Well, at this point, after doing grinding in several locations (both Group and Solo), the leveling curve is just a killer... I would much rather be able to do group quests and the like (go through some content and a story line. Who would have thought this would be a good idea to have in an MMO, right?.......) to get a lot of the experience versus killing 10's of thousands of mobs over and over and over and...... As it stands now, we need a new Experience Bar just for our current experience bar, because each % gained post lvl 50 feels like a level in itself! If you're the kind of person who really loves the content 1 - 50, then the game basically ends for you at 50. Prepare for mindnumbing grind...

I just really hope they are working on some varied content for the post-50 endeavors.

Surely the levels were not made so huge, and then expectations set for the mass segment of the playerbase to kill the same kind of mob for 100's of millions of XP at 20K per kill... surely not.

I'm maintaining a wait and see attitude, and really not worried about leveling up beyond 51 (I have my main, and my primary alt along with my brotherhooded friend leveled to 51.) I can play a lot more than your average player with job, kid, and perhaps another hobby or two... most of these kind of players just don't see leveling up happening fast enough for them to keep up with other members of the raid force.

With the changes we've seen to Siliusaurus, we're dubious about having to level up just to regain access to mobs we used to farm before PoTA. With losing xp in APW, no one wants to die repeatedly trying to figure out the changes to the mobs. IMO, APW needs to be looked at, experience-wise. There's one raid dungeon in the game... maybe it needs to at least go xp-neutral.... with neither xp loss nor xp gain. The current setup where folks lose more xp  than they gain from raiding makes APW much more sparsely populated than it was. It's a shame to kill the one raid dungeon we have by raising the level cap, making xp so precious, but then setting players up for xp loss while raiding.

I haven't been able to do APW since being back in the game, but I thought no APW mobs were changed at all?

Did this change?

Kcxiv@Seradon wrote:

P.S just got back from watching the Lakers game. GO LAKERS!

I LOVE live basketball The Screeech of the sneakers.. the slapping of sweaty players hitting the wooden floor... the Hrruooomph of the guys slamming into eachother as they all jump for the basket... much better than tv!

Kindair@Xeth wrote:

It seems admiral is now doing it's backstabs finally, one shotting tanks who try to move through him, maybe it's not changed, maybe it's fixed, we just never saw it before.

Other than that, I didn't see any major changes to APW. All fight seems to be similar in all ways.

I haven't noticed any change in apw mobs either.  Although the Admiral did give us a hassle this last weekend.

Suga@Seradon wrote:

I just really hope they are working on some varied content for the post-50 endeavors.

Surely the levels were not made so huge, and then expectations set for the mass segment of the playerbase to kill the same kind of mob for 100's of millions of XP at 20K per kill... surely not.

I think they're still in patch-clean up mode, still, so I wouldn't count on new content for a bit.  Other than Sparkles, maybe.  Sparkles, the huge friggin' turtle.  I think it's a play on the general population wanting to kill LG.

I assume you're hanging out on the bridge and killing elementals or killing the solo elementals for 20k?  If you can get a bunch of guildies together in vent, the grind in SoD is better than anywhere else, as long as you're able to entertain each other.  I think I've killed over a thousand gataros this weekend.  You get 50-60k per kill and the turn in for 10 collections is ~430k.  More than double the xp you can get from elementals.  Just remember, it's about 20 mob kills in SoD per percent of a level (on average and factoring in rest xp).

Combat logs revealed quite a few differences in Siliusaurus.

He was spawning 6-8 adds, instead of his usual 4.. and those adds abilities had been changed to hit for harder. Seems some abilities were changed from being melee hits to being "casted" or something, which hit through the tank's melee defenses. My raid leader is more fluent in the specifics of the combat log than I am, but I made a list of some of the changes he rattled off after looking at the log:

Spawnlings hitting for 3-5k instead of the pre-PoTA 300-500. Bloodthirsty spawnlings doing hungerlust for 3k, bites for 2k. New flurry effects on Siliusaurus. Siliusaurus summoning people. Concordant hand (disciple heal) damaging the tank. Those are just a few things I jotted down.

I know that prior to PoTA we killed this mob weekly, or the next time we saw him after our lockouts expired from the previous kill. Now our previous techniques don't result in a victory.

BTW, "fixing" a mob qualifies as a change.

I have not had time to read the last six pages or so of the thread yet but I wanted to point out something that kinda has bearing here.

Over the last few weeks I have been running groups for a bunch of newer level 50s (like, within the last two months) in my guild.  Most of them literally just finished swamp armor right around the time they hit 50, and hadn't even started on Tehatamani or Rahz Inkur stuff.  So, we've been doing that.

What we're finding is that by the time we get most of them through RI and and all the temple flips and everything else, they're going to be level 51 and possibly well on their way to 52.  And this is all stuff that's sort of pre-requisite content for SoD, BoD, and so on.  This is happening because experience gain pre-50 (which was always too fast for the content) was not reduced.  Now that the ceiling has been lifted, the experience gain from the existing content is taking people beyond 50 - if they hadn't done it months ago.

It's just my impression but the people I see complaining about the experience in game for the most part have been people who were at level 50 for 6-months plus, and who focused on and finished all the various quests in an effort to gear up for raiding.  Newer level 50s or less focused players still often have a good amount of content left to do, at least enough to get them a level or two.  That's not to say anyone's concerns aren't valid, but we should probably keep it in mind.

Talaen@Xeth wrote:

I have not had time to read the last six pages or so of the thread yet but I wanted to point out something that kinda has bearing here.

Over the last few weeks I have been running groups for a bunch of newer level 50s (like, within the last two months) in my guild.  Most of them literally just finished swamp armor right around the time they hit 50, and hadn't even started on Tehatamani or Rahz Inkur stuff.  So, we've been doing that.

What we're finding is that by the time we get most of them through RI and and all the temple flips and everything else, they're going to be level 51 and possibly well on their way to 52.  And this is all stuff that's sort of pre-requisite content for SoD, BoD, and so on.  This is happening because experience gain pre-50 (which was always too fast for the content) was not reduced.  Now that the ceiling has been lifted, the experience gain from the existing content is taking people beyond 50 - if they hadn't done it months ago.

It's just my impression but the people I see complaining about the experience in game for the most part have been people who were at level 50 for 6-months plus, and who focused on and finished all the various quests in an effort to gear up for raiding.  Newer level 50s or less focused players still often have a good amount of content left to do, at least enough to get them a level or two.  That's not to say anyone's concerns aren't valid, but we should probably keep it in mind.

 

I think it just underlines the fact that when the experience cap is raised in a 2-year old game, that care needs to be taken to make sure the levels are introduced along with content to support them for all players.

Veterans of this game are what have kept this project going during development, via our funding through subscriptions.

 As the playerbase ages up in levels they will reach the potential of losing % points of xp while spending a year gearing up in APW, unless via some way they skip APW and go straight to PoTA.

There are all kinds of chain effects from raising level cap. Doubtless, ongoing tuning, balancing, bug fixing, and further content development will improve the landscape of this game, post 50 or 51 or 52....

Talaen@Xeth wrote:

What we're finding is that by the time we get most of them through RI and and all the temple flips and everything else, they're going to be level 51 and possibly well on their way to 52.  And this is all stuff that's sort of pre-requisite content for SoD, BoD, and so on.  This is happening because experience gain pre-50 (which was always too fast for the content) was not reduced.  Now that the ceiling has been lifted, the experience gain from the existing content is taking people beyond 50 - if they hadn't done it months ago.

Frakir in his Level 55 thread has said that it took 10k+ kills to level 52 to 55 (more NPC kills than level 1 to 50 total).  He also mentioned that the most efficient way to do this was to grind in SOD.   So even if a new level 50 is well on their way to L52 by the time they finish the previous content, what they have to look forward to is the equivalent of level 1 to 50 number of NPC kills in the same zone in order to get to L55 efficiently.   Fun. Not.  Or else, they just don't worry about XP past 52 and do....what? It seems like the stuff that L50's *used* to do pre-POTA is now too hard at L50/L51.  So honestly, I think the game will end for many of the new 50s once the old content is done and they experience firsthand this grind.  I believe the number of people willing to put up with that grind are going to be very few.

Eued wrote:

.. Or else, they just don't worry about XP past 52 and do....what? It seems like the stuff that L50's *used* to do pre-POTA is now too hard at L50/L51. 

 

I'm not sure it's as much your quote above, as the fact that once you hit 51, they have nerfed the old zones to a point where you would be stupid to ever set foot in them again.

RI for example.. I used to love going there. I got a group invite there the other night to help some people.. I figured, "Sure, why not. I like RI.. I know the mobs are 4 dots now, but no big deal. I'll help out, and get some XP on the side.. and maybe a plat coin or two."

Boy was that wrong.

They didn't just lower the dots t 4... they made EVERY mob in the ENTIRE zone a lvl 50 4 dot. Even the WARLORD is now a 50 4 dot mob. And at lvl 51, in a group, you get 4k (four thousand) XP per kill in RI.

I'm sorry.. 4k? Seriously?

Let's go help people in NN.. oh look, the same thing!!! Except NN has some lower lvl mobs, so you get 2k - 5k.

Let's go kill one of the PHAROAH guys for the final part my guild needs to spawn PHAROAH HARK. "Oh look guys.. he's only a 50 4 dot!!"

Guess what? A full wipe later, and a 1.5 hours TS recovery.. we try him again. The fight lasted 15+ friggin minutes. Level 50? Really? Not even close. How they can lower a mob to a "lvl 50 4 dot," but yet have the encounter take MUCH longer than fighting lvl 54 6 dots in SoD, is beyond me.

If you are lower level, and want to get PHAROAH parts.. don't bother. Do not engage any of the 50 4 dots there. If you do.. bring a raid.

You've been warned.

Bottom line.. yea, get used to SoD, because that's the only place you will ever go again if you have half a brain once you hit 51 lol. I personally love SoD so far, so don't mind. Although I came from FFXI, where you needed like 300 Billion XP to hit cap, and mobs give you under 200 XP per kill. I have no issues grinding.. but I don't have the time for that anymore either. I'm going to try to hang in to the end.. but who knows.

Yeah, many of us who've been level 50 for at least a year or more had all the exp we earned from lvl 50 content wiped out and our xp reset back to 50 zip.
So, that's basically lost exp from RI, TH, SoD and other places.

If they're going to throw in a leveling curve and reset people to 50, then at least reset the exp and then reapply exp earned post lvl 50 after the curve adjustment.  At least people wouldn't lose all that exp from quests and stuff as they've been lvl 50 for quit a long time.

They did it completely wrong..

Wiping out legit exp and replacing it with a severe leveling curve to have to grind thousands and thousand of mobs just to get the exp back, isn't making any friends for SOE and Vangaurd Dev Team IMO..

Yeah I came back after the PoTa patch thinking it would be fun.  Glad they keep making Heg stronger lol.  I used to be able to solo the whole event self buffed.  Thought i would do him for old times sake.  LAWL, Raea whooped me good.  Can't even solo the first phage anymore ; ;.

I also did 30 hours of grinding.  I found it horribly boring so I stopped.  Not worth the time if your not having fun in a game you pay to play. Did a few raids and had some fun. Admiral backstab is cool x.x 16k hits ftw if you don't turn him correctly. Love the constant changing of old content. I never felt so power in Old Targonor before!

As my last acts in VG I brought some low lvls alts to camp in SoD.  That was a slightly amusing trip. Getting out now so I can have a pleasant memory of VG and not be mad for wasting my time.  Good times in VG. Time to play more Aion!

Suga@Seradon wrote:

Combat logs revealed quite a few differences in Siliusaurus.

--- Concordant hand (disciple heal) damaging the tank. ---

 

Condordant hand has always looked like damage in the logs, or at least always used to look like damage in the logs.  It's always healed though.