It's time for preleveled/preascended characters to enter the shop or be made available somehow.

"

Turtledove wrote:

So, pre-leveled character is not really a pay to win. Pre-leveled characters are a pay for convenience and a pay for more fun.

It is if future leagues have the "level x number of characters to level x" challenge as we have had in the past.

"

Casual_Ascent wrote:

A single human user can only operate one character at a time, so regardless how many characters they have on their account, only one can be accumulating wealth at any given time.

1 player with 1 character can only play 1

1 player with 100 characters can only play 1

Same wealth gain potential between the two players.

Actually, the one buying pre-leveled would make worse loot that a guy with a single level 95 (for example) because they'd be playing in lower ilvl content, finding crappier stuff than the guy with a single, efficient character.

You changed the argument though, you arent making a direct comparison between 2 people and the difference between their starting level, you added another variable which is how many different characters they made. With what you said the guy who started at lvl 60 could just as easily have the advantage if he never re-rolled a character and the one starting at lvl 0 did. You cant make a comparison while changing multiple variables.

Your last statement also contradicts the first part of your post. You say that both have the same wealth gain potential, but your last statement says the player that spends more time in lower level content will make less. If you start at 0 instead of 60 you will spend more time in low level content, so even if we take out your last paragraph, its just plain wrong. You are ignoring variables.

Is this all relevant for 1 month into the league? Everything sells easier at the start of the league and with extra/premium stashtabs. You should not care about this.

"

Shovelcut wrote:

"

Turtledove wrote:

So, pre-leveled character is not really a pay to win. Pre-leveled characters are a pay for convenience and a pay for more fun.

It is if future leagues have the "level x number of characters to level x" challenge as we have had in the past.

Absolutely true, if they did that challenge again then they would have to disqualify pre-leveled characters from that particular challenge. In my view this would be another argument to make the pre-leveled characters obvious to all somehow, like maybe an "_PL" at the end of the name or something.

"

Fruz wrote:

Are you serious ?
There is nothing to "win" other that one's own enjoyment ? Many people's enjoyment come from being in the top ladder and getting prizes, and for that they need .... trading.

Again, I never said not to trade. However, if they are worried about what some level 60 guy is doing, they already lost the chance to be at the top of the ladder, because they are no longer competing with the top 0.1%; they are competing with the bottom 99.9%. The only thing that ladder pushers need to look at is their position on the ladder. What other people are doing is none of their business.

"

Trading is already a competition, and Legatus detailed why, going on pretty obvious facts that either you did not know / understand, or you where just trolling,

The assumption that all trading is a competition is not a fact; it's an economic philosophy, and not even a good one. I probably know more about economics than both of you put together, but that subject is not actually relevant to this discussion. All the supposed "advantages" of a player who starts at 60 are already mitigated by the player who stays with his 80+ character.

"

And here you go speaking about fallacies, and going with the "it does not matter it's all a game" strawman, good job.

"It's a game" is not a straw man at all. It's not any kind of fallacy. It's a simple fact. Look up what straw man actually is before you attempt to use the term, because you clearly don't understand what it means.

"

Providing enjoyment to players is a complicated thing, and it does not go through giving them everything they ask.

It's certainly not through forcing them to do a boring grind that makes them not want to play at all either. In fact, giving people at least some of what they want generally IS a good way to facilitate enjoyment. You have it exactly backwards.

"

TenTonBlue wrote:

The assumption thus far is:

-It is not a paid-for feature, but rather an unlocked one
-You have to reach level 80 with at least one character
-You may need to fulfill other requirements like beating Malachai on Merc and/or having to complete all the story quests
-The character starts with no gear, no currency, all Normal/Cruel waypoints, choice of which bandit rewards for N/C, and starts in Act 1 Merc

Since everyone can do this, and it's not a paid-for feature, nobody has a competitive advantage that they wouldn't have without it. The rest of the nonsense from these nay-saying trolls is pointless, because they cannot provide a good argument against it.

The only valid counter-point I have seen at all is that GGG wouldn't need this sort of thing if they would make the leveling experience better and/or rework the story mode so you don't have to repeat the same content 3x before entering maps.

The counter-point to that is that pre-leveled characters are much cheaper/easier/faster to implement, which saves a lot of dev time and money for other projects. If GGG wants to go the extra mile to try to accomplish a better leveling progression, more power to them, but it's a much riskier proposition because there's much more room for error and bad implementation.

I'd be happy with either, assuming the reworked leveling system doesn't involve playing sleeping through the game twice before it actually starts.

Just to be clear, if the suggestion is to allow people who have already reached levels beyond 60 to purchase pre leveled 60 toons, I have no issue with that on its own merit. I do see ways in which it could be abused to get an unfair advantage, but unless you died at 61 or etc I don't think it will affect much. Maybe make the required level point 70 before allowing this.

My gripe with the debate here was the specific comment made about not being forced to trade or compete with other players, because that argument specifically gets repeated all the time and is completely false.

As to its relevance to this debate, again I see ways this could be abused. For example, you know flame totem is the best leveling gem and earthquake is the best mapping gem by a large margin, you would ideally level to 66 as flame totem and then buy a level 60 eq toon and continue the race to 100.

I don't necessarily have issue with the idea itself, but I do think it will undermine the integrity of the game that ggg has spent so long upholding. For that reason I don't think this will ever see the light of day and honestly, I don't mind of it doesn't. I still will support the game as I always have on the progression of the game towards the ideal game that it could potentially be. As we all should.

"

Albinosaurus wrote:

The assumption thus far is:

-It is not a paid-for feature, but rather an unlocked one
-You have to reach level 80 with at least one character
-You may need to fulfill other requirements like beating Malachai on Merc and/or having to complete all the story quests
-The character starts with no gear, no currency, all Normal/Cruel waypoints, choice of which bandit rewards for N/C, and starts in Act 1 Merc

Since everyone can do this, and it's not a paid-for feature, nobody has a competitive advantage that they wouldn't have without it. ...[snip]...

I kind of like the paid-for option. (More money for GGG to enhance the game.)

I'm fine with a level 80 gating or almost any of the other suggestions made.

I would be fine with the Malachai or other suggestions made.

Those starting criterian seem reasonable to me.

You could try to get Pyrokar to update the OP. Otherwise, the only other "arbitrator" on what is what for this thread is GGG. :-) Regards,

"

Legatus1982 wrote:

Just to be clear, if the suggestion is to allow people who have already reached levels beyond 60 to purchase pre leveled 60 toons, I have no issue with that on its own merit. I do see ways in which it could be abused to get an unfair advantage, but unless you died at 61 or etc I don't think it will affect much. Maybe make the required level point 70 before allowing this.

This is why level 80 made a lot of sense. It puts a fairly decent buffer between people racing for league firsts and progression and those who just want to play alts.

"

My gripe with the debate here was the specific comment made about not being forced to trade or compete with other players, because that argument specifically gets repeated all the time and is completely false.

You misunderstood what I was referring to then. I was saying that nobody would be forced to keep making level 60 characters to keep up with people who do--not that they couldn't/shouldn't trade.

"

As to its relevance to this debate, again I see ways this could be abused. For example, you know flame totem is the best leveling gem and earthquake is the best mapping gem by a large margin, you would ideally level to 66 as flame totem and then buy a level 60 eq toon and continue the race to 100.

You aren't buying characters. The potential for race abuse is avoided by the higher level requirement to unlock it.

"

I don't necessarily have issue with the idea itself, but I do think it will undermine the integrity of the game that ggg has spent so long upholding. For that reason I don't think this will ever see the light of day and honestly, I don't mind of it doesn't. I still will support the game as I always have on the progression of the game towards the ideal game that it could potentially be. As we all should.

The only thing that it undermines is the bottom (boring) half of leveling. There's not that much you can do with only 20 points to spend in your tree, very limited selection of gear, and only access to about half of the gems. The real fun is when you have access to those tools, and combine them for interesting and/or powerful builds.

The integrity of the game is based on a premise that they don't want players to "pay to win," and this solution preserves that integrity.

~-~-~

Now, just for argument's sake, there are other ways to address early game leveling, such as reworking the story mode, but let's look at some alternatives.

Compare to Torchlight 2 with Synergies mod:
-Can level through maps
-Through story
-Through endless dungeon (Realms of Discord)
-Through "bounty" area (Selrock)
-Through "arena" (Clockwork zones)
-Unstable Embers (haven't tried this myself, but it's available)

Compare to Diablo 3:
-Bounties
-Rifts
-Story
*All have selective difficulty with scaling exp/gold/loot

Diablo 2:
-Story
-Get rushed and run cows, Tristram, Tombs, Chaos Sanctuary, Baal, etc

Sacred 2:
-Everything scales to your level, so farm wherever you like

I'm not saying to add all of these, because that would be ridiculous. What I'm trying to point out is that lots of models exist, and GGG doesn't have to look far to find something that they can make fit so that people don't have to keep running the story over, and over, and over, and over...

Alternative methods of leveling are a very healthy option.