What I meant by a good medium was that I don't want to see experience handled like it was in Vanilla WoW or Post-Cataclysm WoW. Vanilla WoW was notorious for making you have to grind mobs to get a few levels so you could finally start another zone, while post-Cata you never had to worry about it. I don't mind having to grind mobs for that last 1/4 of my experience bar to get a level, but I don't want to have to grind for 3 levels because I ran out of quests to do. That's what I mean by a good medium.

I am tired of the trend of hitting level cap in a week tops, for sure. I didn't vote though because I want exp gain on all facets of the gain, just in a smaller dose than we usually get.

I also welcome back the days of grinding mobs being a legitimate way to level, and wish some game would find a nice hybrid of questing and mob-camp-grinding to choose from. I actually liked sitting in a group camped up somewhere and having our "puller" go bring mobs for the group to kill. FFXI party leveling was awesome until you realized it was the ONLY option. I want that option, AND the option to go quest solo if I want to. Never understood why games gotta be one or the other.

See I don't mind do a bit of grinding. Like maybe at most a levels worth. But I hate having to do 3-4 levels of grinding just because there weren't enough quests/things to do that garnered enough experience so I could go to the next area to do stuff there. But everyone's different though. Some truly loving grinding and others really don't. That's why I hope they make a good enough medium for it.

I agree 100%, I miss the days when you could just pick a monster, find the one that gives the greatest reward and camp it over and over again. I certainly don't want it to be the main method of leveling, but that should always be an option. It takes away meaning from individual locations if you just move on and be done with that area forever, having a reason to come back is something I will always enjoy and encourage to be in a game. There's no sense of nostalgia if you visit a place only once, and there's no reason to come back or to pay a game again if you don't have any meaningful memories built into a place - only the endgame/cyrodiil will have that, which imo isn't enough.

I'd like to have it like this:
- EXP from fighting only
- items and gold from quests only
- epic weapons form the deepest tomb and the hardest (game destroying) daedric quests only

that (imho) would be TES style

Having two 80s in GW2, I cant really be arsed with alts even though I find both of my 80s to be boring... But then again every class is kinda boring in GW2, which is totally besides the point....

Generally speaking in MMOs I tend to pvp, and RP, and do some quests for fun. Forced grinding of mobs is about the most boring thing there is, same as repeating the same dungeons ten times, often more, just to get some snazzy loot is really boring - to me. Semi-fast lvling does not bother me at all since it lets me focus on what I think is fun - exploring, killing player characters in sieges, and RPing. And given that pvp will be slower on the xp than PvE Im already stuck in the slower lvling slot.

There should never be a "forced" way of leveling. I just stated that having the option to grind quests or grind monster faces should be equally viable, perhaps with different rewards (higher exp on the mobs, more loot on the quests).

I think skills should be trained over time and not gained by experience points. So your character will gain skills even when your logged out of the game, much like Eve Online and Age of Wushu do. This way it slows player down without actualy making it look like they are being held back.

There are really mixed opinions on this, so maybe we do need a way to let the players decide individually. The only place I have seen anything like this done (could be that this exists in loads of other places too, but my experience of MMOs in limited) is in WoW. In WoW there was a person that you could pay to turn your exp gain off, when you had done this you would be in different battlegrounds from everyone else because obviously the longer you spend of one level the better your items and mastery of your skills will be.

I thought that this was good mechanically but not so great from an RP perspective. I would rather that the option to turn off (or turn down) exp was not in the game itself but in an option menu somewhere. That way I can tell myself that my character not learning stuff so fast because he is missing someone or something like that. Makes it easier to put it into an RP context but it’s nit-picking really.

Not once in all the time I've played MMOs have I ever wished it would take even longer to level up. Watching that xp bar move about half a centimetre when you turn in five quests is depressing.

This is not about slowing down the leveling. It is about balancing it so when you do an area, you haven't leveled up so much you pretty much have to skip the next area.

What is xp gain for if not leveling? I think an MMO should give you the freedom to level how you wish. Restricting xp to force you through a linear leveling path is not something I like.

I'd like low-exp gain and less rewards. Rewards just make you feel that "you did the right thing" - if it comes to events. Turning sieges into events for example while playerkills don't give that much reward ... Is just not balanced. It makes you think: "Why killing players in a PvP zone if I get better rewarded by sieging?"

Same thing for balancing rewards of defending and sieging. Defending should always be more important ... But rewarding sieging more make most players also think that defending isn't that important.

Frankly, rewards are never just about leveling. I guess you will also get some kind of reward at level 50. I'd really love to see less rewards than GuildWars 2 gave since you just have more freedom. You also never have that feeling: "Oh, dang! I shouldn't miss that sieging or boss event!" - Too many rewards push that feeling.

I've wished it a few times, though mostly in hindsight.

Usually what I'm wishing for, though, is that there were more levels and smaller gains between them.

The way I see this, all really comes down to the progression design, in an economy where getting even slightly better gear is meaningful, progression feels more rewarding, some may feel "support actions" do indeed worth the time invested. If a sense of progression fails in other areas of the game experience, then people will over/compensate with exp grinding, to get ahead -- faster.

PS: I also really like segmented levels, where you get mini milestones to look forward to. Although I would not make them evenly rewarding, so players do anticipate the next level.

Current level = 1----10%----20%----40%----60%----(100%) 2 = levelup

something like this

Xp is for leveling. I think what he is saying is that he is not asking the games to make leveling slower, just balance the xp so you don't shoot past places because the place you just did gave too much xp in that area. Does that make sense?

Modern MMO's give us to much exp that's right i would really love it if they would slow down a lot, but also i dont want it to be like the really old ones where i had to lvl 4-6 months befor i reached max lvl.

Hmmm...now this is just a thought and I have no idea how it would really work out. But what if you could prestige your character? Which basically means you relevel that character again for some small benefit at the end.

How would you guys feel about that? How would you implement such a feature or what problems do you see with such a thing?

Slower and more balanced leveling so that you don't have to skip content is aways better. It would be nice if it actually took 120h to get to max lvl like they said, but i'm not going to believe that.

Oh and can we not have epic music, screen shaking and disco lights every time you level up? It's something that really bothers me in mmos. You get to lvl 2 in the tutorial and you get this rediculous message popping up saying OMG YOUR SO [censored] FOR DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!1! followed by some rediculous lightig show

Maybe the best idea would be to give people a slider.

Slider at normal 100% XP and normal loot drops. Want to level slower? Move the slider down. Want to level a bit faster? Move the slider up. But the scale should be balanced with loot drops. So if I want more XP, I can have it at the cost of some of my loot. If I want less XP, I can have that too and get a little bit extra loot.

Sounds perfect

So once you reach max level you just turn the scale so you maximize loot drops? Not sure that would work.

So maybe turn it off at max level?

I guess, that just seems like an inelegant and jarring solution.

I found it hard to vote - there's at least one other option to the first question that's been mentioned a few times here, i.e., the ability to lower or turn off xp on your own. I've used that a lot in games that feature it. That said, I hate the bs of "rested" xp and extra xp for special events - like Crimsonraziel said, it's like the game is gonna damn well force you to level up whether you want to or not.

Forgive the tangent, but this problem can be partially alleviated by using instancing for levelling quests. It's really difficult to adjust open-world difficulty (and rewards, if rewards are scaled to difficulty) to the player's level, but very easy to do in instances. Combine this with a radiant-like quest mechanism, and a character could get a lot more mileage out of each area. Plus, the open-world content would remain for those who prefer a more traditional leveling path.

Another tangent - more and more games feature a level-matching system of some kind, where a character's level is adjusted to the level of the area, or where all characters in a group are adjusted to the level of the highest level character (or lowest, or median). Rewards are adjusted accordingly; a low-level character who's matched to a higher level still receives xp and rewards appropriate for his "real" level.

Granted, I'm not sure how that would work in TESO if its mechanics are true to the TES games, but I hope it's something Zenimax is thinking about.