escalation methods and pitfalls.

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kiryan
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escalation methods and pitfalls.

Postby kiryan » Sat Dec 24, 2005 5:47 pm

This thread goes hand in hand with the "escalation is good" thread. This is the place to discuss specifics of escalation that are good and bad, things to do, things to avoid, flame retarded suggestiosn ect... The thread to discuss whether escalation is good or bad is here: http://www.torilmud.org/phpBB2/viewtopi ... 525#158525


some thoughts from witnessing player power escalation on everquest.

1. Don't do it too fast.

If you escalate too fast, you make the "path" shorter by obsoleting old zones too fast. This is still a problem with spob, if you pwipe, why do any zone but spob? you have to do it naked so eq isn't a factor. There used to be a progression, you used to do like SG, crypts, Jot, brass to get started then move on to harder zones when your equipment was good enough. Do you remember having to rep a leader and tel him your hit/dam before he would take you to a zone? We lost that and although belittling, it proved that equipment would make you zone worthy.

More importantly, you take the legs out of any existing economy and people who were participating in that economy. For example if there is significant trade in 0/3 earrings, if your next step is then to a 0/6 earring, the 0/3 earrings become worthless nearly over night. However if oyu go to 1/3 or 0/3 plus a prot or a save then the 0/3 earring lose a lot of value, but still has value eventually 1 year, 2 years whatever that 0/3 earring becomes worthless, but it served a purpose.

2. Don't forget the little people like to get stuff

Ok so now after 1 year of tiamat, you have 10 people taking down BC/Bel and you have people 2 manning IC vault and people soloing SG.

You have to be real careful here, because you think gah thats terrible people soloing SG and IC vault, but by this point of the game IC vault and SG are already "worthless" eq wise and zone wise... So the fact that people are there is a plus because its being used. However, you don't want this to happen in every zone, some yes, but not every zone. If you have these stacked people going through destroying low end content, your new people, your lowbies may actually end up having no content to use.

We see this in exp zones, the stacked alt coming through tearing up the exp mobs while the 4 man noob group sits back in awe which turns into disgust when they run out of mobs to kill. We also can see it in things like the old tiny golden earring, 1 level 50 would run down and solo the TG with 20 in their bag (well at least i did) taking that opportunity away from a smaller group of say 4 level 30s.

You have to be careful to provide enough low end content that won't be solod so that new people don't have to buy their way into the high end game, but can still go out and get equipment if they want. Unfortunately, I've never seen a good way to do this. There was "trivial" loot code on eq, which meant if a 50 killed a level 20 mob, its inventory would poof, but if a 25 killed a 20, it would get the loot. There is level locked content which lots of players hate (because they can't explore it without rolling an alt which means not playing their prime). The best way I have ever seen it done is by making it take too much "time" to be worth it to high level players....

For example on everquest, some mobs drop pelts which are pretty valuable to high level tailors, but they are very rare and the mobs are very spread out. So though a high level with faster running speed can spam around and kill these mobs faster than lowbies, it may take an hour to get one still. On the other hand, the lowbie was exping here so they might spend 15 hours here and end up with 10 pelts, 5 less than the high level, but the pelts aren't that valuable and could be purchased from the lowbie for the equivalent of 2 hours of work.

Some combination of level locks, trivial loot code, and design would surely do the trick, but its important not to advance the high end game while destroying the low end game.

3. Limiting the destruction of low level challenge.

Ok, people pretty universally hate eq level restrictions. But, high level equipment has destroyed the low level challenge. With additional escalation you have even more escalation in the low level game. Luckily a lot of "procs" are level restricted which is good, but we still need to see some more control. I believe low level hit/dam is capped at level 10 and leve 20, but two also very important stats weren't capped, AC and HPs. To restore some of the challenge to the low level game, and to protect it from future escalation, and to create some "excitement" at reaching cap levels I propose the following chart.

Caps for WORN equipment (natural hit/dam would not figure into the cap).

1, 5 hit 5 dam 25 ac 25 hps
10, 8 hit, 8 dam, 35 ac, 45 hps
15, 10 hit, 10 dam, 50 ac, 75 hps
20, 15 hit, 15 dam, 100 ac, 100 hps
25, 25 hit, 25 dam, 125 ac, 150 hps
30, 30 hit, 30 dam, 150 ac, 250 hps
35, 35 hit, 35 dam, 200 ac, 400 hps
45, 40 hit, 40 dam, 200 ac, 400 hps
50, no limit (or possibly implement some sort of system/skill to continue to limit stats so that you would have to "earn" the ability to raise your caps)

Beyond protecting the low level game from escalation, it also should create some interaction at the low level game, somethign toril has been missing for years because alts with -100 ac and 20/20 tear through levels 1-20. Why there is a lack of any reason to group for at least the first 20 levels, in a game where the high end is ALL grouping is beyond me. You would still have "power leveling", but I'm not looking for a perfect solution. (btw, implement a REAL exp bonus for groups, people solo because they get better exp solo. Sorry if i got a little sidetracked.)

4. More than eq.

There needs to be more to advancement than equipment. On everquest they have Alternate Abilities. A whole slew of abilities that must be trained with exp (doesnt have to be here, but its trained with exp there) that add very small measures of power to your character. They have a 3 tier AA system where you have to train certain # of lower level abilities before you can train higher abilities. The lower level abilities could be stuff like +strenght, +wis. The 2nd tier abilities could be + max str, +maxwis, the 3rd tier stuff could be -1* to chant time, extra attack, an innate !ress effects ress, ect....

The reason why alternate advancement is important has 2 parts.

The first is that we have no transfer restrictiosn on eq. You can take your eq and hand it to any other person, so the development of a character is very very short, a 5 day race to 50. You could spend hundreds of play days working on your equipment. Why can't we extend the character development some, why not implement 50 or 100 play days worth of alternate abilities you could train? Why not escalate character power as well as eq power?

Second, for lots of reasons eq advancement doesnt work for some people. They get bored of zoning for advancement, some people get assed out of zone groups, some people don't have as much time to do zones or have to be able to leave instantly, but could find time to exp here and there to still continue their character advancement. You want to provide an alternative to zoning for equipment. (Tradeskills is another idea in this realm).


thats all for me for now, i have other stuff i want to get done today.

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