Redlynne wrote:

But I also have to wonder if it might not be a wise thing to rig the game such that zones simply don't have a MAXIMUM on their Level Range.

It is definitely worth looking into a way to avoid outleveling content. In some games, outleveling is the way you can manage the difficulty of a quest, but if CoT includes the CoH magic that allowed you to manage difficulty already, that is covered.

I did use outleveling as a way to rush (in game time, as opposed to real time) arcs that unlocked things. For instance, I would often play Striga up until I got "book" with the last contact (Lars?), then I'd head off to Croatoa or wherever, knowing I could gray out the remainder of missions quickly if I needed Hess unlocked on that character. As much as that was convenient for me, I don't think that is a thing they need to worry about preserving. IOW, the advantage of additional content (in the form of content that would otherwise have been "expired" and gone), is worth more.

That should be pretty easy to achieve when it comes to instanced missions. It would also be nice if they could come up with a way to keep openworld difficulty based a character's slider settings, as well, but i could see that being a lot more complicated (though, as you point out, there was some of that in place in CoH in the handling of giant monsters).

Anyway, making more zone and arcs viable throughout a character's career would add a lots of play options.

Tzu wrote:

And, sure, we could mimic or translate CoX's partial fix of the problem, but wouldn't it be better to avoid the problem in the first place?

*shrug* that is an implementation question. IOW, that distinction is something that will make sense or not based on the context of their game code, and I don't know what that looks like. Do I think they should go with the approach you are suggesting (as opposed to massaging levels) if that can work for what they have in place (or if they don't have much in place already related to that, which is not unlikely)? Sure. There may be some desire to keep some levels more for upper-level people, but I would think the relative difficulty of poor slotting and small number of powers would encourage that.

eta: hm, rereading that, starting with a shrug makes it feel like I don't think the distinction is a big difference. That's not the case. I think it would be much better design to bake in a level-agnostic approach than to work around being level-conscious. I also think it would be a cool feature for CoT to have, much like SSK was for CoH. The shrug is more about my efforts not to fall in love with one approach to something (that can lead to me getting bitter about something that is cool, just because it isn't 100% the way I would do it, etc. >_>)... I dunno what the CoT folks may have in place as of yet that might make level-agnosticism hard.

Wyvern wrote:

Good idea; I'd suggest one adjustment, though: you auto-SK up to content, but not down (unless you're in a team or have set some option to always auto-SK down).

Except if you do that, then there's no reason to give any NPC Mobs [b]anywhere[/b] a "Level" and you essentially wind up with it being simpler to just make all PvE Zones have "Level-less Content" in them, because you've made Levels functionally irrelevant at that point.

So, stream of consciousness...

Tzu's comment about attaching value to powers seems like a solid idea..... but we still end up with tiers and gated materal, it's just gated by "powers level" rather than character level, which would end up being the same thing, just look more complicated.....

So....here's my thinking. rather than teir "zones", you tier "threats".
So, level 1-10 would qualify as tier 1 threats. They would consist of general street-level threats (pick-pockets, lowlevel thugs, basically normal people commiting crimes) with some slight augmentation (low level powers or specialized weapons)

level 11-20 would be tier 2 threats. these would be mid level villains(the sort that can be taken down by a single hero, but challenging) and moderately augmented goons (your full blown Sky Pirates or Black Roses would fit here)

level 21-30 would be tier 3 threats. these would be your master villains that generally take a team to bring down (Magneto or Dr. Doom types) and highly augmented goons (lieutenants/lackies/sidekicks who are generally comparable to a mid-level villain)

You could even have "tier 4" threats which are like raid bosses....

Pretty standard stuff, on the surface, so here's where I'd mix things up
every (or nearly ever) zone in the game has level one, two, and three threats. There is no "kiddie pool", and no gradually scaling difficulty [i]by zone[/i] Rather, the type of activity and the aesthetics of those involved define their challenge.

if your superhero ID is still warm from the presses, you'll be looking for street level crime. You might stumble upon bigger threats, but you're small fish compared to more powerful heroes who will be trying to stop them...

This set up accomplishes several things:
It makes the whole city more authentic and organic, allowing each zone to have it's own "balance" of the various threat levels without ever literally gating the world.
You never feel like you're "leaving behind" any part of the city, as viable threats for your level exist in every zone (though you might not get to enjoy the full content of the zone)
You are able to stay or go as you please (by having all threat types in all zones, to some degree, if you want to spend your whole career trying to experience every bit of content in Alexendria, you never have to leave there.... or you can do the same thing in any other part of the city)
Developers have the ability to build more dramatic and dynamic enemy compositions, as you could have a mix of multiple threat levels in a mission (fight your way through tier 1 gang members before facing off with their tier 2 leader... or working your way through various tiers of enemy mob compositions as you move through a super villain's volcano lair)
Can dramatically diminish the feeling of out leveling a "zone", as there will always be viable threats for your character to face.
Depending on how the mechanics are set up, this could also lead to better team dynamics, as "sidekicks" would have the ability to face off against tier-comparable enemies, while "mentors" would go toe to toe with higher tier threats.

and, lastly... at least so far..... this system would allow the development team to define neighborhoods or zones by their threat balance, rather than their "level." A place like Clarkstown might have a high percentage of tier 1 street crime, but it's instanced missions might all be tier 3 (cause rent is cheap, and no one cares if you have a portal to the outerverse hellscape in your basement....)
and a place like alexendria might have very little actual street crime, and what it does have is tier two or three... but it's instanced missions are all pretty small time (because a super villain might walk into town to cause trouble, but it's rare that many can actually get a foothold in that part of the city)

as a side note, this sort of system would also enable developers to play with villain dynamics in other ways, In alexendria, for example, you might have a tier 2 threat (Some Kingpin-esque lawful-evil type) who hires tier three protection.... so one hero in his teens might devise a plan to draw the bodyguards away and poach the leader... while a team of heroes might tackle the lieutenants and boss head on...

A thought that came to me is that one option is to do away with the strict 'Zone A = Levels 1-10' paradigm. Instead, if one were to place a threat map on Titan City they'd get a bunch of variably overlapping blobs (along the lines of what GhostHack is suggesting). Also, a city is a three dimensional environment. In some zones the lower level "punks" could relegated to the streets while the tougher guys hang out in the restaurants, bars, clubs, or warehouses. Or on the rooftops (best learn in which neighborhoods the rooftops are more dangerous than the streets, chummer).

Levels (or some facsimile thereof) are going to be necessary for much the same reason that it is easier, even desirable, to have ATs: they are relatively simple and straightforward structures that both computers and people can grasp with minimal difficulty. "I am level 16" presents a lot of information in a compact package that would be impossible to match with something like "I am a somewhat experienced hero".

There is a way of making lower level content "non-obsolete".. it was done in Guild Wars 2.. and it's a method I'd hope CoT would at least consider: You NEVER outlevel low content.

For instance: You have just finished a mission in Steel Canyon, when your friend contacts you for help in a particularly brutal mission in Atlas Park. So.. away you go! You hit Atlas Park, and notice that you have been de leveled.. What?!? Yes.. de leveled. You still have all the powers you should, but your fighting level is now the maximum suggested level for that zone. So.. you do have an advantage.. you still have all your neat powers... BUT.. it is not a given that you will wipe the floor with any and all mobs. Likely.. but not a given. So.. now you can help your friend out.. you get XPs for that mission as if it were a "green" mission for your level, and all is right with the world.

This type of thing would give higher levels more incentive to actually head back to older zones and help out.. because they still get drops/XPs/etc, and they don't feel way overpowered.

Of course, they could also allow lower levels to auto SideKick for higher end content.. with the understanding that the ONLY way they are doing that content is with the guidance of a higher level (i.e.; more experienced) hero.

Oh, one other thing: something I thought CoH had when I started playing was random high-level enemy spawns in lower-level zones. (Turned out it was just leftover ambushes.) It seemed like an interesting RP-lite system where the younger heroes needed to watch out and not get overconfident lest they find one of these the hard way and get smooshed, and instead had to either team up en masse or call in higher-level help to the location. In other words, it was like the lower level players were giving out the radio mission in real time.

I saw lots of Rikti and Devouring Earth in Steel Canyon that way.

Actually, this brings up an interesting point. What if PCs didn't spend all of their time playing the game at the Level Cap?

Consider that in City of Heroes, once you got to a Level, you never dropped below that Level except if you were to Exemplar/Malefactor (either to another Player, as part of a Task Force/Strike Force/Trial, or when doing a Flashback). So once you got to the Level Cap, you pretty much played the entire game at the Level Cap ... except when you voluntarily decided to run content that wasn't designed to be run at the Level Cap. This then allowed people to create builds that were essentially "50" Builds that assumed the character would always be 50 and never be put into a situation where they weren't 50. The result were some really peculiar incentives involving the Invention System with respect to Sets.

I, personally, wound up making all of my Invention Sets as Level 27 (with only rare exceptions) so as to be able to Exemplar down to Level 24 Content without losing my Set Bonuses.

But what if this assumption were no longer operative?
What if just because you've reached the Level Cap, that doesn't necessarily mean that you will always be PLAYING at the Level Cap except for very special circumstances?

Setting up City of Titans such that PCs need to be "viable" across a RANGE of Levels, rather than just merely at the Level Cap (or close to it), could make for a very interesting incentive structure on how character builds are made ... in that you'd want to have a build that is viable in the early game, the mid game and the end game, instead of just being viable in the end game only because everything that came before that "doesn't matter" anymore once you've got your end game build.

I really like some of what I'm seeing here, especially GhostHack's idea. I've never been comfortable with a street punk taking on an experienced super for more than a few seconds without some sort of augmentation. Now if we classify all 'normal' criminals as 'less powerful', lieutenants as 'equal' and so forth then the whole system takes care of itself. The Devs can even tweak the old '3 minions or 1 minion and 1 Lt' system this way. Newer characters with fewer powers will be challenged by 1-2 minions perhaps. As they get more powers, they have more options and can handle greater threats. This will hold true for tougher toons (who will be able to accumulate more defenses) and the squishier types (who will have more offensive choices to work with).

Not sure what the final outcome will be but if they can break out of the 'this zone is level 10-15' mold they will truly have something new and different for us.

Let me put an alternative spin on this (that just occurred to me right now).

In City of Heroes, the street sweeper NPCs all spawned with a FIXED Level associated with them. I repeat ... FIXED Level.

What if in City of Titans, the street sweeper NPCs all spawned with a VARIABLE Level associated with them. I repeat ... VARIABLE Level.

What do I mean by Variable Level? Something along these lines:
(PC Level + (Random Number: -3/+3)) with a Minimum Value of ##

So instead of running around Steel Canyon and seeing NPCs that spawn at a Level of 10-20 (low in the south, higher in the north) that simply has no relation to whether or not my PC is Level 1 or Level 50 ... instead the NPCs are all spawned as having a Variable of setting their Levels as being -3 to +3 of MY Level, with only a Minimum Level Limiter. So if I'm Level 3 and the NPCs have a Minimum Level of 20, then until my character reaches Level 18, they're always going to be Level 20 if I want to fight them (ouchies!). But then if I come back later as a Level 30, those exact same NPCs could be anything from Level 27 to Level 33.

So rather than spawning Foe NPCs in zones with Fixed Levels, they're instead spawned as being Variable Levels which run through a very simple addition function to determine what their Combat Level is when they're being fought. But what happens when a high and a low character try to hit the same NPC, how does the Variable Level work then? Well, it still functions the same as before, and each PC effectively fights the "same" NPC at "different" Levels.

So let's say we've got an NPC who is spawned as a -1 Level Foe with a Minimum Level of 20.
A Level 25 and a Level 15 pair of PCs who are not teamed attack this Foe at the same time.
The Level 25 PC fights the NPC as if the NPC was Level 24.
The Level 15 PC fights the same NPC as if the NPC was Level 20.

If you set things up THIS way, you effectively make it such that Content can become AVAILABLE in a progressive sequence, thanks to the Level Minimum Cap, but which Players (and their Characters) will never effectively "outgrow" because they've leveled up beyond the upper range that Content was designed to allow for. That way, you're never faced with the famous Positron response of "All Grey To Me."

Furthermore ... it would be simplicity itself to have a Difficulty Slider (via Contact?) that allowed Players to introduce a bias in the -3 to +3 Level Range for Foe NPCs that they would be facing. Things like being able to raise the Minimum, raise or lower the Maximum, and so on. So if you wanted to fight in a Level Range of -3 to -3, you could. If you wanted to fight in a Level Range of 0 to 0, you could. If you wanted to fight in a Level Range of +3 to +4 ... you could. Have another parameter for Minimum Team Size when creating Instances, and you can have your +3/x8 Difficulty if you want it.

In a way, this kind of formulation would be a sort of "backdoor" way into making every Foe NPC you encounter effectively compliant with the Giant Monster Code that City of Heroes used, while still enforcing Minimum Levels so that you didn't have lowbie n00bs trying to bumrush Grandville for street sweeping purposes (thanks to the Level Minimum clamp).

Rewards would be scaled to whatever the Relative Level of the Mob was. So using my above example, the level 25 fighting a -1 NPC would receive a Level 24 Reward. The Level 15 fighting the same -1 NPC would receive a Level 20 Reward, because the NPC is "clamped" at being minimum Level 20.

The whole thing balances itself out with Sidekicking, such that the 25 could Sidekick the 15 up to 24 ... so the 25 would be fighting a 24 NPC, and the 24(15) would be fighting a 23 NPC. The 25 gets a Level 24 Reward, and the 15 Sidekicked up to 24 gets a 23 Reward.

So a -1 Foe NPC fights as being -1 to every PC with the exception of PCs that fall below the Level Minimum of that Foe NPC. That way there IS a lower boundary, but no upper boundary.

Part of the reason for putting Foe NPCs onto a scale with Planned Obsolescence is to "force" a circulation of PCs from early zones to later zones. We've already seen what happens when that sort of force circulation breaks down in City of Heroes thanks to ... Mission Architect ... where people would power level their characters from 1-50 without ever leaving the building in Atlas Park. Needless to say, such an experience made them QUITE unsuited for "survival" in the world outside their limited experience of farming MA for XP. So the danger is that if you can get all the XP you're ever going to need in order to get to the Level Cap, then there are going to be people who will do just that. So applying the Giant Monster Code to all Foe NPCs within the Zones, creating effectively 1 big "super zone" that has no Level progression or restrictions on anything in either direction (up or down), would be a mistake similar to allowing players to "Live" their entire careers of fighting (or doing) crime inside of Mission Architect. It's something that has the potential to "shrink" the game down until the larger world just simply "isn't needed" for an entire strategy of advancement.

GhostHack wrote:

every (or nearly ever) zone in the game has level one, two, and three threats. There is no "kiddie pool", and no gradually scaling difficulty by zone Rather, the type of activity and the aesthetics of those involved define their challenge.
if your superhero ID is still warm from the presses, you'll be looking for street level crime. You might stumble upon bigger threats, but you're small fish compared to more powerful heroes who will be trying to stop them...
This set up accomplishes several things:
It makes the whole city more authentic and organic, allowing each zone to have it's own "balance" of the various threat levels without ever literally gating the world.
You never feel like you're "leaving behind" any part of the city, as viable threats for your level exist in every zone (though you might not get to enjoy the full content of the zone)
You are able to stay or go as you please (by having all threat types in all zones, to some degree, if you want to spend your whole career trying to experience every bit of content in Alexendria, you never have to leave there.... or you can do the same thing in any other part of the city)
Developers have the ability to build more dramatic and dynamic enemy compositions, as you could have a mix of multiple threat levels in a mission (fight your way through tier 1 gang members before facing off with their tier 2 leader... or working your way through various tiers of enemy mob compositions as you move through a super villain's volcano lair)

And it multiplies the developer's headaches [i]immensely[/i]. You have your instanced content, which will be 'hidden' inside a structure or behind some entrance. So you've got your level-2 character merrily going along beating up street mobs in tier 1, picking up leads, and finally builds a clue to a deal going down inside a warehouse, so he heads over there.

The warehouse has tier-3 mobs around it, because that location got picked by the RNG when another player with a level-28 character built a clue to where some stolen artwork had been stashed, and the server picked the same warehouse for the lowbie's instanced mission.

If you have spawns that grossly outlevel the characters that will be running around an area, you're [b]going[/b] to have situations where some level-3 hero chases a Hellion around a corner and runs smack into a spawn of Nemesis soldiers. This is not fun for the hero. And no more so for the player; you're dropping them into 'born to fail' situations that they have no control over.

Tzu wrote:

One more time, I'm not asking, or even really thinking about, nor encouraging others to think about, the abolition of levels. I think you are right that levels are useful, maybe even necessary, to the structure of the game. I'm not even saying that they're inherently non-genre. I'm saying that the huge and overwhelmingly decisive adjustments for relative level in combat ARE those things. In other words, yes, CoX attributed too much importance to levels.

Using pen-n-paper games to reinforce this:

In AD&D (forgive me, I left around early 3rd edition, so this may not really apply) a fighter started with 1d10 hit points, and at each level he gained 1d10, and you could easily earn more than one level in a gaming session early on. That made a HUGE impact in just a few levels, dramatically changing what you might face. Yes, it could flatten out over time, as your 19th d10 doesn't have the same relative impact as your 3rd, but you still go from fearing death from a sharp steak knife to taking multiple max-damage critical hitts with a bastard sword without even thinking of wasting a healing potion.

In GURPS, you built characters with character points, usually with 75 points representing Joe Average and your first "normal" character starting at 100 points, starting you as somewhat above average (you could assign any point for the start of a campaign, though- "supers" at 350 points, for example). You might earn a half dozen points adventuring in a good night. You do see growth... and you see characters overcome adversaries that would have previously been a challenge, but even after you've doubled in points, that thug with a .45 isn't going to be someone you just ignore.

While AD&D early leveling had you advance in capability by rather huge increments overall, compared to your previous levels, GURPS had you gain just a few percent points.

I much prefer the proportionate relative feel of advancement that GURPS offered rather than going back to zones where I'm virtually untouchable by thugs that were a threat just a few weeks, if not days, before.

Tzu wrote:

Becky Thunder wrote:
I'm not sure where the whole "leveling from 1 to 50 is not part of the superhero genre" is coming from. Comic books? Maybe. But Batman had his "Year 1" story arc.
Pen and Paper RPG? o.O I've run quite a few of those, and they do start off at level 1.. with max level varying depending on the game. Take any superhero pen and paper RPG you care to name, roll a new character, and tell me what level they are, because I'm willing to bet cash they are level 1 (unless the GM say "Hey, everyone is level 50, so we can do cosmic style stories!")
Pretty much all superhero PnPRPGs followed the D&D method of XP/LevelUp. Escaping that in an MMO may be possible, but it would also be.. odd...
I know a lot of people are wanting something new and shiney instead of the tried and true level up method, but honestly.. I'm inclined to say "If it's not broke... " >.>

I do not wish to be combative, so let me just say that I've played (and generally run as well) close to every major superhero tabletop RPG and this does not match my experience at all. It's a minority that even have something called, or a stat similar to, 'levels', and those tend to use it in a significantly limited fashion when compared to D&D or CoX.

While I'll agree with you that many PnP superhero games (e.g. the HERO system) manage very well without using the classic RPG mechanic of "levels" I will point out that many of those systems don't ADAPT nearly as well to the "computerized MMO" world as the tried-n-true level-based paradigm.

It's generally known that when the Devs of CoH first approached the idea of "let's make a superhero MMO" their main goal was to try to "computerize" the Champions game system. In fact they initially tried to obtain the IP rights for that game and when that fell though they created CoH which was essentially a "generic-ized" Champions setting. At some point (probably after their disastrous initial attempts to replicate Champion's Free-Form powers system) they came to the conclusion that shifting over to a more structured AT/powerset/level based system instead of a free/points based system would work much more smoothly.

So while I don't think MMOs are absolutely required to always use level-based systems I think the structured, deterministic venue is very well suited for them.

As much as I would love to see a free-form system, such a thing would be nigh impossible to balance. We need levels to maintain some kind of structure.

Maybe the best way to get what we can all work with is figure out a way to have a structured leveling system that gives us some room for choice somehow? No, I don't know how, but I recall one of the frustrating things about CoH was the fact that in some cases leveling up became very stuck in the mud in some ways.

Tzu wrote:

I'm feeling the need to provide some sort of example system where level can be a useful combat feature without being an overwhelming one. Lets start by laying out the extremes.
Here's the CoX version. Powers are nice and shiny, and important when fighting things near your level. However once you're 4 levels over your target any attack is near automatic hit and a near automatic kill. You can stand in the middle of a group and take most things down with unslotted Brawl if you have the patience. Likewise, unless you are buffed and slotted to up near the caps, you are rarely hitting and barely scratching anything 4 or more levels above you.
Of course we could go to the opposite extreme and take 'combat level' out of the equation entirely. In this version we might say that Level is only a shorthand term for how many powers and enhancement slots the character has and nothing more.
I think we can strike a middle ground. Perhaps something like this. Just for the sake of discussion, lets say that all the character's basic stats go up 1% per level. So if a level 1 and a level 50, all other things being equal, just use unslotted Brawl on each other, the level 50 will be 50% more accurate and do 50% more damage, and maybe be 50% harder to hit and take 50% less damage as well (and be 50% more resistant to being Disoriented if Brawl does that, maybe has 50% more Health, etc & etc amen). Then let those inherent numbers do the job instead of adding an additional calculation based on relative level. In this simple hypothetical system, being higher level does mean something, but in any given fight powers and slotting and numbers of combatants and teamwork will be the more important factors. A team of low level characters could be a challenge for a single high level one. The higher level will have many more powers and opportunities to enhance or buff which may make some of those numbers go much higher, of course.
If this isn't steep enough for you, make it 1.5% or 2% per level, or whatever works out best after some testing. I'm just trying to frame an idea here.

This post really captures the problem well.

CoT is going to have levels. The question is: will we have a relatively gentle increase in power as level goes up? Or will we have a relatively steep increase in power as level goes?