Right now, once you reach level 31 with one character, all EXP gained further on is wasted. You have your abilities unlocked, your build stands, you’ve become more of a killing machine than FNIX ever dreamed of, cutting enemies down with your experimental PvG 90 and Machine guns on guerilla difficulty, once you join an online match, you carry it. You’re swimming in ammo, you eat apoc tanks for breakfast, but what now?
At this point you simply start a new character to try a new build. But does it have to be that way? What if we had a motivation to keep improving our character? I want to propose a new feature, not reinventing the wheel, something that might make it attractive to keep trying to get experience points after level 31.
Something along the lines of prestige experience, a level system after max level is reached. It could offer anything from giving you a random skin/cosmetic that you haven’t acquired yet (three characters and still I’m missing hairstyles!!!) to allowing you to re-spec or giving you (and all your future characters) stackable, marginal bonuses like 0.5% resistance to the first damaged received in a combat or additional jump height, fall damage resitance or maybe the chance of looting a medkit to give an example. Leveling it should be rather slowish, maybe starting off with a requirement of a level up on character level 10 and then increasing linearily after that.
Having small bonuses like that as an appetizer after fully leveling up wouldn’t break the game if balanced correctly and could eliminate that demotivating “Exp 0” after finishing a mission. Additionally, starting a new character with those bonuses might prove fun. To keep it optional, giving players the possibility to disable them at any time to have a clean slate start would make fresh runs still possible for people who want it that way.
I’m also still waiting for the option to reset the map/story progress without having to delete all my characters.
Opinions!?