Replayability Ideas
I wanted to put my ideas here to see how they are accepted by others and if they would be appropriate for in-game achievability.
TLDR: reincarnations / new generations with boosts / boosting long-term achievements
Backstory/reasoning
I have had bad experiences with games (MMORPG's mostly) in the past for several reasons.
1: because the games are very short lived, there is little to do, and once you do everything you originally set out to accomplish, everything is just 'meh' after that, and maybe just loyalty groundwork to continue going.
2: because the games may have only an end-game, which is not what everyone wants to do. Many people like myself enjoy the journey there, living the story line as you progress up the divinity system. This is solved in a lot of games by offering variables . This includes things like Randomly Generated spawns, Randomly Generated loot, and other Randomizations. Another is solved by including multiple ways to complete in the game (such as CIV games where you have multiple win conditions, kind of idea). And others include things such as guaranteed different play-throughs every time you play, such as randomizing the maps, objectives, and even monsters you fight. But all of these things boil down to basically 'different each time' sort of deal. And in AoC this can be answered by the variety of different classes and combinations. However, in order to do this that means you MUST create a new character for every single playthrough. To my understanding, this means that the average person would need up to 64 possible character slots available per account if they wish to preserve each character as they do another 'combination'. Which sounds from a playable perspective, certainly something fun and entertaining and desirable for a goal.
3: because games simply have a stopping point. Now MMO's that get regular updates generally don't have as much of a problem with this, and it would be as expected to continue playing as each new 'update' and 'expansion' arises. But even then, it comes down to 'does the expansion actually drive curiosity enough to come back to the game and play that?'
Idea
I have played multiple games, and have also seen what I personally like best about the games I've played. One game in particular is the game/MMO that I play most, and is always my go-to when I get into gaming(DDO). However, it has many flaws in it (namely, bugs and balancing issues). But they incorporated a lot of good ideas that I would love to see come to this game.
**1** is that you always have something to accomplish, at least something that would keep people going far longer then it would take to just wait for the 'next expansion'. This is done in a lot of games by simply adding Achievements; and don't get me wrong, I think achievements definitely carry a game's interesting capabilities for a LONG time by providing goals for more dedicated gamers. But I would like to see 'achievements' provide some veterans bonuses to make them more interesting, and more sought after. That is to say, they gain a small edge, by having played the game more than others. But at the same time; its not something that someone with a much higher skill (gaming skills) cannot overcome. And to that point; I would like to see something like 'stat advancements' available for achievements.
---- Such as: You complete a very big portion of the game, near-max out most of your capabilities in the game, and complete some arbitrary requirement / Quest. in particular, lets say you start a main class as a 'Fighter' and then achieve the max level, maxed your crafting skills (with what is possible to achieve in each crafting skill not including the 1 mastery above the rest) to the best, and then are rewarded with this by lets say, a 'account-wide bonus to all your characters: +1 Constitution, +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity' sort of thing. Now maybe these numbers can be tweaked to be more of a balance, as I do not know the balancing numbers; but you have the idea. Another idea could be something like, instead of directly increasing stats, you have something like a 'bonus' that adds a small percentage. Maybe '+5% movement speed, +2% of all damage, -1% of all damage taken'. Now obviously this should not stack infinitely. But perhaps maybe 1 for each class, or perhaps maybe you can achieve it multiple times per class (like, say, up to 3 times?), or perhaps you can only select one of the achieved at a time to provide that bonus. Or maybe even up to '5' of them? There are different ways to balance this.
**2** is that, to solve the multiple playthrough abilities, while still maintaining a desirable smaller selection of character pools, would be to allow a sort of 'restart' kind of system. Obviously, no-one wants to just simply 'restart' out of the blue. But when you provide incentives for it, its certainly not out of the question anymore. So something that I would like to see is something similar found in the D&D Universe, where they have a 're-incarnation system' sort of deal. I believe that providing a sort of in-game character restart, without actually deleting the character AND by providing incentives (lets say, ways to grow stronger) will by-in-large increase the games survivability and long-term gameplay in my opinion. This would work for the end-game bossing group of people, as you may change your classes instead of restarting completely, to find something that may work better for your role in your group. But this would also work for the people that enjoy the journey there more than the simple 'end-game grind' as you provide this sort of restart incentive.
---Such as: You achieve max-level in your class, or something close to it, and then lets say you complete a 'Quest' that only a max-class character could complete. And as a reward, you receive some blueprints to 'catalyze your life' kind of system. And lets say this could be set up in your own 'player-owned housing', and only works on max-level characters. And this could require components that could only be made by master-craftsmanship (thus requiring you to trade parts around, as you can only achieve creating 1 of the master-craft specializations per character (or per-life sort of thing)). And in this canalization, it restarts your level back to, lets say, level 5? But as incentive, you receive some boost that only a 're-incarnated' or 'catalyzed' character could receive. Perhaps this could be something like, if you 're-incarnate' as a Bard, you receive a 5% price discount for all transactions with NPC's on that character. Or perhaps you receive a 'bardic lifestyle' that slowly heals you even while in combat. Just these little boosts that aren't game-breaking but are certainly a goal to aim for (and even to explore/find out). And these would of course be achievable for trying different 're-incarnations' sort of thing. Perhaps even, this could be a use of things like a combination of crafted items that combine into: A machine that makes use of life-control and a 'magical' giant egg from Animal Husbandry, which houses a new life which you work toward growing. And at the end, you actually 'transfer' your life force into the egg, and end up being re-born as the new character (but containing benefits). And as such, perhaps each time you 're-incarnate' you receive a permanent 'Experience Boost' to your character. Lets say, each time adds another +10% EXP, up to +50% after 5+ re-births? And this would affect both crafting and combat-level experiences. But each time you use this process, you sacrifice the required equipment, and reduce your level by 90% (or even 100%?), essentially starting over in terms of combat [AND in crafting, as it would reduce ALL levels, but also require certain achieved levels to perform]. But what you would gain from doing so, is perhaps a boost to your character, as well as the added bonus exp (so that as you do it more and more, it becomes easier to do to a certain degree). Obviously, however, the equipment, housing, and every 'object' owned by the character would remain with the character, as only the characters levels are reset, with some added bonuses.
**3** is that, by providing achievements and a replay-ability that contributes to your 'accounts' over-all effectiveness, you both reward players with experiencing different aspects of the game, but also reward the player by achieving things that are not the easiest to be done, and would require to some degree a great amount of commitment to actually accomplish. I realize that this may make it a power-creep in terms of Veterans to Newbies, but I also believe that this would not hurt the game in any way, but hugely benefit the player-base. So by providing incentives to play you can guarantee the player-base will not dwindle from simply having 'achieved everything there is'. This should not hinder the people who have not put in this kind of work, however, as even a newbie well-performing group should be able to achieve relevantly the same as a veteran's group of poor-performing. I also do realize that with open-world PVP a thing, this may slightly unbalance 1 on 1 PVP situations, but lets be honest: A veteran certainly deserves an advantage as he's put the hard work in on the first time to get to where he is at now.
All of these are Ideas, and simply that- Ideas. Gathered from experience, and put through a AoC thinking process. There would certainly need to have some balancing involved, but also it would be good to see that after this amount of work, it pays off. As opposed to just
I achieved the max end-game on my Rogue-Wizard, and now there is nothing left. I can make a Guardian-Cleric next, but the game wont be as interesting; and I have to delete my other Rogue-Wizard in order to create and start over with a Guardian-Cleric.
Would love to hear other opinions on these sort of ideas. Something that would work in AoC? Or not?
