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Powerleveling
tinyish
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
In DDO if you group with a party member that is more than a couple levels above you then you have a large experience penalty, up to the point where you get no experience at all. Being entirely limited from playing with my friend just because he is low level, no matter what the adventure level is, is no fun at all.
The goal in a social game like this should NEVER be just to keep certain people from playing together. The goal behind the experience penalties is to limit powerleveling. That is, we may discourage people from grouping together just to get thier lower level characters up very quickly, but we shouldn't limit them from being together altogether. Granted, it may be very difficult for a level 1 to even survive in an adventure with a higher level character, but that's the risk you take.
I'd like to see a system that scales better so that people of somewhat different levels can group together and still make some process. If I get to level 30 in Neverwinter and a buddy of mine who isn't so sure about the game starts a level 1 then I should go and show him the ropes so that he'll get more into the game instead of giving up. I'd rather not be forced to start over at level 1 to play with him, especially if I've run out of character slots to make level 1 characters. I think there are several different options that could let me play my level 30 with his level 1.
I've seen some games which have a mentoring system. They basically scale your character down to a lower level, taking away your abilities and stuff. I think I'd rather see a system where they let you keep your abilities (so that your buddy can see all the cool stuff that he can do later on) but just scale the damage down to a percentage or a cap based on the level that you're scaling down to. So if I'm mentoring a level 30 with my level 1 I'd still be able to do my massive ice-blast nova uber monster killer daily attack, but instead of doing normal damage it would be limited to 3% as much damage.
Another option would be to give both players an experience penalty, but have the minimum be at an amount that is less than 0%. I think a minimum of 5 or 10% experience would be fine. Granted that's a terrible way to level up either character and would effectively limit powerleveling, but it would at least be an option where we could play together and still get some small amount of progress out of it.
An option that I'd really like to see would be to give full experience for anyone that pulls thier weight in a party. If I joined my level 30 character with my friend's level 1 character and we went to go do a level 15 dungeon then I'd likely get full experience for doing my part (10,000 total damage) and and my level 15 buddy managed to do 20% as much damage or healing as me and would get 20% as much experience and my level 1 buddy would have done his best and managed to do only 5% as much total damage or healing as me and would get the minimum 5% or 10% experience. In this case the average level would be about 15 and completing a level 15 dungeon with a level 30 character would not give the same full amount of experience as when the level 30 completed a level 30 adventure, which means that the level 30 character would be doing all the work but effectively also getting less than normal experience.
In this option, it would also give less experience to someone who simply went AFK for half or of the adventure and a very significantly less experience to someone who went AFK for all of the adventure. Also, when a high level healer just stood back and kept a low level fighter alive for an entire instance then both of them would have contributed equally and thus both would get 100% experience. Of course, it may not be possible for a level 1 fighter to effectively tank a level 15 instance, even with all the healing in the world, so the levels would likely have to be closer together for this to work.
In all of these scenarios the goal to be able to play together and still get some small reward has been met, but there may be a better way that I haven't thought of. Which of these do you think might work the best, or can you think of any other ways to modify experience or loot to let various different leveled characters play together? What about a combination of these things?
The goal in a social game like this should NEVER be just to keep certain people from playing together. The goal behind the experience penalties is to limit powerleveling. That is, we may discourage people from grouping together just to get thier lower level characters up very quickly, but we shouldn't limit them from being together altogether. Granted, it may be very difficult for a level 1 to even survive in an adventure with a higher level character, but that's the risk you take.
I'd like to see a system that scales better so that people of somewhat different levels can group together and still make some process. If I get to level 30 in Neverwinter and a buddy of mine who isn't so sure about the game starts a level 1 then I should go and show him the ropes so that he'll get more into the game instead of giving up. I'd rather not be forced to start over at level 1 to play with him, especially if I've run out of character slots to make level 1 characters. I think there are several different options that could let me play my level 30 with his level 1.
I've seen some games which have a mentoring system. They basically scale your character down to a lower level, taking away your abilities and stuff. I think I'd rather see a system where they let you keep your abilities (so that your buddy can see all the cool stuff that he can do later on) but just scale the damage down to a percentage or a cap based on the level that you're scaling down to. So if I'm mentoring a level 30 with my level 1 I'd still be able to do my massive ice-blast nova uber monster killer daily attack, but instead of doing normal damage it would be limited to 3% as much damage.
Another option would be to give both players an experience penalty, but have the minimum be at an amount that is less than 0%. I think a minimum of 5 or 10% experience would be fine. Granted that's a terrible way to level up either character and would effectively limit powerleveling, but it would at least be an option where we could play together and still get some small amount of progress out of it.
An option that I'd really like to see would be to give full experience for anyone that pulls thier weight in a party. If I joined my level 30 character with my friend's level 1 character and we went to go do a level 15 dungeon then I'd likely get full experience for doing my part (10,000 total damage) and and my level 15 buddy managed to do 20% as much damage or healing as me and would get 20% as much experience and my level 1 buddy would have done his best and managed to do only 5% as much total damage or healing as me and would get the minimum 5% or 10% experience. In this case the average level would be about 15 and completing a level 15 dungeon with a level 30 character would not give the same full amount of experience as when the level 30 completed a level 30 adventure, which means that the level 30 character would be doing all the work but effectively also getting less than normal experience.
In this option, it would also give less experience to someone who simply went AFK for half or of the adventure and a very significantly less experience to someone who went AFK for all of the adventure. Also, when a high level healer just stood back and kept a low level fighter alive for an entire instance then both of them would have contributed equally and thus both would get 100% experience. Of course, it may not be possible for a level 1 fighter to effectively tank a level 15 instance, even with all the healing in the world, so the levels would likely have to be closer together for this to work.
In all of these scenarios the goal to be able to play together and still get some small reward has been met, but there may be a better way that I haven't thought of. Which of these do you think might work the best, or can you think of any other ways to modify experience or loot to let various different leveled characters play together? What about a combination of these things?
Post edited by tinyish on
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cryptic is logically light years ahead of DDO when it comes to XP distribution and level disparity.
This enables higher level players to assist lower level players without the encounter being overpowered by someone who is at a higher level. This implementation really has promise in my opinion and may be something to be considered.
My Best,
Ezra Steel
It doesn't work that well btw the characters do scale down but power creep is still very much a factor because of the equipment they are wearing.
Example: a lvl 80 scaled down to say lvl 20 will have a much easier time with mobs than his buddy a true lvl 20 of the same class and skill fighting the same mobs.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
I don't see it as much of a problem that a character who scales down to 20 from 30 is still more powerful than a regular level 20, or a character who goes up to 30 from 20 is still less powerful than a regular level 30.
This would simply spark a host of arguments about class balance, expose a host of exploits, and generally annoy the hell out of tanks.
Lowering your character level to earn either experience or unique rewards should be fine.
I don't care either but for the topic of powerleveling it is a factor isn't it, you could easily get your high level buddies to "run" you thru lower lvl content to get you up to high levels relatively easily.
Depends on how cryptic sees it and what they think of power leveling. It's a zergers dream you know power leveling.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
It really depends on just how difficult the players want the game to be, and how much control over the difficulty Cryptic is going to give those players.
In my experience, if you give players an easy button, they will push it.
I'd rather have an insanely tough game than a boringly easy game.
I'll get out my main, max level character in his Venture skinned Dreadnought, have my low level character on the second account send a party invite and then have my main character Match down to my low level character's level. I then set my low level character on follow and run him or her through the mission on my main character.
I cannot recall the correct distance, but if either member gets too far away from each other for 60 seconds, the Level Match will go away and the player will return to their correct level. When you get back close enough, you'll automatically Level Match again. You are notified before this happens and at intervals as the 60 second timer counts down.
I haven't used CO's Sidekick system, so I cannot comment on how it works.
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Mobs' exp can be capped at a maximum for the player's level. Dungeons can be locked for certain levels and upwards. Dungeon and event quest/mobs'/boss exp can scale with player's level. Exp quests/potions can be capped per day. Simple and easy things that quite simply put a semi-hard cap at how much exp you can gain per day.
You can if you want take a look at Forsaken World to get an idea about what a system that flat out does not allow power leveling can include.
Agreed but I have to say FW isn't a great example, it's bloody easy to level in that game soloing. I diodn't even have time to figure out how the instancing worked properly before I hit lvl 35 ish lol
I'd have to add if power leveling is something they allow they will need some kind of endgame that doesn't rely on leveling.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
It's bloody easy to level solo sure. Early on, that is. Part of it is that the leveling curve is broken due to a bug in a western version, that forced PWE to disable a certain exp-giving system and replace it by a flat 3x exp bonus across the board. The other part of it is that lv1-30 is the tutorial, so you've always were able to blast through it, even before the 3x bonus.
That changes at high levels though. JFI, lv79->lv80 took me personally a bit over 2 months. 2 months for just one level. You wanna know something scarrier? I was at the top 50-60 highest levels on the server (and still am, apparently, as I don't think they raised the cap since I left).
So powerleveling has it's usefulness...
I've played my share of korean grind games and I still think it's bloody easy to level in FW even at higher levels. It's also boring as hell to kill the same 2 or 3 mobs for 6 months to get a level.
It's something that's unique and great about DnD that it's a game that's not really about that one more level so you can reach cap and pawn all in pvp etc etc
I don't really care which way they go on this matter as long as reaching cap doesn't take 3 years of your life.
Neverwinter Thieves Guild
It was good until the 3x quest exp became permanent..
I still prefer a good mix of quest + grinding. Only good thing about mob grinding is if they drop gear etc. Otherwise no point in grinding lol