vbGore Free Online RPG Engine

EXTRA Idea:
when I am lvl 70, why must I level up an "alt" character?
why not create a new char near my highest level?
so when I have a lvl 70 Warrior, why not be able to create a lvl 50?
just something we had in mind and makes sense a little in this talk.



These Support Characters are a new appraoch now and make sense.

It reminds me a lot of the supporters in GW

if you didnt have a buddy, you grabbed some mercenaries.

They were averagely strong.

Weak players could be surpassed by them,
but good players rocked them away in no time.

only drawbacks towards other players:
-basic equip, no fire swords or so
-basic armors, no hp and stat bonuses
-basic skills. strong skills, but nothing specific, just damage or small combos

I also recently played "Evo" which is a jump n run rpg and lets you save your characters
at some points you can load your old stats (in this game it was useful as you evolved/world
and becoming a fish or bird was useful at times)

I thought about saving chars but meh, too much traffic.
alone what id have to save into the DB would kill me!

i had imagined some shrine where you would save your chars into
in this case:

you could have a selection of "ancient heros" from the past.
you go to some priest or so, blabla,
chose a hero, and a level.

-The exp you gain is 0
-The gold you gain is average to your normal level (so its not too pointless)
-the items you gain: none, or they disappear when you "vanish"
-no death penalty

could be a setup

I honestly had something like a testserver planned where you could
"create a char on the fly", as alerons skill system allows complex builds,
and before people must respec or so, they can test.

Never thought of such a system for such use though...

would be fun to become a lvl 70 wizard if my buddies need one.
(me beeing a lvl 60+ Warrior)
I would have like 6 spells (fireball, meteor, etc, very standart but not weak)
STANDARD equip for that level ("Lich Staff", Not "Lich Staff of Hatred +6")

these supporters CAN be profitable to a party, why not?
else people wont party with him, and after all: it is a player.
If your afraid of the supporters used to level normal characters:
yes that will happen, but i personally see no prob if the supporters are players
and the leveling is just as fast as in a normal 2 man party

also the quests you mentioned:
if those supporters are spirits of ancient heroes, you could really make awesome quests
and 1 final quest, where all party members must be heroes, and none double.
for example 5 different ones then.
would be very difficult to form good supporter only parties

There good ideas but I just don't think they will work I don't know why but I just don't people will find a way to exploit you letting them level up temporarily. And if not then i think it would just be a major turnoff here you can be this level for now but you won't get anything out of it. I think it should be the higher level becomes a lower level and thus can help his friends reach his level and help them properly.

i don't exactly know how the data base side of this works (mostly in a game with player raise stats)

but you could always mask the players lvl.

Say a lvl 70 wants to help his lvl 30 ish friends, when joining a party with them they will be set at their own levels. (This is to begin with)

So the party of a lvl 70, a lvl 40 and a lvl 30 all go into a lvl 40 zone.

So far:
- The lvl 70 will gain 1 exp per kill because they are so powerful in this area.
- The lvl 40 will gain the normal amount of exp per kill since it's the area he has to be in.
- The lvl 30 will gain more from each monster since they will be harder to beat for him.

The party is given a lvl mask to the lowest party members level. If the skills are lvl dependent any skill over the lvl (for this 30) will be suspended, can't be used.

So the party is now masked as lvl 30.

the party would now consist of a lvl 46 (the 70), a lvl 39 (the lvl 40) and a lvl 30. *** these are rough ideas ***

(i just divided the first by 3, the second by 30 to get a rough estimate on how much of the lvl should be taken off)

their stats would be reconfigured to these lvls.


So now:
- Even though the lvl 70 is greater than the area lvl they will still gain a semi worthwhile amount of exp per kill.
- The lvl 40 doesn't change much in the exp gain
- and the lvl 30 is gaining the same they would have in the party as it was.


the lvl 70 can still use all their skills up to and including those under the lvl 46 requirement. Sadly the lvl 40 will lose a lvl 40 ability they should actually be allowed to use.

again just another idea on high lvls joining a low level party... with their exp gain in mind.

There is a big problem with restricting players based on the level difference and that is simply, that the higher level player just won't want to party. Maplestory does exactly what you said Vincent, and it ends up being that you group with a whole lot of randoms your level rather than partying with your friends.

I think whenever we come up with these theories there should be specific criteria mentioned up top.

For this problem:

• What are the problems associated with this issue?
  
• What past implementations have been used to solve this issue?
  
• What are the pros and cons of these past implementations and what can we take from this, and what have we learned from this?
  
• What mistakes have been made in the past?
  
• What does our solution solve?
  
• Are there any problems with our solution?
  
• How is our solution better?

Sorry i missed this,

Sounds like a good idea, you seemed to have come up with a solution to resolve a bundle of issues, but ive found it hard to actually make sense of and put into perspective, im sure you know exactly what you are talking about. If possible, some practical examples of what you mean? as in, imagine if this were implemented into your game, what would the result be like, what do people have to do,what would happen, what events would occur?

Sorry dunno if its because im tired, but atm its just hard for me to imagine this visually.



I call your first problem you mentioned party power-leveling, where noobs can level up ridiculously fast by camping until the final boss is at 1 health and then getting the higher level players let the noob kill it. And yes this is one of the issues i tried to address many posts ago.

I call the second problem you mentioned, the "boring game" phenomenon, where there is no replay value for any of the quests you do, have no friends, and the only reason you play the game is for the act of leveling itself. The obvious solution to this problem is just make the game more fun, give the quests some replay value. Maplestory did this extremely well with its first party quest (in fact it was pretty much the only fun thing in the entire game).

And then the solution you gave to address this problem is in fact the problem itself. The actual problem is having to wait for you noob friends to reach your level before you can band together. There needs to be some alternative and instantaneous means to be able to party with your friends, because occasions when all your friends are online are rare, and you want to be able to co-op straight away.

What I think is that when you are going to help someone that is a lower level there needs to be some way it benefits the higher level character without giving them experience or better gear. The big question here is what can you do to make a high level person want to help a lower level. Well, I'll think about this for awhile and get back to you on what I come up with.

but i just don't see what the big deal is with giving the higher level player goodies for helping a weaker player. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it as far as i can see.

Lets say I am level 50 and have been playing for a few months. I get a friend of mine to join, and want to play with him to get him into the game, but don't want to start a new character. So we group, but since our level difference is too large, I have to select a "support" character that would be about the same level as he is - level 1. So I get to choose between a limited selection of pre-built characters, each with a specific role like healer, tank, yada yada. Being someone who has played a while, I'd just choose whatever would work best with his new character.

So we go off and do level 1 stuff, as a group - me as my support character, him as his normal character. My character comes with armor and stats already determined, so the best I could do as we level up is change to a different support character. I can still use potions, magic items, etc, though, if I want. But they have to be stuff that we find or he gives me, since the support character is separate from the main one, thus can't access your main inventory.

When we're done, he has progressed just like as if he grouped with anyone else. I, on the other hand, progress differently. My support character earned all this exp, but I can't change the support character's stats. So this exp is adjusted to fit my main character's level, and then given to him. How this adjustment is done may be a bit difficult to determine, but if we were fighting as a group for 5 hours, it should be about equal to what I could make solo in around 3 to 3.5 hours (don't want it BETTER than playing as your main character). More importantly, I get to play with my friend, still progress my character a bit, and can actually help him out.

Likewise, if I go back to my level 50 character, but there are only people level 40 and below online, I could have them group with me as a level 50 support character (they come up to my level instead of me down to theirs). This would allow me to do some quests that I would normally need a group for. Why they would do this is up to them. I could entice them with in-game money or items, let them keep whatever loot they want, or they could come along just for the fun of it. The important thing is that I wouldn't be stuck here alone, in the dark, just because I'm higher level than everyone else online.

Ahhh i see, thats actually a pretty good idea i like it. It sounds a bit like City of Heroes sidekicks (http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Sidekick).

Although i wonder what the overhead will be like with all these fixed stats, again, im still more of a fan of dynamic allocation, where programmers don't have to make guestimates and accidentally over/under - power some classes.

oh, a simialar system is already in use,
so what I "would" be thinking of implementing,
though its the same BASE concept, but with different intentions
and other differencies (missin a word in engl here.... im tired...)
would not sound like ripping off spodis idea.
its even strongly in debate if were to implement it or not XD
might not fit the story at all... so chances "are" low

well for one in aleron your account "remembers" your highest level reached,
and if you reached lvl 50 once, for example,
you can chose your new characters level form 1-50,
distribute loads more stats and other stuff.

thats 1 very simple way we will allow for alts and playing with people who are maybe 20 levels below you.
(lvl 70 wants to party a lvl 40 or so)