Jump to content

Feeling that progression is a little rough


Recommended Posts

After trying out a Seraphim, a High Elf, a Dryad, a Shadow Warrior and an Inquisitor, I decided to focus more on the Seraphim. I finished Silver at 49, then entered Gold.

 

Currently, my Seraphim is lvl72 and progress since lvl50 has been very slow and grindy. 15 levels with no change before I picked up a final skill at lvl65, then 7 more levels (so far) without feeling any progress. +1% damage or whatever is not noticable, especially when enemies gain +0.5% life. The grind from lvl50 to lvl75 has felt extremely dull and unrewarding compared to the first 50 levels (where I regularly felt my character was growing).

 

I have also not upgraded my gear since around lvl55-60, as nothing better has dropped (almost complete Niokaste's Blade Dance). The lack of new loot has exasperated the sense of non-progression. Currently, I have 45% map completion, 81% survival bonus and lvl20 Enhanced Perception, so drop quality is not bad, but nothing seems to compare to the quality of the aspect-based Sets.

 

Combat is beginning to get quite dull too. Every enemy (includng bosses) varies wildly. Either they crumble in a single attack, or they are so chunky I just hold the button and read a book while waiting for them to die. Either they do so little damage I heal faster than they damage me, or they do so much damage I lose 1/2 my life in an instant. There does not seem to be any middle-ground. Have I done something wrong for this to happen, or is that just how the balance pans out at higher levels?

 

Does the sense of progression feel smoother later on, or have I passed the point where the game does enter an endless grind? Can I expect the loot to get more interesting later on, or does each class/build simply have one or two sets that eclipse everything else so badly that all other loot is trash loot?

Edited by Elric of Grans
Link to comment

I gotta admit, I kinda feel the same way at times. To me half the fun of the game is actually building the character and watching them grow. That said, I have completed Gold but it wasn't quite as much fun as Silver where I had the opportunity to sometimes agonize over which skill to pick where to put points, etc...

 

From what I've seen - many people who do play higher levels seem to be preoccupied with finding the good drops - and they do seem to enjoy the endless grind - mostly by doing farming runs where the go into say the Orc cave or they go onto various other quest runs - just to find that elusive Legendary drop to make their character complete.

 

For me, the storyline is what sucks me into the game.

  • Like! 1
Link to comment

When I went all the way thru Bronze, I remember that the character reached close to level 40. When I switched to my new system of Bronze to level 12 and then switching to Silver, the character will reach close to level 75. I have a Seraphim in Gold that I parked at level 89 finishing the Swamps. I might hit level 100 at the end of Gold(fortunately, I modified the Balance.txt file to prevent the level penalty after 100).

 

Even with a mastered Enhanced Perception, the good finds are pretty rare. From my experience, EP seems to help more for finding rare or unique rings and amulets that it does for finding those lottery sets(WoW set is the easy example).

Link to comment

Having managed to get only a seraphim and a shadow warrior to niob while all my other toons are just waiting there, I can definitely say that the grind does not get any smoother. The next level around the corner just gets longer and longer to attain, the added boost you gain for your skills get more and more miniscule until you reach mastery, and then after a while diminishing returns kicks in, and once you've reached a point where even bosses become as laiughable as the fodder you kill, it's hard to keep motivated. For me, I managed to complete niobium with my shadow warrior, and after building him up into such a nasty tank... it was hard to continue. I think he's at about level 130 or so, can't remember. Alot of he grinding ended up going into free world play, since once you end the niobium story, that's it. Sometimes I'm motivated enough to continue and go through quest runs or boss runs, but these days it's when I go back to build a new character did that excitement return.

Link to comment

This issue is why I always lose interest in the game about halfway through gold. I've taken about a dozen characters that far, and several more partway. I've never had a character on platinum, much less niobium.

 

After some time has passed, I usually come back to Sacred 2, but I usually want to build a new character when I do. There will have been so much time passed, I will have forgotten what I was doing with the old gold level toons, and will have lost all attachment to them.

 

Actually, this is the way I am with all arpg's. I don't think I've ever played to the final level of any of them. I pretty consistently will play the story once, build the character until there are no new skills to choose, play about halfway through the second level, whatever it's being called, see that it's a big repetitive grind for very little reward, lose interest, and move on to the next game.

 

I've never quite seen the appeal of playing an arpg four times in a row, and spending hours farming areas and bosses trying to get the "lottery drops" of "legendary" sets and items, and leveling up 100 levels past the point of diminishing returns. On the other hand, I see how passionately some people *do* get into that. It seems to become a figurative "drug of choice" for them. I guess it either appeals to an individual, or it doesn't.

 

EDIT: Oh, come to think of it, I did take one of my Sacred 1 battle mages to niobium once. He was an ice shards build, and I could just right click once or twice to blow away everything in the game, including bosses. I wanted to see what the big deal was, where people would say stuff like, "oh, niobium level is so much harder, you'll never survive there unless you do this and that, exactly."

My niobium battle mage was about level 50. I had rushed him on speed play through gold and platinum. All the drops in niobium were way up at 100th level or higher. It didn't matter that I couldn't use any of the equipment there. Ice shards, everything on screen dead, Ice shards, everything on screen dead. It was *so* booo-ring. I think that experience is another reason I almost never play much farther than the second level of whatever.

 

I wonder if the divide in experience with the higher levels of the game has to do with single players trying to interact with multi-players? I've found that people who play because they like to compete or team up with other players in multi-player mode have a whole different attitude about games than that of people who mostly play by themselves in single-player mode.

Edited by belgarathmth
Link to comment

You may have a decent point belgarathmth, running around with others in mp sure makes the grind less boring. Having said that I also only ever got one toon to niob, an inquisitor at ~level 100, nothing else due to HC deaths and simply getting bored.

Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...

Dropping motivation for a particular game is a given, for me, after a couple of months at the most.

 

One motivation for me in Sacred, and many other rpgs as well, is to find the absolute best possible state of being for a particular character.

I have spent days and days with characters popped from 1 to 200 with balance.txt mod to test various skill- and attributedistributions, massively increased droprates to get the final gear quickly, and I have learned many things along the way, without ever leveling a noncheated char to 200.

Atm. I'm taking a semi cheated character to 200, cheat concerns gear only (massive enough of a cheat already though...), to get the survival bonus up properly. One thing I noticed so far while questing at about level 107 on niob is, that the quest xp boni are rediculously low.

I will try tripleing the values for the QuestExp*** values in the balance.txt to see if it makes a difference.

 

If you're only playing SP, then use the possible options to make the game more interesting for you. There is no need to restrict yourself to the stuff Ascaron thought up. If some changes increase your gaming experience, do it.

Edited by Nighthawk
Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...
Please Sign In or Sign Up