Celtic Heroes

I feel like OTM's approach to expanding the game through increasing levels is not very creative and will be eventually detrimental to the games long term playability. When the game loses its ability to garner and retain completely new players it has sighed its last breath.

And if they keep the cap going up and up... New players will either leave after realizing how far behind they are or they will
Simply not play at all.
When that happens I can almost guarantee you all that OTM will respond by making the grind easier. Levels will take half as long, they will earn twice as much exp, and so on.
So when OTM does that... Oh man... You will all be upset, because each time it happens it will cheapen your accomplishment. If it took you a thousand hours to make your characters and OTM makes it so a newer player can reach the same point within a day or two... You will be upset.

Just my two cents =)
I say we squelch this before it becomes a problem. I feel like it may already have become a problem.

I am really liking your ideas. I have a few questions though. In order for this to work do you have to be at max level to start accumulating the alternate points or while leveling up could you choose between moving up a level or opt out to instead get x amount of alt points and stay at your current level? I would assume if this was the case that you would only gain a small fraction of alt points compared to gaining them at max level. For example if alt skills climbed up similarly to the way our current skills do in proportion to your actual level, this would prevent someone from staying at a low level and just gaining alt skills since they would have to level up in order to spend them. Either way, I like this.

Your absolutely right. I was secretly hoping otm had a plan for all this but it seems they dont, updte after update, not even a word on level capping.

Very curious to see admins response on this so ill bump this when i can. Ur suggestions are great, i think to keep it simple they could use and modify the current ability points to incorporate the new system, add new ones, and each ability level u gain after the cap allows u to unlock 100 ability points of the selected ability or somthing.

So for example if a mage wants to be a fire-based they cud invest all the points in fire magic. The current bonuses u get from the abilities will need to be improved and modified though.

I am really liking your ideas. I have a few questions though. In order for this to work do you have to be at max level to start accumulating the alternate points or while leveling up could you choose between moving up a level or opt out to instead get x amount of alt points and stay at your current level? I would assume if this was the case that you would only gain a small fraction of alt points compared to gaining them at max level. For example if alt skills climbed up similarly to the way our current skills do in proportion to your actual level, this would prevent someone from staying at a low level and just gaining alt skills since they would have to level up in order to spend them. Either way, I like this.

I understand your question; however, since I don't design this game it's hard to answer for you.
Here is how it worked in EverQuest.
Once a player reached a certain level (I think level 51 out of 60) they had the option to "divert" experience to their AA pool.
Essentially, it was a completely separate experience pool, a different exp bar with a different result when it would fill. Players could choose the exact percentage to be diverted to the AA exp pool and they could adjust it at any time. So to overly explain that let me paint the picture for you. You can grind on mobs with 0% diverted towards AAs if you wanted to... meaning with each kill all of your exp would go towards your characters level progression. However you could change it, at any time, to a different percentage to earn AAs. So if you were in the middle of a boss fight and forgot you had your AAs set to 0% you could open the menu and move a sliding bar left or right to change the percentage. Whatever percentage you selected when the mob would die is where the exp went. AAs were earned when your AA exp bar became full. You got one AA point and your bar would become empty once again. It took around the same amount of time to earn one AA point as it did to earn one level. (level 50 to 51 amount of time, I THINK)
When a character reached max level, you could still gain level exp but only until your level exp bar became full, you would never gain another level at this point (can't go from 60 to 61 because 60 is max, but you could fill the bar anyway)... This acted as a "reserve" for players to use in the event of death. Death I'm EQ1 caused exp loss and could potentially result in the loss of a level if a player was not careful. This is why max level characters would still divert some of their AA exp towards leveling exp to continue "topping off" this reserve.
This game has no such death penalty in any form or fashion so it's not really an issue here.
I hope that answered your question, and of you are curious to learn more do a little light reading on this page here:http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:AA
Follow any of the links (like Wikipedia) to get a better explanation of what they are talking about. Read some of the AAs descriptions to get a feel for what kind of abilities could be transferable to this game.

Some of the AAs were crazy crazy powerful and would unlock abilities that were invaluable to completing end game content. An example of this would be unlocking a warriors ability to use "stun" (let's call it shield bash) without having a shield equipped. Meaning a pure DPS warrior using 2H weps could still shield bash.... This ability was not unlocked using one AA points. You had to "save up for it" I'm going to check the alakazam website and tell you exactly how much it cost in EQ1....... And I found it, it cost 6 AA points and had no prerequisites, however you couldn't spend the 6 AAs on this skill until you unlocked it at level 59. Here is the reference page http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:2_Hand_Bash
And some AA's were just incremental increases in innate character traits. Such as poison resistance. First upgrade may cost one AA and give you +10 to the resistance, the second upgrade may cost 4 AAs and give you an additional +20 on top of the +10 that you already had.

Hope all that made sense, glad you guys like the idea =)
Just know, it's not my idea! Lol, I stole it from EverQuest!

I think CH is far from having AAs like in Everquest. The end-game content is very sparse and the abilities/skills don't need get into a complex system....yet.

I would like to see CH have more dungeon-like zones that means something other than grinding xp. A series of bosses to beat that will only spawn after one is beaten, for example.
I'd like to see more epic class quests, better loot itemization, battlegrounds, crafting system, etc. before level cap increases to 210 (if at all).

Idk I think they could add more dungeons with a twist. Like with one leystone at the beginning and you have to fight several "mini bosses" before being allowed to continue and then when you get to the end you fight the main boss and it would drop random items like aggragoth. Also, you couldn't just keep doing the dungeon over and over because the bosses still have a spawn rate like the regular bosses. These dungeon should be set up to the point where they are mazes and take about an hour to complete. It could even be a grinding/farming zone as the mobs could range from lvl 80-180

I think CH is far from having AAs like in Everquest. The end-game content is very sparse and the abilities/skills don't need get into a complex system....yet.

I would like to see CH have more dungeon-like zones that means something other than grinding xp. A series of bosses to beat that will only spawn after one is beaten, for example.
I'd like to see more epic class quests, better loot itemization, battlegrounds, crafting system, etc. before level cap increases to 210 (if at all).

Absolutely agreed. This game is still very primal. There is a ton of expansion needed in almost all aspects.
One thing that somebody said before (can't find the quote) was that OTM needs to stop expanding upward and start expanding outward. Meaning to me that all content at all levels and stages of game play need to be beefed up. New quest lines added, more places to explore, new bosses, pretty much everything you just said...
I'm just trying to offer an alternative to increasing the level cap. That's all the developers seem to be doing. They don't seem to realize that the game can be expanded without jus increasing max levels and regurgitating the same grinding content in a new area with a new face in a new name.
Shale was just a regurgitated Lirs with higher levels, different mobs, and different place
SV was regurgitated Shale with '', '', and ''
OW was just... You get it
I imagine the new world will be the same thing, I'm not complaining per se... This is the nature of MMO's; however, mostly every widely successful MMO realized the need to limit character levels to a finite and attainable goal. When that limit was increased it took yeeeeaaaarrrrssss for the expansion to come out to allow continued leveling.
How long has WoW been out? What's the max level? I think like 80 or something? I'm not sure, I don't play that game.

So I agree with you aileron, this game is still in its infancy (IMO) and needs to see outward expansion very badly. I still think we need to stop the upward expansion, cap it off and offer an alternative to leveling in the classic sense... Crafting is an excellent example.

Despite how young this game is, I still think an effective AA system could be released in a basic sense. AAs could expand over time with game content to keep pace. So... When crafting comes out, so do crafting AAs. So on and so forth

/end unnecessarily long explanation that could probably be reduced to a few sentences. Thanks for your patience.

Idk I think they could add more dungeons with a twist. Like with one leystone at the beginning and you have to fight several "mini bosses" before being allowed to continue and then when you get to the end you fight the main boss and it would drop random items like aggragoth. Also, you couldn't just keep doing the dungeon over and over because the bosses still have a spawn rate like the regular bosses. These dungeon should be set up to the point where they are mazes and take about an hour to complete. It could even be a grinding/farming zone as the mobs could range from lvl 80-180

I love instance zones like you are describing here. They are an integral part of any great MMO. Real time zone bossing is fun in the competition sense... But we shoud have both.

In other games, clans would set a time to meet up outside of a dungeon zone. When everyone was there they
Would form the groups and (in some games) bind the separate groups together to create a "raid party" once the raid party was assembled the leader would enter the dungeon or instance zone an drag everyone that had been bound to him along. Everyone would appear in the zone together and start to fight their way to the end exactly as you have just described. Those were always the most fun for me while playin other MMO's

A lot of great points made in this thread - lets hope OTM is listening.

I want to add that I have introduced many friends to this game. Most have quit around level 50 due to the insane grinding it takes. I played EQ1 for nearly 5 years (I had like 1300 AA's or something). It was the best game I have ever played, and I often reminisce about the times I had there. The points that have been made here, new player daunting leveling task, lack of end game content, rising level caps - all very valid! Please OTM...

The other great thing about EQ was the crafting. I don't know that I would craft again, but it would certainly add a dimension for some people. I spent more that a couple hours in front of a potter's wheel.

The great thing about crafting being that it doesn't require a character level, and aids in a dynamic economy.

I really do hope that the level is capped with Update 5, and that the main focus of the update is Auction House and Crafting.

And now for a foolish EQ crafting story: A good friend of mine also played EQ, and became a master tinkerer. He built an Aqualung, and to test it out he decided to walk to Kunark (a 15 min or so boat ride). Took him 3 hours.