Post Issue 16: new Exemplaring?
By
AquaJAWS,
Posted on: 2009-08-12 13:28 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
But when exemping... you always lose those powers. Unless you mean joining a team and going into the mish where you can, as the higher level, beat on the foes that con grey to you and purple to your buds. Other than that I don't really see an issue with exemping, particularly since you'll still have the option to do it with increased infamy instead of the XP.
Really my only problem with this is during Mothership Raids. I tend to lead teams during those raids and I'm not always the highest level toon on the team. If I bring a 45 to a mothership raid, the option would either be, don't be a leader, bring a higher level toon, or reduce your entire team to level 45s. That would be a particular annoyance for me.
I think it's fine as is. Enemies are balanced to the level of the characters that fight them, and that includes their available powers.
@SPTrashcan
Avatar by Toxic_Shia
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To avoid having to exemp/unexemp by quitting team rejoining, etc, just play a game of pass the star. Team leader sets the level of the team. You could even have a lvl 30 person set the mish for 8 people, and pass the star to a lvl 32, so everyone can just sweep through, if you really wanted.
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Read Posi's posts again. Mission owner sets the level, unless no mission is set. If no mission is set, then the team leader sets the level.|
Originally Posted by Haruu
Team leader sets the level of the team.
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But Seldom, you need to read Posi's posts more closely, too: they're looking at retaining your powers when you exemplar, and they've already made it so you still gain xp.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Oh, and just sayin', yes, this is a question to exemplaring as a whole.
I know the mechanic proposed is as it has been; I just meant it seems to be something that will happen more often, (such as doing a member's level 33 mission with your 34) so talking about what could be done to improve it whilst the sidekicking is being improved seemed relevant.
>edit< and yes, I did see they were looking at changing exemplaring. His words were "we're looking into some sort of change" on the subject. I just wanted see a discussion from the player's perspective, especially with the upcoming changes in mind.
My understanding was that they were looking for a fix to exemp down and keep your powers.
So a 50 inv tank could drop to say lvl 1 and still have unstoppable.
@Zopharshinta
@Zophar2
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I'd say enemies are not balanced, period. Villain groups are drastically easier or harder at almost every level.|
Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
I think it's fine as is. Enemies are balanced to the level of the characters that fight them, and that includes their available powers.
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Compare Vhazilok to Hellions, or Malta to Praetorians.
Which isn't to say the OP has a good point or not - but the idea that there's some finely tuned balance that could be disrupted is almost absurd.
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I don't agree. Compare Vahzilok to Malta.|
Originally Posted by Plasma
I'd say enemies are not balanced, period. Villain groups are drastically easier or harder at almost every level.
Compare Vhazilok to Hellions, or Malta to Praetorians. Which isn't to say the OP has a good point or not - but the idea that there's some finely tuned balance that could be disrupted is almost absurd. |
I think it would be interesting if you were right. But I don't think you are.
@SPTrashcan
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They can also have fully slotted powers.
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Originally Posted by Seldom_NA
Currently the only 'advantage' higher leveled characters have when exemplared is extra inspirations...which actually is a big thing.
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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
Posi seems to be aware of this problem, and working on it. I don't know what his solution will be, but likely you will be able to keep your powers if you exemplar down only a few levels.
The most logical solution is to allow you to keep all powers for any level up to the level at which you would make the team stop getting XP for the mission. So, whatever your exemplared level is, +5. That way you don't lose any powers you would have kept had you chosen not to exemplar. But the point at which you wouldn't be making any XP if you didn't exemplar anyway, you lose the usual powers.
Possibly, they could just use the exemplar level + 5 value for powers no matter what level you are, so if you exemplared down to level 1, you'd be level 1, but have your first five powers. As they will probably want to leave PvP and Oroborous missions alone, though, that might be overly complicated.
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After reading the " Defenders vs Controller Disparity" thread, it's occurred to me that one result would to be to make defenders even less desirable when Going Rogue comes out. Right now one of the few advantages Defenders have is that they get their buff/debuff powers earlier. If exemplared characters keep all their powers then that advantage vanishes when it comes to exemplared characters; an exemplared level 50 Controller/MM/Corr doing a low level mission will have the same range of buff/debuff powers as an exemplared level 50 Defender.
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Originally Posted by Seldom_NA
What, though, would be the result if exemplaring (Which will now be far more widespread) if higher level character kept some of their higher powers? or all of them?
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Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
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I agree with this comment. There could be a change in balance, but more like changing an unbalanced system.|
Originally Posted by Plasma
I'd say enemies are not balanced, period. Villain groups are drastically easier or harder at almost every level.
Compare Vhazilok to Hellions, or Malta to Praetorians. Which isn't to say the OP has a good point or not - but the idea that there's some finely tuned balance that could be disrupted is almost absurd. |
I had a few ideas on this. 1) they could try and scale down power's abilities i guess like the OPs idea. But how or what specifics I'm not sure of a good answer.
2) If you're exemplared down, you don't lose ALL of your powers and slots of levels you lose, but keep the 5 powers and slots you would have had up to 5 levels above your exemplared level. Right now you don't get XP if you play at levels more than that difference but you can use the powers. It would allow the player to keep recently earned powers if they just happen to level up faster than the mission holder but not allow too much of an advantage. Possibly even some scaling effects on the enhancements and powers as well, but I'm not great at crunching the numbers to see if that would be necessary.
3) This one I'm not so sure about, but it popped into my head and could be interesting...keep all the powers, lose all the enhancement slots that you would have down to the exemplared level. People could keep powers but they won't be as strong? Not sure if it would work, but might help keep some resemblance of balance.
4) Allow higher players to chose the level they exemplar down to. Example: lvl 35 mission holder. lvl 20& lvl 45 teammates. When getting into the mission, lvl 45 teammate gets pop up (or maybe a slider where exemp buttons are now on team window) allowing themselves to select a level between 35 and 40 to play at, defaulting on level 35 if they don't select to change it. Unexemplar button to quickly unexemplar if team is in trouble at sacrafice of rewards until reexemplaring. Rewards gained scaled as is now based on selected level. lvl 20 teammate gets sk'd to level 34. Allows teams to still function as is now for higher teammates. Allows people who out level mission holder to keep recently earned powers unless they go too high, in which to continue getting XP they would now anyways.
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Originally Posted by Zophar_Shinta
My understanding was that they were looking for a fix to exemp down and keep your powers.
So a 50 inv tank could drop to say lvl 1 and still have unstoppable. |
at a wild <censored> guess, I'd be thinking the same 3 level rule that applies to set bonuses would apply to powers.
Having tier 9s at level 1 is not right, but there is middle ground to cover between all powers and current exemped level. 3 (maybe 5 at a push) levels seems a reasonable starting point.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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The scaling of Enhancement strength to level is supposed to emulate this. In short, they have recorded what levels you got your powers at, but they can't know what levels you got each slot at. (So when you respec you can actually just pick slots in any order) When you go down to level 10, your Enhancements go down to like 6%, so even fully slotted you won't be any stronger than a normally slotted character of that level. |
Originally Posted by AquaJAWS
3) This one I'm not so sure about, but it popped into my head and could be interesting...keep all the powers, lose all the enhancement slots that you would have down to the exemplared level. People could keep powers but they won't be as strong? Not sure if it would work, but might help keep some resemblance of balance.
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In fact, this is kind of an inconvenience when Exemplaring, because if you've slotted around having SO's for accuracy, when you exemp down you'll have less accuracy than someone of that level who has slotted one or two SOs or DOs. You'll probably have more damage, though.
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| 4) Allow higher players to chose the level they exemplar down to. Example: lvl 35 mission holder. lvl 20& lvl 45 teammates. When getting into the mission, lvl 45 teammate gets pop up (or maybe a slider where exemp buttons are now on team window) allowing themselves to select a level between 35 and 40 to play at, defaulting on level 35 if they don't select to change it. Unexemplar button to quickly unexemplar if team is in trouble at sacrafice of rewards until reexemplaring. Rewards gained scaled as is now based on selected level. lvl 20 teammate gets sk'd to level 34. Allows teams to still function as is now for higher teammates. Allows people who out level mission holder to keep recently earned powers unless they go too high, in which to continue getting XP they would now anyways. |
The idea here is to give the exemplar the powers for the level 5 (or 3) levels above him, but for the sake of XP he's still the same level as the mission holder.
I hope they take this time to change how globle IOs work. Some of them lose thier effect when you malefactor down too low. I don't think you should lose the effect of globle IOs ever. After dropping ridiculous amounts of Inf on some of the better ones like LotG 7.5%, it really blows to lose that recharge bonus just because you malefactor doen to play with a friend. Even if it's just a globle run speed boost...it's annoying to lose that and discourages me from malefactoring down.
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Another effect of this is that buffing Defenders (and to some degree Controllers) lose the advantage they had of still being functional at lower levels than their team.|
Originally Posted by Obscure_Blade
After reading the " Defenders vs Controller Disparity" thread, it's occurred to me that one result would to be to make defenders even less desirable when Going Rogue comes out. Right now one of the few advantages Defenders have is that they get their buff/debuff powers earlier. If exemplared characters keep all their powers then that advantage vanishes when it comes to exemplared characters; an exemplared level 50 Controller/MM/Corr doing a low level mission will have the same range of buff/debuff powers as an exemplared level 50 Defender.
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On my Force Field Defender, I felt I could contribute when fighting +5's with a team 2 levels higher than me. My blasts were weaker (and did less -Res debuff, I was Sonic secondary), but I was still dishing out the same Defence bonuses and providing extra damage mitigation through the autohit Repulsion Field when required.
And I quite enjoyed all that sweet sweet XP without the guilt I would have felt playing say a Scrapper two levels lower than everyone else.
This always felt to me not so much like an exploit, but an advantage of that set that compensated for the lack of offensive buffs of any kind. With the new exemplaring, that will be gone.
I'm still in favour of these new changes, and willing to accept this casualty to avoid the nightmare of "Sidekick Tetris", by the way, but thought I'd point out this side effect.
I'd let you use every power, but apply some major debuffs, as if the enemies you're fighting are +5.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
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A lot of people seem to be suggesting this as a good idea, however if it went through like this it would just lead to a new method of power leveling. |
Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
I'd let you use every power, but apply some major debuffs, as if the enemies you're fighting are +5.
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Lets take one of my characters as an example, the character is currently a level 46 earth/ta controller. If this character kept full powers at all levels whilst exemped and still earned xp as if fighting at its natural level all I would need to do is team up with a level 1 with xp turned off and their dificulty settings maxed out as if its a team of eight on max.
Even debuffed as if fighting +5's I would still be able to wipe the floor with large groups of hellions for easy xp and laughable risk levels. At higher levels players get better and better debuffs and soft/hard controls which low level mobs have no resistances or defences against.
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The answer to your question is actually in the original post that you linked|
Originally Posted by Seldom_NA
What, though, would be the result if exemplaring (Which will now be far more widespread) if higher level character kept some of their higher powers? or all of them? What could be a way to allow full power access without too much impact, or would this impact be nothing to worry about? We know that the enemies we fight are balanced by the foreseen abilities of the players, so that hellions have only a couple attacks but later foes have many tricks, as players then have more tricks to counter.
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Originally Posted by Positron
Now we are aware of a couple things that this system doesnt do so well, and we are attempting to address most of them in the coming weeks. The first of this is the fact that you lose access to powers, especially the most-recently earned ones, when you Exemplar down. We are looking into some sort of fix for this.
(These changes are currently being tested in the Closed Beta for Issue 16, and may be changed/modified by the time they reach the Live servers) |
- Garielle
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Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme
I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".
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This speaks to the current discussion- yes Posi said changes were being considered, but the specifics were lacking. Hence why I'd like a more specific discussion from the game users' view.|
Originally Posted by Garielle
The answer to your question is actually in the original post that you linked
Positron: "Now we are aware of a couple things that this system doesn’t do so well, and we are attempting to address most of them in the coming weeks. The first of this is the fact that you lose access to powers, especially the most-recently earned ones, when you Exemplar down. We are looking into some sort of fix for this. (These changes are currently being tested in the Closed Beta for Issue 16, and may be changed/modified by the time they reach the Live servers)" Now, some on the forums have already begun to read that statement as "You will have access to all your powers." I am not one of those folks, and I cringe to think of the whining if that proves not to be the case. People will swear up and down that Positron promised they would have access to all their powers. The only people who have said that are players who are reading what they want to read into a vague statement which says they are "looking into some sort of fix for this" but does nothing to make any specific promise. It simply means they are aware that this is an issue and are working on some reasonable way to resolve it. |
>editted out...I focused on other things whilst reading, and skimmed over the 'exemplars get xp' bit<
Yup, if they are actually testing some of this might be a bit more moot, but having input ain't bad.
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Exemplared players will still recieve XP as normal, with the new system. So there will be no loss of XP. There may be an option to turn off XP, if you want to recieve influence instead, as in the old way. But you will not be forced to choose this option.
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Originally Posted by Seldom_NA
The fact that as mentioned earlier a player will have to be exemplared down if the mission is lower makes the automatic 'no Xp, but cash' side of exemplaring a little more problematic,
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That's not necessarily a bad thing. Removing relatively unimportant advantages makes the core problem more obvious... and therefore more likely to get fixed. Defenders don't need to be masters of Positron's TF, they need to bring as much to a team as Controllers, regardless of level...
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Originally Posted by Obscure_Blade
After reading the " Defenders vs Controller Disparity" thread, it's occurred to me that one result would to be to make defenders even less desirable when Going Rogue comes out. Right now one of the few advantages Defenders have is that they get their buff/debuff powers earlier. If exemplared characters keep all their powers then that advantage vanishes when it comes to exemplared characters; an exemplared level 50 Controller/MM/Corr doing a low level mission will have the same range of buff/debuff powers as an exemplared level 50 Defender.
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Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name
[u]Arcs[u]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
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Would you actually be able to defeat a +5 or +6 hellion faster than a +0 or +1 normal mob? I doubt that.|
Originally Posted by TheHawkes
A lot of people seem to be suggesting this as a good idea, however if it went through like this it would just lead to a new method of power leveling.
Lets take one of my characters as an example, the character is currently a level 46 earth/ta controller. If this character kept full powers at all levels whilst exemped and still earned xp as if fighting at its natural level all I would need to do is team up with a level 1 with xp turned off and their dificulty settings maxed out as if its a team of eight on max. Even debuffed as if fighting +5's I would still be able to wipe the floor with large groups of hellions for easy xp and laughable risk levels. At higher levels players get better and better debuffs and soft/hard controls which low level mobs have no resistances or defences against. |
Also that is just an example. They could even be +10.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
my thought on this subject is that if done right, this could help mitigate the "need" for stamina for a lot of builds. My ice/ice tanker gets a lot of endurance back using heat absorption, and my /elec brute works well with power sink, but both come kind of late in the set maturation and any exemplaring makes blue issues return, often cripplingly. if exemplaring allowed you to always access these blue mitigation tools no matter what your exemplared status, then i can think of at least 3 characters i currently play with stamina that could be skipped if we get some access to these powers while exemped.
Hello. With the changes to teaming in issue 16, all team members are sk'd/exemplared to the active mission level. (Read here)
I see a significant upside, that I can play with all my friends regardless of level aptitude, and they can tag along...but the downside is exemplaring. I like the fact that I can go with my buds, but losing all those powers is a bummer. Currently the only 'advantage' higher leveled characters have when exemplared is extra inspirations...which actually is a big thing.
What, though, would be the result if exemplaring (Which will now be far more widespread) if higher level character kept some of their higher powers? or all of them? What could be a way to allow full power access without too much impact, or would this impact be nothing to worry about? We know that the enemies we fight are balanced by the foreseen abilities of the players, so that hellions have only a couple attacks but later foes have many tricks, as players then have more tricks to counter.
My initial reaction was that it would be cool if all powers were available, with scaling debuffs to those powers by how far removed they were from the present exemplared level- so that a level 26 power would work well (but sans enhancements) when exemplared to 25, but your level 41 would be barely functional. (I envision scaling -power boost kind of effect, along with a scaling -recharge on powers) Problem is,would this make high level characters too useful? How would you see this affect Strike forces? I would assume PvP zones, as they retain their level restrictions, such a exemplaring mechanic might be best left out of PvP. (They have their own rules anyway.)
What do you think? With exemplaring becoming automatic, what would you do, if anything, to improve it?