Hello to every community out there,
I'd like to introduce one of my most favorite ideas: "The leveling system". Please be aware, that this suggestion is more of a first approach than an absolutely finished idea that should be implemented exactly like it stands here. And I'd also like to apologize for my bad English – it’s not my mother tongue and I’m kinda "out of practice". ;).
First of all I'd like to tell you why we need - in my opinion - a leveling system similar to the ones we know from many (MMO)RPGs such as WoW, Gothic, Morrowind, etc. Then I want to show you how I imagined the implementation and the balancing. And at the end I want to give you a small overview of some of the skills and balancing issues I thought to be possible.
I don't want to be too specific, so nobody feels forced to discuss about some final talent's strength and some balancing issues that would come with it. I want you to primary discuss the whole idea of a leveling system. My talents and values shall give you only a hint how I brought this to mind.
1.Foreword
2.Why do we need a leveling system?
3.Advantages of a leveling system
4.The specializations
4.1Fleeter
4.2Miner
5.The System itself
5.1 Gaining levels
5.2 Respec
6.Talents and masterys
6.1 Fleeter
6.2 Miner
1. Foreword
Initially I developed this idea for a different game. I had much more features in mind because this game had much, much more features and abilities than OGame has and will likely ever have. But that doesn’t matter now, I want bring some of the innovations, which were planned, to OGame. Credits for this go primary to Francolino and WTH and recent changes, all this gave me the feeling that OGame could change to something more innovative. The idea of my leveling system is pretty simple and effective: You should get better at what you do most.
For this I divided the game in two separated gamestyles: The fleeter, who earns his resources by farming other people and killing fleets and the miner who harvests his income through mines. Of course I considered the mixed style which uses both – mines and fleet. Following this thought we get three different types of players: The Fleeter who is by far the most active player, the Comber who is pretty active, too, and also uses fleet to earn his resources and the miner who is known as a pretty inactive, mostly passiv player who produces everything he needs by his own and doesn’t interact much with other playes. Many of the players who first read this (especially in the German board where I first published this idea) told me that this would “force” them to play a predicted style and would constrain them in everything they want to do. In the end you will find this conclusion proven wrong. Always keep in mind that all the talents, masteries and general ideas behind every spec only support you at what you do. You are free to choose every spec you want. I want to make sure that everybody profits from a leveling system. I want to give a fleeter tools to raid more efficient, I want to give a comber tools to raid more efficient and boost his mines and I want to give tools to a miner that boost his mines and possibly boost his defense a little bit more because he’s the one who can’t defend himself with fleet.
The system itself is pretty simple: Every spec has different actions that give you experience (from now on called EXP) and for a given amount of experience you “ding” a new level and earn a new talent point to spend in one of the two specializations. By choosing one of the specs you also choose a mastery. This mastery isn’t skillable and only improves by leveling up. Both specs have one mastery that supports its own style of playing and other than talents this mastery gives you a bonus which increases linear and all the way you level up.
2. Why do we need a leveling system?
In my opinion OGame gets pretty boring and repetitive when it comes to the late game. The main goal of my system is the ability to provide some extra achievements and thus some bonus purposes you can try to reach for in the mid-late game (which begins, in my opinion, at about 10-15 Points in 1x-Speed-Universes). I don’t want my system to be absolutely overpowered in the beginning and totally meaningless in the endgame. I want to provide a system that develops your account and develops with it. I think its common sense, that especially miners (but also fleeters in “dead universes”) have almost nothing to do (apart from saving each day their resources and clicking one mine every week) when they reach approximately 10m points. I want to give these players new ambitions they can reach for. And of course by providing EXP through various actions (like harvesting ress from debris, attacking or trading other players, flying expeditions and all that stuff) I want to provide new incentives to just “do” anything.
3. Advantages of a leveling system.
I guess all the advantages should be obvious. By providing new achievements the game would be interesting for a far longer time than now. Especially the players who really appreciate a big challenge would get real benefits of e.g. researching, building up extremely big mines, etc. (Instead of today, where an espionage technology of 20 gives you no real profit – in my system players would get huge amounts of experience for great projects like this)
On the other hand I just want to give everybody the opportunity to really specialize his account for what he does most. A fleeter should be more effective at raiding than a miner, and a miner should be able to generate more resources peacefully. In a system like this it should be extremely easy to implement various incentive structures and to constantly add new achievements and talents for rebalancing the game. Like I mentioned before: There will be no buff like “ur mines produce 100% more res”. Even though the mines of a miner should be little more effective than the mines of a fleeter, the main goal is to give a miner tools for playing actively – an equivalent to farmraids.
4. The Specializations (Specs)
I prefer two skillable specializations (in this point I altered my initial idea from the german board where I suggested three talent-trees). One Spec for improving your passive, peacefull activity such as Mining, Trading, Expeditions and one Spec for the aggressive type of playing: farming, killing fleets, bashing defense. All talents and masteries in the “Mining-Tree” support all your peaceful activities (details later) and all the talents in your “Fleet-Tree” support your aggressive activities (more details later, too).
The idea is this: Once you hit about 50k Points you get the option to choose one spec. You just choose “miner” or “fleeter, no talents spend and no levels gained yet. You now unlocked the mastery of one tree. You are still able to skill both of them (like I said: I don’t want to force you in one spec), but you only get the mastery of the tree you choose where you put the most points in. (I just want to prevent fleeters from choosing and skilling their fleetspec and get the mining mastery and vice versa). Here’s a short overview of what a Fleeter is and what a Miner is:
4.1 Fleeter
He’s specialized at hunting down fleets, killing Moons but also small farm raids and everything that involves attacking other players with his ships or interplanetary rockets. I clearly say that I want to make it easier for fleeters to bash defense with profit, kill moons and find and hunt down fleets. If somebody doesn’t save his dayproduction for 10 days behind a big bunker it should be made easier for a fleeter to kill this bunker.
4.2 Miner
He’s peaceful and mostly inactive. The last thing is primary because this gamestyle just doesn’t support activity. The only time most of the miners do anything is when they trade the weekly production of deuterium to either a fleeter or the merchant. That’s it. There’s nothing more to do at the moment, doing expeditions is a joke (30 seconds of playing, then waiting nearly 2 hours. Then again 30 seconds of playing …). Every now and then he grades one mine up. I want a miner to be better at peaceful playing. That’s why I want to improve the following things: Trading (especially deut), getting more resources out of peaceful mining and expeditions) and of course doing research.
Just as an example: If you play – for example – a pure miner you will spend nearly every talentpoint in your mining spec. If you choose to be a comber you will spend roughly 10 points in fleetspec and 20 points in mining spec. Or 20/10.
5. The leveling system
But now the real explanation of how the system will work: There will be an infinite amount of levels (just like the levels of your mines today). And of course every next level will be harder to reach. Every level gives you one talent point you can spend in wherever you want. I think it could be useful to cap your levels at the account points, so here’s a guideline how I would like it:
Level1: 50k Points
Level10: 5m Points
Level15: 15m Points
Level20: 30m Points
Level25:60m Points
The approximate player would thus reach normally level 15 – 20. One talent tree will have roughly 30 Talents where you can spend your points in (and you will need maybe 15 or 20 to unlock the ultimate) , so no Tops with both talent trees completely skilled.
Once you choose Fleeter or Miner the related actions to this specialization will give you experience and you activate your mastery, which will passively boost your account.
5.1 Gaining experience
And here is what makes you level up:
As a Fleeter you gain experience for attacking other people (destroyed units, harvesting debris) and building battle ships. Every ship you build will give you exp, no matter if it gets destroyed or not (you keep that EXP). How much of your EXP is gained by building things and how much by attacking (e.g. destroying things) is up to you. That’s just how I imagine it.
As a Miner you gain EXP by producing resources passively and by doing expeditions. You also get EXP for every production building (Metal, Crystal, Deut and Power Plants) you build and for every research you do. You also get EXP for friendly flying missions (like transport, deploy) – the bigger your fleet the more EXP. So you gain EXP for trading!
5.2 Respecc:
Of course you can always choose to respect. I’d suggest a first, free respecc and costs for later respeccs (just to prevent an abuse). The costs could drop while time goes by. So for example a new respecc - if you just did it - costs 250k DM and in 6 months it is free again.
6. Masterys and Talents
And here are my masterys and talents. This are just my first ideas, I’d love to work out other ones:
I again want to point out that all of this is just made to improve the strength of a play style and make them more efficient and comfortable. This are all my ideas and of course I’d like to hear constructive criticism.
6.1 Fleeter:
Mastery: Produces more debris. If the fleeter was leading in this fight, he gets 1% per level more destroyed ships into debris. A level 25-fleeter would generate 55% debris if he kills a fleet.
Fuelconsumption: Reduces the fuel consumption of heavy ships such as bombers, destroyers, battle ships
Rapidfire: Gives some ships higher and/or new rapidfire values. One talent per ship. I highly recommend more rapidfire from bombers and Destroyers to defense and also a big increase from Deathstars to defense (against fleet they’re strong enough)
Loot: increases the looted resources after a successful raid to up to 75%.
Driveboosts: I think some of the ships could still need a speed tuning. For example Destroyer and Bomber. Especially with reduced consumption, more speed and new RF the destroyer would finally get his crown as “king under the battleships” back.
Ultimate: Raidcolony. I think everybody know that this is. It should be buildable in the shipyard and should cost a huge load of res. Then it can be used as a mobile moon.
6.2 Miner:
Mastery: Increases the mine production by 1% per level. Again, a level 25 miner would generate 25% more resources through his mines. (passive and constantly)
Fusion plant improvement: Reduces the deuterium consumption by up to 90%.
Solar satellite improvement: increases the temperature (only for SolSat-Energy-Production) by up to 30°C
Large Cargo improvement: increases the cargo capacity of your large chargo by up to 100%.
Expedition: Improves the number of expeditions you can do simultaneously by up to 3 or 4. There should also be a talent to increase the resource loot on expeditions.
Ultimate: Deutcolony. You get the ability to build a deuterium colony in your shipyard which can be deployed on any position in any solar system. This colony only produces deuterium (I guess the best solution would be to determine your average level of your Deutmines all over your other planets and let the colony produce exactly by this level)
Most of the talent should be skillable with 3 to 5 Points.
I guess that’s it, i hope you like it. Once again apologies for my bad English, I’m still out of practice ;). If something’s unclear or badly verbalized let me know and/or just ask for clarification. I hope nothing got lost in translation ;).
I'd like to introduce one of my most favorite ideas: "The leveling system". Please be aware, that this suggestion is more of a first approach than an absolutely finished idea that should be implemented exactly like it stands here. And I'd also like to apologize for my bad English – it’s not my mother tongue and I’m kinda "out of practice". ;).
First of all I'd like to tell you why we need - in my opinion - a leveling system similar to the ones we know from many (MMO)RPGs such as WoW, Gothic, Morrowind, etc. Then I want to show you how I imagined the implementation and the balancing. And at the end I want to give you a small overview of some of the skills and balancing issues I thought to be possible.
I don't want to be too specific, so nobody feels forced to discuss about some final talent's strength and some balancing issues that would come with it. I want you to primary discuss the whole idea of a leveling system. My talents and values shall give you only a hint how I brought this to mind.
1.Foreword
2.Why do we need a leveling system?
3.Advantages of a leveling system
4.The specializations
4.1Fleeter
4.2Miner
5.The System itself
5.1 Gaining levels
5.2 Respec
6.Talents and masterys
6.1 Fleeter
6.2 Miner
1. Foreword
Initially I developed this idea for a different game. I had much more features in mind because this game had much, much more features and abilities than OGame has and will likely ever have. But that doesn’t matter now, I want bring some of the innovations, which were planned, to OGame. Credits for this go primary to Francolino and WTH and recent changes, all this gave me the feeling that OGame could change to something more innovative. The idea of my leveling system is pretty simple and effective: You should get better at what you do most.
For this I divided the game in two separated gamestyles: The fleeter, who earns his resources by farming other people and killing fleets and the miner who harvests his income through mines. Of course I considered the mixed style which uses both – mines and fleet. Following this thought we get three different types of players: The Fleeter who is by far the most active player, the Comber who is pretty active, too, and also uses fleet to earn his resources and the miner who is known as a pretty inactive, mostly passiv player who produces everything he needs by his own and doesn’t interact much with other playes. Many of the players who first read this (especially in the German board where I first published this idea) told me that this would “force” them to play a predicted style and would constrain them in everything they want to do. In the end you will find this conclusion proven wrong. Always keep in mind that all the talents, masteries and general ideas behind every spec only support you at what you do. You are free to choose every spec you want. I want to make sure that everybody profits from a leveling system. I want to give a fleeter tools to raid more efficient, I want to give a comber tools to raid more efficient and boost his mines and I want to give tools to a miner that boost his mines and possibly boost his defense a little bit more because he’s the one who can’t defend himself with fleet.
The system itself is pretty simple: Every spec has different actions that give you experience (from now on called EXP) and for a given amount of experience you “ding” a new level and earn a new talent point to spend in one of the two specializations. By choosing one of the specs you also choose a mastery. This mastery isn’t skillable and only improves by leveling up. Both specs have one mastery that supports its own style of playing and other than talents this mastery gives you a bonus which increases linear and all the way you level up.
2. Why do we need a leveling system?
In my opinion OGame gets pretty boring and repetitive when it comes to the late game. The main goal of my system is the ability to provide some extra achievements and thus some bonus purposes you can try to reach for in the mid-late game (which begins, in my opinion, at about 10-15 Points in 1x-Speed-Universes). I don’t want my system to be absolutely overpowered in the beginning and totally meaningless in the endgame. I want to provide a system that develops your account and develops with it. I think its common sense, that especially miners (but also fleeters in “dead universes”) have almost nothing to do (apart from saving each day their resources and clicking one mine every week) when they reach approximately 10m points. I want to give these players new ambitions they can reach for. And of course by providing EXP through various actions (like harvesting ress from debris, attacking or trading other players, flying expeditions and all that stuff) I want to provide new incentives to just “do” anything.
3. Advantages of a leveling system.
I guess all the advantages should be obvious. By providing new achievements the game would be interesting for a far longer time than now. Especially the players who really appreciate a big challenge would get real benefits of e.g. researching, building up extremely big mines, etc. (Instead of today, where an espionage technology of 20 gives you no real profit – in my system players would get huge amounts of experience for great projects like this)
On the other hand I just want to give everybody the opportunity to really specialize his account for what he does most. A fleeter should be more effective at raiding than a miner, and a miner should be able to generate more resources peacefully. In a system like this it should be extremely easy to implement various incentive structures and to constantly add new achievements and talents for rebalancing the game. Like I mentioned before: There will be no buff like “ur mines produce 100% more res”. Even though the mines of a miner should be little more effective than the mines of a fleeter, the main goal is to give a miner tools for playing actively – an equivalent to farmraids.
4. The Specializations (Specs)
I prefer two skillable specializations (in this point I altered my initial idea from the german board where I suggested three talent-trees). One Spec for improving your passive, peacefull activity such as Mining, Trading, Expeditions and one Spec for the aggressive type of playing: farming, killing fleets, bashing defense. All talents and masteries in the “Mining-Tree” support all your peaceful activities (details later) and all the talents in your “Fleet-Tree” support your aggressive activities (more details later, too).
The idea is this: Once you hit about 50k Points you get the option to choose one spec. You just choose “miner” or “fleeter, no talents spend and no levels gained yet. You now unlocked the mastery of one tree. You are still able to skill both of them (like I said: I don’t want to force you in one spec), but you only get the mastery of the tree you choose where you put the most points in. (I just want to prevent fleeters from choosing and skilling their fleetspec and get the mining mastery and vice versa). Here’s a short overview of what a Fleeter is and what a Miner is:
4.1 Fleeter
He’s specialized at hunting down fleets, killing Moons but also small farm raids and everything that involves attacking other players with his ships or interplanetary rockets. I clearly say that I want to make it easier for fleeters to bash defense with profit, kill moons and find and hunt down fleets. If somebody doesn’t save his dayproduction for 10 days behind a big bunker it should be made easier for a fleeter to kill this bunker.
4.2 Miner
He’s peaceful and mostly inactive. The last thing is primary because this gamestyle just doesn’t support activity. The only time most of the miners do anything is when they trade the weekly production of deuterium to either a fleeter or the merchant. That’s it. There’s nothing more to do at the moment, doing expeditions is a joke (30 seconds of playing, then waiting nearly 2 hours. Then again 30 seconds of playing …). Every now and then he grades one mine up. I want a miner to be better at peaceful playing. That’s why I want to improve the following things: Trading (especially deut), getting more resources out of peaceful mining and expeditions) and of course doing research.
Just as an example: If you play – for example – a pure miner you will spend nearly every talentpoint in your mining spec. If you choose to be a comber you will spend roughly 10 points in fleetspec and 20 points in mining spec. Or 20/10.
5. The leveling system
But now the real explanation of how the system will work: There will be an infinite amount of levels (just like the levels of your mines today). And of course every next level will be harder to reach. Every level gives you one talent point you can spend in wherever you want. I think it could be useful to cap your levels at the account points, so here’s a guideline how I would like it:
Level1: 50k Points
Level10: 5m Points
Level15: 15m Points
Level20: 30m Points
Level25:60m Points
The approximate player would thus reach normally level 15 – 20. One talent tree will have roughly 30 Talents where you can spend your points in (and you will need maybe 15 or 20 to unlock the ultimate) , so no Tops with both talent trees completely skilled.
Once you choose Fleeter or Miner the related actions to this specialization will give you experience and you activate your mastery, which will passively boost your account.
5.1 Gaining experience
And here is what makes you level up:
As a Fleeter you gain experience for attacking other people (destroyed units, harvesting debris) and building battle ships. Every ship you build will give you exp, no matter if it gets destroyed or not (you keep that EXP). How much of your EXP is gained by building things and how much by attacking (e.g. destroying things) is up to you. That’s just how I imagine it.
As a Miner you gain EXP by producing resources passively and by doing expeditions. You also get EXP for every production building (Metal, Crystal, Deut and Power Plants) you build and for every research you do. You also get EXP for friendly flying missions (like transport, deploy) – the bigger your fleet the more EXP. So you gain EXP for trading!
5.2 Respecc:
Of course you can always choose to respect. I’d suggest a first, free respecc and costs for later respeccs (just to prevent an abuse). The costs could drop while time goes by. So for example a new respecc - if you just did it - costs 250k DM and in 6 months it is free again.
6. Masterys and Talents
And here are my masterys and talents. This are just my first ideas, I’d love to work out other ones:
I again want to point out that all of this is just made to improve the strength of a play style and make them more efficient and comfortable. This are all my ideas and of course I’d like to hear constructive criticism.
6.1 Fleeter:
Mastery: Produces more debris. If the fleeter was leading in this fight, he gets 1% per level more destroyed ships into debris. A level 25-fleeter would generate 55% debris if he kills a fleet.
Fuelconsumption: Reduces the fuel consumption of heavy ships such as bombers, destroyers, battle ships
Rapidfire: Gives some ships higher and/or new rapidfire values. One talent per ship. I highly recommend more rapidfire from bombers and Destroyers to defense and also a big increase from Deathstars to defense (against fleet they’re strong enough)
Loot: increases the looted resources after a successful raid to up to 75%.
Driveboosts: I think some of the ships could still need a speed tuning. For example Destroyer and Bomber. Especially with reduced consumption, more speed and new RF the destroyer would finally get his crown as “king under the battleships” back.
Ultimate: Raidcolony. I think everybody know that this is. It should be buildable in the shipyard and should cost a huge load of res. Then it can be used as a mobile moon.
6.2 Miner:
Mastery: Increases the mine production by 1% per level. Again, a level 25 miner would generate 25% more resources through his mines. (passive and constantly)
Fusion plant improvement: Reduces the deuterium consumption by up to 90%.
Solar satellite improvement: increases the temperature (only for SolSat-Energy-Production) by up to 30°C
Large Cargo improvement: increases the cargo capacity of your large chargo by up to 100%.
Expedition: Improves the number of expeditions you can do simultaneously by up to 3 or 4. There should also be a talent to increase the resource loot on expeditions.
Ultimate: Deutcolony. You get the ability to build a deuterium colony in your shipyard which can be deployed on any position in any solar system. This colony only produces deuterium (I guess the best solution would be to determine your average level of your Deutmines all over your other planets and let the colony produce exactly by this level)
Most of the talent should be skillable with 3 to 5 Points.
I guess that’s it, i hope you like it. Once again apologies for my bad English, I’m still out of practice ;). If something’s unclear or badly verbalized let me know and/or just ask for clarification. I hope nothing got lost in translation ;).
If WTH says that this is considerable, we can discuss on balancing things 
.