Did I miss "The Opposite Day"? It seems so...

WHAT kind of malus starts with free points + progression points? Let's not forget that Story missions give 800-1500 acc-points, meaning you'll earn a couple even with 60 starting (and with 100, it's really, really questionable should you get any).

Rewards for higher difficulty (should be rebalanced heavily) are miniscule - more gold and glory, great! Better item, which will become obsolete faster with faster progression, than necessarily replaced? No early item can be useful on the long range, except if it has highly uncommon properties - I've seen exactly zero of the kind so far.

Besides, there's changable difficulty which practically guarantees players won't play every map on 'impossible' - they will follow the rule 'rebels + ogryns are imbalance, reduce difficulty'.

And PL is everything? Ok, it was the opposite day, let's leave this in that spirit...

New character is not that overpowered.

Sure, attributes and passives help. Truer for passives than for attributes.

But the most important is the power rating of the character.

The game uses a strange leveling system with four progressions:

- Inquisitor Rank which has no point beyond slowing down your power rating progression and unlock new item (which could have been handled by reaching various power ratings instead of ranks)

- Power Rating which is the real progression of the character

- Account Level which is the progression of the passive trees per account

- Heroic Deeds wich is the progression of the attributes per class/account

When starting a new character, you benefit fully from Account Level, partially from Heroic Deeds, none from Power Rating/Inquisitor Rank.

Moreover, you get a malus as your Account Level wont progress as long as you don't get your Power Rating/Inquisitor Rank close enough to the level of your previous character.

The "Hardcore" mode you're suggesting, allowing to have a new account progression for just a character, is not really "hardcore". It's simply the vanilla experience.

And you don't get the frustration of the malus to earnings you'll get with normal "Softcore" mode.

Personally, I would love getting rid of the Inquisitor Rank, allowing faster progression on a new character in order to get as fast as possible to the point where I use the weapons that I want, start facing more challenging missions and continue contributing to the Account Level, instead of having to grind Tarot missions with no point other than increase Rank.

I'm not against having a mode with this disabled. Let me just make that clear. But it seems despite my efforts, what is fun about it seems to be somewhat lost. That is a general comment and aimed at no individual in particular.

It's only overpowered if you keep the same difficulty. Which a player is free to do but also free not to do.  Should a player want a faster levelling experience to reach end game then this system can achieve that. You can breeze through the "standard" difficulty.

But that is only one path a player might take.  

The potential beauty and origin of my praise is that you are capable of completing impossible difficulty missions with a second character right from the start. More importantly you are capable of doing this with a skillset, build and complexity level that you are used to using, rather than something dummed down to the tutorial level again. Those extra points allow for personalisation but more importantly a little bit of depth. Slows can cause extra damage, certain criteria can lead to damage boosts. You also take far more damage in return. In a nut shell the risk and reward are both amped up to what you are used to as is the complexity.

The result in my eyes is that combat becomes "slightly" more interesting than it would be otherwise. Yes. You will get more rewards. Yes you will get a slight bonus to exp from the increased difficulty (despite missions taking much much longer) but the potential is a more enjoyable experience than the first play though. Which doesn't have to be an easier experience and in my view is actually a far more "hardcore" experience than the OP suggests.

The system makes sense and suits what I would like with a follow up character - a combat experience more complex, difficult, challenging and interesting than the first. This is not something i'm forcing on others. It's something that prevents me from finding tertiary charactes as dull.

Hopefully that's at least a little clearer. Getting a little tired of being told I want things to be easier when in fact I want the opposite. But. 

 

That's the intent of the Account level ;). If your first toon has acc level 50 your next fresh one has 50 skillpoints. Level is Account wide while Rank is char bound.

As I see it, acc-points are a temporary feature added for Alpha/EA only. I can't imagine that devs will allow full skill pool to be transfered to next character (and back!). I played a lot of VH and Glory was OK, it allowed me to start another character on higher difficulty and have a nice, challenging game again. Oh, and I've played campaign with each new character - some of dialogs were so funny that I enjoyed each playthrough (and, of course, increased difficulty and different classes). I imagine Martyr campaign very boring with 60 or more starting skill points. 

If it happens, it's basically the most help I ever got in any game ever. Paragons were childsplay for this - and I don't see any logic in "one character was very good at this, so completely different character have to be very good at something else". Items, achievements - many things are OK to share, but all skillpoints...

Your result is flawed :). You have 3 chars that have unlocked everything. Sure you will faceroll the content up to a certain point but I always saw this as a catchup mechanic.

Good luck with your idea anyway I never was against something that much ;) because I realy like the different approch that dont force a fresh start on you every time. Let's see if a dev speaks up :). I see your reason behind things and as usual it's well fleshed out.