I’ve noticed a fair bit of opposition, if not outright groans of despair, behind the need to level a commander from 1 to 15 again in order to fully unlock one of their prestige talents. Now, just outright removing it I don’t agree with, since its design gives it a lot of replayability and also doesn’t insta-reward players who already have all of the commanders purchased and are at, or close to, ascension level 1,000.
Some of the prestiges don’t come off as worth it for some players, or are just not suited to their playstyles, so to encourage re-levelling these commanders anyway, and given there are currently 54 prestige talents (18 * 3), I would like to propose a new achievement with 10 different levels (10 points per level for a total of 100).
Prestigious Reputation
Level 1 - Reach level 15 with a commander after activating a prestige talent.
Level 2 - Reach level 15 with commanders 3 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 3 - Reach level 15 with commanders 5 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 4 - Reach level 15 with commanders 10 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 5 - Reach level 15 with commanders 15 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 6 - Reach level 15 with commanders 20 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 7 - Reach level 15 with commanders 25 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 8 - Reach level 15 with commanders 30 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 9 - Reach level 15 with commanders 40 times after activating prestige talents.
Level 10 - Reach level 15 with commanders 50 times after activating prestige talents.
Not sure what Blizzard’s policy is on new achievements, but how’s it sound?
I am assuming this works based on commander numbers, rather than trying to do it on one commander alone lol. Would give completionists a reason to prestige every commander. I’m only going to do a select few, personally.
That’s the intention. Hard to find concise wording. Basically, you get the achievement (or progress towards it) by activating a prestige and getting that commander to 15. It doesn’t matter who the commander is, or whether you, say, do the same commander 3 times, or do 3 different commanders. It is a completionist achievement.
Well, for this one, considering how some of the prestiges are simply not worth it, or just not a style players might want to play, it would give a slight bit of encouragement to go through the levelling slog again, even if it is just 100 points overall.
There is another reason why this might be worth considering. I tend to play on the EU server, occasionally venturing on to the NA server to complete the weekly mutation, among other things. If I unlock a couple of choice prestiges for favoured commanders, there isn’t really a huge desire to do the same on my secondary server, not to mention taking double the time, since weekly mutations generally require playing in a particular way to complete and so may not warrant a prestige unless it’s so easy that you can blitz the lower levels with it (e.g. Train of the Dead).
The above suggestion would be a token incentive for completionists who have accounts on more than one server.
To extend from this idea, would it be permissible to, say, reward a portrait for completing all three prestiges for particular commanders? There are a number of unused portraits that could be rewarded. For example, for Swann it could be the Hercules pilot, and for Alarak it could be Ji’nara. It doesn’t even have to have a points rewards with it. A lot of the time there really isn’t much incentive to do every prestige for every commander, especially if it’s a commander you don’t normally play or a prestige that you feel is either underpowered or is counter to your style.
I suggested something like that too, but with a more similar achivement section as the levls section. A prestige section, where instead of : be lvl 5-10-15 with Raynor, it would be “be prsrige 1-2-3
with Raynor”, etc.
It would be way more motivating.
And also it would give information on who an other player play, etc. We could tell it with the level section. Now, with prestige, we can’t, he could be level 15 but still prestige 0 with that commander, etc.
I stopped at 50 so you don’t have to buy every single commander, and if there’s one or two prestiges or commanders that you really hate. It also means it doesn’t have to be adjusted if a 19th or 20th commander comes out.
If I had to add a suggestion for doing all 3 prestiges for a particular commander, there could be a portrait reward for that.
I suggested having a achievement system as well, however, people would be compelled to get all of them, and that’s why they won’t like a achievement system
Less likely than the above suggestions, but it would be neat if there were prestige specific achievements.
For example:
“Warp 30 units at once with Nexus Legate on Hard or higher”
“Lose fewer than 30 units with Backwater Marshall on Hard or higher”
“Cover 50% of a map with Creep in less than 15 minutes with Malevolent Matriarch on Hard or higher”
Yeah, I would have liked more productive CO-based achievements rather than the usual 4 we already have, especially since many of them are per-match grinds (Zeratul’s Devolution Retribution) or long-term "let it happen"s (Collect 100k gas for ally via Swann’s havesters).
Other fun one’s could have been:
win 10 matches with Raynor using only Marine, Marauder, Medic
this could be added for P1, perhaps as ‘only only bio units’
mind control 100 enemies using Vorazun’s Darchons
generate 4k infested troopers from Stukov’s bunkers in a single game (promotes proper bunker play instead of mass barracks); easily do-able for P3 with proper macro
etc.
Of course, at this time, adding prestige-based achievements makes more sense. Perhaps 2 per prestige.
I do hope that the Co-op developers at least would make a note of it. Not all of the prestige talents are exactly appealing, and some can be ‘skipped’ (by resetting but not enabling the newly-unlocked prestige) if the next one is more appealing or the disadvantages at low levels hurt too much. Also for those with accounts on more than one server… going through all of the prestiges for almost nothing can be demoralising.
True, ‘the grind’ is part of a number of games, although even being awarded something superficial like an achievement or a portrait could go a long way.
Just to note also, there are a few characters that don’t appear as portraits yet that could be implemented as extra rewards - for example:
Hercules (1 prestige)
Scourge (3 prestiges)
Havoc (5 prestiges)
Science Vessel (10 prestiges)
Guardian (15 prestiges)
Dark Archon (20 prestiges)
Sgt. Hammer (25 prestiges)
Aurana (30 prestiges)
General Davis (in Balius) (40 prestiges)
Ji’nara (50 prestiges)
Also available: Ma’lash / Amon’s Champion; Energizer; Devourer; Cpl. Faraday / Dominion Officer; Sentinel; Dominion Trooper; Dominion Laborer… probably countless others. I suggested a few of these before as rewards for winning more Co-op games, but given how long it’s been now, that might not be wise since long-time players will get about 10 achievements simultaneously if they were introduced now.
This might be an undesirable necro-bump, but I would like to draw attention to this again, especially if StarCraft II is under new management and getting a bit of love again!
(Also wondering if the prestige counts for each level should be 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 or readjusted slightly to 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50)
There are quite a few unused portrait and art assets available so I like to think it shouldn’t take too much of a monetary investment. The only things that would probably need new assets are the 10 icons of the achievement, but even then they would mostly just be modifications of the same base asset (an extra star and becoming more glowy with each rank, for example).
We don’t know that for sure. For all we know, it may still stay the same course. And the transition won’t be fully done until 2023, so we’ll have that much time to wait at the very least