IMHO, one of the biggest offenses in today's MMOs is the way they throw experience at players that make us level up way too fast. The give xp for killing, questing, exploring, PvPing, crafting, reaching minor goals(you killed 10 goats 200xp!), special events xp(like in NWN, you get xp, just for praying to a god once an hour), you even get resting xp, xp booster packs, tec. It is way too much.

The major problem I have with so much xp is that I level up through areas WAY too fast, so when I get to the next area, it is too low for me to do, so I skip it and go to the next. Another problem I have is, I travel with a friend and we try to stay the same level. Problem is, I like to craft and he does not. In most games that makes me out level him pretty quickly. So that means I can not craft on that character unless he finds some way to gain xp some other way. But then we both out level the zones we are in, and that svcks as well.

I wish I could just get xp for questing and killing. I would like to have a switch to turn off all other xp gain.

Before anyone thinks I have all the time in the world to play. I do not. I post 90% of the time from my work. I really don't have a lot of time to play, but that does not mean I want to level up my character ASAP. I want to take my time to play slowly and have fun exploring all the levels at a nice pace.

What do you guys think?

Edit:

Nice idea.

Yeah because there's nothing worse than running out of quests in a zone and having to grind monsters for hours on end just to get enough XP to move on to the next area.

Oh wait...

Its tricky one, because it needs to work for casual players (those who play 2 hour per day) and for those hardcoe players (who play 8+ per day) averagely. Both are needed.

Ive suggested massive-gold-sink for cosmetic items, grind your ass off gold and get uber look, nicer hair styles, mounts with cooler mount armor, decorated armors, houses (houses full of gold later..) maybe even for servants.. who knee next to you. Awesome stuff what casuals doesnt mind but are pissed off as hardcoe players has those. Also later those who've played since launch has all the cool stuff, and noobs looks awful, yep, they envy veterans.

Maybe casuals could use their gold to progress faster? hardcoe players can throw all their money at massive gold sink. ALSO, if your friend is veteran in ESO, and you're starting playing, your friend could give you tons of gold to get good char asap.

I say no, but I do find it weird getting so much experience while crafting. I'd rather gain experience from questing, exploring etc.

Gaining 3 levels by just making things and not having a kill. I find strange.

You don't need to kill something to improve your skills and healthiness...I think you learn a hell of a lot more making something than you would if you killed a rat, cat, wolf etc etc.,.

So why do you consider it weird? Just want to understand the though process there.

I would welcome an option which allows us to determine levelling speed. I hate it when there are too-easy areas because I received 1000Xp from bringing back a lost item to an NPC.

But, if I understand correctly, Skyrim gives only XP for using your skills. In that case, the problem is thankfully limited, and I really hope that TESO does not go down with the WoW-crowd. In my opinion, skills should only raise when using it is still a challenge. No, please, more smithing of 200 iron daggers when you actually want to learn how to improve glass armor! Leave the former to achievement [censored]s and give them maybe another graphic for that 10000th iron dagger.

Although it seems weird leveling mostly by crafting, leveling does not necessarily show how strong you are at PvP or PvE. It is your overall experience as a player. I voted XP rate is fine as long as there is not hours of grinding, instead of moderate grinding, and Resting should not give you that much experience. I personally believe that you should not receive XP for not doing anything.

before wow most leveling was done from straight up grinding monsters. you would find a camp site and stay there until you leveled a couple times then you moved on. now i never had much issue with this as i found mmo games to be friendlier and more social back then. now they are made to be solo to cap so thats what everyone does. with that in mind i prefer the questing to leveling system over the grind to level. i do not agree with the gw2 system of every little thing you do grants you experience. so really i think wow has it right with the questing to level system but they clearly have made it so players level to fast now by doing it. then again most players just want to skip all the game content and get to end game right now so really its the players fault and not the devs. TESO does sound like they will have a longer leveling experience though

In many mmos these days, XP are everywhere. You can't hide yourself. They'll track you down and level you up, no matter what.
I mean, doing your main story is mostly enough to be always on the appropriate level. By doing side quests you are overleveled in no time.
Doing some additional PvP or dungeons, because you like it, it becomes ludicrious. The entire game looses its challenge, if there ever was any.

It turns into some kind of sightseeing tour until you reach the so called "endgame content".

I don't want level grind, but doing some things besides main quests should be necessary to be always on the appropriate level.

Just one bad example: Ignoring PvP, dungeons and all group quests, only completing your story and doing single player side quests results in being max level before even starting the final chapter. Yes I'm talking about SWTOR!

I didn't vote because I don't really have a sense of how fast it is or easy to acquire in ESO. Also, fast XP gain doesn't bother me so much because I'm rarely paying attention to that anyway during my travels. As for their claims of 15 hours to level 10 and 120 to level 50, that will take the average player at 4 hours per day, 30 days to reach max level and I think that's fine. For those few out there it will take 3 days but for the majority, an average of 30 days is not bad in this day and age. You can max level GW2 at 4 hours a day in 6 days and you can do WoW at 4 hours a day in 8 so 30 is pretty good (if their numbers are accurate that is).

Did not vote, since the poll is biased. There is no way I can vote without voting to decrease something.

To me, 120 hours of game time to reach maximum level is too much.

biased poll due to the need to answer question 2 which gives no option for leaving things as is

Agreed!

I think you have not played DDO. Or any other games where content needed to be repeated so heavily, that whoever reached CAP really really earned it . I like non linear gameplay better. I may want to explore that area, and skip another two in exchange while keeping the feeling progression.

I also dont like to work the game, and maybe when I consider running an alt I will sure appreciate the quick progression, and may experiement with multiple character builds on occasion.

Faster leveling just have too many benefits over grinding.

On the other hand I wouldnt mind an option to support hardcoe rules, just the way many games have done before. Start a character, tag it "hardcoe" or whatever and stricter rules apply. Same goes for permadeath, some folks like that kind of thing.

it would be nice to see a long leveling curve but each max character would give your account a perm % to xp gains so if you wanted to roll alts they would level a bit faster

I would rather end up grinding a bit that out level interesting quests. Even when I do out level a quest I always complete it. I hate to think that my character did not save person x or help person y just because there was nothing in it for me, but at the same time doing a quest you have out leveled is dull. I remember that older pokemon had loads of grinding in it, and that never bothered me, so I don't have any objection to tilting the balance towards a potential grind instead of outleveling the content before I get to enjoy it.

I'm not voting, because I don't care, but it makes me pick an option in the second question to cast my vote and skews my results.

But anyways, don't care. There should be a "none" option in the second question.

I was actually suggesting that killing and questing should be balanced with each area. This way you are not stuck grinding, but also you would not out level the area too fast.

How many hours you play should not matter. It is not a race to 50. Like i said before, i can not play that many hours myself. That does not mean I should get all these huge bonuses to rush me to the top. I'm not even implying to take away all these bonuses, I just want to turn them off for me and people like me, who think leveling is way too fast.

I have played DDO. I am in no way suggesting that you should have to repeat the same quests over and over. That is just bad game design.

Slow the exp down, make reaching max level actually feel like an accomplishment!. I remember when DAOC came out it people that stuck with 1 character about 6 months to even get close to max level. When someone hit level 50 it was like a really big deal. Call me old school but i think quest exp should be turned way down and just straight killing mobs (or grinding as some call it)turned up a little. Personally id rather be killing and working on my cambat rather than runing back and forth talking to NPcs and gather stuff....

Another idea would be to drastically reduce the exp being rewarded after each level gained for say 24 hours... then it resets back to full. people who play hardcoe wouldnt be getting as crazy far ahead but they would still be getting all that gold and item drops for their time invested.

I would like to be able to have a switch. While I will take my time to level up the first time, I would probably want to go much faster with alts.

I like this idea. I never roll alts but this would be cool for sure.

We don't even know if crafting or doing achievements will even give experience. And if they do it should be very minimal not a lot at all.

But I do not want to have to grind mobs to get a few levels because they didn't tune experience good enough. If anyone remembers Vanilla WoW and once you hit level 57 you would run out of quests so you would have to go and farm Silithus for those last 3 levels. That was one of the worst things about WoW at the time. Experience was very undertuned back then. But I don't want to see it where it's like now where if you were to do every quest in each zone you'd have outleveled the zone 2/3 of the way through.

I'm sure ZOS will come up with a good medium on how to work on experience. That's one of the things they will fix in Beta if it feels either too slow or too fast.

No.. maybe slow the exp gain like you said, but don't limit the ways you can level up, that's completely stupid. Leveling shouldn't all be about questing and killing monsters, that's not what a game is about, and I'm sorry if you think it should be that way. Getting exp from crafting sounds fantastic, I don't know why they would remove that, and I don't know what having optional switches for turning on and off exp gain for certain things would do.. not sure if many can handle that responsibility.

Sadly theres no good medium... one guy might grind 2 week to get something, and one player might call it quits after 10 hour. Considering in what kind of deep [censored] this genre is, both of them are equally important.

Hmm.. make it casual but give hardcoe folks something to grind for, OR then give hell to all players at launch and make them all work and see how far you get.