Maybe flatten it out a bit, getting to lvl4 combat is fairly quick then BAM, lvl5 is miles away, same with the other combat skills, once you no longer can do single group missions and rack up a bonus or whatnot it slows to crawl fast.

You may decide to up the time of the first levels or down the time for later part, I of course would like to see the later.

Thing is people get used to systems like that and when the whole game stops they will think they are doing something wrong or whatever. I dont see my next lvl in a foreseeable future and that really puts a damper on my will to play.

Note this is NOT about the a17's only, it just get to hard to fast. A lot of dieing is involved to learn how to handle the advanced missions, you are not prepared for them when leaving basic ones, not by a long shot.

I have played pretty much every mmo out there and seen nothing that comes close to this. Seen a lot of games that lost people to early obstacles a lot less severe then this one though.

It's not that hard really... And it's not like you're supposred to be able to get 10/10/10/10 in 5 days anyway. The devs wanted it to take it a while to level up.

I think it should he HARDER to level.

Wasnt my point either, point was that it differs to much.

Harder or easier dont matter, as long as you make it scale somewhat. Point again is that while some people have the patiens and stamina to learn and master a game like this that is quite heavy on the players actual skill, most people dont.

Steady progress is the thing, fast or slow, it dont matter as long as you can actually see the next lvl, or understand how to get there.

Now most games have major bottlenecks somewere along the way to the goal, but this is to early.

I do see your point, and thanks for not putting it all on those pesky apu17s. For those of us who have spent a year or two with Vendetta, the leveling is so much easier now that we're a little blind this. There was a time when a noob could barely leave the station!

The important thing to note is that the missions we see now have nothing to do with what we will see upon release. I'm very interested in how this is going to turn out. None of us know. My best guess is that the leveling will fade into the background and no longer be such an overarching objective.

At 4/4/4/4 we already have lots of good stuff. The problem is that in the -beta- the only thing to do with it is go for 5/5/5/5.

In the meantime, it's a sandbox.

I think we can put it down to this:
You don't learn the neccessary skills from botting.

It seems to me, the first four Combat levels are acquired all too easy. With finishing combat 4, you aren't prepared in any way for the things to come.

Then you are advised to go in "cheat-mode" and take group missions instead of the solo ones. This way you come across Artemis and Apu-5, which are quite easy to handle. You may get destroyed one or two times, but by then you learned how to handle them.
But again you rise in combat, without really learning the essential fighting skills. You just learn how to deal with a certain kind of bot, one by one, that's all.

Speaking of myself, I really tried to figure out how to deal with groups of bots and searchrd the dreaded Apu-17 and jis mates. At least I learned that way that Orne Guardians aren't that hard either, they onlycome in groups of two most of the times.

But I really see no way to learn anything from the other bot groups, each time I get plastered before I can really recognize a certain pattern. All I learned from it so far was buying a new ship and undock :-)

So the advice I get is learn it from a Vet.
Well, this may work sometimes on a one-to-one basis.

Or I hear: "get in a group, they'll show you".
Well, many groups are spread across the universe and each one goes after the bots he can manage, thus optimizing the XP flow. And if you don't meet the expectations, you might as well be out.

What I this is, this game needs a system to help the player evolve his fighting skills.
This can be an ingame mechanic.

Please spare me the "this and that bot is really easy", I *know* I **** at fighting :)

duel someone, then you will see where this game shines and very quicky learn new tactics and doging patterns, always humans are better to train with than AI bots, the bots in this games are just there for noob to shoot at, and some challenging bots to keep the vets busy between PVP sessions

and for killing another player i am pretty sure you get combat, light, and heavy. this is a PVP oriented game (well trading too)

darth out