Change needed for how you level your character

[Fesevoa]

Hello LTG team, I wanted to make a post here since I know this sub forum is actively watched and wanted to make you aware of a change request you might not have seen elsewhere and in the discord general chat today.

Right now the passive skill leveling has gone too far on the casual side compared to the extreme grind that the game used to be a long time ago. At the moment once you find a place to settle you are stuck waiting for skills to level up instead of being able to play the game doing those activities to work on leveling that skill. The fact that banking up a ton of xp from fishing to then log off while you wait for the game to level up your necessary skills isn't a great game design choice.

I don't think the xp bank and slow skill up is bad, for some difficult skills I think it is a great addition, the construction line used to be simply unenjoyable to level up, but the fact that I can play no active role in working on my skills and have to wait for the game to do it for me isn't incentivizing my group of friends to log in for very long and that is going to quickly cause us to leave the game again because there is no reason to keep playing while we wait.

Suggestion - reduce the passive xp skill up rate but keep the system, and add in that doing things from that skill line directly add xp to that skill. This will let us feel that we are actively getting to play the game and work on our skills and gives us something to do instead of log off and wait.

Again, the passive system isn't bad, but it is if that is your only choice. From my group of friends discussion and what I've seen on discord I don't think many think the current leveling system is good. I hope you hear this and can Quickly (within the next week during this vital time to gain players) get an active skilling system implemented.

Thanks, I hope the game can succeed!

[Darkfall]

Cheers for the feedback, I'll make sure that it gets looked over properly by the designers!

From my end, I do agree with you about the "not feeling as if you're working on a skill". I remember when I got into the game, getting very confused about how to level up skills, and finding it a bit...bland almost. (Though, it has grown on me!)

Either way, I do personally agree that having it more intuitive would be better.

I am curious about 2 things:
- Firstly, what do other people here think of this?
- Secondly, and only slightly related, do you think the game gives you enough information on how to level up your character, or do you feel that that is lacking?

[Summanus]

I pretty much agree with everything Fesevoa said. The new time-gated levelling system that Bitbox came up with is all well and good for getting you through those skills that are extremely difficult to level up otherwise (such as Masonry or Healing), so it does serve a good purpose in specific situations.

However, it also removes all sense of achievement from the levelling process as you are no longer actively involved in progressing individual skills (other than by ticking a box) by practising them more often. It also locks your character progression behind an arbitrary time gate that often leaves you thinking "I might as well just log out now that my exp bar is full".

I think some kind of hybrid system that includes both methods would be good.

[ZeuS]

Hello.

I agree that the current system actively discourages players from playing. The passive leveling system is great for casual players but it has serious shortcomings:

It can be daunting for new players to feel like they are able to progress at a satisfactory rate. The increase in training time needed to get higher tiers of skills is simply too much! 15 mins followed by 12 hours then 3 days? Too long for tier 1 skills. Imagine being stuck with primitive gear for 3+ days of playing (remember new players are learning so there will be lost time and growing pains).

Before anyone says new players should ask for help: this game is heavily portrayed as being an open pvp game. Even in green zones, it can be hard for new players to establish themselves because of all the older players already hogging all the best spots and resources. Most people who play these games will have smaller groups band together and tend to be very insular. If the core game mechanic is dependent on players begging for outside help, no matter how much they may be greeted well the concept is DOA. We play these games to accomplish progress ourselves. I'm not interested in playing begging simulator 2024.

Lastly on this subject: if skills can only be obtained passively and take days, maybe weeks, to earn and this is a PAID SUBSCRIPTION game (by the way there's a reason these types of games don't exist much anymore...) the message I'm getting is clear "you need to pay for time and we will milk that time as much as we can". You can argue that isn't the case but if I'm able to calculate the time:money ratio and don't like the results I'm not sticking around. If you're ok with that I have to wonder why bother making an MMO in the first place?

As for the clarity of how the game works I can't comment too much. I played LiF:YO a bunch so I knew what to expect on how the skills work and adapted to the new system well enough. I didn't learn anything from the turorial, though since it bugged out and I was unable to progress. Otherwise it has been a group effort on me and my friend's part to read wikis, ask in discord and just plain experiment when we can in order to learn what we can.

[Fesevoa]

To your second question, Darkfall, I feel the game is lacking enough information in how you level up your character - specifically the level requirements of prerequisite skills that I only recalled occasionally seeing in loading screen tips. Those screens don't mention 90-100 in skills (that I've seen) so things aren't very clear.

If I could give a specific change to the above discussion to try, don't change the xp amounts given by certain activities for now, just change where the xp is deposited. 50% goes toward your exp bank to spend and slowly skill up as currently, and the other 50% goes right towards the skill that activity is unlocked by.

Most important to the games survival right now is new player, and returning player retention. I'm very concerned the passive skill system which disincentivies you from staying in game until you can do useful things will hurt any potential momentum in player growth.

[Tincho]

Originally posted by Darkfall:

Cheers for the feedback, I'll make sure that it gets looked over properly by the designers!

From my end, I do agree with you about the "not feeling as if you're working on a skill". I remember when I got into the game, getting very confused about how to level up skills, and finding it a bit...bland almost. (Though, it has grown on me!)

Either way, I do personally agree that having it more intuitive would be better.

I am curious about 2 things:
- Firstly, what do other people here think of this?
- Secondly, and only slightly related, do you think the game gives you enough information on how to level up your character, or do you feel that that is lacking?

I personally hate the pool leveling system and also hate having a lot of toons why? because u can level up 2 skills per toon logging in around 30 mins per toon to fill your pool... (1M exp also lasts like 3 days so another no need to log or even play the game) so theres no effort and with little more than couple mins per toon u can level 12 skills at a time(theoretically).... this is one of the reasons of why i believe there should be no pve skill cap. I do understand why the original devs wanted caps... but with the current amount of players and some guilds being run by 3 or 4 of them its necessary to have multiple toons. this was partially corrected with the implementation of the 1000 points on pve cap. but back on the 400 it was around 1 full pve line per toon.

now the old system had its own good and bad things... but also was funny for example leveling combat hitting each other with primitive torches was really fun even if it was not the game the devs wanted it to be it made u be with ur friends hitting each other to lvl up then u had some other skills related to combat (medicine) that was a kick in the ass to lvl... but it was kinda easy too... leave a toon standing next to you then u run a macro to hit and heal every time....

last one of the good things regarding the old leveling system is that since u werent able to level up while disconnected the game should “live” more basically because u will have to spend more time getting the levels…

also another thing i would like to see reworked is statcaps but this might be for a different topic but this could be like any other MMO where u can max al stats… i understand its been used to create builds… and i partially like it but if there would be some sort of progression in game secondary toons would be less useful in combat and that would lead you to have just one or two pvp toons

[Asper]

this should be changed and the skill cap increased

[Darkfall]

Just dropping here to say thank you for the great discussion and information thus far.

I have shared this with the team and we are going over the points that you've brought up.

From my side (personal), I do very much agree with the issues brought up. However, I do also need to say that, what has been brought up is a deep-seated part of the game, which means that changing it is no easy feat. However (x2), this also does not mean that we won't do anything, it does just mean that even if we do, it is likely to take a while to be seen.

I am working on a feature tracker for the community (so that you can see what we're working on), so soon(ish), you'll see for yourself what suggestions/ideas we're working with.

[Fesevoa]

Thank you for the engagement, I appreciate that you and the team are listening. I hope you will make mention of this in official dev posts soon if it is a direction the game is going. Even if it will take a little time to figure out how to do the implementation, knowing that an improvement to the skill system is officially on the horizon will go a long way for our near term interest to hold out for that change.

[Stoon Finger]

I like the skill system but it does feel strange... I would prefer if the skill I did directly raised the skill... also, the whole "29.9" sitting there can't get to 30 because you don't have 60 in the previous skill is just lame... feels like I cant specialize into anything because I need so many prerequisite skills just to do basic things any human being could do without training. My skills are just dancing all over the place which is incredibly annoying, in my opinion this game would be 100x more engaging if I could actually specialize in something and do that without having to be supported by four other characters or alts.

[RJ]

I would like to see leveling up skills become a more active process. There were certainly issues with the original system, grinding one task over and over wasting resources. My easiest suggestion would be to make it a 50/50 system. Half the xp from an action goes towards the general xp pool and the other half goes to the skill you are working on.