Rise Above It
Another thing about character advancement is what the character does when it hits the level cap. What I’m talking about here is ascension. Once again, a little info for the uninitiated: Some games have an “extra” feature beyond leveling, and that’s ascension. What it means is that once a character reaches a certain level it has the option to ascend. This doesn’t have to apply only to level-based games with level caps – the character doesn’t have to ascend – the player could keep playing it to hunt for loot (if there’s a cap) or keep leveling it (if there is no cap), but the option to ascend will be given. Ascension usually means that the character goes back to level 1, but with certain bonuses. It could be slightly higher stats, or faster xp gains, or retaining a certain skill. It could basically be anything.
As for us, we like the concept of ascension, but since we’re not yet certain how the character advancement will work, it’s still a bit early to decide on the ascension issue. These two topics should be addressed together, and decided upon together.
So if you’ve any thoughts for or against ascensions, or any ideas for the bonuses received after ascending, feel free to share.
Cheers,
Krazny
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I’ve always liked the concept of ascension. However, since like you state one usually starts again at level 1 again I’d like to suggest ‘ascension with a twist’.
Introduce ageing in your game. At a certain age, characters gain the ability to ‘procreate’. Allow players that have this ability, to procreate with either other players (of the opposite gender, of course) and with NPC’s. One would ascend via one’s offspring. The offspring would have higher starting stats (based on a random mix of the parents current stats, but ’scaled down’ to reflect the starting level of the offspring) than a ‘manually created’ char can have.
Sounds like a great idea, brings up lots of new issues to consider (like does it really have to be the opposite gender or can we “rise above it”
). By the way, if memory serves…. I remember seeing a game that has a similar system in it – Do you happen to know (and remember) its name?
A way to ‘rise above it’ might be the implementation of hermafrodite cowboys
. The guys in Arizona might object tho.
‘Offspring’ in a game isn’t a new concept indeed. The only game that I can think of right now that has it is The Sims.
Well, it’s decided… We like the “offspring” concept. We haven’t seen it in any web-based game yet and it will be a very interesting concept to work on, plus… it fits quite well with the skill-sets advanecment system we’re planning