Super-Sidekicking! This is an awesome development!

[MikeB7]

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=186099

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.

added bonus!  EAT IT, PLers!! 

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.

and this gem

(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.)

This opens up teaming options BIGTIME.  Also, he posts in further pages - the level restrictions on zones besides Hami raids and PvP zones will be removed.  Low-level co-op in the RWZ!  That's just awesome.

[Tortuga]

Wow, that's fantastic stuff.  It's too bad it's taken so long for them to do something like this, but I'm glad it's happening.

[Lionheart]

With my daughter now having her own account, the super-sidekicking will be a great boon. We've been making new characters to run with her; now she'll be able to run with some of our more established characters as well.

With MA, power customization, super-sidekicking, and so forth coming out, CoH is really pumping out the QoL upgrades. It makes you wonder what they're prepping us for with Going Rogue and future development.

[MJB]

I read all this yesterday and I'm just knocked away. Truly awesome stuff.

One question though. I wonder if this means we can throw lowbies in a TF/SF? THAT would be a true quality of life feature. More times than not we would be playing and decide to run a TF/SF where someone didn't have a toon in range to get XP. Less people getting XP = less people interested in running the TF.

[Marmeille]

(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.)

haha! Death to Gagora!!!

The Super-Sidekicking and no more bridging is awesome too.

[Xenolith]

Although neat, it's kind of pointless at this time, isn't it?  I'm assuming nearly everyone that wants a level 50 character probably has one at this time, and those folks with level 50 characters wanting another level 50 characters specifically to enjoy high level adventures are going to be put off my the slow crawl back to 50.  Yes?  No?

I've never power leveled, but I know people who have, and they stopped playing when they hit 50 after doing some end-game missions.  This would have been great about 5 years ago.  Well, great for the game creators, anyway.

[Verfall]

Although neat, it's kind of pointless at this time, isn't it?  I'm assuming nearly everyone that wants a level 50 character probably has one at this time, and those folks with level 50 characters wanting another level 50 characters specifically to enjoy high level adventures are going to be put off my the slow crawl back to 50.  Yes?  No?

I've never power leveled, but I know people who have, and they stopped playing when they hit 50 after doing some end-game missions.  This would have been great about 5 years ago.  Well, great for the game creators, anyway.

If you're playing the game just to get to level 50, you're playing the wrong game.

[GhostMachine]

I'm guessing PI will practically be a graveyard once the Sidekicking feature is added.

[Xenolith]

Although neat, it's kind of pointless at this time, isn't it?  I'm assuming nearly everyone that wants a level 50 character probably has one at this time, and those folks with level 50 characters wanting another level 50 characters specifically to enjoy high level adventures are going to be put off my the slow crawl back to 50.  Yes?  No?

I've never power leveled, but I know people who have, and they stopped playing when they hit 50 after doing some end-game missions.  This would have been great about 5 years ago.  Well, great for the game creators, anyway.

If you're playing the game just to get to level 50, you're playing the wrong game.

Right.  So why bother adding this feature now?  That's the part I don't get.  Was there a particular reason to prevent PL?  I love the idea of auto-sk/exemp, but I can't think that it was intended for anti-PL.  I don't know though.

[Marmeille]

This feature is mostly so that anyone can team easily with anyone now, without the hassle of "tetris" sidekicks and examplars, it has nothing to do with getting to lvl 50, it's all about finally not having to lose time managing a team before starting to enjoy the game, the fact that it's "anti-bridge" and crap is just an added bonus, it's all about quality of life and letting folks play any toon they like in a team with anyone regardless of their levels, you can even for example do that lowbie toon's Firefrost mission even on a team where the other toons are all 40+ lvl, they then just all get examplared and still get xp, it's really awesome when you think about it.

[Lionheart]

This feature is mostly so that anyone can team easily with anyone now, without the hassle of "tetris" sidekicks and examplars, it has nothing to do with getting to lvl 50, it's all about finally not having to lose time managing a team before starting to enjoy the game, the fact that it's "anti-bridge" and crap is just an added bonus, it's all about quality of life and letting folks play any toon they like in a team with anyone regardless of their levels, you can even for example do that lowbie toon's Firefrost mission even on a team where the other toons are all 40+ lvl, they then just all get examplared and still get xp, it's really awesome when you think about it.

Exactly. Many of us play many alts -- and are not interested in powerleveling. After over 36 months, my highest level character is 35. My family and I play for the journey, not the level cap. 

The ability to team without worrying about levels opens up a whole new avenue for team-building. Now maybe people will stop griping about Mission Architect taking away potential non-MA teammates; the pool just got bigger.

[UnfluffyBunny]

I prefer MA over the regular storyline, because, well I can find stuff I havent done over and over a hundred times, and in a few cases the story is better than the core storyline.
it also meant I could team with friends who had nothing in my level range (much as this new change will allow you to do)
so, considering someone (not going to drop a name) very matter of factly accused me of being a powerleveller in the fr&nrf chat, i'd like to know the difference between this and what I was doing?
as far as I know, MA dousnt give you any extra XP over playing regular missions, either solo or sidekicked, and the fact I enjoy the missions there more (the travelling between zones bores me a fair amount) what's wrong with the way I played?
and how is it worse than playing 2 accounts at once, and having them teamed together with a large level difference? I dont see how playing as has been suggested in this thread is powerlevelling if it's in MA (yet apparently not out in regular missions) and teaming with one of your own lowbie alts is somehow not considered powerlevelling. (I cant imagine you can effectively control both at once, especially if they're on seperate pc's)

I will note, after this public (and quite honestly unfair) accusation, people seemed far more reluctant to play with me, to the point where I just left.

[MikeB7]

Dude, are you talking to me?  I've been known to play two toons at once on two separate computers.  I don't hide that fact - after 36 earned 50s, I'll help some toons get to stamina, I don't feel bad about it.  If you are talking about me, I certainly don't remember putting you down or anything in FR/NRF. 

[UnfluffyBunny]

the comment was "it's got to be better than watching Syn get powerlevelled"
i'd have to transfer the screenshot onto my pc from my laptop when the misses picks it up, but I could tell you it was said on June 19th at approx 2:30am GMT.
but beyond that, i'm not trying to air dirty laundry here, i'm merely stating that by the definition I had implied upon myself, this is as much encouraging "PL'ing" as MA

[BlueBard]

There are some aspects of this "super-sidekicking" business that I'm not too sure about.

I've never liked losing powers when exemplaring.  Now I'm going to stand a reasonable chance of being forced to auto-exemplar and thus lose powers any time I join a group.  They say they're going to do something about that, but they don't know what.  They haven't mentioned how it affects the auto-exemplaring experienced via Ouroboros missions, either.

So rather than make it less painful to join a group, some folks will be trying to avoid being auto-exemplared down and will not want to run missions tied to a level lower than they are, missions  that could have been done before without necessarily losing effective levels, only at a lower yield of XP.

Sidekicking is a wonderful thing.  But, do I really expect to be able to effectively run a level 2 character with his 3 powers in a level 50 mission?  No.  He's going to die and he's going to do it often and he's not going to be of a great deal of use.  Besides that, he's going to slow the rest of the team down.  So the examples given of level 1 characters running with much higher level characters are inherently flawed due to basic game mechanics that sidekicking does not solve.  Low-level characters are still better off running around with other low-level characters and tackling enemies of the appropriate level.

Team leaders are not going to have much incentive to invite lowbies to fill a team, either.  Not when they can jack up the effective team size on their own.

Super-sidekicking doesn't fix the teaming problems... it just changes them.  Still, it will be nice to be able to earn XP even on a lower level team if you want to, having the option to exemplar the normal way if all you want is the inf.

[MikeB7]

omg, I joke, I tease...it's what I do in the game.  But yeah, this shouldn't be a public discussion.  PM me if you want to continue.

[Reepicheep]

I'm really happy with this. My experience of the game (before I went on my current break) was that the community had gotten smaller and smaller. This should help connect it up again, anyone being able to team with anyone.

Its a really good cure for powerlevelling. Besides the inconvenience of having to travel between missions, teaming normally should be as productive as MA farming. More fun too.

I don't think the useless lvl 1 characters teaming with lvl 50 characters were a target to be cured with this... I believe its more a sneak attack on powerlevelling. Certainly effective.

However, I don't much like the thought of lvl 1-20 being easier. Gone already are the days when the Hollows were difficult and way more fun. Some awesome content was to be had between 10-20.

Mentor-tetris is an awesome term.

[BlueBard]

Look at it this way, Reep...

Blowing through the levels so fast that a person lost mission content happened because people gained XP faster doing someone else's higher level missions than they did running their own missions.  And because 1-20 is mostly grind after you've leveled up one or two alts.

Now, who knows for sure how the super-sidekick changes will affect mission XP and leveling?  Maybe they saw a need to shore up experience gain in the absence of "power-leveling"?

If low-level characters weren't so completely un-super, I wouldn't feel the need to level up so fast.  Once I got Vet Reward bonus attacks, I felt much better about running a low-level character.  I had some decent attacks to shore up weaknesses, even if they didn't thematically fit the character very well.  Same thing when they gave us permanent "temporary" Origin powers... it added a ranged attack much needed at the lower levels.  And don't even get me started on the Powers tax imposed by the necessity of slotting for a travel power and for Stamina... but the availability of several temporary travel powers has helped that a great deal, too.  (Zero-G, Raptor, Wentworth teleport, Pocket-D VIP teleport, Mission teleport, Ouroboros teleport, etc...)

Even so, I really don't start feeling "powerful" until somewhere between level 14 and level 20.  The great amount of mission content available now is more than welcome... it gives me a bit more control over what missions I run and it's a way to distinguish the careers of my various alts so I'm not doing the same-old.

[AncientSpirit]

The part I think I like best is no longer have to worry that I get too far away from someone whose sk-ing me.   I have died SO many times when the person I'm depending on has left for the hospital in the middle of a fight    Sometimes I don't even know there gone until minutes after I'm dead.