Idea involving mercs: Allow lvl 95 characters to be hired out by the account holder as a mercenary. Utilizing your own lvl 95 as a merc would give you 100% xp bonus. You would be allowed to hire out 5 of your own lvl 95 characters as mercs (a full group of 6 including your active character), giving you the opportunity to gain up to 500% xp bonus. Reason: Many players have several alternate characters they casually level. Many would argue that by forcing players to participate in a grind session to level alts is how Sony keeps people in the game. Honestly, I have heard just as many people argue that this is the only reason they do not make alts - they have already experienced the game and have no desire to start over. Chronomages insure we always are given the option to go back and experience lower level content at our leisure, so why force us to endlessly play at those levels if we do not want to, simply because we wish to try out another class? Once you have played the game to level 95, you have a good handle on whether or not you enjoy the game style of EQII and have decided whether or not to continue playing. Alts are simply a way for us to experience the game from a different perspective. Alts also will make Sony more money because we cannot stop ourselves from needing to make sure all our characters have equal spoils. We should not be forced to request and reexplore content in order to get to the higher level areas where we are currently playing with our maxed characters. With a 20% veteran bonus per lvl 95 character, this helps, but it is still dreadfully slow. Now that mercs are in the game, allowing us to utilize our own level 95 characters as mercenaries to fight by our side will give added incentive for us to level our characters, and giving us 100% experience bonus for each level 95 character we use as a mercenary significantly increases our ability to get to the higher level content we wish to experience. I for one would much rather have my own characters, who I have outfitted, and the ability to choose which of their spells they utilize as a merc, to fight along side of me. They are my "family" - I know them, I trust them - they are not some random hireling I found off the street. Thoughts?
The Merc idea is interesting, but the XP bonus you've listed is ridiculous. You get a 20% XP bonus for every additional 95 on your account. The more alts you cap, the faster your next one will level. This would also seriously cut into their sales of Heroic characters. If you really want that much XP to basically skip most of the game, buy a heroic - That's what they are there for.
Mercing your own toons has been suggested previously. I orriginally sugested it cause I'd prefer to be able to control the itemization of the merc. However, mercs don't work like characters, and I don't believe this request is remotely possible.
I understand the concern for the amount of XP I have accessed. However, after playing the game for several years (over 10) and rolling umpteen-gazillion characters ... been there done that syndrome sets in at some point. I realize this is an unrealistic request, but I personally feel it would be a wonderful way to reward players for their hard work at obtaining end game. Of course if you wish to level the the way it is now, you would simply hire out another alt or even allow characters to turn off all vet bonuses - possibly add a slider to the character screen similar to that in the AA screen. I could even see them having an unlock feature attatched to it where you have to pay 500SC to unlock a level 95 character as a hireable mercenary for other characters on your account. To Atan: Someone told me they were planning to revamp mercenaries to allow players to choose the spells the class would use while under contract. There should be little reason why they could not alter this type of system to utilize actual characters from your account.
How can you play a game for over ten years when it has only been released for nine years? Are you a Timelord?!?
What does any of this have to do with a new ideas forum? The way it is now is fine. Everything gets posted in its respective forum, if it's a tradeskill idea, house item idea or whatever.
