First off, I'm not proposing this to replace the existing Heroic method of jumping straight to level 85, 100, 110 or whatever. Rather, I'm proposing this as an additional way to get to the Heroic level, but through speedy leveling rather than an instantaneous jump to Heroic level. As I've been reading the threads about whether Heroic should be 100 or 110, I'm coming to the conclusion that the post-110 (or 100) game is probably not my preferred play style. I enjoy more of the old-school EQ experience. As such, I would prefer a Heroic option where I could level through content at an accelerated pace rather than just immediately jumping to a high level where the gameplay may not really be what I enjoy anyway. I would like to experience the different classes at their different levels, but I don't want to do 100 traditional levels nor do I want to instantly be level 100. What I would like instead is a way where I could start at level 1 and go through the levels at my own pace--however quickly or slowly I decide. I'm thinking this could be an "Accelerated Heroic" mode. In this mode, I start as a level 1 but I have a way of jumping to the next level at my convenience. Perhaps it's a clicky, an NPC I talk to, or something like that which allows me to jump to the next level whenever I want. I could use this method to level up to the Heroic level, after which it's back to normal leveling. So the AH character starts at level 1 and levels up as they like, but whenever they feel like they've seen enough at that level, they can jump to the next level. If they want to get a bubble and then level up, they can do that. If they want to play a level and then skip 5 levels, they can do that. If they want to skip from 1 to 80, they can do that. A method like this would give players a method to really get to know a class and its abilities from the beginning at their own pace rather than being thrown in the deep end and having to figure everything out. Something like this AH mode would also be more conducive to returning players. Someone who has been away from the game for a while may have a lot of struggles being thrown into the level-100+ game. In my situation, I came back after 10+ years and have leveled up my old 60 to level 90. I can't imagine how I would have come back into the game I'm seeing at level 90. At 90 things hit so hard that I'm about 2 seconds away from death if things go south, and that's after having 30 levels to get back up to speed. I can't imagine doing very well trying to jump into the 100+ game after being away for a while. But if instead I could start as a level 1 and quickly level up to 100, I'd have fun along the way and have the skills needed to be effective at 100. Like I said at the start, this isn't to replace Heroic as we know it. That's still useful for folks who know the classes and can immediately be effective with a character at Heroic level. But this AH method could be very useful for the people who want to experience a class or want to jump back into EQ at a more reasonable pace. And for DB, I'm much more like to spend the money for this kind of accelerated Heroic leveling character as opposed to the jump to 100 character. I wouldn't think this would be too complex to implement, so hopefully it would be an easy way to get revenue from people who wouldn't buy the current Heroic implementation.
I think this is a great idea, they could even implement the system in such a way that it auto expands +5 levels every 2 expansions so people get the boost upto what ever the gap is supposed to be whether its ftp -5 or whatnot.
Theres a problem with that, a level skip with no armor grant will make the character insurmountably weaker, and I can't imagine them having to try to implement an auto armor system unless it just gives you a box you can claim for level appropriate defiant, which is much weaker than anything you can obtain though game play. You don't really want an accelerated leveling system, what you are really saying you want is a class training system. Accelerated leveling whether through level grants or heroics either way is going to erode class training from a new player (or new to class) standpoint. This doesnt fix that issue.
HC aren't the answer to every issue in the game, but they are a reasonable solution to someone who wants to catch up fast. I don't dislike your idea. But it doesn't really support a new player enough. Let's be honest, what new players need is veteran players to mentor them. How do you accomplish THAT? Mentor system, of course. EQ2 has this system down to a science. It's awesome. It's rewarding. It's instant. It allows the player to keep their character's identity while gaining XP and helping a lower level player. My suggestion would be introduce the mentor system to EQ1. I have been suggesting this for a decade. No one wants it but me, apparently.
It would probably be helpful if they collected relevant class information per era and class into one spot (archetype forums don't support this). Then they can add a popup at both character and HC creation directing new players to those resources.
Who are these mythical new players finding EQ for the first time ever in TYOOL 2022? I'd guess that the vast majority of HC purchases are likely to be existing players making alts who already know how the game is played and don't need to play a character for 100+ levels to "learn" it.
I hated this in EQ2, I still didn't know what I was doing and when they left me on my own I was completely out of my depth. Possibly why I've never got past level 20 and don't really enjoy playing the game.
I like the flexibility of op proposal. It could be implemented by a relatively cheap token in the store that grant you the experience necessary to get 1, 5, 10 more levels. Heroic characters comes also with a DON and other Aa that you will never do otherwise, i think those should be included too.
Same experience , When i was playing eq2, this mentor system were very rarely used. Folks willing to help low level using mentor system were very very few. Most of the folks were more into farming one more time a given instanced dungeon.
I guess... I also am not overly interested in the 110+ aspect of the game and haven't been at top level since about 2007 at a guess. But 1-60 with 300 earned AA's though is very little effort though even as a badly-played Enc/Dru (without any software) duo I'm easily hitting 30AA per LDoN's @ 55 (25 mins to do the LDoN then about another 15 mins clearing up) and I'm only doing them for fun, I'm sure there are much more efficient places to get exp. 1-16 is done in the length of one DS cast on a new toons' merc. I re-started from scratch on a new server in December, I have little time to play and I have a 59 Ran, 55 Dru, 55 Enc - it's not as though levelling now is exactly slow.
I don't see this as something useful for brand new players who have never played EQ. I see it more as something for players who have been away for years and are coming back or experienced players who want to try out other classes. Implementation wise, I could see it as something as simple as the server creating a normal Heroic character and then de-leveling it to 1. The level 1 character would have the Heroic goodies. They would have a fully populated spell book and AAs, but they wouldn't be usable until they were at the appropriate level. It would be similar to how your new AA's and spells are disabled when you de-level by dying. Armor I'm not too concerned about. I wouldn't think there would be armor giveaways along the way leveling up. They could still get the normal Heroic armor starter pack, but it might not be initially usable at level 1. Maybe they get some newbie armor. Gearing your character along the way is part of the fun, so I don't see it as an issue to not get free armor for every level. The level boost could be implemented at the character select screen with the normal Heroic Character button. Today the button will boost a normal character to the Heroic level, but I could see it being used for this kind of accelerated leveling. Pressing the button could show a screen with a few choices of which level you could jump to, such as jump one level, jump five levels, or jump to Heroic level. I'm guessing the existing Heroic button kind of does this accelerated leveling today, but it's only to Heroic level. I would guess a normal Heroic character can do a death loop to de-level to whatever level they want. They can adventure as much as they like at that level. Then when they want to go back to Heroic level they can press the "Heroic Character" and level back up. If they had levels above Heroic they wouldn't get those back, but I'm assuming that they can jump up to the Heroic level if they somehow de-level below 85. At the most basic, this feature could be done by adding a way for the Heroic button to give me some granular control over which level I jump to.
If the heroic character came with armor that was required level 1 and recommend level 110 it would automatically get better as the character leveled.
The experience rate from 70-100 should be boosted. I am powerleveling a mage for pet toys and just pulled 213 mobs in Fortress Mech (all dark blue cons) with lesson and it got the mage 87% of level 83. That is ridiculous, imagine doing that solo... you shouldn't need to kill 2-300 mobs per level under level 100...
My suggestion has been vendors combined with a beta buff. Hail the NPC, say the expansion/level you want, go to that level. Vendors are present labeled by expansion to sell you no-trade items from the expansion you want to play in. Every expansion launch, a new vendor is added. If heroic = Autogrant, then the current heroic vendor added with ToL would be RoS armor. However, I myself think heroic should be 1 expansion ahead of autogrant, so you still have AA to earn. So the current vendor would be TBL and the current level buff would be 110 or 115 (depending on if it was set to buff you to the previous expansion cap ROS110 or the current expansion cap TBL 115.) You can always go back for an additional level jump or buy more armor, and heroics scale with expansion additions.
This is what they used to do with AAs instead of just auto granting them, and I liked the old way infinitely better. You gained them at a much accelerated pace just starting out until you reached whatever the accelerated cap was. That way people had to go out and actually play the game to get AA instead of just giving people 20-30k AAs at the touch of a button. Never been a huge fan of the current way they handle this.
