There would have to be major restrictions on being able to use your high lvl character again after playing your lower lvl if they decided to separate them. Otherwise as soon as new content comes out...or even if a raid mob spawns or a good camp opens, people will just hop on their high lvl.
That doesn't solve the high lvl bottleneck at all. Your progeny character has to be more than just something you play during down time or when you feel like it...that's an alt.
It seems like many people here aren't taking into account the reason for this type of system. Many of the alternatives being presented negate the reason for the system in the first place.
philo said:There would have to be major restrictions on being able to use your high lvl character again after playing your lower lvl if they decided to separate them. Otherwise as soon as new content comes out...or even if a raid mob spawns or a good camp opens, people will just hop on their high lvl.
That doesn't solve the high lvl bottleneck at all. Your progeny character has to be more than just something you play during down time or when you feel like it...that's an alt.
It seems like many people here aren't taking into account the reason for this type of system. Many of the alternatives being presented negate the reason for the system in the first place.
You're not wrong, but I think it's important that we keep in mind why the game wants a system to encourage people to play through older content. It's not only about thinning out the high level population to reduce contention.
It's also about insuring that there are people at lower levels for new players to group with, especially as the game ages and the influx of new players inevitably slows.
If the community debates about progeny are any indication, it's going to take more than a single system to solve this problem. Maybe we should be thinking of progeny as one possible piece of a more comprehensive package of solutions, rather than the whole solution in and of itself.
If we frame it that way, should the goal not to be to find a way to make progeny appealing without being overpowering, so that people are encouraged to jump back down to lower levels even if they're not the sort of person that would normally be interested in playing an alt? It's not a replacement for making additional characters if someone wants to do that. But just because people can make additional characters doesn't mean that they will. For every person who likes to try out different races and classes on alts, there's another person that just likes to play what they already do. Progeny is for those people - it's a way to get them to do something they normally wouldn't do on their own, because they're just attached to their main.
Does progeny alone do enough? Of course not. There's going to need to be more. But if we believe that progeny could help, even a little, isn't that a reason to find a way to make it more palatable to people?
If not, and we truly believe that the retirement requirement must be present in order to balance the benefits of the system, then my recommandation to VR would be just to not do progeny at all - because there will never be enough people willing to use it to make it worth the effort to implement. It will become a forgotten, abandoned feature, something that a few weird people try because they got bored, but that everyone else ignores because no one wants to give up their main. And eventually it won't be worth the effort to maintain, and will be patched out of the game entirely.
So, I submit that if we want to really solve the larger problems of level distribution as the game ages, than we should be talking about what else can be done in addition to progeny to achieve that goal, rather than trying to force progeny to do it all on its own.
I know this doesn't fit under the definition of Progeny.
What if there was a Phoenix system?
Where one was required to be born again to eventually acquire an epic ability and/or some sort of upgraded physical appearance. You wouldn't lose your gear in this scenario, your abilities/spells throughout the second leveling process would be slightly increased making the leveling process not as harsh.
The end result could also unlock a new title, new zones (planes), extra spells/abilities or something new.
Given that we don't know much about progeny. The reasons for it make sense. However, I am not a fan of losing my main character to play a different class if this were to be the way it works.
"In Greek mythology, a phoenix (/ˈfiːnɪks/; Ancient Greek: φοῖνιξ, phoînix) is a long-lived bird that cyclically regenerates or is otherwise born again. Associated with the Sun, a phoenix obtains new life by arising from the ashes of its predecessor."
philo said:There would have to be major restrictions on being able to use your high lvl character again after playing your lower lvl if they decided to separate them. Otherwise as soon as new content comes out...or even if a raid mob spawns or a good camp opens, people will just hop on their high lvl.
That doesn't solve the high lvl bottleneck at all. Your progeny character has to be more than just something you play during down time or when you feel like it...that's an alt.
It seems like many people here aren't taking into account the reason for this type of system. Many of the alternatives being presented negate the reason for the system in the first place.
"Retiring" your high level seems like a pretty major restriction. Doesn't it?
Jabir said:I have never understood the appeal of any progeny system.
For me, it's all about the journey. That is, beginning with nothing, in a place I know little or nothing about and gradually becoming stronger, richer and more knowledgable. So, if my first character hits level 50 and I cannot find much of interest to do, I'll gladly roll an alt. But I would want that alt to be of another race and class, starting in a different place. Otherwise, it wouldn't feel like a second journey. Why ask for "replayablity" when you can have an altogether different experience?
As a bonus, I'd get to keep my slumbering level 50 character with all his gear and wealth, whom I could wake up whenever friends needed help with something.
This couldn’t state my sentiments any better. The thought of wiping a fully leveled character, regardless of some power boost seems counterintuitive to me. As for the need for replayability, with leveling speed being very slow, the ability to roll any number of alts, the opportunity to take up a profession on each of those alts, and all the other time-sinks the game is sure to have, I just don’t know why we need a system like Progeny. Just my two coppers...
One reason for differing opinions about Progeny - one of many reasons - is whether we think of it as a system that can be used or totally ignored or whether we think of it as semi-mandatory.
Some of us are focused on having one or more characters that are as strong as they possibly can be. Where that is the mindset, if sacrificing the first character and then running a new character (perhaps even the same class and race) through the same content produces a character 5% more powerful than the original the player feels that he or she *must* do it.
Some of us are focused on high-end raiding or other similar content and even if our own biases don't force us to spend months turning a perfectly good maximum level paladin into a maximum level paladin that is 5% better we fear that the most successful raiding guilds may force that by eventually only wanting characters on their A-list raid teams that have done it.
It is entirely reasonable that anyone in these camps may look at Progeny as a negative - probably a *strong* negative - whether it requires the sacrifice of the Progenized character or not. Because the system would "force" them to use it.
The only way I can think of that people who think that way will not feel threatened by Progeny is to have it give only benefits that do not help in combat. Few people or guilds will feel it is mandatory to use the system if it gives more flexibility in crafting and harvesting. Few of them will feel it is mandatory if it gives a wider choice of races for a particular class where the race that only a Progenized character can be is not clearly superior for the class. Few people or guilds will feel it is mandatory to use the system if it gives some cosmetic benefit (only Progenized characters can have a glowing left ((cough)) ((blush)) well let us skip the details.)
Where am I going with this? Well, nowhere in terms of any suggestion about how I think the system should work just trying to analyze some of the considerations.
@Nephele you are right, its just a part of the puzzle and there are other benefits to progeny type of systems as well but, relieving the high end bottleneck is one of the major benefits. We do have the mentor system that also populates lower lvl areas but doesn't relieve high lvl bottleneck because people still have full access to their main character.
When new content comes out...or a raid mob spawns, or even a good camp opens up people will hop on their main character.
@feyshtey yes indeed. Retiring your high lvl character is a large restriction. That comment about requiring major restrictions was if VR decided to allow players to not retire the high lvl character. There would have to be some other major restrictions instated instead.
@philo -- Why?
Think about expansion releases. Do you think whatever benefit might have existed from Progeny will never see iterative change through what I hope will be a decade or more of life for this game? Lets say at release you have to use Progeny once to get max benefit. One of two things must be true for the expansions:
1) Progeny is never altered past release guidelines, and is therefor meaningless once a person has maxed the original Progeny benefits and all the same issues of top-end congestion will exist from that point forward.
2) Progeny iterates with some or all expansions. And if the game is truly successful and has many expansions, you might be in a situation eventually where you feel that in order to completely max your characters' potentials you have to retire several characters.
in scenario one, you havent really solved anything. You've just kicked the can down the road (for an "issue" that I don't really see as an issue anyway, and most players probably wont either.)
In scenario two, you've created a host of new issues. Not the least of which being players who decide to join the game at some point in the timeline after release. Imagine telling someone 5 years in that, yeah, the game is freakin' awesome. You're gonna love it! Oh, but by the way if you want to be a top-end badass in a top-end badass guild, you're going to need to level and retire 5 characters. Oh, and the leveling curve for every one of them is longer than you're probably used to from other MMO's. Oh, and yeah, you're going to probably end up doing a lot of content you've already done at least once again because there isnt enough content to allow 5 characters to advance in 5 completely new and unexplored ways. At some point your system meant to provide replayability or relieve top-end congestion actually becomes a major barrier to entry for new players, and the life-blood of an aging game (new players) is strangled out.
The only way these issues arent real is if the benefits from Progeny are mundane enough that it really doesn't impact max potential power. Like allowing your progeny to start with a major bonus to whatever tradeskill their parent had and passed on. At which point, as I think you pointed out, not all that many people are going to do it and will instead just start alts. And if VR starts inventing major restrictions to make that choice undesirable it will almost assuredly lose a significant portion of its potential player base.
Was discussing this with my brother, to your point, Feyshtey, regarding a pontential tradeskill bonus. Some other posts and threads over the past few years have mentioned a possibility that, for example, your Progeny character could master another tradeskill, each time through.
If you look at that objectively, though, it's a bit of a conundrum. VR has public design goals, and one of them, currently, is that no character shall master more than one trade skill profession, ever.
So, why would they take a flagship/unique/distinctive feature, that is supposed to be something that makes their game stand out as remarkable, attract their target demographic, and implement a mechanic in direct opposition to one of their fundamental or core design goals? It makes no sense.
" We are enforcing, with explicity hardcoded mechanics, that each character may only have one trade skill profession "
" We are explicitly permitting you to bypass our current limitation and each character may have more than one trade skill profession. "
Hmmmmmm. Yeah, with or without beer, we couldn't see how that one passed the logic test. I don't personally agree with the one trade skill profession per player limitation, as it did nothing positive in EQ2, and I see no reason to think otherwise for Pantheon, but it would be constant illogical thorn if this was a benefit from/for Progeny. It would also call into question many of their "set in concrete" core public design decisions.
@fey
One of the few official bits of info we have received about progeny is that there will be a limit to the number of times a player can earn perks by using the progeny system.
All these systems have to do is extend content long enough to keep people paying/playing until the next expansion or large update. There are other benefits as well but, in relation to this discussion, that is the focus. So "kicking the can down the road" is what they are designed to do.
Like other systems: leveling, AAs, progeny, gear/loot etc. Eventually, if given a long enough time, players will 100% earn all the rewards if it doesn't get updated. Whether VR decides to leave it at a base level or update it years down the line is up to them but that seems like we are getting ahead of ourselves a bit. There are a lot of variables there that could influence how it is handled down the line.
The "gate" for new players is basically a moot point imo. There are always large gates for new players to over come before they are able to join top end guilds...whether that's months or years worth of stepping stone raids to acquire gear, thousands of AAs etc. In other games that utilize similar systems to progeny, it is part of the fun...building your character long term. (DDO being the most well known of the games I have played that uses this type of system).
It's not a stand alone solution. It's something that works best in conjunction with other systems imo. While I can think of one game that specifically uses this type of system as the sole way to provide long term incentive between updates, I tend to think it is better as an option. Progeny might be one option, AAs another, achievements that provide perks another etc. There are plenty of systems that can be instated to help keep people around long term.
I would prefer if VR offered a variety of ways players could earn small perks for accomplishing goals that give them incentive to continue playing even after they have played through all of the content.