The Scoop on the Leveling pact is essentially XP is put through all the calculations modifiers and what not, and then it is cut in half, and distributed to the other partner. So if you are both on the same team, you'll both get half of the other's XP and therefore get normal rates. I'm pretty sure that this only applies to newly created characters as well. Probably put in the name of your leveling pact partner at Char Gen.
See:
The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."
>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
See:
Quote:[table]And:MMORPG.com:
In
terms of the Leveling Pact, does this mean that if I'm playing and my
friend isn't, that his character will level up with mine?
[/table] Matt Miller:
Levelling
Pacts are the next major evolution in side-kicking within City of
Heroes. Essentially, every point of XP is equally shared between
participants regardless of online status. This enables online friends
to keep their XP in synch no matter their gaming schedules.
Quote:Massively: Brian, you talked about how day jobs are---
part of NC Norcal's idea of involving players in the game even when
they're not necessarily playing, and it seems like the Leveling Pact is
obviously a tie-in to that. Can you talk a little bit about that, from
a philosophical perspective?
Brian Clayton:
I'll talk about it from a philosophical perspective and then let Matt
follow up with the nuts and bolts of it. The one thing that we continue
to strive for with City of Heroes is to pick areas where the
MMO genre could use some innovation. We certainly have the best
character creation system, and I would argue that sidekicking was very
innovative, at the time when that was released. Even the further
iterations, like our base creation system, were still very innovative.
So
we looked at another area of innovation with the Mission Architect
system, and now the Leveling Pact. These are things that had been
begging to be done in the MMO space for so long. Again, while
sidekicking and exemplaring accommodate a number of player types, we
feel that the leveling pact now accomodates another type of player.
These things not only benefit City of Heroes, they push the genre forward.
Matt Miller:
It's definitely one of those features that came to us based on a lot of
feedback we had from our players, and especially our friends who are
playing the game. They came to us and said 'You know, I like playing
the game, and I like the sidekicking system, but I'm getting to a point
where my friends are so far outleveling me that they don't want to
exemplar down and do my stuff because they've already done it before.
Is there any way that we can stay more in synch?' So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each
character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across
two characters whether they're offline or online. And we said: 'You
know what? There's a system here. This is a workable system. This is
really innovative, and this is taking a new step in sidekicking, making
sure that you and your friend are always able to play the game
together, and will always be the same level.'
Massively: So basically the main character's XP gain is halved, and the other part is given to the buddy?
Matt Miller:
Yeah, basically both characters when they earn XP, they go through all
the calculations for earning XP – how much they're supposed to get,
based on their team size, what they defeated – every calculation
possible in the game, and at the very end it's divided in two and each
person in the pact gets their share.
The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."
>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI