An idea - The Ultimate Grind (tm).

[Swordbreaker]

I think there should be some link to your old character, so you could either change breed or profession but not both.

That would work methinks, and would make people think more of what they're actually gonna do instead of going for the safe bets. Although you'd probably still be able to change the second bit if you're insane enough to go for TWO rebirths, you'd still either have to go through being a trox NT or an NM advy/keeper at worst if you happened to be an NM NT for one up to 220 dingin' set. :-D

[Sefus88]

I like this idea. I'm kinda scared about what will happen when I get 220. Do you get bored easily? great idea. I might not understand tho...

But fill me in on how this works with the storyline, RP side of things. It doesn't have to make perfect sense but most every feature in game has a reason that ties in with Rk and all. Someone wouldn't just get bored and say "I'm gonna go get reborn."
So fill us in with the RP side of things and I'll give you some more of these.....

BUMPs!!

[Reneaa]

Sefus...possibly OT designs a new technology that allows them to "recreate" one of their employees, to try and get the upper hand in the Clan/OT war. Clan then steals this technology and uses it themselves, while sharing it with Neutrals (cause we know Clan is the generous faction, and omni the greedy one...)

[drgrimmy]

cool idea...i'd drop back down and relvl my main if i got to keep all my nodrops and axp>
I rebirth bonus would be nice too..maybe a 2nd SB line or somthing.

as for storyline how bout this..

"the redeemed/unredeemed/guardian wish to repossess your soul on the way back to reclaim and restore your youth as a reward for service to your faction....do you accept?"((if they could do that would kinda explain a few thing like 40,000 yr old technology))

[atlasdreamer]

How about reborn doesnt get anything except being able to use their old nanos?
and to help keep balance the reborn are "reborn" on an alternate RK , one where the Battle for RK and control of the source is just starting to heat up. or perhaps where the Immortals werent killed and now are NPC"s that the Reborn must contend with.

the newborn counts as their old Proff as well as their new proff. Still keeping the Level locks of the nanos as well as the cast requirements. So a reborn MP (as say an advy) still wouldnt be able to cast Comp teachings till level 25, reborn NT wouldnt be able to equip Cybordeck untill level 50 and spec 1

so on and so forth.

[atlasdreamer]

I can see it now. "Mastablasta having attained enlightenment has been chosen to carry the battle into new realms."

"Mastablasta awakens , groggy and feeling a bit cloudy in the head, to find him/itself standing inside the ICC shuttleport. Everything feels wrong somehow, you remember great battles and horrors beyond imagining but how could this be? You have only just arived on Rubi-Ka havent you??"

"Arriving safely at (insert city of choice) you feel as if the city is emptier than it should be....there seems to be a feeling of fear in the air."

"(insert faction leader of choice) Mastablasta, we need you desparatly. The damn immortals are making a push for control of the Notum refinerys. Help us cripple those unnatural b@st@rds!" sounds of screaming and massive violence cuts off the transmission. Leaving you thinking....wait a sec! I thought Eric miller was the only immortal left!! WTF is going on here?

[Swordbreaker]

It would put the ex 220ers in a situation which is comparable to starting out in AO from the beginning of all expansions. Everything would have to be started from zero, and all this would require new servers and everything. On this "alternate RK" you'd be nothing special. You'd be the same as all the others - if there'd be others. You'd be practically on your own private AO server with a select (probably drunken) few.

To be honest, being cut off of about 95% (or more realistically, 99,99%) of the playerbase doesn't seem very tempting. Doing it that way would totally break the whole idea, not to mention the fact that it would make it impossible to somehow explain it gamewise. It'd completely and utterly destroy the whole reason as to why go through with the whole rebirth process - I have yet to meet a single person who would want to farm his own inf boots (again, as it would be for the old timers) and the whole nine yards since he can't buy them anywhere. Not to mention that it would crush any semblence of game balance under its heel.

In my opinion it'd be easier to just make a whole new server for AO which allowed multiple profs if you wanted something like that.

[Yamaeda]

But fill me in on how this works with the storyline, RP side of things. It doesn't have to make perfect sense but most every feature in game has a reason that ties in with Rk and all. Someone wouldn't just get bored and say "I'm gonna go get reborn."
So fill us in with the RP side of things and I'll give you some more of these.....BUMPs!!

Just like you lose your xp gained from your last save, you make a request to the DNA-library to pull out your first clone, from when you first arrived to RK, and thus you'll be recreated as lvl 1 insted of your old level. To get authority to to this, you must be completely unequipped, as per IPR. For a small donation you can even bride the employees to switch that DNA sample to change your breed. Since it's a starting characters DNA all IPRs are also reset.

As it's still you, you'll keep all your items, and your profession is the same as that represents your interestes and learning from your youth before your adventuring days. Switching brain would infact erase your personality and you'd be another character, thus it's not possible.

As for the original idea, it's crazy and brilliant! All old xp into the pool and play away and be scared in subway again. (note that you get sk after 200, so it's only the RK levels that gets boosted by rebirth)

/Y

[Sefus88]

Thats a good idea for a storyline.
Pull up your first clone from before you died the first time you logged in.

that makes sense.

as promised
Bump!

[Swordbreaker]

Switching brain would infact erase your personality and you'd be another character, thus it's not possible.

But you'd just need to replace parts of the brain, or "reset" the part in which you have the profession in. We already have the IPR and their in-character reasoning is that you "unlearn" what you've learned before - which means you erase only select parts of your accumulated memory.

Thus, the game has, technically, already explained why it could also be possible to change your profession once again.

[catdog]

Good idea, but... Some QL 300 items (Pure ring, 15% scope) would be easy to equip even at lvl 1. Would be kindof lame in some cases, other things are hud items and such that is near impossible to get ahold off on lower lvls. Then you have the case of twinks. I'd hate to see some twink that was rolled from a 220 and then got some perks to make him even more powerfull then b4. So agi \ sense buffing isent the best off idea's for something like this I guess. Though some fun, hard to get or rare perks. Would be very cool!

But overall! GREAT IDEA, for the ones choosing to do it. Though the idea of ability buffing for rerolling is just lame. Needs to be something unique, maby an extra perkline for your class or something. Backing up the primes of the class you currently love to play.

A little extra evades for a MA
Some defrating and runspeed for fixer
Extra damage for enf, or an additional stunprocc.
Some special healing efficiency or something perk for a doc?
Defence modifier leech or damage for a shade (extra blur?)

Just some idea's. But seriously, abilitybuffing is nothing i'd like to see.

[keta]

What if you could chose to be reborn as an evil mutated mob? Starting out as a Mugger in the Subway must be funny. Or a claw or eyemutant? Of course you will have to kill players then to gain xp.

[Docnamdkeeper]

What if you could chose to be reborn as an evil mutated mob? Starting out as a Mugger in the Subway must be funny. Or a claw or eyemutant? Of course you will have to kill players then to gain xp.

whoah lets make mob-players then that level just like real players and spend time hunched in shops twinking.... and buffbeg in bor...

[Swordbreaker]

But overall! GREAT IDEA, for the ones choosing to do it. Though the idea of ability buffing for rerolling is just lame. Needs to be something unique, maby an extra perkline for your class or something. Backing up the primes of the class you currently love to play.

Actually, hmm. I guess it would work if you only got a special (insignificant but still somewhat useful) perk if you stay in the profession you started with originally. So you'd be rewarded for "loyalty", but you still could switch your prof if you wanted to.

[SoCal]

Amazing idea...

you factor in the ability to regain the IPR (make sure it's capped at the max you can gain through one trip to 220)...

If a profession you play gets nerfed, it doesn't mean reroll... it means hurry up and get to 220, so you can change it

This would be a great way to keep people playing and interested. I know many who get sick of starting just another alt to grind again...

[Piping_Hot]

The basic idea is very cool - being able to have your 220 toon reborn as a new avatar has lots of story & game potential.

But if the new avatars are going to get any game advantages (e.g. powerful new perk lines) then there definitely should not be any modification to the amount of XP given, or the amount of XP required to level.

A player who has levelled to 220 once already knows all of the tricks to levelling faster and more efficiently than new players, there's no need to give them extra-fast levelling as a freebie when they cycle through additional avatars.

Besides, who ever said that being reborn into a new avatar would be easier than the last one?

[Gresshoppe]

I like this idea!

This could actualy solve some of the problems in the game atm.
If you get to keep your side tokens, this could make tokengun-farming a less needed timesink. If you have, say the 1k board, but need tokens to get the 1750 and 2500 boards equiped, you could "reroll" and get the last 1500 tokens the "normal way" from missions.

This option could also cool the heated ecconomy a bit, as more ppl would consentrate on their mains, instead of farming creds on main, and buying uber stuff for their alts, compeating whith other highlvl ppl whith alts for the buy, pressing prices upp.

This could also let ppl "do the things they missed out on" whith their mains. Its a pain to gather all those tokens, and chanses are you outlvl some dungeons while gething them. It must be cool to just play the game, not worying about tokens and such, if you have 2500 tokens already.


I do think that rerolling a 220 should give you some bonuses to stats or skills too.
I used to play a game called "The fourth coming" (T4C for short). In that game one of the goals was to become a "Seraph". What it meant was that at a certan lvl, you could go true some trials, a rather hard dungeon you could enter after colecting lots of rare drops and compleating some quests. If you made it true, you got reborn at lvl 1. But, you got some extras too. You got higher base stats, you got a damage shield that sometimes pulsed out, harming nearby mobs, and you got to choose among some othe bonuses, like added damage to spels of diferent scools.

In the original form you were aloved to "seraph" 3 times, adding additional bonuses each time. But on some servers (as the game was running on lots of diferent servers for diferent companies) you could seraph as many times you liked (remember, the seraph quest took a lot of time, and it involved a lot of killing of mobs to get some rare items to triger the quest.) There you could bump into ppl who had done the quest 8 times and more.


Annyhow, I would sugest that every reborn character got 5 points extra to every base stat, and got to choose a bonus, in the form of a "Glory of the reborn" effect that would alvays be effective in the NCU, taking 1 NCU and cant be cancelled.

The GoRe effect could be a free pick when you're reborn, or it could be locked to your class or race.

GoRes could include: "Glory of the reborn healer" Gives you a +5% healing efficiancy, "Glory of the reborn Exterminator" Giving +5% to nanodamage, "glory of the reborn Tank" giving +5% hitpoints, "glory of the reborn Curier" giving +5% runspeed and base evades. GoRes shouldent be limited to this, this is just a n example.

[catdog]

Actually, hmm. I guess it would work if you only got a special (insignificant but still somewhat useful) perk if you stay in the profession you started with originally. So you'd be rewarded for "loyalty", but you still could switch your prof if you wanted to.

You should be more powerfull in my eyes, but this should be a viable choice to have FUN! Not a must do thing in order to keep ur edge up and sharp.

I wish more people took the time to read this post, sigh.

[Docnamdkeeper]

so anyone else thinking of Kingdom of Loathing when they look at this thread? Or does anybody else play that game?

[Swordbreaker]

They keyword on any new perks should be "insignificant". So it doesn't keel the game balance and whatnot. And you could look for perk action examples by looking at the new Wen-Wens - low impact but still somewhat useful.

I've been saying for the last few posts of mine that the "upgrades" should be low impact, but still have that weak impact on the game. Nothing fancy like zomg a new Mongo Rage or Genius for Sense/Agi, but rather something closer to secondary genomes or Gadgeteer or some other low impact perk in what they give.

The only bigger advantages so far would be faster exp grinding and the fact that you get to keep your items, but the exp grind bit is debatable. I still think that you should be able to keep all your items, though.