DAoC patches in sidekicking - kind of

[eldaec]

New Grouping Level Range Changes

With 1.70, we are relaxing the rules that govern the level ranges that can effectively group together. The intent of this new system is to allow lower-level players to group with substantially higher-level group leaders, and enable them to make some contribution to combat and spellcasting.

The system works as follows:

- Whenever a low-level character (5th level or higher) joins a group led by a higher level character, they are temporarily adjusted so that they can hit and land spells on monsters of the range that are normally fought by the group leader. They will be able to hit, and also to do damage to these monsters.

- This adjustment kicks in when a player approximately 90% of the level of the group leader or less joins a group. This means that if anyone less than 17th level joins a group led by a 20th level group leader, their to-hit and damage are boosted up so that they can hit and damage monsters that are commonly fought by a 20th level group. Also, while grouped, they will take less damage per hit from high level monsters.

- This system does not affect items such as weapons or armor - only to-hit and damage, and to some extent, damage taken is affected.

- Lower level group members must be within 3000 units of the group leader in order to receive the bonus.

- Experience gained by the lower level character is the same as it currently is on the live servers when lower level characters are grouped with their higher level friends.

- There are diminishing returns on the effectiveness of wide level ranges in this system. Any character that is approximately half the group leader's level or lower will not see as much bonus from this system as characters closer to the target range; although they will still get some benefit.

[Daydreamer]

Mythic Entertainment - Stealing Good Ideas So We Don't Have to Think Them Up Since 2001.

[schild]

Mythic Entertainment - Stealing Good Ideas So We Don't Have to Think Them Up Since 2001.

Too bad they haven't stolen the 'fun.'

[daveNYC]

That might almost get me to resubscribe.  That and a pony.

[ajax34i]

The thing is, though, that in order for a sidekick system to work, you have to have a core gameplay that actually supports it.  Namely, spell damage, combat damage, resists, accuracy, your HP's, mana...  A lot of of these MMOG's have coded everything based on actual player level, not on effective level.  The core of the CoH sidekicking system is that little "You are now fighting as level xx" message.

That, and the fact that there are no fixed-point abilities. You don't heal 20 pts., you heal a percentage of your HP's (even heal other does this), which depend on your level.  You don't do 20 dmg, you do a multiplier of the level difference between you and your target.

They really did a good job of making everything depend on just one number that you can increase or decrease at will and have that character still be balanced for the new level he's acting at.  NPC's are like this too, which shows that the whole game revolves around it.

As far as copying the idea, of course it will be copied.  It's a kick-ass idea, any MMOG that doesn't have it is sub-standard now.  In fact, every MMOG out there will copy it, soon.

[Pig Destroyer]

A blatant rip off?  Yes.  Still an extremely good idea?  Definitely.

[Alrindel]

Whenever I have described CoH's sidekicking system to anyone I have added, "every MMOG should implement this".  I'm not going to fault Mythic for stealing Cryptic's innovation, I'm going to congratulate them for being the first to realize that sidekicking should be a standard feature.

[SirBruce]

Yes, nearly every dev I talked to at E3 about CoH said, "The sidekick system is great!  We should have thought of that!"  I expect to see it implemented throughout most MMOGs.

Bruce

[geldonyetich]

Yes, it's still an incomplete implementation so long as damage taken and spell effectiveness remains unaffected.

Aside from that, however, it could even be better than sidekicking in CoH on the grounds that there's no limit to how much sidekicking is done.   Instead of just promoting one character to 90% under the leader's level, each and every player is sidekicked to a level right under the group leader.

[eldaec]

It's about as complete as I'd ask for from daoc. It includes everything that is directly affected by level.

Spell damage multipliers will be affected - but not base damage.

I think in practice this one will be more about letting people work with a wider group level range (say 8-10 levels rather than 4-5), than pulling up a lvl 20 to lvl 50.

[HRose]

Early tests confirm that you can land spells finally... but they do 0 damage :)

[kaid]

Due to their gameplay it will never be quite what sidekicking is in coh but I fully expect to see just about everybody and their brother who can steal the sidekicking thing for their game to do so. It works well and is a huge boots so people whose friends are casual can still romp together.

Eq2 has recently shelved the fellowship system and I would not be shocked to see something like sidekicking put in to replace it. Side kicking has less power gamer implications than a xp chain like asherons call has.


kaid

[daveNYC]

Early tests confirm that you can land spells finally... but they do 0 damage :)

Any tests on what damage mobs do to the lowbie characters?

[hirebrand]

Are heals and enhancements affected? It would suck if those classes were left out.

[Nebu]

Looks like people should be able to powerlevel their bots to 50 even faster...

Nice job Mythic!

I left this game and haven't looked back... if it were free, I still wouldn't play.

[Pig Destroyer]

Looks like people should be able to powerlevel their bots to 50 even faster...

Nice job Mythic!

I left this game and haven't looked back... if it were free, I still wouldn't play.

Personally, anything that makes getting to the "endgame" AKA killing people, faster, is a very good thing.

Sounds like your problem lies with buffbots and not this idea.  Try to stay on track please.  

I don't even consider buffbots that much of a problem anymore in comparison with the insane amount of catassing that needs to be done to get the uberriffic ToA equipment and master levels and such.  this helps speed along the process, which is great IMHO.

[Nebu]

Sounds like your problem lies with buffbots and not this idea.  Try to stay on track please.

My "problem" as you like to call it is the fact that this entire fucking game is a sinking ship.  Rather than fix the multitude of problems that have existed in it for years (class issues, bots, the stealth war, treadmill-from-hell, ToA catass artifacts with unbalanced powers, the have/have-not syndrome that makes pvp more about zergs and less about skill, god I could go on for days!) they decide to do what they've been doing... slap on a band-aid and call it a day.  

Sidekicking is a good idea and a feature I support. In the case of DAoC, it's like stealing a roll of duct tape from a neighbor to patch a hole on the Titanic.

Oh... the next time I make a sarcastic comment, I'll make sure that I add a disclaimer.

[eldaec]

DAoC has issues (buffbots primarily, also RvR design, which is being looked at) but fundamentally it works. Not everyone likes it, (downtime, and rvr needing more objectives than gank group roaming are fair complaints) but that doesn't mean it doesn't deliver a solid game with the only mainstream level based pvp environment that is even basically functional in a game that still has viable server populations.

People whine a lot about ToA requirements, but the fact is that to be competitive in RvR you need about ML3 and about 1 or maybe 2 artifacts (and even the MLs are optional tbh). That's about about 5-6 evenings play past 50 assuming you are willing to organise a raid or two (even outside a guild most servers still have more than acceptable population of people happy to join public raids with alts who need MLs and artifacts).

You do not need ML10, you do not need a full set of artifacts. Anyone who says you do is talking crap. More artifacts are helpful - but you can compensate just as easily with more RvR time leading to more RAs.

And the class issues are nowhere near what they used to be, and nowhere near as problematic as they are in SWG, EQ, UO, or AO pvp.

The stealth war has been irrelevant for months - groups simply ignore it. Ungrouped people in a massively multiplayer pvp environment get steamrollered, whoop-de-fricking-do. This should not surprise anyone.

[waylander]

I don't know why they are so stuck on having level restrictions for grouping. DAOC has the worst treadmill of any PvP game out there. If you started new or returned today, you're still talking about a significant time investment before you can do squat.

That is the problem with so many existing MMORPG's is that they want to get new players or returning players, but their core game mechanics are the main turn off. I can list a whole slew of issues with each game that just don't make them worthwhile to return to without adjustments.

The sad thing is, those core adjustments are mainly a matter of principle and not something that is hardcoded.

[Soukyan]

Yeah, DAoC is a decent game. Getting artifacts is a pain in the ass and is probably one of the longer things to get just by virtue of having to farm scrolls and activate them and then level the fucking artifact. But I'm starting to get pissed already. Let me start over...

DAoC is a decent game.

I no longer play it because I did not like the regurgitation of the "farming for rare drops and wasting my life away" EQ paradigm.

The "sidekick" system that they implemented is a good idea and will hopefully help new players get into the game faster, but it will still most likely be a "bring-a-friend" game. Why? Because all the current players will continue to powerlevel themselves with their buffbots and they won't take a new player into their "group" even with the sidekick system because it will take away from their experience gain rate. So you see, it matters not at all that the system has been implemented because it's still all about maximizing the experience gain.

Where it will help is with those players who are playing just for the hell of it and are in no rush to max out. Adding to that are the battlegrounds from level 1 through 44 now as well. These will be a bigger boon to the game. As a matter of fact, I find myself contemplating resubbing just to play in all of the new battlegrounds and to level up solely through PvP. Now THAT would be fun.

[eldaec]

Yeah, DAoC is a decent game. Getting artifacts is a pain in the ass and is probably one of the longer things to get just by virtue of having to farm scrolls and activate them and then level the fucking artifact. But I'm starting to get pissed already. Let me start over...

Scrolls are generally for sale in the housing zone for about 50 to 200 gold these days.

Assuming you level up by playing the game rather than PLing (should give you a budget of 2-3 plat at level 50, or more if you level in DF at all), and assuming you avoid one or two artifacts requiring ultra rare scrolls you can typically activate an artifact purely by trade without blowing your .

And you can earn up to about 1 plat per evening in DF, or just playing the arbitrage game in the housing zones.

[Soukyan]

Yeah, DAoC is a decent game. Getting artifacts is a pain in the ass and is probably one of the longer things to get just by virtue of having to farm scrolls and activate them and then level the fucking artifact. But I'm starting to get pissed already. Let me start over...

Scrolls are generally for sale in the housing zone for about 50 to 200 gold these days.

Assuming you level up by playing the game rather than PLing (should give you a budget of 2-3 plat at level 50, or more if you level in DF at all), and assuming you avoid one or two artifacts requiring ultra rare scrolls you can typically activate an artifact purely by trade without blowing your .

And you can earn up to about 1 plat per evening in DF, or just playing the arbitrage game in the housing zones.

My best friend still plays so I knew all that. ;) But that still does not do away with having to level the damn item to unlock all of the "uber" effects. And nobody wants to level up unless it is PLing these days because the level grind in that game is just sheer boredom these days. I will give them credit that they have lots of zones to choose from, but the mobs are a bit lacking, although better than in the past. Also, they would do well to devote some development time toward adding more quests. That's one thing I could deal with, doing lots of quests to earn experience... and GOOD experience, not piddly shit. At least then I feel like I'm doing something other than camping virtual_world_spawn_8932478. Even moving around just changes the number.

But yes, you are correct that you would have a couple platinum to your name by just leveling from 1-50 with no PLing. The problem with that is first convincing yourself of the time investment. I guess I just never was one to enjoy spending months and years developing a character.

[eldaec]

I take your point on the extra xp required to level the artifact.

I'm rather hoping that the 8x multiplier for rvr xp in version 1.70 will make artifact levelling just by rvr practical, though I have my doubts.

I very much agree with your point about quests as well - classic game quests all had xp set too low because they were designed a long time ago, and the devs guessed wrong. Fine. SI improved that - and there are some quests there that give time-appropriate xp rewards, but SI isn't massive, and so the number of quests is limited. Then ToA comes along, and for some ass-backwards reason, quests are much harder (normally requiring a small group), generally longer, and generally give less xp than SI, certainly with no bonus to compensate for the overhead of having to organise a group. Which is dumb, obviously.

[Mesozoic]

I'm rather hoping that the 8x multiplier for rvr xp in version 1.70 will make artifact levelling just by rvr practical, though I have my doubts.

In my experience a better multipier would be at least 20.

[Soukyan]

I'm rather hoping that the 8x multiplier for rvr xp in version 1.70 will make artifact levelling just by rvr practical, though I have my doubts.

Two things (I have the same hopes as you, but...), and I need to borrow my friends account to test it this week:

I believe the 8x multiplier in RvR now only applies to character experience gain in order to put it in line with experience gained if you were to simply fight mobs all day long, and even then, I think the gain will still be slower not just due to the fact that you need a constant supply of enemies and need to be winning/taking forts constantly.

Second, I think the 8x multiplier may already have been nerfed once on test server as people were leveling too fast. Nevermind the fact that the bunches of testers and lots of opponents thing may have had something to do with it. I have a hunch they will lower that RvR experience yet again before it goes live. Woe to the RvR player on a small server...

Anyhow, it remains to be seen and I'm anxious to test out some of the changes. Who knows, despite my pessimism, I may yet be pleasantly surprised.