About a year ago my available playtime was seriously cut down as my wife gave birth to our first child; a beautiful Baby-Ffaffner! This has made my playing profile alter quite heavily towards the very casual/retired MMO’er.
I’ve been participating in Rift beta and therefore bought the damn thing hoping my “schedule would clear up”. It really didnt but still I’ve managed to squeeze in a few hours of Rift each week so far. By now you can probably imagine how little I actually play, and eventhough my time is very limited, I have one big gripe with this game: It’s WAAAAAAAY too fast! The speed I’m talking about is ofcourse the speed of levelling. You can’t friggin’ pass a wind in this game without being handed a considerable XP reward. Everything gives loads and loads of XP, and it really ruins the experience for me, that I can’t delve into different areas of the game without outlevelling other areas.
It’s not like I demand to be able to do every single quest and daily out there, but as a VERY casual player it surprises me, that I would run into this problem. As an example, I’ve decided not to move to next tier zones without having finished the current tier instance and possbily every story-quest there is. THis means that I have to almost stay away from ANY rift-hunting, as they yield so much XP, that I would either out-level or trivialize the quests I’m going for.
Right now I “park” my main at the end of a tier and play an alt instead. I have to wait until I can get a guild-group together to do the tier instance, before I can play him again, and I cant even take him out for a rift-spin because of the xp-rewards from killing mobs; even helping guildies out on my main can tip me over the level-top.
Another example is my alt. He is a butcher, which means every time I have to farm for my tradeskill I get LOADS of XP from killing mobs…there’s just now way of stopping that XP bar!!
In my opinion XP-gain could be easily reduced by 30% in Rift. It’s not like you would ever run out of stuff to level from. I still remember levelling in EQ1 which was simply a matter of grouping up, picking a camp and then killing mobs until the sun went down (and up again). In Rift Trion really made the perfect setting for a game with medium to low xp-gain. With dailies, rifts popping up everywhere and zonewide quests you could never run out of ways to level, even if you had finished every quest in a zone without getting a high enough level to move on. Sadly this isn’t the case. Now I have to bypass content I find interesting, because every single time I whip my eyelashes, inhales or scratches my arse theres a chunk of xp coming my way.
And don’t even get me started on this new World Event….how the hell can I in ANY way participate without outlevelling the quest-line I’m currently doing? You know, these questlines have stories attached to them, and I sure hate to give up in the middle of a good story.
I could go on bitching about how this lightspeed levelling also has a negative impact on the usefulness of crafted equipment, but I won’t…not yet.
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I've just about got over the fact there's a post from Ffaffner.
Seriously though, it's a good point you raise Ffaff. I am now 32 and doing some achievements in Scarlet Gorge. I like to leave a zone when I've done all the achievements I can do without severe pain, so all apart from rare mobs and collections.
I'm currently doing the ancient wardstone quest which means I have to kill a fair few mobs and as a result am moving onto 33. The problem here is the quests finish at about 29 which although it's only a few levels behind it does mean I start the next zone a few levels higher than I should and so on.
I am not sure I'll be able to experience everything at the right level with Yetian as I think Moonshade Highlands begins in the mid 30's so by the time I've done the zone next to the Gorge I will be a bit high for some of that.
I'll probably end up doing some quests grey but hey there's no other way. It would be nice to have an EQ2 style xp switching system so I could turn off combat xp, quest xp or everything.
It's not putting me off the game as I am really enjoying Rift but it is a bit of a gripe as you say.
Yetian is my main so I'll be trying to complete as much as possible with him. It's early in the game, maybe they will bring in some kind of self mentor system like EQ2, afterall that game didn't have half the features it does not at release.
I enjoy Rift also, but this thing is putting me a bit off. When I started Rift I knew my time was very limited. This was the reason I decided to take it easy and try to slowly digest all the content at my own pace…to really immerse myself in Trions game, exaclty as I have been doing in LOTRO (no better game for that IMO). But the damn game keeps nudging me along!
Now, I COULD cope with all this IF the promised mentoring system had been in place from the get go. In fact, the promised implementation of a mentoring system was the primary reason I got Rift in the first place. It is a feature SO dearly missed in LOTRO, that it made me semi-switch to Rift.
Eventhough I got sick of EQ2 and stopped playing it, on paper I think still think it is one of the best MMO's out there. And it's great legacy will IMO forever be the (working) concept of mentoring. It simply boosts the social aspect of an mmo in a very unique way.
Perhaps I shouldnt have jumped aboard Rift from the get go and simply waited a bit until this stuff was in place…if it ever will be.