I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained

getting sidekicked doesn't give you more powers, for one thing. So there's that. I'm convinced this is the best thing ever.

You still won't earn your powers until you level; a level one character running a level 50 mission will still be incredibly gimped and a level 50 character running a level 1 mission will still be overpowered based on that alone.

The fact that they are broadening the teaming abilities is a great win here.

Yes indeed!!!

I am truly pleased!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

For heroes, it's lvl15 (might be 14.) Something that i found extremely frustrating last night when i decided i'd get my villains into the midnighter club, too, and discovered yet one more evidence that Devs have villains. (Yes, that's tongue in cheek. At least the part about Dev hate.)

Would be great if they either made it the same level for both heroes and villains, or just removed the requirements.

1) This will slow down levelling for the worst of the powerlevelling strategies. While you will still be able to powerlevel, it will be at the same rate you would level if you were on a similar team of your own level, engaged in the same strategies.

2) The sidekicking system has always allowed you to ignore level. Again, you only level at the rate that would be normal for a team of your level. There will now be some options open that weren't open before, but there were always options for teams of mixed level in this game. And with Going Rogue coming up, opening up RWZ to lower levels is likely a preview of what the new Praetorian zones are going to be like.

3) You are still encouraged to level in order to gain powers, Enhancement slots, and the ability to slot higher level Enhancements. Although a SK can participate in a mission with a much higher mentor, he is still much weaker in comparison to him. So teams of equal or higher level than the mission owner will still be more effective.

4) Kind of a combination of 2 and 3, high level zones will still be dangerous to newbies. They will be safer if they are in a team with a team leader the same level as the zone (or higher) but they will have to be teamed to have such access. The same with missions that are required to access a zone or content in the zone, you will be able to access that content if you can get on a team, but otherwise you will have to level to that point if you wish to take it solo.

How will this effect me? I think I'll be teaming with just my friends instead of everyone else. AE was already doing that, this will just push it more. I used to like to PUG.. met new people, some bad sure, but a few good people that have become my friends. But now pugging becomes and argument because everyone wants to do everything as fast as possible, or AEAEAE. (I swear if anymore people call me stupid because I don't like to do AE...) And I think this will just make that moreso because a team will be all over the place. "Let's go to RWZ!" "No let's do this!" "No let's do this!" Ugh. Yeah.. I'll be falling into the pit I always hated before. But it's better than arguing all the time.

As I understand it you'll be able to physically go most anywhere you want but you're still going to have to team up to fight high level critters wherever you go.

At this point in the aftermath of AE anything that encourages people to go to different places around the game and team up with each to do it is probably a good thing all things considered.

What they need to do is ban the spammers by IP address. It seems like an obvious solution to me? Just take the IP addresses that are repeatedly reported as spammers and ban them from accessing the servers at all.

I KNEW you would :P

Meh. Just gonne get out of the convo now, because everyone is so "ZOMG THIS IS SOOPERAWZOM" that no one is going to understand what I'm saying.

I'm not into badge-hunting for its own sake, but there are several badges needed for in-game accolade powers that just invite farming - I rarely feel the need to farm, but these 3 in particular just push me towards farming - so I would be grateful if you could look at them:

• Hero-Slayer (parity with Villain Disruptor would be nice, i.e. 25 instead of 100 - please think of Infernal's poor Behemoths!)
• Illusionist (why decoys? That just invites tediously farming the same MI's decoys over and over - maybe change the badge to needing 50 Master Illusionist bosses or 200 Illusionist lieutenants instead)
• Unbreakable (not a defeat badge, but seriously how are you supposed to get this badge without farming it?)

It will override the current MA sk system.

IP adresses are completely worthless for bans, you can change em with zero effort whatsoever and there is allready programs out there that will change it automaticly every few mins.

Really! dont already level FAR too fast as it is. Its not supposed to take mere hours to get to level 20. Days at minimum a week pref. Its supposed to be fun and ROLE PLAYING not as abridged as the harry potter movies.

The Midnight club is not 'level restricted' for either side. It requires a badge. Now your access to that badge 'naturally' is lower blueside than redside, but you can easily join a team for the final mission and get access at any level (the lowest I did it was 3)

Well for what it's worth I believe I understand what you are saying.
I'm just not convinced the downside to this is as bad as the benefits.

I see these changes ultimately bringing a stabilizing influence to the excesses AE created.

=P honestly if you really want to stick around in your pre20 stage, take your time, solo, do regular teams or if you're really loving the early game, turn off your xp untill your tired of it.

Dammnit.

My prediction - everyone will farm level 54 Liutenants in AE. They will be +5 to the SK's level.

Fortunately this won't affect influence farmers at all.

Being in atlas park typically makes my IQ drop several points, I try to avoid it anyway. >_>

I feel silly for asking, but what is QoL?

I understand what you're getting at. I agree there may be a problem with PUGs, but we won't really know for sure until we see the true effect. Maybe PUGs will assemble of random people who all want to do different things, but it's also possible PUGs will still use the current strategy of searching for members of close to the same level. After all, there is no ADVANTAGE to inviting a lowbie to your group. If anything, his lack of powers will drag your team down.

Keep in mind also that the Rogue Isles has always had open zones, and never had Hazard Zones. So if this is going to cause a problem with heroes being able to go anywhere they want to, we would have already seen evidence of it redside. From what I've seen, though, villains usually stick to the zones appropriate to their levels, unless they go to the AE in Cap.

This WILL make it much easier for you to group with friends or SG mates, as you won't have to juggle characters or make sacrifices about who you want to play. But given as you won't have to spend so much time putting together a team, either with friends or a PUG, you should have the extra time to spend with your friends.

As far as determining what the "appropriate" leveling speed is I would leave that to the Devs to decide.

Besides the Devs gave us the "earn no XP" option to allow us to level as fast or as slow as we want.

Sounds about right.

Lewis

Don't feel silly, there's tons of strange acronyms flying around these parts.
QoL is Qality of Life.