Can we please get...

[Valdaglerion]

<p>The ability to modify our toon level down without having to mentor?</p><p>There are 2 major points I would like to make to this - </p><p>(1) Mentoring is currently flawed in the sense that while higher level gear is tuned down a bit, <span style="color: #ff3300"><u><i>it simply should not be allowed.</i></u></span> When you were level 5 you couldnt equip level 70 gear, the same logic should apply while mentoring. If you want to be a mentor then equip for it. Does this make mentoring hard? Abso-freaking-lutely it does! it makes mentoring more valuable and more difficult. If/when the higher level toons complain about mentoring being hard and they cant power level toons and guildies anymore just tell them its a more challenging facet of the game it was intended. I find it hard to believe the intention was ever to create tons of rich content and then have people blow by the first 20-30 levels of it (a good majority of the work) by being power leveled by a high level alt or guildie. Making the potential mentor only use the appropriate level and tier of gear makes the situation interesting. Cant burn through those first 9 levels in 45 minutes anymore because you have to have varying levels of gear to work through it and spells, etc. You will have to modify your hot bars to accomodate it. Guilds would have to have mentoring times set to help guildies so multiple guildies could be helped because it will require forethought to do it. Lower level toons couldnt just scream out - OMG, such and such named is up, come mentor and help me kill it quick. The toons who could mentor might not be equipped for the level and wouldnt be of much assistance in that situation, again, making the game more challenging at all levels.</p><p>(2) I would like to see a way to modify the level of my toon DOWN, you must achieve or level before you can go back to it - no going from 5 to 20 jsut to see whats its like. <b><span style="color: #ff3300">It would be nice if the level bar was a slider that you could simply change your level from the top level you have achieved to any level below you.</span></b></p><p>I would like this because...</p><p>(a) There are times you want to solo or do quest that no one else at the moment has an interest in doing that are below your level. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p>(b) I want to experience all the content in the game the way it was intended, with aggro and challenging. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p>(c) You cant always find someone to mentor and those that do typically want to power level which isnt part of the "FUN" factor for me anyway.</p><p>(d) Maybe I want to go hunting for named NPC's on the lower levels to find better gear to equip my toon for mentoring under the new mentoring system suggested above. Or maybe I am an achievement freak anyway and I want to hunt for all my own Masters and gear and the only way to do that is to mentor some alt, 2 box or camp an area asking for someone to mentor  - not much fun in those scenarios.</p><p>(e) I want to explore some of the lower zones I havent explored yet with a sense of danger involved. This adds to my FUN.</p><p> -------------------------</p><p>The icing on the cake would be to be able to do city writs for lower levels. This of course requires the mentoring suggestion above be put in place. To prevent abuse - when you modify your level put in a function to evaluate city writ quests and automatically delete any that are not within the modified level.</p><p>i.e. - I change my level from 65 to 27. I got a writ to kill Varsoon Apprentices which requires level 25-29. Before I finish the writ I decided to modify my level from 27 to 34 and go help in RoV. All writs for anything below my current level of 34 gets deleted. This should prevent people from getting lower level writs, returning to the their higher level and blasting through them. Again, if you must be properly equipped to perform at a lower level with appropriate gear and spells, the writs are going to be just as difficult as they were when you were origingally at that level. </p><p>---------------------------</p><p>Are you guys seeing a consistent theme here? Thoughts?? Something I failed to consider? Chime in, lets get this modified and increase our fun factor!</p>

[epyon333]

<p>Actually mentoring was like that.  You did have to equip gear at the lvl you were mentoring and i even think you couldnt use combat arts of spells above the level you were mentored to.  Of course ppl complained and mentoring was under used, so it was changed to how it is now so that it would be used more.  Think about all the gear youd have to carry if you mentored down one tier and its not like you could just buy gear and resell it and get your money back since most everything needs to be attuned.  </p><p>i just think a t7 toon in handcrafted mentored down to t2 should feel only a litter stronger then a t2 in handcrafted not like a t2 in mastercrafted or higher. i also think that you should have to use those old spells again.  i know when i mentor to lvl 10 i have a lot of spells a real lvl 10 does not.</p>

[PsiberDaemon]

as was mentioned earlier, the main hassle about mentoring in 'the old days' was that gear would basically shut down (and spells as well) ...  this can be a real hassle, because basically, I'd have to change my gear to something level appropriate, then go back through my spellbook and reselect spells for the correct level...  then AFTER the mentoring, re-equip the correct gear, re-select the correct spells...  just seems like too much of a hassle.

[Atria]

<p>hmmmmmm, interesting viewpoint. </p><p>My vote .. NOT. </p><p>If you want to gear appropriate urself for mentoring down, by all means, be my guest. But dont demand that I do so. I am totally not interested in filling my bank with gear of different lvls so that I may be able to play with the lower lvl toons in my guild and server. I solo a lot and when not am usually with other members of my guild which are of much lower lvl than myself.  Supposedly our gear is downgraded to the lvl we are mentoring. I am not 100% sure of how that works, but if there is a problem then SOE can look at it. I dont have a problem with them adjusting it. </p><p>As for as far as deleting quests automatically.. are u high? I have many many quests that I am working on in various modes of completion and I not pleased of the idea of someone else thinking because its easy for them, its easy for me.  And having to do them all over again? Not .. so NOT.. NO! Especially with some of the steps being a monster time sink to camp spawns. Although, if the game play were redone and all quests were triggered events instead of camping spawns this idea might have merit. </p><p> The idea of being able to adjust ones lvl down has merit tho.. esp to someone as I that solo a lot.. that would be kewl.. and interesting..  I have met many peeps along the way that have wanted to use my lvl to be able to complete quests that were grey and I have done the same. It would be nice to be able to downlvl myself solo if i wanted. </p>

[ArivenGemini]

<cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The ability to modify our toon level down without having to mentor?</p><p>There are 2 major points I would like to make to this - </p><p>(1) Mentoring is currently flawed in the sense that while higher level gear is tuned down a bit, <span style="color: #ff3300"><u><i>it simply should not be allowed.</i></u></span> When you were level 5 you couldnt equip level 70 gear, the same logic should apply while mentoring. If you want to be a mentor then equip for it. Does this make mentoring hard? Abso-freaking-lutely it does! it makes mentoring more valuable and more difficult. If/when the higher level toons complain about mentoring being hard and they cant power level toons and guildies anymore just tell them its a more challenging facet of the game it was intended. I find it hard to believe the intention was ever to create tons of rich content and then have people blow by the first 20-30 levels of it (a good majority of the work) by being power leveled by a high level alt or guildie. Making the potential mentor only use the appropriate level and tier of gear makes the situation interesting. Cant burn through those first 9 levels in 45 minutes anymore because you have to have varying levels of gear to work through it and spells, etc. You will have to modify your hot bars to accomodate it. Guilds would have to have mentoring times set to help guildies so multiple guildies could be helped because it will require forethought to do it. Lower level toons couldnt just scream out - OMG, such and such named is up, come mentor and help me kill it quick. The toons who could mentor might not be equipped for the level and wouldnt be of much assistance in that situation, again, making the game more challenging at all levels.</p><p>(2) I would like to see a way to modify the level of my toon DOWN, you must achieve or level before you can go back to it - no going from 5 to 20 jsut to see whats its like. <b><span style="color: #ff3300">It would be nice if the level bar was a slider that you could simply change your level from the top level you have achieved to any level below you.</span></b></p><p>I would like this because...</p><p>(a) There are times you want to solo or do quest that no one else at the moment has an interest in doing that are below your level. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p>(b) I want to experience all the content in the game the way it was intended, with aggro and challenging. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p>(c) You cant always find someone to mentor and those that do typically want to power level which isnt part of the "FUN" factor for me anyway.</p><p>(d) Maybe I want to go hunting for named NPC's on the lower levels to find better gear to equip my toon for mentoring under the new mentoring system suggested above. Or maybe I am an achievement freak anyway and I want to hunt for all my own Masters and gear and the only way to do that is to mentor some alt, 2 box or camp an area asking for someone to mentor  - not much fun in those scenarios.</p><p>(e) I want to explore some of the lower zones I havent explored yet with a sense of danger involved. This adds to my FUN.</p><p> -------------------------</p><p>The icing on the cake would be to be able to do city writs for lower levels. This of course requires the mentoring suggestion above be put in place. To prevent abuse - when you modify your level put in a function to evaluate city writ quests and automatically delete any that are not within the modified level.</p><p>i.e. - I change my level from 65 to 27. I got a writ to kill Varsoon Apprentices which requires level 25-29. Before I finish the writ I decided to modify my level from 27 to 34 and go help in RoV. All writs for anything below my current level of 34 gets deleted. This should prevent people from getting lower level writs, returning to the their higher level and blasting through them. Again, if you must be properly equipped to perform at a lower level with appropriate gear and spells, the writs are going to be just as difficult as they were when you were origingally at that level. </p><p>---------------------------</p><p>Are you guys seeing a consistent theme here? Thoughts?? Something I failed to consider? Chime in, lets get this modified and increase our fun factor!</p></blockquote> No, actually I am not seeing a consistant theme here.. first you ask for things to be made harder.. then you ask for things to be made easier..  heck first you complain about mentoring making it easy to kill named mobs then you comment how you want something that would be custom designed for farming nameds..  just dial down to the right level to where that mob is JUST green.. and bam.. perfect loot farming.. I like how mentoring is now.. it used to be you had to redo your hotbars and fix your spells to use the correct leveled ones.. which took time and messed up your hotbars.. Things are easier now.. I like that.. I LOVE to be able to mentor up a friend and go kill stuff with them... and I love the fact that technically at least you have to be with someone to mentor up.. I dont want an easy button for farming nameds either.. to me it is more fun to progress and kill stuff to get that progression.. getting in a group where I hope to get XP or finish out a quest only to find us jumping past all the content and running in circles looking for named mobs to kill is boring and kills the enjoyment.. Does the mentoring system need help?  yeah, I think it does.. I think that there is a chance that they are not scaling down the gear quite right, since it seems like mentored people are much more powerful than someone at the level they are mentoring too... but then that could simply be because a higher level person tends to have better gear in general... But.. dont make it HARDER for friends to group up..  thats the wrong direction..  make it easier.. and make it more fun...

[Atria]

<p>" just dial down to the right level to where that mob is JUST green.. and bam.. perfect loot farming.."</p><p>OOOOOOOOOOOO that would make the plat sellers happy </p>

[Valdaglerion]

<cite>epyon333 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i just think a t7 toon in handcrafted mentored down to t2 should feel only a litter stronger then a t2 in handcrafted not like a t2 in mastercrafted or higher. i also think that you should have to use those old spells again.  i know when i mentor to lvl 10 i have a lot of spells a real lvl 10 does not.</p></blockquote>If you look at the DPS parse and compare you will find that using spells of a higher level mentored down do considerable more damage than spells of the appropriate level.

[Valdaglerion]

<cite>Atria wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>As for as far as deleting quests automatically.. are u high? I have many many quests that I am working on in various modes of completion and I not pleased of the idea of someone else thinking because its easy for them, its easy for me.  And having to do them all over again? Not .. so NOT.. NO! Especially with some of the steps being a monster time sink to camp spawns. Although, if the game play were redone and all quests were triggered events instead of camping spawns this idea might have merit. </p></blockquote>No, I am not high. I added specifically "City Writs". There was never any mention of any quests other than city writs in the original post. Currently they are the only quests you completely outgrow and cant get again. The reason for that is abuse, same reason you cant get them when mentoring. It would be simple to mentor, get the writs for level 25 stuff, return to the T6 level you are. One AOE later you get your SP and on your marry way for another.

[Polywogus]

I can understand your point (OP) from not wanting quests to go gray, because obviously getting AAXP & level-appropriate awards are nice. *However*, my (& I am sure others) resolution to this is turning off combat XP. My quests stay the nice non-gray colours a lot longer that way. Positively love that feature, & only wish I'd used it far earlier. Love it love it love it! *edited out quest deletion after clarification via OP* I enjoy the mentoring system as it is today. No, it's not "realistic" that we go down to a lower level, but add that to a million other non-realistic things, which is exactly why I love this game=)

[SteelPiston]

<p>I'm in favor of scrapping mentoring altogether. It's a nice idea, but it is more generally used for loot farming, bottom feeding and easy AA hunting.  A level 70 mentored down to level 20 is far more powerful than a level 20. This will upset a lot of folks, but hey, if you want to play with the level 20's...go and make yourself a level 20 toon. A big, bad, level 50+ toon can make a new level 20 toon in less than 2 days and tweak him out in all the best gear available. Turn off his adventure xp and you can remain a level 20 forever! This would boost the actual amount of lower level characters playing the game. </p><p>In many other games, if you are not within +/- 5 levels of the group leader, you are out of luck and will need to find someone near your own level to play with. As for the old arguement of "I play more than my wife and we need to stay the same level"...then turn your xp off or play on another toon until she logs on.</p>

[epyon333]

<cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>epyon333 wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>i just think a t7 toon in handcrafted mentored down to t2 should feel only a litter stronger then a t2 in handcrafted not like a t2 in mastercrafted or higher. i also think that you should have to use those old spells again.  i know when i mentor to lvl 10 i have a lot of spells a real lvl 10 does not.</p></blockquote>If you look at the DPS parse and compare you will find that using spells of a higher level mentored down do considerable more damage than spells of the appropriate level. </blockquote> wow.  yeah i know you do a lot more DPS using your higher lvl mentored down.   i think im too strong when im mentored.  i feel when im mentored im cleaning up on those lower lvl mobs and my friend is like a triple down arrow and is useless leach sucking up xp.  i was trying to say that mentors need to be brought more in line with their mentorees instead of way overpowering them.

[Kizee]

<p>Let me guess.... you wern't around when you had to have a set of armor for all tiers and then spend an hour redoing all your hotbars to lower end spell.</p><p>Nobody used the mentoring system before....thats why it was changed to scaling.</p><p>Big deal that some things don't scale down the right way. It's not game breaking.</p>

[Dasein]

Mentoring in it's current form is one of the best features in EQ2. Changing mentoring to make it more difficult would be very detrimental to the future of the game.

[Ealthina]

Wow, I must say horrible idea.  I enjoy mentoring my lower guildies to help them with quests and maybe finish off one I have had forever.  Why make it harder?  It's bad enough that many guilds form cliques because they seem to think their mentor button is broken.

[Valdaglerion]

<cite>Kizee wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Let me guess.... you wern't around when you had to have a set of armor for all tiers and then spend an hour redoing all your hotbars to lower end spell.</p><p>Nobody used the mentoring system before....thats why it was changed to scaling.</p><p>Big deal that some things don't scale down the right way. It's not game breaking.</p></blockquote> I always love your assumptions Kizee. In my original post I almost put in the line "(I can hear it now, all the whining about how much bag space it takes to have gear, how much extra effort it takes, etc and all the whining will come from the people who also complain about how easy the game has gotten and the effort vs rewards needs to be balanced.) - I really should have left that in but I, wrongly admittedly, assumed the hard c ore players would understand the intent so let me specifiy a bit more. (1) Mentoring would be more in line with a true level 5 playing with an other level 5 not a semi-scaled way overpowered 70 powerleveling a guildie through the first 20 levels in a night and robbing them of all the content at those levels or just powerleveling an alt to sell on exchange. (2) Yes, been around long enough to know the previous moans, groans, complaints etc (3) We did not have the previous macro system. It takes me literally 2 button clicks to completely switch gear now (10 equip lines in each macro). Yes the toolbars take a little more thought and I know many of us actually use all 10, maybe they could give us a few more to ease that issue. (4) Game breaking? Yes it is actually. There are so many alts being power leveled through and to certain levels and it disrupts the economies for those levels and new players can not compete with the influx of money from the higher leveled toons to their lower alts. You create a toon and level them without mentor and in the same time I will mentor a new one and level them and tomorrow morning you will still be at best around 9-11 and I will be sitting pretty at 25-30. Recently saw a post from a noob has couldnt grasp the economy of the game because the rewards at his level were not in line with the gear being sold for his level. Transmuting had some effect on that obviously but even crafted items are way out of line. Why? because the high level toons have enough coin and shovel it to their lower alts and pay higher prices for the convenience. Right, wrong, or indifferent, when leveling toons is made too easy it creates imbalances in many areas. (5) Effort vs Reward: if you are going to get the benefit of a friend leveling up faster by you giving them a boost in the % of XP they are gaining should you expend a little effort? Really, how much effort does it take to "Right click>Mentor" <span style="color: #ff3300"> Or maybe this should be an addition to the mentoring system where you had the option to choose "Hard Core" mentor and the % of XP gain would be tripled over the normal rate of benefit?? There's an idea that just came to me. Perhaps that leaves teh current sysem which really is more for the casual player and adds another level which could appeal to the hard core player - what about that? Even more balance...huh? Come on - lets get something for both casual and hardcore going here. Thoughts?</span>

[Odalia]

<p>Can you say "NO WAY IN HELL" , I ahve never used mentoring to be power leveled nor will I ever use it to power lvl someone else in my guild I have asked for and cecieved some help from a couple lvl 70's to help compleate an HQ where I was soloing the whole thing till I had to fight a group of 3 ^^^ lvl heroics. I looked for a group for over 1 hour before I finally asked my guild to come help me. </p><p>That is why mentoring should be left alone, the  mojority of people do not abuse it and should not have to have it made harder.</p>

[KBern]

<cite>Valdaglerion wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>The ability to modify our toon level down without having to mentor?</p><p>There are 2 major points I would like to make to this - </p><p>(1) Mentoring is currently flawed in the sense that while higher level gear is tuned down a bit, <u><i>it simply should not be allowed.</i></u> When you were level 5 you couldnt equip level 70 gear, the same logic should apply while mentoring. If you want to be a mentor then equip for it. Does this make mentoring hard? Abso-freaking-lutely it does! it makes mentoring more valuable and more difficult. If/when the higher level toons complain about mentoring being hard and they cant power level toons and guildies anymore just tell them its a more challenging facet of the game it was intended. I find it hard to believe the intention was ever to create tons of rich content and then have people blow by the first 20-30 levels of it (a good majority of the work) by being power leveled by a high level alt or guildie. Making the potential mentor only use the appropriate level and tier of gear makes the situation interesting. Cant burn through those first 9 levels in 45 minutes anymore because you have to have varying levels of gear to work through it and spells, etc. You will have to modify your hot bars to accomodate it. Guilds would have to have mentoring times set to help guildies so multiple guildies could be helped because it will require forethought to do it. Lower level toons couldnt just scream out - OMG, such and such named is up, come mentor and help me kill it quick. The toons who could mentor might not be equipped for the level and wouldnt be of much assistance in that situation, again, making the game more challenging at all levels.</p><p><u><i>Having a bag full of tiers of gear is not "fun".  Mentoring would basically fall by the wayside because no one would want to carry all that gear around with them.  Mentoring is supposed to be a way to help friends or guildies and group with lower level friends and guildies for fun.  Your system is tedious, not fun.  It was changed to its present state for a reason.</i></u></p><p>(2) I would like to see a way to modify the level of my toon DOWN, you must achieve or level before you can go back to it - no going from 5 to 20 jsut to see whats its like. <b>It would be nice if the level bar was a slider that you could simply change your level from the top level you have achieved to any level below you.</b></p><p>I would like this because...</p><p>(a) There are times you want to solo or do quest that no one else at the moment has an interest in doing that are below your level. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p><i><u>Doing level appropriate content is fun.  If you happened to pass a quest line early on, you have no one to blame but yourself on that.  You have two choices....make an alt and experience the content, or mentor.  You do not even have to be in the same zone to mentor.  Mentor a friend of guildie and travel to where you want to go and do the quests.  In the slider system as you propose....every quest can be knocked out while grey and then slide down to a level and hand it in for extra AA exp...it would be exploitable.</u></i></p><p>(b) I want to experience all the content in the game the way it was intended, with aggro and challenging. Doing grey content is not FUN</p><p><i><u>See above...</u></i></p><p>(c) You cant always find someone to mentor and those that do typically want to power level which isnt part of the "FUN" factor for me anyway.</p><p><i><u>You dont even have to be in the same zone to mentor someone to lower your own, but you do not have the capacity to raise and lower your level at a whim either...there is no challenge to roam around a dungeon or zone while greyed out and then reduce your level when you feel like fighting something.</u></i></p><p>(d) Maybe I want to go hunting for named NPC's on the lower levels to find better gear to equip my toon for mentoring under the new mentoring system suggested above. Or maybe I am an achievement freak anyway and I want to hunt for all my own Masters and gear and the only way to do that is to mentor some alt, 2 box or camp an area asking for someone to mentor  - not much fun in those scenarios.</p><p><i><u>Maybe they dont want you to hunt lower level content out of your level range.  As stated earlier, you could roam around at your whim, when you see named, lower your level and kill it, loot box, then go right back to grey out the zone and repeat.  Talk about a farming exploit.</u></i></p><p>(e) I want to explore some of the lower zones I havent explored yet with a sense of danger involved. This adds to my FUN.</p><p><i><u>I think what you should about all this grey content you missed when you were the appropriate level is to make a new toon, and shut off your combat exp, and explore and experience the game that you think you missed.</u></i></p><p> -------------------------</p><p>The icing on the cake would be to be able to do city writs for lower levels. This of course requires the mentoring suggestion above be put in place. To prevent abuse - when you modify your level put in a function to evaluate city writ quests and automatically delete any that are not within the modified level.</p><p>i.e. - I change my level from 65 to 27. I got a writ to kill Varsoon Apprentices which requires level 25-29. Before I finish the writ I decided to modify my level from 27 to 34 and go help in RoV. All writs for anything below my current level of 34 gets deleted. This should prevent people from getting lower level writs, returning to the their higher level and blasting through them. Again, if you must be properly equipped to perform at a lower level with appropriate gear and spells, the writs are going to be just as difficult as they were when you were origingally at that level. </p><p><i><u>Why in the heck would anyone want to do lower level writs anyway?  Less status, and they are simply "Go kill X number of Y mobs"</u></i></p><p>---------------------------</p><p>Are you guys seeing a consistent theme here? Thoughts?? Something I failed to consider? Chime in, lets get this modified and increase our fun factor!</p><p><i><u>I dont think any of this would increase a fun factor.  It would allow certain people to exploit the mechanics and it would also prevent a lot of people from using the mentoring system because of tedium.</u></i></p><p>*edit* bah, its not taking my font color change.</p></blockquote>