AA's are nice for post max level advancement. I think Pantheon, a game of challenge and rewarding content can benefit from it immensely. Ive played games where PVP and PVE are on the same server and it creates problems with balancing and player gaps, but that shouldn't be an issue with PRoT since Brad claimed the servers would be seperated.
Just dont get too crazy with it and put bonuses that trivialize the content or expect it to take players a long time to max trees. Be prepared for players who may max it out quickly. Never underestimate what players can do in a short amount of time.
AA are very nice for different aspects of the game :
- they create an intensive for people to still log in and exp/socialize with other player in order to
- improve their character once max level is achieved
The Alternate Advancements can be broken down in many different group and may not trivialize content if its done right.
AA can be Quality of life (such as leadership AA to enable some group or raid features)
Class defining (ie : rogue can frontal backstab for minimum damage, cleric can rez once an hour for full mana/hp etc...)
Circonstantial (as the EQ1 finishing blow, could be something new such as specialization in damage against some monster type etc...)
or just general type (ie an AA that give +1 resist to a certain type of magic school)
My feeling is that each class should have a Core number of AA that make them more powerful, this number of AA should be attainable by a good amount of the player base, then you throw in the flavor or general AA that doesnt boost much but keep the more hardcore players entertained.
Also i am totally against an EQ2 type of AA, those were just a specilization tree, no different than a WoW spec tree...
What i really liked about EQ1 AA was that you could max all your AA if you put in the time and effort, you had a freedom of choice. Some AA were follow-up of other AAs, but there was no wrong choice because you could get them all.
I honestly dont know why EQ1 is the only game with that system, i've never played another game so much because once you have your gear and level, you have nothing to do.
in EQ you always have something to do, there is always an AA to grind out with friends while making money or helping with a quest !
Everyone is in agreeance so far, interesting!
It can be a great way to continue progression on a maxed level character and also help to set your class apart from other similar classes but if done wrong, they can not only divide the community but also set the skill ceiling too high for casual/new players, turning many off the game, so I think it is important that they are balanced, difficult to get and not so many of them that you can have hundreds going into a new expansion but just enough ti feel like you have unique choices to make without overpowering any classes.
I rember in the Dev . podcast that there was talk of color mana and that u needed gear and to find a trainer or spell/skill drop to be able to change the mana color to use that spell or skill. This gave me the idea that the AA was going to be set up in a way that the player would spend time and resorces to ubtain them ... Not like a tree on a page u can open .. But being Able to find all said parts to make your toon stand out from the rest but will not make other class useless.. So yes i like the AAs but I like that rare spell/skill + gear drop then wellah.. or even make them drop in a way that players dont get a list on a page ... more like a payer finds a small town being attacked he or she joins the fight saveing the town drunk who happends to be an old washed up wizzard and offers to train you ... there can be meny ways to get AAs out to playes ...The page filled with greyed out boxes takes the immer. right out.. Make the playes find them, steal them or heck go to school and train in a nice little story line ...
SO yes to AAs But no to a preloaded greyed out page i can look at and go o i like this spell/skill and grind the exp into this page till they can fill said boxes..THx
Longshanks The King of England!!!
What I don't like about AAs is how it makes a new max level character useless compared to one who is also max level but maxed out in AAs. Makes it kind of hopeless for anyone not riding the initial wave of characters.
Why create a seperate system for gaining character power? It still equates to: you play, you gain xp, you get more powerful. Why not just add a few more levels to the cap and tie those powers to those levels?
I've never experienced the system myself but I love the sound of it. I would love for there to be a vast number of area's we could put points into to be able to customize our characters in a large number of ways (hopefully with more than 1 or 2 viable options). Maybe they could even tie into the progeny system in some way aswel.
I think AA's can be used in a good way to further define your character, and provide something to do after reaching max level, but you are right Kilsin, they can be a turn off for newer players. Getting to max level can be difficult enough, but then with AA's thrown in you can feel that the end game is almost unachievable, especially if some of the best abilities on a character are tied to certain AA trees. You also get into the problem of the "one" AA tree being the best etc. Again, it's one of those things that, if done right, will make the game more interesting, but if done wrong will hurt it. I guess overall I am for them when it comes to being able to specialize my character a bit more, but it needs to be done carefully.
I do have experience with a similar system (Merit Points). I am a fan of this type of progression, though one aspect of it from XI I wouldnt want to see is new abilities from AAs. Small changes to how existing abilties work or anything that would fall more into small passive increases could be good. And keeping in the theme of horizontal progression would have my support as well. But no new abillities. Keep that in the realm of questing/finding them.
As for being able to see upcoming abilities, I dont have a problem with seeing them. I would have never even thought of that being an issue though. Besides to me it kind of defeats the purpose. Its an alternate way to progress that even casuals can do. Its a way to "level" after you have leveled so I think we should be able to see it and track progress in which direction you want to take those AAs. And you should be limited and should have to choose because you should not be able to max out every AA. (example: if there are a total of 30 AAs you can only invest in 10)
Kilsin said:What are your thoughts on Alternate Advancement (AA's) and do you have experience with that system?
I would like to have AA’s that are available at different levels as I level-up, this will enable me to turn off straight EXP and funnel that to those AA’s that are available to me at the current level I’m playing at. Also, it will allow me to stay in zones that are appropriate for my level longer thus giving me more playability in various zones that I wouldn’t have experienced due to out leveling them too quickly. I’m not a big fan of having lots of alts, so having the ability to stop leveling at 30 so I can explore every zone that is geared towards players that are between 28 – 35 would really ramp up the playability for me.
In terms of AA’s value to the game and players I feel it gives us additional goals to tackle and help boosts our characters performance. The nice thing about AA’s is that its available to everyone who puts in the work so there would be no need for some classes to feel cheated or worse complain that a higher level player has an unfair advantage. All they have to do is level up their own AA’s to have the same advantage.
I’m a big fan of how EQ did AA’s, as it offered a variety of options depending on your class. I also enjoyed other games that had versions of AA’s to them such as Diablo 3’s Paragon Points, Path of Exile’s Passive Skill Tree, Age of Conan-Rise of the Godslayer’s AA system…etc… I always enjoyed having AA’s in any game I play, it just gives me something else to do when I’m bored, can’t find a group, or I don’t want to out level a zone too quickly.
Rint
I love AA's and the whole design - up to a certain extent. The problem is that eventually it becomes a cookie cutter test in developing your skills. Everyone uses the exact same path etc. Then we come to what has become very popular in that games allow players to keep templates for certain uses. A template for crafting a lot of items, a template for crafting extremely powerful items but only 1 at a time etc. Or a template to promotes grinding vs. a template that propmotes questing.
I would like to see AA's that let you truly develope a unique combination that fits the players play-style. I also have to suggest that these become permanent. No hot-swapping. Or if there IS swapping - make it costly by requiring the player to quest and spend a required amount of time swapping his template.
I love the idea behind AAs, a means to obtain intraclass variability, but I think the implementation was a bit lazy in EQ. I didn't like how there was some extra dedicated point system used in an isolated window. The whole system felt orthogonal to the rest of the character and the world. I hope thay Pantheon better weaves a similar system in the game more naturally and allows alternate advancement earlier on. If a player wants to differentiate his character horizontally at the cost of vertical growth early on, I say go for it.
Kilsin said:What are your thoughts on Alternate Advancement (AA's) and do you have experience with that system?
I find them nice in certain settings.
1: Dont make 100000 AA at launch. It should be something to add slowly between level cap increases.
2: Allow players to have 2 or 3 (No more then 3) Different AA profiles. in EQ2 We could have 3 and to switch back and forth was 20 plat I think. But it helped because I had a raid tank, Offtank/DPS and a PVP spec and the PVP spec was wildly different.
3: I feel AA should be something started at End Game.
Retsof said:I love EQ1 AA's. I really hope they will be in Pantheon. I hope you save it for the 1st or 2nd expansion, or keep them basic and tree them out with more in expansions (like EQ1 and 2). EQ1 AA's are better than EQ2 though.
Just to keep the response short, this is close enough to where I'm at as to just quote it.
I felt like AAs were a way to tack on additional levelling in a game where they'd made levelling too easy. To me if the level progression is properly tuned (stat increases vs xp required), there's no need for AAs for combat stats.
On the other hand, I feel like AAs are a wonderful thing for non-combat things (crafting) and convenience (run speed, replacing spells, water breathing etc).
I guess I don't understand why in 2016 there is discussion about "alternative advancedment". Why would it not just be normal advancement?
Alternative advancement was implimented to add character development that was not available at launch. If a new game is coming out it's completely irrelevant to call it that becuase the normal advancement systems would include all the things you could do in EQ AAs.
The one thing I can say is that I really don't care for "point buy" systems. I don't like just clicking a button and automatically getting better in a skill. I'd rather the system raise caps then allow the player to gain more skill ups than you normally would without the cap increase. That would require the player to still use the skill in order to increase it, not just click a mouse button and poof be there.
Aena said:What I don't like about AAs is how it makes a new max level character useless compared to one who is also max level but maxed out in AAs. Makes it kind of hopeless for anyone not riding the initial wave of characters.
Why create a seperate system for gaining character power? It still equates to: you play, you gain xp, you get more powerful. Why not just add a few more levels to the cap and tie those powers to those levels?
This is my biggest concern. People that are behind at all will continue to be behind and RIP if you want to ever play an alt character.
card said:Aena said:What I don't like about AAs is how it makes a new max level character useless compared to one who is also max level but maxed out in AAs. Makes it kind of hopeless for anyone not riding the initial wave of characters.
Why create a seperate system for gaining character power? It still equates to: you play, you gain xp, you get more powerful. Why not just add a few more levels to the cap and tie those powers to those levels?
This is my biggest concern. People that are behind at all will continue to be behind and RIP if you want to ever play an alt character.
A player that's hit the cap months before you should have better gear anyway, making him/her the better pick for raids or grouping regardless. IMO, AA won't really change that.
I do agree that AA, at least in EQ1, became a template for elite guilds. I remember reading guild applications where Clerics had to have so many AA points in certain key raiding allocations, and they went on to list out every class with stringent requirements for each. I shook my head thinking "It'll be another three months before I even meet their AA requirement!" The worse part was that the bar kept getting raised each month that went by, making it virtually impossible to join their ranks.
Other than that, I loved the titles you got when you unlocked so many AA's. Pretty cool for the 1-2% of players who chose to max out AA early on rather than level traditionally - "Whoa! A Venerable lvl 51 cleric!"
Talv
I feel AAs can be fine but i would prefer to see noncomabt AAs so max aa'ers dont blow through content or no AA max lvl players have no chance at content which i see this always happens when you have combat AAs. But i would be a fan of noncombat AAs something to grind after i lvl to maybe help me craft better or something like that.
Vertical Progression
AA’s that provide new skills/abilities or raw increases in power.
-- These AA’s can become problematic over time as content gets balanced around players that have them. They are somewhat akin to level cap increases. While some of these are nice to have, I think it’s important that they remain in check. If the slope to end-game gets too steep and the game population becomes top-heavy, then over time we inevitably see mechanics like AA auto-grants or level/AA-based experience curves get implemented so that newer players don’t face an insurmountable obstacle to join the masses at end-game. This cheapens the experience for new players, and leaves veteran players feeling like they payed dearly for something that’s now just being handed out to everyone.
Horizontal Progression
AA’s that provide convenience or unlock alternate growth potential (like maxing out a 2nd tradeskill).
-- These AA’s can reduce interdependence, but don’t really affect the level of difficulty of content. A player who has purchased some run-speed increases is less reliant on another player who can cast run-speed buffs. And a player who was maxed out in blacksmithing and unlocks the ability to max out fletching as well will no longer require the services of a separate player/character to provide some of their tradeskill combines.
I like both forms of progression, but I think the horizontal increases are much better for the long-term health of the game. In general, the convenience that these abilities unlock are something that many players would achieve through alternate characters anyways. My thoughts on AA’s in Pantheon are going to be highly dependent on how the Progeny System is implemented. If we’re forced to sacrifice our mains to create progeny, and if there is significant benefit to having progeny toons, then I don’t see a lot of use for complex AA systems as devoting a lot of time to them would act as a counter-incentive to sacrificing that character. If the progeny system allows us to retain our original characters then I could see more potential for AA’s.
I think a contested game world combined with AA's create's an environment where players, who don't keep pace with hardcore players, don't have access to max level content because it's on lockdown status. Some would say, "well then join their guild". And then I would say, "but I dont want to join their guild". And then they would say, "well then join another guild". And then I would say, "I'm already in a guild". And then they would say, "well, leave your guild". And then I would say, "I cant leave my guild, I've been with them for over a year". And then they would say "well then it's your problem!". And then I would say, "you're a horrible person!". And then they would say "I'm not a horrible person, how does that make me a horrible person?" And then I would say,...ugh, nevermind...