DDO - playing with friends?

[mikarddo]

One of the major strengths of DDO is the fast that playing at cap is not the only viable way to play the game.

However, this also means that its harder to play together with friends unless you perfectly match your playtime which is often unrealistic.

Example:
Tuesday I play with 4 friends running a bunch of level 6-8 quests together.
Wednesday I log on and play with one of those friends running Shadow Crypt, Von3+4 earning 1+ level in a few hours. Then the 3rd friend logs in --- and while we could all play together it would be much less efficient and thus we decline. Maybe we get lucky and match up some other day. Friday the 4rd friend logs in again - he is still level 9 while we are level 15. Playing together is not possible.

How do you handle this?
- Alts are an option but due to rxp and rpl and other past lives alts are hard to keep up in power.
- Boxing the friend who isn't online to make him keep up can be done (turning the blind eye to the Eula if need be) but boxing more than 1 friend becomes very cumbersome and even boxing one requires quite alot of trust.
- Scheduling a timetable is what some do. Even with just 2 people thats not easy to do and with more than 2 its outright hard leading to a significantly reduced play time.

I would like to offer some ideas that could reduce this issue. Completely removing it seems unrealistic.
- Allow 'banking' more than 1 level. This would mean I could join friends running something slightly higher level without having to skip something really nice on the level I am on. Example: I am level 9 and about to run SC + Von3 for great xp when friends that are level 11 log in wanting to run Sands. If I could bank 2-3 levels I would run Sands with them without taking level 10 and then return to the level 9 quests after they log off or when I next log on.
- Give first time (tome, first time, bravery) bonusses to everyone in the group if anyone in the group is in the quest for the first time. This makes rerunning quests to play with friends much less of a burden. Requiring someone to be on the first run makes exploiting this feature cumbersome.
- Make reaper xp overlevel penalty much less unforgiving on epic levels. Let epic levels be where you can actually make groups across many levels without incurring harsh xp penalties.


Also, and these are the major ones:
- Make reaper xp account shared (for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)
- Make racial past lives account shared (again, for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)

Both of these would make playing alts far more rewarding and viable.


I am curious what others thing about this. Both how you see the issue, how you handle it without the current structures, and which structures you might want changed.

[slarden]

I have this scenario where I play with real life friends that play less frequently than me. I have an alt that levels with them and only plays with them. The loss of rxp on that character isn't really an issue because it keeps the character on par with everyone else.

Yes playing alts in general will result in less power for your main and that was never really much of an issue until reaper. It is what it is.

[mikarddo]

I have this scenario where I play with real life friends that play less frequently than me. I have an alt that levels with them and only plays with them. The loss of rxp on that character isn't really an issue because it keeps the character on par with everyone else.

Yes playing alts in general will result in less power for your main and that was never really much of an issue until reaper. It is what it is.

Aye, that approach works in the most extreme cases where one player (you) plays much more than the others - and those others play at the same time.
But replace with a situation where you play 100%, one other friend plays 90% (with maybe 60% overlapping), friend 3 plays 70% and friend 4 plays 40%. What then?

[hp1055cm]

I am curious what others thing about this. Both how you see the issue, how you handle it without the current structures, and which structures you might want changed.

There isn't a viable solution to the gap between players who level at different rates. You seem to understand the complications so I'm not sure what the point of your question is.

You pose a scenario where you are playing for challenge or benefit (Reaper/BB) and then offer 'solutions' that imply relaxing the parameters that make it more challenging/rewarding.
It isn't logical.

_____
If playing with your friends is important to you then stay capped until they are ready to level at the same time.
Or like Slarden suggested run an alt character and keep pace with them.
Or stay in Epics where the level gap is more forgiving.

[Qhualor]

An idea would be to play as a static group playing only those characters for that group. You don't play them for any other reason. All characters are progressing the same and on "equal" footing. You could call it playing Alts. The other days you could play and progress your main as you like.

[mikarddo]

There isn't a viable solution to the gap between players who level at different rates. You seem to understand the complications so I'm not sure what the point of your question is.

You pose a scenario where you are playing for challenge or benefit (Reaper/BB) and then offer 'solutions' that imply relaxing the parameters that make it more challenging/rewarding.
It isn't logical.

_____
If playing with your friends is important to you then stay capped until they are ready to level at the same time.
Or like Slarden suggested run an alt character and keep pace with them.
Or stay in Epics where the level gap is more forgiving.

Banking levels does not make for more challenge. In fact, the way I proposed it would likely make for more challenge as I would be more likely to run level 11 quests with friends while being level 9 myself because I could bank the levels and run the level 9 quests after my friends log off.

Getting 1st time bonusses multiple times doesn't really make the challenge less either. More xp, possibly, though it only really replaces one quest with another.

Having rxp and rpl shared doesn't make for more challenge either. Right now I only play my main - with this suggestion I would probably play several alts as well. As those alts have few heroic/iconic/epic past lives than my main the challenge would be greater not lesser.

So, your claim that my suggestions would lessen the challenge does not seem logical to me.

----
Alts & Epics - yes, I could do all that - but I already covered why that is not much of a solution. Not that I pretend to be able to offer a full solution but even small improvements would be very welcome.

[mikarddo]

An idea would be to play as a static group playing only those characters for that group. You don't play them for any other reason. All characters are progressing the same and on "equal" footing. You could call it playing Alts. The other days you could play and progress your main as you like.

I am not talking about a group of RL friend that want to goof around one night a week together - not that its likely to happen regularly that 4-6 adults with families and kids are ALL able to make it even if its a regularly scheduled event. No, I am talking about people that play DDO from somewhat actively to fairly actively that like to progress in the game and like to play together while doing so when they happen to be online at the same time. Most with many past lives - so a "start all over and play slowly" group is not a viable answer.

I do realise that DDO is badly shaped for what I wish for - unlike games where you play at cap almost exclusively - but that does not mean a few changes to somewhat lessen the problem should not be considered even if it cannot fully be done away with.

[Qhualor]

I am not talking about a group of RL friend that want to goof around one night a week together - not that its likely to happen regularly that 4-6 adults with families and kids are ALL able to make it even if its a regularly scheduled event. No, I am talking about people that play DDO from somewhat actively to fairly actively that like to progress in the game and like to play together while doing so when they happen to be online at the same time. Most with many past lives - so a "start all over and play slowly" group is not a viable answer.

I do realise that DDO is badly shaped for what I wish for - unlike games where you play at cap almost exclusively - but that does not mean a few changes to somewhat lessen the problem should not be considered even if it cannot fully be done away with.

So you are saying that these friends of yours due to real life commitments are unable to dedicate a set play time and day. I would assume other static groups are able to play together despite also having real life commitments. I solo all the time and I still have real life commitments. Instead you propose several different system changes because you say that Alts are not an option for you because you need your main to continuously progress without falling behind the power curve of... who? Alts aren't an option because they fall behind the power curve of... who?

People keep saying DDO isn't a PVP game but people keep trying to treat it like it is.

[vryxnr]

All people involved having many alts of many levels is the only current solution. ALL people involved. That means the one with lots of playtime has alts, the one miss medium playtime ALSO has alts, and the one with the lowest playtime might also have alts. This way when it does happen that some of you are online at the same time, you can choose the characters that best fit the group at that time. When all of you are online, you can do the same.

An alternative is accepting that you can't always play together without hampering one/another person's XP gains (though you can still gain both favor, loot and quest knowledge together).

The insistence that this is not a solution (despite it being so. Many people already do this with great success) makes me think you know what you want, but are trying to push other posters to post what you want without saying it yourself so that you can claim it came from elsewhere and point to other 'like minds' to 'prove' that many people want it (that most likely being the removal of level restrictions and over-leveled penalties from all quests/difficulties, so that a level 1 and a level 30 can play in the same quest together regardless of difficulty and both gain full xp so as to not hamper anyone's progression. This is a problem/specifically not the case because of that scenario where a capped character would carry lower leveled characters through adventures to 'power level' them while they do nothing).

...and if that is your end goal/agenda, than I fear that I might now get quoted out of context. XD

[mikarddo]

All people involved having many alts of many levels is the only current solution. ALL people involved. That means the one with lots of playtime has alts, the one miss medium playtime ALSO has alts, and the one with the lowest playtime might also have alts. This way when it does happen that some of you are online at the same time, you can choose the characters that best fit the group at that time. When all of you are online, you can do the same.

An alternative is accepting that you can't always play together without hampering one/another person's XP gains (though you can still gain both favor, loot and quest knowledge together).

The insistence that this is not a solution (despite it being so. Many people already do this with great success) makes me think you know what you want, but are trying to push other posters to post what you want without saying it yourself so that you can claim it came from elsewhere and point to other 'like minds' to 'prove' that many people want it (that most likely being the removal of level restrictions and over-leveled penalties from all quests/difficulties, so that a level 1 and a level 30 can play in the same quest together regardless of difficulty and both gain full xp so as to not hamper anyone's progression. This is a problem/specifically not the case because of that scenario where a capped character would carry lower leveled characters through adventures to 'power level' them while they do nothing).

...and if that is your end goal/agenda, than I fear that I might now get quoted out of context. XD

I do believe I already posted my suggestions in the OP - so there is no hidden agenda. I certainly know that it is possible to always play together - heck, we could all create new level 1 chars whenever need be - so that is not the issue. The issue (for me, and maybe only me, maybe more) is that DDO makes playing with friends while being somewhat efficient wrt. progression more difficult that most games. I am certainly not trying to get others to post what I want - I always prefer doing so myself :)

[mikarddo]

So you are saying that these friends of yours due to real life commitments are unable to dedicate a set play time and day. I would assume other static groups are able to play together despite also having real life commitments. I solo all the time and I still have real life commitments. Instead you propose several different system changes because you say that Alts are not an option for you because you need your main to continuously progress without falling behind the power curve of... who? Alts aren't an option because they fall behind the power curve of... who?

People keep saying DDO isn't a PVP game but people keep trying to treat it like it is.

For me DDO is mostly a progression game. If loads of new quests came out all the time (not realistic, I know) or the new quests were hard to conquer (rather than 2-3 hours on admittingly low reaper to win all the quests in a new pack) it might have been more about exploring new stuff or the thrill of the win. But, its not, and thus DDO (for me) is mostly about running the same quests over and over again, faster and faster each time. In that light I prefer to look at the progression as part of the fun for me - and thus rerunning the exact same quests on a character with no meaningful progression (to me) is not interesting.

Others including you are obviously free to view this otherwise which is cool.

[Chacka_DDO]

For this issue, I currently prefer the idea of account-wide character progression, this way you could reserve certain characters to play with one or more friends together.
If you online while your friends are not, you could play another character and you always know it doesn't matter which character you play, all your characters get progression.
This means not only reaper experience is shared, also class race and epic past lives.

[xveganrox]

I've played with the same static group of 4-8 friends (depending on school/schedules/other commitments, some people might miss a full TR sometimes) since right before Red Fens came out and I can definitely sympathize with the problem. What we do is generally set a limit of 2 + whatever quests we're planning on running for maximum level. If someone isn't there, we bank experience. We aren't all up to running reaper on every quest anyway, but keeping HE streak is still generally plenty.

Iconics help out a lot -- if someone knows they won't be playing as much, they can just start as an iconic and if they miss anything up to level 13 it doesn't matter. The two level exp banking limit does suck though: Since it's clearly not a system limitation (see iconics), it seems arbitrary and makes static grouping more difficult. I don't see why we couldn't bank to 20 -- there are only a handful of things that are more efficient for leveling than just R1 streaking. I don't really think that Shadow Crypt window farming would break late heroics -- it does ransack, and the people who do that to TR efficiently probably aren't going to wait at level for it to reset every 18 hours... and if they do, so what? It might even mean more LFMs since it could encourage people to run every quest they have at-level for BB or R1 for favor since currently if you do that you end up hitting the banking limit.

OTOH the other stuff you mentioned -- Account-shared RXP/racial TRs -- seem like complete non-starters. Don't get me wrong, I'd love both of them personally, but they would 1) probably cut revenue dramatically, RXP and racial TRs mean Sovereign pot and sometimes even heart sales, & 2) really ruffle the feathers of people who have ground them out on separate characters. I could see shared RXP working sort of like Paragon levels in Diablo, and if it came with major changes to the whole Reaper system (which I think most people agree we need at some point anyway) it might work out. Account-shared TRs doesn't make much sense IMO though -- just start a level 7 first life of every race, trade it your ML8/ML10 slavers/RL gear, run it to 20, TR, delete, and repeat? Past lives have always been character-specific. I don't know the numbers, but I bet exp boosts and Otto's boxes sell more than just about anything else. And I imagine someone out there even buys hearts of wood, although I can't imagine why.

Overall though I think increasing the banking limit on exp would be reasonable and small enough that could be considered and wouldn't hurt revenue so it could be a possibility. That would definitely improve my static party experience. Heck, even just make it 2 levels for F2P, 4 for Premium, 6 for VIP, or something like that -- might even end up being revenue positive.

[vryxnr]

IMO account wide progression does not solve or help mitigate this issue in any significant way. ANECDOTE: Diablo 3 has account based progression, and for a while myself and some of my RL friends played. I was able to get more play time in than they did, and when we were all online at the same time it was still awkward/annoying/less enjoyable for everyone involved because no matter what character I played, I was still overpowered compared to them. Not everyone likes to pike while other people play for them (the result of large differences in character power within the same group). I certainly do not, and neither do my friends. So even there, were account wide progression is the norm, I had alt characters that I'd only play when they were on and only level them when my friends leveled in order to keep the playing field even, thus allowing everyone involved to participate.

[xveganrox]

IMO account wide progression does not solve or help mitigate this issue in any significant way. ANECDOTE: Diablo 3 has account based progression, and for a while myself and some of my RL friends played. I was able to get more play time in than they did, and when we were all online at the same time it was still awkward/annoying/less enjoyable for everyone involved because no matter what character I played, I was still overpowered compared to them. Not everyone likes to pike while other people play for them (the result of large differences in character power within the same group). I certainly do not, and neither do my friends. So even there, were account wide progression is the norm, I had alt characters that I'd only play when they were on and only level them when my friends leveled in order to keep the playing field even, thus allowing everyone involved to participate.

In Diablo 3 you can avoid that problem entirely by not running seasonals with static groups if you know everyone won't be able to keep up. And at cap, assuming you don't have Primal Ancients of every set you should be fine by just using one of your weaker sets or even just dropping Paragon points. You can just change your build, without having to level to cap again (or spend $20), so unless your only goal is GR pushing (in which case you should probably find a different group) IME Diablo 3 grouping is pretty easy. And you can get an alt class from 1 to 70 in what.. 30-40 minutes? And start fresh there with whatever set items you've got for it.

[Bacab]

Do not ever include your "main" in a static group. Period.

Not unless you are ok with them not progressing as fast as you want.

You clearly play more than your friends, which is fine.

I generally only play 1 toon.

But when I get friends to give the game a try, I like rolling a first lifer so I am not way over powered over them.

I even generally play a class that helps us get completions. I will often be a Cleric/Healer type or a Trapper so that stuff doesn't stop us.

Anyway, I do like the idea of banking more than one level though.

[mikarddo]

Account-shared RXP/racial TRs -- seem like complete non-starters. Don't get me wrong, I'd love both of them personally, but they would 1) probably cut revenue dramatically, RXP and racial TRs mean Sovereign pot and sometimes even heart sales

Overall though I think increasing the banking limit on exp would be reasonable and small enough that could be considered and wouldn't hurt revenue so it could be a possibility. That would definitely improve my static party experience. Heck, even just make it 2 levels for F2P, 4 for Premium, 6 for VIP, or something like that -- might even end up being revenue positive.

I honestly doubt it would cut into revenues. Right now I simply only play 1 character. With account shared rxp/rpl I would probably play several more - earning some epic/heroic past lives on those as well and purchasing more bank slots, tomes etc to keep them up. Also, a small cost to add each char to the sharing system would earn some. So, from me specifically it would mean increased revenues if anything as well as make it more likely for me to keep playing for more years.

I agree that being able to bank xp seems like a good step without too many pitfalls.

[mikarddo]

Do not ever include your "main" in a static group. Period.



But the issue here isn't about a static group as that unrealistic in our case. Its about making it more likely to "randomly" be able to play together without the hassle of forming and maintaining the socalled static group. So, the answer you posted is not to the question at hand :)

[MasterKernel]

Ah, just another ordinary "make everything shared" standard thread with a pretty name. Boring.

[Niminae]

Also, and these are the major ones:
- Make reaper xp account shared (for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)
- Make racial past lives account shared (again, for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)

Both of these would make playing alts far more rewarding and viable.



The above seems to only relate to playing alts. Your post title suggests it is all about playing with friends. Maybe try to focus on one topic at a time? If RXP and racial past lives were shared account wide then the friend of yours who played more hours than all your other friends would have all of their characters more advanced than everyone else in your group. That seems to be at odds with the parts of your post complaining about the difficulties of keeping everyone together despite different play schedules.

I don't believe we'll ever see account shared RXP, racial past lives, or any other kind of past lives or XP. Your account can already share Cannith Crafted gear and all BtA items and platinum, as long as you're a VIP or buy the shared bank. The rest is a matter of logistics for you and your friends to work out between yourselves. No game modifications are going to make the failure of your group of friends to be able to commit to a play schedule for at least one character each a sudden success. If it's important to you and them, you'll work it out. If it doesn't happen, then it clearly isn't very important to you and your group of friends. No dev hours need to be wasted making changes to accommodate people who don't seem to care enough about it to figure it out on their own anyway.

[Bacab]

But the issue here isn't about a static group as that unrealistic in our case. Its about making it more likely to "randomly" be able to play together without the hassle of forming and maintaining the socalled static group. So, the answer you posted is not to the question at hand :)

If everyone in your static had a character that they only played while in the static group...it would solve your problem though.

You could always just run quests without leveling up. You just will not get XP from it. I do think you could still get Reaper XP (unsure of the repeat penalties though).

[slarden]

For me DDO is mostly a progression game. If loads of new quests came out all the time (not realistic, I know) or the new quests were hard to conquer (rather than 2-3 hours on admittingly low reaper to win all the quests in a new pack) it might have been more about exploring new stuff or the thrill of the win. But, its not, and thus DDO (for me) is mostly about running the same quests over and over again, faster and faster each time. In that light I prefer to look at the progression as part of the fun for me - and thus rerunning the exact same quests on a character with no meaningful progression (to me) is not interesting.

Others including you are obviously free to view this otherwise which is cool.

There are many things I do with friends that involve no progression or benefit other than simply spending time with people I enjoy. The issue of progression difficulties when playing alts is a real issue, but completely separate from the issue of playing with friends with different schedules, interest and play time. The latter is easily solved by designating one alt to play with that group. this solves the issue of people being at the same level and power gap.

The issue of your main being significantly behind the power curve compared to people that focus primarily on one character is a real issue, but not one that SSG is likely to resolve before it shuts the game down for good. If you want to ride out the final chapter of DDO you have to accept the current game is built around a grind revenue model and the only bypasses to that will involve spending money or time. I understand - even with missing nearly 9 months since reaper due to injury I managed to get over 10 million rxp across alts but no alt has more than 2.5 MM so I am behind on hp, spell points and other things but I also haven't seen any indication that I am contributing less to the quests than someone with quadruple my rxp total on a character.

Power in this game is mostly about time investment. That's how it is.

[Enoach]

...
I would like to offer some ideas that could reduce this issue. Completely removing it seems unrealistic.
- Allow 'banking' more than 1 level. This would mean I could join friends running something slightly higher level without having to skip something really nice on the level I am on. Example: I am level 9 and about to run SC + Von3 for great xp when friends that are level 11 log in wanting to run Sands. If I could bank 2-3 levels I would run Sands with them without taking level 10 and then return to the level 9 quests after they log off or when I next log on.
- Give first time (tome, first time, bravery) bonusses to everyone in the group if anyone in the group is in the quest for the first time. This makes rerunning quests to play with friends much less of a burden. Requiring someone to be on the first run makes exploiting this feature cumbersome.
- Make reaper xp overlevel penalty much less unforgiving on epic levels. Let epic levels be where you can actually make groups across many levels without incurring harsh xp penalties.


Also, and these are the major ones:
- Make reaper xp account shared (for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)
- Make racial past lives account shared (again, for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)

...

I'm going to give you my point of view on your suggestions from one of the players that has 6 Characters I play regularly and 3 characters that are part of static groups one of which does not TR but actually gets deleted and recreated as part of the group running only as 1st life no Tweaks, no Past Lives, No ship buffs and Group only runs Elite...

First you don't need "all the power" to be very successful in DDO, the most important part when playing with a group is being able to play in a synergic way, complement each other. The goal being to have fun in my opinion is more fun then the "gottacatchthemall" goal.

Now your suggestions...
1. "Allow Higher Level Banking"
A note that the game is based on Dungeons and Dragons and this "cap" on leveling is something that come from that system. I wanted to point this out to put to rest any thought that this is something random. Now even when you are level capped (cannot earn any more XP for leveling purposes) you can continue to earn Reaper XP. I myself have had many situations where I "hard capped" and chose to continue to run with the group without leveling to complete a series and keep the maximum possible Rxp.

But there is also a danger in expanding the "Hard Cap" that it would potentially allow a player to pick the levels/quests they will run in a limited way. Not utilizing every area provided. As a software developer myself it saddens me when a user of my software only uses a small percentage, even more so when that person complains how limited that software is but refuses to use more of the features.

2. First Time Bonus if someone in the group is first time to everyone even it is not their first time?
You don't see the potential to abuse this? There are some quests that a person that uses the "boxing" method could potentially run the same quest multiple times and level even faster, again being able to skip a large amount of content in the process.

3. Reduce the over-level penalty of Rxp.
I'm mixed on this one. On one hand I could see them adjusting Rxp to be from the Quests Modified level instead of based on Base Quest level. On the other hand I see that keeping it at the Base Quest level helps to promote the challenge as 2 Character Levels does give a character more power. In my mind one of the failings of Reaper Mode is that the "standard xp" is more then Elite. I have felt that the reward for Reaper should have been limited to the additional Rxp only. But my understanding is some felt "people won't come unless we sweeten the pot", I disagree but I wasn't asked to make that decision :)

4. Make Rxp Account based.
Actually, while this would benefit me as a player of multiple characters. I think it would be "too powerful" an option to give every character the benefit of all Rxp earned.

Now that being said, I think it would be a nice change if the "vendors" were available based on your total Rxp on the account. But these are cosmetic items and outside the "pretty factor" have no impact on the characters ability to perform.

5. Make Racial lives shared (even for extra cost)
I'm against "sharing" power options. I don't think it will be better for the game to give "past lives" on an account basis (Keep in mind if that happened I would login and have 9 characters with Triple Completionist status for Heroic and Epic Lives and 1/3 of the racial lives) In my opinion it would rob me of the journey that I'm currently enjoying, shortening the "life" of me being able to progress my characters.


To this end I don't feel your suggestions represent those of us that enjoy having multiple characters, that have not succumbed to the pressure of "There can be only one."

[Xanthrawl]

One of the major strengths of DDO is the fast that playing at cap is not the only viable way to play the game.

However, this also means that its harder to play together with friends unless you perfectly match your playtime which is often unrealistic.

Example:
Tuesday I play with 4 friends running a bunch of level 6-8 quests together.
Wednesday I log on and play with one of those friends running Shadow Crypt, Von3+4 earning 1+ level in a few hours. Then the 3rd friend logs in --- and while we could all play together it would be much less efficient and thus we decline. Maybe we get lucky and match up some other day. Friday the 4rd friend logs in again - he is still level 9 while we are level 15. Playing together is not possible.

How do you handle this?
- Alts are an option but due to rxp and rpl and other past lives alts are hard to keep up in power.
- Boxing the friend who isn't online to make him keep up can be done (turning the blind eye to the Eula if need be) but boxing more than 1 friend becomes very cumbersome and even boxing one requires quite alot of trust.
- Scheduling a timetable is what some do. Even with just 2 people thats not easy to do and with more than 2 its outright hard leading to a significantly reduced play time.

I would like to offer some ideas that could reduce this issue. Completely removing it seems unrealistic.
- Allow 'banking' more than 1 level. This would mean I could join friends running something slightly higher level without having to skip something really nice on the level I am on. Example: I am level 9 and about to run SC + Von3 for great xp when friends that are level 11 log in wanting to run Sands. If I could bank 2-3 levels I would run Sands with them without taking level 10 and then return to the level 9 quests after they log off or when I next log on.
- Give first time (tome, first time, bravery) bonusses to everyone in the group if anyone in the group is in the quest for the first time. This makes rerunning quests to play with friends much less of a burden. Requiring someone to be on the first run makes exploiting this feature cumbersome.
- Make reaper xp overlevel penalty much less unforgiving on epic levels. Let epic levels be where you can actually make groups across many levels without incurring harsh xp penalties.


Also, and these are the major ones:
- Make reaper xp account shared (for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)
- Make racial past lives account shared (again, for characters that opt in, add a small cost to do so)

Both of these would make playing alts far more rewarding and viable.


I am curious what others thing about this. Both how you see the issue, how you handle it without the current structures, and which structures you might want changed.

I get what you're going for, and it has been a complaint for over a decade. City of Heroes did it best. Allow a lower level character to temporarily be powered up to play with higher level friends. Or allow a higher level friend temporarily be a "sidekick" and drop to a lower level to play with others.

Allowing 1st time bonus if anyone in the group is on their 1st run would be abused so much. Most content in the game could be "unlocked" by someone rolling up an iconic, hopping in the quest for the 1st time bonus for the entire group, and switching back to their main. This would only encourage less LFM diversity, which I personally view as a bad thing. We already have far too many of the "dailies" LFMs because their XP is so lopsided.

Making rXP and racial past lives account based is never going to happen, though I agree it would be a nice way to keep up power on alt characters and represent the (vast) amount of time one has spent in-game. Perhaps on another character, perhaps not. Of course, this would lead to people farming Racial Completionist on 1st life characters for far less XP required. Perhaps any +3 life could count toward the account-wide totals?

[Renvar]

Aye, that approach works in the most extreme cases where one player (you) plays much more than the others - and those others play at the same time.
But replace with a situation where you play 100%, one other friend plays 90% (with maybe 60% overlapping), friend 3 plays 70% and friend 4 plays 40%. What then?

Your posts suggest that leveling is the only activity that you can do during play time. (And primarily heroic leveling, at that. Where the level restrictions are more severe)

My recommendation:

Have an alt you level with Friend 4. That alt only gets run when Friend 4 is online. (or, if friend 3 is getting behind due to non-overlapping, then with him as well). You don't actually level faster than the slowest leveling member of the party. If that means you are xp capped and rerunning content while catching them up, so be it. This character and this activity is social as the first priority and speed of character progress is secondary.

When friend 4 and friend 3 are not on, you are running other characters at cap (Reaper XP farming, gear farming, raiding, feeding your sentient gem, etc). Or you are working on Epic PL's for your main or another alt. Epics are much more more forgiving on level ranges for questing. You might not be getting BB, but there is plenty of XP in epics, so who cares?

As for reaper XP, that is better done as an at cap activity. Where you won't have any of these problems. A lot of your stress is based on getting reaper xp while leveling. Use the reaper quest xp bump and run low skulls and get what reaper xp you can, but really, don't worry about it. As it doesn't get erased between reincarnations, it will build up over time. If you are really all about the reaper XP on a specific character, put that character at cap and do the reaper dailies that should be running on most servers.

You can do the above running 2 or 3 characters. More likely 3. A group heroic leveling alt, an epic PL alt, and an at cap reaper XP/gear grinding character. You can swap out which one is doing each thing as needed. Maybe you run char X as the leveler for a while and have Y doing Epic PL's and Z is grinding at cap. Then, you want to reset first time bonuses, so when X gets to 20 with the group, you TR character Y and have it do the heroic leveling with the group and X moves into doing some Epic PL's for a while. And so on.

I'd also advise all the friends to hit their silver rolls daily and their gold rolls weekly and store those up. Then, they can use them to bridge some gaps as needed when the time arises. Also, maybe don't run an XP pot (or a super high one) if you are earning XP faster than the friends. If they have a sov pot on, run a 30% or 20%. Save your sov pots for situations where you are speed leveling. (That last comment may or may not be applicable).

I don't see that the game really needs to change the XP mechanics or leveling mechanics to support this situation. I think that causes more problems than it solves at this point.

[Duskofdead]

I have this scenario where I play with real life friends that play less frequently than me. I have an alt that levels with them and only plays with them. The loss of rxp on that character isn't really an issue because it keeps the character on par with everyone else.

Yes playing alts in general will result in less power for your main and that was never really much of an issue until reaper. It is what it is.

It's all relative. Before reaper plenty of people said to me in game something along the lines of "I guess I won't be playing alts anymore/they seem to want to end alting, there's so much power tied up now in your iconic and epic past lives..." and before that, people with a jilliion heroic past lives pushed the pace of play on a basis of assuming every first lifer should be able to make that jump or run through that trap like they just did. Racial reincarnation and reaper made the issue of "pack more power on your main or go home" worse, but it definitely has been in the game for a very long time.

[Ralmeth]

In the group of friends I typically play with, we solve this by everyone having multiple characters / alts. It seems like we're always able find some combination that works.

I do like the OP's idea of being able to bank more than one level, if you wanted to, purely from a point of view of giving more options of how people want to level up. I'm not sure I see a downside to this, though I'm sure someone would figure out how to abuse this. If the concern is running the same quest over and over again (ex. Shadow Crypt), wouldn't quest ransack prevent abuse?

[mikarddo]

2. First Time Bonus if someone in the group is first time to everyone even it is not their first time?
You don't see the potential to abuse this? There are some quests that a person that uses the "boxing" method could potentially run the same quest multiple times and level even faster, again being able to skip a large amount of content in the process.


Indeed, there is a very real risk of abuse here. I definitely do think that some restrictions need to apply to this to make abuse so cumbersome that few will bother without removing the intended use. I didn't post those initially to not bug the OP down in too much detail but I possibly should have.

I am thinking something along these lines:
- Does not apply to first life characters below level 10
- Does not apply to first life iconics
- The character has to actually be in the quest upon completion
- The character has to get at least 5 kills
- The character cannot be more than 3 levels below the highest level in the quest
This does not prevent the intended use to any major degree nor does it fully prevent abuse. But it does make abusing the system rather cumbersome which is good enough for me.

Still, I admit its not exactly elegant so I wish someone would post a better idea. That's is the reason for posting this thread in the first place afterall.

[mikarddo]

In the group of friends I typically play with, we solve this by everyone having multiple characters / alts. It seems like we're always able find some combination that works.

I do like the OP's idea of being able to bank more than one level, if you wanted to, purely from a point of view of giving more options of how people want to level up. I'm not sure I see a downside to this, though I'm sure someone would figure out how to abuse this. If the concern is running the same quest over and over again (ex. Shadow Crypt), wouldn't quest ransack prevent abuse?

I am curious indeed about the abuse aspect of being able to bank more levels. I fail to come up with an example on how to that seems important but maybe someone else can. A generel "will run more quests at the same level" is not really specific enough to show how this would be an actual problem.

[Enoach]

I am curious indeed about the abuse aspect of being able to bank more levels. I fail to come up with an example on how to that seems important but maybe someone else can. A generel "will run more quests at the same level" is not really specific enough to show how this would be an actual problem.

I think it depends on what side you are looking at the situation from...

If you look at it from the side of just being able to level running only the content you want to run then you won't see the issue, however, you may find the "life" of the game lessen because you become bored of running the same content over and over.

If you look at if from the side of having lots of content to run, some you love, some you like, some you are ok with and some you dislike (keeping in mind what you like vs not like is your opinion and the next person can have a different take) then what you will see is that this could lead to an abuse of leveling XP, especially how your character level effects XP earned with the Bravery Bonus or even with the Reaper XP and the penalty associated with being to high a level. I see this as a life issue of the game as well. Even with Quest Ransack which resets to a point after a certain amount of time (reason why people will generally run a "leveling" quest 2x a day and wait 18+ hours before the run it again)

I can't imagine the game developers being onboard with the idea that would make is easier to run only a fraction of the game, leading to the potential of people feeling the game has too little to offer while ignoring a large portion of the game.

[mikarddo]

I think it depends on what side you are looking at the situation from...

If you look at it from the side of just being able to level running only the content you want to run then you won't see the issue, however, you may find the "life" of the game lessen because you become bored of running the same content over and over.

If you look at if from the side of having lots of content to run, some you love, some you like, some you are ok with and some you dislike (keeping in mind what you like vs not like is your opinion and the next person can have a different take) then what you will see is that this could lead to an abuse of leveling XP, especially how your character level effects XP earned with the Bravery Bonus or even with the Reaper XP and the penalty associated with being to high a level. I see this as a life issue of the game as well. Even with Quest Ransack which resets to a point after a certain amount of time (reason why people will generally run a "leveling" quest 2x a day and wait 18+ hours before the run it again)

I can't imagine the game developers being onboard with the idea that would make is easier to run only a fraction of the game, leading to the potential of people feeling the game has too little to offer while ignoring a large portion of the game.

Aye, I definitely understand the generic argument. I am curious if someone could post an actual concrete example to discuss. Whenever I try to I always seem to end of with something that is inferior to just playing different quests for the first time bonusses.

[Fivetigers33]

For you and your friends, you should all just stay in epics. Or just stay at 30 and work on reaper xp. You would still be advancing and RXP is arguably more important than past lives anyway.

From reading all the posts though, it sounds like leveling up your main is far more important to you than playing with your friends. A number of possible solutions have been given in this thread. The only thing stopping you from playing with your friends is you.

[mikarddo]

For you and your friends, you should all just stay in epics. Or just stay at 30 and work on reaper xp. You would still be advancing and RXP is arguably more important than past lives anyway.

From reading all the posts though, it sounds like leveling up your main is far more important to you than playing with your friends. A number of possible solutions have been given in this thread. The only thing stopping you from playing with your friends is you.

You could say that I want to eat my cake and keep it too - and you would be correct. Some may call that unrealistic, I prefer to call it hopeful.
Yes, I want to be able to progress my main AND play with friends while doing so, at least more often than is now the case.

[Enoach]

You could say that I want to eat my cake and keep it too - and you would be correct. Some may call that unrealistic, I prefer to call it hopeful.
Yes, I want to be able to progress my main AND play with friends while doing so, at least more often than is now the case.

Yes it appears you would like to be able to play your main and progress your main with your friends. All of the suggestions given so far show you how you can progress your main and be able to play with your friends - but fall short of progressing your main while you play with your friends.

I'm not exactly sure a system could be created to allow what you are looking for without opening the system for potential abuse that would allow people to circumvent the idea that an MMO is designed to be played to progress.

[Duskofdead]

Altphobia, while really really common (we all know multiples of That Guy who won't get off his max level character even when showing up to play with a friend he just convinced to install who is level one) is something you just need to give up on in any mmo with level based progression where you want to play with regular friends. It's just an incompatible mix of agendas. There are games out there without level progression and, in fairness, DDO is much kinder about it than most mmos. The only solution that is viable is to make another character, play him as your "main" and progress him at any rate you like, and keep the other character parked to only play with your friends. There really isn't another answer.

[Crazywist]

This is the way I have found works best for me.

1. Invite friends over.
2. Chain them to a computer.
3. Starve em until they get the next level

It's summertime here and that is about what it takes to see my buddies.

Have a great day/night wherever you may be :)