I played this game for years from beta through the Lv 65 content before taking a break. I rolled at least 15 toons and got most of them to max level because I enjoyed the content. The game today feels far too rushed. I hit level 30 today on an account I created only 3 days ago. Previously that would have taken at least two weeks of playing at least 3-4x as much as I have the past 3 days.

The game isn't even challenging anymore. I'm 4 levels above max level for a planet by the time I hit it, and I am only doing a few heroics, the character story, and the planet story. I'm not using resting bonuses much and I don't touch the exp bonus that say 60 minutes but turn out to be 3 hours long.

The game has had many great additions over the years, but the extreme experience increase mixed with the turbocharged pace of the game makes it feel like the game turned into a machine meant to grind people to end game as quickly as possible instead of enjoying the enormous story content that was the main draw of the game.

I'm not looking back to the good old days. I just wish they toned down on the rocket ship ride through leveling that has turned it into easy mode that feels like

Anyone else feel rushed though the content?

Oh look, another person who wants to force their "challenging" and slow playstyle on everyone else.

Seriously, this game was never challenging outside of the content intended to be challenging. And that is still true today.

As for leveling, just play whatever missions you want and don't give a dam about your level. Level sync will lower you down if yo go too high. If you want some challenge, set your companion on passive.

leveling is too easy. i want them to bring back the difficult leveling style like before kotfe

you want a more difficult time, slower levelling

1. go naked, no gear, empty shell for main hand, or just punch your way around

2. Get rid of the companion crutch

3 Unsub, and see how much slower it is as a preff

4, don't use any boosts or power ups.

I'm sure there are a few other options too.

I wouldn't mind there being an item to slow down leveling, an optional thing players can buy in-game that makes it so you have to do most missions on each planet to get enough experience to do the next planet. They already have the items during xp events to turn off double xp. They could make a different one that reduces xp by 80% or something, then sell it for 10000 tech fragments (legacy bound, reusable item).

This is something I would appreciate on a few characters just going through to see the story. Definitely don't change it for all players though. Most of my characters I just want to do endgame. 24 hours of leveling (my average) is more than slow enough when I just want to put on my endgame gear (I have multiple tabs of 306 sitting in bank).

I must have missed the "challenging and slower" leveling curve, maybe it was pre-Makeb? I do remember people complaining that mob density was too high on Makeb though.

This game has never been challenging, barring progression raiding. Even with that, once you were done with the progression part, meh...

I must have missed the "challenging and slower" leveling curve, maybe it was pre-Makeb? I do remember people complaining that mob density was too high on Makeb though.

 

This game has never been challenging, barring progression raiding. Even with that, once you were done with the progression part, meh...

We're sitting here saying this like Oricon at release didn't cause a big uproar across the board? lol I can sort of see what people mean by 'challenging', which isn't just stacking an enemy's health bar and giving them a 4 second stun. You at the least want to have to use some abilities outside of your rotation semi-regularly, your dcd's, have your healing companion struggle a bit, dps companion half dead (from actually pulling aggro) and tank act as a ticking clock until your turn comes up unless you're healing.

It never was 'hard', I think people don't realize they didn't know *** they were doing before (hey, that's me!), didn't have the tools to do as well as they do now and BioWare hasn't done a good job scaling fights across all content adequately to make combat not just a stale distraction from the story. This curve existed, but we naturally grow out of it and BioWare purposefully streamlined it to onboard new players faster, which is for the better imo no matter how much I miss getting man-handled on Hoth.

We're sitting here saying this like Oricon at release didn't cause a big uproar across the board? lol I can sort of see what people mean by 'challenging', which isn't just stacking an enemy's health bar and giving them a 4 second stun. You at the least want to have to use some abilities outside of your rotation semi-regularly, your dcd's, have your healing companion struggle a bit, dps companion half dead (from actually pulling aggro) and tank act as a ticking clock until your turn comes up unless you're healing.

 

It never was 'hard', I think people don't realize they didn't know *** they were doing before (hey, that's me!), didn't have the tools to do as well as they do now and BioWare hasn't done a good job scaling fights across all content adequately to make combat not just a stale distraction from the story. This curve existed, but we naturally grow out of it and BioWare purposefully streamlined it to onboard new players faster, which is for the better imo no matter how much I miss getting man-handled on Hoth.

I was soloing Oricon's H4 on my Shadow tank with Nadia in her original DPS role. I was BiS, from raiding, and so was Nadia. My Sorc healer ran Battle of Ilum with Xalek, before there was a story mode. But yeah, some of it was "don't know what they're doing". Running around with comps that had their starter gear, not being able to figure out why they couldn't do anything, etc. BioWare can't roll back to that, because players learned. It's hilarious to me, every time I see these threads, that we spend so much time and effort trivializing a game's content, and then complain that we succeeded at doing so.

I just finished the first act of a new imperial character story (from Hutta to Alderaan). I did all missions and quests available on each planet including exploration missions, heroics and bonus series. No FP though, except Black Talon. Result: I'm starting act 2 on Taris at level 65 while the normal level of this planet is 32. So don't tell me there's no problem with leveling.

My grievance is less about the lack of difficulty it induces (there are indeed workarounds like putting companions on passive and playing naked and the game was never really difficult anyway) than about the feeling that something actually goes wrong with the game.

It feels wrong to be permanently 100% ahead of expected level.

It feels wrong to have so many abilities and utilities unlocked so quickly and so early in the story (there is no sense of reward any more).

It feels wrong to loot useless gear.

It feels wrong to receive alliance crates from heroics that you won't be able to use until you have completed Act 2, Act 3, Interlude, RotHC, Forged Alliances, SoR and finally KOTFE. Those crates shouldn't actually even exist before the Alliance gets founded, i.e. in ~10 years from now of my character life time.

It feels wrong to get alerts for all expansions on your spacecraft terminal triggered by your character level and not by your actual progression in the story.

It feels wrong to reach maximum character level in the middle of the vanilla story i.e. when 75% of the game content remains to be played.

It feels wrong to have to chose between playing all the game contents and keeping your level progression under control.

Luckily there's nothing game breaking in all of this (except if you play expansions in the wrong order), but I'd be very happy if I was given the possibility to slow down drastically my level progression. For instance, there could be an option to stop level progression each time you reach the current planet maximum level.

I was BiS, from raiding, (...)

hihihi... now it is "I was BiS, from HS-Grind"... "look how they massacred my boy"

If you only do the Story Missions the leveling is ok and you will always be on the Planet Level. (+/-5)

But a soon you do something else, like the planetary Missions, H2s, or FPs you will soon be overleveled.

I totally agree with you. Levelling - the very core and best part of this game, has been completely trivialised. As you said it does not offer any sense of reward, no feeling of progression, no sense of accomplishment at the end. Every planet troubles are distilled into a joke - too easy, too quick. It does not encourage exploration, doing side missions, exploring the story. The suggestions like "just ignore everything other than class story" or "dismiss companions, throw away gear" is showing just how wrong this is. That you would need to deny content (some really cool & amazing stories) or cripple yourself artificially to get any sense of challenge is too dumb for words in my opinion.

I'm currently on Balmorra, just playing the game, where I should be just about level 20, I am 40. I have not used XP boosts, have not run a single flashpoint, just missions, story heroics, side quests, world bosses.

And yet reading replies here, I guess that's what the player base as whole wants. Quick path to endgame. Where the journey there doesn't matter, story be damned.

We are a minority I'm afraid. And it is unlikely BW will ever change. If there ever was a SWTOR classic (pre 3.0) server released - I would jump there instantly and probably never log into retail again.

hihihi... now it is "I was BiS, from HS-Grind"... "look how they massacred my boy"

Um, yes, I think? My capped toon ran what was end game content at the time, in endgame gear. The horror?

It's funny now, but I do seem to recall variants of this very thread as far back as the release of RotHC. Where people ran the story/planet/heroics, and were over level for most of the rest of the game. I remember that this was one of the primary arguments against level sync as well. It's still one of the arguments for removing level sync.

It's closer to "this has always been my experience" than "we must rush to end game". The only real difference for me these days is that I've long ago lost interest in "end game". I have some 30ish toons that have never and will likely never set foot in any of the expansions. I've run every class through them, and there's no need, and I'm no longer able to raid, due to my migraines. So now, I just play the game. I put it down when the mood strikes me, and pick it back up for the same reason. I've started four new toons in my recent return, simply because I got tired of playing at cap. While I could cap them plenty fast, I took a toon from 20 to 50 in a day and a half back when 55 was cap, and our guild did a race to 50 with 20 being the starting level. There's nothing new about being able to level really fast, it's been part of the game since I've been here.

I would like to see an OPTIONAL setting to bump up the difficulty to, or slightly above, the level we had in the game at launch. But I also cannot see a way that could be implemented for each individual person outside of instancing all fights, because in open world settings if I choose to tune my fights to a more challenging level, that will also affect any mobs in my vicinity.

Regarding leveling, Everquest 2 has/had an interesting model, where you could redirect all, or a portion of, your in-game leveling XP into advancing a separate utility system that allowed you to pimp out your character. So if you were in an area with level 30 mobs, and you were level 35 and on the verge of them going grey and wanted to avoid that, you could flick the slider all the way up and cultivate your utilities instead of growing your adventuring level. The drawback here is that there is no equivalent utility system (the "Utilities" we have through combat profs are nowhere near as extensive or varied), so there is currently nothing to redirect that leveling xp to....

Levelling is Far Too Quick

Of all the games out there, levels in this game are the least meaningful.

If levels were removed entirely from the game, and only story progression gated access to things, your little whine suddenly wouldn't mean squat.

So stop obsessing about levels and just play.

Progress through your story and be done with it. Your suggestions on how you want the game to impact me are not appreciated.

Game has levels, pretending it doesn't won't make them to go away. Content, abilities and other aspects unlock with levels.

I think it is entirely valid concern if some people (OP and myself included) find levelling process too boring. I think having some sort of optional Master Mode levelling would be a great idea.

Game has levels, pretending it doesn't won't make them to go away. Content, abilities and other aspects unlock with levels.

 

I think it is entirely valid concern if some people (OP and myself included) find levelling process too boring. I think having some sort of optional Master Mode levelling would be a great idea.

The only way this would work if it was Optional. Because as someone who has created well over 100 characters over the years since launch, I don't really care about leveling slowly. For me if I make a new alt it's just something to mess around on, but I don't want to go through the annoying grind of having to do every single quest on every planet on every character.

You think fast leveling is boring, but some of us would argue that slow leveling by having to do everything is boring. With that being said I wouldn't mind an increase in difficulty on the class quests themselves, especially the phased quests. Beating the end of chapter bosses in 2 hits isn't very satisfying. My suggestion would be more a long the lines of for your class quests your downbolstered to the level of the instance, and lose all abilities, and utilities that are above that level while your inside that phase.

As I said, this suggestion would need to be optional so not everyone would be required to play this way. A purchasable low level tactical or something along those lines would give the character the difficulty boost while in the class phases.

So stop obsessing about levels and just play.

This is the perfect answer for those obsessing about these 2 non-issues:

- Leveling is too fast

- Level scaling

I am going to try not to laugh at some of these comments as I believe those individuals wanting leveling as it was at launch is wearing rose-colored glasses.

I was here at launch (actually before launch p) and all I heard is that leveling is too hard and to slow and now

Leveling is too easy and too fast.

I heard so many complaints at launch about the leveling being too hard and too slow that I cannot believe these few individuals cannot remember that unless they were not here at launch and just joined the game now.

Most people hated the leveling back then.

This is the perfect answer for those obsessing about these 2 non-issues:

 

- Leveling is too fast

 

- Level scaling

This is the perfect answer for those obsessing about these 2 non-issues:

 

- Leveling is too fast

 

- Level scaling

WE might not always see eye to eye on things. But on this ... you nailed it !!

Why not just use the situation to their advantage and gain better gear ? Sooner or later the better gear will be a better benefit in other areas:

OP's / FP's ... that sort of thing !!

There are more benefits than there are negatives !!

( No brag ... just fact )

Levelling - the very core and best part of this game, .

No, the core of the game is the stories, that was it's selling point, everything else was built up around that*.

But as I've said MANY times, all instanced missions should have difficulty options like Kotet, etc. That way people could experience the game as they want. But leave open world as it is. But it depends on what resources it would take and whether BW would commit to it.

*NB: Not saying other parts of the game aren't important, as long as people play them, then they are important. BUT the selling point of this game has always been the stories, etc.

No, the core of the game is the stories, that was it's selling point, everything else was built up around that*.

But as I've said MANY times, all instanced missions should have difficulty options like Kotet, etc. That way people could experience the game as they want. But leave open world as it is. But it depends on what resources it would take and whether BW would commit to it.

 

 

 

 

*NB: Not saying other parts of the game aren't important, as long as people play them, then they are important. BUT the selling point of this game has always been the stories, etc.

Agreed !!

[/two thumbs up !!]