Innovation

Palamedes · Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 336 Location: Austin, Tx

Well right, and I agree with you.. Take Counterstrike for example, if Joe power gamer that has played every day of his life is tossed onto a map with Bob the newbie.. Chances are that joe will "pwn" Bob.

But, unlike most RPGs, that's not due to the character but rather to Joe himself. Bob does have every possibility of getting lucky and killing Joe.

Roll that over to the RPG side.. Joe the level 65 uber warrior will completely annihilate Bob the level 1 newbie and in most cases can’t even play together if they were friends..

This sucks and needs to be addressed. This is what I’m suggesting.. ways around the whole gap issue.
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The Bit Twiddler

cliff · Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 527 Location: Anchorage, AK

While it was aimed at PvE, I thought the Sidekick/Exemplar solution from City of Heroes was quite nice... but unfortunately it doesn't make as much sense in most other genres.

Prometheus · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 4:01 pm Post subject:

I'm going to see about making a variant of it work in the Fantasy genre.

We'll see. People may hate it, ya never can tell. Wink

LynxJSA · Joined: 12 Dec 2005 Posts: 64

Prometheus · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 6:06 pm Post subject:

Yeah, but the thing that worries me is Ubers may not like a system in which they are not rewarded for all their "work", but instead can sometimes be on equal footing with "newbs". Even if they don't really mind it, it takes something exceptional to get them to do it on a semi-regular basis... at least so far.

LynxJSA · Joined: 12 Dec 2005 Posts: 64

WyldKarde · Joined: 16 Dec 2005 Posts: 11

We're trying to keep the players playing together by removing the "ladder" effect. Without levels, a powerful player is one who effects the gameworld by the greatest degree. Players can become kings, guildmasters, etc. holding some in-game power over other players and NPC's.

The trade-off is that they lose the incentive to play in the traditional way. With great power comes great responsibility and players who want to be kings have to delegate. They need to surround themselves with trustworthy people (or at least trustworthy NPC's) to keep their power.

Wanna have a "clan", then build one. Just know that there are those who want to see your clan fail. There are those in the clan who want to see themselves in your seat. No banishing or "booting" with an admin button. Just genuine power and control over your subjects.

Or a knife in your back...all up to you.

So you acquire power by killing, grabbing better weapons, killing more, all good. But then you can use that power by starting a guild, opening a shop (for those guys who just craft nonstop), or usurping the power of a king and making yourself a monarch.

Or, you can just keep on killing and adventuring. You don't have to be a king. You can ignore the reputation you accumulate and the favor you've won and keep on killing dragons for the fun of it. We just wanted to create a system where you can be badass and reap the rewards in-game.
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