Level 40 instances of open world zones

rabenschwinge · July 2013

Inspired by a thread about Unity missions I was thinking, it may be in an interesting change to just make level 40 instances of the big world zones of this map. Not necessarily along with the missions that come with it (though a level 40 variant of Telios' Tower might be interesting), but with all enemies on the map and all open world missions at least level 40.

This game has a lot of interesting sceneries and a lot of interesting open world missions, but they are viable to each and every character only relatively briefly.

If there was an instance of The Southwest Desert or Millennium City were every single enemy is at least level 40 that would make a lot of more or less dead content become much present than it is now.

ashensnow · July 2013

rabenschwinge wrote: »

Inspired by a thread about Unity missions I was thinking, it may be in an interesting change to just make level 40 instances of the big world zones of this map. Not necessarily along with the missions that come with it (though a level 40 variant of Telios' Tower might be interesting), but with all enemies on the map and all open world missions at least level 40.

This game has a lot of interesting sceneries and a lot of interesting open world missions, but they are viable to each and every character only relatively briefly.

If there was an instance of The Southwest Desert or Millennium City were every single enemy is at least level 40 that would make a lot of more or less dead content become much present than it is now.

An interesting idea.

Another, along similar lines, might be to switch existing mobs in existing zones over to scary monster tech.

rabenschwinge · July 2013

ashensnow wrote: »

An interesting idea.

Another, along similar lines, might be to switch existing mobs in existing zones over to scary monster tech.

I am not sure whether I understand what you mean... a mob that would be naturally level 11 in Millennium City could be level 40 if a level 40 looks at it? That would have funny consequences if both a level 11 player character and a level 40 player character engage the same mob... Or just instantly switch mobs? That would then of course lead to many actually low level players getting killed...

ashensnow · July 2013

rabenschwinge wrote: »

I am not sure whether I understand what you mean... a mob that would be naturally level 11 in Millennium City could be level 40 if a level 40 looks at it? That would have funny consequences if both a level 11 player character and a level 40 player character engage the same mob... Or just instantly switch mobs? That would then of course lead to many actually low level players getting killed...

"Scary Monster," is a classification of mobs that already exists that takes damage from a character as if they were the same level as that character, and do damage to a character as if they were his level as well. You can have a level 11 and a level 40 fighting a, "scary monster tech," mob at the same time. Of course the level 40 has more powers, advantage points, better gear, etc etc, but both characters can contribute to the fight.

Its not a perfect system, but it already exists, is already in game, and has been used for years now.

rabenschwinge · July 2013

I see. Like the mobs that dropped the minor evidence pieces during the Nighthawk event. That might work...

iceih03 · July 2013

ashensnow wrote: »

"Scary Monster," is a classification of mobs that already exists that takes damage from a character as if they were the same level as that character, and do damage to a character as if they were his level as well. You can have a level 11 and a level 40 fighting a, "scary monster tech," mob at the same time. Of course the level 40 has more powers, advantage points, better gear, etc etc, but both characters can contribute to the fight.

Its not a perfect system, but it already exists, is already in game, and has been used for years now.

Everything should be that way, every-map and instance would be playable.

flamingbunnyman · July 2013

iceih03 wrote: »

Everything should be that way, every-map and instance would be playable.

It would mak things a lot less annoying when I decide that one of my 40s needs to empty out their Crime Computer. All those outleveled missions would be more entertaining if they weren't a total cakewalk.

rabenschwinge · July 2013

Applying something like this to the entire game would be basically removing the significance of levels in Champions Online altogether. While I would have preferred such an approach to start with (Mobs do simply not have a level. At all.) it would be a very fundamental change to the game, within the league of the "New Game Experience" in Star Wars Galaxies.

Problems I see with this from scratch:

In many missions there are mobs which are designed to be above or below mission level. Sometimes you get swarmed by particularly low level enemies. (I believe there is one in the Canada Crisis, where you escort a wolf spirit through a frozen cave, filled with masses of zombies which are usually "grey". The mobs in Therakiel's Palace on Elite are usually level 43, the mobs in Andrithal in Monster Island are usually level 41)
This would be a very fundamental change to the game, might take a huge amount of development time and a lot players may dislike it and turn their back on the game. Players don't like changes. Even if it's a conceptual improvement there are going to be miles long open letters to the devs on this forum, detailing why people hate everything and turn their back on the game for DCUO.
You'd be taken away the freedom to decide the relative level of the enemies you fight in many circumstances. The time being a player who is new to MMOs can do blue or green missions. An experienced player who seeks a challenge levelling a new character can fight mobs five levels higher than him. That would no longer be possible.
The item level of loot drops would depend on the level of the player who kills it. If two players are involved in slaying the same enemy they might get different rewards of greatly different value, ironically they player who had a harder time the less valuable reward. But you can't just remove item levels unless you want items that drop in the tutorial to be as powerful as items that drop in Vibora Bay.

Don't get me wrong, I see the beauty of a game without mob levels. Actually without levels, not as in The Secret World (where there are no character levels, but gear levels). It removes an unnecessary ballast, from a time where levelling up a character was the core experience in MMOs, and single player games which were designed for a single story line only. The whole idea is to make as much content available, meaningful and rewarding, to players regardless of their characters' levels. I am just saying it's not without problems.

ashensnow · July 2013

rabenschwinge wrote: »

Applying something like this to the entire game would be basically removing the significance of levels in Champions Online altogether. While I would have preferred such an approach to start with (Mobs do simply not have a level. At all.) it would be a very fundamental change to the game, within the league of the "New Game Experience" in Star Wars Galaxies.

Problems I see with this from scratch:
In many missions there are mobs which are designed to be above or below mission level. Sometimes you get swarmed by particularly low level enemies. (I believe there is one in the Canada Crisis, where you escort a wolf spirit through a frozen cave, filled with masses of zombies which are usually "grey". The mobs in Therakiel's Palace on Elite are usually level 43, the mobs in Andrithal in Monster Island are usually level 41)

This would be a very fundamental change to the game, might take a huge amount of development time and a lot players may dislike it and turn their back on the game. Players don't like changes. Even if it's a conceptual improvement there are going to be miles long open letters to the devs on this forum, detailing why people hate everything and turn their back on the game for DCUO.

You'd be taken away the freedom to decide the relative level of the enemies you fight in many circumstances. The time being a player who is new to MMOs can do blue or green missions. An experienced player who seeks a challenge levelling a new character can fight mobs five levels higher than him. That would no longer be possible.

The item level of loot drops would depend on the level of the player who kills it. If two players are involved in slaying the same enemy they might get different rewards of greatly different value, ironically they player who had a harder time the less valuable reward. But you can't just remove item levels unless you want items that drop in the tutorial to be as powerful as items that drop in Vibora Bay.

Don't get me wrong, I see the beauty of a game without mob levels. Actually without levels, not as in The Secret World (where there are no character levels, but gear levels). It removes an unnecessary ballast, from a time where levelling up a character was the core experience in MMOs, and single player games which were designed for a single story line only. The whole idea is to make as much content available, meaningful and rewarding, to players regardless of their characters' levels. I am just saying it's not without problems.

There are already mechanics in the game for having some mobs weaker and stronger than others even without level difference. Even without those mob power level modifiers the option exists to not rank up a particular mob's attacks if it is meant to be weaker or to provide a passive, toggle or power rank up for those meant to be stronger.

Whether or not proposed changes would be perceived of as an improvement drawing in more people, or a problem chasing people away is beyond our ability to suggest or speculate. I think it is safe to say that any change will offend some people and that a lack of change will offend some people. The reality of the matter is that nothing that is done, or not done as the case may be, will be implemented without complaint. The fact that some people will complain about improvements to a game is no reason to decide to not improve the game. For example, the suggestion made in the OP would involve spending scant dev resources on changes to the game that only benefits those playing level 40 characters. Certainly justification for complaint for some.

Item drops being appropriate for the level of the character receiving them seems like a good thing to me. As it stands in the game right now a more powerful character will get better (much much better) drops while facing less challenge than the lower level, weaker, character does.

Obviously there would be changes needed to implement such a suggestion, but pretty much all of the mechanics are already in place in the game, and have been for years.

firefly113 · July 2013

I do think that levels would still play a factor even with this change. Higher level characters will simply be better prepared to handle all of the challenges the world offers than lower characters would.

Also, this would allow low level characters to go anywhere. If you decide to make a Canadian trooper, nothing's stopping you from going to Canada. If you make a manimal or jungle dweller you can head straight to Monster Island. It would officially become a choose your adventure book, because the only real restriction would be the fact that if you go to these high level places as a low level character you'd be stuck spamming one or two powers against enemies that have more of a variety. Plus Monster Island would probably be a really scary place for a newbie with all the special powers that monsters there get.

Sadly this kind of change would probably be too time consuming, and a total balancing nightmare. I think we'd probably sooner see level 40 variants of all the zones, because at least we know for sure that level 40s can handle it all.

Level 40 instances of open world zones

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