Does veteran leveling irk anyone else?

Spontaneous_Noms

Building on what the above poster said: it's kind of ridiculous that they're discouraging grinding when their design philosophy for everything thus far has basically been "player choice!"

Want to be a plate-wearing wizard? You can. Want to be a dual-wielding clothy? You can. Want to dump tons of skill points into crafting? You can. Want to level as a tank and a healer? You can. ESO has been built around allowing the player to achieve a reasonable level of viability with just about any sort of build or method for progressing that they can conceive of.

Then suddenly you get to veteran content and the choices you've had up until that point effectively disappear.

lupusrex

I don't think nearly as many people would be complaining about the time and effort needed to reach the cap if they had implemented those levels in a different way. After spending 43-odd levels having your character led to feel like he's some sort of elite special agent for his faction, then finishing in Coldharbour, you're told to finish the journey by questing for the other factions. Suddenly you're intended to help "the enemy" with problems that would otherwise weaken them against your side in the alliance war, and this sometimes involves killing people from your own side.

If VR 1-10 leveling were its own thing and not just increased difficulty slapped onto others' basic leveling quests, I think people would be fine with the large investment of time. I was excited early on to learn that we would be able to go into the other zones after 50, but I wasn't expecting that it would be used to finish leveling. I acknowledge my own failure to research this enough, and I would have bought the game anyway.

Many people are mentioning WoW. Even before the XP required to level was substantially reduced around the Wrath period, it was possible to take a number of different paths or series of zones to reach the cap. Would people be as happy with WoW if they were required to complete not only every part of every zone, but everything for the opposing faction as well? For every single alt? I reiterate that the time needed to level isn't the issue here, but rather the abundance of quest content and choice which existed even at that game's launch. For a game that sells itself so heavily under the brand of player choice, TESO is not comparing favorably to other games in that respect at this point.

What all this mainly kills for me is the leveling of alts. I made a couple characters in each faction on the morning of early release, hoping to level up several of the many class/build combinations that we're allowed to make. I don't think I could tolerate the repetitiveness that capping multiple characters would entail, at least not without a very long break in between.

Also, I realize that I threw around words like "required" when this isn't technically true. We are free to AOE grind or PVP, although questing is the most expedient way to level through VR, and the other options don't interest a large number of people.

TL;DR I (and perhaps others) don't mind putting a lot of time into characters, but repetitiveness is bad.

Sakiri

SexyVette07 wrote: »

Im still VR1 after almost a week, and I love it. Doing all the quests and enjoying the content will actually make it feel like I experienced the game and earned VR10 eventually. Honestly, I wish it took longer. The journey should feel epic...

I did go into a public dungeon to grind for a few hours last night, and I have to say, I was pretty pissed off about getting veteran XP for farming trash. In fact, I got more xp in a few hours farming than I had in the previous 4 days of doing quests. It really pissed me off! This totally defeats the purpose of forcing you to do the content to move up to the VR6 area.

IMO, vet xp for solo dungeon trash is *** and should be removed, but thats just my opinion. It undermines the whole veteran questing system. 4 man Veteran dungeons? Sure. But not grinding some BS public dungeon...

You never played EQ did you? You didnt quest. You grinded mobs.

Cry more.

Asava

This isn't 1999, it's 2014. This also isn't Aion so quit comparing this NEW game to your dinosaur game. How about we 7x Gm and stat dance to max stats like UO did before that trammel junk to? Not many people like grinding. This is supposed to be an open world MMO. There should be many paths to max level and gear not just one path.

Spiritreaver_ESO

Spontaneous_Noms wrote: »

This is probably going to dovetail into a bit of a rant, so I apologize in advance.

Let me preface this by saying that, on the whole, I genuinely like this game. Even after all the sensationalized coverage of it (from the people crying bloody murder over the dupe bugs to Angry Joe's review), I still come down in the pro-ESO crowd. I think the game tries to do some innovative things and, on the whole, does them reasonably well.

But I just can't shake the feeling that veteran leveling is exceptionally lazy. I get the core idea behind it: one person may only want to play one character, so instead of forcing them to level three different characters to experience all the quests or simply not do it, you allow them the opportunity to do it on one character. On the other hand, I really have to ask: who on earth thought it was a good idea to make it such a grind?

It probably took me about three days /played to finish everything up to and including Coldharbour. And now, about 616k of 912k required for VR3, I've doubled that time. Sure, you can chalk that up to me taking time out of questing to level crafting skills and I probably spent a good half day /played doing Cyrodiil, but I have precious little to show for it beyond a pair of skyshard achievements and maybe 7 or so skill points.

And now, as I look at how much content I've got to clear to reach the actual level cap and start to look into genuine endgame content, I'm frustrated. Not because the content is more difficult -- which it is, sometimes stupidly so -- but because there's so much of it. Not only do levels take extraordinarily long (an entire zone, or thereabouts), they take longer than they would have earlier thanks to the increased difficulty of individual mobs.

I realize that MMOs are all grinds in the endgame. I was a raid leader in Burning Crusade and played more of WoW than I'd ever care to admit in polite company: I'm plenty familiar with the grind. But there's grinding and then there's veteran leveling. This is the kind of nose-to-the-grindstone leveling that harkens back to farming Molten Core so you could get enough people with Waterlords rep to reliably clear the raid. It makes the old farming for Hearts of Darkness so you could actually have decent enough gear to go up against the Illidari Council look pretty standard. Basically, this game is expecting me to put in progression tier raiding grinds to... reach max level? Really?

Maybe I'm old and jaded in my middle 20's, and maybe I've turned into a casual without noticing it, but c'mon. I cannot be the only person who thinks this leveling system is bonkers. In the time it takes you to level from VR1 to VR10, you could level three new characters to VR1. Or you could, I don't know, make $2,000 working minimum wage jobs. After taxes. I can't believe I'm actually sitting here and saying an MMO is taking too much of my free time, but I genuinely can't justify the time this game expects me to put in just to reach max level.

I really do want to continue playing this game, and I want to be able to look back and say I was in on the ground floor with all the bugs and whatnot, but I just don't see a scenario where this game's grind doesn't kill it. Especially since the veteran content is exactly the same as what the players from other factions leveled through. It's not even unique quests.

Honest opinion. In answer to your question, not at all.

I am a FFXI vet, '02 to '13 when i finally called it last year. After all that time, i can honestly say TESO is a walk in the park in terms of grinding out VR levels in comparison to FFXI's merit system.

guterreeb17_ESO

So because older MMOs were even Grindier (some not all) then this abysmal system of quest your way to the top is ok in 2014... Maybe we should all ditch our Cars and start using Horses again, after all that's what we did back in the olddays...
PPL with this kind of Argument really need to STFU and GTFO!

They need to give options on how to lvl VR and not this BS of quest quest quest kill boss quest quest quest delve quest quest quest dolmen...

Kendaric

The questing itself isn't the problem, neither is the time investment really.

The problem with current veteran content is that it utterly destroys replayability. Alternative ways to level through the veteran ranks would be a good thing to start of course, but it shouldn't just end there.

frwinters_ESO

did anyone notice they are raising the experience you gain from killing veteran ranked mobs and such to make it faster to level? Its in the Craglorn patch notes for 1.1 which is like a week away sooooooo it will be a little easier to level.

falsfire

Spontaneous_Noms wrote: »

Maybe I'm old and jaded in my middle 20's

Really? REALLY? A mid-20s claiming to be "old" and anything...

But to address the original point made...it's not supposed to be fast. Where oh where do people get the idea that reaching max level in an online game is supposed to be a handout?

I still remember early wow when seeing a character in their level 30's was "high level" for quite some time. I still remember the ground-breaking headlines when a character actually reached max level in Diablo 2.

I for one, like the idea that it takes a significant time investment to reach VR10. It should be an accomplishment. This isn't your typical handouts-galore MMO that has taken the market by storm lately.

Let max level be an accomplishment, for it should be. What's the rush to reach max level anyways?

I'm in my late 30's, yet I still don't claim to be "old and jaded". I know gamers in their 50's playing this game. We don't have much time to play given hectic work and family and "real friends" schedules, but we're perfectly fine to spend months of our casual gaming in the effort to reach max level.

I'm VR2 on my main and I think that, given I started on early access Mar 31st and have hardly played any other characters (highest is level 17), I think I reached VR2 *too fast*.

Zephyr

I have just been leveling in PvP and it is terrible how badly the rewards, or lack there of, are. I get a green every once in a while. I quested to VR of course, top 25 on the leaderboards for a while, but I've been capped at the max tier of reward since day 1. This irks me more than belief.

Spiritreaver_ESO

guterreeb17_ESO wrote: »

So because older MMOs were even Grindier (some not all) then this abysmal system of quest your way to the top is ok in 2014... Maybe we should all ditch our Cars and start using Horses again, after all that's what we did back in the olddays...
PPL with this kind of Argument really need to STFU and GTFO!

They need to give options on how to lvl VR and not this BS of quest quest quest kill boss quest quest quest delve quest quest quest dolmen...

Really, you should calm down and drop the melodramatic flair.

OP asked for opinions, i gave mine. Nowhere in my post did i say i was against changes to make getting exp easier in VR content. In fact i would have nothing against changes like that. But on the other side, like i said before, if nothing changes drastically in exp accumulation in VR content, i'm OK with that too.

Krym

falsfire wrote: »

I still remember early wow when seeing a character in their level 30's was "high level" for quite some time. I still remember the ground-breaking headlines when a character actually reached max level in Diablo 2.

I for one, like the idea that it takes a significant time investment to reach VR10. It should be an accomplishment. This isn't your typical handouts-galore MMO that has taken the market by storm lately.

lvl30 in wow was pretty easy, even in vanilla, d2 worked differently since you just grinded the same maps on higher difficulty.

the problem here (imo) is that people treat VR as 50-60, if it was more like paragon levels or prestige where it just shows how long you played without significant gains it wouldn't that bad.
of course the real issue that ESO has no endgame atm besides cyrodiil and the VR zones of the other factions are a kneejerk fix to keep people playing longer than their free month (just look at all the bugs).

Mothanos

Veteran ranks should be optional for everyone.
Not a requirement to do PVP or PVE.
Extra skill points / extra loot to deconstruct / bonus story line / etc etc

I feel like once again i made a wrong decision of buying a sub based mmo...
After Warhammer / Aion / SWTOR i am as close as ever to put ESO in the list of another tripple A mmo bites the dust.

Sad story again, using a massive IP to hype up the game like SWTOR did only to deliver a half assed shadow of it.
ESO still has me on to pro side, but my patience is getting to a critical stage here.

guterreeb17_ESO

I'm almost VR3 and I haven't Loged in 2 days now, i just had to take a break from the lvling it's just to much questing... This is coming from a Grand Marshal in WoW and I have 6 lvl 90s someone Who lvled in Korean Tera to 60, I Have 6lvl 80s in GW2 I have 3 55s in Swtor this and a buch of other mmos, but the one thing all these mmos gave me that Eso doesn't... Options on how to lvl.

Eso presents you with questing and only questing to do it in any reasonable amount of time (that or exploit your way to the top)

I just want Options (and maybe be a little faster)

and don't give me the crap of "take time enjoy the game"... well tough luck I can't enjoy the game if I'm not max lvl it's how I like to play I Like to stay ahead of the curve not behind, and from the looks of it ESO is not the game for me and that's why I didn't renew my sub (first mmo I haven't given more then a month)

South_of_Heaven

If skills lines, skills and morphs were designed to be maxed at VR10 I would find the courage to level my character. At the moment I have just stopped playing at VR2 because there is ZERO character development to make things more interesting and will definitely not renew the sub.

crowfl56

There isn't or hasn't been a game launched that the 24/7 crowd can't max a char in 1 or 2 days.
Now this is usually done thru the many exploits a new game has, but that being said, everyone plays the game the way they want, they payed the money.
I do applaud the gamers that take their time to enjoy the game, report the bugs and do anything but exploit or abuse.
I believe in banning any and all that exploit or abuse game bugs, gold sellers and or buyers.
No need to flame this, because its only a opinion.

KenjiJU

What I dislike is the difficulty jump. I'm not averse to difficulty, but I got to liking the base 1-50 a lot (much more than other MMOs), and VRs seems so far and away from that. Save from the uber power class builds, it feels like beyond 50 it's only there to slowly mold you into the group required for everything-eventually raider mindset.

Group content should remain difficult as is, that's fine. But turning everything else into basically elite hp bags sucks a lot. I leveled my char being able to take on 6-10 enemies at a time, and now I can barely finish 3.

blackcules

malikwalker_ESO wrote: »

Spontaneous_Noms wrote: »

I am a FFXI vet, '02 to '13 when i finally called it last year. After all that time, i can honestly say TESO is a walk in the park in terms of grinding out VR levels in comparison to FFXI's merit system.

Who cares about a sub-par mmo from 12 years ago? Comments like this are *** ***. Who in their right mind (a person with a job, family, ya know a life?) enjoys this repetitive *** that is VR? I'm only vet lv 1 and I am already sick of it. 82VP for 1 mob with 405k to level to vet 2 and it only doubles from there?! I came to this game to PvP, and at this point I will NEVER be able to pvp competitively because I just dont have the time (like you other bums have) to grind out those levels. I paid my dues playing exclusively PvE content so I can be effective in Cyrodil

That being said, I doubt ill stay subbed. solely on the fact that VR leveling is a stupid grind. Even if it was doubled from its current state, it would STILL be too much. But to each their own.

rioinsigniab16_ESO

Personally speaking, I'm loving doing the VR's in the other factions. Why?
Because regardless of the fact that "lowbies" are doing the same content, *i* haven't actually experienced that content before.

I don't care what others are doing. I don't care that a level 10 is running around in Glenumbra. *They* aren't doing it at VR levels.

So why does it matter that there isn't exclusive content for VR's? Would I like it as well? Sure, choice is the key to keeping a playerbase happy. But until we get more content, I'm going to enjoy the other zones.

rioinsigniab16_ESO

KenjiJU wrote: »

What I dislike is the difficulty jump. I'm not averse to difficulty, but I got to liking the base 1-50 a lot (much more than other MMOs), and VRs seems so far and away from that. Save from the uber power class builds, it feels like beyond 50 it's only there to slowly mold you into the group required for everything-eventually raider mindset.

Group content should remain difficult as is, that's fine. But turning everything else into basically elite hp bags sucks a lot. I leveled my char being able to take on 6-10 enemies at a time, and now I can barely finish 3.

Whilst I am enjoying the VR levels, I will admit that there is a somewhat jarring jump from a small group of level 50 mobs to a group of Rank 1 mobs. And even then ....there's Rank 1 mobs....and then there's Rank 1 mobs.....

The class abilities don't seem to be balanced against each other....so in the VR levels I find that unless I fill my hotbar with a particular set of abilities then I will struggle against more than one mob at once.

rioinsigniab16_ESO

Mothanos wrote: »

Veteran ranks should be optional for everyone.
Not a requirement to do PVP or PVE.
Extra skill points / extra loot to deconstruct / bonus story line / etc etc

I feel like once again i made a wrong decision of buying a sub based mmo...
After Warhammer / Aion / SWTOR i am as close as ever to put ESO in the list of another tripple A mmo bites the dust.

Sad story again, using a massive IP to hype up the game like SWTOR did only to deliver a half assed shadow of it.
ESO still has me on to pro side, but my patience is getting to a critical stage here.

I'm bewildered as to your statement that VR's shouldn't be a requirement for PVE or PVP. What exactly would you put in it's place? Just grinding without any form of progression? That's not going to work. Both PVE and PVP needs progression.

However, let's assume they keep the VR's but didn't allow people to use the other faction areas. What would you recommend to put in their place? Dungeons with XP gain to fill all the levels? No dev company has THAT amount of time on their hands, so you'd be "grinding" the same limited amount of dungeons. Good luck with that.

Or how about they made VR exclusive soloable leveling areas? Well, as much as I'd love to see that, previous MMO's have proven that there just isn't enough time to do that AND deal with the development of ALL faction areas prior to launch. Will they have a Craglorn soloable version with loot reduced accordingly in the future? Possibly. But I'm wondering just how big Craglorn is and whether it fills all the levels without repeating any of it.

In short, they decided to recycle the other faction areas at launch. Maybe not the perfect solution on its own, but it's a damned sight better than grinding a small number of dungeons just after launch. There's a lot of content in those zones, so it made sense to allow people to view it all.

rioinsigniab16_ESO

l-wilson-1986b16_ESO wrote: »

SexyVette07 wrote: »

Im still VR1 after almost a week, and I love it. Doing all the quests and enjoying the content will actually make it feel like I experienced the game and earned VR10 eventually. Honestly, I wish it took longer. The journey should feel epic...

I did go into a public dungeon to grind for a few hours last night, and I have to say, I was pretty pissed off about getting veteran XP for farming trash. In fact, I got more xp in a few hours farming than I had in the previous 4 days of doing quests. It really pissed me off! This totally defeats the purpose of forcing you to do the content to move up to the VR6 area.

IMO, vet xp for solo dungeon trash is *** and should be removed, but thats just my opinion. It undermines the whole veteran questing system. 4 man Veteran dungeons? Sure. But not grinding some BS public dungeon...

Sorry but I have to disagree, because players should never be forced to do anything. If a player wishes to grind to VR10 then they should be quite capable of doing so. I can imagine if a collective group of people are grinding in a public dungeon that it would be faster (if not eye poppingly boring) than questing, however soloing trash content in a vr5 dungeon only averages out at about 150k exp per hour vs 250k+ questing and killing according to my tests when completely soloing. You do get 2% per completion of a public dungeon which may skew the statistics but farming alone is unlikely to be faster than questing, particularly as you progress in veteran levels as the mobs scale proportionately faster than the player making them harder to defeat at each rank. And I assure you that some of the higher VR story quests are scaled so insanely you'll feel like a super hero for completing them.

I'm all for options. Craglorn. Group based content. Wanna grind in a group? Go for it.

Now, with that said, I think that xp gain from group play should always be scaled correctly in comparison to the risk and challenge involved. But, when you're dealing with public areas, that's very hard to do. The amount of people involved in the encounters in public areas can dynamically change. Too many and the content is trivialised. And when the XP gain is good for grouping in general (in comparison to say, questing) then people will choose the "path of least resistance" and exploit the fact that the content is been trivialised by too many players.

Which is why we often see private instances that limit the amount of players in them. But time is finite prior to launch. And to expect enough variable content to cover VR's 1 - 10 and have it ready for launch could be considered a little unreasonable.

Hopefully as time progresses, the "risk vs reward" factor will be tweaked accordingly for all content, opening up more options for people to consider viable. Without trivialising that content.

Until then we have faction zones, Craglorn, PVP, and grinding.

harnessedyeti9

lupusrex wrote: »

If VR 1-10 leveling were its own thing and not just increased difficulty slapped onto others' basic leveling quests, I think people would be fine with the large investment of time. I was excited early on to learn that we would be able to go into the other zones after 50, but I wasn't expecting that it would be used to finish leveling. I acknowledge my own failure to research this enough, and I would have bought the game anyway.

Many people are mentioning WoW. Even before the XP required to level was substantially reduced around the Wrath period, it was possible to take a number of different paths or series of zones to reach the cap. Would people be as happy with WoW if they were required to complete not only every part of every zone, but everything for the opposing faction as well? For every single alt? I reiterate that the time needed to level isn't the issue here, but rather the abundance of quest content and choice which existed even at that game's launch. For a game that sells itself so heavily under the brand of player choice, TESO is not comparing favorably to other games in that respect at this point.

Well put. This is exactly the way I feel and I cannot get past it. I do not see a good segment of the player base tolerating this for very long.

Kroin

Its not that hard, and as soon as you hit VT 8 you run dungeons because you get 50.000 exp per boss.

RangerChad

Leveling has always been perfectly done in this game for me so far.

Rad

I don't se veteran ranks as ordinary levels. You're maxed at 50. This is where most games would have "ended", and you're now forced to repeat group raids or pvp. This is where I normally make a new character for a different faction.

ESO gives me options. I can restart with alts, enjoy the other factions content, go from 1-50 again. But I can also chose to keep going with my favourite character, my main. As a bonus there's new levels and gear to earn. Not many, they take time, but they're still there. As I said .. I see this as a optional bonus.

What's wrong with this is that they're adding content that requires these levels, ie Craiglorn. Maybe it's even needed to be competative in PvP, but I do not care about that much. Now all of a sudden it's not an option anymore. Not if you want to experience the full content of ESO.


What I don't like with Veteran content is the steep jump in difficulty. I run a concept build (trying to be a pure warrior, no magic which means almost no class skills ) and I'm dying a lot. Sure, I'm a older player, I am somewhat casual, but I like to think I'm experienced. I still find fights to be a tad to hard and long. This makes the whole game feel more grindy and boring than before. I can no longer jump into a group, swing left and right and come out of it hurt but victorious. If I do that I come out dead.

Add to this the difficulty to group with friends (phases and no mentoring system) which means I cannot get help either. I either have to join a guild where I do not know anyone (and I'm not that e-Social, but that's another discussion) or hope for Random Joe to show up doing the same content so I can tag along.

And that is my main reason for not enjoying veteran content.

BrassRazoo

No.

Xaei

But that's the problem: the game doesn't 'end' at 50.

Without getting to V10, you can't do Trials, you can't use veteran gear, and whatever future endgame content they put in after Craglorn is probably off-limits as well.

leandro.800ub17_ESO

I don t want to see this game turn into a 2 week time to get to end game stuff and then do the same dungeon or pvp event over and over (i mean whats the fun in that)
I mean whats the point on struggling for a low level blue or purple item if in 1 minute you level up and get a white item better then that one (level up should always be hard and time consuming) VR leveling is great!
I mean if i pay the game monthly is to enjoy a long term game not a 1 month pay and be done with it
In my perspective getting achievements that take too long to accomplish should reward as much as end game items, the same goes for professions (long time = good reward)
*A bit off topic*
Why should a 1 hour dungeon give you a better reward than a 1 month or more of crafting researches (i know to control the amount of items but make them bound and that's it ) The last sets are very good but make more content like that

Sakiri

I find the last sets to kind of suck actually so thats up for debate.