[SUGGESTION/INFO] EXP and the current non-whale player.

[i have a display name tho]

   If you're impatient to read but still interested, just read what's in the spoiler box.

Spoiler

 

     I complete every daily and weekly that is worth doing for EXP, as well, and collecting as much EXP charms as possible from sources as well as crafting EXP charms. I enjoyed  playing the game until the level 60 patch. I have good gear but I don't spent a significant amount of real money on it; I probably have more hours played than multiple 'whales' combined. However, after awakening, the most significant part of the EXP game is now nonexistent: a place similar to pre-awakening celestial basin.

 

    Consider the amount of EXP you can gain in a week from quests as well as some extreme time-restricted methods of getting EXP (not including crafting 5m exp charms daily, which is unsustainable with the extremely low supply of evolved stones, and 12 bloodstones a day while maintaining this is out of the question):

RAID

    2,300,000 TT

       526,000 VT

       217,750 BT

   +~100,000 Dynamic

---------------------------------------

    3,143,750

 

WEEKLY

    7,000,000 Craft

+~1,400,000 Average EXP Charm results from weekly boxes

       863,000 5 Dungeon-raids

     +~30,000 Dynamic

---------------------------------------

    9,293,000

 

DAILY

  +~480,000 login rewards

  +~200,000 Daily premium cache (RNG)

    ~290,000 PTrain + Dynamic + Boss/Mob EXP

      130,000 Mid-bummer night's dream

      130,000 Koldrak

  +~100,000 Solo dungeons

        32,000 PVP Quests

    +~40,000 EXP charms+fragments from quests

---------------------------------------

    1,402,000 *7 = 9,814,000 per week

                            +9,293,000

                            +3,143,750

                            22,250,750 per week.

 

Consider now that 99.9% of people do not do every single quest every single day, miss raids, don't craft EXP charms, don't buy premium cache, aren't logged in 3 hours a day every day, getting EXP rolls on events:

 

     22,250,750 per week

   -   7,000,000 crafting

   -   1,400,000 daily premium cache per week                   

   -   1,072,000 missing one day of dailies per week.

     12,778,750 EXP per week for most people.

 

It still seems like a fair amount of EXP per week. However, assuming that:

    1. all of this takes about 2 hours a day if you are very strong (gc9) and have a strong group (a9 with an ideal party composition) to do dungeons with who know what they are doing, and have decently performing SSDs (An entire party with Samsung 970 Evo would cut the time to about 50%.)

    2. TT is 1 hour, VT is 30 minutes, BT is 15 minutes

    3. Weeklies take 15 minutes

 

     That's approximately 14 hours for ~13m EXP per week, or slightly less than 1m EXP per hour. My total EXP at HM27 is about 7 billion EXP. At this rate, it would take me 538 weeks or 10 and a half years of dailies+weeklies to get to HM27. A friend of mine who has done it for longer is HM29 which would be a whopping 15 years. One can no longer even grind EXP at any meaningful rate as CB monsters now give 100 times less exp than before. So now, you play 14 hours a week, and the rest of the hours don't give you any meaningful experience.

      The only 'reasonable' alternative now is trove, which is ridiculous to call reasonable considering the rate of EXP from trove is atrocious (think 10-30,000+ dollars and ONLY picking up EXP charms from crits for HM30, not including 50 gold spent per charm). The people who trove and pick up a large amount of EXP charms are not in the same group of people that optimized their exp gain, so I believe the following would not affect the financial standing of the game from users purchasing experience with ncoins, while the happiness of the general player would increase. In turn, that would probably make the general player more likely to buy ncoins, as the game becomes more appealing to play.

 

 

     For comparison, CB provided about 3-4m EXP per hour, depending on your EXP multipliers and class. It could be done at any time for as long as you want, at the speed that you want. Dailies are a must-do if you want EXP daily regardless if you feel like doing it or not, something that highly contributes to burnout.

 

     In CB, we could previously buy 1m exp charms for a high price in peaches. That was taken away recently, lowering the EXP gain a little. However, we could still grind monsters for good EXP and rewards. Now that the max level is 60 and there are no mobs that are close to lv60, there aren't any monsters to gain exp from like before.

CB mobs now give 30-50 exp each when before they could give 3-5k, a 100x decrease or 30-40k EXP/hr. Moon Refuge's strongest monsters also give roughly 30-50 exp each as well. You can get 300-500k EXP in charms per hour, which is about 10x slower than previous CB even without 1m exp charms/10k peaches.

 

     Moon Refuge, for some reason, has the same level monsters with only different HP values? I think it would be better if each zone's mob level increases as well as HP value with difficulty (for example: there are 5 zones, which should start at level 56 and increase in difficulty by 1-2 levels each as well as HP (ending at 61-63 perhaps in the lunar field). Another idea is to change one zone to have stronger mini-bosses spawning at the rate of normal monsters (ie. a mini-boss with the relative strength of the CB mini-bosses compared to the normal CB mobs, but in MR). that would give viable EXP and perhaps materials/EXP comparable to CB previously. I believe it would be a good place to put HM Gem powder and HM gem fragments, as we currently have no source for that. Another option would be evolved stones/pet pods/sacred oils at a lower rate than field bosses/hm dungeons which drop evolved stones, pet pods, sacred oils, etc.

 

     I also agree with the other post which suggests that Earthseers' Special EXP charms should be account bound. There really is no reason that they are not, considering the high price of crafting (approximately 570-600g/7m/week depending on market price, not counting premium and special papers., That's about 80g per charm which also has a 1 craft per week limit.

 

Previous arguments used against this and some counter-arguments:

 

1. BnS is not a grinding for EXP game.

     The core of essentially every MMO is things to defeat, your character and it's progression, and community/possessions/economy. The monsters and tasks to do give things such as EXP or items which help progress your character and provide an economy. Nearly all of them have some sort of repeatable task (ie. killing monsters) which provide a low-level reward (EXP or a low chance at drops). BnS has or had exactly this with SSP, CB, PVP, dungeon dynamic boxes, etc.

2. BnS EXP mainly comes from daily quests.

     Quests can only be completed once a day, and cannot be stacked to complete multiple times on another day. When this is the only source of progression, a user who doesn't feel like doing it may feel that they're 'behind' if they don't do it daily, which is a major contributor to burning out and quitting the game in a short period of time. By having both dailies and a source that we can do at any time (pre-awakening CB), it gives more options for the user and allows them to feel more freedom in their choices of what they can do in-game.

3. BnS should not be taken seriously/Games are meant to be for fun.

     Personally, I play for fun, and levels are part of the fun. It's relatively relaxing to grind and it is rewarding to see progress in anything -- including games. Nearly every human has some sort of competitive nature in them, even in games, where competition is often linked to fun. Competition is the concept of half of the game - PVP and season leaderboards. Furthermore, the casual player who simply does whatever they want without a care for gear or raids benefit from these changes as well. The entire point of BnS and MMOs in general is also to complete content, which generally requires gear.

4. MMOs are meant to be taken slowly.

      BnS is relatively slow to progress in and that is okay. The point is that we can't level up outside of daily quests, and high-level, free-to-play players are frustrated that levels are now impossible to get (gold and equipment are also getting more and more difficult, but that's for another post). Some players are proud that they can level up that way; everyone has their own reason to play an MMO, which is mostly the point of an MMO. It's not really about 'being able to level up faster', it's that a portion of the playerbase lost a large part of the reason to play the game.

5. We need to support the company financially. (really?)

      One of NCSoft's 'mottos' or policies is that the game will not have things purchasable for real money that cannot be acquired in game. While this remains true, it's becoming more and more 'technically the truth' as many things are nigh impossible to get. Personally, I'm okay with the gem changes to solar energies, because it's not particularly unreasonable to complete dailies on multiple characters and eventually fuse good gems (you can actually get the primary dyad gems within a reasonable amount of months if you play efficiently, a fair timescale for end-game items). However, EXP cannot be gained on multiple characters and would be pointless to do so, because the rate of EXP gain is so low. The concept of 'transferring' EXP from quests would be much more convoluted and eccentric compared to just allowing monsters to be grinded for EXP, which is an intuitive mechanic presented similarly in nearly every MMO, including BnS until last month.

 

 

 

 

TL;DR

     I think there should be a relatively casual, free-feeling source of EXP without requiring a large sum of money, things that are already 'rare' or are used to acquire other rare items as is (evolved stones, bloodstones, zen beans, etc), like how celestial basin used to be pre-awakening. Only 15 hours a week give you experience points and most players play much more than that if they have strong gear, so most of the time you aren't actually gaining any exp.

Edited April 17, 2019 by i have a display name tho

[LaraKelly]

yes I used to grind mobs in CB for exp too  + soup + clan bonus + premium bonus
now at Hm 23 about 150 mil more to hm 24 [out of 810 mil]  I can't grind CB anymore

now I  do Moon Refuge main quest upgraded boxes and boss loot for hopes of exp charms drop
do the Shackle Island for some exp and maybe may use it's token to buy exp too
sadly all this is STILL way less then what I used to make grinding CB mobs alone

Maybe some mobs in moon refuge could be upgraded to leevl 61? or something like that so those who want to grind exp can do so again and those who don't can still go kill the other mobs

[Garlend]

You can also craft exp charms. I don't remember what one tho. Also you can get exp charms from ToI and trail arena next door but only once per season.

[i have a display name tho]

On 2019-04-17 at 9:50 AM, Garlend said:

You can also craft exp charms. I don't remember what one tho. Also you can get exp charms from ToI and trail arena next door but only once per season.

I've accounted for that already.