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.

 

[Azasmokey]

F2P 0 shared Past life character. Premium 1 shared past life character. VIP 2 or 3 past life shared character. 1 server only. Every server max the limit of 2-3 character total. Once chosen that's it . Done and dusted.
I'd have a raid ready healer and buffer or melee. 1 just to carry on enjoying TR-ing
All retroactive e.g pick a character to have the shared past lives.
Not sure about this . Or better yet a 1 time only become a VIP bonus. Or only as a VIP bonus shared past life limited as above .
Would this make me become a VIP. Sure would!
The real question is would this encourage group play or more specifically raiding . Also encourage more spending.
I'd buy Tomes plus all the other 'things'.

 

[Minako]

Maybe if it was a toggle when you rolled the char? There are times the guys with everything want to roll a level 1 newbie first lifer. If you can pick and choose like you do weather you start at level 1 4 and 7 then sure... I guess? I wouldn't use it but sure?

 

[Shear-buckler]

Yes. Right now it takes far too much time and effort to try different builds. There are dozens of builds I would like to play but I dont want to stop playing my current build so I am simply stuck. There is so much character customization and build exploration that is left on the table. I have started farming lives on an alt so that in 10 years or so I am able to run two characters. Most likely we will get legendary reincarnation before that with even more grind so it is probably more like 20 years away.

This would encourage a lot of spending. Playing an alt is very expensive.

 

[Drunken.dx]

I noticed couple of names here who on old forum said years ago they don't wanna new players catching up to them.

so there is that.

I'm in for toggle option (like Inquisitor Martyr has option to skip story once you complete it once).

DDO needs better catch up mechanics than what SSG currently implemented and Otto boxes are to expensive (not to mention don't give full pl once you get enough pls).

pls being server shared is not exactly... best option, but there needs to be something to give new players hope they're at least gonna get class completionist in reasonable time without buying Otto boxes.

BTW some od us play other games too.

 

[Shear-buckler]

I noticed couple of names here who on old forum said years ago they don't wanna new players catching up to them.

so there is that.

I'm in for toggle option (like Inquisitor Martyr has option to skip story once you complete it once).

DDO needs better catch up mechanics than what SSG currently implemented and Otto boxes are to expensive (not to mention don't give full pl once you get enough pls).

pls being server shared is not exactly... best option, but there needs to be something to give new players hope they're at least gonna get class completionist in reasonable time without buying Otto boxes.

BTW some od us play other games too.

Yes but it should be noted that alt support and catch up mechanics for new players are separate issues. DDO desperately needs to improve both.

Catch up mechanics is fairly simple. They should just extend the number of lives that require normal amounts of experience. Instead of 4 it should be 40-50. Also remove the 1.5x requirement lives and go straight from 1x to 2x to streamline and simplify it. As more classes and races are added the number of 1x lives should be increased.
A similiar system should be implemented for epic lives.

This combined with shared past lives would make the game far more accessable for new players and encourage established players to play more alt, and spend more money on tomes etc for alts too.

The concern that the top 0.001% of players who have multiple completionist characters with maxed out reaper points will run out of things to do is greatly overstated. They will be fine.

 

[Solarpower]

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

Or it can be even better. Let's remove PLs from the game !

 

[Fisto Mk I]

Or it can be even better. Let's remove PLs from the game !

...and close game immediately after. Good solution, yea!

 

[EinarMal]

I don't think this is a good idea either.

I do think if they wanted to monetize something along these lines, a better approach would be a $$$ clone feature. Charge a one-time clone of my favorite character, including all past lives, for some large sum of money. They could also only allow 1 per server, or they could do like 2, whatever they wanted to limit it to.

Would generate a ton of extra money and not invalidate past lives.

They already have most of the tech for it; it is essentially a character copy to the same server.

 

[Solarpower]

Good solution, yea!

Exactly ! Glad you liked it !

 

[Sylvado]

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

Too easy

 

[Shear-buckler]

I don't think this is a good idea either.

I do think if they wanted to monetize something along these lines, a better approach would be a $$$ clone feature. Charge a one-time clone of my favorite character, including all past lives, for some large sum of money. They could also only allow 1 per server, or they could do like 2, whatever they wanted to limit it to.

Would generate a ton of extra money and not invalidate past lives.

They already have most of the tech for it; it is essentially a character copy to the same server.

Why would shared past lives invalidate past lives?

 

[Enoach]

What I think everyone can agree on is that past lives true power is best seen with the flexibility of builds. The more past lives you have the more build options are available. For example, with Wizard's PL feat builds that are dependent on multiple schools but have limited feat options now have a single feat vs needing to use multiple feats to raise their DCs.

There are different types of players - some that simply want all the power as fast as possible and some that enjoy the progression of leveling.

Consider if all characters on a Server or Account received all the power what progression is left besides gear?

If 'farming' is the only progression left in a game it will drive those that enjoy the game for progression away as there is nothing left and would eventually drive the "power fast" people away as soon as they have the gear and become bored with nothing left but to wait for more "power" to enter the game.

This also takes away from other play styles or even groups that want to play on the same power level as far as character progression.

IMVHO I don't think this is needed or is a good idea, because at some point all of my Alts (I have many all at different progression states) would start to feel the same.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Consider if all characters on a Server or Account received all the power what progression is left besides gear?

What do you mean? The progression that is left is past lives, among other systems like gear and rxp.

 

[Enoach]

What do you mean? The progression that is left is past lives, among other systems like gear and rxp.

If all characters get PL by doing it once Per Server/Account once that progression is done there isn't any additional progression until a new PL is created - that could be a significant amount of time without progression which would drive those that enjoy that part of the game away if they are not fond of gear farming.

 

[Shear-buckler]

If all characters get PL by doing it once Per Server/Account once that progression is done there isn't any additional progression until a new PL is created - that could be a significant amount of time without progression which would drive those that enjoy that part of the game away if they are not fond of gear farming.

That assumes you have finished all past lives. I think that is pretty rare.

 

[Diaari]

Old geezer ramble incoming.

When I played DDO in college (2010-2013 era), the grind to become a heroic completionist was extremely high. I knew very few people who'd done it, and people would always speak in hushed, reverent tones about those who'd managed to complete it. It required almost buddhist monk-level asceticism and focus. As a result, most people would instead focus on building out a stable of alts with a handful of past lives so they could play different roles at endgame.

When I came back in 2024, the bar had changed drastically. XP requirements were lowered and multiple bonuses to quest XP reduced the amount of grind (no more running Shadow Crypt Ex7, H, N just to get 12). At the same time, there are MANY more past lives now.

On the one hand, the bar to "finishing" a toon is incredibly high now. I'm doing racial and epic PLs on my main right now, and I cannot imagine ever doing this on a second toon. Factoring in time spent at cap doing r10's for rxp, it will probably take me another year before I'm even ready to go back and finish cleaning up iconic and class PLs. I spent a couple months getting heroic completionist on my alt because she's my primary raid toon and the power difference is noticeable. I've got another 5 alts beyond that from my college days that I'll probably only TR if their builds are nerfed into the ground. So I can see the benefits:

• It would recognize the player behind the character instead of treating each character as totally separate
• It would encourage more players to reincarnate more often
• New players would have an easier time catching up

But I think the cons explain why SSG hasn't done this yet:

• Massively reduces the grind (re-playability factor)
• There'd be no way for a veteran player to start over from scratch with a first-life toon (and I do think this is important)
• It would devalue the work done by high-achieving players and would almost demand some form of compensation for the time/money wasted doing PLs on alts
• Reduces the number of players in the 1-30 range, making it harder for new players to get into the game
• I can't quite articulate why, but I think this change would also be bad for the end-game scene because of the number of players running a bunch of high-powered alts

Maybe there is some middle ground, but I don't see this as a good solution.

 

[Minako]

Someone mentioned making the xp penalty only start after like 50 lives. Honestly with as many lives are in the game taking out the xp penalty all together would be better then shared past lives. They will never do it of course as people would stop buying xp potions and 500$ otto boxes.

 

[Shear-buckler]

Someone mentioned making the xp penalty only start after like 50 lives. Honestly with as many lives are in the game taking out the xp penalty all together would be better then shared past lives. They will never do it of course as people would stop buying xp potions and 500$ otto boxes.

Yeah a significant increase in lives without the penalty would go a long way to solve the alt issue. People would still buy ottos to skip the grind on established characters when new races etc comes out.

 

[Enoach]

That assumes you have finished all past lives. I think that is pretty rare.

Is it for those of us who have been playing since DDO added past lives? If I added all the PLs from all of my Alts together I would have all of them and I know I'm nowhere near the only one that has done this - many on a single character.

 

[Azasmokey]

Exactly. Give a reason for new players(far and few between) to pay or become VIP. Better yet, give he multitude of spend the minimum players (me) a reason to part with some cash. I went VIP over 10 years ago for a few months, since then bought nearly all with earned DDO points and bought DDO points. VIP bonus 2 or 3 characters shared past lives. I'd subscribe for a year. Subscribe for 1 year get the above. The Vip bonus isn't at all enticing.