Ok this ones gonna be a bit of a ramble... Apologies in advance.
In most MMOs at max level the Player Characters feel almost godlike in relation to mid level mobs. Hit Points and AC are so high that mobs barely do any damage.
I think a different approach to this power curve could be beneficial to a game.
For instance what if in a game with a max level of say 50 that most of the power would be gained between levels 1-30 and the levels 31-50 would be much smaller power increases with more of a focus on opening up a players "toolbox".
I'd like to define my idea of power in relation to PC before I go on. I'm specifically talking about Hit Points, AC, Damage Delt, Resistances... This to me is Vertical Power.
Now as far as the "toolbox" of players, by this I mean having more options to control encounters and the environment... This to me is Horizontal Power.
Keeping that mid level content relevant for max level characters by having items drops, area specific crafting resources, and quests seems like a good idea to me. Some zones could span all the way from level 30-50 and you could group with anyone in those levels because the general power curve would be a slight incline.
I love the idea of a dungeon that gets colder the deeper you go down and a group of level 30ish players picks up a max level Druid that can guide them down lower with a spell of warmth protection but without making the group totally overpowered in the process. OK now I'm really rambling...
Levels 30-50 could be made way longer also because it would be easier to put together groups with a wider range of levels.
Maybe mentoring solves all this but I was trying to think of a more organic way to achieve this effect.
Having mid level mobs still be dangerous to max level characters increases the amount of the games content being consumed at any one time I would think.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
PS: Hmm on second thought mentoring doesn't really do the same thing as the Druid in my example could have just not mentored and guided them down out of group still overpowering the mobs. So by keeping those 30-40ish mobs dangerous it makes the group fight down normally. I like this...
Like your resoning as this is a big problem in most game's its should be discussed , what we should get to increase our advancment could be tricky not to still get over powered by it. And what of the gear, if im lv 50 with 50gear its should still not make it much harder for a lv 30 mobb to damage me but still its should be lv 50 gear. Is there a nice solution for this approach of thinking out there ?
Stratoz said:Like your resoning as this is a big problem in most game's its should be discussed , what we should get to increase our advancment could be tricky not to still get over powered by it. And what of the gear, if im lv 50 with 50gear its should still not make it much harder for a lv 30 mobb to damage me but still its should be lv 50 gear. Is there a nice solution for this approach of thinking out there ?
The benefit to itemization is that you can keep all level 30+ gear relevant because it doesn't climb in power so drastically. A specific drop from a level 35 mob could still be very valuable and a challenge for even maxed out characters to seek out.
Honestly, plenty of level 20-30 mobs in original EQ were enough of a threat to a level 50, even with the best raid gear available at the time.
3-4 level 30 mobs could wreck a caster if they weren't careful.
Vanguard was similar, honestly. You could easily get destroyed by enough 4-dot or higher mobs if you weren't careful.
In some games there is a massive power creep that occurs at max level but I don't think Pantheon will necessarily follow that path. The reason I think this is because Pantheon is already being designed in a manner that makes the 1-50 journey a lot longer, as well as more horizontal progression elements that don't exist elsewhere.
Games backload a ton of character power at level 50 because it takes people 2-3 days to hit max in a lot of newer games. In order to keep things interesting they have to make level 50 feel a ton more powerful than earlier levels because you blow through levels in a flash of light.
Liav said:Honestly, plenty of level 20-30 mobs in original EQ were enough of a threat to a level 50, even with the best raid gear available at the time.
3-4 level 30 mobs could wreck a caster if they weren't careful.
Vanguard was similar, honestly. You could easily get destroyed by enough 4-dot or higher mobs if you weren't careful.
In some games there is a massive power creep that occurs at max level but I don't think Pantheon will necessarily follow that path. The reason I think this is because Pantheon is already being designed in a manner that makes the 1-50 journey a lot longer, as well as more horizontal progression elements that don't exist elsewhere.
Games backload a ton of character power at level 50 because it takes people 2-3 days to hit max in a lot of newer games. In order to keep things interesting they have to make level 50 feel a ton more powerful than earlier levels because you blow through levels in a flash of light.
Very true but it wasn't long before tanks with 10,000 hps could tank 50 mobs at a time... It seemed like the blink of an eye to me back then and was one of the things that turned me off EQ1.
Having a plan in place early so this doesn't happen would be a good idea and I'm sure they have got this covered. I think it's an interesting discussion to have.
Thanks,
Kiz~
Interesting thoughts here.
One thing I find undesirable is constant annoying attacks by much lower level mobs that are trivial to kill and give essentially no experience or loot. I liked the DAOC system where gray mobs would basically leave you alone except under special circumstances and a level cap character could travel in low level zones without annoying but non-threatening attacks. Though I can see an argument against this since it may give too much of an advantage in harvesting over people that actually belong in the zone.
One of the things that EQN was supposedly going to implement was hotizontal progression. I like that type of thing, but not sure if it would work with the Pantheon crowd. I do recall the last time I seriously played EQ1 (many years ago) I could easily get my shaman into trouble at level 35 fighting several gray conned mobs at once. Sure, scrawny kobolds fell by the dozens, but level 20(s) mobs could still hurt. You are right, other games a max level character could one shot mobs half their level, which seems silly.
Anistosoles said:One of the things that EQN was supposedly going to implement was hotizontal progression. I like that type of thing, but not sure if it would work with the Pantheon crowd. I do recall the last time I seriously played EQ1 (many years ago) I could easily get my shaman into trouble at level 35 fighting several gray conned mobs at once. Sure, scrawny kobolds fell by the dozens, but level 20(s) mobs could still hurt. You are right, other games a max level character could one shot mobs half their level, which seems silly.
Pantheon will have horizontal progression, they're just not taking it to 11 and scrapping the level system like EQN planned to.
Pantheon will be a hybrid of vertical/horizontal progression, most likely with emphasis on vertical.
EQ's original answer to this issue was Alternate Advancement. Worked pretty good initially. It had to be difficult to balance same level content for a char with no AAs vs one with a ton of them.
I like your idea of a large range of levels to group. The larger the range the slighter the power delta between levels would need to be. Slower levelling definitely helps with this though. And I'm guessing their answer is the mentoring system. Worked fairly well in VG, though I'd like to see a little more power decrease when mentoring.