Why veteran ranks don't interest me much...

Lagoz · April 2014

Just a short explanation to those who are not actually playing veteran ranks in ESO.

1) How the XP/VP system works.

- Basically every quest/event scales with your level and gives you bit less that 2% of your _current_ level.

- If you were to be Veteran 1 you'd get ~2% per quest you complete in veteran areas.

- Even if you complete higher quests than your current rank, you still get ~2% of your level per quest

- A single zone has about 20-30 location quests which give you around 40-60% of your current level.

- These location quests are divided into parts that give you smaller rewards (0.5-1%) of your level while progressing

- After completing the zone worth of quests you'll end up with 75-80%ish of your current veteran rank and this usually takes about a day worth of gaming.

2) Problem: Missing 20% of the rank.

- Every mob on veteran zones regardless of the veteran rank gives 45"weak"/85"normal"/115"elite" VP/XP

- Veteran ranks require about 500k more each time you rank up. 1-2 = 456k, 2-3 = 960k, 3-4= 1.4mil etc.

- So we have an exponential larger than expected in points required but the MOB XP/VP stays the same.

- If you rush the quests on the next zone you are biting out a lot of XP because of the scaling system.

- [PVP] Cyrodill gives about 500k-1mil for 16hours of gaming with a hardcore PvP guild. Otherwise pretty much nothing.

3) Conclusion:

- As long as you have quests to complete there's no issue, unfortunately game is designed so that you won't have enough quests and you are forced to find other means to get the missing 20%. Before they dropped the MOB XP/VP to 1/10th of what it was on the PTR you were able to fill the gap with mob grinding. At current state of the game you are looking at a massive grind.

- At best with a group grind you are looking at around 25k / VP / Hour. So just to grind the next rank we are looking at:

V1-V2 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 4 hours elite grind

V2-V3 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 8 hours elite grind

V3-V4 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 12 hours elite grind

V4-V5 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 16 hours elite grind

V5-V6 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 20 hours elite grind

V6-V7 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 24 hours elite grind

V7-V8 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 28 hours elite grind

V8-V9 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 32 hours elite grind

V9-V10 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 36 hours elite grind

The problem here isn't that the ranks are "hard" or "take long time".

The problem is that you are forced to follow this certain path to level and the monotonous grind against much tougher and less rewarding monsters is unbearably dull.

What players need at the moment:

1) Better rewarding quests (amped up to 4% each)

2) Higher mob VP/XP (atleast 5x or 10x)

3) More options to rank up (instances or PvP)

ZOS: If this is deliberate to soft-gate the ranks before Craglorn, please communicate with us!

zaria · April 2014

My guess is that its designed to slow down the path to VR10
High chance leveling will be faster just with trials and Craglorn content.

PBpsy · April 2014

Where do you get that crap? It is mostly wrong.

Lagoz wrote: »

- A single zone has about 20-30 location quests which give you around 40-60% of your current level.

Nope around 50 to 60 in general .

You get one level + a bit per area cleared completely Quests /Dolmens /World bosses/Public Dungeons. Quite a bit of that is done in groups which go fast.

Lagoz wrote: »

- Veteran ranks require about 500k more each time you rank up. 1-2 = 456k, 2-3 = 960k, 3-4= 1.4mil etc.
- So we have an exponential growth in points required but the MOB XP/VP stays the same.

Oh dear God !!!
Linear is very different from exponential.

Lagoz · April 2014

These stats are from V1-V3 with Aldmeri Dominion the zones are Ebonheart starting ones.

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

PBpsy · April 2014

Lagoz wrote: »

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

Wow.

The dumbest thing I have read on this forum.

That doesn't change that most of what you wrote in the OP is simply not true.

Lagoz · April 2014

PBpsy wrote: »

Lagoz wrote: »

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

Wow. The dumbest thing I have read on this form.

That doesn't change that most of what you wrote in the OP is simply not true.

Nerdmuch?

PBpsy · April 2014

Lagoz wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Lagoz wrote: »

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

Wow. The dumbest thing I have read on this form.

That doesn't change that most of what you wrote in the OP is simply not true.

Nerdmuch?

Yes. it's my job and my favorite pastime.

Trollmuch?

Thalmar · April 2014

Maybe people need to stop thinking as Blizzard teach them in years, the game begins at the highest level possible namely end-game. MMORPGs should be and should be played as a whole, the journey should be as same fun as the destination. Try to stop making calculations on how long it will take to V10, instead just play the game and try to have fun. If you are having fun before the end-game why it should matters how long or how hard to reach end-game. No offence, just a friendly advise, you will be happier when you stop calculating and actually play the game as it is.

My only concern thou, the people who rushed to V10, i called them MMO consumers, will force developers to push content faster and cheaper to keep up with this crowd. It already started, putting a new raid or call it end-game content will affect all aspects of the game. In the end, developers will regularly push end-game content with automated and cheap additions will make the game become less quality and repeating itself.

Athise · April 2014

And that's the reason i'm not bothering to level up more untill i get a clear message from the Devs that this is a temporary leveling solution.
Actually i'm barely logging in before i'm seeing some major overhaul of certain game aspects.
They still have a few days to give some decent responses towards their weird gameplay choices.

To bad this game cannot be modded into something great by a modding community like all previous TES games.

wrlifeboil · April 2014

Athise wrote: »

And that's the reason i'm not bothering to level up more untill i get a clear message from the Devs that this is a temporary leveling solution.
Actually i'm barely logging in before i'm seeing some major overhaul of certain game aspects.
They still have a few days to give some decent responses towards their weird gameplay choices.

To bad this game cannot be modded into something great by a modding community like all previous TES games.

It's deja vu all over again. Most of these arguments and concerns were made on the eso forum last year when the forum was hosted on the bethsoft site. It's too bad there wasn't a way to benefit from that foresight.

zaria · April 2014

Lagoz wrote: »

These stats are from V1-V3 with Aldmeri Dominion the zones are Ebonheart starting ones.

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

Dark anchors can be farmed then up as I understand they give decent with xp on veteran level, yes you mix them with normal grinding.

Thalmar wrote: »

Maybe people need to stop thinking as Blizzard teach them in years, the game begins at the highest level possible namely end-game. MMORPGs should be and should be played as a whole, the journey should be as same fun as the destination. Try to stop making calculations on how long it will take to V10, instead just play the game and try to have fun. If you are having fun before the end-game why it should matters how long or how hard to reach end-game. No offence, just a friendly advise, you will be happier when you stop calculating and actually play the game as it is.

My only concern thou, the people who rushed to V10, i called them MMO consumers, will force developers to push content faster and cheaper to keep up with this crowd. It already started, putting a new raid or call it end-game content will affect all aspects of the game. In the end, developers will regularly push end-game content with automated and cheap additions will make the game become less quality and repeating itself.

To be fair he is not complaining that it will take to long, just that it require a lot of boring grinding.

On the other hand will you not simply finish the game at VR7 or 8? finish in having done all the quests, dungeons and bosses and having to grind to get up to VR10.
Or is it blocks so you have to be VR5 to continue to higher veteran zones?

After finishing the game do primarily PvP, grind can be combined with farming and level up crafting, hunt achievements, help lower level guild mates, if they have problems an VR8 players is always welcome. Then back to more PvP.

And finally WOW has an gear grind after you reach level 90, ESO uses VR rank instead of gearscore.

PBpsy · April 2014

zaria wrote: »

Lagoz wrote: »

These stats are from V1-V3 with Aldmeri Dominion the zones are Ebonheart starting ones.

Was referring to the slang term where a growth is larger than expected (i.e comparison to XP/per level from 1-50) instead of the mathematical term.

Dark anchors can be farmed then up as I understand they give decent with xp on veteran level, yes you mix them with normal grinding.

Thalmar wrote: »

Maybe people need to stop thinking as Blizzard teach them in years, the game begins at the highest level possible namely end-game. MMORPGs should be and should be played as a whole, the journey should be as same fun as the destination. Try to stop making calculations on how long it will take to V10, instead just play the game and try to have fun. If you are having fun before the end-game why it should matters how long or how hard to reach end-game. No offence, just a friendly advise, you will be happier when you stop calculating and actually play the game as it is.

My only concern thou, the people who rushed to V10, i called them MMO consumers, will force developers to push content faster and cheaper to keep up with this crowd. It already started, putting a new raid or call it end-game content will affect all aspects of the game. In the end, developers will regularly push end-game content with automated and cheap additions will make the game become less quality and repeating itself.

To be fair he is not complaining that it will take to long, just that it require a lot of boring grinding.

On the other hand will you not simply finish the game at VR7 or 8? finish in having done all the quests, dungeons and bosses and having to grind to get up to VR10.
Or is it blocks so you have to be VR5 to continue to higher veteran zones?

After finishing the game do primarily PvP, grind can be combined with farming and level up crafting, hunt achievements, help lower level guild mates, if they have problems an VR8 players is always welcome. Then back to more PvP.

And finally WOW has an gear grind after you reach level 90, ESO uses VR rank instead of gearscore.

You get one level per area if you do everything once. No need to grind anything and no need to do group dungeons. There are 5 major areas per faction that comes up to level 10 . It will take you at least twice as much as going from 1 to 50 because you need nearly twice as much content since you do no main story or guild story in VR .
I find myself going at a slightly lower speed then in the first alliance because stuff is harder. On the other hand some things like public dungeons and world bosses go faster since a lot of times there are very hard to solo therefore finding groups is easier then in the 1 to 50 areas where people like to solo a lot.

wrlifeboil · April 2014

zaria wrote: »

And finally WOW has an gear grind after you reach level 90, ESO uses VR rank instead of gearscore.

It's not comparable. Once you hit 90 in WoW, there are many options to gear grind. You could do mat farming for crafted gear, rep farming for rep gear before Timeless Isle, Timeless Isle now, and of course, raid instances.

It might more more a case of mmo gamers aren't accustomed to doing quests at
'max level.' You have to wonder if the reaction would have been the same as it is now if ZOS had just gone with 60 levels instead of masking the last ten levels as VR ranks.

kreekitb16_ESO · April 2014

Stopped reading after:
- Every mob on veteran zones regardless of the veteran rank gives 45"weak"/85"normal"/115"elite" VP/XP

How can you get THAT wrong? higher VR Rank gives more Exp (call it whatever you want, its still exp)

Custos91 · April 2014

Sry, just by completing every public dungeon, every world boss and every dolmen you get extreme amounts of xp, I am VR 2 now and everyone of these things gives for first time you clear it 18k exp +, you should do most of it in grous, so there will die more mobs, just take 25 k for it, should work, you need 9XXk for VR 3
there are usually around 8 public dungeons on the map, 4-6 world bosses and at least 4 dolmen, means 400k or more just by doing these things^^ that can be done in less than 2 hours, but then you shoul calculate with the normal 18k exp, because you won't kill as much mobs/bosses or other things... even if 25k is to optimistic, you will get at least 300 k exp like this, and you haven#t done a single quest untill now...
You have up to 5 guilds with up to 500 people, means there are neough people to group up and do somthing, even if you already have done it, help somebody with a public dungeon, or get your VR5 dungeon set?
And pvp gives very unstable numbers, running around and getting slaughtered will give you nearly nothing, If you have to deff a castle for 2 hours against 2 factions, that will help, since you need 225 k AP for a single VR 10 set piece (up to 625k AP for the shield xDDD) you need the AP anyway, why not do it now? now you get EXP, at VR 10 you don't, so whats the problem? you will even save time^^
Have a pvp player in our guild that was almost VR 4 before even killing Molag bal^^

Jiub18 · April 2014

It roughly takes 2 years to max out Rune Scape with 1 skill/month (maybe more or less nowadays). Theres less players complaining about it even though that game is the perfect example of grinding the same thing for weeks. ESO so far? I'm in veteran and still enjoy exploring or still going back some zones 'cause it just feels nice and not once I was concerned to level up so I have to stand up and grind something. I wish more people would enjoy the game and not when they can brag about their bigger numbers. Tell you what, I'll be able to brag about my big numbers while knowing the path as well.

midnight_tea · April 2014

"After completing the zone worth of quests you'll end up with 75-80%ish of your current veteran rank."

Is that so?

I was VR2 3/4 into Glenumbra and completed it 18% into VR2 - now I've done roughly 1/2 of Stormhaven and am now only 23% from reaching VR3.

And I did it in 95% thanks to questing and exploring (and 98% of it solo). In other words: you must not be really as thorough with the map as you think you are.

I understand that people don't necessarily have time or patience to look into every nook and cranny, kill everything that moves and complete all there is on the map as I do - but if I finish a zone and am 1/5 into the next rank, it means that there is more than enough content that will make you progress.

reften · April 2014

as if getting to the highest level is the goal of the game. It's not. Play, have fun. If you're "grinding" than it's time to move on to a new game. There is just too much to do in this game to ***. Less than a month of playing, a social gamer with two kids, full time job, social life, i'm already level 32.

I have no issues with the leveling slowing WAY down later on. there are skyshards to find, Keeps to take, PvP to do, etc.

Thechemicals · April 2014

Op has spoken like a true macro user or in the least, an xp exploiter.

Orizuru · April 2014

Lagoz wrote: »

Just a short explanation to those who are not actually playing veteran ranks in ESO.

1) How the XP/VP system works.

- Basically every quest/event scales with your level and gives you bit less that 2% of your _current_ level.

- If you were to be Veteran 1 you'd get ~2% per quest you complete in veteran areas.

- Even if you complete higher quests than your current rank, you still get ~2% of your level per quest

- A single zone has about 20-30 location quests which give you around 40-60% of your current level.

- These location quests are divided into parts that give you smaller rewards (0.5-1%) of your level while progressing

- After completing the zone worth of quests you'll end up with 75-80%ish of your current veteran rank and this usually takes about a day worth of gaming.

2) Problem: Missing 20% of the rank.

- Every mob on veteran zones regardless of the veteran rank gives 45"weak"/85"normal"/115"elite" VP/XP

- Veteran ranks require about 500k more each time you rank up. 1-2 = 456k, 2-3 = 960k, 3-4= 1.4mil etc.

- So we have an exponential larger than expected in points required but the MOB XP/VP stays the same.

- If you rush the quests on the next zone you are biting out a lot of XP because of the scaling system.

- [PVP] Cyrodill gives about 500k-1mil for 16hours of gaming with a hardcore PvP guild. Otherwise pretty much nothing.

3) Conclusion:

- As long as you have quests to complete there's no issue, unfortunately game is designed so that you won't have enough quests and you are forced to find other means to get the missing 20%. Before they dropped the MOB XP/VP to 1/10th of what it was on the PTR you were able to fill the gap with mob grinding. At current state of the game you are looking at a massive grind.

- At best with a group grind you are looking at around 25k / VP / Hour. So just to grind the next rank we are looking at:

V1-V2 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 4 hours elite grind

V2-V3 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 8 hours elite grind

V3-V4 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 12 hours elite grind

V4-V5 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 16 hours elite grind

V5-V6 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 20 hours elite grind

V6-V7 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 24 hours elite grind

V7-V8 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 28 hours elite grind

V8-V9 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 32 hours elite grind

V9-V10 = Quests 4-5hrs~ + 36 hours elite grind

The problem here isn't that the ranks are "hard" or "take long time".

The problem is that you are forced to follow this certain path to level and the monotonous grind against much tougher and less rewarding monsters is unbearably dull.

What players need at the moment:

1) Better rewarding quests (amped up to 4% each)

2) Higher mob VP/XP (atleast 5x or 10x)

3) More options to rank up (instances or PvP)

ZOS: If this is deliberate to soft-gate the ranks before Craglorn, please communicate with us!

I'm sorry. All I got out of that was leveling up through Veteran levels is work and you don't want to do it.

Thanks for contributing.

Selstad · April 2014

An interesting notion is that people "complain" that it takes too long to get to max level, yet, at max level, the same people complain that there's not enough content to keep one interested. It's a bit of a conundrum to figure out in all honesty.

I'm just glad that there are tons of things for me to do in this game, and they aren't push-over easy like questing in other MMOs are. Coming over a pack of mobs with a healer in the group can at times be frustrating to handle. I more than often find myself revising tactics how to approach something, which has been hell of a long time since I've done that in an MMO.

Bottom line is though, it's good that things aren't full speed ahead and that they do require some time to complete. At least there are things to do then.

zaria · April 2014

wrlifeboil wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

And finally WOW has an gear grind after you reach level 90, ESO uses VR rank instead of gearscore.

It's not comparable. Once you hit 90 in WoW, there are many options to gear grind. You could do mat farming for crafted gear, rep farming for rep gear before Timeless Isle, Timeless Isle now, and of course, raid instances.

It might more more a case of mmo gamers aren't accustomed to doing quests at
'max level.' You have to wonder if the reaction would have been the same as it is now if ZOS had just gone with 60 levels instead of masking the last ten levels as VR ranks.

Yes I agree that doing pvp or dungeons should be viable ways to level up and then repeatedly not just an one time quest. PvP from killing players not only daily quest.
Doing so they should balance so large wars gave less xp while singe killings or small groups gave more than today, yes large wars should still give most xp but not hundreds of time more.

Irtax · April 2014

midnight_tea wrote: »

"After completing the zone worth of quests you'll end up with 75-80%ish of your current veteran rank."

Is that so?

I was VR2 3/4 into Glenumbra and completed it 18% into VR2 - now I've done roughly 1/2 of Stormhaven and am now only 23% from reaching VR3.

And I did it in 95% thanks to questing and exploring (and 98% of it solo). In other words: you must not be really as thorough with the map as you think you are.

I understand that people don't necessarily have time or patience to look into every nook and cranny, kill everything that moves and complete all there is on the map as I do - but if I finish a zone and am 1/5 into the next rank, it means that there is more than enough content that will make you progress.

This. The early vet ranks I was about 20% into the next rank when I completed a zone. The last 3 or 4 ranks I was about 20% short of the next rank when I completed a zone and moved on to the next one, but I hit VR10 about 3/4 of the way through the last zone.

There are 9 levels of vet ranks to exp through and 10 zones. You start at 1, not 0. It's the same reason you have 49 attribute points, not 50.

Zakua · April 2014

It takes some adjusting...getting a considerable amount less per kill and not seeing your XP /VP bar raise up much after a 1/2 hour of laying waste to some mobs...The "carrot" is on a much longer stick now heh.

I blasted through side quests as I stumbled into them early in game (lvl3 to lvl30) but enjoyed the main story and the fighters guild story...I like quests in general so I am kind of excited now at VR1 to see it slow way down.

I just got to Daggerfall and there are all sorts of quests to be done...the fact I can not bypass them and just slay mobs for 4 hours...well I think its kinda cool. I'm going to read it all/ absorb it/ suck it up and enjoy.

IMO, it's a nice change, They put a throttle on my sometimes voracious appetite for content.

Glad I found this post...looking at my VP bar last night I begian to wonder if I was doing something wrong....