Would this make any sense? The thought is triggered by LOTRO introducing a new set of progression servers as it prepares for a hoped for (not necessarily likely but definitely hoped for) flood of new players when the Lord of the Rings TV show hits. The two new servers, of course, are well before the show but they aren't intended at all for the new players thay are essentially testing grounds for the game to try out different approaches - with more "legendary" but not "classic" servers promised for later.
One appeal of these servers will be nostalgia - they do not have the original game rulesets and mechanics but they do let players go back to a simpler time before legendary items, warsteeds, big battles and the like. At least until the progression reaches these points. This is totally irrelevant for Pantheon purposes since we have nothing yet to be nostalgic for.
One appeal of these servers will be everyone starting fresh at level one with a "virgin" economy unwrecked by inflation and hyperinflation. With no established guilds that may dominate certain content. This too is totally irrelevant for Pantheon purposes since all servers at release will have this.
One appeal of a progression server is to slow things down. The LOTRO versions make leveling slower than normal (giving only 60% of normal xp) and delay getting to higher level content. For purposes of this discussion let us ignore the new Shadowfax server which may not work this way.
So let us say a progression server at release of Pantheon will have two distinctions in ruleset if done this way, as I posit. One - in a game dedicated to slow progress it will have even *slower* progress. Something that some forum members have suggested already as an optional ruleset, though perhaps with more difficult content being the mechanism rather than a xp haircut. I note that for a programmer having an xp haircut is probably far easier than having to balance content with multiple difficulty levels. Obviously it doesn't give more of a challenge to the content so this option does not obviate the suggestion for a harder content server.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly - the promise that future expansions or other new content will come to this server later will tend to disincentivize any rush to maximum level and encourage players to do things even more thoroughly and to play more different classes and races than normally. An altoholics paradise, perhaps. Obvious negative - to the extent that future content is *sold* rather than given for free to subscribers the revenue stream from this server will necessarily be reduced.
I neither support nor oppose the idea at this point but I don't recall this ruleset having been brought up in the threads on possible rulesets and the forum has been slow lately.
Still playing devil's advocate - though looking around the world I think Satan is doing quite well and doesn't need any help.
The theory would be that starting from release players on the server would know they would have all the time in the world to get to maximum level - if they even wanted to - and would be able to focus more on alts and crafting without worry that they wouldn't have high level characters ready in time for the next content to be released.
A progression server in a few years may or may not be a good idea but I am positing that having one at release is one of several ways to accomodate any players that want an even slower than Pantheon-normal experience.
I don't know about at launch o.o maybe they could be delayed for a few months? At launch it just feels like different ruleset server to me which could be fun! :D, or could be like "the gauntlet" that's happening in path of exile right now, it's a 10 days league with lots of mods/rewards o.o
dorotea said:The theory would be that starting from release players on the server would know they would have all the time in the world to get to maximum level - if they even wanted to - and would be able to focus more on alts and crafting without worry that they wouldn't have high level characters ready in time for the next content to be released.
But that doesn't sound like the case here. When leveling and everything else takes notably more time than a normal server this would only mean those people who might already be time limited/slow to level would fall even further behind less time limited players or at the very least still find themselves lagging far behind before an expansion. Let alone having enough time for alts.