So a while ago I made a forum post called "A structured critique of Revelius" and while many people said it was good I'm not happy with how it turned out. I wrote it at 5:30am half asleep and despite what the title said, by the end it was poorly structured and didn't push my point across very well. In order to rectify my mistakes I'm going to be releasing a series of forum posts talking about individual problems with revelius with more depth and more room to talk about ways to rectify these errors.
In this Forum post I'm going to go over what is wrong with the EXP system and the amounts of exp you recieve for completing certain objectives. Furthermore, I will very briefly go over Potterworlds almost "Identity Crisis" on what sort of server it wants to be.
The methods currently available to earn EXP.
Currently there are 3 main methods to earn EXP. Killing mobs, Quests, and AC.
Before I begin I would like you all to take my numbers with a grain of salt, they are NOT exact however I've asked many people who are leveling for references.
AC is by far the most productive and easiest way of getting Experience. However, while it is the fastest method of leveling it by no means makes things easy for players. Someone who is level 68 needs 7Million EXP in order to level up, whilst they only get 500k EXP from 10ac. This means in order to level up they'd need 140 AC. Now, as you level up the Required EXP per level also grows exponentially, but as I don't have the numbers for the exact EXP requirements I'm just going to imagine every level from level 68 to 80 needs 7mil EXP. This would mean a player would need to accumulate 1680 AC to get from level 68 to max level. Further exaggerating this problem is the increasing rarity of written classes. Many classes that would normally give someone the opportunity to get EXP are growing increasingly rare as the amount of Dueling, Flying, and WizPE classes increase. Only very good duelists can come first in order to get the maximum amount of XP, and as a level 71 fighting level 80 duelers there's very little chance. Flying has only 1 winner per house and parkour only 3 people can win. This means that most of the time you'll be receiving 15 ac per class and if you want to go from level 68 to level 80 you'll need over 100 of these classes. Pre Revelius 10ac would automatically just give 10% of a level, just having this would be a big step up from what it is currently.
When it comes to quests, they give very, very little experience until around year 7. One of my friends in year 6 did every quest, year 1 through year 6 all quests available and only got half a level. When they hit year 7 they leveled up from the EXP, but once again a single level isn't very much, and when someone becomes a graduate there's only 1 quest, which gives the same amount of EXP as 10AC. This is nowhere near enough especially for a grad when leveling starts becoming very very difficult. The amount of EXP from quests needs to increase, on servers like Wynncraft typically it would only be 1 or 2 quests per level. A common trend is as the amount of quests available increases the experience reward decreases, Potterworld has a very, very limited selection of quests and this problem is exaggerated by the map. The map itself is very good, the builds I enjoy, however between the builds it's just empty space, forests trees that only serve to eat your time and drain your gold and the travel isn't enjoyable or fun and only serves to drive away players. I personally couldn't bring myself to do quests despite the 70k gold reward as even with my Fireflash broom, which is significantly faster than new players brooms, I didn't want to waste my time flying 3000 blocks, to spend half an hour killing something, and then fly another 3000blocks to a different NPC. Alongside better rewards the quests need to be more local, and have more variety. At the moment quests are either some sort of obstacle course (elytra or parkour) some sort of riddle or a fetch quest. These quests need more variety, the plots of the quests need to be more extravagant, adding in cutscenes instead of simply hovering over an icon and reading a wall of text would be a huge step forward that I'm confident Potterworld could do, (Kyla in the Revenant Dungeon had dialogue, most bosses all had dialogue and queues, it is well within the staff teams ability to create cutscenes) just the mere addition of cutscenes would make you feel so much more involved in quests, like you're actually IN a world.
Mob XP is trivial, when you have 7mil required EXP and get 7k EXP per kill its just nothing. I know people that spent entire days, 7 hours grinding killing mobs and only got half a level. This isn't a viable strategy, and can't be considered a viable strategy until the EXP reward is increased. Most games don't have you level from killing mobs, they put in enough quests and activities that a player very, very rarely has to actually grind mobs, and mob EXP is just a small feature if someone is very close to leveling but doesn't want to start a new quest.
Finally I would like to cover what I believe to be the most critical with Leveling. It doesn't appeal to any audience. Potterworld is trying to move in a more MMORPG direction as oppose to the more community driven server it was Pre Revelius. I'm not head staff, I don't decide which direction they take the server and it is up to them if they want to make Potterworld an MMORPG. However, you can't appeal to both audiences. Potterworld still has classes and it is still possible to roleplay. However roleplayers need to treck thousands of blocks if they want to roleplay. The community element of Potterworld is severely diminished too as, while the great hall used to be bubbling with players, a hub of events its now empty, the parkour, mazes and droppers people would do passively while talking have also been removed giving people no option other than do nothing or kill mobs. And MMORPG players don't have any reason to play on Potterworld. You can't expect someone who plays proper MMOs like WoW or ESO, or even Wynncraft to spend half an hour taking notes in class and writing an essay, or sitting for 45 minutes for their turn in dueling so they can get 15 AC. Potterworld neglected its current players whilst giving a very, very, limited and superficial appeal to RPG players. It needs to choose, either Potterworld is for people looking for a Harry Potter experience, where you go to classes and run around Hogwarts, or an MMO where you do quests and level up. It can't be both. You can't expect someone who wants to be harry potter to grind mobs for countless hours, and you can't expect an RPG player to spend hours in creative writing classes.
Thanks for reading, I hope this much more focused forum post was able to provide constructive criticism, I reread it and made sure that I put ways to improve the server to couple majority of my criticisms. I don't want to cause trouble and say the server's bad, I don't want to point out its flaws and laugh. I want to see whats wrong, say why it's wrong, and try to give suggestions as to how they could be fixed.
If you agreed, or disagreed with my points, please reply. I want to get more suggestions and ideas going in this thread so that we can actively work together as a community to help make the server better
In this Forum post I'm going to go over what is wrong with the EXP system and the amounts of exp you recieve for completing certain objectives. Furthermore, I will very briefly go over Potterworlds almost "Identity Crisis" on what sort of server it wants to be.
The methods currently available to earn EXP.
Currently there are 3 main methods to earn EXP. Killing mobs, Quests, and AC.
Before I begin I would like you all to take my numbers with a grain of salt, they are NOT exact however I've asked many people who are leveling for references.
AC is by far the most productive and easiest way of getting Experience. However, while it is the fastest method of leveling it by no means makes things easy for players. Someone who is level 68 needs 7Million EXP in order to level up, whilst they only get 500k EXP from 10ac. This means in order to level up they'd need 140 AC. Now, as you level up the Required EXP per level also grows exponentially, but as I don't have the numbers for the exact EXP requirements I'm just going to imagine every level from level 68 to 80 needs 7mil EXP. This would mean a player would need to accumulate 1680 AC to get from level 68 to max level. Further exaggerating this problem is the increasing rarity of written classes. Many classes that would normally give someone the opportunity to get EXP are growing increasingly rare as the amount of Dueling, Flying, and WizPE classes increase. Only very good duelists can come first in order to get the maximum amount of XP, and as a level 71 fighting level 80 duelers there's very little chance. Flying has only 1 winner per house and parkour only 3 people can win. This means that most of the time you'll be receiving 15 ac per class and if you want to go from level 68 to level 80 you'll need over 100 of these classes. Pre Revelius 10ac would automatically just give 10% of a level, just having this would be a big step up from what it is currently.
When it comes to quests, they give very, very little experience until around year 7. One of my friends in year 6 did every quest, year 1 through year 6 all quests available and only got half a level. When they hit year 7 they leveled up from the EXP, but once again a single level isn't very much, and when someone becomes a graduate there's only 1 quest, which gives the same amount of EXP as 10AC. This is nowhere near enough especially for a grad when leveling starts becoming very very difficult. The amount of EXP from quests needs to increase, on servers like Wynncraft typically it would only be 1 or 2 quests per level. A common trend is as the amount of quests available increases the experience reward decreases, Potterworld has a very, very limited selection of quests and this problem is exaggerated by the map. The map itself is very good, the builds I enjoy, however between the builds it's just empty space, forests trees that only serve to eat your time and drain your gold and the travel isn't enjoyable or fun and only serves to drive away players. I personally couldn't bring myself to do quests despite the 70k gold reward as even with my Fireflash broom, which is significantly faster than new players brooms, I didn't want to waste my time flying 3000 blocks, to spend half an hour killing something, and then fly another 3000blocks to a different NPC. Alongside better rewards the quests need to be more local, and have more variety. At the moment quests are either some sort of obstacle course (elytra or parkour) some sort of riddle or a fetch quest. These quests need more variety, the plots of the quests need to be more extravagant, adding in cutscenes instead of simply hovering over an icon and reading a wall of text would be a huge step forward that I'm confident Potterworld could do, (Kyla in the Revenant Dungeon had dialogue, most bosses all had dialogue and queues, it is well within the staff teams ability to create cutscenes) just the mere addition of cutscenes would make you feel so much more involved in quests, like you're actually IN a world.
Mob XP is trivial, when you have 7mil required EXP and get 7k EXP per kill its just nothing. I know people that spent entire days, 7 hours grinding killing mobs and only got half a level. This isn't a viable strategy, and can't be considered a viable strategy until the EXP reward is increased. Most games don't have you level from killing mobs, they put in enough quests and activities that a player very, very rarely has to actually grind mobs, and mob EXP is just a small feature if someone is very close to leveling but doesn't want to start a new quest.
Finally I would like to cover what I believe to be the most critical with Leveling. It doesn't appeal to any audience. Potterworld is trying to move in a more MMORPG direction as oppose to the more community driven server it was Pre Revelius. I'm not head staff, I don't decide which direction they take the server and it is up to them if they want to make Potterworld an MMORPG. However, you can't appeal to both audiences. Potterworld still has classes and it is still possible to roleplay. However roleplayers need to treck thousands of blocks if they want to roleplay. The community element of Potterworld is severely diminished too as, while the great hall used to be bubbling with players, a hub of events its now empty, the parkour, mazes and droppers people would do passively while talking have also been removed giving people no option other than do nothing or kill mobs. And MMORPG players don't have any reason to play on Potterworld. You can't expect someone who plays proper MMOs like WoW or ESO, or even Wynncraft to spend half an hour taking notes in class and writing an essay, or sitting for 45 minutes for their turn in dueling so they can get 15 AC. Potterworld neglected its current players whilst giving a very, very, limited and superficial appeal to RPG players. It needs to choose, either Potterworld is for people looking for a Harry Potter experience, where you go to classes and run around Hogwarts, or an MMO where you do quests and level up. It can't be both. You can't expect someone who wants to be harry potter to grind mobs for countless hours, and you can't expect an RPG player to spend hours in creative writing classes.
Thanks for reading, I hope this much more focused forum post was able to provide constructive criticism, I reread it and made sure that I put ways to improve the server to couple majority of my criticisms. I don't want to cause trouble and say the server's bad, I don't want to point out its flaws and laugh. I want to see whats wrong, say why it's wrong, and try to give suggestions as to how they could be fixed.
If you agreed, or disagreed with my points, please reply. I want to get more suggestions and ideas going in this thread so that we can actively work together as a community to help make the server better
