I feel like this is a bit of a reason that Sidekicking would need a lot of focus testing, yeah. But it would be fairly healthy if it is working right, in the long run. I can't imagine it would be any worse, though, than being the lv112 barely-geared Ranger getting their backside dragged across the frigid tundra while their awesome Monk and SK buddy at 115 in full raid gear are doing all the heavy lifting with their cleric mercs to make sure they survive. lol.
Well I would hope for a Side-kick to be around as tough defensively & offensively as a reasonably geared group player, i.e. not as weak as a Merc is or otherwise the temptation is just use a merc instead of having a sidekick join. They wouldn't be as good as a fully-geared out group player as they would still be lacking a full tool-set of abilities but they can perform their role okay.
i think it'd be neat if they managed changing level like FFXIV does. Since gear is already very normalized, stats shouldn't be hard.
If they were geared out about the same as a merc with a decent number of Merc AA but with a wider range of skills applicable to their class, they would be better than a merc because they could actually react and adjust where mercs just don't and can't. For example: a player would know not to cast a 'promised heal' when the target's health is plummeting, a player can switch targets, a player can back off until the tank gets something adjusted in position after the group has started fighting it, a player can adjust the types of spells and skills being used during the fight for agro managment, etc. A player is not an AI. However, a boxed sidekick would and should be little better than just a merc with a few extra skills. And.... there is a lot of dispute on what "reasonably geared" is. Should that be the equivalent of group T1 for the level range or top group tier for the previous level range? Would the equivalent of group T1 ToL be "reasonably geared" for any NoS content for a sidekick, how about group T2 ToV? Would that be ok for a tank? Sidekicking is a lot more complicated than EQ2's mentoring (scaling down) and is, in many ways, far more akin to EQ Shrouding.
Yes it would be more complex, but a systems-based approach like this, once engineered would work forever basically, but it definitely requires a lot of groundwork to make it viable, making every ability & spell have a "family" so for example every Cleric HP+AC buff is on one family & the Cleric Side-kicks spell is upgraded temporarily to the most recent one in that family for example. The big think EQ would need to have over & above the basics of the sidekick system's level boosting is gear, City of Heroes didn't really have a gear equivalent as their progression system relied upon augmenting abilities which were analogius to gear but worked differently. A buff which granted a sliding scale number of hitpoints/mana etc. up to the current T1 group-geared "cap" is what I suggested in an old post - so it subtracts whatever gear stats & hp etc you have on your gear from the "t1 group-geared cap" & that's what the buff gives you. Though maybe your present gear could grant a small bonus above the cap, depends how the devs want to tune it to make it fair without being too good.
IF DPG ever decided on doing a "buddy" system, it would probably be easier to do mentoring than side-kicking code-wise. Though, a dev would have to answer that question. I mean, I like the idea of either being implemented, it would be a great way to help out new/returning players. I ran into a returning rogue (well, he sent me a random message about poisons) and I ended up helping him with TS mats and some plat to help him out with that, but he is only level 47, so not much I could do there. If either system were in place, I would have been more than happy to help out further.
You inadvertently illustrate perfectly why Side-Kicking is such a better system, mentoring has such a massive reliance on goodwill & of playing in content that does not reward the player for their goodwill in any way shape or form. And Side-kicking does not stop players being generous, they can still do all of the things they did in a mentoring system but without losing out themselves. When you mentor down how often do you take the other 4 players with you so that the mentee has a full group? I bet almost all of the time it is single mentor & maybe some of their boxes being dragged along. Side-kicking is massively more likely to have 2-5 actual other players for the side-kick to play along with.
Which, unfortunately, is lacking in most games (the good will), including EQ. The young rogue was surprised that I just gave him mats, bought all the other TS items, and gave him plat for gear. We were talking about leveling, and I told him that with a merc he was good until around 60-70, but then he is stuck in limbo as there aren't many players in that range. My only suggestion to him was to heroic to 100 and find a solid group of folks willing to take him on to help (I am sure my team would be more than happy to help).
And when you think of a Merc - well they kind of operate in a similar way to how a side-kick would, in that whatever level you are, they are also. (The CoH side kick system kept the side kick -1 level behind their hero) Mercs use the spells that their level would use yet the merc can go up & down in levels with the player, this system might not be quite how a side-kick system would need to work but it is remarkably similar in practice.
Spells/skill already do have "families" sort of. That's the 'copy/paste' for the spells/skills that several players complain about with each new expansion or level increase. In a gear-based game, a buff as a substitute for gear doesn't really work. Why should you gear up a lower level character at all, just side-kick them to have the equivalent? This would just encourage having a "side-kick" box, not another player, and not equip them. If you got the character to the level of the higher level one, i.e. the point where you would have to equip the "side-kick", just create a new character without gear.
That's why I suggested the side-kicks actual gear could have a portion of its benefits as a "bonus" over the cap, up to the devs if they decide to do something like that, in the hypothetical scenario that they even entertain the side-kicking idea. After all the entire premise might be hated by the devs or Ji Ham may just give it one finger of "approval", after all, maybe the C suite types just don't want EQ to grow & have new players.
If they continue to not implement a side-kick option, whether they tell the players of an active decision or not, does not automatically indicate they "just don't want EQ to grow & have new players". As far as I know, only one game has used the side-kick concept and that game was sunsetted several years ago because it didn't have enough players to sustain it through a development house shifting (one similar to how Daybreak was formed when Sony decided to end SOE). That particular track record of side-kick doesn't really indicate it is a good way to grow & have new players. Mentoring was EQ2's idea to allow those of differing levels to play together and then, when self-mentoring was added, to play out-leveled content. Even adding rewards for the actual level while mentoring hasn't made it something many will go out of their way to do. There is even a TLE with automatic level adjustment (i.e. 'mentoring') to the content that should make it possible to have characters of different levels be able to group. On that server you not only get rewards for your actual level as drops in lower content (i.e. a level 90 doing level 50 stuff gets level 90 drops), you also get an alternate currency to buy actual level gear. If it was really only an issue of people not mentoring to group with others 'cause they don't get gear for their own level, that server would be a lot more popular than it is. Mentoring in general would be, but isn't, no matter the incentives added for actual level.
That would be something better added later in a TLP lifecycle than at launch, like with the Luclin unlock or later.
yeah, why not just mentoring. Its easy, basically turn mentoring it takes like 10 seconds and bam you can group in that group with low levels. xp is good too for the person mentoring. Sometimes its better than not mentoring getting regular xp. Group up is easy in EQ, you don't have to worry about being too high of a level, better to mentor down and play with people than solo bored. EQ2 they got things right. It's overshadowed because of Michael Jordan. I mean World of Warcraft. If your trying to make any game like FFXIV, trying to take what makes so many people that game. EQ2 is in better position to be FFXIV wannabee than EQ1. EQ1 is pretty outdated you just don't know. EQ1 and WoW are not apples and apples. EQ1 is PS1 era its older 1999. remember the days of 32MB video graphics card. thats EQ Then 256MB came out, big deal, thats WoW and EQ2. PS1 era that was a quickie. EQ PS2 era that one pretty long, game changer. Thats EQ2, WoWs time. Some PS2 games still consider better than other games. GTA San Andres, I play with over GTA5. People be thinking EQ1 and WoW are on the same level same playing dead wrong. WoW is a newer era engine than EQ1, EQ1 is outdated now, WoW can still keep going its engine isn't outdated outdated yet. EQ2 is in the same boat as WoW, but not EQ1. run and jump in EQ1, now do it in EQ2 and WoW, big difference.
Best laugh for Friday. Glad you didn't reference the King. I would have been thoroughly disappointed in your judgment.
I'm more for the Higher level toon scaling down to the lower level player, rather than the reverse. Mentoring over Sidekicking.
Mentoring in EQII does things very differently to how the EQ devs have so far approached everything in EQ. In EQ the devs approach has been "no way are max level players getting rewarded for playing in old content" and everything they do is built around high level players being in the most recent content, they even nerfed XP in older expansions & fudged around with HA scaling making a bloody mess of it for the very same reasons. EQ2 decided to do the exact opposite to encourage it. To me Mentoring just doesn't have enough appeal to waste time developing it and still requires the higher level player to have some kind of benevolence that is asking them to make sacrifices of their time in the most recent content to go backwards & play content they may already be entirely bored of. And a large focus here is what the higher players want, nobody is asking what the lowbies want, do lowbies want to play for months & months in old outdated content in an effort to appease the "well we had to play all that old stuff so should you be forced to before you are worth playing the new stuff with" crowd. You know who you are, the "know your place" types. Are lowbies happy to be beholden to the generosity of a few concerned citizens looking down upon them with pity and choosing to make the sacrifices needed to help out a potential new player who they often deep-down believe is 95% unlikely to stick around anyway? What do the lowbies get forced to resort to when they do not earn the attentions of some mighty max-level benefactor? Same old grind, alone. Mentoring is far too open to being irrelevant. Why do people prefer Mentoring to the idea of Side-Kicking anyway? Do they like the lop-sided power dynamic involved? Do they think unproven noobs are just not to be trusted in their high level parties? Are they worried the new player will steal their friends?
