Would sidegrades have a place in CU since theres no leveling?

Hokibukisa · February 2013

For leveling to be fun, imo there needs to be some kind of progression.

But CU will not be a PvE game with PvE content designed to stagger your progression to the top, and it sounds like there will be no battlegrounds either. As far as what I've read, I haven't read it all. A quick example of what I'm getting at, without PvE or battlegrounds, a new player would have no chance to progress in the frontiers.

Now imagine a new player joins a fully developed server, what sort of disadvantages are we talking about here? My first assumption is that progression would be a mix of side-grading and modest raw power advantage.

No matter how you do it though, I think we can all agree that:

1) New blood or recently rolled characters would need to be able to compete with the RR11s somehow, and still have a strong desire to progress their character in some specialized way.

2) That same RR11 felt very good about his progression from noob to awesome. That there is a clear uberfication in one way or another between noob and awesome, so that noob doesn't feel helpless, useless, and most importantly that the noob is still having fun and contributing in meaningful ways.

Itt this would be a good foundation principle article when you figure it out. :>

skyexile · February 2013

Mark said he still wants to separate new players/characters from older players, he hasn't said much more than that.

Lore84 · February 2013

Originally posted by Hokibukisa
For leveling to be fun, imo there needs to be some kind of progression.

But CU will not be a PvE game with PvE content designed to stagger your progression to the top, and it sounds like there will be no battlegrounds either. As far as what I've read, I haven't read it all. A quick example of what I'm getting at, without PvE or battlegrounds, a new player would have no chance to progress in the frontiers.

Now imagine a new player joins a fully developed server, what sort of disadvantages are we talking about here? My first assumption is that progression would be a mix of side-grading and modest raw power advantage.

No matter how you do it though, I think we can all agree that:

1) New blood or recently rolled characters would need to be able to compete with the RR11s somehow, and still have a strong desire to progress their character in some specialized way.

2) That same RR11 felt very good about his progression from noob to awesome. That there is a clear uberfication in one way or another between noob and awesome, so that noob doesn't feel helpless, useless, and most importantly that the noob is still having fun and contributing in meaningful ways.

Itt this would be a good foundation principle article when you figure it out. :>

I think we've been told that new characters will get a chance to get on their feet before going out into the "frontiers" so I think your fears should be alleviated on point 1

Hokibukisa · February 2013

Aha, good to know. Thx guys.

Still, elaborating on that would be a good principle article. :>

A daoc battleground stops working when there aren't enough players to fight. He did say that there will be NPCs to kill, but that it just wont be the focus.

boxsnd · February 2013

They didn't say there will be no BGs.

I'm hoping for a newbie BG like Thidranki that is like a PvP tutorial. You just can't ask day 1 players to fight 5 year veterans.

Hokibukisa · February 2013

Originally posted by boxsnd
They didn't say there will be no BGs.

I'm hoping for a newbie BG like Thidranki that is like a PvP tutorial. You just can't ask day 1 players to fight 5 year veterans.

Yes but that example, the fast progression (customizing who your character is) was through standard leveling to 50 which is pretty fast, and it should be pretty fast in an RvR game, especially one with many classes to potentially alt-aholic.

But what if that fast progression of defining your character isn't there? One problem Im trying to figure out, is if there the only progression system is the super-long, year spanning progression that we knew and loved as Realm Rank, that wouldn't do.

Unless the progression is more like a logarithm and certain stats have caps or diminishing returns.

skyexile · February 2013

Progression in this could possibly be unlimited provided progression past a certain point became alot harder and was less rewarding with power.

gregoryvg · February 2013

Originally posted by boxsnd
They didn't say there will be no BGs.

I'm hoping for a newbie BG like Thidranki that is like a PvP tutorial. You just can't ask day 1 players to fight 5 year veterans.

Yeah but on day 1 of the game we'll all be day 1 players. I would think there will be no need to worry about battlegrounds or "safe rvr areas" until the game has been around for at least a year or so.

meddyck · February 2013

I hope there will be DAOC style battlegrounds. First because they're fun. Second because they do exactly what you say which is give new toons a chance to grow and learn how to play without having to immediately deal with experienced, much more powerful elder characters. Third because many players either always or at certain times don't have the free time needed to commit to forming or joining a complete group and trying to accomplish something in the frontiers which can take hours. Having a BG like Thidranki or Molvik gives those players someplace to play the game that meets their needs. Having options is always a good thing. Just keep it simple and have one well designed BG map instead of the multitude that DAOC had most of which were empty for the longest time until they added BG quests.

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Would sidegrades have a place in CU since theres no leveling?

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Would sidegrades have a place in CU since theres no leveling?

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