[Leveling System] Weapon = Level

[Solon001]

I agree with some people that a leveling system would shatter the spirit of the Mania. But i also agree that without a sense of character progression it isn't an RPG. So i propose this, "You're only as strong as your weapon"

Picture this you start with a grade F- Weapon. Weapons go in rank order from F- F F+ E- E E+............A- A A+ Super (Represented as a grade S) and Mania (Represented as a grade M)

now a standard longbow could be a grade E weapon, but if you manage to pick up a longbow with a fire enchantment on it that turns all arrows fired from it into flame arrows, or if you find a way to to do the enchantment itself, you may find that the rank of the weapon has increased from a grade E to a D- or even a D.

Now the master of "Insert dungeon name here" has a magical seal on it preventing all weapons of grade C- or Higher to be rendered useless (1 HP Damage) Thus rendering a quest fair for all. obviously if you don't have a D+ weapon or a weapon of a couple grades lower you wouldn't be in that server in the first place. but it also teaches all high level players to still keep lower grade weapons in their inventory if they want to join lower servers.

Skills are then obviously tied to the weapon. and the weapon would define your role within the party, so no job/class system is needed in this way. Clothes and Armour can also do this too, meaning in the previous example if you have a B grade armor in the C- or higher stuff is banned dungeon, your shiny new magical enforced super Amour will now end up doing less good than knocking on the dungeons door starkers.

Now "leveling" is simple really, all you have to do is take your D- Weapon for examples sake and go to a dungeon that has D grade enemies, keep trying and eventually you will come across, (in a chest for example) a D grade weapon, get all the D grades you want to make your role complete then your ready for the D+ dungeons. and that is how you keep getting better. Naturally though that goblins of different levels will have different skills and AI meaning that you need to get better in skill as well as increasing your weapon grade too. So that could mean you could take on an A grade dungeon with C grade weapons if you want, just make sure you can compensate for the lack of weapon grade for your skill.

But wait there's more, with my grade system you could easily buy with planets/credits/whatever the RPG currency is going to be in this game, Charges that will upgrade your weapon for a one time only boost. or downgrade a weapon so you can use them in lower dungeons. (for those who have played the dot hack series, think of the scrolls that increase speed, or paralyze poison sleep of does elemental damage) This will provide a one time fix for a person who doesn't quite have the correct grade equipment for a dungeon.

There we have it, that's my suggestion, and to me it's a sound way to go. Then again, the Pokemon series have a way of evening out levels in competitive PvP Pokemon Battling that could be used in QM. In the Pokemon games there's 2 types of competitive battle There's level 50 Battles and Level 100 Battles, (a Pokemon can only grow to level 100) if you Pokemon don't meet the requirements for the level 50 battles then your Pokemon gets upgraded/degraded to the correct level and the stats will be updated accordingly, however though a Pokemon of level 25 that's been upgraded to level 50 would have a disadvantage to a Pokemon that was level 75 and been downgraded, because the level 75er has had time to learn most if not all the skills it can learn in it's leveling. while the level 25er is s stuck with the moves it's got. (only 4 moves can be learned in one go though, so if they have 4 already then can learn another move then they have to "Forget" a move to learn a new one. So in a way the higher level person could still have the advantage when you look at it like that, but there are items and other ways to learn moves that you'll know of only if you are a Pokemon fan and something that i'm not prepared to go into detail with right now. The Level 100 battles however, are no holds barred, if your not level 100 well there's no mercy. So untill your pokemon are level 100 and you want to go into competitive battles, your best to go into the level 50's. so if you want, a level system would also work, just have a Level 20/30 characters only, then if a level 40 wants to take part he/she will automatically be downgraded to level 30. the same with a level 10, gone to level 20.

Thanks for taking the time to listen/read to what i have to say/write. I hope a system like this will happen, and i hope I've offered some sort of inspiration/information to all the team at nadeo working on this.

[krone6]

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