So, in some games (typically RPGs and incremental games) there are prestige mechanics. The idea here is that you can get a special boost at the cost of resetting your progression. For example:
* In Wizardry (excluding 4 and 8), when you class change, you go back to level 1 and lose stars, but you get to keep the spells you learned, and with the exception of 6 and 7, can even learn spells of levels you have access to that you didn't get lucky enough to learn before. We see a similar mechanic in Bard's Tale, where the mechanic is limited to casters, and there's no stat loss, but you can't return to a class to get spells you skipped earlier.
* Similar mechanics appear in other such games, including Dragon Quest 3 and Stranger of Sword City (revisited).
* Arguably, D&D 2e's dual-classing (not muti-classing) is an example as well.
* Disgaes famously lets you transmigrate/reincarnate characters. Go back to level 1, but your base stats, and hence your stat growth, is higher now.
* This mechanic is very common in incremental games. For example, in The Prestige Tree, you can sacrifice all your points in order to get prestige points, which allow you to purchase upgrades that give you more points. (Worth noting that prestige is the big theme of the game, to the point where there's tons of layers of prestige.)

So, what are your thoughts on this mechanic?

As always, my go to class system is Final Fantasy V, where mastery imbues the freelancer with the stats and commands of the class. If you haven't mastered it yet, it'll be as if you never learned any skill associated with it when you switch.

The classes are subdivided into levels, with each one bestowing a perk and leveling separate of the character levels.

(But you know all that already. ;p)

It's bot really a prestige mechanic, since it doesn't reset progression. In particular, there's no way of lowering a character;s (permanent) level.

This topic is specifically about prestige mechanics.

(Also, while off topic for this tread, FF5's freelancers can equip any 2 learned abilities, and can even get stats from some of them, just like any other job in that game.)

Anyone else have any thoughts?

I enjoy the "prestige systems" you are talking about because I enjoy the feeling of having continuous progression in games I play. Unfortunately most games, RPGs and otherwise, lack said systems, with idle/incremental games being the most obvious example of games that are basically required to have them.

This may get confusing but another, similar in my opinion, thing I dislike are games that let you level one skill, say a weapon skill like "swords", but this skill doesn't contribute to the overall power of your character once you switched to, say, "morningstars". You'd think that after going through hundreds of battles using a sword, your character would get better at using all kinds of melee weaponry. One example of such game is Kenshi. I love the game itself but I wish every skill contributed in some way to the overall power of my characters.

This is also the reason I don't play roguelikes much, as the idea of losing basically everything at my character's death is simply not that enjoyable to me.

What if a roguelike made death act like a prestige system/

For example, you die, you have to start a new character, but the new character gets a bonus based on the power of your previous character?

(Rogue Legacy, while not strictly a roguelike, does something like this; when you die, the money you earned can be used to purchase upgrades for your next character.)

Not sure any of it matters.

Prestige basically comes down to 'specialized' and usually some subclass or subtype of the class you're using.

A thief becoming a swashbuckler, A warrior becoming a Paladin, An herblist becoming a druid, a Red mage becoming a black mage. A thief becoming an arcane trickster.

From what i've seen (and not gotten to really play) is some minor benefit goes down that subclass. But the specialization heavily hinders the original class quite a bit.

Some prestige classes replace main class levels, like playing certain monster races, you can swap out the 3rd level of fighter to instead increase your racial benefits and then level to 4th in fighter normally. etc.

It just feels so.... meaningless and inconsequential.

Not really a fan of the mechanic to be honest.

Its meant to be a way to encourage replayability but doesnt really impact the base game imo. So if the base game is not good, prestige doesnt mean much.

Its also a hard mechanic to balance well imo. I find the "prestige" mechanic to be quite common in online multiplayer (Red Dead Redemption 1, Arkham Origins multiplayer, etc.). For multiplayer, its just bragging rights as well as provide gamers a way to still "gain" experience even if it doesnt do much, just work as a bragging rights reward (RDR online unlocks special horses and allows players to unlock guns at earlier levels so resetting isnt as detrimental). However, just cosmetics dont seem to be such a nice benefit.

Adding stats or other concrete benefits does encourage grinding though which makes the reset cost worth it but gives long term players an advantage so isnt fair for competitive play. If implemented in single player, it encourages grinding which may be ok in new game + but not in an original run imo.

"prestige classes" in systems like D&D 3.x aren't really prestige mechanics in the manner I'm thinking. Thing is, when you first gain a level in said classes, there's no resetting of your abilities; your character level doesn't drop, and you (usually) don't lose those abilities.

There are, however, some cases of classes that can only be accessed through what I consider to be prestige mechanics:
* Lord and Ninja in classic Wizardry
* Sorcerer and Wizard in Bard's Tale (plus some classes added in 2 and 3; note that each of these requires at least one such class to complete the game)
* Sage in Dragon Quest 3
* Perhaps Bard in AD&D 1e, though the requirements are enough of a mess that it's unlikely to have seen much use in tabletop, and this version of the class hasn't appeared in a CRPG. Of course, this argument fails to work for The Prestige Tree. If, by "base game" you mean the game up to the first prestige, then there's basically nothing there; you start with 10 points, no way to get more, and the *only* thing you can do at the start is prestige.

(It's common for imcremental games to have tons of content that require prestige to access, including entirely new mecahnics that show up, and sometimes even multiple layers of prestige.) Some implementations of New Game + actually feel a lot like prestige mechanics, to the point where it can be hard to tell the difference. You start the entire game over, but you get some benefit that you didn't have the first time around.

(Then again, some games use this as a way to unlock higher difficulty options. I've heard this happens in Diablo-likes, for example; you continue the game with the same character, don't lose any power, but the enemies get a power boost so that they're now an appropriate challenge for your high level character, with the rewards being boosted as well.)

That could work, still I prefer to have the "prestige" mechanic you're talking about in just one character, without starting over, if you know what I mean.

Roguelikes are kinda pointless for me in general, but that's just opinion of course. I didn't try many, one that I tried most recently is "Tales of Maj'Eyal". It's advertised that what you gain with each playthrough is the experience you get as a player which helps you overcome challenges further on. Personally, I don't buy it.

As you mentioned in another post, another fun example of this mechanic is new game+ in most, if not all, hack 'n' slash games (or ARPGs, as they are called today), and those are some of the most fun games for me, hands down. Roguelikes are just... masochistic might be too strong of a word, but they are close to being masochistic. Again, that's just an opinion of course.

If what I read is correct (you have some initial points but need to reset with prestige and lose all your points so you can get more points to get more abilities) it sounds like bloat. Why force players to "reset" their character and remove their points so they can build it up and unlock previous abilities again so they also get more points to unlock more abilities? Why not just make it straight forward and allow players to unlock higher abilities without having to reset? And if you say its for the challenge, you can easily just do a no upgrades or limited upgrades challenge (did one with Shadow of Mordor no problem since you become incredibly OP after you unlock the final tier abilities).

And by base game, I mean the initial run of the full game from beginning to end. If the game itself isnt fun with a good combat system, I dont see why anyone would bother grinding, especially if a "grinding" system is implemented. I would say its different. New Game+ often has the player retain the abilities and stuff they have unlocked and usually only reset player level at worst. It results in a player being OP from the start and cruising through the game unless the game itself unlocks new difficulties with harder enemies to compensate for the stronger player (Diablo 2 for example with its higher difficulties). Great for games with multiple endings for multiple playthroughs (Chrono Trigger) or if the player just wants to cruise through the game being as OP as possible. Find NG+ to not really be that fun as a result most of the time.

From my experience with the prestige system which mostly comes from the online portion of games, the prestige system really seems to just be a way to prolong player engagement. I honestly havent experienced the prestige tree so cant comment on that since I dont play Wizardry but in multiplayer cases, it just seems like a lazy excuse for the devs to encourage players to keep playing by allowing them to reset their progress and unlock everything all over again, the prestige being a "bragging point" for how much exp you have. So havent been a fan of the system.

First of all, I think you have the wrong idea of what sort of game it is. It's not a game that would generally be categorized as an RPG. For example:
* There's no notion of a character. When you reset, you're resetting the parts of the game up to that point. (Later on, milestone awards reduce the amount of the game that gets reset each time.)
* The sort of things you unlock are things like "Start: Gain 1 point per second" and "Prestige Boost: Gain more points based on prestige points". There's a lot of them. (Note that you don't have to re-unlock these two when you reset for prestige points, but you (initially) do have to re-unlock them after you reset at a later layer, like Boosters or Generators.)
* You simply *can't* do a no or limited upgrade challenge, as the upgrades are how you'd progress. If you try to skip too many upgrades, you either have to wait an unreasonable amount of time (I'm talking millenia or longer) or it's outright impossible (the numbers scale very quickly; by the time you get to the 3rd row (of 7 or so), you've passed a googol, and during that row you surpass the usual limit of a double precision float.)
* There is no combat system, as this game is not an RPG. (Not every game needs combat; this is one of those games that doesn't.)
* What I would consider to be a full run of the game is one that covers all the game content up to the defined winning condition, which I believe is reaching e3.14e16 points. (That's a 1 followed by 31.4 quadrillion zeroes, in case this nested scientific notation isn't so easy to understand.)
* Also, I would say that this game is pretty fun, proceeding at a fairly brisk pace, for the first 3 rows (assuming you aren't playing Classic). It's only after that that the game starts to become a slog.

Why don't you try that game out for yourself? (It's a browser game. Just remember that the game can't save if you use private browsing.)

In my experience, a prestige in an incremental game feels a lot like how you describe New Game +; you really feel OP and like you're cruising through the game until you get to around the point where you prestiged, where the bonus you earned is expected and the game slows back down to its normal speed.

I do recommend giving The Prestige Tree a try. Just load your JavaScript supporting browser and go to
https://jacorb90.me/Prestige-Tree/

(You can stop once you reach Quirks; that's one the game starts to become a slog.)

(Prestige Tree is nothing like Wizardry; it's not even in the same genre.)

Seems like an extra step of grinding and seems to exist just to exist, but I suppose it's fine in long form games if you want to switch builds without starting a new game and want to reward people for reaching some threshold.

If dual-classing counts at prestige mechanic, KOTOR1 forces it on the player. You are stuck with your base before moving out of the starting planet. After that, you are forced to take a Jedi class to progress further. The player stops growing in their base class, and spends the rest of the game growing in one of the Jedi classes, who have a different progression. In practice, some players choose to stop leveling their base class at certain points, to avoid wasting levels where there is no feats to be gained. Personally, I find the mechanics confusing for beginners, especially those who don't know the limits of experience and levels gained from a single playthrough.

Skyrim gaves the player the option to make maxed out skills, making skills "Legendary" refunds perk points and resets skill points from 100 to 15. This effectively raises the level cap and makes it possible to acquire every perk, provided the player is willing to do a ridiculous amount of grinding.

I only count dual-classing as a prestige mechanic if you actually have to go back to level 1 (or at least if your level drops significantly). My understanding is that, in the KOTOR games, it works something like 3e D&D, where you keep your levels.

One thing is that, in cases where you do reset to level, 1, the first few levels will come quickly. As an extreme RPG example, in Disgaea it's possible for a newly transmigrated character to gain hundreds of levels from a single action, and I hear later in the series it eventually becomes possible to jump from level 1 to level 9999. Of course, in incremental games there's even bigger numbersl in the one I'm playing right now, at this point after a prestige going past e5000 points is nearly instant after a prestige. (Another common convention in incremental games is automation; after a while, you get the ability to automate certain repetitive actions.)

Skyrim's "Legendary" skill mechanic could be considered a prestige mechanic, though the only advantages are the respec and the ability to reach higher levels. (This is done, for example, in the Ebony Warrior speedrun category, along with the use of a game-breaking trick to easily get all the skill XP needed.)