Alternate Leveling & Crossing Powers

Ever said to yourself, “I could really use that mez resist power now, I’ll get it when I level… oh wait, it’s just enhancements next time.” Or the opposite, “hey this last power is really making the toon gel. Slot this up a bit more and I’ve got something fun here. …Except I have to take another power, so it’ll be two levels – sigh.” Ever said to yourself “Why did I take this power, I never use it. Oh yeah, I had to take something at level 49 so I could get the final 3 slots from level 50).

Alternate Leveling
At level 1 you get 1 power from your primary set (first or second power in the set) with one enhancement slot and 1 power from your secondary set (first power only) with one enhancement slot. You also get the powers of Brawl and Sprint with 1 enhancement slot.
As you adventure through the game you will gain experience bars. Every time you gain ten bars, you go up a level and earn the right to spend the 10 bars you just earned. At level 2, you gain the power Rest with one enhancement slot. At levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 47, and 49 you unlock the ability to select another power.
When you go to a trainer, you can choose to spend any of your experience bars or hold them for later. A new power (with zero enhancements slots) costs 10 bars. Enhancement slots cost 3 bars each. So at level 2, you could now purchase a third power with your 10 experience bars; or up to 3 additional slots for your existing powers, and save the unused bars for later.
In the course of going from level 1 to level 50, you will earn 490 experience bars. Converting from the current method, all level 50 characters have spent 220 experience bars on additional powers leaving 270 bars, enough for 90 enhancement slots. In the current system, a character ends with 91 slots. In this proposal, you are given 5 enhancement slots for free so the net difference is 4 additional slots. I would suggest sweetening the deal even more by giving you the ten bars from level 1 in your pool to spend (so that at level 2 you can purchase a power and at least 1 enhancement slot for it), making it an even 500 experience bars; for a bonus 7 slots over the current system.
Since selecting new powers are now optional, you could intentionally forgo up to 8 powers so that you could six-slot the powers you do have (Peacebringers and Warshades could forgo even more to boost their Nova and Dwarf slotting).

Crossing Powers
With this said, you can now look at some crazy options.
Training Academies and/or Re-leveling: Allow characters to earn 20 bonus experience bars. Level 50 characters can continue to earn experience as if they are replaying level 49. They don’t gain any more health or con any higher, they just get 10 bonus experience bars (so players could reach level 50++?). And/or have contacts who specialize in helping a character be the best they can be. The end of their mission arcs offer a few bonus experience bars rather than merits.
Skills/Talents: There have been a number of suggestions for skills in the forums through the years. I haven’t seen any of these being worth exchanging a power for, but setting their small edges at 1 or 2 experience bar each would be fair. Would you give up one enhancement slot for three minor advantages (quick example - lock picking, which debuffs the time needed to open a safe or vault door)?
Alternate Powers: To create a character like Frostfire – who has both fire and ice controller primaries – isn’t possible. Or is it? What if we said selecting a power from an additional primary (or secondary) set appropriate to your archetype costs 30 experience bars rather than 10 and like your initial set you must ‘open’ by selecting one of the first two powers (first power only for secondary) from the alternate power set, and since you are not level 1 you do NOT get an initial enhancement slot.
Wild Powers: To create a character like Iron Man (who could be seen as a Tanker with a few ranged powers or as a Blaster with defensive powers) you could select powers from a list that is not appropriate for your archetype for 30 points if you possess the set ‘keyword’ or 50 if you do not, and again you would have to ‘open’ the set by selecting one of the initial powers from it. What I mean by ‘keyword’ is that your selected power sets come with keywords, and if any of those keywords match the keywords from the wild set you want, then you have some thematic justification for it (i.e. A blaster with dark primary and fire secondary set could consider dark or fire defensive sets at 30 bars per power but Stone, Invulnerable, Cold, Regen, Reflexes, Shield, etc. would be 50 bars for the first power). This would need to exclude selecting the exact same powers/sets (An Invulnerable Tank cannot double up by cross training into Scrapper Invulnerability as well). Note also that by purchasing your first power of a new set, you gain that set’s keyword.

So maybe crossing powers is too wild and crazy. But the basic alternate leveling idea alone opens the door to diversity. Would you trade in a power or two to further enhance those you do have?

/unsigned. this goes against the entire game structure.

/unsigned detrimental to game balance

Not only is this a complete mess, it perverts one of the primary reasons I like City of Heroes - because I'm never forced to take FEWER powers for the sake of making those few powers stronger. I HATE HATE HATE how Blizzard's games go about this, with forcing me to repick powers multiple times, meaning that if I take too many, I can't "enhance" them enough, meaning I end up with, like, five powers total.

I am completely and utterly against this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.