How fast should players level?

[edbailey]

I think I put too much content in my LVL 1 zone.

I've got three monster zones -- one in a true "newbie" area with a small inn and potion shop, and then a larger town with a real inn and all the shops.

In total, I have used 5 quest givers each with their full contingent of quests.

Players are leveling up before even hitting my "big town" and skipping over (IMO) the best content.

Can/should I fix this by cutting the monster & quest XP significantly (probably ~70%) or is there a more elegant solution.

[smokauweeds]

yeah this is something im playing around with currently. you use the monster and quest xp to adjust the rate they level.

I had someone tell me once they made it so it took an in game month or there about. but I question how this affects the player count. if its to hard people quit, if its to easy they level to fast. Going to have just find the balance.

then there is the matter of, does game type effect this as well? But I havent had a lot of time lately to test this.

[Sheldin 夜秋夢]

A general rule of thumb I use in terms of gating my players in the game is basically this; if the quest contains killing - reward minimal xp for the quest itself but slightly more on a per mob basis. On the other hand, if the quest is a fetch quest reward slightly more xp to compensate for the lack of mob-slaying.

If my first kill quest is "kill 5 spiders" and you need "50 XP" to level up, and this is only at my starting town in my starting zone, I'd award the player 2 XP per kill, and another 2 XP for the quest itself. That's a total of 12 XP gained from that one quest - now the player needs to move on to the next area to progress, and I usually "force" my players to progress by giving them a fetch quest which will take them to the next area naturally, like "talk to the innkeeper at Area 2". And when they get to area 2 they'll find the next quest there. The reward for such a quest can be 4 let's say. Now your player is at 16/50. Do another kill quest: another 12 XP = 28, plus another = 40. Then go for another fetch quest to go to the last area in the zone, make that quest level them up - or have another quest there for them to do - either way works.

Another route I've tried is making it so that the starting zone is made for more than only 1 level. So instead of the start being only level 1 I make it maybe 1 - 3 by making the second zone a level 3 zone. They won't enter the next zone unless they're at least level 3 that way. (the level x to x zone thing hasn't been implemented yet so this was the next best thing I could think of).

[smokauweeds]

Im curious, what is your player count? I have been doing some testing the last few days.

I made 3 games. I left the first one unchanged. the second game some mild tweaks. the third game, I stretched it out so the first player to level 2 took 4 in game days.

I was trying to see if player base was larger or smaller, based of the difficulty of the leveling.

I noticed I can never get current player count higher then like 1/4 of of my total player count.