[WaifuApple]

I don't believe making more EXP items that you have to do dungeons to obtain in the first place. Grinding being tedious is a problem that won't be solved with a grind to get better EXP. That'd still screw over new people. I'm not asking for BDPs to be skipped entirely, but for an EXP increase. It's only when people can't be tower grinded that you'd want to opt into dungeoning for levels, in most of the cases I've seen, and BDPs would still be used for item hunting, so they won't be made irrelevant.

[Shujin]

I still rather have it so, that the mentality of "being 60 is mandatory" is removed, and there are things around beside it, before we devalue level 60 even more than it is already. And I think instead of making it easier to hit 60, the exploitable and easy ways should be removed. Like Towergrind. Then working on making it more interesting and having more things you can do by the by.

In my unpopular opinion, I rather have to work for something over a long period of time (this IS a long time RPG, after all.) than having it a joke that you can reach within a day...Even without friends. I start Characters here and there and it never takes me longer than a few hours (depending on BDP luck) to run through them till I am near sixty and the rest can easily be obtained by clinics/Scars/RP exp/Black beast raid Exp.

[Lolzytripd]

agree that you should have to work, but after your first character you should be able to skip to endgame grindfest in away, with all the exp legend extends so you can go be a real grindy boy.

1 level 60 would only maintain an unlock on 2 other slots on the key, its not really abusable for spamming new characters.

[WaifuApple]

I don't agree with you at all Shujin. We shouldn't remove the ways of making the worst thing in the game better, especially if we're expected to then wait for the problem that would make larger to be fixed afterwards. If you're going to remove stuff like tower grinding, remove it after you've fixed the problem.

Grinding in the dungeons right now is painful, and it wouldn't be a good idea to say "Oh, I know. Let's remove the less-painful ways of getting levels, and then make everyone wait for a solution after!"

In that time, I can almost guarantee there will be a drop in popularity. The game might even die because of it. So, to me, that suggestion is stupid, and potentially damaging. A longer grind won't crush the level 60 mentality, either, because people will still aim for that, and you'll still be at a disadvantage if you're at anything under.

A game like this seems to be intended for roleplay, and if we're going to make the non-roleplay section even longer, less characters will be made, and less roleplay will be done, which is not a good idea.

[Sawrock]

The grind to reach sixty can be done within a day's time- even without the Tower Grind. That is not slow.

Calling Shujin's opinion stupid is not very constructive. You say it'll drop the game's popularity, but new players are given no indication about the Tower Grind method, so it will have no instances of new players leaving, just players who are making additional characters.

The "reach level 60" mentality will never go away as long as a cap of level 60 exists. The only way to get rid of it would be either to introduce a capless system (which would be a terrible idea for multiple reasons such as giving old players a grip on power that new players can't achieve), or making it like when the game was first released and getting to level 60 took many months (which many people bypassed by spamming "aaaaaaaaa" to get RP exp anyways, myself not included). This is unavoidable. People want to roleplay strong characters- and they should be able to, anyways. Don't make your character's skills and level determine their usefulness. Make your roleplay and actions decide that.

[WaifuApple]

It is slower than conventional tower grinding, and is rather mundane to go with it. In a game where everyone really just wants to get into the RP, I don't think there's any merit to an idea that then takes away the fastest means of cutting down something that is just... boring. Sure, you can do it in a day, but that's a pretty lackluster day. I'm sorry for calling the idea stupid, but I do stand by the idea that it is just that, however unconstructive that is to say. The idea of making the problem worse before fixing it does not seem all that reasonable, to me, but maybe that's just me.

I have had a really long, boring week trying to grind a character up, and I'm not even done, because there was nobody around to grind them. In fact, alone, I'd still be at a very low level, and I had to rely on people wanting to dungeon too. To me, the tower currently helps with a problem that exists because I honestly would rather not go through that mundane experience again just to create a character that won't get destroyed when RP turns to PvP (and in that situation your attempts to play a powerful character amount to honestly nothing), and I don't support any "Make tower grinding less useful" idea unless it's suggested to be after there's a meaningful update to dungeons. To suggest making the grind more boring before dungeons are improved does risk a negative period for the game.

Tower grinders may not apply to new people, no, but when I was new I survived because I had people to help me. Not everyone has that in this dungeon system, so while removing the tower wouldn't affect them (And it would affect everyone else, negatively, which is a reason I'm against it), they're still subjected to the mundaneness that is dungeons. I hardly see any new people that stick around. Only the same faces.

But, If we were to make dungeons more interesting, instead of increasing the experience reward, why don't we suggest some things that could be done? Dungeons need to feel fun and fulfilling, so any ideas that could add that aspect to it (which I do not believe it has right now) would work.

[Chaos]

As stated earlier in this thread, people are going to surge for the maximum level for various reasons, no matter how you try to slice it. Making the climb to level 60 'longer and better' is a lost cause at this point, due to the sheer number of characters that reached it. We are FAR better off making a higher 'power ceiling', so to speak, and giving it a slower, more thorough progression if we wanted to 'fix' progression in any way.

As for the topic's suggestion, I'm going to be perfectly blunt and honest:

If we would stop getting tunnel vision over PvP and start focusing on PvE, giving constructive criticism and maybe some suggestions towards fleshing out dungeons/letting dungeon items be actually useful/making mobs more interesting or challenging to fight, then we might have a 'grind' that's not either clicking a statue in a tower until death, nor running through randomly generated dungeon #5034297 with just food regen and mindlessly mowing down mobs.

As much as we like to say 'PvE is boring....', this state of affairs is entirely our fault. We treat PvE as a chore, so we get PvE as a chore. Complaining to Dev that 'we need better dungeons' isn't going to magically fix this. Not when we're just as happy to go straight back to the ol' Tower Grind afterwards. Or worse, when we're asked 'well what should be done then' and everyone goes straight for 'more pvp things'.

Perhaps elaborating on 'making dungeons more fun/interesting' will push things in the right direction? Just a suggestion.

[Autumn]

I've tried to say this in the past but I fully agree with Chaos here, PvE can be fun if you treat it as such, I for one do grind in dungeons regularly and respect a bunch of the content, that said it can't be denied that the leveling process in this game just isn't friendly to new players, or even veterans in general.

It can't be denied either that tower grinding is simply put way superior to any other form of grinding currently, and in the last topic brought up about this I even suggested that we should streamline the leveling process, making dungeons such as Shilo's Water Cavern (lvl 15) in a similar manner as the jammer Cavern.

When it comes to the Jammer cavern it seems to get you going until about lvl 14 fairly well, you get some optional quests to do, and a cool boss fight at the end, as well as coming back there later for snakeman business, now imagine Shilo's Water Cavern but as an adventure into a water cavern for some sort of thing related to pirates, there's a pirate inside who is an acclaimed sea hunter and tasks you to set forth and kill oceanblood similar to the adventurer in Jammer Cavern, there could be a cool boss fight and a mini story, but not related to the main story, this quest would probably provide a significant amount of EXP to help level up faster.

Say you do this dungeon until lvl 25, and then you get another dungeon that leads you into a bandit's den, with its own story relating to Air from Cellsvich, as she warns you of bandits at the very start of the game even and has you seek them out, you do this until lvl 35, continue back up on the story since this is where you usually go to fight Ashe (You'll probably be lvl 40ish by here), and then you get another dungeon, this one lasts you until 50, and then at that point lvl 50 could simply be "Alright, you know the game, now go out and grind out random BDPs or do sidequests like the Manor or Snakeman stuff."

[Shujin]

@Apple
First of all-> Less characters being made if that were the case, is pretty much what I am aiming for. Making many characters is NOT good for RP, trust me. There are reasons why manyRP games rule you to have one/maximum 2 characters. Not saying we should add a Limit, but too many characters within one person is basically just a dozen of unfleshed out characters that only show themselves periodically which results in less interactions with them and less Character building for them, since you have to divide your attention between them. MOST people can't do that. Honestly, I have seen no one in SL2 who CAN.
Secondly-> As Saw pointed out, no it will not drop the popularity of the game. Most people do not know about it, at worst it removes a unfair advantage oldbies with friends have.


I fully agree that there should be something happening before it gets removed, But yeah Chaos is absolutely right here. I tried to suggest serval things now that could make things more interesting outside of PvP and even PvE. things that you can do by the by which is just fun. But if everyone is just focusing on PvP I guess that's what Dev tries to fix/Improve first. So yeah, maybe we should all push more for PvE/General Gameplay content after the trait rework is done. But as Chaos says, this is something the community as a whole needs to support and voice towards Dev. Always complaining about how boring it is, will not really help...And maybe once we as a community have done that we can actually fix the progression system as well.

@Spo
Yeah more actual static dungeons like the first Jammer Cave would actually be very nice, I fully agree on that.

@Chaos
I fully agree, there isn't much to add to that. The power ceiling should remain untouched though, in my opinion, for the time being at least. I think the base of the game should get "Fixed" first, before something like that is going to be considered. But yeah, This topic has been flying around for a while now, and most people disagree with a raise of it/ Making it longer, because of how boring it is currently and they want to avoid as much time they can spending on it. I assume(hope) that once things are more interesting we can actually come up with something that makes Progression not feel like a bad joke.

@Saw
Yeah I know people want that, I am not against that. But yeah as you said back then when it took a while? I honestly enjoyed the game much more, it just felt better as an RPG game. SL2 is the only RPG/RP I know that is longtime without wipes and you can reach maximum within a day. I don't think a Game should be designed like this. It takes away all feeling of accomplishment and progression out of the game. So thats probably what we should try to work towards, by making the general game content better and shove PvP away for a while.

[WaifuApple]

Well, someone had to complain to get people to start bringing up these points. Jammer Cavern has a flaw in the fact that for some reason I only ever get random encounters on the first two floors, and then the floors after that start to seem... unpopulated?

In regards to making dungeons better, I know one problem immediately. That problem is that AIs are just dumb as all hell (see: Red Gorgon using their rolling move even if there's a dense tile between them and the enemy) and most times their challenge comes from multiple of them in the same place, rather than any of them having much power at all alone. That, and they don't really work as a team, much, either. They mostly seem to just focus on complete offensive entirely, when there could be enemies that exist not to attack, but to support the enemies they're paired with. Some enemies like Kinu and Ashe (but not as powerful) that appear alone would be really nice, since Kinu and Ashe are unique, special snowflakes. This could especially work for a powerful bandit, since they're person enough?

It would be nice to have more dungeons like the jammer cave, and the other three we have, spread across levels, instead of the static dungeons that are just one floor BDPs that don't have a core and never despawn, too. Maybe a forest to explore (not one with player housing) or wintery cave, something along those lines that doesn't look like a BDP.