The one thing that annoys me most in MMORPG is that you have to spend alot of time in one area to level up and go to the next area. I know it's the core of RPGs, but I don't like it that high level players are seperated from low level player. I belive I found a way to solve it. You will only have one skill you can level up-leadership. With this skill, you can offer rewards to players who will be on your team. That way, you could make a team, and take it to the harder areas. High-levels will be able to play in more advance as team-leaders, and low-levels will be able to play there as team-members. What do you think?

Great idea. Get cracking.

Asheron's Call 2 already has this to some degree. Most higher level players have protection/healing spells they can apply to everybody in their fellowship (hunting party/quest group). Players in a fellowship can share XP gained from fighting if the person who made the kill is within a certain number of levels of the person gaining XP.

The idea is, that high-levels will be able to go to the advance areas, only if they have a team. in a one on one pvp, high level charecter is a match for a low level one. Unless one of the player is more skilled, ofcourse.

also called party play.

e.g. diablo2 has monsters, which levels depends on the some calculations out of the stats / levels of all players in that area. Means if you are level 10 and goes out into a area, the monster are much weaker than if you are level 10 and another 7 players of level 10 in your party (or not) goes out in that same area.

The bad thing is, when you make it like this, that almost everybody can goes everywhere, just with the right party ( of low levels ), you have to make your monsters / oponents of players very low level, other wise you are only going to see players dying again and again and again (also called single-hit-kill) in areas which are not "highly suggested" to their levels, until they found out that the feature of "to be in a party and possible to also go to high areas" does has a little sence and instead keep playing in the low areas.

It's a good idea, but does have a few potential issues, as observed by JoeDB. I'd also have to agree with the notion that the higher level players will require a party of lower level players for some tasks. Your system could easily be broken if high level players can band together, boost each others abilities, and then head off into dangerous territory, leaving the weaker players without a powerful leader.

What happens if a low level character gets disconnected or logs off in a high level zone?

Quote:

Original post by Garmichael What happens if a low level character gets disconnected or logs off in a high level zone?

Or the high level leader gets disconnected and you have a bunch of stranded low level players...

It sounds like a good idea, but in its current state its to general and needs alot more details worked out. Keep chipping away at it and I think this could become a very good idea!

-Limb

just an idea:

You need a master to level up. You only get exp or new skills in the presence of a master/teacher. these masters are NPCs. The master serves as a backup, he will only help you if you are almost dying. (ie, a newbie trying to tackle a stronger foe too early). A master NPC can have maybe 1-4 students.

You'd have all these parties wadering around. If you ask your master to raise your strength, he will guide you to a place where monsters are heavy armored. IF you want to improve your magic, a magic-resistance place. Not having a master is possible but you don't learn new skills or gain exp slower.

Masters are contractual. You pay them for a certain amount of hours or levels. You go to the town Msters guild and choose a master you want to study under. Some masters may have specialties or skills.

They may be the answer to high levels beating low levels and steal-kills (players hovering outside a battle and only stepping in to give the final blow or steal the dropped items). A master could detect a another group of players and prevent his students from joining the battle. sort of like mobile GMs. A master can also prevent PvP where not allowed. (e.g. when attempting to attack a player with a master the master blocks your attack ot your master stops your attack)

the downside is the amount of AI needed for the masters. in the worst case, each player has a master, making the server work perhaps twice as hard. A possible solution is to level cap the students. Only players below a certain level can become students, with higher level players having the option of becoming Masters themselves. All Masters (PC/NPC) have a restriction that they can not attack a PC.

With this system, permadeath might be a good idea since the lower levels usually have a Hand-holding Master to stop your from dying. if the students insists on fighting a powerful monster even against the Master's advice, then they deserve to permanently die ;P.

NPC Masters can also be attacked and killed. A powerful player may kill his own master or another master but this will result in permanent ban or another grave punishment (can't enter any town, wanted by police,etc) This is because Masters are defensive and do not really join into battles and can not initiate combat with another player. Attacking a Master proves malicious intent and the system can automatically log who is the offender (player who attacked Master).

I can't think of ideas how to extend this to PC Masters though, or the problem when a PC master logs off/dies leaving newbies behind. Perhaps disabling the permadeath when a group of students lose a master.

Another problem is how can 1 master protect his 4 students in case they are attacked by 4 PCs? I can only think of not procesing the attacks and letting the master give 1 warning dialog. All damage is automatically redirected to the master until he dies. permadeath is disabled for the students and the attacking PCs can kill them, of they choose. Permadeath is also disabled for PC Masters in case they are attacked by PCs.

So instead of having 100 zones of varying degrees of difficulty, you have 1 zone of super difficulty? Everyone would just hang around outside waiting to build a party.

If the only skill I have is "Leadership", what else am I doing? Why am I playing a game to sit around for 45 minutes waiting for a group to get into the best zone? There's no reason to hang out in the crap zones if I can wait around for a bit for the good zone and there's no point in going into the good zone if that's the one and only thing worth doing.

I don't see how this solves anything. I guess it does achieve the goal of bringing everyone together... Unfortunately, that would be on your forums, bitching about the lack of stuff to do. =P