level dead zone mid 80s

Kalvon

There appears to be some sort of dead zone of leveling around the 80s. You're kinda past the stage where you can't gain experience as fast anymore, but not quite high enough to crit enough for faster bashing. In terms of time spent hunting to regain experience per death, this is probably the worst zone to be in. Dragons don't lose much experience on death and can hunt quite easily, and I believe up to somewhere in the 90s this is also true. I don't have any solid data to back this up, just purely anecdotal evidence. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Xer

Raiding best exp. (But I feel bad raiding -for- exp haha. Just a plus on top of it being fun lol)

Up to the mid 80's were ok with places like Arcadia, Tsol'aa and a few other spots (some islands are pretty good here but the inconvenience of going out there and back, especially in a position of power where you're required -everywhere is not worth it). Upper 80's is annoyingly slow, especially when you can't nonstop bash. Since dying is too huge a setback (and demotivator), I still stick with a lot of Arcadia and the places I did for mid 80's, but obviously the returns diminish quite rapidly and the grind just gets exponentially worse >.> 

Kyrra

If you can't hunt innocents, there's a bit of a restriction but there's plenty to hunt over a variety of areas on the mainland and off plane.

Some of my mid 80 levels were helped thanks to Achilles being worth 16% and I gained my last three levels off calories. There's a bit of a drag for long the levels take but.. depending on class, plenty if options.

Nim

I wouldn't know how hunting is for most people, since it sounds like an awful lot of valid EXP grinding involves murdering sapients, and I play a character who kind of disapproves of that. I do wish there were more ways to get EXP without killing things en masse, but I wish that were the case in general - not just at level 80ish.

Santar

404 idea not found.

Silas

Level 92 gives a crit boost that really pushes you past the mid-80s doldrums. I think it's just that 80 is the first real bashing milestone, and then there's nothing until dragon. Only, level 80 is a very small percentage of the way to dragon. 91.15 or something is the halfway point, and on the next level you get the crit boost (I'm pretty sure this is true, though I have no data to back it up).

I wouldn't really be in favour of a hardcoded platform between 80 and 92, but there are more than enough orgs (unless you're Targossian) that could provide their own incentives to keep people plugging away.

In summary, Targ Houses next please.

Kyrra

Houses suck. I am using this argument in future.

Skye

A number of the islands make for good bashing in the 80s, it's only a question of getting there.

Ereshka

Valho and Meropis are really worth it mid-80s. Manara is shockingly still worth it up til about 85 (50k essence, about 3-5k gold, 5%ish xp gain for NO use of curatives) or 86 (about 4.2% for a full clear last I tried). 

The problem leveling at this bracket that I found... was if you had an unstable connection. A lackluster connection at 80-90 was way more painful for me than it was at 70 or lower or 90-92 (where I am now) because you don't quite crit to make up for time and you lack a bit of health to make up for beefyness. So largely it becomes an issue for anyone with less than awesome ping to bash the best places at that level (Qurnok, Tsol'aa...) but not impossible. Voyria or Aduril walking in is just painful with any sort of lag is all.

Without adding another area that would just get bashed out because of the number of people that sit at those levels I don't see anything within reason to be done about this issue? Its possible to make it NOT a lull (personally, without a change to the game), but there are some factors that make it not as fast. 90-92 may have taken me the same time as 80-85 but I'm really not bothered by the fact that there are some slower parts and some faster parts and some more efficient parts of bashing.

Bottom line is I don't see a point in changing anything for this bracket.

Sylvance

This out to be in North of Thera. Unless I missed an idea in the OP somewhere?

Kyrra

It's asking for ideas?

Blujixapug

I think it's always going to be hard to level around that point. From ~80 until about 92, like Silas said, you begin to need so much more experience per level than previously, but you don't yet have that really high crit rate to make it easier to cruise through bashing areas.

Achaea is not WoW. Achaea does not have an "end-game". You don't need to reach max level before you can start participating in major activities. In fact there are no gameplay activities based around dragonhood - it's a reward, not an expectation. You only *need* to be around level 70 to have the health to compete in PK. I do think there should be high-level bashing areas, but I don't think they should be set up as rungs on a ladder to get people to level 99.

Naisar

I've always thought the gold standard for Achaean combat should be tri-trans + survival level 80.

Anyway, just chiming in with my anecdote.  85-92 was -ing godawful, even as a good bashing class.  Blows my mind that people did it with the slower ones.

Sylvance

Kyrra said:

It's asking for ideas?

Oh.

Sylvance

Naisar said:

I've always thought the gold standard for Achaean combat should be tri-trans + survival level 80.

Anyway, just chiming in with my anecdote.  85-92 was -ing godawful, even as a good bashing class.  Blows my mind that people did it with the slower ones.

Blows my mind that people did it before potash.

Eld

Silas said:

Level 92 gives a crit boost that really pushes you past the mid-80s doldrums. I think it's just that 80 is the first real bashing milestone, and then there's nothing until dragon. Only, level 80 is a very small percentage of the way to dragon. 91.15 or something is the halfway point, and on the next level you get the crit boost (I'm pretty sure this is true, though I have no data to back it up).

I wouldn't really be in favour of a hardcoded platform between 80 and 92, but there are more than enough orgs (unless you're Targossian) that could provide their own incentives to keep people plugging away.

In summary, Targ Houses next please.

Base crit rate is just ((level-25)/100)^3. There's no step at 92, or any other level, but it increases faster as you get to higher levels.

Iocun

I hit level ~84 years ago and I'm still only level 87. Part of the reason may be that I got more involved in PK then and I tend to die more often than I tend to kill, and any XP set back from dying makes me want to hunt even less, because the time spent needed to just make up for the loss seems disproportionate with how quickly I lost the XP, so I often just shrug it off and stay at that lower XP level until I can muster up the energy to hunt a bit, much later.

The other reason is that getting dragon simply doesn't sound awesome enough for me to really put much energy into it. Dragon is not a particularly interesting class, mechanically, due to the very linear and easy nature of its combat, and flavour-wise it has lost a lot of its pull due to the mere facts of there being so many other dragons around that becoming one isn't special in any way anymore. And I don't really want to RP a giant lizard anyways.

Sylvance

Totally agree. Dragon leaves me flaccid.

Sherazad

Raids, double xp helped me lots on the 80s.

Cooper

I think the issue more lies partly with traits, partly with artefacts, and partly due to the wide availability of defenses and generally better armor that all come together.

"Back in the day" only the strongest people in groups could kill the bodyguards in Moghedu (level cap was 75, before races were given buffs, etc). Then along came toughness, spirit shields, everyone always having a boar and moss tattoo, irid moss/potash becoming widely available, crits introduced, runes become available, more people forging so everyone has much better armor/weapons, traits that greatly increased health and survivability, a lot of bashers have artefacts now, mob damage on a lot of bashing attacks was raised, everyone has a cheap system they use that automatically cures much faster than people could before, etc.

What that all did was allow people to bash the high level areas much sooner than it was originally intended. You can bash Azdun at level 20-25 - that used to be a level ~55-60 area. You can bash Moghedu at 50. You can hit up Annwyn/UW (with risk of PK) at 65-70 fairly easily (this is "end game" bashing, designed for high levels)

So the areas that were somewhat designed for higher levels (Annwyn/UW, the new Moghedu, new Dun Valley, lots of others) are being done way earlier.

So I suppose long story short is that you aren't hurting at those levels, you're just getting to the point where the game catches up with you and it's where you should be instead of people bashing content not originally designed for them and thus giving them an experience boost.

Kalvon

> I've always thought the gold standard for Achaean combat should be tri-trans + survival level 80.

This may have been the case in the past, but as the game ages, so do the characters and their power. With elite membership and more advanced scripts raising the bar as time passes, any gold standard is going to be a moving target.

> Achaea is not WoW. Achaea does not have an "end-game". You don't need to reach max level before you can start articipating in major activities. In fact there are no gameplay activities based around dragonhood - it's a reward, not an expectation. You only *need* to be around level 70 to have the health to compete in PK. I do think there should be high-level bashing areas, but I don't think they should be set up as rungs on a ladder to get people to level 99.

Achaea's end-game is player-driven conflict (i.e. pvp). Level 70 is definitely not enough to be anywhere near competitive, attributed to my point above. More likely, your idea of 'compete in PK' differs from mine. At level 101, I still feel subpar in many areas of combat.

> because the time spent needed to just make up for the loss seems disproportionate with how quickly I lost the XP

I think what Iocun said makes sense. Around these levels, perhaps due to the availability of hunting grounds or the exp loss per death, the risk/reward ratio is disproportionate for those who do engage in pvp. I don't think this is a problem for those not involved in major conflict though.

Xli

It's also compounded by the sheer number of dragons who can rinse through areas such as Moghedu and Tir Muraan (sp?) without breaking a sweat, meaning the challenging areas are emptied out a lot of the time. Without some form of travel skill / artefact (eg wings, vibrating stick), a lot of time is spent walking from one empty area to the next

Penwize

Honestly, empty high-level bashing areas is increasingly becoming a problem for the casual basher who walks from empty area to empty area, and with the admin's recent statement that they aren't looking to expand the world I'm really worried that it's going to persist unchecked and unacknowledged.

Exelethril

Penwize said:

Honestly, empty high-level bashing areas is increasingly becoming a problem for the casual basher who walks from empty area to empty area, and with the admin's recent statement that they aren't looking to expand the world I'm really worried that it's going to persist unchecked and unacknowledged.

Yeah, I wonder why those areas are empty, Penwize  :-w

Iocun

Xli said:

It's also compounded by the sheer number of dragons who can rinse through areas such as Moghedu and Tir Muraan (sp?) without breaking a sweat, meaning the challenging areas are emptied out a lot of the time.

Hrm, seems I have to redouble my effort to make hunting Moghedu a pain!

As for Penwize's point: I wonder if npc respawns should be randomized a bit more, to make it harder to cycle through areas, cleaning them all out, and establishing a rhythm that disables anyone else from bashing there. More random respawn times would even this out a bit more.

Kalvon

Re: Penwize

I think in part this is due to scalability. Just a thought experiment, what would happen if one day Achaea marketing hits the jackpot and we suddenly get 10x more players? Can Achaea scale to accommodate? It probably wouldn't happen overnight so there'd be time to react and code solutions, but it'd be interesting to see some code that scales denizen difficulty/rewards/spawn based on players online.

Blujixapug

Kalvon said:

> Achaea is not WoW. Achaea does not have an "end-game". You don't need to reach max level before you can start articipating in major activities. In fact there are no gameplay activities based around dragonhood - it's a reward, not an expectation. You only *need* to be around level 70 to have the health to compete in PK. I do think there should be high-level bashing areas, but I don't think they should be set up as rungs on a ladder to get people to level 99.

Achaea's end-game is player-driven conflict (i.e. pvp). Level 70 is definitely not enough to be anywhere near competitive, attributed to my point above. More likely, your idea of 'compete in PK' differs from mine. At level 101, I still feel subpar in many areas of combat.

If you feel sub-par it's probably because of skills, artifacts, curing, general experience with PK, or the scenarios in which you're fighting (eg. raids as a class without range) - not your health pool, provided you have about 3500-4000 health.

Bashing somewhat affects your skills and artifacts, because it's a source of gold, but otherwise there's not a lot of connection between bashing and PK. You don't become better at PK by being a higher level. Level affects your health pool, and gives you a couple more traits, but that's about it.

Echald

Kalvon said:

Re: Penwize

I think in part this is due to scalability. Just a thought experiment, what would happen if one day Achaea marketing hits the jackpot and we suddenly get 10x more players? Can Achaea scale to accommodate? It probably wouldn't happen overnight so there'd be time to react and code solutions, but it'd be interesting to see some code that scales denizen difficulty/rewards/spawn based on players online.

The solution most modern MMOs have taken for this seems to be instances. The other measure being that a higher level player would have little reason to revisit an area below his level, but since clearing 'level 80s' areas will always be especially quick and profitable for dragons, they will always do so. Even if you created one or two dragon-only areas it would be always be cleared and the dragons would continue to clear the same previous areas with equal haste.

Also, the significant increase in credits gained from levels did increase their value somewhat.

Cooper

Kalvon said:

Re: Penwize

I think in part this is due to scalability. Just a thought experiment, what would happen if one day Achaea marketing hits the jackpot and we suddenly get 10x more players? Can Achaea scale to accommodate? It probably wouldn't happen overnight so there'd be time to react and code solutions, but it'd be interesting to see some code that scales denizen difficulty/rewards/spawn based on players online.

An interesting thought, but after ~14-15 years with a fairly steady active population I doubt Achaea will see explosive growth like that ever.

Tagg

After playing the rest of IRE frequently, and then coming back and having to bash essence for unenemy reqs, Achaea's bashing sucks. There's really no other word for it. It's entirely possible for one or two people who are good at bashing to monopolize all areas worth doing. The only other option is either deep sea diving (which obviously requires a ship) or sticking your ship somewhere like Prin to ship return to (which requires having a ship that's otherwise useless except for ship returning).

It doesn't even need world expanding, take areas nobody bashes in for whatever reason and repurpose them, make one or two of them instanced, throw in areas that spawn in waves the more you kill that's nearly impossible to bash out yourself etc. etc. They took the time to churn out a bunch of islands approximately 1% of the playerbase has probably visited, why not do something that's actually useful for more of the game?

But coder limitations and very busy etc. etc.

Naisar

The issue is complicated somewhat because Achaea has multiple axes of progression that influence a character's bashing power. Level, skills, equipment (armor/weapons), and artefacts all play a part.  In other MMOs there's usually only level and equipment, and the value of your equipment is tied very closely to your level.  This creates a very tight window of viable zones to quest/bash whatever.  There will be outliers, but the (usually) nonlinear progression of stats means that no one is going to be doing zones 10 levels higher than them, and anything more than 4 levels below you is usually a waste of time.  This narrow window allows developers much more control over what a character's journey looks like and keeps the population evenly distributed over the zones.

Now in Achaea, the two things you care about are health and crit rate.  Health scales linearly, compressing the difference between levels.  Crit rate isn't linear, but only becomes a factor very far along in levels, and only has a significant effect on what areas you can take once you're in the nineties.  So right off the bat, there's going to be a lot more competition for the best bashing areas because there's not that much of a difference between level 68 and 78.

The different axes of progression, linear stat scaling, and difference between classes' bashing power mean that there's a ridiculously wide spread in the power of the population layered on top of the fact that each player has access to a very large range of viable areas.  The competition for the good ones is correspondingly fierce because there are so many characters that can do it, and there's no dedicated end game to remove characters from the pool.

I'm not sure there's an easy solution for that.