What is the stance going to be on PL'ing in Valiance? Matt Miller was so adamantly against PL'ing that he wrecked COH more than once because he was so hellbent on keeping people from doing it. I liked it because I loved to PvP and getting a character to max level so I could farm and PvP was what I enjoyed doing. Personally, if its not crashing the server or ruining other peoples experience, what is the big deal? I would hope Valiance takes a friendly stance on PL'ing. Not necessarily facilitating it but not going out of your way to crush every PL method that comes up would be nice.

Thoughts?

Personally I have nothing directly against PL'ing since it does have its place.

I agree with you here, they don't need to expend any resources to design for it nor should they expend any to remove the possibility for it. Sure, they'll need to keep an eye on it so it doesn't get out of hand but that would probably be part of the overall monitoring of farming in general, since PL'ing is essentially just farming for XP.

I agree about the watching that it doesn't get out of hand. I liked how it ended up being with Architect Entertainment in CoH. You could PL and Farm with it but you didn't get any drops so there was a trade-off.

Interesting Topic. I personally never had a problem with PL'ing ... I received and gave PL'ing to/from friends who didn't have time for the grind to 50 ... I got a few chars to 50 by playing different arcs, and then took some others through PL'ing to certain levels of playability. If you enjoyed the game differently than me (i.e. Sitting in Box missions while someone else grabbed all the baddies and gave you XP, then fine). I agree with the previous reply, the AE really had a good balance on the limited/no drops. The first few toons in Valiance will be to get through the arcs, experience the game and the devs hard work, but if PL'ing is present, I will take advantage under certain situations so that I can enjoy the game.

My only real problem with power leveling was the shift away from leveling content to pure 'end game' content.

I understand your opinion on it, however, my point was to (and this is friendly sentiment, not a flame war starter) say that if others do like to experience the game differently (i.e. PL'ing instead of grinding through missions and end game content), then let them.

I can give examples where PL'ing greatly enhanced mine and my friends' game experience (well after we all had level 50s and experienced end game content)

I will share simply for the great memory and give others ideas (and possibly different perspective):

3 friends and myself welcomed another friend to COH (a newbie whom we coached through some early levels). When he received the FrostFire mission in his teens, we all decided to build him support characters ( all Radiation ... Controller, Defender, Dominator) and PL'd them all to the level to participate. We had him crank up the difficulty, he read all the story arc, and stated many times "Man, this game is incredible, they've thought of everything, it's so cool" .... "Man guys, this is the most FUN I've ever had in a video game ... thank you thank you"

Without the ability to PL, I am not sure the experience would be as great as it was ...the 4 CoH veterans were able to level the night before, build the toons that made this memory possible .... This is 8 years ago, and still I wax emotionally about it. And damnit I miss the ability to do it (or something like it) again.

Again, I will say thanks to OP ... it's a healthy discussion topic.

Perhaps Valiance Online (are we gonna adopt VO for it ?) can understand this and foster a (appropriate time and place) system for it.

Honestly, I don't think there needs to be any specific system in regards to PL'ing, neither for or against it.

Most of the time it was just enough to use the mentoring system and running missions way above your normal level, and even better if done in a full group. Sure there were also the specifically designed architect mission for it but from my memory they weren't really that much better since many required specialized builds for top efficiency.

Yeah, I had a specialized mission that I had built that was all fire damage and ambushes with a glowey at the end. I had a Super Strength/Fire brute with the fire ball epic powerset. Max resistances and massive damage. The XP was massive. It was compact and fast.

Dam i miss some ss/fire brute. I think ss itself was good with any defense you wanted to experiment. Nice close attk, aswell as range and one good aoe [Foot Stomp]

Takron wrote:
Catching up on some older posts.

To answer you, we won't necessarily facilitate power leveling, but we also won't stop people from doing it. If people want to have a lower level character run around with them and advance at a faster rate, they will be able to.

Just my two cents on this: The only time I cared about PL'ing was when I was bridge level, and then I absolutely hated it. Constant whispers/tells. If it's possible to get a "do not disturb" chat feature that defers messages from people who aren't friended, I think that would go a long way to removing the annoyance factor for people who prefer to solo.

I agree with the post that leveling content shouldn't be sacrificed for endgame.

cristobal03 wrote:
Most games I think have a way to "Hide" yourself.

ZeeHero wrote:
I loved the different hide functions in COH. Ghide hid you from guildies, if you just wanted to putz around on a new toon or something. stuff like that

Yeah with proper hide functions account handles don't bother anyone and are purely a huge quality of life improvement as they're intended to be.

A few posts above mentions the Frost~~ mission, and while I remember that.. there's also more. A really good and sneaky power leveling that i'm not sure many people knew about was with Glowies in missions giving xp to everyone on a team regardless of being in the same zone. It might've been one specific mission though, but it worked good.

Another post referring to Matt Miller nerfing the game. I think this is a reference to the Aggro Cap limit? Once being able to horde an ENTIRE map of mobs all at once onto a pile of a Blaster's Trip Mines. I'm not sure if the Custom "Create your own Mission" led users to make their own PLing level.

'Enhancement Diversification' was the biggest blow in the gut, moreso than Power Level nerfing. I don't think PLing can be stopped. I could argue both that it ruins the fun by giving the player things without deserving them, as well as it being a nice shortcut to make things more fun.

From what I read here it looks like VO is going in the right direction on this. I never had a problem with PL'ing and used it myself after I had a few of my characters at level 50.