Salamandarin wrote:
Your solution is: play a class with trip/bash, group with a priest, or find new leveling areas. My point is: I shouldn't have to. Go play any other professionally produced RPG (MMO or otherwise), and you will quickly see how little downtime you suffer. They're interested in letting you play the game they've made, not forcing you to sit out for fifteen minutes at a time, or more, in the case of some of SK's other mechanics, such as death, which you previously mentioned. The only reason I don't speak out against SK's system of death is because I have yet to think of a superior system that achieves what the current system does.
So you don't like taking my advice, because you don't want to put forth the effort to learn new leveling areas? I've played characters that have completely avoided fighting casters because I didn't feel confident in my ability to keep the caster down.
But regardless, you're reading what I'm saying the wrong way. My very first character that I played ended up sitting alone blind a lot of the time while training (Dang necros under Morea.) In fact, I even got edrained by the mummies under Morea and lost XP one time, and I don't want to count the amount of times that I got confused and massacred myself on ten giants. That was pretty annoying, but it gave me a very healthy respect for fighting casters, especially necros. In fact, I even thought about complaining, but honestly, it reinforces the fact that this game requires -tactics-. Things aren't going to be easy just because some people don't like a challenge. When you're leveling, you're (usually) killing other sentient beings, and they're not just there to roll over and pop out XP like some sort of loot pinata.
But you touched on a very important thing in your post.
Salamandarin wrote:
They're interested in letting you play the game they've made, not forcing you to sit out for fifteen minutes at a time, or more, in the case of some of SK's other mechanics, such as death, which you previously mentioned.
Yeah, I've spent a lot of time playing WoW, where even death typically takes no more than five minutes to recover from. On the flipside, killing someone means nothing more than a few more honor points. There are dualities to everything in SK: Making one thing harder (for example, leveling) makes other things less impressive (for example, getting to GM.)
But here's the reason I quit WoW. Blizzard is indeed very interested in "letting you play the game they've made," and with little "downtime" indeed (Although I spent countless hours farming materials for single pieces of equipment.) but Shattered Kingdoms not only invites you to play the game, but also to -shape- it yourself. Things that happen in SK should be taken ICly, and what you do actually changes the game for yourself and others. Why the character you're playing who is obviously having a hard time leveling against casters hasn't looked for a more suitable place to level is beyond me, unless you're going about it the wrong way and avoiding RP like the plague until you hit higher levels.