hear on zone chat.

Tonight someone said vet levels were going to be removed from the game and that character progression would cap at level 50. They also said it was coming this month. I expressed some skepticism and was told by two others IIR that this was a sure thing.

Is this truth or rumor? Has it been confirmed by Zenimax?

AngryNord

It's coming. Unlikely to be this month tho.

Gidorick

Yea... Isn't that a wonderful idea?

Could you hear the sarcasm in that? 'Cause there was sarcasm in that.

RizaHawkeye

AngryNord wrote: »

It's coming. Unlikely to be this month tho.

Really? So will they simply remove the silver/gold thing? Because I will be at level 50 long before I finish my current faction. And then, what's my motivation to keep playing?

Paulington

Definitely happening. ZOS said they'd let us know more info in the New Year (So, hopefully soon!).

We will all be dropped to level 50 and gear will have CP requirements instead of VR requirements.

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

A little context here before this gets too out of hand…

1. We’re still working on the system – nothing is finalized. (which is why we’re not really talking much about it yet)
2. The intention is that once you hit 50, champion points take over. Veteran Ranks are completely removed.
3. When Veteran Ranks are removed, we will convert any Veteran Ranks on your highest character into CP.
4. To get a rough idea of balance - think of 10CP = 1 VR. (so 160 CP will roughly = VR16)

Additional Details:

• We’re planning on giving 2.5 CP for every VR level you’ve earned on your highest level character. (40 for a VR16 character)
• When the conversion happens, any player with CP less than their old veteran rank * 10 will instead be given enough CP such that their total is VR * 10. For example: A player is VR14 with 75 CP, they will be given 65 CP (140-75) instead of 40, so that they can still equip any gear they may have.
• We will make sure the 16 attribute picks you got from VR1 to VR16 will carry over. (current plan is an achievement that goes up in 10 CP increments until 160)

Keep in mind that none of the stuff above is 100% locked in. We're still implementing the feature - things are subject to change. It's important that everyone understands they are not suddenly going to have to have 501 CP in order to equip the top level gear. We will introduce new gear, with higher CP requirements sometime in the future, but we won't be making huge jumps. (i.e. - we won't go from 160 to 400 suddenly)

Once we finalize the system and lock in more of the details, we will discuss things in more detail and answer questions.

RizaHawkeye

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Gidorick

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Mettaricana

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of them! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

I want that I hate vet grinding

Paulington

As Gidorick said, it essentially takes all the progression of your max character and adds it to your others. Instead of hitting level 50 and then grinding to max VR you just need to hit level 50 and that character can instantly equip the max level gear that all your other level 50 characters can. This will make alting far, far easier as with XP pots you can do 1-50 in <10 hours.

VRs are a huge stopping point for a lot of people and the sooner they are gone the better. Yes it is replaced with CP but at least they are account wide and and the CP catch-up mechanic makes for really fast CP gains. From zero CP you can hit 160 in a couple days of "regular" play. .

RizaHawkeye

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Okay, this makes my head hurt. Currently, cps buy passives. Will they still buy passives? Will the whole constellation thing go away? So up to level 50 would be one big starter dungeon?

Brrrofski

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Basically, you only need to get a toon to 50 and it's the same level as all your others.

I've got 4 characters to vet 16, have a vet 4 and vet 1. So once vet ranks are removed, my vet 1 and 4 will basically become vet 16s.

Great for people who have multiple toons.

Knootewoot

I do not have an alt. I play for (almost) 2 years with the same goshdarn toon. Why? Because of the vet levels. Just thinking about doing silver and gold makes me vomit.

Veteran rank away is my doorway to create another toon and enjoy the PvE main quest, get to lvl 50 and hop in to PvP without the stinkin' silver and gold.

Gidorick

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Okay, this makes my head hurt. Currently, cps buy passives. Will they still buy passives? Will the whole constellation thing go away? So up to level 50 would be one big starter dungeon?

Yep... The champion points are going to function EXACTLY as they do now... We still don't know how they're going to give us the skill points of the 16 vet levels. Money is on some design where players will get an extra skill point every 5 levels of 1-50 or something.

I get the merit of the change. I get that it will allow players to level alts more easily. I just think it's the wrong design decision that will lead to player boredom setting in more quickly. I hope I'm proven wrong.

Gidorick

Knootewoot wrote: »

I do not have an alt. I play for (almost) 2 years with the same goshdarn toon. Why? Because of the vet levels. Just thinking about doing silver and gold makes me vomit.

Veteran rank away is my doorway to create another toon and enjoy the PvE main quest, get to lvl 50 and hop in to PvP without the stinkin' silver and gold.

I totally get this @Knootewoot but I think the better option would have been to FIX silver and gold and make Vet Ranks regular levels so you progress naturally through the whole of the game...

At least now you'll be able to use Orsinium, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood to get those CPs!

RizaHawkeye

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Okay, this makes my head hurt. Currently, cps buy passives. Will they still buy passives? Will the whole constellation thing go away? So up to level 50 would be one big starter dungeon?

Yep... The champion points are going to function EXACTLY as they do now... We still don't know how they're going to give us the skill points of the 16 vet levels. Money is on some design where players will get an extra skill point every 5 levels of 1-50 or something.

I get the merit of the change. I get that it will allow players to level alts more easily. I just think it's the wrong design decision that will lead to player boredom setting in more quickly. I hope I'm proven wrong.

I just hope they have a plan to extend the number of character slots beyond eight ...

Wolfshead

Mettaricana wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of them! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

I want that I hate vet grinding

You will still "grind" but not in same way we do today you get CP exp alot faster then you VR exp basically you need less CP exp to get 1 CP so you get fast CP then VR lvl

Sausage

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

It's coming. Unlikely to be this month tho.

Really? So will they simply remove the silver/gold thing? Because I will be at level 50 long before I finish my current faction. And then, what's my motivation to keep playing?

CPs, Skyshards, and Skill points. Also if you're one-char-player you can see the rest of the zones too without making alts, trust me when I say this, tons of people play with one char only. I think they should just disable CPs from Silver and Gold, so thats why they can make sure they are always populated, worst thing they can do is to scale Silver and Gold to CP to make them dead empty all the time.

Gidorick

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

Okay, this makes my head hurt. Currently, cps buy passives. Will they still buy passives? Will the whole constellation thing go away? So up to level 50 would be one big starter dungeon?

Yep... The champion points are going to function EXACTLY as they do now... We still don't know how they're going to give us the skill points of the 16 vet levels. Money is on some design where players will get an extra skill point every 5 levels of 1-50 or something.

I get the merit of the change. I get that it will allow players to level alts more easily. I just think it's the wrong design decision that will lead to player boredom setting in more quickly. I hope I'm proven wrong.

I just hope they have a plan to extend the number of character slots beyond eight ...

I'll be surprised if they don't. What else will players have to do besides make new characters?

I also bet we will get more than a few threads from players asking "Why do I have to play the story over and over again? Why can't I just start a new character at the same level as my other characters?"

RizaHawkeye

Wow, I must be tired because it just hit me:

All I really need to do is to get one character on my account to V16 ASAP, by any means possible, before they implement the change.

After that it's all magic bingo.

Edit: I think I'll start tonight.

Spottswoode

Gidorick wrote: »

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

So what? The Vet Ranks are removed but the champion points remain? So just points without a rank?

How does that change anything?

Now you have to have X number of champion points instead of X Veteran level for gear and such. So instead of 16 vet ranks we get HUNDREDS of Champion Point "levels"!!!! yay!

But seriously... what it does is it makes end game progression account wide. Just get another character to level 50 and BOOM... they now have as much capability as your most played, highest level character.

You realize, of course, that means that you can level all of your characters to top level once you get to 50? Meaning that levelling a new alt only takes about two weeks (6 hours a day) instead of two months? Frankly, I welcome it.

Paulington

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Wow, I must be tired because it just hit me:

All I really need to do is to get one character on my account to V16 ASAP, by any means possible, before they implement the change.

After that it's all magic bingo.

Edit: I think I'll start tonight.

I don't think you need to do it ASAP, I would be (very pleasantly) surprised if VRs were removed in Thieves' Guild as it seems very much a work in progress and ZOS have said that some gear will scale to VR16 in the next DLC suggesting they will remain for Thieves' Guild at least.

Maybe they will remove VRs around the time of Dark Brotherhood/Japanese ESO launch in June?

Of course we could be wrong and VRs will be removed with the next DLC, hopefully we will know more today!

Flameheart

The gold and silver thing will remain, but now it's your decision to do them or not.

You need the skill points and skyhards anyways, you need exp to grind skills and skill lines and some people prefer questing to just grinding. Some will do the Cadwell gold and silver questlines anyways because they are achievement junkies or just like to quest.

I totally agree to the removing of Vet ranks. At moment you have two systems in this game which deliver extraordinary power increases, CPs and Vet levels. One system has to die, because the current game is already pretty hard to balance powerwise especially in PvE. This game gives a lot of freedom concerning builds and roles, two additional systems to increase power of player characters make balancing almost an imposssible task in a longer term. To favor the CP system to the VR system would be my decision too. The CP system is much more diferentiated and allows to specialize even more. It's much more like a secondary skill system.

The current plan for removing the Vet ranks still lacks some information, but overall it will be an improvement for balancing, IF they do it right.

The most interesting question imho is, how future CP dependant gear will scale. Current V16 equip will equal CP 160 gear, but will there be much more powerfull items in future ? Will Zenimax keep the power balance between crafted and dropped items (I hope so) ?

Van_0S

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

It's coming. Unlikely to be this month tho.

Really? So will they simply remove the silver/gold thing? Because I will be at level 50 long before I finish my current faction. And then, what's my motivation to keep playing?

If they allowed us to switch classes and add new classes then we would have positive motivation in this game.

AzraelKrieg

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

It's coming. Unlikely to be this month tho.

Really? So will they simply remove the silver/gold thing? Because I will be at level 50 long before I finish my current faction. And then, what's my motivation to keep playing?

I don't think they'll remove Silver and Gold because of the skyshards and lorebooks but doing them will be at the user discretion.

ADarklore

Flameheart wrote: »

The gold and silver thing will remain, but now it's your decision to do them or not.

You need the skill points and skyhards anyways, you need exp to grind skills and skill lines and some people prefer questing to just grinding. Some will do the Cadwell gold and silver questlines anyways because they are achievement junkies or just like to quest.

I agree! I actually enjoy running the quests, not for achievements, but for the fun of questing.

YurtTheSilentChief wrote: »

If they allowed us to switch classes and add new classes then we would have positive motivation in this game.

But then what would be the motivation to get you to put money into the game to upgrade your character? I mean, if everyone could simply switch their main, then ZOS would be losing much more money on character upgrades than they would from gaining people buying class changes. Figure, how much money do people spend to upgrade a character's inventory or mount with Crowns for convenience... I know I have personally spent a LOT of money with all my various alts. When, if I could simply change class, appearance, etc. on my main... ZOS would have lost a lot of money.

DaniAngione

I love that change. Grinding veteran ranks was a pain, Champion Points come faster and easier (and feel more like progression since we distribute them however we like using that shiny and pretty interface full of feels )

Besides, the veteran rank system had the game 'shackled' in place with no possible future expansion/level cap raises in a way that matches the more linear storyline of the first 50 leves (thus continuing the main story).

Alucardo

I'm going to write quite a lengthy discussion on what I think about veteran removals, so hold on to your hats because this story is going to be full of romance, drama and about to be one emotional rollercoaster.
It's going to be quite large, so I'll break it down into chapters starting with one today.

WHAT I THINK ABOUT VETERAN RANK REMOVALS, CHAPTER 1
It will be a good thing.

Fin.

purple-magicb16_ESO

RizaHawkeye wrote: »

Wow, I must be tired because it just hit me:

All I really need to do is to get one character on my account to V16 ASAP, by any means possible, before they implement the change.

After that it's all magic bingo.

Edit: I think I'll start tonight.

See this is what I don't understand. They're killing their own game. Why credit for only 1 character? That discourages multiple (aka alt) char play. I would think if anything they would encourage players to fill all 8 of their char slots to maximize their play time potential. All the time I put into my other 3 chars to get them above V10 means nothing now and they start 6 steps back from my main (as a V16 they were behind him anyway but now more so) or else I can level them up further at my main's expense./shrug

NightRibon23444

I think it's a damn joke ZoS is going ahead and doing this. There is no need and I know there are more out there that feel this way. I feel that this is going to be an Update that make me put the game down because they can never do anything right the first time. What's so wrong with the vet lvls now??? Oh let me think!! Nothing!!!

Alucardo

NightRibon23444 wrote: »

What's so wrong with the vet lvls now??? Oh let me think!! Nothing!!!

Are you serious? I'm looking forward to them being removed so I can say goodbye to my crappy battle levelling and start building my character properly to enjoy the game, instead of worrying about grinding my arse off on another 7 characters, only to find they've increased the veteran ranks again in future DLC.
Removing vet ranks will ensure we'll never have to endure an increase again. Progression is still there in the form of Champion Points, so there's still reason to grind if that's what you're into.
This is absolutely a step in the right direction. I was neutral about it at first, but the more I think about it, the better I think it will be.

danno8

VR rank removal...some day.
Class balance...one day.
Race change...soon.
Barber shop...eventually.
Spell crafting...being worked on, sort of, maybe.
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