I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained

[Positron]

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)

[Dr_Darkspeed]

wow, sounds good! Should make making teams much quicker and easier.

[Mental_Giant]

You guys just keep kicking it up another notch! Good work!

[Lady Athyna]

Thanks for double post.

[Frost]

Hear that sound?

That's the sound of PLers crying out in one voice and then being suddenly silenced.

If the exemplar power loss issue is solved, I'm all for these changes.

[Pepsiman]

*squeee*

[Alexis_NA]

This sounds awesome. I'm excited!

[Myopic Aardvark]

Okay, that seems like a good idea.

Sure, I can see a few complaints with it, but it'll suit me since I never farm or powerlevel and regularly team with two other people, usually at different level ranges.

[Liquid]

I have wanted full team sidekicking forever and ever! My SG often has to either turn people away from teams due to lack of mentors, or play mentor tetris, often resulting in people not getting to play the character they'd prefer to play.

This is pure awesome, thank you!

[Janlee]

(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.)

epic win!

[Dechs Kaison]

Second!

Edit: DAMNIT!

[Gruumch]

Sounds awesome!

[Perfect_Pain]

Twitter helps again.

[LoveLife]

Sounds good

[ryu_planeswalker]

Awesome, no more trying to find peeps for ITFs


Can you change lady grey back in 16 too?

Please

[Positron]

Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain

Twitter helps again.

But... but... I posted to twitter AFTER I made the post, and AFTER I made the link in the General Chat forum.

[BrokenPrey]

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.

Best part!!

[Megajoule]

Holeeee...

There is nothing here that is not awesome. Thank you, thank you so much.

[Ineffable_Bob]

At first glance, I like the super-sidekicking. No more "3 spots but no SK" member-hunting messages! Also, it'll be nice not to have to worry about what mission difficulty I need in order to keep my lowest team member within 4 levels of the mobs.

It will be interesting to see if this changes people's build practices to be more exemplar/malefactor-friendly, since that will be happening more often.

[Lemur Lad]

This is exciting. No more worrying over having enough mentors for people.
Also no more worrying over the dreaded "Lackey Leash"