Idea: Class Prestige

[EliteMasterEric]

Many times, it is necessary for me to play using a hero class I have already reached full Champion Levels in. This personally feels like a waste; every battle, I see that I’m gaining Titan XP and know that resource is completely going to waste.

At the same time, I know that the development team doesn’t want to give players classless XP after level 100, since that firstly means that players would be leveling classes without spending time actually using them, and secondly means that players will be banking that XP to use to fully level them immediately when new classes come out.

Additionally, I am recalling one of the original philosophies behind the Hero class system; the team wanted players to stick to one class as much as possible. This makes sense for flavor reasons, you don’t just switch between being a stalwart Giant from Stormheim to a music-playing Wildfolk from Pan’s Vale on the drop of a hat just because your team has 4 Yellow troops in it, especially when you have spent literally thousands of battles training as a Titan.

On the other, other, OTHER hand (I have lots of hands), the importance of Hero classes is such that it is important for players to be able to choose between them; that’s why we got the per-team Hero class change. If they wanted to force players to stick to one class while not affecting players’ ability to switch around, they could have nerfed heroes to the point where they’re not relevant, but the fact that heroes are so useful now plays into that flavor thing; the hero is the CHAMPION of Krystara, it makes sense that they get used in nearly every team.

What would be nice is for there to be some way to encourage people to play classes they have fully maxed their talent trees for. Something to encourage players to dedicate a lot of time to a single class.

My idea: Class Prestige

Essentially, add additional functionality to class XP after the class is maxed out.

This system could be given various degrees of complexity. It could be as simple as the Level 1000 system; gain a small reward for every # extra Class XP you gain.

A more complex system, however, could be made into something nuanced and fun. Here’s my idea:

• Remove the level cap on hero classes. There is now no bound on class level, with the level formula remaining the same. Class level would become a status symbol; we could see people rushing to be the first level 500 Titan (that requires 125,000 class XP btw, 25 times the XP required for level 100), or a GOWDB leaderboard for who has the highest level in a single class.
• Talent trees remain at their current levels, with no additional talents unlocking beyond 100.
• However, high levels do not come without rewards. Certain milestones provide dedicated players with Gems, Keys, cosmetics like special titles and portraits (the ones used for Chat in 4.3), or even special cosmetic Pets!

I think the class system has a lot of room for improvement in this specific area, and the idea has a lot of flexibility in terms of what rewards the developers provide and how.

[Jonathan]

100% for this, although there was a similar thread a little while back that I’ll link later, and I think it opens up a couple of other discussion poonts around Talents that I’ve been thinking about (but aren’t really necessary to discuss here).

Great suggestions for how it would work and examples of things that might be awarded! Tbh, I can see people going for those titles, etc.

[UKresistance]

No thanks.
It’s enough work to level all the classes to 100, I don’t want to have to level them above that to unlock goodies.

[EliteMasterEric]

Remember, the thing to emphasize is that this would NOT have a gameplay impact because talents are tied to level 100. It’s a choice to pursue these rewards, just as it’s a choice to either push a faction or farm it, or to save orbs for Zuul’Goth or use them to power up your troops.

You can choose to level every class to 100, or just level the classes you use and pursue those rewards.

[Venar]

I like it, but I don’t think it will be considered since you can choose to skip leveling by using an Orb to fully unlock talents.
Si basically the system would mean you can spend reward-resources to reach the reward-resource ladder…

[Strat]

No thanks. I would be interesting in the developers spending a few hours and thought into the Hero classes though rather than using RNG as a design tool.

[Rickygervais]

Same i would prefer rework for each class so we don’t have 2 with same talent and would be more unique and give reason to level them all

[Slypenslyde]

Even if they rework the classes so everything has interesting choices at every level, you’re still going to find yourself in situations where you want to be using a class that maybe isn’t at level 100 yet so you can gain XP, but your performance is better if you use one already at 100 instead.

It’s also reasonable to believe you’re going to spend more time in the game with every relevant class at level 100 than you’re going to spend getting there. If we assume you play for infinity time, then it’s true that you’ll spend “nearly infinite” time with no use for your class XP because every class is maxed.

So you can want both. And it’s sensible that if we convinced the devs to do Class Overhaul Round 3, tacking on some new feature that uses champion XP beyond 100 could be part of that effort. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

[Zepp]

I think an idea like this is a bad thing. No time should be spent creating an extension of the existing broken system. Something like this would serve to validate a system that still needs work. Time should be spent on reworking what isn’t working, class balance, and making the current trait trees make sense both lore and synergy wise.

[Jonathan]

Here’s the link! Quite a similar theme: Benefits for classes at and beyond level 100 are needed!

And another, less developed: Bonus in souls or gold for classes lvl100

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I actually personally believe requiring a Champion level of 70 or 100 is too much to unlock the full strategic value of a class.

I also think this is some part of the reason level 100 Talents aren’t that impressive (with the exceptions of Fireblade and Fortitude).

Adding some kind of Prestige system would allow us to remove unnecessary upper tiers and deliver more consolidated, useful and meaningful Talent choices for the rest of the tree, somewhat along the lines of @Shimrra’s analysis.

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The Talent system is kind of like a (very major and much needed) rework or extension of the old Perk system, as shown here (stolen from an old forum post):

I think it needs to be a little more like the old system in terms of needing fewer victories to unlock a Class’ full strategic value, but also a lot less like the old system in terms of offering small buffs such as this (my current least favourite Talent, value-wise):

I.e. I think it needs to break free from the system that came before and from which it developed.

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Off-topic-ish, but funny (imo) (from our Guild Discord):