AN in a Meta where people purchase level 100.

Hi guys,

Wondering what people's thoughts are on this.

Currently, I'm getting a bit of feedback from people when I do my carries (note: Boss Carries lol) - initially just out of general curiosity. Pretty much anyone above 94, I ask if they use levelling strats that involve spending cash. Generally something like

"Hey, do you use ROTA's to lvl or just do it natty?"

Now, most of the time I get a response thats a bit... curious why I want to know - but otherwise everyone is super opinionated on the topic.

From my results, I could comfortably assert the following -

*Most players do not see levelling past 94 as "a generally reachable goal"
*Players feel "locked out of higher levels"
*Generally, players see level 100 as a purchase, not an achievement. There was actually a lot of implication that it's RMT as a result.

Now, the above is not said with anything other than intent to give background to what I want to ask as a result -

How does the introduction of AN/Gods fit into the levelling meta, and are GGG being realistic in their expectations if we take into account the above points? Players find the game so friction inducing difficulty wise that I personally was unable to find a person who has ever levelled to 100 themselves.

The feeling of tapering back difficulty to preserve XP while also needing to increase speed and difficulty thanks to... "changes in loot" seems to be the biggest concern.

I definitely have gotten to 98/99 with builds back in ritual, but I don't think this is relevant, as the gear I had access to was considerably better/easier to get.

What are people's thoughts on this? Was AN a realistic introduction to the game when the difficulty level already provides so much of a challenge that 99% of players (literally) cannot get to max level?

In case it's relevant - I personally refuse to ROTA, it's not fun and I don't feel I earned the resulting benefits.

"

In case it's relevant - I personally refuse to ROTA, it's not fun and I don't feel I earned the resulting benefits.

I agree here, but find it strange coming from a guy offering boss carries :P

I really don't like the idea of any services; boss carries or buying into ROTAS. Both of the takes away valuable goals players should have. I've never beaten an Uber Boss (other than regular Uber Elder), but I couldn't dream about buying a service to remove that future goal.

Sure, people are free to share their journey, or get help beating a boss. But to charge strangers, or purchase stuff like that? Just very weird in my eyes. But I'm a special, grumpy snowflake, and I know there's probably no functional way around in a multiplayer environment.

I've never had any problems reaching 95+, even back in my first leagues where I was pretty new - and when leveling took quite a bit longer than it does now. There's no shame (or bad game design) to do a bit of lower level grinding to level up. Leveling up to levels that are far from required shouldn't be automatic.

I've gotten level 100 through most means that you can think of:

Mapping
Simulacrums
Solo Breachstones
5-Way Rotas
Pure Chayula Rotas

I've never really felt like I didn't earn them through any of those means. Even the rotas, you still had to earn the currency to do it which is time consuming (at least for me it is).

Mapping was by far the most cost effective way to do it, but the slowest. 5-Way rotas were the fastest but by far the least cost effective way to do it.

It tends to boil down to cost no matter what path I personally take. Simulacrums was by far the most fun. 5-Way rotas I tend to be the resetter so that I'm doing something, so working as a team still brings some joy -- though that's the method I've done the least.

That's a bit of rambling so I'll get to some sort of point. I don't really think it matters how others feel about it. If a path doesn't bring you joy, then don't do it.

I got level100 in an AN league with stone golemancer, my main strat was spec fully into abysses and just buy gilded abyss scarabs, abyss compasses, abyss kirac craft, ..., just fully max out on them.
It took awhile, but in the end I got there. It took 67maps for 98->99, and 138 maps for 99->100. But I had to roll maps veru safely, never interact with stuff like metamorphs, rituals, legions, ... (stuff that was sometimes killing me on the eay to 98).

No wonder abyss exp was nerfed, it was really good, and the amount of mobs it spawned was insane for drops/incubator kills as well.


Wasn't really enjoyable, I guess just sitting in 5way rotas as a reseter and leveling up 30+ gems seems to be much efficient and enjoyable.

I've leveled to 97-99 in most leagues I played without rotations in the past. However, lately I've just started looking at levels as an upgrade like any other. If the extra 2-5 skill points are cheaper and more worthwhile than any upgrade I can buy with the same amount of currency, I just tend to go for rotations to get the levels quickly.

I can level on my own as I tend to play really tanky builds (in the context of softcore, anyway). Yet I still feel like leveling just makes playing the game "normally" harder. If I'm 50% into level 97, I'm quite hesitant about running Maven or Sirus etc. and generally just don't do some content I would normally do. Even if I have no issues clearing the content, the prospect of accidentally dying once and losing hours of mapping sucks.

My natural level 98-99s were:
- Simulacrums
- (Infused or T15) Beachheads
- Nemesis farm

And this was usually ~3 weeks into a league where that was the only thing I was doing anymore. It's often difficult to just level by playing "normally" (doing maps->big bosses).

I don't think it's anything new, but rather a natural result of the xp penalty, and has nothing to do with AN modifiers.

At like 92+, every death represents a considerable amount of playtime lost. That leads to the feeling, and reality, that running challenging content when one has some XP to lose feels bad - even if you succeed at killing of a juiced-up invitation, it doesn't feel like a win if it cost 30 % XP.

But challenging content is the most fun content, so one either levels and focuses only on that, or doesn't care about XP at all. Sure, one can have a build so powerful it makes the challenging content not riskless, but at that point one doesn't really need to level anymore anyway.

Naturally, when focusing on it, one might as well be as efficient as possible - personally, I like to do 88+ purely on rotations, and precisely to the point where I complete my build, never more. This league, I incidentally did 93 - 94 naturally, but that was an accident and I'm still not sure how it happened.

You can get to max level basically doing anything, you just need to stay alive and spend time.

It’s a huge waste of time to get past lvl 98. Life is short.

You can do that without purchasing it, of course, but it takes lots of time. It took me a month with Necro in Delve from 98 to 100. If it's your target for the league why not. It's not always mandatory and definitely you shouldn't pay for it if you don't really need it. Most characters are complete at level 96-98.

I would just not bother gearing my characters at all if I couldn't do an exp rota to 100. I'm not putting that sort of stress into my life.

How you design your character and how much content you skip determines if you can level from 95-100 or not. There is no skill behind having a level 100 character even in a world without exp rotations because you would just have gotten there thru alt-rolling T12 maps or by playing a build that kills things 3 screens away....