I suspect the point here is each level is more meaningful and carries greater impact - no more skipping the first 60 levels in one day by heading to Manara at level 20.
You say that, but there are definitely people that have gotten over 10 levels in about 5 hours (from spacer to high smuggler). I don't know if the bug abuse announcement has anything to do with that, but just look at rankings xp. There are people way ahead of the others, and they're not sharing that information.
I suspect that beta player knowledge has quite a bit to do with the leveling process, on top of being ahead of the crowd and so not having to deal with overpopulated areas and slow respawn timers.
Just checking - you guys did see the Updates news with the xp requirement lowered from levels 1-10 and less so from 11-20 right?
Personally I hadn't seen the news during this discussion, because I was at work - was 11am when you posted this, and I check forums at work but can't check the game. The XP I earned from 8-10 after this change seemed much more reasonable, but still "slog"-y enough to where it wasn't just "bash a mob per level". In shorter terms, I like the middle ground, so thank you.
I suspect the point here is each level is more meaningful and carries greater impact - no more skipping the first 60 levels in one day by heading to Manara at level 20.
You say that, but there are definitely people that have gotten over 10 levels in about 5 hours (from spacer to high smuggler). I don't know if the bug abuse announcement has anything to do with that, but just look at rankings xp. There are people way ahead of the others, and they're not sharing that information.
I suspect that beta player knowledge has quite a bit to do with the leveling process, on top of being ahead of the crowd and so not having to deal with overpopulated areas and slow respawn timers.
There was a quest in Song without a cooldown that I know some people were looping for pretty ridiculous xp. It's been fixed now but I don't know if there were others. That kind of thing could definitely level you fast.
I have been consistently in the top 10 by xp since day one. From my perspective, the bashing felt really slow and boring through the early levels. I was actually really worried about how much of a grind it would be.
However, for the last 10 levels or so I have been enjoying it more and more, as far as you can enjoy bashing in a MUD. There is a lot to explore, both in areas and mobs to try to take on, as well as the various skill combos we can use. There is also a real sense of danger to it, and I am constantly trying to decide if I need to attack, heal, or try to escape.
As opposed to grinding the same 2 mobs hundreds of times..?
Why in the world would you do that?
The exp requirements to level from bashing. At least, before the recent adjustment, that for some reason some people were against with all that "don't give in to whiners" talk.
Pretty dull, right? Definitely was worth fixing. Might still need some adjustment 20+ too, we'll see..
Bashing in other IRE games is something you do to reach a goal (level, gold, honours lines, haven points or whatever) and while in the right mood the mindless repetiveness can be enjoyable in an almost carthartic way, most of the time it is the worst part of the games.
We've been told that bashing in Starmourn is NOT the best way to level. So maybe experiment a bit and figure out what that means for you and the way you play the game?
The problem is there is no Agency of Character .I want to choose what system I use for my level and when and I want it to be equal in risk reward to ratio to the other systems. Bashing is slow, boring and unrewarding but I don't really care for ship combat and I like hacking ocassionally. The great thing about a mud is they can allow balancing for all three and IRE has done balancing like that in the past.
The problem is there is no Agency of Character .I want to choose what system I use for my level and when and I want it to be equal in risk reward to ratio to the other systems. Bashing is slow, boring and unrewarding but I don't really care for ship combat and I like hacking ocassionally. The great thing about a mud is they can allow balancing for all three and IRE has done balancing like that in the past.
Until about level 15, if your hacking is high enough leveling via hacking actually outpaces bashing. At 14 or 15 I was getting about 7% per grid completed. Sadly its fallen off and I had to swap back over. I wish it scaled with level, not just a percentage of hacking xp.
I love the leveling rate. Based on what others have told me you stay at a consistent ~1% per mob through all the levels, so I'm all for that. Couple that with the more meaningful 'oomph' given to bashing by the higher difficulty and, well. Let's just say I'd rather have 100 somewhat interesting pve fights to get a level than 500 totally boring "spam my bashing macro" ones.
The captaincy bleedthrough experience is unfortunately so small as to be unnoticeable, from my experience. I like doing incursions, there's just often not enough of them going and it's difficult to come out at break even at the end of it all.
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I was mostly just concerned that people weren't actually seeing the news.
I suspect that beta player knowledge has quite a bit to do with the leveling process, on top of being ahead of the crowd and so not having to deal with overpopulated areas and slow respawn timers.
There was a quest in Song without a cooldown that I know some people were looping for pretty ridiculous xp. It's been fixed now but I don't know if there were others. That kind of thing could definitely level you fast.
However, for the last 10 levels or so I have been enjoying it more and more, as far as you can enjoy bashing in a MUD. There is a lot to explore, both in areas and mobs to try to take on, as well as the various skill combos we can use. There is also a real sense of danger to it, and I am constantly trying to decide if I need to attack, heal, or try to escape.
Pretty dull, right? Definitely was worth fixing. Might still need some adjustment 20+ too, we'll see..
To each his own.
We've been told that bashing in Starmourn is NOT the best way to level. So maybe experiment a bit and figure out what that means for you and the way you play the game?
Couple that with the more meaningful 'oomph' given to bashing by the higher difficulty and, well. Let's just say I'd rather have 100 somewhat interesting pve fights to get a level than 500 totally boring "spam my bashing macro" ones.