Point of Career levels?

[tazdingo]

So, do you think leveling takes too long in WAR?

i enjoy leveling, i tend to re-roll instead of picking back up mingling lvl ~20 i haven't played in months, because it's nice to start fresh, re-learn the basics of the class and i enjoy t1 pvp

saying this, 31 - 40 is a very rough grind indeed, however you go about doing it. but i do agree that 40 shouldn't be given for free

[Needabeer]

The point is to have progression, make you feel rewarded for the time you spend. For career ranks, this is the addition of new abilities and tactics. This also serves as a tutorial allowing you (in theory) to understand abilities and their use(s) before a new one is introduced.

Leveling a class is important.

I completely understand the progression part which, in my opinion, is the RR side of things. Having to level career ranks is unnecessary and to do it quickly, you have to grind PQ's which is boring af. Even though you get bolster before 40 in rvr, you still miss a lot of tools that CR40 players have. As mentioned by other replies, mid tier is dead. Next to no SC's pop.

[adamthelc]

When this game first came out there were a lot of servers that were dead immediately and it was pretty lame leveling.

But after you switched to a populated server or waited for a merge, the mid tiers were pretty awesome. T2 and T3 can be pretty awesome, the problem has always been in population supporting them.

So they merged the tiers in this game, which I think is a pretty good fix. I know some people have a problem with it, but the alternative is having dead tiers. Which is worse even though it's hard to see it.

The problem is that then it creates this situation where people feel they need to be max level to compete instead of just enjoying the experience. Their is some validity to that feeling, but people should try to have some perspective and realize the alternative would be worse.

[lefze]

I completely agree with OP, and have suggested the same before. XP levels really are completely obsolete.

The first issue is that while you should have to work in some way for a max level toon, there needs to be enjoyable content in order for this to be a requirement. I for one can NEVER be arsed to do it again, but it's not because I'm lazy. In the last few weeks I've racked up around 200 hours in ESO to go from level 0 to Champ level 160+ with some okay gear. This because both the pve and pvp is extremely varied and enjoyable on any level.

The second issue is that currently, any kind of leveling, help with leveling, powerleveling or boosting is nerfed to hell for mysterious reasons. You are forced to grind crap content, and mostly alone because of certain changes. I am again gonna make a comparison to ESO, where you get scaled to the level of the content regardless of what you are doing. So basically, any dungeon, delve, public dungeon, quest hub or whatever is doable by a lowbie, and it's doable with higher level or even max level friends.

The third issue is that rvr puts all level 16+ players in the same bracket. Sure, you can do some things, but the average player is gonna get shat on while not even getting xp to level up in the lakes. Bolster simply does not let you perform well enough. And once again I will make a comparison to ESO here. The reason I feel like the game is designed so well, is because not only are you scaled to the content, but they understand that simply scaling stats is never gonna make a lowbie competitive. And as such, they have several campaigns with different rulesets. The ones of relevance here are sub-50, and no Champion Points (Can roughly be compared to no renown points allowed in this game). This limits the powergaps present in the pvp even further after the game narrows it to some extent with bolster, as again, simply scaling stats doesn't do much.

Now, obviously these are different games, and this server does not have the resources or playerbase to implement anything close to what ESO has, but getting rid of xp levels as a whole will be the best solution imo. We already have the RR and gear grind, which is more than enough, especially as you really need more than one toon.

Edit: And also wanna include that this is still an alpha server, you will never get balance down until comps can be changed more at will. There is still untested and vastly underplayed stuff, in part because leveling new toons to test these things takes forever.

[saupreusse]

No xp levels isnt a viable solution. Our database and nearly all combat/bolster/xp,rr gain claculations are making use of your level stat. Changeing this completely for the sake of testing iss too much work for a private server like us if you want my honest opinion. Also i do believe the client will act up weird if you have a char without a level. It probably just crashes

[lefze]

No xp levels isnt a viable solution. Our database and nearly all combat/bolster/xp,rr gain claculations are making use of your level stat. Changeing this completely for the sake of testing iss too much work for a private server like us if you want my honest opinion. Also i do believe the client will act up weird if you have a char without a level. It probably just crashes

So basically just set everyone to 40 for the sake of those but remove the actual levels in-game?

[saupreusse]

No xp levels isnt a viable solution. Our database and nearly all combat/bolster/xp,rr gain claculations are making use of your level stat. Changeing this completely for the sake of testing iss too much work for a private server like us if you want my honest opinion. Also i do believe the client will act up weird if you have a char without a level. It probably just crashes

So basically just set everyone to 40 for the sake of those but remove the actual levels in-game?

I dont really know how you think this would work? just being 40 from the start? why would I do quests, what do we do with all the gear that isnt top tier (not only stat- but skin wise). will everyone have their full set of tactics and abilities from the start? I imagines new bg and IB players will have a hard time figuring out what each of their 30 skills does. overall this sounds like a very short sighted plan if you ask me

[lefze]

No xp levels isnt a viable solution. Our database and nearly all combat/bolster/xp,rr gain claculations are making use of your level stat. Changeing this completely for the sake of testing iss too much work for a private server like us if you want my honest opinion. Also i do believe the client will act up weird if you have a char without a level. It probably just crashes

So basically just set everyone to 40 for the sake of those but remove the actual levels in-game?

I dont really know how you think this would work? just being 40 from the start? why would I do quests, what do we do with all the gear that isnt top tier (not only stat- but skin wise). will everyone have their full set of tactics and abilities from the start? I imagines new bg and IB players will have a hard time figuring out what each of their 30 skills does. overall this sounds like a very short sighted plan if you ask me

That's exactly why you should just pull the plug on levels, who cares about the quests? who cares about the crap gear? I mean seriously. If you care so much about the appearances and quests, slap the items onto the quests to give them some nice rewards, it's not like you can level with quests right now anyways.

And it's not like playing a gimped class for a few months is gonna give you any kind of insight into the potential of the class, and being locked out completely from any serious party until you have mostly completed the grind so you can start actually learning is just horrible. I don't see any reason to argue that the current system is in any way beneficial to newbies, because it simply isn't.

As I already mentioned, not only is the xp grind a complete waste at the end of the day, it's pretty much just a mini-game before the real game starts, and the content to make it enjoyable just isn't present, and it NEVER will be.

Edit: And yes, obviously everyone would have all the abilities and tactics. Pretty much the whole point of doing it.

[Sulorie]

An experienced player can deal with having all skills at once but a true newbie? No way.
You don't like the leveling process but this is just one opinion, one of many.

[Needabeer]

No xp levels isnt a viable solution. Our database and nearly all combat/bolster/xp,rr gain claculations are making use of your level stat. Changeing this completely for the sake of testing iss too much work for a private server like us if you want my honest opinion. Also i do believe the client will act up weird if you have a char without a level. It probably just crashes

So basically just set everyone to 40 for the sake of those but remove the actual levels in-game?

I dont really know how you think this would work? just being 40 from the start? why would I do quests, what do we do with all the gear that isnt top tier (not only stat- but skin wise). will everyone have their full set of tactics and abilities from the start? I imagines new bg and IB players will have a hard time figuring out what each of their 30 skills does. overall this sounds like a very short sighted plan if you ask me

Yes start at level 40 with all tactics and skills like any other 40. As someone else mentioned, allow this feature for someone who has already got to level 40 on another character. I dont think it's short sighted at all. Just allows someone to bypass all the boring pve crap if they dont wish to mindlessly grind mob after mob.