"Zonekicking"

I love a lot of the zones that sadly I seem to outlevel in about twenty minutes nowadays thanks to the adjusted levelling curve. Wandering into Dark Astoria for the first time, only to be confronted by less-than-terrifying grey enemies, is a real shame.

I could turn off my XP, but being stuck permenantly at a suitable level for one zone then discounts me from entering others - or rather entering others and surviving for more than ten seconds. Also, and call me strange, but I rather like to progress when playing this game - the I16 change that you can earn XP whilst mentored is superb and is what got me thinking about this suggestion.

It would be wonderful if there was a mechanism that allowed you to automatically mentor down to a zone appropriate level whenever you were outside in a zone - particularly for the ex-Hazard zones.

Have an NPC - perhaps the Hazard zone information officers? - that gives a player the option to attune themself to a suitable level for the zone they are in, or alternatively an option that does so automatically (with the same prompt set-up as super sidekicking).

So if you are in Dark Astoria you get mentored down to 20-29 (depending on your difficulty setting - if your'e running at +5, say, then you get mentored to 24) whilst outside for example, but return to your real level if you have a mission to run there. All the usual mentor rules apply, as per I16. In teams, the leader sets whether or not to "zonekick".

Note that this would only allow people to mentor down. You would need to be a higher level than the zone to use this feature, or in a team led by someone of a high enough level.

It's currently possible to McGuyver this using Flashbacks - I would simply like a more accessible method of achieving this to be implemented.

To exemplar down they should allow you to visit zone security chiefs or the npcs that describe hazard zones to you as you enter a hazard zone (can't think of what they are called)

This should not only allow you to fight enemies and still earn the xp/inf/prestige for them but it should also allow you to complete old contacts. And could be another option for the mission owner to earn the ouroboros badges as you would be presented with the challenge settings. But only the mission owner. If your team wants to earn the badges then you have to goto ouroboros and enter the taskforce ouro mode and do the arcs from the beginning to the end.

Downside if this were a forced option:

Running a level 45-50 arc say Crimson, and you get a mission in the hollows. (Happens more often than not when I run Crimson)
Being forced down to a pre-travel power level by such a zonekicking would be not so ideal.

Maybe only a few zones would be suitable, but then there is still the increased risk in getting to a mission door.

I like that I can happily ignore the grey DA zombies (or more more recently aI have a lot of doors in Boomtown, so clocks,lost and council) when running a high level arc, just get in and get out and onto the next mission.


The concept works well in the PVP zones, because those are entirely optional, and no mission doors from non-PvP contacts occur in them. Im not sure it would be such a good idea appied to Hazard zones.

Having the zone chief be the optional source of the autoexemp seems like a reasonable compromise. But then each zone does have a large range of levels, (typically 10) where would you exemp to ?
At that point however, using the O-zone as a workaround is barely less clunky.

/No thanks.

I'd like to NOT have to relive the pre-travel power days of my characters whenever I go to the Hollows, Perez, or other low-level hazard zones.

And do Villains get anything? Everything to them is a hazard zone, since they don't separate the two.

I wonder if an optional exemplaring will ever be used. Most of the hazard zones are never used for their original purpose. Namely getting xp in hunt teams. With the only exception being the sewers run.

During a bug where you could not enter a mission i made my team get into boomtown to earn some xp. Most of my team never had been there or even knew that you could form hunting teams like that. It was fun, but we all agreed, doing missions was better.

This would, of course, be optional as detailed in the original post.

Having the option to automate the process (by choice, rather than default) was intended purely for the convenience of those who did wish to run it at all times.

This is by no means a Heroes only thing - I rarely play Blueside myself - but having a dedicated NPC in every zone would have to be implemented and there aren't any obvious analogues Redside so new NPCs would have to be created. Blueside you have those redundant Security Chiefs and the Hazard Zone informants, both of whom probably get a little lonely and could do with an injection of relevance.