I've brought this point up in one or two other threads but I think it needs to be official: Whilst I love the idea of being a powerful superhero, I'm not a fan of everyone running around being as powerful as Superman or Goku or Thor or whatever. The problem is, when everyone is max level, being max level becomes trivialised. To this extent, I believe that a reincarnation system not dissimmilar to the one used in Dungeons and Dragons Online would be beneficial to the longevity of the game. This would consist of, when at cap, taking on a long quest in order to reroll from level 1 whilst gaining some small benefit for the next time through. Maybe even have a counter for how often someone's rerolled in order to inspire some small degree of competition. The code could go something like this:
player.add (achievement.Reincarnation.[PlayerClass])
player.reincarnationCount()=+1
export (player.list.achievements) to C:\Temp\cityoftitans.reroll
export (player.list.bank) to C:\Temp\cityoftitansbank.reroll
export (player.list.inventory) to C:\Temp\cityoftitansgear.reroll
call (player.characterSlot)
n=int(player.characterSlot)
player.character.create (n)
str(m)=import (C:\Temp\cityoftitans.reroll)
player.list.achievements = str(m)
str(o)=import (C:\Temp\cityoftitansbank.reroll)
player.list.bank = str(o)
str(p)=import (C:\Temp\cityoftitansgear.reroll)
player.list.inventory = str(p)
Or simillar, adjusted for language and syntax, of course. This idea would also allow new players to join the game and play with their long running friends without said friends being too high level to quest with them effectively, and would mean that a spread of content over all levels would not only be required to make the rerolling fun, but would be in place in order to draw as many new players in to the game as possible. I dunno, just a thought. Tell me if it's idiotic or if I'm engaging in whistful thinking in thinking this idea is even implementable.
Greetings Zanton, and welcome to the site!
Just out of curiousity, are you a former CoH player? I'm asking simply out of curiosity and for information gathering.
Your point has value, as playing "certain other games", I always felt left out when traying to play with my higher level friends, as I felt I was never able to participate in anything they wanted to do. CoH was the exception to this rule, as they had invented the sidekick/examplar system, allowing players to join their friends content at no matter what level. I am pretty sure we will be attempting something along these lines.
As for reincarnation, one of the things we hope players will be doing in our game, is once they reach max level, if they feel the need to start from scratch, they can simply reroll a new character. This was one of the main reasons people loved CoH, as players constantly rolled new characters. I myself loved this feature, and had well over 40 max level toons.
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Remember that in CoX there was the Exemplar system. It didn't matter what level your friends were, you would be able to group with them. Either they would sidekick and join you at your level for your content, or you would exemplar and join them at their level.
That being said, this doesn't invalidate your idea.
What does invalidate the idea is the lore. D&D is first and foremost a system about meaningless progression and this is only emphasized in DDO. By making it so you get a minor boost by resetting your character to level 1 you are, in essence, rewarding people grinding ad nauseum on the same content over and over again, something for which that game seems to excel.
Super Heroes, on the other hand, are all about being The Hero. Super Villains are less about being The Villain than being The Villain that Killed X Hero. Comics are written from that perspective.
I personally liked the way that CoX worked. You started out some low level punk with a dream, tights, and two dollars to your name.
You took some hits, learned a lot, and eventually made your way to the mid level minor hero. Here you began to see more of the city, and the fights became a bit more epic as you began to group up with other heroes. The 2 to 8 of you would team up. Maybe for a mission or two. Maybe for an extended period of time.
You changed groups a couple of times, but continued to progress. It's possible you took less hits, but you continued to learn. Eventually you became a high level Superhero. You face off against global threats here. Your progress might have become rare at this point, in fits and spurts as you gained favor in different situations, but you still had a lot to do...
...there is always more villainy to defeat after all.
Now, all of this being said, your idea has some merit, if not exactly in the manner that you envisioned.
I think that this might easily be changed into a Patronage system instead of a reincarnation.
Keep the long mission arc idea, possibly link it to one or more Task Forces. At the end, your hero can become a Patron to a new hero. The new hero would get the occasional scripted communication from your first hero and would gain some benefit from your Patron's tutelage. You set it up so each of the cap level heroes on an account can provide Patronage to a single lower level character.
In this way, you still have your cap level character, but you gain the benefits of experience.
It seems more in keeping with the genre while adding the core of your idea.
Be cool if my toon hits max level. then a new option in the creator appears where i could create the offspring of my max level toon. then they get a few small bonuses and they start off with the primary or secondary power set. Then the player is kind of re-rolling sort of but getting to try a new power set combo with some bonuses. Now you can tell the story of your toons kid. The Huntress (the first version of helena) is really just the offspring of batman and catwoman. And she does sort of show some some powersets of her parents, like martial arts.
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
Forum Breaker
Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
Hi, Ozmosis. Yeah, I did play City of Heroes, but only for a bit when it was P2P as I'm not the richest person on the planet. I ran a Grav/Time Controller mostly, and whilst I found it fun, I've enjoyed playing big beefy angry men with a line of buffs and a right click more recently. I also get your idea about rolling new characters, but I honestly think that Per Ignim has the right idea. His has a way for your atCap character to be a part of the lives of any new characters you make. What might be even more interesting is making it so that other players can take your atCap hero as a patron. Maybe use PRD with a base of 10% for each patron choice each player makes, and have it generate a random player ID from all those that are atCap and suitable for the hero in question to take as a patron. You could even have big enough guilds be viable Patron group choices, with NPCs and atCap PCs from that guild acting as patrons for low level players, who would also be invited into the guild as standard. Could be pretty cool getting a call from your Patron that a big raid was going down then seeing them fly off towards where they said the raid was.
I like the idea of it being a patronage system and not a generational system. That way you can say the elder is really your parent, you can say it is a Ward situation, it is a benefactor...gives a lot more room for story.
While I cannot speak for everyone, I'd have no interest in a system where, upon reaching max level, my character would go *poof* and be level 1 again, even with some minor bonus. Why would I want to erase all the effort I put into getting the character to max level in the first place?
If I want to team with lower level friends with my max level character, I'll use the sidekick system. Upon reaching max level with one character, if I want to play at the lower levels I'll create an alt. I had dozens of alts in CoX and expect to have dozens again in CoT.
Mendicant, why not read the replies? We've basically already been saying this. There are alternate suggestions in here, though, take a look at those :)
And it would be just my luck that I'd be playing my 3rd level reincarnated hero only to have the next update come out with 10 more levels added or an Incarnate System or something.
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Warcabbit
The patronage system is an interesting idea, something that would formalize what already exists informally. I certainly had my higher-level heroes subsidize my lower ones. (Made much simpler after you no longer needed a third party to transfer influence)
I'm not sure how much I would use it, as few of my alts were that closely connected with one another, but it would be very in-theme for legacy heroes, etc.
I think the Patronage idea is great. I always use my max level characters to buy stuff for my low levels. Giving them a small boost to xp gain or (insert currency here) gain or even a buff that lasts for a few hours would be great. It would give me more of a reason to make alts. They could make it a daily thing too, log into max level character, give buff to low character (almost as if teaching the low level character a lesson in hero-ness), play for a bit and then log your low character with the buff. That's how I would like to see it done myself.
Well the CoH team handled this spectacularly well. They made every single team autoscale to the highest level so that noone had to even worry about level differences and they added group tp's so noone even had to travel through dangerous areas. They also developed fun endgame content with a whole suite of extra powers that only worked in the endgame raids so that you could continue to develop your favourite characters.
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Don't know what you don't know. Only know what you know.
-The wiseman.
I quite like the solution that DCUO came up with in that your direct experience/level/power build caps out but you still keep progressing (in their case through skills earned from acheivements). Not suggesting the exact same solution is appropriate, but it does make sense for there to be some form of growth after capping out, and if so, making the cap less of an endgame and more of a midgame option.
I also like the content balance in Pirates of the Burning Sea, where there is as almost as much after the cap at 50 as there is before.
To be honest, I'm not a big fan of level progression controlling content anyway - it's the single biggest social game killer out there as players who are able to level up quicker than others either outstrip their group or have to artificially control their game to keep the group together. Original City dealt with this very well by first the sidekick system and then the group scaling one. But another approach is to simply design the game from the outset such that lower level characters can keep up, even if they're not quite as useful. Again, I'd cite Pirates; lower level players can still be useful adds for the higher level player whose mission it is. EVE online is another excellent example, as is The Secret World.
You don't need to regulate game content by level, after all. You just don't make missions available until pre-requisite ones are completed, which is the case for the most part anyway.
Always felt a bit stupid that my *Superhero* daren't go to some parts of the city because the local gang members would kick his butt. Minions should be minions whatever the character level, just as bosses should always be bosses.
Minions in their perspective, Demi-Gods from ours.
Keep Low. Move Fast. Kill First. Die Last. One Shot. One Kill. No Luck. Pure Skill.
I'm mixed when it comes to how various MMOs handle it. I like the idea of more quests and such opening up as you fulfill others rather then being level locked causing you to have to grind out until you reach lvl 10 for the next set of quests. I like the idea of enemies in general just scaling to the person that aggros them but you'll also never really feel fully powerful because each battle will always be a slight challenge so you won't ever get to just plow through stuff. I like in WoW where just doing the quests you run across will all be enough to level you up so that by the time ya finish the quests in the area ya ready for the next area and by then you are stronger and can fight stronger enemies. And even get to a point where you are just plowing through enemies because of your awesome power. Plus if i'm traveling through low level zones i can just walk past mobs and not have to constantly fight my way around. where as if they all just scaled, I would constantly be having to avoid mobs to avoid fighting them while traveling in what would have been the low lvl areas. I like level control cause I like the idea of not being able to just run to the end and fight big bad boss of the game and defeat him at lvl 10. But one thing about those games is that they have gear with all kinds of stats that upgraded your attributes and attacks and defenses. TSW scales but you do need to upgrade to higher level gear in order to last in battles against enemies in the next area. I don't know how that would translate in CoT If we just have enchantments per power in a power set. Someone without a Defense secondary I don't think will have access to using an enhancement that gives them more DEF. So I dunno how I really feel about the whole thing. If anything I would probably still vote for the way CoH had it. Except I would like to see quests unlock as other quests are completed rather then level locking them and causing me to have to grind a few levels just to open the next set of quests.
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
Forum Breaker
Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
Some form of Patronage would be cool if you wanted two toons, one leader and his trusty sidekick or whatever. This sort of thing is going to happen anyway (if only because players will grouse a LOT if they have to rely on workarounds) so might as well make it sanctioned. I wouldn't put it high on the priorities list though...Masters aren't in the initial launch yet ;)
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...