Hokanu said:Maybe the character you "lose" when you go for progeny remains as a trainer for you to use as you grow your new char and at a certain level you can bring them back into the game
I do like the idea of the character staying around as some kind of NPC we can interact with, but I think if you retire a character it should be perminant. No coming back from that.
For me the key still is a temporary lockdown (linked to progeny character reaching certain level), not a permanent retirement. Progeny should work as an incentive for veteran players to re-populate the lower levels (thus helping new players to join) but also to reduce pressure on end game content and progression and of course to minimize burnout of hardcore players.
- Elia
You must remember that retiring a character permanently is a big ask, which would need a big reward. For me to want to permanently give up a character to start a new one, any advantages given would need to be large. This could very easily unbalance the game. So I essentially agree with Hoiyay, you must be incredibly careful that the progeny system didn't unbalance the game in any way as it could easily lead to the game content becoming progeny favoured content and disadvantage new players.
Hokanu: ...remains as a trainer for you to use as you grow your new char...
I like this option and it could prove useful, but only if you start a character with the same role or one that has spells/skills that cross over with your retired one, so limited appeal.
Hokanu: ...Maybe that character is unplayable for a month or two, or 6 months...
This feels like a punishment rather that something that a player would want to do.
Eliadann: ...but instead to give a slight edge, perhaps a 0,75% more to score a critical hit...
Would that be enough of an incentive for you to want to give up a character you have spent an entire year making? It would not be for me.
Eliadann: Part of the community will want to roll alts now and then without any reward system in place.
Agreed.
I believe any advantage that a "child" character gets must be substantial in order to make me want to retire my "main". That advantage will unbalance the game or it would not be worth my time. So, what to do?
I suggest that you do not give bonuses at all, but introduce content that is only available to those willing to retire a character.
Hybrids (BeaverBiscuit (and others) mention something similar above), these could be created quite easily given what VR have said about getting new classes into the game. Yes, they would require new models, but they could introduce some interesting cross-over racial traits. Only available to those retiring characters of each race involved (i.e., two characters, elf and dwarf for instance. The progeny would have unique racial traits from each lineage).
You could use skills of the retired character such as trade skills, spell tutorage, etc. (as others suggest).
You could stop the upward push for higher and higher levels and skills with each expansion. What if an expansion produces content for all levels of characters, and does not increase top end levels? New starting zones, mid-range and high content. This could encourage players to start new characters and try out the content. Horizontal expansion instead of vertical. Make the starting zones pregeny only.
Introduce legacy quests; quests that are only available to the progeny. Inheritance based quest lines if you like.
Basically, to stop the potential unbalancing of the game, you have to offer something that is distinctive to the progeny and not a direct advantage. Something that is only available to progeny. If you take this as the base format, then this would certainly interest me. Quest lines, zones, skills, even spells lines could be created that are “family” driven, i.e., only available through the progeny route.
BeaverBiscuit said:*snip*
Hokanu said:Maybe the character you "lose" when you go for progeny remains as a trainer for you to use as you grow your new char and at a certain level you can bring them back into the game
This is an interesting compromise allowing you to still give something away for progeny without losing your character forever. VR seems to be aiming for a mostly hardcore experience that still allows a good deal of QOL and, again, this compromise seems to fit that. Many people who love their first character may be willing to give it up and try something new so long as they know that eventually they get their character back. Well thought sir.
Double quote opportunity that isn't spam.
If player housing was by account and not character (if it is open world housing then it's the only way I can conceive of there being enough space for everyone), then maybe an aged version of your old characters could be NPC trainers around your house.
Each time you Progeny you pick a path Adventuring, Crafting or Keeper that the retired character will be able to offer training and bonuses for.
Not super balanced and goes down the player housing rabbit hole but is still interesting.
. . . why did this forum turn my text black
Trasak said:BeaverBiscuit said:*snip*
Hokanu said:Maybe the character you "lose" when you go for progeny remains as a trainer for you to use as you grow your new char and at a certain level you can bring them back into the game
This is an interesting compromise allowing you to still give something away for progeny without losing your character forever. VR seems to be aiming for a mostly hardcore experience that still allows a good deal of QOL and, again, this compromise seems to fit that. Many people who love their first character may be willing to give it up and try something new so long as they know that eventually they get their character back. Well thought sir.
Double quote opportunity that isn't spam.
If player housing was by account and not character (if it is open world housing then it's the only way I can conceive of there being enough space for everyone), then maybe an aged version of your old characters could be NPC trainers around your house.
Each time you Progeny you pick a path Adventuring, Crafting or Keeper that the retired character will be able to offer training and bonuses for.
Not super balanced and goes down the player housing rabbit hole but is still interesting.
. . . why did this forum turn my text black
This player progeny<->housing connection of having the retired characters available in the your player house is quite intriguing. This could be built on to the extent it's not even undoable (The Devs would need to balance what is reasonable use of there time and what’s not.. there are always Horizontal expansions!!)
So you get to level 50 and now you have this retired Char. "standing" in your player house (I HATE standing characters, let's say he wander's in your player house) What if this retired Char was not only a Ranger, but a Max Level Fletcher, Could this come with a fletching station and an animation for this retired char to sit and use the Fletching station animation (your home now has)
Could he be placed in a Guild Hall or Guild Camp (I think is the route they were going) as well/instead
Could he actually make you arrows?
What is he was also a max level Baker, could he cycle between the Fletching station and an oven?
These ideas/thought could easily be beyond what can be reasonably programmed/animated in a game by a small team shooting for the stars and level 100, but if the concentration again was solely horizontal, who knows what a future expansion could add to the world.
Interesting thoughts
Great job in teeing up this thread Hoiyay. I had previously given progeny a lot of thought, and let to go to the wayside because I too thought that this sounded much better in theory than it would in reality. With that being said, after reading through this thread and giving this some more thought with more knowledge of what some of the game mechanics are going to be, I am actually starting to warm back up to the progeny system and it could actually ask as a release valve to other design pressure points.
BENEFITS TO THE GAME (in addition to those already raised in this thread such as repopulating low level areas so the game isn't top heavy)
Respecing: I'm sure I'm not the only person who put attribute points into my first character that I later regretted. This is easy to do as you don't know exactly how the game is going to play, and what will help you the most. Joppa said that, in Pantheon, decisions will have consequences. You shouldn't be able to respec these mistakes more than once in a character's lifetime. The progeny system could instead give players a way to respec these attributes in addition to the other benefits that VR implements in the system. Also keep in mind that as the game ages, certain mechanics will change, and when one attribute once was king, maybe now not so much. Progeny is a way to lessen the harshness of these mechanic changes.
Mastery Point System Synergy: In previous streams, Joppa has said that he has an idea of how many MP's a player will likely have when they reach level 50. IIRC, it sounds like we get one MP every time we level, passively as we get xp, and when we do unique tasks throughout the world. What we also know is that each spell/skill (with some possible exceptions) has three MP levels, which will get exponentially expensive (the first MP for a spell will likely cost 1 MP, while the third could cost 10 MP). Without progeny, when you hit level 50, the only way to get MP would be from xp grinds, and finding all of the unique world tasks. This could (and possibly should) become tedious. As an alternative, you could progeny, and one of the rewards could be starting with 10 MP (instead of zero). This could ultimately help you max out your MP quicker than just doing a top-level grind.
MY EARLY IMPLEMENTATION WISHLIST FOR PROGENY
While the progeny system can be expanded as Pantheon expands, I would like to see a simple system first put in place where you HAVE TO progeny to the same race/class. There is a lot of talk about half-races, and new classes, which is awesome, but I think this talk is why I had previously concluded that the system would not work: it would get too complex too quickly. I would like to see the progeny system as a way to ultimately make your character more powerful.
Your First character vanishes...eventually: Many find progeny a hard pill to swallow because you poured a TON of time into your character and losing it forever seems like an impossible choice to make. What if you could have a progeny AND your original toon, until the progeny hits level ten. Once you have enough xp to ding to level X (level 10 seems appropriate to me), you get a message window stating that if you choose to level further, your original toon will be gone. If you think you made a mistake and are not liking the new improved lowbie, you can either keep it at level 10, or delete it. One character can only have one progeny at any given time.
Faction Standing: You should keep a high percentage of the positive faction standing your retired character had (80% seems appropriate). From a role playing standpoint, NPC's will remember your parent, and think fondly of them, but will still be somewhat more skeptical of you. You shouldn't keep as much of your negative faction standing with hated factions, as they would hate your parents, but shouldn't hate you nearly as much (40-50% maybe). This should create some net incentive to progeny.
Inheriting all items from original character: You shouldn't lose any items from progeny, and even if an item would not otherwise be equippable by your progeny, it can equip EVERYTHING that was on your previous toon. I love a good twink, and having a level 1 with an epic would be....epic.
Tradeskills: I would like to see a system where you could either keep ALL of previous character's tradeskill levels, or reset to allow you to master in something different this time. What I would REALLY like to see is a master tradeskill item that could be achieved by getting your tradeskill up high enough to create some unique NO TRADE item for that specialization that serves no other purpose other than to pass down to a progeny. Once you have the NO TRADE item for all different specializations, then you get some super rad item that not too many will spend the time to get. It should have great tradeskill buffs, and some decent adventuring buffs. It should look BEAUTIFUL. EQ2 did something like this, and you would get a really cool cape. This could be a cool elite item that would let everyone know that you spent the time to progeny a TON, and also tradeskill a TON. I'm not big on tradeskilling, but if this were implemented, I would seriously consider trying to grind this out.
Experience bonus: I would like to see a progeny have a slight permanent xp bonus (1-2%). This bonus would stack every time you progeny, with a cap at some point. This would be an xp bonus towards both leveling, and gaining MP's. Every time you grind to 50, it should take less time to do so. One of the big drawbacks to progeny is how it could disrupt the raid guild community. While this would still necessarily have to happen, it could be lessened to a certain degree with xp bonuses.
Character Bonus: In addition to the xp bonus, and the ability to respec (and modify your character's looks), you should get to choose from a short list of character enhancements. Maybe you could choose to, instead of respecing attributes, you get 1 or 2 new attributes to add onto your character, or you could choose a slight increase to your max hp/mp pool, slight increase to your hp or mp regen, slight increase to attack rating, haste, crit change, or crit dmg. You could boost just one of these areas each time you progeny, and cap at X increases into a certain category.
ALTERNATE WAY TO IMPLEMENT PROGENY
What if Pantheon implemented the progeny system as an homage to EQ's alternate advancement system. Instead of getting AA's, you would get Progeny Points (PP's). Your PP from creating a progeny would be determined by how much xp and other achievements that you accomplished thus far, perhaps with the xp needed to get from 1-30 being worth X PP (with a bonus for any horizontal progression). A toon that just dinged 50 then could perhaps get X+4 PP(or however many additional point as would be deemed appropriate). A veteran level 50 then would get even more PP for every additional MP they received through xp gains in addition to the PP from their horizontal progression.
Then, with your PP, you could use for character increases much like the EQ AA system. Increases would be incrementally more expensive each bonus into the same category. The categories would be as explained above under "character bonus" but you could add in permanent xp bonus (which would make it easier to get PP's on your next progeny), or MP's that you start out with. You may want to put a PP into an increase in your starting MP as that would help you level quicker, and therefore acquire future PP's quicker, or you may want to enjoy the journey more, and instead increase your permanent stat pool instead.
To put a bow on this long-winded post, progeny could be implemented to make sense, but in doing so it would most definitely become something that elite guilds will want their members to participate in because if you get any increase to your character, you will be expected to do it. Period. That is how MMO's work, and at the end of the day, this is really no different than gearing up your toon (raiding guilds will obviously require you to gear your toon up). If your guild isn't so picky in regards to these upgrades, then I would assume they would be casual enough to where they wouldn't mind you restarting a progeny toon anyways.
If there isn't a benefit to a progeny character, then scrap the entire idea, as there is no reward for the sacrifice. In order for the system to work though, there should absolutely be an xp boost, you should keep all of your gear, and I would like to see your original character still remaining in existence until your progeny hit a certain level, so you can progeny AND keep raiding with the guild for a period of time.
If there isn't a benefit to a progeny character, then scrap the entire idea, as there is no reward for the sacrifice. In order for the system to work though, there should absolutely be an xp boost, you should keep all of your gear, and I would like to see your original character still remaining in existence until your progeny hit a certain level, so you can progeny AND keep raiding with the guild for a period of time.
I do like this idea of your Progeny Points. This could provide some interesting family traits that can be handed down from parent to child. However, I do not believe that advantages given to progeny that enhance heals/damage or xp helps the game, especially when accumulated. Balancing the game for multi-generational characters that increase in these areas would be impossible and inevitably lead to either a generation that could walk all over the game world or be a very very difficult for characters that do not have progeny to get a foot hold in the game. I also don’t like the idea that you are forced into such a drastic action just to be able to raid. Having a specific gear set is one thing, but being forced to retire your favourite character for raiding seems a bit of a heavy hand in my view.
Giving bonuses to XP has always felt a bit clumpy to me. Because the game is centred around a character spending x-game-hours between levels, only then to reduce this by a percentage can, once again lead to an unbalanced play. Characters levelling before having all the equipment needed for the next level of encounter springs to mind. The progression rate is set for a reason, why should we expect to get around that with a bonus?
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of progeny points, but they should “buy” progeny specific spells, skills and abilities, rather than a direct bonus to XP and damage/heal percentages. This PP tree could be influenced by the character (or characters) being retired. So, if you retired a healer and a cc role, for instance, then the PP tree would allow you to spend points in a cc line and/or a heal line. Making the progeny more variable. Yes, of course this affects game play, but given that your cast bar is limited, you will have to make a choice between your characters specific skills and spells and anything the progeny route has to offer. There is no direct bonus given to a characters progression, but they do become more versatile.