What do you think of a reborn feature that resets your level

[MushroomCake28]

So I was thinking about a reborn system. Effectively, once a character hits level 99 (or whatever is the max level), he can be "reborn", which will reset his level to 1, but he will retain 10-15% of his parameters as his new base parameter at level 1. He will keep all his skills and abilities, and any other achievements he got. The second reborn he does will have for the base parameter reborn base 1 + reborn base 2. There could even be a higher parameter retention % for subsequent reborns. So here's an example:

Regular level 1: Atk = 10
Regular level 99: Atk = 500
Reborn (1st) level 1: Atk = 10 + (10% x 500) = 60
Reborn (1st) level 99: Atk = 620 (better classes and stuff, higher atk growth)
Reborn (2nd) level 1: Atk = 10 + (10% x 500) + (12% x 620) = 134.4

This could be used as a way to add replay-ability, especially for those who are more hardcore. Furthermore, it would work well in a game with classes selection, where higher tier classes can only be achieved late in the game, and being reborn at level 1 with those classes will make it so the levels up offer the greater parameter growth from level 1 to max.

What do you think?

 

[zerobeat032]

I remember playing stuff like Makai Kingdom and being able to do this. it was fun to get some really broken characters after a few resurrections... but you were also dealing with a much higher level cap. I'm assuming you'd make challenges that only someone who's done this a time or two could take on? otherwise it'd be weird to be that powerful after doing this a few times and have literally nothing able to stop you.

 

[MushroomCake28]

@zerobeat032 Yes of course, if there are no endgame super challenges this would be pointless indeed lol.

 

[M.I.A.]

@zerobeat032 , YES!! I forgot all about the Reincarnation system in Makai Kingdom (Which is coincidentally my FAVE in the "Disgaea" line-up)!!
Oh Man.. I made a really broken Thief and a REALLY broken Priest via reincarnations.

It's a tricky system to implement, but I say go for it!
-MIA

 

[MushroomCake28]

@zerobeat032
It's a tricky system to implement, but I say go for it!
-MIA

No worries, I'm re-coding most of the default game engine so implementing something like this is no problem.
Thanks!

 

[FleshToDust]

I've seen that in mobile games. hit max level then "x function name" and you're back at lv 1 but with better stats than your original lv 1 was. do it over and over to get better stats. eventually your lv 1 is better than your lv 99 before x functioning him.

 

[l8rose]

Makes me think of Chrono Trigger's New Game + that allowed you to keep levels and gear but start over at the beginning (it also unlocked the availability of getting certain endings you couldn't achieve in normal mode either due to unlocking a short cut to the final boss).

 

[Wavelength]

I remember the Reincarnation system in Disgaea (and some of its spinoffs like Makai Kingdom), and it never felt appealing to me. I never really wanted to take that plunge and know that I would have to grind for a long time to get the character back to where they were before the Reincarnation - even if eventually, they'd be a lot more powerful for having done it. It meant that it would be a while before I'd be able to take on new, tougher challenges (than the ones I'd just beaten), and it just felt pretty bad to me the few times I used it. Essentially you're giving up 90% of the growth you've made so far, in order to be able to do that same growth again - I think that's why it felt bad. It also meant that I couldn't Reincarnate too many characters at once. In theory the risk-reward mechanic is cool, but as a player I just never wanted to pull that trigger.

Disgaea and its ilk were made specifically to be grind-heavy endgames, and offered a lot of ways to level up really quickly, so I sort of get it, and I imagine a lot of hardcore players probably did appreciate the feature in a game that accommodated it so well. I would just say be careful before you add that into your own design, especially when "safer" design options such as endgame dungeons that scale monster level to party level (allowing you to maintain a decent Level-Up rate no matter how highly-leveled you are) could also be options to provide infinite growth.

 

[MrNybbles]

I remember playing stuff like Makai Kingdom and being able to do this.

Nippon Ichi also made the Disgaea series which had a reincarnation system (as well as many other similarities).

Disgaea was a game that was fun to just play and level, but tended to have specific stages built for leveling and also allowed for leveling equipment. If you wanted to have an even stronger 9999 Flonne then you would reincarnate her and watch as her stats would eventually surpass from before she reincarnated. But the key here is as long as your players feel like playing stages and leveling is somehow progression then it isn't Grind. However, none of this was ever necessary for the main game, though useful if you wanted to reck a level 100 Item God.

The way I think of Grind is as the feeling of doing stuff in a game between making what feels like progress rather than feeling like you've made any progress itself.

 

[Poryg]

To be honest, I don't see the point in this feature.
Grinding from level 1 to level 100 takes an eternity in most games. And unless you're reborn around new game, it's impossible to progress forward on level 1 in the late game even with the skills. Also, unless the enemies are scaled with it or get more powerful each replay, it would mean that every subsequent playthrough would be "easier". If on the other hand the scaling is there and bad job, it will go out of hand (for example in Rogue legacy enemies will always one-shot you from new game+50 onward).
So unless you have some way to inflate XP gain, it would make much more sense to get either forced or optional reborn only upon new game+.
Also, stats growth is linear. Exp required grows exponentially. So it means getting reborn twice at level 60 defeats getting reborn at level 100 not only through total inherited stats, but through saved time as well.
But if you and the enemies scale the same, then if you are 140% stronger, the enemy is 140% stronger, what's the effective balance? It stays the same.
In the end I don't see how it adds on replayability. Unless the game is scaled properly towards this mechanic, which is not going to be easy, the only thing that's effectively going to be different are the available skills.

 

[TheoAllen]

There's a legendary function in Skyrim that you could reset and refund your perk point in a certain perk tree (so that you could spend it somewhere else), essentially allow you to make an unlimited level up (you only gain character level EXP when you level up your specific skill with its perk tree). You know what? I didn't like it. I modded the game so that I didn't need to reset perk in order to continue leveling.

 

[CraneSoft]

The very nature of this feature promotes excessive grinding for the sake of grinding, if you are going to let the player keep their skills anyway, there is absolutely no reason to make them lose 85%-90% of the parameters in the process - it's like tearing a house down after you've finished building it the first time so you can build it again - why not just simply renovate (increasing the level cap) it?

Like what Poryg pointed out, this can potentially work if you have New Game+ cycles with increasing difficulty since you are effectively "starting over", but even then this can be notoriously hard to properly balance as each reborn must not scale at the same rate as the enemies or there would be no difference. You'll also need a whole lot of content more than just "a few endgame super challenges" to justify its implementation.

With that said, the Reborn feature itself isn't that bad of a idea as it's simply another form of "Job Change", but players don't need the realism of losing stats from being born anew.

 

[Tiamat-86]

think i would just prefer the job point's stat growth system so its just a slow but steady increase instead of getting stronger > weak > strong > weak ...

edit: and most new game+ features i usually find more lacking then just developing a good endgame system.
new game+ needs to feel like a completely different game

 

[MushroomCake28]

@Poryg I intend to use it with a hierarchy job system/class system. Stat growth is depended on the the class (I've recoded the stats growth and exp growth): for example, a if a character levels up as a knight, he will have +5 physical attack, but if he switch to a mage, his next level up will only increase his physical attack by +2. With that in mind, at the beginning the player only has access to the lower tier classes, effectively leveling up with weaker classes. At the end of the game, with all the strongest classes unlocked, it would be possible to return to level to level up with those high tier classes to have the best stats. Also, the bonus carries over and grows exponentially, so if it's your 5th reborn, your base stat at level 1 would be:

Atk = base_atk + (10% of 1st reborn) + (12% of 2nd reborn) + (14% of 3rd reborn) + (16% of 4th reborn)

@TheoAllen That's fine. I suppose this comes down to personal preferences.

@CraneSoft How about you don't have to use the feature at all during the gameplay. Finishing the main story ends with characters around level 60, so still not max level. So that feature would be for the hardcore players that want to do the Endgame Ex-dungeons on the hardest difficulty.

 

[MrNybbles]

To be honest, I don't see the point in this feature.

It is there for people who enjoy Skinner Box -- the game! It's not for everyone, but some people get a sense of accomplishment out of exploiting game features and mechanics to create insanely huge damage numbers. The entire post game is based on getting 0-rarity higher-level equipment and leveling the equipment by eventually killing the the Item God at level 100 the item. This is beyond what most people want to do. For others, Makai Kingdom and other Disgaea games are their preferred Operant Conditioning Chamber. Wow, that went kinda dark.

Grinding from level 1 to level 100 takes an eternity in most games. And unless you're reborn around new game, it's impossible to progress forward on level 1 in the late game even with the skills.

This is a good point, but the Nippon Ichi games mentioned above are good at letting your level 1 character XP-leach and/or kill-steal so you can very easily get double-digit growths in levels. Yeah, I know, these are not normal games.

So it means getting reborn twice at level 60 defeats getting reborn at level 100 not only through total inherited stats, but through saved time as well.

Again, going by Nippon Ichi games, your level 1 character equipped with leveled high-tier equipment will be able to go to a low-level area, get to level 50 or so, level in the next area, etc.

But if you and the enemies scale the same, then if you are 140% stronger, the enemy is 140% stronger, what's the effective balance? It stays the same.

If it did then that would be a defect in balancing the mechanic. This is probably going to sound like I'm making things up at this point but I swear this is true in the Disgaea series. There are stat-boosting specialists living inside the weapons. Once you subdue a specialist they not only double in level but you can then also combine them with another same-type specialist and get a specialist at the level of the other two combined (and move them to different equipment).

In the end I don't see how it adds on replayability. Unless the game is scaled properly towards this mechanic, which is not going to be easy, the only thing that's effectively going to be different are the available skills.

In Disgaea it is fairly well-balanced post-game mechanics. Your level 1 reincarnated character with high-level equipment populated by specialists and a high-level party are going to steamroll through the early leveling stages. Results vary wildly, but a couple hours later and your character has gained several thousand levels.

What prevents this from feeling like grind is that any point you can say "I've leveled enough, now it's time to take on an Item God" (or some other objective). If you have completed the game and don't want to play any more you won't end up feeling like you've missed out on anything.

Personally I stopped playing Disgaea 4 after completing the main story and I've never needed to reincarnate a character, but one of my friends only stopped playing the original Disgaea on the PS2 because they came out with a hand-held version of the game.

To be clear I'm not disagreeing with the points Poryg is making -- these are valid concerns and I think Disgaea is an exception to the rule. The Reincarnation mechanic by itself isn't a good thing unless it works with the rest of the game's mechanics. I am in no way kidding about Disgaea being a Skinner Box, but at least it's a humane Operant Conditioning Chamber that doesn't punish you for not using it, or not logging in daily, or not buying the DLC, or not opening a loot box.

 

[CraneSoft]

@MushroomCake28 I'd say Go for it, but do note that if the feature is entirely geared towards post-game content, then it does not really add to replayability - which I assume is part of your original intention, as you are simply resetting and re-grinding to overcome the next big obstacle or to create absolute broken characters with every possible skillset.

 

[MechScapeZH]

I think it sounds cool, conceptually- maybe tie it to a phoenix of some sort story-wise? I'm curious as to why the characters are able to do this. The only thing I'd suggest is to allow the player to reincarnate at any time over a certain level (say, 10?) so that you don't have to grind all the way to the max level every time if you don't want to.

 

[FleshToDust]

It would be fine if you level up excessively quickly(to the point where you reach lv 99 in a matter of hours) and the first time you redo and be lv 1 again it be like as though you were lv 10.

 

[atoms]

I like it in theory, but it depends how long it would take to lv99 and repeat it a second time, etc. If it's very lengthy apart then it could become very grinding and more of a chore then anything else, but yes if the balance is fair it sounds at least intresting.

 

[rue669]

Sounds like a cool idea. Kinda like a rogue game. Dead Cells does something like this, except that when you die you go back to the start and you can carry over certain things. Definitely helps with replayability as long as the gameplay loop is addictive.