I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained

from : http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=186099

I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained
I am pleased to tell you that in Issue 16: Power Spectrum we have two
new features that are made to better facilitate the game experience by
streamlining many processes that players spend time setting up.

The first of these is the new difficulty settings. A lot of in-game
Broadcasts are powerful characters looking for “pads” so they can
artificially increase their team-size to provide more of a challenge
for greater rewards. With the new difficulty settings, these players
can set their team size without having to bother other players with
their Broadcasts. If they want to be treated as a team of 8, even when
solo, they can.

The second feature is what we have come to call “Super-Sidekicking”
but actually applies to all types of Sidekicking: Exemplaring,
Lackeying, and Malefactoring as well. With this system, everyone in
the team will find themselves automatically level adjusted to the
level of the owner of the Mission that is currently selected. If there
is no mission that is currently active, then the level is set to the
leader of the Team.

If you are below the level you are getting set to, you are
automatically sidekicked up to one level below the owner’s level, just
as if you had sidekicked to them. If you are above the level, then you
will be lowered to the level of the owner, just as if you exemplared
down.

The players don’t need to do anything for this to happen, it all
happens automatically. This means that no matter what level ranges you
have in your group, you can ALWAYS play together and you can ALWAYS
get XP. Yes, we are even changing the way exemplaring works so that
you get XP while you are fighting at a lower level. There will be an
option of having the “old way” of exemplaring, and earning extra Inf.
instead, for those players who want to earn some more Inf. instead of
levels.

Gone are the days of having to play “Mentor Tetris” (as we’ve come to
call it) to make sure everyone in the team is SK’ed/EX’ed to the right
person so that everyone is receiving XP, or having to tell your friend
that they can’t join your team because you don’t have enough people to
make sure everyone is SK’ed and earning rewards.

One of the other advantages to this system is that the level
adjustments take place no matter where you are in the game. No more
“My sidekick is out of range” messages. If you are about to undergo a
large level shift, you will have a dialog box pop-up giving you
warning and the ability to leave the team (handy if you are in combat
at the time and don’t want to suddenly be fighting at a lower level).
The range of levels that this dialog pops up is adjustable in the
Options screen.

Now we are aware of a couple things that this system doesn’t do so
well, and we are attempting to address most of them in the coming
weeks. The first of this is the fact that you lose access to powers,
especially the most-recently earned ones, when you Exemplar down. We
are looking into some sort of fix for this.

Next is the fact that sometimes you just want to un-exemplar and kick
some butt, especially when things look bad for the team. If you leave
the team you will automatically start fighting at your superior level.
This will enable you to save your team’s bacon at the cost of eating
up any of the rewards they might have earned for those guys you
defeat.

Badge hunters in the closed beta have pointed out that some badges are
simply favorable to get once you outlevel the content where they are
given. Since Super-Sidekicking makes manipulating the levels more
difficult, we’re going to re-examine the requirements on some badges,
and lower them where appropriate. Mentor badge credit is still given
whenever you are the Mission Owner, and someone is auto-sidekicked to
you.

Now one thing that is getting removed by this new system that is not
going to be fixed is the ability to “bridge”. Bridging is the practice
of sidekicking a low level character to JUST the right level to cap
their XP earning on each entity defeated by the group. This was a side
effect of how the Sidekicking system worked. While we have made
adjustments to the Sidekicking system many times over the course of
the life of the game to combat this, Super-Sidekicking eliminates
bridging completely, since all rewards will be in parity.

Before we went and removed this playstyle completely from City of
Heroes we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. We did
extensive datamines to see how many accounts were actually
participating in a “bridge” team, and were surprised to see just how
low of a percentage it actually was. This may be a case where it is
possible that the “advertising” in /broadcasts for bridge teams
actually made the practice seem more pervasive than it really was.

With the ability to bridge removed, we should see an end to those
Broadcasts, in addition to /tells to characters who are in the right
level range for being a bridge. To us cutting down on annoying spam
only makes your game experience better. (Which reminds me, we’ve added
new features to the in-game Email system to either shut it off
entirely, or only receive emails from people on your friends list and/
or people in your Supergroup. Another step in the battle against
annoying in-game spam.)

With both the new difficulty levels and Super-Sidekicking, players can
use the difficulty slider to increase the level of the entities in the
mission so that they can earn more rewards. But this, at least, comes
with the risk inherent with fighting higher level entities and larger
spawns. As for low level characters missing out on accelerated
leveling speeds, we are increasing the rewards they earn from level 1
to 20 (about 20% across the board) so that every player can get
through the lower levels faster, not just those that know “the
tricks”.

(These changes are currently being tested in the Closed Beta for Issue
16, and may be changed/modified by the time they reach the Live
servers)
__________________
Positron
Lead Designer, City of Heroes
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