The speed of character progression, specifically leveling, seems poorly paced for players with a casual schedule. And, to be clear, I don’t mean that it’s too difficult to level when playing at a casual pace. On the contrary, leveling feels far too easy and fast.
To understand what I mean, I think it’s best if I provide a summary of how a friend and I approached our co-op playthrough, if only to explain how we organically wound up in our current situation. By the time we confronted Warrick the Torn our characters had reached level 5, as we had fully explored and cleared the areas currently accessible in the Shallows, Mariner’s Keep, Iona’s cavern, and a portion of Orban Glades. At this point in the story the Glades is level 1, so between being level 5 and arriving decently geared (thanks to our extensive wanderings), the battle with our first boss was rather unremarkable.
Once we gained access to Sacrament we focused on upgrading each of the structures once. This required several return trips through Orban Glades and the Shallows to gather materials such as wood and ore. And because we’re only able to play approximately two hours per evening, this stretched on for several days.
This is, in part, where a casual schedule begins to expose problems with how the game rewards experience, because as we were spending days doing this we had several opportunities to take on daily bounties and challenges. And while those dailies do provide XP as part of their rewards, the act of completing them (e.g. combat, gathering resources, etc.) does generate experience. And by the time we explored the remainder of Orban Glades (now set to level 3) and fought Falstead for the first time, we were level 12. Unsurprisingly, that boss was defeated in a handful of seconds.
We were level 15 by the time we realized the Nameless Pass (level 8, and the Quarry level 11, I believe) was our next destination. We were level 19 by the time we faced the Riven Twins. Again, because of our level difference, that boss also died in a handful of seconds. We completed the Black Trench (level 15 zone) and defeated Falstead for the second time when our characters were level 23. Like the others, he fell to a handful of hits and we didn’t have to contend with any of his mechanics because of the speed at which he died.
Honestly, this game throws a lot of XP at players, as if it is tuned to help a player move with minimal grinding from quest to quest, region to region, without the need to revisit older areas, and all in one sitting. The pace of rewards probably works very well for that approach. But it doesn’t work well for someone like myself who plays at a much more casual pace and is repeatedly earning additional experience through combat and gathering tied to daily bounties and daily challenges as the weeks go by.
So what is the solution here? We could argue that I should avoid bounties and challenges altogether, that I shouldn’t prioritize rebuilding Sacrament over quest progression, that I shouldn’t search every nook and cranny in an effort to locate treasure which improves my character’s gear bit by bit - to do whatever it takes to avoid earning too much experience. But that means playing the game in a manner that I find less interesting. At the same time, being able to two-shot bosses is also extremely uninteresting, and maxing the difficulty setting doesn’t help when the level difference is this vast. Hence my dilemma and this feedback.
One possible solution is level-scaling the opponents and region to match the player’s current level, assigning each region a minimum level while placing no cap on its flexible maximum. And while I’m fine with this, I find many players don’t like this approach, often complaining that it removes their feeling of progression when forced to face opponents who are always equal in power to them. And I realize that, to an extent, Wicked already scales areas up as we dispatch story-bosses, but that’s not implemented in a way that prevents the situation I find myself in.
Another possible solution, and one I think I’m more in favor of, is reducing the experience rewards a given area provides as you outlevel it, to the point where it eventually no longer provides any experience points at all. For example, I think areas that are level 3 (like the Shallows, Mariner’s Keep, and Orban Glades after defeating Warrick) should have a significant experience reward reduction when our character reaches level 4, an additional reduction when we reach level 5, and fully stops providing experience once we reach level 6 (at least until these areas level up again per the story progression). That allows a player to farm these areas to their heart’s content between story beats, without the danger of vastly outleveling any upcoming content. The result ends up being that the player is never more than a handful of levels above the next area and its boss, but able to continue farming these areas for crafting resources and the “best” equipment available in each area to help overcome any progression walls they may encounter with each region’s boss.
Although I have none to give, I’m sure there are other potential solutions as well. What I can say for certain is that the current situation is simply not fun. Boss fights lacking all challenge because my party has vastly outleveled the encounter is not fun. Having to constantly worry about gathering too much XP, avoiding gathering spots (especially fishing) because they award so much XP, trying to avoid any unnecessary combat as we make our way to a bounty target to minimize our XP gains, etc. is not fun. We’re drowning in experience points at the pace we play; we’re nearly level 30 (the current maximum) and haven’t even stepped foot yet in the Lowland Meadows or Marin woods (both level 21). That feels off. I don’t necessarily want to slow down progression, but I do think it needs to be better controlled so that it’s more in line with the intended experience you want players to have as they progress through the story.