I may have missed this question if it's been asked before but what are the plans for replayability? Aside from alts? One of the only MMORPG's I've seen that actually had something cool was Dungeons and Dragons Online's Reincarnate feature. It allows you to start back over at level 1 and you get certain perks for reincarnating and it allows you to choose another class and such.
Yes. Pantheon has the Progeny System
"There will be incentives to create alternate characters through the Progeny System. Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new level one characters. These new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain advantages; abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character -- but not to the point that it unbalances things."
Sounds just like the reincarnate feature you said.
Even without progeny (or reincarnate, or other) don't most RPGs (mmo or otherwise) have massive replayability naturally because of the character you choose to play and how you choose to play it?
Playing the game as a warrior will be a totally different experience than playing it as a wizard. Playing as an ogre will be a different experiance than playing it as a gnome. That's the definition of replayability to me.
With that said, the progeny system does still sound cool, I'm excited to see what they have planned for it and how it actually ends up working.
I think having over arching factions (classic good evil trope) and different starting areas/cities for each race gives huge potential for the whole levelling experience to vary from one character to the next. As long as we dont make levelling too fast and refrain from encouraging a "rush to the top". Any other meta you want to pile on top of that (progeny, exploring, AA, tradeskilling, perception, class mastery, etc).. Well great! Just more ways to provide variance in the game experience.
Doford said:Yes. Pantheon has the Progeny System
"There will be incentives to create alternate characters through the Progeny System. Players will be able to 'retire' high level characters and then create their children as new level one characters. These new characters, the 'progeny', will have certain advantages; abilities, stats, etc. that make them slightly yet noticeably better than a completely brand new character -- but not to the point that it unbalances things."
Sounds just like the reincarnate feature you said.
Sounds pretty sweet. thanks for explaining.
They've also talked about a Mentoring system in the past where you can (temporarily and scalably) level down and help folks. There may even be 'incentives' to do so.
disposalist said:They've also talked about a Mentoring system in the past where you can (temporarily and scalably) level down and help folks. There may even be 'incentives' to do so.
I'm just bolding that bit Dispo for those that are concerned about mentoring trivialising content, not set to be your run of the mill your over powered mentoring. Maintaining a challenge for the mentor and a challenge for the normals in the group by scaling everything down, how exactly we dont know, but surely there is no way VR are going to destroy the challenge of a game with this feature, it would go against everything.
Hokanu said:disposalist said:They've also talked about a Mentoring system in the past where you can (temporarily and scalably) level down and help folks. There may even be 'incentives' to do so.
I'm just bolding that bit Dispo for those that are concerned about mentoring trivialising content, not set to be your run of the mill your over powered mentoring. Maintaining a challenge for the mentor and a challenge for the normals in the group by scaling everything down, how exactly we dont know, but surely there is no way VR are going to destroy the challenge of a game with this feature, it would go against everything.
Agreed, though whatever scaling they put in place would be less trivialising than the alternative powerleveling and twinking, but sure, it would be good if they err on the side of scaling being underpowered. People have seen it done badly before, so they worry *shrug* doesn't mean it will be.
DDO definitely has one saving grace like you said, it has unbelieveable replayability because of reincarnation. Progeny in Pantheon seems to be similar as was mentioned and that is one way -- aside for keeping zones properly populated -- to allow for one of many forms of replayability. What they need to also do is having playability meaning that length of play for their core character.
It will be difficult to keep zones properly populated without a gimmick of some kind. (Gimmicks like EQ's Hot Zones where certain zones get bonus xp, or EQ2's level reduction ability (which I absolutely loved)). If the game is a large as we are thinking it will be, it will be likely that players will outlevel areas before getting to see it in its entirety. This was why I loved EQ2's level reduction system SO much... If you leveled in say 3 or 4 of 10 areas designed for level 20-30 but really wanted to experience gameplay in the other areas, you could level yourself down from say 50, back to 25 and go exp in those other areas while still gainging some experience toward your level 50 character at a much reduced rate, but still able to enjoy that area and get some benefit from it other than just one-shotting everything and kill-stealing others in the area because you happen to be bored. All of your stats were reduced to the max expected for the level (assuming they were higher than max), so you were strong, but not OP (you were basically a twink in that area) still very susceptible to death and agro as if you were of the appropriate level.
Without some kind of gimmick like this, areas of the game will absolutely be desolate, especially as expansions come out. Some games (EQ included) have done things with revamping entire zones to be much higher level (which is pretty cool), but again - a gimmick instead of allowing the original area to be appreciated/enjoyed as originally intended. This is why vanilla versions of games are so popular... people want to re-experience something through fresh eyes having the wisdom that they didn't have when they first went through. Replayability is important.
One of the areas they are looking at to add replayability is in the perception system and how tags will affect the storylines and outcomes.
You should check out their latest video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCKDgQ7KS1Q. Originally this was meant to be shown as part the most recent dev stream but due to technical issues, they had to upload this as a separate video. In the video, they briefly discuss the replayability factor of this system and demonstrate how one player could have a completely different outcome from another player based on their choices during a questing arch.
There is also talk about a progeny system although not much has been discussed about its conceptual design and implementation.