I think there's been enough to say that, mechanically, some sort of solution exists in which you could scale gear and talents appropriately to be (reasonably) balanced against content. However, this also seems to ignore the basic tenets of progression in the game. The game IS progression. It always has been and always will be. CoH is a different game that emphasizes the mechanics you want-- small group teamwork and short-term fun, with progression being a secondary consideration. It might not be the genre, but as much as Blizzard wants to accomodate playstyles, this playstyle is contradictory to pretty much every one in the game so far.
Don't try to change Chess when you want to play Checkers.
Now, the mechanic you might want is something to artificially slow progress-- like, an ability to refuse leveling up until you go talk to a trainer, or reduce your XP gains relative to people you play with so you can "stay together" better-- the problem seems inherently that staying together with a similar group is difficult. Or changing the balance in XP gain while grouped, so if someone is under-level they get a vastly larger share of XP (while keeping "your XP plus their XP" the samel). But don't allow it for max-level players, or players that are X levels above you.
This would appear to allude again to the root of the problem - it's that players who want to play in-sync need to stay in-sync. If you buy a game that has leveling as a mechanic, separating start from finish, you can't expect to jump in and 'play with your friends' if they've already put in the time to reach the finish, unless they're willing to start anew with you.
We seem to be searching for a solution to a problem that is a) not inherently present in the game, thereby not Blizzard's responsibility (whether they desire to or not, we can't speak to); and b) very much a product of Blizzard's take on the genre, and as such, not easily resolved by incorporating mechanics from other interpretations of what an MMO is or should be.
The actual system itself wouldn't be all too hard to design. Just do it like level draining in Dungeons and Dragons, where the player has a debuff-like effect called "Level Drained: x Levels" and is effectively that many levels lower. In DnD, the player loses everything that he/she gained during those levels: all abilities, spells, etc. In WoW, the only problem I see is talent points. My solution would be to remove talent points starting at the highest level in the tree (duh) and then move down. When multiple talents are at the same level in the tree (or at the same level in multiple trees), the player can select which ones to disable and which ones to keep. So if you had 41/20 in 2 trees, you could take from the 20 first if you so choose.
The actual system itself wouldn't be all too hard to design. Just do it like level draining in Dungeons and Dragons, where the player has a debuff-like effect called "Level Drained: x Levels" and is effectively that many levels lower. In DnD, the player loses everything that he/she gained during those levels: all abilities, spells, etc. In WoW, the only problem I see is talent points. My solution would be to remove talent points starting at the highest level in the tree (duh) and then move down. When multiple talents are at the same level in the tree (or at the same level in multiple trees), the player can select which ones to disable and which ones to keep. So if you had 41/20 in 2 trees, you could take from the 20 first if you so choose.
How does this resolve the issue of Tier 6 gear being 5x better than equivalent level 40 blues (or whatever the case ends up being)?
Can we not get into this discussion about what the game is or its purpose? The original poster asked for ideas/discussion about how to design a mentoring system that would fit into WoW. He didn't ask about whether it would be worth blizzard's time or if it fit into what someone's idea about the philosophical ideas about what WoW "is".
Anyway, I think Lookit (and others) have it right when they focus that its not really about getting things exactly on the money with the idea of balance. All we're shooting for (if there is even the slightest chance of this being implemented) is to get a approximate power level of the instance while taking the least amount of coding. I think a simple debuff (possibly user controllable) that scales stats by certain percentages back would do most of the job. The other things to note:
1) I don't think talents will be that big of a deal, either talents are activated (so either a) you don't use them or b) use a downgraded rank) or are a % buff of your stats (which the debuff should take care of). I can't think of any others off the top of my head.
2) For the purposes of xp for the other person (I'm assuming that you don't get xp at all for doing this, maybe rested in case you're not max level) just let the severity of the buff determine what pseudo-level you are. This would have to be tweaked some to get it right or it might lead to some power leveling exploit. Just err a bit on the conservative side and it shouldn't be too bad. Maybe don't have anyone be able to be mentored within 10 levels of the current max?
I can't imagine this being too difficult to implement. It also doesn't require more memory like pre-mades or snapshots. Though admittedly, it might not go quite as far as some would like.
Last edited by Darjin : 10/30/07 at 7:14 PM.
Reason: grammar errors
The question of "should Blizzard allow higher-level players to reduce their effectiveness to group with lower level players?" is moot. It's not going to happen. It's much more interesting to think of how it could be implemented.
I'd design a "template" character for each instance and spec. For example, a level 40 shadow priest could have 31 points in the talent tree; level 40 resto shaman would have 31 healy points, etc. These specs could either be taken from the high-level character's allocation (as seen on their armory page) or be a choice at the Comrade screen. These specs would be Blizzard chosen and as good as Blizzard could design; suboptimal talent specs wouldn't matter much, as lowbie instances can easily be done outside of your spec. Upon choosing the target instance the person would get a "Comrade: Instance" buff that replaces their character with the appropriate template for that instance. The appearance could come from the parent character, with appropriate consumables, gear, etc. The transition would occur upon zoning into the instance, much like loading an alt. Essentially the template character would be an alt that exists only within this instance for the play session. If the character exited the instance (through hearthing, teleport, walking out, etc) they'd revert to the parent character. If they log out, they revert. Restrictions would have to apply, including an inability to trade non-conjured goods. I'm sure there are other restrictions to be chosen.
I.e.
1)Player decides to become a "Comrade" for SM:Cath.
2)Player opens Comrade dialog and chooses their spec. For example, a druid would be able to choose between balance, resto, or feral.
3)Player gains "Comrade: Instance" buff.
4)Player zones in. An appropriate template character is loaded inside the instance. In this example, the resto druid recieves a green/blue "of the eagle" set placed on a level 38 character with swiftmend.
5)Player enjoys instance.
6)Upon zoning out (not counting corpse runs), the "parent character" is loaded. Comrade buff persists until log-out.
Is this a perfect and thorough system? No. For example, the template character would probably need a new name to avoid server bugaboos, but messages to the "parent" would need to be forwarded to the Comrade. Food for thought, at least.
Why don't you just powerlevel your friends and get them to 70? Yes the mob experience will be much lower but the quest xp is where it's at and it's the same amount each time. I think Blizz increasing xp and making lvl faster in next patch is already what you're looking for.
Said friends don't want to be power leveled.
They want to enjoy the leveling process. There's a lot of fun to be had from 1-69 the first time through.
Another option would be to do a version of what you discussed doing for items. Use a "Standard" set. Say I had a 70 druid and I wanted to go to Zul'Farak with a friend. When I pushed the mentor button it would ask me if I wanted to be Feral/Resto/Balance and give me a "standard" talent allocation. You could even marry this up with the "Standard" armour idea so that a player got both.
THIS IMO would have wider appeal for those that don't have low level friends.
-With this system "We did Sunken Temple 4 man in 40 minutes Mentor" Would be something a guy could be proud of weather or not he has low level friends it could be a bench mark of PvE skill and you could just do it with guildies for fun.
-It would also allow people an even greater choice of how to spend their time at max level and get all that content that we only see brief glimpses of as we level back on the map.
I would use this with some slow leveling friends I have.
I would also certainly use this with my hardcore guild mates for fun and to blow off steam.
We might even team up with another guild and go blow BWL away again. Or relive Cthun yo!
I love the idea of tying a system like this to the Caverns of Time - kudos to Vinsent on that one.
I've definitely been in multiple situations where it would have been great to have a system like this. I play a lot with my girlfriend on RP servers, and sometimes, our priorities don't line up. She tends to want to take her time and enjoy questing/RPing/whatever, and I have a much stronger "must-progress-now" drive. Needless to say, it has become an issue more than once, where we both want to have our characters more-or-less equal when we play together. Alts do help that, but there are plenty of reasons to stay away from them. If a mentoring system existed, we'd both feel much more free to head off and do our own thing - while still being able to quest/instance/whatever on an equal footing. For that reason, I'd prefer a system like this not be confined only to instances.
On the issue of scaling gear and talents - I'm certain that utilizing the data from the Armory is a much less expensive process for Blizzard than it is for us, and given that they have all that data, it seems like it would be a fairly straightforward process to build up an "average" kit (talents/gear) for any given class/level/spec. That's probably also the sort of thing that only needs to be done once (or once every so often). When someone is in "mentor" mode, they can either go Caverns of Time and change appearances to the default mentor kit, or they can just have their stats pull from the statically-assigned set for that level.
I'd also probably just turn off experience gain for mentors while in costume, and treat them as if they were the average level of the party for experience calculations. Just to avoid any possible exploitation.
For talents, have immediate re-buy of talents. R-click on portrait, choose Mentor, enter a level, and get an empty talent pane. Unless you both logged out in the same inn, you need something to do while flying anyways. The re-buy of talents would only be for your Mentor version; your normal spec is unchanged.
For gear, it'd be a large task for Blizzard to create pre-made gear sets, but not unreasonably so. 3 specs * 9 classes * 32 levels might suffice: start at level 6 and go up through 68 at every even level. The gear will be far from ideal, but I do not believe anyone using this system is going to care about that.
I would skip having "MC" or "BWL" sets for people who want to play the legacy game.
By allowing me to choose what level to sidekick down to, I have lots of options: if four 21s are going into Deadmines, I can sidekick down to 16 or 17 to not add a lot. Or if there's just three of us, I can sidekick down to 22 or 23 and respec into (say) Protection, and we'll see if we get anywhere.
Blizzard should have quite a bit of interest in doing this. The best customers for Blizzard are the people who subscribe but only play 3 hours/week: they add very little load to the servers and they certainly aren't clamoring for new content.
One idea I had to deal with this issue from another angle was a Levelling Pact.
Multiple characters would enter into the pact, and the highest level player could only be 2 levels higher than the lowest level person. Once you were at the limit, you stopped earning XP.
This would guarantee that you always had a character within range of the other people. The more hardcore could easily keep their Pact character in sync, and use a different character the rest of the time.
As well, a Pact would sort of turn the problem into a social problem instead of a mechanical problem. If you wanted to keep levelling, you would have to deliberately make the choice to leave the pact.
Blizzard should have quite a bit of interest in doing this. The best customers for Blizzard are the people who subscribe but only play 3 hours/week: they add very little load to the servers and they certainly aren't clamoring for new content.
But are these people the highest demographic, has there been any research into this?
If your going to make an assumption like this, wouldn't it make more sense that Blizzards best customers are the casual players who progress forwards through the game to reach the level cap and pvp or do the 5 man content, as this seems to be Blizzards focus on development?
I don't think its entirely possible to make any assumptions on which developments would please the highest majority of people.
But are these people the highest demographic, has there been any research into this?
If your going to make an assumption like this, wouldn't it make more sense that Blizzards best customers are the casual players who progress forwards through the game to reach the level cap and pvp or do the 5 man content, as this seems to be Blizzards focus on development?
I don't think its entirely possible to make any assumptions on which developments would please the highest majority of people.
I think his point was that the 3 hours a week people are the most money per unit of development time/effort for Blizzard. They pay as much as the folks with 6 70's but require next to no new content to keep happy. How many of them there are is sort of a different question, though yes, that would need to be considered to see if this kind of system would be worth creating.
Can we not get into this discussion about what the game is or its purpose? The original poster asked for ideas/discussion about how to design a mentoring system that would fit into WoW. He didn't ask about whether it would be worth blizzard's time or if it fit into what someone's idea about the philosophical ideas about what WoW "is".
"that would fit into WoW".
If you don't fit into the design philosophy of the game, the designers wouldn't even begin to consider it. So all this discussion becomes is a "wouldn't it be great if!" thread, when the OP seems to want to find a real solution to his real problem with the game. Designing something that is philosophically sound is just as important as designing something that is mechanically sound. Otherwise, druids would have pots and procs in forms by now.
To believe that a mentoring system is not a game-defining mechanic is wrong. It drastically changes what you can do and what you WILL do with the character that you play. It changes how you have to reward people for time in-game-- "helping friends" isn't enough of a reward for the majority of the playerbase. It changes the amount of time you have to spend testing and balancing legacy content.
Blizzard would have to want to re-focus on legacy content to even THINK of putting in mentoring. Tweaking XP gains in groups? They'd change that a heck of a lot sooner. Allowing you to "delay" accepting a level-up? Feasible. Levelling pacts? Simple mechanic.
The point of all this is... we should be looking for simple changes with meaningful results that require a small amount of testing and verification, rather than re-defining the game, re-adjusting balance across every tier of content, and so on.
The flaws of mentoring:
- Where is the balance point? Do you put the balance where they're down-leveled enough for an instance to be "easy"? At what point do you start trivializing content, like you would with your high-level character?
- How does a simple debuff distinguish between a 70 in crappy greens and a 70 in epics? A 60 who's in Naxx epics (that, say, was abandoned for a re-roll at TBC time) and a 70 in greens? It's a complicated, ugly, unfair-to-someone debuff.
- How do you justify "comrade" templates appearing out of nowhere and disappearing too? How do you balance gear?
- How do you keep people from working the system to exploit powerleveling sweet spots? How do you keep gold farmers/character sellers from exploiting the mechanics involved (i.e., create a group with a 20, a 30, and a 70; de-level the 70 to 25, then "disconnect" the 30, leaving a 20 and a 25, where the 25 with probably unbalanced gear doing all the work)?
Or, you could try to adjust the current "progression" system to be more friendly to maintaining a similar level of your alt to another player.
I have to agree with Allev. Right now, players have exceptionally abilities to nerf themselves. Between be able to wear poor quality gear (or none whatsoever), downranking, unlearning and playing with unspent talent points.... There is no shortage of ways players can marginalize themselves in order to not overpower outleveled content when playing with friends.
Implementing a complicated system would only transfer the burden of making it work from the player to the developers, and not particularly well.
Also, there needs to be incentive to use any system, and the option to bypass it would be problematic.
If Blizzard is going to change things so that I can take my level cap character, and run through SM with a friend at reduced effectiveness/simulated level, then they need to take away my ability to power through it as a fully effective 70.
Any mentoring system requires a major redesign of preexpansion content. I don't see a way around that.
If you don't fit into the design philosophy of the game, the designers wouldn't even begin to consider it. So all this discussion becomes is a "wouldn't it be great if!" thread, when the OP seems to want to find a real solution to his real problem with the game. Designing something that is philosophically sound is just as important as designing something that is mechanically sound. Otherwise, druids would have pots and procs in forms by now.
To believe that a mentoring system is not a game-defining mechanic is wrong. It drastically changes what you can do and what you WILL do with the character that you play. It changes how you have to reward people for time in-game-- "helping friends" isn't enough of a reward for the majority of the playerbase. It changes the amount of time you have to spend testing and balancing legacy content.
Blizzard would have to want to re-focus on legacy content to even THINK of putting in mentoring. Tweaking XP gains in groups? They'd change that a heck of a lot sooner. Allowing you to "delay" accepting a level-up? Feasible. Levelling pacts? Simple mechanic.
The point of all this is... we should be looking for simple changes with meaningful results that require a small amount of testing and verification, rather than re-defining the game, re-adjusting balance across every tier of content, and so on.
I certainly agree about your last point, that they are looking for simple changes (for example the debuff idea is particularly simple. For example, It doesn't need any rebalancing of content). But to say that that WoW is <X>, whatever X is, is simply an over generalization. WoW is different things to different people. Heck, just in your example, why do raiders still play after killing Illidan and getting the loot they want. Certainly there is no further progression to be had.
Also, I'm sick of people keep reiterating that there isn't a audience of people for this type of system. Here, in what I'd consider a very max level raid-biased group, we're still getting lots of replies and interest in such a system. So unless you guys have some other evidence (from the daedalus project or something), you have to admit there is significant interest in such a system.
I have to agree with Allev. Right now, players have exceptionally abilities to nerf themselves. Between be able to wear poor quality gear (or none whatsoever), downranking, unlearning and playing with unspent talent points.... There is no shortage of ways players can marginalize themselves in order to not overpower outleveled content when playing with friends.
Implementing a complicated system would only transfer the burden of making it work from the player to the developers, and not particularly well.
Also, there needs to be incentive to use any system, and the option to bypass it would be problematic.
If Blizzard is going to change things so that I can take my level cap character, and run through SM with a friend at reduced effectiveness/simulated level, then they need to take away my ability to power through it as a fully effective 70.
Any mentoring system requires a major redesign of preexpansion content. I don't see a way around that.
A "mentoring system" would streamline the self-nerfing process that already exists.
I could try to make a lowbie instance challenging to me by stripping naked and putting low-rank abilities on my hotkey bar. Itemrack can help with the equipment swapping (if you have the bagspace), but swapping abilities is a PITA.
It'd be pretty neat if I could instead activate "Lowbie Handicap", and get a debuff that scales me down to the instance level, skipping the re-gearing and ability swapping.
I don't think the handicap has to be precise, it just needs to get me down to the right ballpark of power. A L70 is something 100 times more powerful than the mobs in Deadmines (see 1/2-pull clears of the instance using a single L60 - a L70 can do that even easier). If the handicap "only" nerfed a L70 to the power level of a L25 or so, a L25 is maybe 1.5~2 times the power level of the Deadmines elite mobs - hardly able to pull the entire instance and win.
I have to agree with Allev. Right now, players have exceptionally abilities to nerf themselves. Between be able to wear poor quality gear (or none whatsoever), downranking, unlearning and playing with unspent talent points.... There is no shortage of ways players can marginalize themselves in order to not overpower outleveled content when playing with friends.
You still take away massive amounts of xp from anyone you're grouping with, though its true you can just equip poor/no gear. I might actually try this just to see how hard it is to get something in the neighborhood of an approximate power level for an instance.
Also, there needs to be incentive to use any system, and the option to bypass it would be problematic.
Why would you want to make it mandatory? It would anger anyone who wants to get run through an instance. I see this as something in the same idea as RPing. Just give us some kind of mechanic that makes it simple to become a pseudo level y, so that we can play along side another level y, without taking away things like xp from the person we're grouping with.
If Blizzard is going to change things so that I can take my level cap character, and run through SM with a friend at reduced effectiveness/simulated level, then they need to take away my ability to power through it as a fully effective 70.
Again, why? The whole reason to do this is to play through an instance at the level it was designed for so that both your friend and you have an interesting time in the instance. If you just want to power through it, then go for it.
Any mentoring system requires a major redesign of preexpansion content. I don't see a way around that.
Again, it doesn't need any redesign. What most people are asking for in this thread, is a straightforward way to "downrank" our character so we can play with friends who aren't at the same level we are. We aren't looking for tightly tuned instances, if we're just a bit over/underpowered, it doesn't take away from the challenge/fun of the instance.
I don't see the need to complicate the system with respect to choosing new talents since you should have fewer talent points, or altering items on your character. The system needs to be easy for 2 reasons: first, from a design standpoint and second from the viewpoint of those using the system. If it's too complicated, people just won't use it. If they can just hit a button and poof, be powered down to the right level and get to it, then it will be used much more.
I favor some kind of flat % reduction in ability. Keep all of your items and talents; mucking around with this seems too complicated. I don't remember what the average stats are for a level 20 character, but let's say they have around 500 hps. At level 70, I'd say 6k-8k is the norm for starting out, and going up as you get better geared. So take a 70 and reduce them to 7% or so of their hps, then apply that across the board: all their spells and attacks are calculated normally, then reduced to 7% of whatever the final value would be, and call it a day. Mana and Hps are similarly reduced to 7% of max.
Sure they'll have talents and skills they wouldn't normally have at that level, but with all your abilities functioning at 7% it's not game-breaking. I don't think we are trying to accurately re-create the level 20 experience, just make it so a 70 can group with his friends and play through the instance more-or-less normally.
Overall, I think the idea of a sliding scale where you set the % of max you will function at is best. Maybe it can't be a flat % to all stats (I don't think you can simply apply the same modifier to hps/mana/damage/healing), but adjust it accordingly...say at 10% effectiveness you have 15% hps and mana and 5% healing/damage or something. Then list what power range is approximately appropriate for any instance...say 10% of a normal level 70 for deadmines, but 20% for uldaman, or whatever. You can set the scale to whatever you want, so you can go lower if you have all T6 for example, but provide guidelines at the meeting stone for the instance.
But don't muck about with changing the stats on gear or choosing new talent trees; to much to code and, more importantly, too much of a headache to use (not for those on this forum, but your average WoW player). A flat % reduction is simple to understand, should be simple to code (everything works exactly as it does now, but with a modifier at the end).
All the debuff systems I've seen proposed simply don't deal with gear progression at level cap (or massive gear progression pre-cap, like the former naxx raider who's still at 60). I don't see a way you can do that while maintaining any kind of uniqueness to characters (i.e., dressing them all up in the same gear). Then there are issues of, how do you scale consumables? Do you let them use reduced versions of lvl70 items, or do you make them find level 30 water? Do you scale potions? What aboaut the ones under cap, do you scale them down too? How about arrows? What about loot "upgrades" that drop that are better than scaled-down versions? Again, how do you balance how much to debuff them against content? Do you want them to not even try to balance it? If you don't care enough to balance it, then why not bring your 70 and just play with level 1 weapons?
How do you make the feature seem as if it's not just a tacked-on hack?
A simply slider available in the interface menu that goes from 10% to 100% and adjusts your stats accordingly is all that is needed. If my uber mage buddy with 10,000 health and 1k +damage wants to run SM with me, he just scales down to 20% and suddenly has 2k health and 200 +damage -- still overpowered for SM, but weak enough that we could perhaps 3 man it with a tank and healer and have a fun and semi-challenging time. If he finds he's just dropping mobs way to quick, he could unequip a bit of gear to bring the +damage down or just adjust the slider some more.
Next to the slider could be a checkbox that says "Calculate player level as equal to target". This means that my hit rate against a level 34 mob is the same as if I was level 34.
You know, I was thinking about this.
We're now talking not necessarily about a mentoring system, but about a fully generic handicapping system. That might have applicability outside the context of mentoring. Imagine saying "I could beat you in a duel with half my DPS tied behind my back", and being able to test that in a verifiable way. It would certainly meet the need for mentoring. I wonder if the idea that it might have wider uses might help convince 'em to implement something like this?
Also... the checkbox for "calculate player level as equal to target"... that's a new mechanic. But you know what isn't a new mechanic? "Calculate player level as three levels below target." That's how raid bosses work now. A checkbox to "treat every target as skull" might be easier for Blizzard -- it could tie in to an existing mechanic rather than a new one.
And do you know what an interesting side effect of that would be?
A character who turned on that particular handicapping mechanic but who wanted to maximize their DPS would need to do exactly the same things they need to maximize their raid boss DPS. This might provide an interesting opportunity for practice. You could play with gear choices and shot rotations and stuff without being in a raid. While your low-level roommate or spouse or whoever is concentrating on, say, tanking VanCleef, you're simultaneously tweaking your spell rotations and your balance of spellhit gear and so forth to manage your DPS. And what you're learning will be applicable for you in, say, Zul'Aman!
I don't know if anyone else finds that thought interesting. Maybe it's just me.
I think his point was that the 3 hours a week people are the most money per unit of development time/effort for Blizzard. They pay as much as the folks with 6 70's but require next to no new content to keep happy. How many of them there are is sort of a different question, though yes, that would need to be considered to see if this kind of system would be worth creating.
Hmm... how many of them are there? Let's see.
WowJutsu counts 1,759,776 characters in the U.S. and Europe. When TBC was released, Blizzard stated the following in a press release: "Day-one sales totals on both continents were similar, with an estimated total of nearly 1.2 million copies sold on the first day in North America and an estimated total of more than 1.1 million copies sold in Europe within the first 24 hours of launch.*"
Now, of the 1.7 million raiding characters, not all of those are unique. Many people, especially in higher end guilds, will raid on more than one character (though the alt character may only attend Karazan or Gruuls, they still count as a raiding character). Moreover, not all North American and European subscribers bought WoW on the first day. These numbers are also skewed because there are some people (not a ton, but some) who get to 70 and do not raid at all, even Karazan.
Nevertheless, 1.7 million raiders / 2.3 million subscribers still shows a substantial chunk of the playerbase who is either not interested in "progression" as people here think of it, or not able to experience said "progression" due to casualness/playtime constraints.
I agree that a complicated system is not really worth implementing--if we want to spend a long time screwing around with things right now we can approximate a really torturous system. However a streamlined system that makes it much easier for the 1.7 to play with the .6 (or whatever the real ratio is) is certainly worth pursuing. It would, however, have to be EASY. Anything very complicated that made you respec your talents or carry around an extra set of gear probably does not fall into this category.
Also... the checkbox for "calculate player level as equal to target"... that's a new mechanic. But you know what isn't a new mechanic? "Calculate player level as three levels below target." That's how raid bosses work now. A checkbox to "treat every target as skull" might be easier for Blizzard -- it could tie in to an existing mechanic rather than a new one.
Well, I'd say that it is the same mechanic with simply a different value plugged in.
One thing you brought up that I had been thinking but didn't really elaborate on is that having a sliding scale like this would indeed be just a general handicapping system, and not specifically a "mentoring system". This works to its advantage because Blizzard can just say "We've implemented a voluntary handicapping system; how you choose to use it is up to you. Whether you want to venture into dungeons with lower level friends without completely overpowering them or want bragging rights by beating someone in a duel at 70% power, you now have the option to."
This way it's just a simple feature that they can add that some of their players will enjoy without a lot of hullabaloo, as opposed to some major rollout along the lines of "Blizzard is pleased to announce its brand new Mentoring System!". This really shouldn't be front page news, but rather something that shows up in the patch notes that makes people think "Hey, that's pretty cool. I might use that from time to time."
Define "power". You still have to get it 100% right. All stats? AP and HP? Even those don't scale correspondingly.
And the scale you talk about seems fraught with the same problems as before-- most often, the higher-level player will still choose to overpower the instance, because he can and it's more fun for the high level player to do it that way. Also, you don't solve the original problem, because somehow you have to balance things like XP gain when a handicapped player groups with a non-handicapped. Do you give non-handicap full XP? Do you not give them any, and do nothing to fix the original problem (level difference)? Balance, balance, balance. No real issues solved.
Douglas,
Interesting idea, but hard to replicate. Even trash in raids isn't skull-rated. You add in mechanics like crushing blows that don't exist in non-raid scenarios. You still need to scale damage when grouping with different levels ("OK, to me this boss has 100000 HP, to my level 30 friend he has 1000, and he can crushing blow me but not him. How does aggro work again?") It's just adding a level of indirection to scaling that doesn't leave it in an elegant place.
Define "power". You still have to get it 100% right. All stats? AP and HP? Even those don't scale correspondingly.
And the scale you talk about seems fraught with the same problems as before-- most often, the higher-level player will still choose to overpower the instance, because he can and it's more fun for the high level player to do it that way. Also, you don't solve the original problem, because somehow you have to balance things like XP gain when a handicapped player groups with a non-handicapped. Do you give non-handicap full XP? Do you not give them any, and do nothing to fix the original problem (level difference)? Balance, balance, balance. No real issues solved.
It would probably just be easier to scale the player's output: if a player selects 20% on the slider, all damage and healing is calculated normally and then multiplied by 20%. Health is similarly multiplied by 20%. Mana could be perhaps left as is, otherwise one or two maxlevel spells would fully deplete it. Alternatively, mana costs could be multiplied by 20% if a player's mana is multiplied by 20%. Armor value could be multiplied by 20%.
As for XP, lowering the slider could gradually reduce the XP penalty caused by the level difference, but only very slightly. The incentive should be "play with your friends without them one-shotting every mob" and not "get run through instances by high level players without any XP penalty". I think it would be fair if it were calculated so that running a full group with a handicapped 70 meant the regular players got between half and a third of their normal XP.
If you're say level 36, you can already run SM with someone who's level 45 - you still get great XP, and the instance is pretty easy due to the 45's contribution. This would be fairly similar.
10/30/07, 6:36 PM
The re-buy of talents would only be for your Mentor version; your normal spec is unchanged.
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