Make past lives account(server)-wide

[Ooblagato]

The amount of time needed to invest in past-lives and the difference it makes in gameplay to have a lot of them is very significant. While there may be a few outliers, this usually means alternative characters on someone's account rarely get played aside from the occasional special case use such as filling a tank role in a raid party or such.

I for one would love to be able to swap between characters without penalty. So I suggest, any past lives gained on a particular server should be applied account-wide and all characters on that server should be able to make full use of them.

Some benefits this would bring to the game are:
- Players would not need to feel like they are wasting experience points/progression when they play on an alternative character
- Players would be able to swap classes and playstyles more easily
- Players could more easily play with their friends who are at a different level and would no longer feel forced to not play when their regular group is not playing
- The ease of swapping classes would make balance decisions less controversial


Some complications that may need to be addressed are:
- Veteran status characters may be an unfair way to skip early levels for farming past-lives
- It may be difficult to bring past-lives across server transfers for a character
- Reduced experience requirements for the first few lives could cause existing characters to have a mismatch in experience and level upon implementation and upon achieving the first few past-lives

Please help by considering the practicality and finer points of implementing this and giving your feedback.

 

[Hobgoblin]

o god no

 

[Ooblagato]

o god no

Hi, do you mind being a bit more constructive, perhaps voicing why this makes you feel that way?

 

[Zavina]

The amount of time needed to invest in past-lives and the difference it makes in gameplay to have a lot of them is very significant. While there may be a few outliers, this usually means alternative characters on someone's account rarely get played aside from the occasional special case use such as filling a tank role in a raid party or such.

I for one would love to be able to swap between characters without penalty. So I suggest, any past lives gained on a particular server should be applied account-wide and all characters on that server should be able to make full use of them.

*laughs maniacally*

And just like that, all of my characters inc my mules are uber-completionists..

 

[Phoenicis]

This topic is back? Again?

Hasn't the resounding silence from the devs along with the obvious monetizing of speed-up to leveling individual characters made it clear they will NEVER even remotely consider this?

You wasted your time typing this out, as I did responding.

 

[Anurakh]

Perhaps not all PLs, but some should be made account-wide. Currently there are 207 PLs, too many for people to be motivated to create alts, and this number grows every year without any catch-up mechanism.

Making about 1/3 of the PLs shared across the account would greatly benefit the health of the alts.

And this would help SSG too. More people playing alts means more space bought, more cosmetics, more potions invested in alts... nowadays so many PLs make many people give up on investing in alts, and that also hurts SSG.

 

[Lotoc]

with the devs extending the lowered exp requirements of lives 1 and 2 to lives 1-4 and lives 5-8 respectively this would cause a messy situation where the best way to get your completionists is make a new character and TR 4 times.
If anything this ask isn't so much "Make the game more accessible" as it is "I don't want to reincarnate my main 3 more times when a new race gets added."

 

[Dude]

And cut into Otto's Box and Wish for Memories sales? Good luck!

 

[Hobgoblin]

Hi, do you mind being a bit more constructive, perhaps voicing why this makes you feel that way?

i thought the idea was so bad i didnt need to elaborate?


you would lose most of your player base doing this - and people like me would go from having 1 char with all pl to 63 chars with all pl and then all i do is gear and i get bored and leave

 

[Ooblagato]

i thought the idea was so bad i didnt need to elaborate?


you would lose most of your player base doing this - and people like me would go from having 1 char with all pl to 63 chars with all pl and then all i do is gear and i get bored and leave

There is no need to be so rude. So your argument is that players who have triple completionist will run out of things to do as each individual character can no longer get progression beyond reaper points and gear? I suppose it is something to consider as a large portion of the player base has been here for a very long time. Past live counters going beyond 3 while only providing the 3 past lives benefit seems like a good solution to that; maybe alternative character specific progressions similar to reaper as well.

 

[Ooblagato]

Perhaps not all PLs, but some should be made account-wide. Currently there are 207 PLs, too many for people to be motivated to create alts, and this number grows every year without any catch-up mechanism.

Making about 1/3 of the PLs shared across the account would greatly benefit the health of the alts.

And this would help SSG too. More people playing alts means more space bought, more cosmetics, more potions invested in alts... nowadays so many PLs make many people give up on investing in alts, and that also hurts SSG.

I can dig the limited application approach. It would make the sense of character progression as opposed to account progression stronger. For me the biggest aspect is feeling like any time spent playing on alt characters is a waste of time in terms of progression.

 

[Ooblagato]

with the devs extending the lowered exp requirements of lives 1 and 2 to lives 1-4 and lives 5-8 respectively this would cause a messy situation where the best way to get your completionists is make a new character and TR 4 times.
If anything this ask isn't so much "Make the game more accessible" as it is "I don't want to reincarnate my main 3 more times when a new race gets added."

I appreciate the constructive feedback. The character would behave as if they had those past-lives, so the reduced experience required aspect would effectively turn into an server/account thing as opposed to a character based issue. (This could make existing characters exp and level mismatch though, so it is something that would require consideration; I will add it as such)

 

[GrizzlyOso]

This has been discussed before but I would be pretty mad if my alts didn’t all “add up” past lives in this case and I could’ve just maxed one character instead of spreading them all over this whole time.

Also as someone who likes developing alts, it would pretty much end reincarnating and building new characters, which I would probably look forward to at this point, but also , probably wouldn’t make me stick around as much.

 

[Ooblagato]

This has been discussed before but I would be pretty mad if my alts didn’t all “add up” past lives in this case and I could’ve just maxed one character instead of spreading them all over this whole time.

Also as someone who likes developing alts, it would pretty much end reincarnating and building new characters, which I would probably look forward to at this point, but also , probably wouldn’t make me stick around as much.

Point of clarification-- progression across characters would add up. Though I suppose special consideration may be necessary if you have say 12 past-lives of a particular life across all your characters.

As for the developing alts and the challenges associated with not having the past-lives is an aspect I suppose I am overlooking. Some manner of opting out, or perhaps after x number of reincarnations they can share past-lives may be a good solution. In any case it is something to consider.

 

[Teh_Troll]

Let's go full communist and make PLs server-wide!

 

[Fhrek]

I don't see it be implemented in anyway... "fiscally irresponsible".

SSG advanced a lot by changing the 1-4 and 5-7 PL system. But, one thing that would easy even more the catch up from first lifes to multiple PLs characters, would be to enable a system where we choose the PL to be acquired before start the leveling and flag it as

(a) First Life - every life a character hasn't acquired yet, Racial or Class, starting from Lv 1 even if it is on the 60th life. Example - the character has 65 past lifes, but is running the first as a Eladrin, so it would count as a first life for experience acquisition. It would lock to be able to Reincarnate only as a Racial Eladrin;

(b) Second Life - if the character is getting a second life on a Class or Race starting from Lv 1. Using the prior example, the player at character creation chooses/flag the life to reincarnate as a Cleric, but the character already has one Cleric or Dark Apostate life, so for experience acquisition it uses the second life exp curve and can only Reincarnate as a Cleric;

(c) Third Life - the character already has two past lifes on Class or Race choose as flag for Reincarnation at character creation.

(d) Iconics - as it needs to go to Lv 30 anyway, could use the Third Life EXP Curve even if it is a first life character.

It could still uses the current Exp Curves, but easy the Past life grind.

 

[The Narc2]

People with and talking about past lives are so funny, but i am with the naysayers. We need the Jones to keep the lights on, and we need the competitive compensators to keep driving the Jones’s.

 

[Willsave20]

The amount of time needed to invest in past-lives and the difference it makes in gameplay to have a lot of them is very significant. While there may be a few outliers, this usually means alternative characters on someone's account rarely get played aside from the occasional special case use such as filling a tank role in a raid party or such.

I for one would love to be able to swap between characters without penalty. So I suggest, any past lives gained on a particular server should be applied account-wide and all characters on that server should be able to make full use of them.

Some benefits this would bring to the game are:
- Players would not need to feel like they are wasting experience points/progression when they play on an alternative character
- Players would be able to swap classes and playstyles more easily
- Players could more easily play with their friends who are at a different level and would no longer feel forced to not play when their regular group is not playing
- The ease of swapping classes would make balance decisions less controversial


Some complications that may need to be addressed are:
- Veteran status characters may be an unfair way to skip early levels for farming past-lives
- It may be difficult to bring past-lives across server transfers for a character
- Reduced experience requirements for the first few lives could cause existing characters to have a mismatch in experience and level upon implementation and upon achieving the first few past-lives

Please help by considering the practicality and finer points of implementing this and giving your feedback.

I was and am still not one whose goal is any form of completionist. This being said, the game is meant to be replayed again and again with different characters and class and race combos. Reincarnation is the game's loop. Since reincarnation is such a fundamental mechanic in the game, the game's balance would be broken by 1st "life" characters being uber completionists after I get one character to that status.

Now, its important to acknowledge that I do also understand your pov slightly. You did it all once and dont want to have to do that all over again on another character. Thats one of the reasons I was never interested in reincarnation. Typically if I want to try a build, I'll roll up a blank iconic. If it works, thats what I'll TR my main into, etc etc.

 

[Marshal_Lannes]

A couple of things. First, it's ok to be finished with a character. At some point, you've won. Start another character. Second, it's not true that people don't play alts. Almost everyone I know in-game uses playable alts. I have 5 characters I play based on play styles (melee, caster, ranged, cleric, static). Four of the five have reaper wings. Three are heroic completionists. I'll never have a racial completionist. And that's OK. I chose to take a different route. Should there be a catch-up mechanic? Absolutely. But every character you play is an uber completionist? Come on, man.

 

[Baconator]

I thought the idea was so bad i didnt need to elaborate?