There was some very brief gossiping last night regarding rebirth, and since I am going through that stage at the moment I thought to collectivize my thoughts a bit more formally about the matter here, as it's a better place to have the discussion that needs to happen.
Firstly a couple of quick points about rebirthing for those who haven't...
* It's really fun, seriously the last few weeks have been great. It's like a victory lap after winning a running race.
* You'll need to vault your elite eq, so you'll need 100-175 vault slots BEFORE you rebirth. (PS You can't buy vaults before level 8 for a reason I don't understand.)
* A smart person would prepare newbie eqsets, quest items before rebirth.
* The typical slow down still occurs at 6x40, and coins will become an issue. I am currently 120m coins down from when I started rebirth.
* You can level extremely fast... I'm not even 3 weeks into rebirth (real time) and I am already 40w 40o 40m 40c 40d 40n 24t 20b 20a
* Keeping half the stuff you gained at avatar shop is an advantage, but won't make much difference. Objectively speaking, it's better to rebirth earlier rather than later.
* You will rank gain 3x faster at rebirth, but at my level that's still 500 big epics for crappy reward. Epic reward shouldn't objectively factor in anyone's decision making. The chance at gems, gold, xp and character improvement in the epic system are worse than any other system in the game once the first ranks are past. Even running xerxes/klklklpa back to back in fast repop can only just keep up with a good group which will also get more gold and gems because you kill more mobs.
So here is some of the chatter from last night...
>'i think rebirth level 2 should be 2x as hard as normal. gorka is levelling too fast.'
Although this was a joke comment, to make rebirth 2 twice as hard raises the question of would there be enough reward for players to even do that. It appears that my rebirth bonus was a single ac point -0.1... of which I already had 140 of before I rebirthed...
>'the way some of the bonuses are set up, in theory you can cap you class bonus since the
code is (rebirth_level * bonus)'
So this comment raises the point that perhaps we could rebirth more than once.
>'rebirth was supposed to be a way for someone to keep their name and restart. 'anything extra should be considered a bonus..'
And this comment states the original purpose of rebirth, but it's not how I want to see it.
So I can't speak for other people who have rebirthed... but for me it was more drachma to buy more items and the replay experience. Sure there is also a rebirth bonus and 3x honor, but these are objectively incredibly silly reasons to rebirth.
My biggest concern is that when I rebirth 9x40 the game is over. I note that the other people who are already 9x40 rebirths don't play there chars much and are playing remorts or other chars. I have already purchased everything in avatar shop so at 9x40, I will have exactly ZERO use for XP. For a second reiteration of rebirth I would have almost ZERO use for DRACHMA. So the point for me regarding reiterations is... why? What's in it for me other than replay value.
Which raises the question what should be the purpose of rebirth... to which my answer is, to incrementally get more stronger. But at the moment that path ends at rebirth 9x40... so what happens next... do I just say I finished sloth and walk away from the game, zero use for drachma or xp? If this is what is true, so be it. However what I really want to see is a rebirth shop, much like avatar shop where I can work to further get my character to some caps that are currently impossible... whether that be purchases through xp or drachma.
One last point, the idea behind making the game more challenging for rebirths... I don't agree that increasing the size of xp for levels for subsequent rebirths achieves that, all that does is make the game more boring than it already is. The challenges of the game ended the first time you reach 9x40... rebirth is like a victory lap. I enjoy playing the game because I desire to maximise my character to it's ultimate form, not to simply continually replay it in 2 months flat. If I loose the ability to improve, I loose the desire to play my character. With that said, clearly there is a social reason to play sloth, and I think I would continue with that occasionally. I don't have plans to make a new character, a bard, or a remort and I don't want to. I want to play Gorka and I want progression.
If it's decided that the road to progression won't be improved, then that's the decision, that's fine... but inevitably I'll fade away, and I don't really want that.