Remove vet ranks but please don't remove leveling

HeroOfNone · April 2016

Morning,

So I've seen 2 MMO announcements in the past 24 hours that makes me anxious about ESO.

First, the dark brotherhood DLC has been long awaited and will remove Veteran ranks, so there will be less grinding on alts to get go content. This is good in several ways, since the current exp grind from v1 to v16 was a huge curve with several plateaus of gear. It also means that when you finish the main quest you should be in an "end game" state and ready to participate in several of the areas that are under populated. It's something that I think will help the game, but I still hold reservations about it till I see the full implementation.

But now second, from the GW2 spring quarterly update:

Max-Level Boost
Soar to level 80, and unlock your heroic potential! All players who have purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will receive one free Max-Level Boost, delivered in a permanent, account-wide inventory slot that's yours to keep. We'll equip your new max-level character with everything they need to join the battle against Mordremoth.

I can not face palm harder at this decision on their part and urge ZOS to tread carefully on any "instant end level" jumps like this. This, to me, is an acknowledgement that they can't make the leveling process fun, can't balance their low & midlevel experience, and it throws out months of work leveling for just spending a few bucks more. It's a borderline pay to win move that seems worse than the WOW equivalent that would bring up only one or several characters close to the level cap wit an offer to "gear them" as well.

Now ESO is not WoW or GW2, but these companies do watch each other and copy business models from time to time. This is one thing I and I feel many others do not want to occur. Keep the current quest or grind method you have and improve it with catch up mechanics if needed. I don't mind a bit of work and exp boost potions, but I loathe a system where you can pay cash for your end level characters and gear without any time investment into the game.

Thanks for your time.

Pirhana7_ESO · April 2016

The same amount of leveling for Champ points will be there with or without vet levels, you are not losing any progression , or any amount of progression that is possible

HeroOfNone · April 2016

Pirhana7_ESO wrote: »

The same amount of leveling for Champ points will be there with or without vet levels, you are not losing any progression , or any amount of progression that is possible

Remember your champion points are account wide and only start progressing at 50. Your lvl 3 can use them, but won't contribute to getting more till they hit 50. If there were an instant level up though, your basically able to get any class & race to end level with no problem, and pretty much negates any leveling up if you have the cash to pony up.

Annalyse · April 2016

I do wish they wouldn't remove levelling also. Once this change hits my current low vet characters will instantly be the same as my V16 character, which kills it for me. I'll probably just start quitting alts at 50 when visible progression ends.

I really, really wish they would give us a choice on whether we want 50 as max level for alts. I'd rather mine had all CP removed so that I had a means of levelling beyond 50 without deleting my main characters. I would love to see an option upon creation of an alt to not be linked in CP and start with 0.

Pirhana7_ESO · April 2016

The amount of exp it takes from V1 to get to V16 is equal to about 150 to 200 Cps. Its takes more than twice that to reach the current CP cap. The same progression is still there in the game, but now you can switch between characters after level 50 to achieve it.

Yes new character will be stronger because of Cps but the origional character or characters to get to 50 did not and wont have Cps.

shugg · April 2016

Wow just wow, i dont mind if vet ranks stay or go as i enjoyed all content however this GW boost is vety bad and would put me off, leveling gives u chance to learn to play and allow you make it ur own story. This boost would deminish the worth of a game.

Now im not against help like the cake or an iteam but i would prefear if a lvl boost iteam was part of a quest - beat story get a cp bonus ring, beat silver get another ring , beat gold get an xp neck.

NewBlacksmurf · April 2016

I don't think everyone understand VR levels....

-they apply to things under the character menu (console ref)
-they don't apply to skill menu items which is the majority of what we need to level. (Console ref)
-the don't apply to quests as all quests are a max of level 50
-CP ranks and VR are not comparable
-odd that VR applies to material progression and gear level retractions only but no other part of the character menu items.

Once gone, all the above is much more strait forward BUT the part that is what happens now:

-gear restrictions (CP rank, Char lvl or something else)
-material progression and gathering by static zones
-NPC VR level removal...what numeric level is the conversion?
-NPC VR level removal in scaled zones...

NewBlacksmurf · April 2016

Pirhana7_ESO wrote: »

The amount of exp it takes from V1 to get to V16 is equal to about 150 to 200 Cps. Its takes more than twice that to reach the current CP cap. The same progression is still there in the game, but now you can switch between characters after level 50 to achieve it.

Yes new character will be stronger because of Cps but the origional character or characters to get to 50 did not and wont have Cps.

You can't use that....the CP exp and VR exp has changed too many times...which has been my argument the whole time that VR removal shouldn't use or relate or convert to cp in any way

Caroloces · April 2016

I couldn't agree more with your post. I guess I might be in the minority, but I didn't mind the leveling up to VR 16 and I am concerned about what will replace it. (check out my "Ask Us Anything" post - http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2869929/#Comment_2869929)

I do like the Champion points, but they seem like a side benefit to me. I do believe we need certain milestones in the game that we need to work towards with quality content that will keep us engaged. I do enjoy the content as much as ever, but as soon as I reached VR16 on my 3 alts, I felt a little let down because there were no long-term goals to work towards.

7788b14_ESO · April 2016

So what happens to those who are currently in the middle of VR leveling? Or in the middle of that silver and gold quest line? Will you still have access to the other factions content?

IcyDeadPeople · April 2016

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

-gear restrictions (CP rank, Char lvl or something else)
-NPC VR level removal...what numeric level is the conversion?
.

Gear restrictions will be based on your character level from 1 - 49 and then on your champion rank once you are a "champion" - as long as you have at least 160 CP or whatever is the appropriate amount, you will be able to equip max level endgame gear.

I imagine the max level gear rank will be increased each year roughly at the same pace it has since launch, when V10 was the max gear level. The difference is now it will be account wide.

Don't quite understand what you mean by the numeric level of conversion. Are you talking about gear, or something else?

wayfarerx · April 2016

7788b14_ESO wrote: »

So what happens to those who are currently in the middle of VR leveling? Or in the middle of that silver and gold quest line? Will you still have access to the other factions content?

Nothing changes in this regard, just instead of using veteran rank to determine how powerful you are you use champion points. They are removing the veteran ranks, but not any veteran content.

Khaos_Bane · April 2016

It will certainly be interesting to see how they implement it, no doubt about it.

How will crafting Materials be impacted ?
How will NPCs at level 50+ scale ?
How will gear now scale on CP ?

Those are the major questions I have.

7788b14_ESO · April 2016

HeroOfNone wrote: »

Morning,

So I've seen 2 MMO announcements in the past 24 hours that makes me anxious about ESO.

First, the dark brotherhood DLC has been long awaited and will remove Veteran ranks, so there will be less grinding on alts to get go content. This is good in several ways, since the current exp grind from v1 to v16 was a huge curve with several plateaus of gear. It also means that when you finish the main quest you should be in an "end game" state and ready to participate in several of the areas that are under populated. It's something that I think will help the game, but I still hold reservations about it till I see the full implementation.

But now second, from the GW2 spring quarterly update:

Max-Level Boost
Soar to level 80, and unlock your heroic potential! All players who have purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will receive one free Max-Level Boost, delivered in a permanent, account-wide inventory slot that's yours to keep. We'll equip your new max-level character with everything they need to join the battle against Mordremoth.

I can not face palm harder at this decision on their part and urge ZOS to tread carefully on any "instant end level" jumps like this. This, to me, is an acknowledgement that they can't make the leveling process fun, can't balance their low & midlevel experience, and it throws out months of work leveling for just spending a few bucks more. It's a borderline pay to win move that seems worse than the WOW equivalent that would bring up only one or several characters close to the level cap wit an offer to "gear them" as well.

Now ESO is not WoW or GW2, but these companies do watch each other and copy business models from time to time. This is one thing I and I feel many others do not want to occur. Keep the current quest or grind method you have and improve it with catch up mechanics if needed. I don't mind a bit of work and exp boost potions, but I loathe a system where you can pay cash for your end level characters and gear without any time investment into the game.

Thanks for your time.

GW2 leveling is so easy that many people already have a great many alts. It really won't effect game play that much. I already have one of every class maxed out and have no real use for the boost at the moment but the free shared inventory slots are nice.

Eshelmen · April 2016

I can understand having a few low VR characters and then suddenly they become as strong as your main over night, is kind of a kick in the face.

However, you still need to get your skill points from the main story, your skyshards, your undaunted passives, and everything else before you could consider your alts being as strong as your main. Yes performance wise, your alts will be incredibly close with your main,in terms of power and such, but there will still be a lot to do to reach an even keel between your characters.

And let's not even start on the grind for leveling your alts and main with Cp while maintaining current CP level gear sets.

It's going to be a lot of work.