Hi everyone. I have a quick question for you guys. The prmary MMO I played back in the day was Asheron's Call. One thing I liked about it was that you could group with players from a pretty wide range and be effective. This was in part due to the way the skill system worked on an exponential curve, and things like a lvl 50 going with a lvl 70 wouldn't be unheard of. Or an 85 with a 126. You see, aside from gear all that really mattered was your attack skill level. As you got higher and higher, the same difference in character level translated to a smaller and smaller difference in attack skill.
Most other games I've played since seem to put in an artificial penalty to accuracy for fighting mobs above your level that makes fighting things more than +4 or +5 almost impossible as well as XP penalties for killing lower level mobs. Some games have implemented various workarounds though. City of Heroes and the sidekick system comes to mind. The game let you artifically and temporarily increase or decrease your level to match another player. No new skills were added, but base stats and damage would adjust to your new level. Other games such as ESO have made all content scale to each players' level. There are some serious drawbacks to auto-scaling, but there are also great benefits especially if outleveling quest chains is an issue.
So what are your thoughs on how levels should determine the players effectiveness?
Seems like an easy one for me as there is a tenet that comes to mind:
-- An agreement that player levels should be both meaningful and memorable.
I'd say they should be pretty damn important relative to whatever you are doing.
oneADseven said:Seems like an easy one for me as there is a tenet that comes to mind:
-- An agreement that player levels should be both meaningful and memorable.
I'd say they should be pretty damn important relative to whatever you are doing.
Gotta be honest here, not seeing how your post was relevant to what OP asked.
@zoltar
So, you seem to have three main questions from what I'm reading.
1) What will be an acceptable level gap while grouping content?
2) How many levels above you will a mob be when it becomes almost impossible to kill?
3) Will level scaling exist?
To address the first question, I don't think an official level gap has beem mentioned. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar system to that of EverQuest was implemented.
There was a forumla(that i can't remember right now) that gave a level range. The level gap increased as you became higher level. So at lvl 20, you could maybe only group with someone who is 28, and when they ding 29, they are too high and the xp gets nerfed. But when you get to lvl 60, you can group with someone as low as 46 and still get normal xp.
To address your second question, it will likely be the same in Pantheon. When a mob is a few levels higher than you, their innate resistance and defensive skills will make them very difficult to hit and do damage to. As the game is group focused, when a mob will 'con'(level check) white, which generally means the same level as you, that means it is an appropriate mob to kill with a group of people your level. When the mob 'cons' higher, like yellow, that means you have a tough fight ahead of you; this will happen when the mob is 1-2 levels above you. When it cons red, that is your indication that you should, generally, not be messign with that mob; this will happen when the mob is 3+ levels above you. So this falls within your experience of mobs being +4/5 levels being near impossible to kill. Should you have a group of people who are several levels higher than you, you probably will be fine, but your contribution will likely be lower because of resists/missing. The obvious exception here being a healer.
To address your third question, I believe Brad has mentioned he would like to implement a level scaling system so you can scale down and play with friends. I would expect this to be similar to GW2 or other games that nerf your character down to that level where your gear still gives you an edge and you're a bit more powerful than a typical character that level will be, but it wont necessarily trivialize the content. As an add-on to this, Brad talked about wanting to do a Mentor/Mentoree system i believe.
zoltar said:Hi everyone. I have a quick question for you guys. The prmary MMO I played back in the day was Asheron's Call. One thing I liked about it was that you could group with players from a pretty wide range and be effective. This was in part due to the way the skill system worked on an exponential curve, and things like a lvl 50 going with a lvl 70 wouldn't be unheard of. Or an 85 with a 126. You see, aside from gear all that really mattered was your attack skill level. As you got higher and higher, the same difference in character level translated to a smaller and smaller difference in attack skill.
Most other games I've played since seem to put in an artificial penalty to accuracy for fighting mobs above your level that makes fighting things more than +4 or +5 almost impossible as well as XP penalties for killing lower level mobs. Some games have implemented various workarounds though. City of Heroes and the sidekick system comes to mind. The game let you artifically and temporarily increase or decrease your level to match another player. No new skills were added, but base stats and damage would adjust to your new level. Other games such as ESO have made all content scale to each players' level. There are some serious drawbacks to auto-scaling, but there are also great benefits especially if outleveling quest chains is an issue.
So what are your thoughs on how levels should determine the players effectiveness?
Hey Zoltar, you may wish to check out several other threads on this topic or have a read through our FAQ as we explain several ways of doing this via "Mentoring" and the "Brotherhood" systems both of which allow players to play together no matter the level gap and stay around the same level with friends and family while offline.
I will have to close this as it is a duplicate but please feel free to search for the other threads and join in on those, links below to FAQ and one of the main Mentoring threads :)
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2536/mentor-mechanics
http://www.pantheonmmo.com/game/faqs/
4.11 Can I play with my friend’s new character using my high-level character? What about alts?
Yes, through the Mentor System. Mentoring temporarily de-levels your character and allows you to group with them. You will either scale down or assume the character you were at that lower level (TBD) and be a huge help. This will enable players to group together without one being overpowered and content trivialized.
The Mentor System is voluntary although there will be incentives to mentor, giving your character certain advantages (points, recognition, and other rewards – the details are TBD). We want to encourage people to help new players. Additionally, there will be incentives to create alternate characters through the Progeny System (where when you reach a certain level you can create an alternate level one character who will have some advantages over a brand-new character).