EXP for Items / "The traveling Bards"

[Eistee]

This is an idea I've had ever since the DLC for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 added the "Traveling Bards" to the game. These NPCs give you special items in exchange for excess EXP. One way to gain this excess EXP is to voluntarily level down your characters at an Inn.

I don't know if this "leveling down" thing would be possible to do in PSO (it would be nice, though). If not, there is a different solution: As most of you are probably aware, your characters still gain EXP after level 200, and this EXP is added to the character's total EXP gained. This "excess EXP" would be used to buy items. The EXP spent would then, of course, have to be substracted from the character's total EXP gained (something which I am not sure is possible).

(Note: The total EXP shown is currently "bugged" and you can only see a character's total EXP when you start up the game and are in the Lobby. According to Ade in another topic, however, this could most likely easily be fixed.)

Now here's the question: Which items should and could be made available through this? In my opinion, anything with a direct "effect" on the game, like PDs or items with high hit, are off the table. However, we recently learned that something amazing is coming: Items that can be used to apply different skins to your weapons and shields. I'm talking about the "Soul" and "Paint" items that are, according to Matt, coming soontm as a reward for the last season.

These kinds of items would be, in my opinion, the perfect reward for this kind of "excess EXP". A common complaint by veteran players is that there is no real "incentive" to continue playing a character after hitting LV 200. While I disagree, the system I am proposing here would definitely give "maxed-out" characters a use besides using them to hunt stuff. Spending 25,000,000 EXP (I just made this number up, maybe it would need to be a lot higher) for a new skin would definitely be nice.

I guess it is very unlikely that something like this will ever be implemented, maybe even because programming something like this would be difficult. Still, I wanted to put it out there.

Thanks for reading; and have a nice day!

 

[Ade]

I'm sorry to be disagreeable here, but how can you state that you "disagree" with the assertion that "there's no incentive to play beyond Lv. 200?" It's objectively true. Currently, you get nothing for any EXP gained beyond Lv. 200. Am I missing something here?

Unless you consider "incentive" to be the subjective good feeling of having a strong Lv. 200 character to hunt items with (the performance difference between a Lv. 180 and 200 is minimal but the 180 at least has a purpose for gaining EXP), or perhaps pride (which isn't a tangible good), there's no OBJECTIVE benefit to accumulating EXP beyond Lv. 200. It's like you're disagreeing with something that's a hard, numerical fact- which puzzles me.

That said, I like your idea.

I think it would be best to avoid the possible messiness of "leveling down," so this should be reserved for post Lv. 200 EXP, and if the EXP counter can't be lowered, then some sort of spendable currency (similar to MA4 Tickets) could be assigned to the account at certain EXP thresholds. That way, you can always see your total EXP gained even after spending it.

 

[Eistee]

Heyo Ade!

On the "incentive" thing: Yes, that is exacty what I meant. Some classes actually get a lot better the closer you get to 200 - FOnewearl is one such case. For example, the earliest you can kill Lizards with the minimal amount of Gifoie casts when using 148 Mind Mats and the "best" Ep4 units (V101, V801, Adept to max ATA and so on and a Tech unit since Gifoie 30 is so rare) is level 197 when using your "max stats" mag (so yeah, you could use a very specialized Mag for each level or so, but almost no one does that). So I would disagree that the difference between 180 and 200 is "minimal" for all the classes. However, there are some classes where this definitely is the case. Maybe I feel the "growth" more since I mostly play FOs and thus I enjoy playing these "complete" characters since they are, strictly speaking, the "most efficient" ones? I don't know. Apart from that, you are correct that there is no "gain" after hitting 200, so we can agree on that.

The "level down-idea" was more of a hypothetical thing. I guess the best way to do this is to use the excess EXP after 200. Leveling down would get annoying fast. I just wanted to present that option in case using the "excess EXP" is not possible.

One thing I particularly like about this idea is that new players would not really "see" this not-vanilla-at-all-change at first glance. When raising the level cap was being discussed, I was against that idea. Seeing characters with levels of 201+ running around would feel a bit too much like a "rom-hack" in my opinion. With this idea, that could be avoided.

Anyway, thanks for your reply! No matter how low the chance of something like this being implemented is, some discussion about post-game content is always a good thing.