Douglas

You've got it exactly backwards. I do not want or need to gain something for myself. I just do not want to completely dominate the experience that my friends have. I do not want to prevent them from contributing. I do not want to force them on to welfare. I want to play with them, to cooperate.

It's completely fine with me if i get nothing at all out of it. It's not completely fine if I trivialize their own experience, or teach them to be bad players, or teach them that everything they could possibly want will simply be handed to them.

 

Kallisti

Furthermore, you are not only looking at a simple buff.

I do not know how exactly WoW is programmed, but if I image a character as an object in object oriented programming and its stats being the attributes of the object, then everything that runs "checks" against those stats, will just ask for their value.

For example porting someone with an instance's meeting stone would require the target to be in a specific level range. So if the software asks for playerobject.Level to see if he is in the range, it has to return the modified level, not the real one.

But probably some values should not be changed since it is the real representation of the value which gets flushed to database later on. I doubt Blizzard would risk to alter the real level of a character based on a buff.

So such a change would require FAR FAR more than "a simple buff", since it would require every getter and setter method (or functions or properties or database wrappers, depending on the implementation) to be rewritten for any specific use case. From a programming point of view even small changes can require alot effort and I highly doubt that WoW will introduce that concept.

It might be nice for some people, but if you did not have such a mechanic in mind when you design the game, it might be hard or even impossible to implement it later on.

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For wishes I behold my nights
A truth at the end of time - Losing faith makes a crime.

 

ebbv

I said 99.999%, not everyone.

But don't say the motivation is due to killing XP, because it's faster XP for me as a level 70 to round up all of SM and AE it down than for me to nerf myself and run it in a real 5 man for you.

Personally I do not like running people through things or being run through them, but my solution is to do it on alts.

 

Stangg

It would still be difficult to apply the debuff in a fair way, the guy in lvl 42 Scarlet Monestary gear would then still be lower powered that the black temple raider. I personally think the whole project would be to vast to either hire more programmers or take them away from developing other features of the game to be worthwhile. I don't think scaling down is viable to be honest, however it would be easier to scale up a character if they wanted to run an instance at a higher level.

But then what would you do with the loot achieved, is it fair for a player that has scaled up to be able to receive loot from these dungeons or would you implement it in a way that any synced player isn't eligible for loot.

Only way I can think of making the talent points work is a reset of points at the time of sync with a memory to return when you leave the instance. So a short "respec" would be needed at the start of the run. Though this could probably be abused in a way where players of the right level would sync to a closer level in order to get a free "respec" for each dungeon, while being a small advantage I don't think blizzard would like it.

Though if you are going to implement this sort of system then you might as well just go with the idea of making heroic versions of old school dungeons keeping, I imagine, a much larger player base happy (though not yourself in this case).

There is a lot of thought that would need to go into balancing this, let alone the sheer amount of work to implement it.

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Pheroz

Keep in mind, City of Heroes sidekick/examplar systems were far from perfect and ripe for exploiting.

It was commonplace to use the system for powerleveling. Dragging lowbies around with high level characters or into farmable instanced missions led to plenty of ignoring the "content" and speed leveling. We'd even examplar high level characters down to blow the content at high speeds, becuase the level reduction power scaling definitly did not work properly.

Even if Blizzard was able to implement the scaling in a decent way, there's still gonna be a drastic difference in the effectiveness of a lowered level cap charcter then an actual level character in standard gear.

Such a system is ripe for exploitation, and with WoW's illegal farming/gold selling/account selling markets, I can't imagine how horrible it would be. CoH had nothing compared to the population or the markets that WoW has, and I still remember the siege of people who needed "bridges" for Powerleveling, or other sidekick/examplar exploits. The number of game changes based on such system was huge.

While the ability to team and play with friends throughout the game before the level cap is challenging at best and impossible at worst, I think trying to emulate what City of Heroes has done would be detrimental to this game as a whole.

 

Valjean

I think the only way this could work is if there was a way to get temporary gear. Say I took a L40 toon. He has the option to buy or rent T3.5 gear. If I went to SM I have the option to buy L30ish gear.

But then this gets really complex.

I think Kallisti is right. CoH works because the game was developed with the system in mind. For WoW it would very complicated to implement something similar.

 

Douglas

Well, can we go with that idea and take some of the complexity out of it?

First of all, I don't think up-leveling folks will work -- I can't see Blizzard ever allowing people to skip past the progression that way. So I'm not going to think about taking undergeared or low-level people into BT for example.

So, just issue everyone random-suffix green gear of the right ilevel. I mean, is there any pre-endgame non-raid content that can't be beat in such gear?

Is it optimal? No. Would a real charcter of the appropriate level be able to gear themselves to be more powerful? Yes. So what? The point here is to avoid dominating what goes on. If the downleveled character is a little weaker than a real character of that level, that's actually fine!

Just give all warriors a pile of "of the bear" stuff. Give mages "of the eagle", et cetera. Maybe mix it up a bit, like, give priests a mix of "of the eagle" and "of the owl". We all know that Deadmines, Scarlet Monestary, BRD, all that stuff can be defeated in such gear.

Heck, maybe take that even a step farther. Know how the public test realm sometimes has premade characters? What about letting us temporarily log in as a premade character of any class we currently play, at any level below our own which is a multiple of 10? Have a 20th level premade warrior that we could log in as if we have a 21st or higher level warrior, et cetera. Maybe have them completely reset upon logging out, so there's no way to gear them up or anything.

 

Cathela

In theory, it shouldn't be. You set the gear level where you want it to be and then scale the gear down with the same proportional use of the itemization budget. E.g., if you're wearing Kara gear and you want to do Scarlet Monastery with some lowbie buddies, the server says "Okay, T4 epics have three times the item budget of ilevel 40 blues, so we'll scale everything down by a factor of three."

Talents would be the tough part, certainly. You could go with a last-in-first-out kind of thing, where the game would just subtract your latest talent points, I suppose.

I really do wish WoW had something like this. I expect if you asked the devs about it, they'd say something like "yeah, that would be pretty cool, and we'd love to do something like that, but really we have our hands full with X and Y, so we'll probably never get around to it."

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

Douglas

Yeup, hence the reason for this conversation in this public forum. For one thing, people can talk about why such a system would be a good thing. For another thing, maybe we can talk through some of the balance issues and implementation ideas, and reduce the amount of effort it would take.

Patch 2.3 convinces me that they're worrying about this kind of issue. They are pumping a lot of improvements into the pre-60 experience. They are dramatically reducing the organizational overhead of running a casual guild (guild banks will rock for poorly-organized teams of good friends).

I did bring this up on Blizzard's own forums from time to time, and there's generally been more support than dismissal of the idea when I've done so. But I've come to believe that these forums are better able to support substantive discussions, as opposed to, say, "Rick Roll" links.

 

dukes

Surely you could just start the instance naked and just use anything you get that drops. Simple solution and one that would work fine, no? I don't see why you need green gear of a similar level, considering that your base stats are likely to be far in advance of whatever they would've been at that level. If you want to take it to another level, respec and just put in the number of points you should have at that level, and use skills of that level. Does it really need a custom made system when you can just do it yourself?

Obviously this wouldn't work as well for leveling with, say, a level 60 char, but at that point the instances are hardly "easy" with one character who is level 70 and a bunch of 60's.

 

◊ Vectivus

I guess it depends on what your 'goal' here is.

If, on the one hand, your 'goal' is to get your friends to level 70 so you can enjoy end-game content, PvP, Arenas, etc. together, then whatever helps them level ought to constitute 'help'. Unless your friends are all brand-new to the game, you're not 'depriving' them of the experience of Sunken Temple and Blackrock Depths; and, even if they are new to the game, is your goal for them to be forced to push through the game without any external influences whatsoever? They can't buy BoE epics on the AH or borrow gold from you, either?

If, on the other hand, your goal is just to get everybody together and play the game, as mentioned earlier in the thread, what's stopping you from rolling an alt to play with them? You're clearly very capable of leveling a new character, and it takes very little time. You've mentioned that you're near the character ceiling for your account, which I understand, but go back to the question - is your 'goal' to play with them? If so, is deleting an alt you can't play with your friends worth being able to enjoy the game with them?

In my opinion, you are asking Blizzard to fix a problem that does not require fixing in this game, and would drastically alter the limited submersiveness that exists.

 

Uglesh

EQ2 had this very system and it worked half decent.

The trouble was that you would have to completely revamp all your cast/action bars every time you went into "mentor" mode.

In the end, VERY few people wanted to do this for the same reasons everyone here has stated. For the handful of people who would use it, I think Blizzard could better use the programming time and resources.

 

Douglas

(Am I responding too much in this thread? On the one hand, I want to keep the conversation going, as it's a topic I care about. On the other hand, I don't want to dominate the conversation any more than I want to dominate my friends' play experiences.)

That certainly ain't it. Most of them have absolutely no interest in either raiding or PvP. These are not in general hardcore players and they never want to be. When they hit the level cap, I want to give them the opportunity to raid, but I won't pressure them into it. (So far, one person besides myself has made that transition.) My own raiding has been adequately covered by guild alliances, and I have little to no interest in PvP/arenas myself.

(Keep in mind that we're on an RP server. Many of us are much more motivated by storyline than we are by "phat lewtz". Blackrock Depths is not inherently any more fun than Blackfathom Depths.)

When I talk about the guildmate with the 54th level paladin, that's his highest level character ever. He's never done LBRS yet. No, really! We have a 60th level priest who I believe has never set foot inside Stratholme. Heck, I myself have never done Razorfen Downs properly yet!

There's "without any external influences", and there's "complete domination resulting in the trivialization of their experience", there's "complete absence of an environment in which they can learn how to contribute to the team", there's "never knowing what it's like to play without a safety net".

Again, tried it multiple times. If it's just one character, I can do it, but it's a lot more work than it ought to be. But it's not just one character. They don't stay in sync with each other, and if I ask them to put in that same kind of work, they either solo or quit!

 

◊ NateDawg1021

This is why I stopped playing the game around MC times, I was lvl ~40 and all my friends were level 60. I would get ganked all the time and was still new to the game and no one ever helped me out. Everytime I asked for help I got stupid responses like "OMFG check Thottbot noob." This was very frustrating, and caused me to unsub. Eventually I came back (I still don't know why) caught up to people. (After playing competetive FPS games and knowing you have people that can help you, finding a good guild was partly the answer).

To this day we have 3 people that raid in my guild and wanted to join my guild because I helped them when they were a lowbie. I answer stupid questions in trade chat as well as heal lower level instances. Sure people probably take advantage of me (I do give away a fair amount of gold here and there as well as assorted slot bags.) But knowing that some "noob" has been asking how to get to Decolace for the past 30 mins with no help makes me think of when I was in their shoes. Helping people most of the time only takes a few minutes. But sadly just like someone said on the 1st page WoW is a very selfish game and there's really no way to counter it. (This is also why World/Organized PvP is dead.) People want rewards and/or gold. Heck that's why the only group quests you can find members for are for the dailies so people get them done faster.
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Then you get into the arguement that this game doesn't really teach you how to "play" your character/class right, again you have to find the right people to teach you and some people won't give you the time of day. I don't know how many priest I talk to everyday and explain to them how they heal wrong. (Ex. Why am I OOM healing Bloodfurnace at Lvl 70) This is why I'm scared to level my Hunter because I know the priest that's healing my Pug will probably spamming flash heal rank 7 on all boss fights or something crazy.

I encourage all people to take the time to help a lowbie, consider it a good deed, but i do not forsee any sort of mentoring change added anytime soon.

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• songster

I think it would be far too difficult to allow a level 70 to zone into Deadmines, and then somehow try and scale all their gear and abilities to an appropriate level.

Rather, it strikes me that the simpler solution is to let you zone back in as a level 20.

That is, you should be able to save "snapshots" of your character. Preferably at will, but with a default setting that takes a snapshot every 5 levels, as soon as you ding. On the loading screen, you can either log in to your character as normal or right click and select "Log on to snapshot". If you log on as one of your snapshots, you have exactly the skills, talents and gear that you had the moment the snapshot was taken - i.e. the moment you dinged 20 (or 25, or 30, or 35...). You zone in wherever your hearth was set at the time.

Snapshots cannot level up or gain items - every time you log onto them they are exactly the same, and any changes to your XP, gold, items etc. disappear when you log out. Of course, you would have to be forbidden to trade items or use the AH when in "snapshot mode", to prevent people repeatedly logging on as a snapshot, trading all their gear away and then repeating the process. It looks as though standard cross-server rules should work (i.e. you can trade conjured items but nothing else).

It means you can effectively drop down in level and quest with friends without having to level up another alt. And, crucially, without having that alt either outlevel them or get left behind. If you have a level 70, then you also have access to a level 65, a level 60, a level 55, and so on.

This could also provide a way to separate out twinks in battlegrounds. Twink yourself up the perfect character, and then save a snapshot. No more "accidental" levelling up. Snapshots are separated from normal players in battlegrounds, and matched against other snapshots where possible. At that point they could even introduce minor experience gain from PvP, to make sure that all twinks *are* snapshots, and that people don't try to cheat the system and force a twink-vs-normal matchup.

 

Typhon

I stopped playing EQ2 in September, and this wasn't a problem any more. Yes, mentored down characters are a bit 'arder than normal characters of that particular level, but its not really a big difference.

Overall, the EQ2 mentoring system is excellent, and adds significantly to an area that WoW is lacking in - replay value.

 

◊ Vectivus

This sounds like it is the root source of the problem, then.

Either you need to work something out with people (e.g. "John, you're 3 levels ahead, you need to cut back until Anthony catches up"), or you all need to agree to just reroll and start over as a team. Asking the WoW development team to re-engineer the scaling process so that it can be applied in reverse because your friends refuse to cooperate doesn't seem entirely like it would be time well spent on Blizzard's part.

 

Ghiest

Everquest 2 had the opposite to CoH, you could mentor someone but you would drop to their level, and it would limit your stats and spell levels down to their level.

All that would be needed was a cap for the level for certain stats whilst mentoring, using the equivalent rank of spell or skill already exists for player level (casting PW:F on a low lvl player results in you casting a lower rank to his/her level). I don't think it would be too hard personally.

I used it quite a fair amount in EQ2 especially when people were slightly behind the curve when an expansion come out and they were late by a month or so in getting it, a group of us would just mentor him and churn through the quests and content for him. Infact I spent 50% of my time (that was not raiding) mentoring people, I found it quite fun to help friends/family/guildies without the hassle of rolling another alt to help out.

 

Douglas

And this is where I completely disagree.

There are pre-endgame casual players out there who, if pressured to play in a less casual manner, will instead simply quit. Some already have. Trying to get them to "work harder" won't work. They don't feel they should have to. They'd rather go play a console or card game instead. That is not good for Blizzard, as it lowers their revenue, subscription figures, et cetera.

Indirectly, it's not good for the more hardcore players either, because the more people playing WoW, the more resources can be put into the portions of the game they like, and the less people playing WoW, the more likely it is that someone -- Blizzard management, Vivendi management, whoever -- will start messing with things to try to "fix" the "problem", and I'm not optimistic about how that might turn out.

Something like a mentoring system would keep more of those players playing WoW for a longer time, and playing more of it when they do, no? On my own, I can think of four subscriptions (people I know personally in real life) that would still be active if a system like this were in place.

 

Caligula

I'm pretty much flabbergasted at the number of people who are saying that this system wouldn't work because there's "nothing in it for the high level person". Except, you know, playing a game with their friends. This especially goes out to the guy who says "I don't like being run through things or running people through them". THAT'S THE POINT! Some people don't want to take the entire challenge out of the game, but still want to play with their friends. Some of those friends don't want to be run through an instance, they want to run an instance with their friends WITHOUT the challenge removed.

"Run the instance naked" doesn't quite cut it either. A naked 70 mage can still AOE farm SM, and at the same time the friend that they are running through the instance doesn't get to do anything except eat up phat lewtz(tm) and not get experience.

I'm not sure why this concept is failing on some. Really, it's not too difficult if you think in terms of fun, and not in terms of phat lewts and phast clears. Some people want to play with their friends without being completely out geared/leveled for an instance. Some people want it to be a challenge. Some people want to get experience without the level reduction. Can we discuss the mechanics/implementation of a mentoring system and just accept that these people exist? Because they do.

 

◊ Vectivus

Who is asking them to play less casually? If anything, we're asking you, who already has the end-game experience, to play more casually. Where all of them continue to play at the level and speed they are comfortable with, you need an outlet to play with them (without feeling like you're compromising their entertainment value by trivializing the content). This doesn't require anything on the part of the casual player - if anything, it requires you to play at a pace that accomodates your friends.