Douglas

So, I've been pretty frustrated with WoW (although patch 2.3 looks like it'll help a lot). I've thought it over and thought it over, and I think the main source of frustration has been that I couldn't play the way I wanted to with the people I wanted to play with. And the single biggest reason for that is, we have not been able to stay in sync. We progress at different rates.

When I have 3 70s, but a guildmate's highest level character is 54, it puts a severe damper on our ability to play together. How do we solve this problem without an insane amount of effort on the part of players?

(One common answer I hear to that is along the lines of "get better friends" or "join a better guild" or something similar. That's a very frustrating answer for me -- I've got good real-life friends I want to play with. I want the game to allow me to play with them without introducing undue organizational overhead. I want the game to help me preserve communities, not shatter them.)

The best solution I've come up with is a mentoring system, where higher level people can temporarily nerf themselves down to lower levels, in order to play with teammates without trivializing their experience.

Here's how I imagine it would work.

You right-click on your portrait. Just as you can use that to select "Heroic" mode for instances, you can also use it to select "Mentor" mode.

So, doing that indicates that you're willing to temporarily "downrank" your character in order to play with others. Next we have to decide what level to reduce you to.

One way to handle it is, whenever you join a party, look at the level of the highest level person who has not turned on mentor mode, or the lowest level person who has. Pick that for your sync target. This has the advantage that it'll work for all content everywhere.

Another way to handle it is, whenever you enter an instance, look at the level of the final boss of that instance, and set your sync target to two (three?) levels below that. This has the advantage that, if you've got a bunch of bored 70s who feel like running through Deadmines, they can actually do so and be challenged, even if nobody around is of the right level. It gives us more options. But, it only works in instances.

So, once you've got your "sync target", your level is temporarily lowered to that. Higher level spells are greyed out. Other spells are downranked. Level-based calculations (hit/crit/glance/crush/whatever) are done with the lower level. Basically, the highest-level non-mentor character or lowest-level mentor character provide a "sync point".

Next we have to worry about bringing gear into sync.

One way to handle that is, do a calculation to average up the average ilevel and gear quality of that "sync target". Then reduce the power level of the downranked charcter's gear to about that equivalent level.

Another way to handle that is, for each level, simply place a cap on the stat you're allowed to have for that level as a mentor. I am not sure what would work best.

(In either case, if the system is implemented via syncing to an instance rather than a character, you could allow gear progression that way. For example, imagine that entering Molten Core capped your level at 60 and your gear at around T1 power levels, and entering BWL capped your level at 60 and your gear at around T2 power levels...)

We also have to bring talent points into sync. I don't have a good idea for how to do that at this time.

If they added a system like that, it would be much easier for groups of friends to have a good experience playing together even when their habits result in different rates of progression otherwise. With the "sync to a character" system, you'd be able to group up with anyone for anything. With the "sync to an instance" system, endgame characters would be able to experience every instance in the game as it was intended and without maintaining a stable of alts, without having to arrange their play time so as to avoid "outleveling" instances before they get around to them.

What do folks think?

One criticism I've heard is "this is too hard to do". I don't think it has to be, but if you can think of a way to simplify it without destroying the fundamental point -- I want to play my high-level characters with my lower-level friends without dominating their play experience -- great, please follow up!

Another criticism I've heard is "nobody will do it without incentives". Well, I would, and I know other people who would, but I agree that a typical PUGer probably wouldn't. Maybe there's some way to incentivize this? Heck, maybe the final boss of every single instance drops a heroic token for everyone who's there in mentor mode or something. Ideas?

Anyone have a completely different idea for solving the same exact problem?

 

• Icetro

Not trying to be contrary or rude, but I flat out can't fathom that this would ever be implemented. It would take heroic effort (no pun intended) on the part of devs and designers to make it happen, and very *very* few people would use it. Your case is the exception, not the rule. It's unfortunate that you and your friends are on unequal footing, but such is the nature of the MMO.

 

tedv

For a while I had 9 alts spread throughout all level ranges, filling a variety of roles (eg. some tanks, some damage, some healing). When someone wanted to quest or run an instance, I just picked the character in the same level range. Right now they are mostly in the 60-70 range, but all my friends' alts are in the same range too, so it works out.

 

Douglas

I'm not sure why it has to take a heroic effort. Ultimately we're talking about a debuff that's essentially similar to rez sickness, no?

As for very few people using it, and the unequal footing being the nature of an MMO, I have heard that at least one other MMO ("City of Heroes") already has such a system. Maybe I misunderstood what I was told. Anyone have any experience with that? How does it work? How often is it used?

They also, I am told, have a sidekicking system, which lets lower-level characters temporarily go up in power so that newbies can join high-level folks and get a taste of what they're doing. (I can't see Blizzard implementing that though.)

 

• Vodos

From some CoH FAQ.

 

ebbv

Do what I do. Make an alt that you only play with that person.

 

Stangg

City of Heroes:-

I think its difficult to compare how it works in City of Heroes to World Of Warcraft as the play style of the game is vastly different. From what I have read there is no gear as such but power enhancers, which I think would be a lot easier to scale in the mentor/sidekick system that it would with the complex variety of gear in world of warcraft.

 

Valjean

City of Heroes did a great job of this. It worked both ways. A L50 player could take a L20 player as their "sidekick" and temporary boost them to L49. A L20 player could rever-sidekick as L50 player to L20.

If you were the L20 player in situation #1, you'd still get XP, but it would be equivalent to what you would have gotten at L20 for killing a mob in your level range.

If you were L50 (max level) since you can't get XP you'd get influence, which is the game's currency.

It was a great way to encourage people to play with different level ranges.

I think WoW could implement at least the sidekick option. Reverse-sidekick would be harder, as currency in WoW was useless, but in WoW it's not. Maybe it can be something like increased rep gain.

 

Douglas

Tried it over and over. Hasn't worked. Requires too much discipline -- not on me, but on the more casual players I often wish to play with. They want to play whenever they want to play. We get out of sync.

I've been trying solutions within the existing game's framework for over two years. None of those have been satisfactory. At the moment my account is inactive (primarily due to this issue). 2.3 will probably bring me back. If they added ... something ... to solve this problem, they'd get me back for certain.

I suppose another way to handle it might be to specify level caps for particular guild ranks. If we set things so that the rank of "lowbie" could not level past 20th level, we'd be able to make level 20 a sync point. Then when we had done all the content we wanted at that level, raise the level limit on that guild rank to 25. I guess twink guilds would love the heck out of that mechanic as well. But I'd prefer something more dynamic, with less organizational overhead, without requiring guild membership, myself.

 

Regan_

I can't really be bothered much to level more alts, but I love to play with guildmates on lowbie dungeons. What I do is keep around a lvl 60 blue gear suit and a lvl 30 green gear suit. I wear them combined with novelty statless gear until I feel I have the adequate stats for that dungeon. Then I downrank all my skills to appropiate levels for the dungeon.

It's obviously nowhere near the same due to level difference mechanics, but makes running lower level dungeons with friends much more engaging.

 

• Icetro

First of all, pick one: do you want the high level character to drop down to a lower level, or a lower level character to jump up to a high one?

If the former, how do you manage the talent point changes? Do you automatically lose all spells not available at the level you wish to become?

If the latter, what do you propose the loot rules be? Would you really want to group with a level 12-turned-69 Blood Elf hunter named Legolazsz who would almost certainly be more of a liability to a group than help?

I still see this is an undesirable feature for most of the playerbase. If you want to play with your friends, roll an alt or help powerlevel them up to 70.

 

Grungo

The mentoring system does exist in CoH, yes. The reason it works so easily there (and problem with trying to implement it in WoW) is that CoH doesn't have any item system (at least it didn't the last time I played a little while before City of Villains was released -- I'm not sure how close the new invention system comes to an item system). Basically, at any given level, how powerful you were was just a matter of what powers you chose, and those powers scaled to your level. When you mentored down, they simply removed any powers you didn't have yet at that level, and scaled all your remaining powers to that level. There was no worry about having to try to convert a T5 piece of gear to something appropriate for doing RFK. How would you propose handling the vast differential of gear that exists at level 70? Would a T6 equipped level 70 character scale down to the same "power level" (for lack of a better term) as a level 70 in dungeon blues? Or would they be given the equivalent of high ilvl epics for whatever level they were mentoring to (quite probably still trivializing whatever content they were trying to run with their friend)?

Not that it's a bad idea, necessarily, but I think you underestimate the amount of work that would be required to implement the system. And given how easy it is (relatively) to reach 70, it shouldn't be that hard for friends to be able to play together. As others have stated, if you have a friend that can't level that fast because of time restraints, make an alt and bring him up to an appropriate level to quest with your friend. It shouldn't take that long at all.

 

ebbv

If you're fast enough to have 3 level 70's while they are only level 54 you should have no problem catching up if they get ahead of you sometimes.

If they really play when you don't play that often then why would you want Blizzard to write this big feature (and it's a much bigger programming undertaking than you might think) just for their benefit?

 

Glayde

Eq2 has a similar system, where someone can assume a lower level to group with lower level friends. (in reality a 60 mentored down to level 40 is at least slightly more powerful than a level 40 of the same class, due to retaining skills and gear or something).

I don't recall the exact name of the system.

 

Valjean

The problem is that leveling is not fun. It's possible to get to 70 quickly, but it's tedious. And it's almost impossible to do it with your L70 friends.

A mentoring system would encourage the L70 players to regularly play with the L30 players. You could temporarily remove talents, skills you wouldn't have at a lower level. I'm not sure how you'd handle gear. The game would have to somehow dynamically nerf the gear, or you could set it so the player cannot equip the gear and thus would have to get L30 gear.

 

Douglas

Ever try to coordinate a guild full of such people? They don't just get out of sync with me, they get out of sync with each other. And being an altoholic, I don't have all that many character slots left too play around with.

I have exactly one guildmate who successfully managed the transition to the raiding game. She's healing in Karazhan and Gruul right now.

Another one ended up getting disgusted with how hard it was to make teamwork happen, and ended up deciding to pretty much only ever solo -- and shortly after hitting 70, he ended up just quitting. He comes back from time to time, with enthusiasm at first, but then the problem comes back and he gets bitter and quits again.

We have a 54th level paladin who is still that level because he had to take months away from the game due to cancer treatments. Everyone wants to play with him when he gets back, but people also do not want to completely abandon the game due to constantly dwelling on the fact of his cancer in the meantime!

This is where I usually hear the "get better friends" comment, which frankly is absurd to me. Why should a multiplayer game prevent people who want to from playing together? Why should it break communities rather than strengthening them?

 

Regan_

Would it be too hard to automatically reduce the iLvL (and tweak the stats accordingly) on your gear to match your new level?

 

Douglas

That's how I'd handle it myself, yeah. In fact, let's say you're scaling down to join someone in Deadmines. I'd scale a level 42 in Scarlet Monestary gear, a level 60 without the expansion in AQ40 gear, and a Black Temple raider in full epics all down to exactly the same power level.

One way to do it is just to cap stats. "At level x, you can not gain more than y points of int from gear. Anything beyond that is temporarily truncated, similar to what rez sickness does to your stats." Do that for all stats, including mp5, rating, spell power, everything. I don't imagine that would be that hard to implement as a debuff. The harder part, I think, is what to do about talent trees.

 

◊ Vectivus

Since the difficulty in leveling in WoW is so underwhelming, why would you not just assist your friends in leveling using your level 70 character?

In a couple of hours, I helped a friend level a Shaman from the low 30's to the high 30's by running her through SM on repeat. I have another friend to whom I donated my old level 60 Priest from the BWL era, and will be helping him to level it up by tanking dungeons for him (since he'll need the experience and the reps).

Your suggestion strikes me as the least elegant solution to a rare, albeit well-stated, problem.

 

ebbv

The problem is 99.999% of people would rather just walk into SM as their level 70 in full BT gear and demolish the instance than flip a switch to purposely nerf themselves just to make it "appropriate difficulty".

 

Angeron

It seems to me that you have mixed up cause and effect. There's no reason that you can't play with your friend, even as a level 70, help out with his elite quests, run him through instances, help him do normal gathering quests! He'll still get exp, you'll get to spend time with him/her, everyone wins. Your being selfish and wanting to "gain something" from helping your friend outside of goodwill and self-satisfaction.

WoW has a linear rewards system, from which you have clearly taken all that is availible in the level 54 section, so just because now you can't go back and make gold (or whatever the fuck it is exactly that you want? This remains entirely unclear) while you help your friend, doesn't mean anyone is "preventing people who want to from playing together". Clearly the problem doesn't exist with WoW "breaking communities rather than strengthening them" but with you (and your guildmates!) being either a) greedy, or b) not really that interested in helping your friend in the first place.

Be honest with yourself, you play the game to have fun with friends and do X; X being all the intangible crap (gold farming/item upgrades/faction grinding/raiding etc.) that makes the game fun in addition to the people. Because you value X more than playing with your friend who is not max level, you feel guilty, and you should, because honestly if he's your friend and you like playing with him, what's to stop you from doing it?

You've got a million silly questions and a hilariously far-out answer for a problem that exists only for those few people who cannot reconcile their self-interest with their desire to play with their friends. The fact is, that problem simply DOES NOT EXIST for most people, as they either sack up and miss out on farming that third primal life to help their friend clear stratholme, or they say "F him, he should be in HFP grinding orcs anyways".

*edit* Grammar

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Douglas

Pretty much none of the people I know would regard that as help! And in their shoes, I would not either.

That's not helping them do content, that's not teaming up with them, that's doing content for them. They are denied the experience of, for example, doing Scarlet Monestary properly. And they're likely to get bored doing the same thing over and over like that.

I have in the past observed people who receive that kind of "help" over and over. Have you seen them at the endgame? If you've been at this for long, I'm sure you must have.

On the one hand, they end up not knowing how to play their characters as members of a team -- they never had to. On the other hand, they have this sense of entitlement, that someone should just hand them whatever they want. "Why can't you just take me through Gruul's Lair until I get the drop I want? You did it in Deadmines!" It's two great tastes that don't exactly taste great together.

 

Caligula

Pretty sure this has nothing to do with the fact that people want to play with their friends at appropriate gear/skill levels without A) ruining the exp gains which furthers the problem of playing with friends to help them level/quest and B) removing the challenge from the encounters. I'm not sure how you could say that everyone would rather "demolish" the instance when multiple people in this thread have claimed otherwise.

In my brief stint in EQ2 I was able to experience a similar system where you can temporarily drop your level to quest. It was very helpful for my max level cousins to be able to run quests with me and still maintain exp gains, allowing me to advance, while not ruining the fun completely by having their character 1 shot every mob.

Yes, it would require a lot of coding, however, there are many "hardcore" players with real life "casual" friends (myself included) that would enjoy, and use, a mentoring system. Obviously blizzard is keen to such ideas considering the announcement of the leveling changes in 2.3, I wouldn't be quick to say "blizzard would never do this because of the work involved".

edit: Douglas is a bit quicker and more eloquent than I.

 

Elendril

I played CoH a bit when it first came out, and occasionally used the sidekick system to play with friends who I'd blown out in levels at first or when I rerolled to a busted burn tanker. As someone else has mentioned, sidekicking works in CoH because the game is very "flat" - the only real differences as you go up in levels are numerical. WoW is very different - if a L70 were to downlevel to play with someone of say level 20, there are skills, talents, and gear to normalize to that level. How would you handle redistributing talents? Do you lose access to your higher level skills? What happens to your gear - especially gear with proc effects, that aren't so easily reduced by any ilvl formula (Shard of Azzinoth proc'ing in deadmines wouldn't quite work, I imagine). Not to mention what happens if you get attacked in PVP while mentoring - are you level 20 or 70 when you fight back? Does that PoM Pyro one shot you or take off a third of your health? Reducing character stats also breaks the persistence and immersiveness of the game world - I could easily solo van Cleef, but instead he kills me and my party because I'm "holding back"?

Honestly, I found the sidekicking system in CoH to be incredibly boring, though that's more a function of the way progression worked in that game (same model, same mission, higher numbers!) than the system itself. Once I realized that sidekicking was just massively nerfing my experience gains, I ended up doing the same thing - going to high level zones with my roommate's fire blaster killing everything - and just didn't sidekick so I gained massive experience instead. Perhaps that speaks to my approach more than anything, but I just don't see it being terribly effective in WoW either.

I guess I just don't see a big problem with the way things are. You said you wished you could impose a level limit on guild ranks - well, you *can* do that, but the game just doesn't enforce it. You could agree to just play with your friends, or if you are playing when they aren't stop before you outlevel them. The game itself is not preventing you from playing with your friends - your playing habits are.

 

Valjean

Wow is a selfish game. Altruism only goes so far. The Sidekicking system in CoH works because both sides get something.

The lower level character gets to see new content if he is being sidekicked. If the higher level character is being reverse-sidekicked he gets currency.

WoW wouldn't have to implement both. Reverse-sidekicking (Taking a high level toon to a lower level) is harder to implement, so we can toss that. However you could take a lower level toon to a higher level instance.

The problem is the difference in gear and talents. You'd have to have certain ranges, because a L20 toon couldn't possibly run through Shadow Labs even if you could artificially bump him to L69 or L70. He'd be effectively naked in terms of gear, and he would barely have any meaningful abilities.