Originally posted by Kaneth

I'm ok with it. You still get sidekicked up for PvP which is an important feature for V8 (or W3) to work. On the PvE side, getting downkicked is more beneficial than the reverse, especially in terms of skills and abilities. Honestly, I like having more options for reusing previous content (sidekick down) content, rather than allowing folks to skip a significant portion of the game.

There would be no skipping though. And these two systems are in no way mutually exclusive. Both were supposed to exist so that there would be very few barriers for people to play together.

People keep talking about "skipping" content, but this is alarming to me because it calls into question the actual design of the game and how people are understanding it versus what I understand of it. Dynamic events are not ways to get to 80. They're certainly good for leveling, and getting those utilities mentioned in the OP, but leveling was, as I understood it, supposed to be largely irrelevant. At level 80, you're not supposed to just be doing level 80 stuff. The downscaling is NOT only for going back to help your friends, but rather being able to experience the dynamic events you definitely will miss and still being able to gain from them.

Originally posted by Serelisk

People keep talking about "skipping" content, but this is alarming to me because it calls into question the actual design of the game and how people are understanding it versus what I understand of it. Dynamic events are not ways to get to 80. They're certainly good for leveling, and getting those utilities mentioned in the OP, but leveling was, as I understood it, supposed to be largely irrelevant. At level 80, you're not supposed to just be doing level 80 stuff. The downscaling is NOT only for going back to help your friends, but rather being able to experience the dynamic events you definitely will miss and still being able to gain from them.

 

The actual design is in fact changing to cater to those people who "don't get it". Anet is dropping their manifesto. All the latest announcements have been U-turns. Soon enough, you'll be farming epic gear with epic stats in dumbed-down dungeons.

Originally posted by iller

I fail to see a problem here....  Anyone who DOES.... let me ask you...  HOW LONG did play City of Heroes for?

 

If you never played City of Heroes then you're kind of walking into this issue totally ignorant of the Meta-game that is created by allowing "Sidekicking Upwards".   Not only that, it actually led directly to the RMT'ing of power-leveling services b/c it's almost impossible to enforce the proper leveling Curves in end-game against certain mobs that allow for "Phat XP farming".   In City of Heroes there was nothing more cancerous in the entire game than the Peregrine Island power leveling.  It separated the playing populace into two groups and that made grouping itself real chore b/c later on you'd end up getting teamed with these power-leveled MORONS who didn't have the slightest idea of how to actually play their class. 

 

I applaud A-net for this decision.  They recognized a limitation in the mathematics of Min-Maxxable XP balancing and they nipped it in the bud BEFORE release.

 

Originally posted by VowOfSilence

Also, consider a group of 5 people with 1 of them being a lower level.

Now everybody has to move to the lower lvl area - or they just drop him.

So?  There's still "Elite" content for them to do in the lower regions as well and they may get even higher quality mods/rewards for beating it than they'd get against vanilla-difficulty mobs in the upper levels.

 

Infact some of the most profitable farming in the game in GW1 was done in lower level areas. (especially if you turned on hardmode)

The problem, as I see it, is that the developers, by getting rid of upscaling, are limiting ways for players to enjoy the game together when they want to.

I don't understand your talking about min-maxxing XP balancing and how this was handled in CoH, but Guild Wars 2 is unlike CoH in-that levels is not a dominant feature of the game. There is no leveling curve at all.

Also, there's still ways players can enjoy the game together through downscaling, but it's significantly less. Let's say a player is level 40, and another is level 70. There's 500 DE's from level 1-40, and 500 DE's from 40-70. You can only play half of the total amount of content available to the level 70 player which is 1000 DE's total, instead, being only able to play the 500 available to the level 40.

You're right, Arena Net could have unearthed problems with this system during extensive playtime, but I'm not very concerned with why they would've done it if it's not something we actually have avilable to discuss because personally I can't think of any. I'm more concerned with the explained loss of content avilable to play with friends at higher levels.

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

Originally posted by Zzad

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

I don't get it.

I mean, I still think there's a thrill in leveling up because you gain access to skills and traits to customize your character with actual leveling, but as I see it with DE's, there are now large restrictions on the amount of content available for you and your friends to play together and still mutually benefit from

Originally posted by Corehaven

So Im assuming sidekicking down works at least?  Or rather, if a level 60 plays with a level 30 in a 30 area, he's kicked down to 30. 

 

If thats the case you can still play with your friends.  You just have to play the content they are leveled too. 

 

I never spoke out about it, but having my friend who just started the game at level 1 suddenly come romping along with me to do level 70 stuff, is kind of weird.   How would rewards or drops even work for him?  Guess there are work arounds for that, but still, with the former system, you could just skip to end game zones by just going with an 80 friend when you are level 4.  

 

So personally Im kind of glad its not there anymore.  Im assuming they thought it was a good idea, saw it in practice, and decided it was anything but.  Such things happen in development. 

Your friend would only be able to sidekick up to your level and play content with you if you or someone you're partied with manually leveled him up for specifically that reason. He wouldn't be able to just move through zones as if levels didn't actually exist.

A couple of people have mentioned the second highlighted, but it doesn't really add to the pros and cons of the upscaling system if we don't actually know what those are. I'm interested to know what people think those game breaking reasons might be though.

great decision. sidekicking up didnt make sense. takes away the epicness of the encounter.

Originally posted by Serelisk

Originally posted by Zzad

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

I don't get it.

I mean, I still think there's a thrill in leveling up because you gain access to skills and traits to customize your character with actual leveling, but as I see it with DE's, there are now large restrictions on the amount of content available for you and your friends to play together and still mutually benefit from

It was like that in Guild Wars & i´m fine with it.

In Guild Wars you couldn´t run "Kanaxai" or "Urgoz" at lvl 3...................

Beeing able to kill the biggest Dragon in GW2 at level 1  just doesn´t feel right to me....

kudos to Anet.

Originally posted by colddog04

I personally prefer it without sidekicking up. And I like that you can sidekick down.

im happy with the current design too

Originally posted by Serelisk

EU Fan Day QA

We had a chance to try the game and noticed that the side kicking system didn’t work inside instances. We were wondering if you are going to confirm this or if in the future or in the release there is a side kicking system inside instances or dungeons?

Colin Johanson: There is side kicking in all of dungeons in the game. Each dungeon whether it is a story dungeon or an explorable dungeon has a correlated level that your character gets side kicked down to if you are over the level of the dungeon, but we do not sidekick you up to the level of the dungeon. So to do any of the dungeons in the game you need to get be high enough level to participate in it and then if you go over level for it, we’ll side kick you down to keep it challenging and fun for you. So for example the Ascalon Catacombs story dungeon is a level 30 and if you get up to say, level 38 we’ll side kick you down to the level of the dungeon so you can keep playing it with everyone and have it be fun and challenging for you.

Eric Flannum: One thing to note is that, earlier we talked about how we were going allow players to sidekick up in level we actually don’t have that functionality in the game and the reason we don’t have it is because when we were going through the game we thought one of the really important moments in the game was kind of that moment where you ran into something and you weren’t quite powerful enough to overcome it, or skilled enough to overcome it, and we wanted to give people the ability to kind of be able to build their character in such a way that you could by those moments instead of just bypassing them by getting artificially side kicked up a level. And so we don’t have side kicking up anymore in the game anymore except for in WvW. So if you want to think of how our dynamic level adjustment works is that it automatically happens downwards in PvE and automatically happens upwards in WvW. And competitive PvP obviously you get set to equal level everybody. So that’s kind of how that works now.

 

While some may not have known about this feature, as highlighted in this thread over at Guild Wars 2 Guru, there was, at some point, a feature planned where players would be able to have a higher level character sidekick them up to their level. This was supposed to be similar to systems in other games like CoH. They would still retain all their original traits, gear, and skills like in WvWvW. There would just be a base increase of stats so they could play with their friends in higher level PvE content.

I'm actually really disappointed that this feature is no longer in the game's PvE. My understanding was that their vision for the game would include a lot of focus on being able to play with your friends. Now, obviously, I expected their to be SOME restrictions to this (like sidekicking up and doing dungeons would have been limited somehow) but it was my idea that the sidekicking up half of this feature for PvE had everything to do with them wanting to play together. Players can obviously still play together through auto scaling to lower leveling content, but this significantly limits the amount of content players can experience together at any given moment.

Now, instead of a level 30 being able to sidekick up to level 60 content with their level 60 friend because they found an awesome event they wanted to experience with their friend, the level 30 now has to work through 30 levels in order to play with their friends, assuming they stayed the same level. While this may sound logical to some, who would refer to there being "no point in levels at all" if it were like that, I'd argue that Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2, from my perspective, were never truly about levels. Vertical progression seemed like a very limited and unimportant theme with the games. And Guild Wars 2 would still have points to levels, because you playing that higher leveled character through sidekicking would actually prove to be very challenging since you'd be without a lot of utility that true players of that level would likely have. And utility is ultimately an integral part of the game's combat. That's what the build system is based off.

Also, I intentionally referred to these understandings as completely belonging to my own concieved notions of the game so I wouldn't come across as thinking that my possibly skewed perception is the fault of Arena Net for not living up to my ideals. However, I don't think i'm alone in thinking that this goes against one of ArenaNet's core phoilosophies for gameplay, which is that there should be very few barriers for friends to play together, and there are things ArenaNet was willing to sacrifice in order for this to be achieved.

I guess not though. Thoughts?

 

p.s. I thought there would be a thread on this, but I didn't see any when I searched. So if there is, then oh well~

I am going to say that it is SIMILAR which is different from IDENTICAL.  I understand you are extremely upset about this but if you calm down you will see this isn't a bad thing. To put it in perspective imagine no sidekicking at all.

Originally posted by Serelisk

Originally posted by Zzad

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

I don't get it.

I mean, I still think there's a thrill in leveling up because you gain access to skills and traits to customize your character with actual leveling, but as I see it with DE's, there are now large restrictions on the amount of content available for you and your friends to play together and still mutually benefit from

I don't get it ...that you don't get it .It appears that most people who have posted here aren't interested in being sidekicked up for a number of different reason , but I have no clue why you would think you and your friends can't mutually benefit  from playing together ?

Originally posted by Zzad

Originally posted by Serelisk

Originally posted by Zzad

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

I don't get it.

I mean, I still think there's a thrill in leveling up because you gain access to skills and traits to customize your character with actual leveling, but as I see it with DE's, there are now large restrictions on the amount of content available for you and your friends to play together and still mutually benefit from

It was like that in Guild Wars & i´m fine with it.

In Guild Wars you couldn´t run "Kanaxai" or "Urgoz" at lvl 3...................

This doesn't make sense and was virtually a non-issue because...

1.) leveling from 1-20 in GW1 was NOT hard to do and could be completed in days. It served more as a tutorial. The game effectively started at level 20. The majority of the content was designed for level 20's. There also wasn't the technology in GW1 that supported scaling. There was just a hard mode version of content. And you could run those dungeons at any point the moment you hit level 20. However, you would be silly to do so as you likely wouldn't have the appropriate item customization on your gear or specific skills needed to do so.

Also, I already said that the dungeon aspect could've been circumvented by just not allowing upscaling in dungeons.

2.) I'm pretty confident in my understanding that a very major design philosophy Arena Net wanted to go with is removing many of the barriers that prevented people from playing together. Something that was never really an issue in GW1 because if you couldnb't be bothered to spend the very small amount of time it took to level to 20, then you weren't actually giving the system a chance. It takes considerably longer to gain levels in GW2 and as such is a very large barrier when people want to play together.

Originally posted by Baddogbill

Originally posted by Serelisk

Originally posted by Zzad

I simply love it !

You can still feel the thrill of leveling up!

but you can go back & still be challenging.

nuff said-

I don't get it.

I mean, I still think there's a thrill in leveling up because you gain access to skills and traits to customize your character with actual leveling, but as I see it with DE's, there are now large restrictions on the amount of content available for you and your friends to play together and still mutually benefit from

I don't get it ...that you don't get it .It appears that most people who have posted here aren't interested in being sidekicked up for a number of different reason , but I have no clue why you would think you and your friends can't mutually benefit  from playing together ?

I never said that o.o They can when downscaling, but they also could with upscaling. Since there's no upscaling, there is significantly LESS opportunity for players to do so.

I'm glad they are not letting people side-kick up levels. It would ruin the game. Especially if they make a dungeon finder and you are doing high level explorable dungeons and you get stuck with a low level group with crappy gear and no skills.

That would be highly frustrating.

And people side-kicking up to level 80 content from low levels would also be dumb. By the time they were high level they would have already done all of the content and would have little to nothing to look forward to. The exciting part of leveling up is to see what opens up for you each level whether it is a new skill, a new zone, a new dungeon or a new chain of events.

I'm all for the side-kicking system but only when you side-kick down in levels.

Well I never planned to use the sidekicking to move upwards so I can't say that this bothers me int he slightest. I love the scaling but being able to move freely both ways kinda made the levels actually meaningless for the most part. I do try to keep in mind that a lot of the system tweaks are happening and things are always subject to change for the betterment of their game so even this isn't final. I am not sure why someone would want to skip content even on an alt to jump ahead other than playing with a buddy, but this can still be handled by doing lower content with them so I dont think this is going to affect my gameplay. Thanx for the info.

i'm happy enough not to sidekick up. i think it's sensible.

Originally posted by Serelisk

Originally posted by Kaneth

I'm ok with it. You still get sidekicked up for PvP which is an important feature for V8 (or W3) to work. On the PvE side, getting downkicked is more beneficial than the reverse, especially in terms of skills and abilities. Honestly, I like having more options for reusing previous content (sidekick down) content, rather than allowing folks to skip a significant portion of the game.

There would be no skipping though. And these two systems are in no way mutually exclusive. Both were supposed to exist so that there would be very few barriers for people to play together.

People keep talking about "skipping" content, but this is alarming to me because it calls into question the actual design of the game and how people are understanding it versus what I understand of it. Dynamic events are not ways to get to 80. They're certainly good for leveling, and getting those utilities mentioned in the OP, but leveling was, as I understood it, supposed to be largely irrelevant. 

Yeah it was a nice thought while it lasted.  Level didn't matter much in GW1 so long as ya got your 30 Bonus Attribute points ahead of hitting 20.  But I guess enough traditional MMO'ers complained about that dynamic that Anet decided to compromise a bit.

Originally posted by FlawSGI

Well I never planned to use the sidekicking to move upwards so I can't say that this bothers me int he slightest. I love the scaling but being able to move freely both ways kinda made the levels actually meaningless for the most part. I do try to keep in mind that a lot of the system tweaks are happening and things are always subject to change for the betterment of their game so even this isn't final. I am not sure why someone would want to skip content even on an alt to jump ahead other than playing with a buddy, but this can still be handled by doing lower content with them so I dont think this is going to affect my gameplay. Thanx for the info.

Thanks for your explanation of your thoughts on the matter. I wasn't actually planning on using this either, unless it does happen that a higher level player wants me to come level with them and I'm lower level. I really like having the options for playing with my friends, and this severely restricts them.

No one has really offered me an explanation why this would break the game or hamper their own gameplay experiences specifically for PvE content excluding dungeons, something I talked about in the OP. It really sucks to me that this is no longer in the game, but I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

I would still like people to explain really why they feel the way they do about this.

I have always preferred mentoring down to sidekicking up. It makes more sense and works better, because higher level content should be designed around players with a certain amount of traits and skills available.

Scaling down to areas to keep them fun and challenging is great too. Means more content to do at max level, rather than running around greyed out zones where you are invincible. In EQ2 it never made sense to me that all those undead mobs would just cower in fear because I am 10 levels higher than them, as if a skeleton magically bound to protect a crypt cares how powerful an intruder is (admittedly EQ2 also has a great mentoring and chronomentoring system, although it has been trivialised by gear since TSO).

There are still many options for playing people that are a lower level than you. You can go help them out in areas suitable for them, or you can go participate in PvP with them.

Umm Serelisk, I just offered you that explanation....

It divides the population if you allow smurfs to get power-leveled in end-game areas with potentially unbalanced R-v-R mobs that can be exploited for faster XP when the leveling Curve math doesn't convert properly...

This is not a subjective matter or victimless crime I'm pointing out here.  This is a mathematic Cancer on the population and City of Heroes, the ORIGINAL creator of the sidekick system, already established it as such.