So I wasnt really in touch with leveling since I graduated like 5 years ago, but I saw a lot of discussions about leveling and was curious. Aurora and I first did some testing trying to find out how much ACs it would take to go from level 1-80. The number we got is somewhere between 8-10k ACs. Now back when ACs were the only way to gain spells (level up), you only needed around 2k. The difference is 4x. If we say the average player gets around 10 ACs from a single class (some classes give 5, some give 10, a lot of glasses give a bit more but not many people get the best grade, and even if they do, thats still about 20 ACs for something that takes around an hour), that means you needed to do roughly 200 classes before versus 800 classes today. A difference of 600 classes. Now obviously, todays players have so much more options for leveling, and Im going to go thru every single one that I could think of and test, but its just something I wanted to put into perspective. If a todays player did the exact same thing that a graduate player did in 2017, he would only be 1/4 of the way to graduate. The numbers I used in this thread are from a level 61 player (Thank you WildKoekje)
Mobs
Compared to other ways of earning XP, farming mobs seems to be extremely overpowered (even with the recent bug fix and overall nerf of the mobs). Dont get me wrong, farming mobs still demands a lot of time and effort, but its still way faster than other ways. I will compare every single way of obtaining xp with mobs, just to showcase how unbalanced it really is. A level 65 mob gives a level 61 player 5,1k xp per kill. That means that a level 61 player needs to kill roughly 570 mobs in order to level up, which does seem like a lot right now, but when we compare it to other way, you will see what Im talking about.
ACs
The most crucial form for old leveling system got extremely nerfed. A level 61 player who needs 2,9 million xp to level up only gets 167k xp from 10 ACs. That means that he need 173 ACs in total in order to go from level 61 to level 62. Now lets compare those numbers to xp from mobs. The 10 ACs which is something that a player can spend almost an hour in class for only equals to 33 mob kills. People struggle in Wiz PE class for a whole hour to get 10 ACs, meanwhile they couldve just killed 33 mobs in like, 10 minutes at most. Mobs are extremely easy to kill, it takes 1-3 spells to kill a mob if you have even just common gear for their level. The biggest issue with mobs is that the spawn rates for certain mobs are simply too low (some mobs only spawn 3 at a time, and once they die, you still need to wait some time in order for the next 3 to spawn).
Event xp
The current best (and very broken) way of earning xp is doing the even minigames. For doing a single minigame, you earn a modest amount of experience. Since you earn 6 game tokens, you can get 6 of those. For a level 61 player, that modest reward is 67k, and if we times that by 6, thats adds up to 402k xp. Thats almost triple from the amount you get from 10ACs. Doing 6 balloon popping games takes less than 5 minutes, so its like a player got 30 ACs in under 5 minutes. Thats extremely unbalanced. 30ACs is something you cant even get in a class.
Professions
Brewing a potion for your level earns you about 2/3 of xp that you would get from a single mob kill. Thats absolutely ridiculous. A potion which you need to spend 10+ materials (plants as well) and that you can fail, earns you less than a single mob kill.
Reputations
So first of all, reputations give a set amount of xp per task no matter what your level is. That doesnt make much sense. The player i did the tests with, that is level 61, doesnt have a appropriate town to do reputations in for xp. The level 70 towns are locked, and the highest level before that is Griffin Hollow (level 45). But lets ignore that for a second and imagine that the perfectly leveled player did reputations. The amount of xp you get per task in Griffin Hollow is 8k. If you were a level 45, the perfect level to get xp from that town, a single task equals to less about 4 mob kills. And it only gets worse as you level up since the amount of xp from the task stays the same, and the mobs give u even more. For a level 61 player that cant do anything higher than lvl45 Griffin Hollow, a single task equals to a 1.5 mob kills. And you can only do 6 tasks in 12 hours (~50k xp), that would equal to 10 mob kills for a whole town worth of tasks.
Dungeon
Another form of gameplay which doesnt give xp amounts based on level, but has a set amount which only gets less and less worth as you level up. It gives 150k xp which equals to 10 ACs xp wise at level 60. By the time you hit level 67, its already dropped to 1/2 of what 10 ACs give you. Just to be clear, a level 60-67 cant really run a dungeon alone. And back to mobs, at level 60 150k is worth the same as 30ish mob kills at its peak. Dungeon takes 10 minutes if all graduates are running it, so you can think yourself it its easier for a level 60 to kill 30 mobs or try to do a dungeon.
Daily reward
Really small. It gives about %1 of total xp needed to level up once. Less than 10 mob kills.
Daily riddle
From what I understood, Daily riddles give different amounts of xp now depending on which area they in, but from what I heard, theyre about the same amount as you would get from 10 ACs, which is still not that much considering it equals to 33 mob kills (and if were being real, its much harder and time demanding to try to solve a riddle than to kill 33 mobs)
ATs
So the amount of xp you get from ATs is higher than you get from ATs which makes sense as ATs are harder to get and you only get 5 for participating in a challenge. The issue Im having with AC/AT thing is that the exponential curves for those two dont match. That basically means that AT would be more worth at one level, and AC would be more worth at another. That makes zero sense.
Quests
Level 60 quests give 666k experience which is maybe one of the best balanced forms of leveling. It equals to 150 mob kills at that level. Obviously quests are a one time thing and should be high rewarding. (edit - a level 62 quest gives less than 600k xp, not sure if this is intentional, but yeah, another unclear inconsistency)
Dailies
The dailies and the amounts of xp they give do make sense when compared to ACs, but overall theyre not a lot. Most easy dailies give small amount of xp (~6 mob kills for a level 61), modest amount of xp (~13 mob kills) and large amount of xp (~26 mob kills). For example, being every position in quabbleball (20mins) and winning 3 games of hide and seek (maybe a bit less than 20 mins, if you dont lose) equals to 26 mob kills. That doesnt make much sense, as you can kill 26 mobs in way less time. Its not horrible as theres a lot of variety for dailies and its just fun and games, but still.
My thoughts
Even tho todays players have much more variety for leveling, I wouldnt say its any easier for them. A standard day for an old player would look like this - You would do a class or two in a day, and everything else you did wasnt based around leveling, it was purely for fun and making profit. A player couldve maxed himself with ~ 200 classes, if you tried to do that today, you would be 600 classes off. Todays players have the constant pressure to grind and level, they never get a break. And just to think that griding mobs is better for leveling than going to a class is crazy. Leveling got really complicated and honestly, its simply not balanced well. Saving ACs for graduate years so you dont have to grind mobs and other hacks that people are doing shouldnt have to happen. Besides just balancing leveling, the time people spend on the server should be balanced as well. It doesnt matter how fast you leveled up and how much you grinded, people stopped enjoying certain crucial aspects of the game. We barely see new duelists for example, and the way leveling works is to blame in my opinion.
What I would do?
I would buff the amounts of xp earned from ACs, by quite a bit. I would keep mob xp amount the same, but I would make the mobs harder to kill (being able to kill tons of mobs with 1 venonox while being in a tree shouldnt be possible). Quests and dailies I would keep similar as they are. Reputations and dungeon should give more, depending on a players level. All of those changes would put more focus on getting ACs rather than grinding, and it would make leveling easier overall.
Mobs
Compared to other ways of earning XP, farming mobs seems to be extremely overpowered (even with the recent bug fix and overall nerf of the mobs). Dont get me wrong, farming mobs still demands a lot of time and effort, but its still way faster than other ways. I will compare every single way of obtaining xp with mobs, just to showcase how unbalanced it really is. A level 65 mob gives a level 61 player 5,1k xp per kill. That means that a level 61 player needs to kill roughly 570 mobs in order to level up, which does seem like a lot right now, but when we compare it to other way, you will see what Im talking about.
ACs
The most crucial form for old leveling system got extremely nerfed. A level 61 player who needs 2,9 million xp to level up only gets 167k xp from 10 ACs. That means that he need 173 ACs in total in order to go from level 61 to level 62. Now lets compare those numbers to xp from mobs. The 10 ACs which is something that a player can spend almost an hour in class for only equals to 33 mob kills. People struggle in Wiz PE class for a whole hour to get 10 ACs, meanwhile they couldve just killed 33 mobs in like, 10 minutes at most. Mobs are extremely easy to kill, it takes 1-3 spells to kill a mob if you have even just common gear for their level. The biggest issue with mobs is that the spawn rates for certain mobs are simply too low (some mobs only spawn 3 at a time, and once they die, you still need to wait some time in order for the next 3 to spawn).
Event xp
The current best (and very broken) way of earning xp is doing the even minigames. For doing a single minigame, you earn a modest amount of experience. Since you earn 6 game tokens, you can get 6 of those. For a level 61 player, that modest reward is 67k, and if we times that by 6, thats adds up to 402k xp. Thats almost triple from the amount you get from 10ACs. Doing 6 balloon popping games takes less than 5 minutes, so its like a player got 30 ACs in under 5 minutes. Thats extremely unbalanced. 30ACs is something you cant even get in a class.
Professions
Brewing a potion for your level earns you about 2/3 of xp that you would get from a single mob kill. Thats absolutely ridiculous. A potion which you need to spend 10+ materials (plants as well) and that you can fail, earns you less than a single mob kill.
Reputations
So first of all, reputations give a set amount of xp per task no matter what your level is. That doesnt make much sense. The player i did the tests with, that is level 61, doesnt have a appropriate town to do reputations in for xp. The level 70 towns are locked, and the highest level before that is Griffin Hollow (level 45). But lets ignore that for a second and imagine that the perfectly leveled player did reputations. The amount of xp you get per task in Griffin Hollow is 8k. If you were a level 45, the perfect level to get xp from that town, a single task equals to less about 4 mob kills. And it only gets worse as you level up since the amount of xp from the task stays the same, and the mobs give u even more. For a level 61 player that cant do anything higher than lvl45 Griffin Hollow, a single task equals to a 1.5 mob kills. And you can only do 6 tasks in 12 hours (~50k xp), that would equal to 10 mob kills for a whole town worth of tasks.
Dungeon
Another form of gameplay which doesnt give xp amounts based on level, but has a set amount which only gets less and less worth as you level up. It gives 150k xp which equals to 10 ACs xp wise at level 60. By the time you hit level 67, its already dropped to 1/2 of what 10 ACs give you. Just to be clear, a level 60-67 cant really run a dungeon alone. And back to mobs, at level 60 150k is worth the same as 30ish mob kills at its peak. Dungeon takes 10 minutes if all graduates are running it, so you can think yourself it its easier for a level 60 to kill 30 mobs or try to do a dungeon.
Daily reward
Really small. It gives about %1 of total xp needed to level up once. Less than 10 mob kills.
Daily riddle
From what I understood, Daily riddles give different amounts of xp now depending on which area they in, but from what I heard, theyre about the same amount as you would get from 10 ACs, which is still not that much considering it equals to 33 mob kills (and if were being real, its much harder and time demanding to try to solve a riddle than to kill 33 mobs)
ATs
So the amount of xp you get from ATs is higher than you get from ATs which makes sense as ATs are harder to get and you only get 5 for participating in a challenge. The issue Im having with AC/AT thing is that the exponential curves for those two dont match. That basically means that AT would be more worth at one level, and AC would be more worth at another. That makes zero sense.
Quests
Level 60 quests give 666k experience which is maybe one of the best balanced forms of leveling. It equals to 150 mob kills at that level. Obviously quests are a one time thing and should be high rewarding. (edit - a level 62 quest gives less than 600k xp, not sure if this is intentional, but yeah, another unclear inconsistency)
Dailies
The dailies and the amounts of xp they give do make sense when compared to ACs, but overall theyre not a lot. Most easy dailies give small amount of xp (~6 mob kills for a level 61), modest amount of xp (~13 mob kills) and large amount of xp (~26 mob kills). For example, being every position in quabbleball (20mins) and winning 3 games of hide and seek (maybe a bit less than 20 mins, if you dont lose) equals to 26 mob kills. That doesnt make much sense, as you can kill 26 mobs in way less time. Its not horrible as theres a lot of variety for dailies and its just fun and games, but still.
My thoughts
Even tho todays players have much more variety for leveling, I wouldnt say its any easier for them. A standard day for an old player would look like this - You would do a class or two in a day, and everything else you did wasnt based around leveling, it was purely for fun and making profit. A player couldve maxed himself with ~ 200 classes, if you tried to do that today, you would be 600 classes off. Todays players have the constant pressure to grind and level, they never get a break. And just to think that griding mobs is better for leveling than going to a class is crazy. Leveling got really complicated and honestly, its simply not balanced well. Saving ACs for graduate years so you dont have to grind mobs and other hacks that people are doing shouldnt have to happen. Besides just balancing leveling, the time people spend on the server should be balanced as well. It doesnt matter how fast you leveled up and how much you grinded, people stopped enjoying certain crucial aspects of the game. We barely see new duelists for example, and the way leveling works is to blame in my opinion.
What I would do?
I would buff the amounts of xp earned from ACs, by quite a bit. I would keep mob xp amount the same, but I would make the mobs harder to kill (being able to kill tons of mobs with 1 venonox while being in a tree shouldnt be possible). Quests and dailies I would keep similar as they are. Reputations and dungeon should give more, depending on a players level. All of those changes would put more focus on getting ACs rather than grinding, and it would make leveling easier overall.
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