First, let me start by saying that this will end up being a bit of a wall-o-text. Apologies. Second, it's meant as constructive criticism and by no means it's a rant. I'm fine with the game as it is.
Finaly, I know this has been brought countless times, but I figured a decent argument where people don't fling feces at each other would be something good to try to spark.

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The game has a huge spectrum of challenges. The interesting part about the game is that you can create your own challenges to test your own ability without hitting a system wall. Ofcourse, there's some of those walls (for example, hard mode bosses have such a huge regen that solo or duo will be pretty much impossible due to a low damage output), but in general you can find your skill level and have fun with it.

However, I understand and share the concerns about the difficulty of the mobs you fight while leveling. I know this is bound to get harder, specialy 40+, but currently at lv27 with blue gear it's rather easy to kill any normal mob 2 levels over you in a combo.

And the biggest problem: you take very little damage even if these mobs manage to hit you.

To get a real challenge out of normal monsters you need to fight them about 8 or more levels over you, which in itself is ok. You can go out and move to a higher level area to get an awesome experience where you are challenged while leveling. However, there's a design problem here: there are no quests to go with this monster hunting session, because the quests have a lower cap. This makes the "hard mode" leveling to be slower than the normal leveling.

I have no wish to make the exp curve slower. I'm fine leveling up at the speed we level up. I would however hope that by now EME is aware that the difficulty of the normal mobs is perhaps too low and that they should be ramped up slightly. If it requires to adjust the exp they give to something higher to balance the speed in leveling, so be it.

The other alternative is to add hunting quests with a lower cap so that we can go out to an area that's over 8 levels from your current character level and get exp from monsters and quests at the same time, like the "easier mode" leveling would be.

It's natural that the exping curve isn't very demanding in terms of time, but I would prefer if the time spent exping was more entertaining.

I'm aware that further analysis on the subject brings the following point:

"You can fight BAMs at your level which also have quests related to them, get good exp and get good quest-exp at the same time, all while keeping a challenge".

Indeed, you can. And this is part of the wide spectrum of choices I explained before. However, fighting BAMs and fighting normal mobs is a completely different experience. Both things are fun to do: while a BAM requires you to focus on a set of skills and a single fight for a couple minutes or so, a normal monster that's +10 levels over you provides a shorter challenge that ends up being more dynamic than the BAM fight itself, while being potentialy deadly too.

They are different playstyles, both are great. The problem is only one is currently viable compared to the "easy mode" leveling path.

For me, the perfect solution to this dilema is simply to add hunting quests that can be acquired by low levels on the high level nodes while keeping the easier, care free leveling in place.

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TL;DR: Leveling speed is fine. Leveling challenge is only present in two flavours: easy normal mobs or decently difficulty BAMs. The alternative to fight harder normal mobs is not there because there's no extra quests that go along them; adding such quests would fill in the difficulty cravings some of us have now and then, while not exactly wanting to go for BAMs all the time.

Fast but difficult fights are also fun.

Middle of the road fights. Seems reasonable. I'm sure some will disagree vehemently.

My personal opinion upon reading your post is that you are correct. There seems to be a difficulty gap between normal and BAM. Yes, there is supposed to be a gap, but the gap is so wide that there is ample room to fill it with more good times. Nothing negative about that.

Also, in short, I choose not to comment on the rest of it (xp curve etc...) because it isn't necessary. Identifying the potential for middle of the road content is plenty enough, the rest is just mincing.

Quote: Angrynixon on 2012-03-06 14:22:14 UTC - view

Agreed. Added the bit about the exp curve to deter focus on it, since I wasn't really talking about a change on the XP time but in the actual gameplay experience alternatives for the time we spend XPing.

I know Mush :) I just wanted to mention it in passing (also to deter focus) since your post addressed it and I bet someone will make it, and all the incidental issues surrounding your idea, the main focus, without ever speaking to your point directly. lol.

I think it's nice your suggestion adds a "third experience" as definable from the other two experiences you raised in your post. I don't see how that can be the end of the world.

im ok with the current situation. also you seem to base your judgement of it on lvl 27 content. seems like a bad time to do that when you have such an artificial wall keeping you from going higher. i understand that you were fighting things higher than yourself but thanks to the fact that you couldnt simply progress past it at the normal rate your impression of it is longer lasting. same thing happened at 22.


i think once the normal rate of progression kicks in the bad impression you get will be less harsh. i know when i did other characters in CBT2 that 22 wall that was there before became less of an issue. i know that as you lvl higher and take longer you will be fighting that particular lvl range longer but the difficulty will also be higher. should balance out in the end.

you cant evaluate something properly based on a cut off section, especially with artificial limiters like time and lvl caps. you know you are only getting a part of the picture.

edit: sorry, forgot. that being said. i have no problem with adding optional difficulty. can only help to improve the game and some will enjoy it. myself included.

It's not as much a bad impression as it is actualy realizing that there's an unexplored alternative that would fit well within the current game without requiring much of a change.

EME has show the ability to add quests, even to the point where NPCs are moved around (Horse quest in Velika as proof), so revamping quest nodes adding simple grinding quests would be simple enough. Ofcourse, I don't mean to understimate the work this would bring, but it's clearly not among the hardest things to implement for them.

See, I'm trying to bring in the feeling older MMOs gave while retaining the current game structure. So what I'm talking about is more an addition than it is a modification.

I think the game is fine as is, but with a relatively simple addition it could catter to a whole new range of people and fend off criticism towards its difficulty, which is rather common.

One thing I liked about FFXIV before all the patches that are turning it into FFXI-2 was being able to scale Leves(repeatable quests) to the difficulty desired and actually being able to complete them if you had the skill. ʚɞ

A one star leve would give mobs of the same level, and you'd usually get solo or duo monsters to fight. Two and three star difficulty leves would give mobs between three to eight levels higher with groups of three or four monsters. Four and five star leves would often give monsters ten or more levels above the person initiating the quest and in large quantities, possibly soloable with correct combination of different class skills and gear.

The point is you could choose to fight mobs of a higher level and in greater numbers while doing a quest meant for you. I agree most MMOs trade danger for tediousness while questing. Having to kill twenty times as many solo mobs doesn't make a quest more difficult, it succeeds at keeping you logged in longer. This is why many prefer the open world pvp servers, where the danger returns in the form of other players.

I agree that the normal monsters are way too easy at the levels we have to fight them at during quests. I'd be all for an easy quest/hard quest alternative or just adding better AI to all of the mobs. Granted, I only reached level 24 but I didn't find anything that was particularly hard to kill that wasn't a BAM. I do like how they have the BAM's available though, it adds that degree of difficulty I feel is lacking from regular quest leveling.

Some players enjoy hardmode which is the BAM's. It would be nice if an MMO were a little more difficult to handle though. Although I'm sure many players would complain about their leveling speed since it would likely be reduced. ^^

One more thing, and keep in mind this is always from the perspective of normal mobs:

While the argument that as the game progresses it will get harder is probably valid, when talking about normal monsters we do know today that this will not happen at least until lv40. The reason is simple: we can fight lv38 monsters as lv27 and kill them.

In fact, the lv38 NORMAL monsters provide a very interesting challenge to a lv27, where every hit you take counts and every move you make counts. It's like a mini BAM, a much faster fight and with an earlier reward but equaly penalizing.

So if at 27 you can kill lv38 mobs it stands to reason that as a lv38 you'll destroy these mobs just like a lv27 chops over a lv27-29 monster.

What comes after lv40 may be different ofcourse, but I see no reason why it would discard the viability of this proposal anyway!

TL;DR But seems like a lot of QQ over something that already works for like 99.9% iof the people.