I think the Dev's are heading in the right direction to try to get players to not bypass much of the maps and the game play. However, I also played a noob along with Naughty and found that the quests were over in the blink of an eye. Perhaps the Dev's need to load up the old Irose on a separate server and play up some noobs on that game, to get a feel for how the game SHOULD love you good long time, rather than players speed rushing through the first 20 levels. While the progression might put players through a "logical" movement through the lower maps, they level up still very quickly and like Naughty pointed out, by the time we got to the breezy hills, the monsters were all green and blue. Again, the leveling is still quite fast. I know some people complain that getting to level 200 in a week or two is way too slow but I think they are Wrong and spoiled with too much instant gratification mentality. It's no wonder players burn out and disappear and don't hang around. The Triggersoft developers had it about right in terms of game mechanics, maps, difficulty and leveling speed. Yes, it took a couple months to get to 100 but the journey was very fun. That is the "trick" to it. Again, the dev's need to load up Irose on a server in the office and actually play it to see how they got it right and why people still consider it the "gold standard"
Thanks very much for the feedback
This is definitely the kind of thing we need to hear.
I am a bit curious though, are you both premium and were you using any item mall exp enhancers along the way? What level were you when you arrived in Zant and what level were you when you left Breezy Hills for El Verloon?
Did you guys enjoy playing together or do you feel there weren't enough mobs to go around?
Finally - About how long altogether did both maps take?
With all the new quests coming out, I plan to open up a special feedback thread in the Proposals and Suggestions forum where I plan (hope) to be actively engaged in receiving/requesting feedback.
Will there be more progression-based quests? The short answer is yes. We are not exactly trying to "speed through" the whole leveling process, but we want people to get to Junon in a relatively smooth, guided fashion. Imagine a new player just coming in to the world of ROSE. Adventure plains has a few people hanging out, Zant is OK... but the game really picks up once you hit the big city and see all those shiny player vend shops ^_^