Grinding to 50 is Deterring me from Creating Alts. Why is it There?

Kalante

i guess this guy doesn't know about the veteran ranks when we you had to reach level 50 sixteen times over to reach max level for just ONE CHARACTER and then be able to use vr16 enchants and weapons. Good days.

Bevik

Leveling is already way too easy anyway from couple of hours to 1-2 weeks tops if you are doing it very slowly. 1 more week for undaunted and skyshards+lorebooks. That's nothing for an MMO. You have double xp weeks, scrolls everything to help you level up a new toon. I like the feel when I level up a skill and it becomes stronger. Reach the morph. Get the passives. I do feel like it's going damn slow then I realize I only play that char for a week. I'm only playing since April and I only have 1 more char slot and I'm still planning to make more chars. Already bought the 2nd acc anyway. I have not yet completed the main story nor all the zones nor the DLCs. Still not tried a lot of trials not even on normal but already above 600 CP. Leveling is really not an issue here. ZOS should focus on bigger issues like how to teach people the basic mechanics. How to sink the gold out of the game. Fix queue for DDs, fix PvP lags, disconnects. Try to balance the game as much as possible, add more content to PvE and PvPers aswell, new areas maybe classes, skill lines and make all these in a reasonable time. They really do a good job since I play. And you can tell this game is getting better.

VaranisArano

If you choose the methods of leveling that feel the most boring and part of the grind for yourself, of course leveling is going to feel like a boring, pain in the butt grind to level 50 when the "real game" begins.

If you choose methods that are entertaining, or at least keep your interest or require more active gameplay , then hopefully you'll find that the leveling process keeps your interest.

I find leveling alts to be entertaining because I create my alts as characters, not as a playstyle that will only be used for end-game content. This last time, I leveled my warden healer from 30-50 in 2 days by running random normal dungeons, which I found to be a very active form of gameplay that kept me engaged.

agingerinohio

Dolmen grinding xp is good for leveling skills fast. I found that doing random normal dungeons with the quests the fastest way to level. Get a group together and you will have your alts to 50 in no time.

kargen27

bhagwad wrote: »

To those who're asking, I spend 100% of my time in vet DLC dungeons. I wanted to test out the performance of a magicka nightblade.

Can anyone tell me what value a lvl 1-50 grind is going to bring me?

Sure it eventually gives you a character you can take into vet content. Not going to be much of a test with a level 50 nightblade using the three starting skills available for your bar.

Rudyard

code65536 wrote: »

Those of us who remember those VR days think that leveling these days is trivially easy. And it's absolutely hilarious to see people complaining about 1-50. You're complaining about having to walk four blocks down the road to buy milk, when leveling used to be like running a Marathon. We just look at this thread and think, "Aww, how quaint."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

On the other hand, leveling the vet zones in that first year was actually a challenge. A group of three mobs in vet zones actually posed a real threat of wiping you.

Rouven

Before you could buy cosmetic gear in a shop ...




Seriously though, the journey and all that. Eso is truly one of the more alt friendly MMO's I know.

Vimora

There are no levels since One Tamriel. 1 to 50 is just a counter that they forgot to remove so we still have this inconvenience. :P

Pwnyridah

I leveled to 1-50 in 2 days last weekend. Not really an issue. The problem is the skyshard/skillpoint grind...

technohic

Pwnyridah wrote: »

I leveled to 1-50 in 2 days last weekend. Not really an issue. The problem is the skyshard/skillpoint grind...

yeah, I have characters I got to 50 and then realized I needed skill points and books and mount feedings more. Actually kind of pointless to worry about being 50 I suppose once you have one outside of just outleveling gear as you go being annoying.

SHADOW2KK

You would have loved the old Vet 16 grind on a few characters..

bhagwad

To all the responses against instantly leveling from 1-50:

1. It's an MMO - that's the way it is!

That's an illogical response. It does not address why something should be there. Only that "It's always been this way".

2. It was much, much worse before with vet levels etc

Again, this is not a logical argument to make someone grind from 1-50. Sure, it might have been worse before. But so what? That has no impact on whether or not the current grind is necessary.

3. You should enjoy questing, developing your character etc.

Everyone plays for different reasons. You like to quest. Great! You like to develop your character. Fantastic! Others like me, like to play in the toughest content, and grinding from 1-50 gives me nothing by itself. It's just a meaningless hurdle - ESPECIALLY when we already have multiple characters at level cap.

4. Grinding allows you to learn your character

I ground my very first magplar from 1-50 the slow way. It did NOT prepare me for my vet dungeon rotations, weaving light attacks, timing buffs, resource management etc. The skills required to output maximum sustained DPS, healing, tanking, have NOTHING to do with the way you play while leveling up questing.

Not to mention that if you dolmen grind your skills, or get a skyreach carry, you won't learn anything anyway!

If I hit lvl 50 instantly, I will THEN learn how to do a proper DPS by repeatedly parsing and perfecting my skills on a target skeleton before I even set foot in a dungeon.

5. You won't have enough skill points if you just reach 50.

Since I've already maxed out crafting on my other two characters, I need just 80 skill points in total to complete my new build. I get 64 by leveling, 2 from stepping into Cyrodill. That means just 14 more points, and I can get those from finishing the dungeon quests. Problem solved.

Is there any OTHER reason anyone can give me to not instantly level from 1-50?

newtinmpls

bhagwad wrote: »

I thought I'd take advantage of the double XP witches festival to level a new magicka NB. I already have a CP 470 Templar and DK, and I run dungeons exclusively. So I'm not interested in questing, or the storyline. That's simply not why I play.

But my god, the tedium of running Dolmens. I hit lvl 31, before I gave up. Why Dolmens, you ask? Because:

1. Questing is too slow

If you are familiar with the storylines and just doing it to level and get skill points, it's really not that slow. Cruise and go.

THWIP71

I have the opposite problem. When I get bored, and start missing the "newness" of starting out with nothing, I create another alt....then in a few short days, without even grinding, I'm already at lvl 50 , and then I just have yet another toon with the same CP level as my others. I currently have 11 Level 50 toons , and have deleted 3 in the past year. I created and leveled 2 new ones in the last couple weeks, and am thinking about doing another soon , just because I have a crap-ton of low-level armor sets and weapons stored, and can never make myself sell or decon them. It's a vicious cycle.

heartburnkid

I got to 50 in like 2 days running dungeons back to back and killing zombies in between. Was fast stacking the cauldron and xp pots. Now I have a cp 660 of every power.

AcadianPaladin

@bhagwad I think you make a reasoned case for options to support how you want to play without negative impact on others.

I run very few characters (3) and, for each of them, savored a slow, leisurely progression smelling the roses and enjoying the quests and stories etc. So the existing system is fine for me. That said, I do understand your point of view. I also expect you are already aware of most of the 'tips' on how to level quickly.

I think your ideas are fine - largely because they support how you want to play/level while not hurting how I want to level/play. Cheers.

strebor2095

I raised this idea on Reddit as well, no one really has a valid reason as to why there should not be boosts to 50


Some good ideas that were discussed:

- You need "hero of the Covenant" "Hero of the Pact" or "Hero of the Dominion" and finishing the base game Main Story to unlock level 50 boosts.

- The boost would include the Skyshards and Quest Points from those included regions. Not group dungeon points, no public dungeon points. Main Story is not counted as completed, Coldharbour is not completed.

- When you raise this character it is treated as if they had just started Cadwell's Silver.

- Your class skills and weapon lines are all at 50 and have Rank IV but no Morphs are learned and no points are applied in anything.

- all other skill lines (Ledgermain, FG, MG, Undaunted, Alliance War, Thieves Guild etc) are all unleveled.

Slick_007

news flash: dude dolmen bots and then complains its boring. in other news, water is wet.

Sheezabeast

Do you realize how hollow of a game ESO would be if you gutted the experience of its content and monetized a max level character? Instead of demanding why, why don't you justify why Zos, who keeps releasing new content, would /want/ to give players a back door into veteran content?

MLGProPlayer

Every zone has 2-3 zombie hordes. Alik'r is just the most popular one because it's right next to the city. Look around and find an empty one. You can level 1-50 in about 10 hours with regular 50% potions.

Dolmens take like 25 hours. They're horribly inefficient.

Skyreach is the best but might cost you (it takes like 5 hours to do 1-50). You can always ask for free runs in guild chat though. Whenever I have time, I will run someone since I need to clear my enlightenment. A lot of other players do the same thing.

I agree that it's super tedious though, hence why I only have 2 characters (and I only made the second one since warden wasn't available at launch; if it was, I would have only 1).

Mindless grinding is the worst kind of content in video games.

ADarklore

Well, here is one reason... because ZOS wants players to spend TIME in the game, the more time a player spends, the more likely they are to spend money in the Crown Store... if they don't want to spend money in the Crown Store, then ZOS would rather not have them play because they are just taking up space on the server and not earning them any money.

MLGProPlayer

Pwnyridah wrote: »

I leveled to 1-50 in 2 days last weekend. Not really an issue. The problem is the skyshard/skillpoint grind...

Undaunted and Mage's guild are even worse.

Undaunted can't be expedited unless you have 3 friends who want to go achievement hunting with you through every dungeon (I imagine 99% of people don't). That means you can only do your 3 daily pledges + daily delve quest. It takes around 2 weeks to max out the skill line this way (since it's time gated).

Mage's guild takes extremely long well as you need to clear 12+ zones worth of lore books. It's an absolute nightmare on console where you don't have the lorebooks add-on.

thedude33

lordrichter wrote: »

bhagwad wrote: »

My question is this - what is the purpose of the grind to 50? The real game for me starts after that anyway. I can understand for a new player, getting to 50 can be an adventure. But not when I already have alts, and I won't be able to do the real content until I hit 50.

For anyone against this idea, could you tell me what benefit the grind to 50 on a new character brings to a player like me?

It's an RPG, which means that the game starts when you create the character, not when you hit Level 50. It sounds to me like you are looking for something else.

All of my level 50 characters are "done" for me. All they are good for is "maintenance" stuff like daily writs. I might use them for new content, like Morrowind or CWC, but my active characters are all under level 50.

I know that I am far from the norm here, but this is how I play RPG games. Max level means "game over", start again.

Exactly. Not sure what the OP expects when he hits level 50. A parade ? A reward of 200 virgins?

newtinmpls

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Mage's guild takes extremely long well as you need to clear 12+ zones worth of lore books. It's an absolute nightmare on console where you don't have the lorebooks add-on.

You can do daily mages quests too....

thedude33 wrote: »

Exactly. Not sure what the OP expects when he hits level 50. A parade ? A reward of 200 virgins?

Argh.. must be a guy thing. Please give me a parade of 200 really skilled lovers.

VaranisArano

Let's pretend you get what you want. A token, instantly leveling you to level 50 + however many CP you have, probably somewhere over CP 160 since you are about end-game content.

ESO now consists of:
24 normal dungeons
6 DLC normal dungeons
24 veteran dungeons
6 DLC veteran dungeons
1 4-man arena
1 solo arena
6 Trials

+PVP in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds
+ zones worth of questing content that you might or might not do.

So from a purely end-game content perspective, ESO looks like a stunted game with very little content in terms of dungeons and trials.

But, you know, it doesn't matter. Why would ZOS ever want to lose out on the hours of gameplay and the crowns for exp buffs in order to give you the ability to zoom past their game content to reach the end-game where you'll complete content and get bored because there's just not that much of it?

idk

Getting to max level is so much easier than it was a little more than a year ago when we had to grind vet levels as well. Even then it was easier than when the game lauched.

Really simple solution. If you cannot stand the few days (and that is not pushing hard) it takes to level up a new character, do not do it.

Really simple.

VaranisArano

idk wrote: »

Getting to max level is so much easier than it was a little more than a year ago when we had to grind vet levels as well. Even then it was easier than when the game lauched.

Really simple solution. If you cannot stand the few days (and that is not pushing hard) it takes to level up a new character, do not do it.

Really simple.

This! I make so many alts that I need a reference to the local chapter of Alto-holics Anonymous. However, I cannot seem to level a Nightblade up to 50. I just can't get into their playstyle whether its stam or magicka based. I just don't like how they play even though I've tried lots of times. On the other hand, I know I love stam sorcs because they are super easy to level up to 50 and continue to be easy for me after they have CP.

Could I use a token to get myself a max level stamblade or magblade? Sure! Except that it would probably sit unused because I don't think max level is going to help me enjoy the playstyle any more than I already do, having tried and failed to level nightblades over 6 times.

Minyassa

I can only speak for myself, but I really appreciate levels 1-50 when I'm trying a brand new class or a different build of a class I played in a specific configuration, because it's where I learn my new class skills and level them without a lot of pressure to have the right gear. There's this massive buff under level 50 that allows me to concentrate on the best uses for my skills and get a feel for how I want to do my rotation and just experiment without worrying about getting killed every ten seconds, and if I don't have good gear that's fine because I don't need it yet.

Curragraigue

My dear summer child what do you know of leveling alts? 1-50 is a breeze it was the VR1-VR16 grind that was tough.

I used to level alts by doing main zone quests, main story quest, FG and MG quests, delves, public dungeons and dolmens to level FG and MG and to get all the skill points. After 12 characters to max level I'm now doing Delves, Public Dungeons, Dolmens and 10 or so levels in Cyrodiil because I'm wearing thin on helping NPCs with the same problems.

newtinmpls

VaranisArano wrote: »

Could I use a token to get myself a max level stamblade or magblade? Sure! Except that it would probably sit unused because I don't think max level is going to help me enjoy the playstyle any more than I already do, having tried and failed to level nightblades over 6 times.

I'm struggling with that myself. Finally I respecced/reskilled to make a character I enjoy playing more.