Just for context, it was confirmed by Mzulft on Discord that the perks on each class are going to reset along with the level every time you prestige.

I genuinely think it's a very archaic approach. I understand that it's additional grind for people that want to grind, but it doesn't seem to be the right way to go about this in 2025.

I'd like to discuss some cons and pros for it.

Pros: 

• More grind makes some people more involved
  
• Having to unlock all the skills again gives some "sense of progression"
• Potentially populating lower difficulties, since perks on each class are back to 0

Cons:

• Having to unlock things you've previously unlocked may feel like a chore
• Playing lower difficulties with all the acquired gamesense and skill will certainly feel like a downgrade from gameplay perspective
• If the players end up playing on lower difficulties after prestiging, the grind will become slower, due to lower exp gains

I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't mind more grind, and I'd be glad to prestige all of my classes when I get to it, since my main incentive are the rewards (both cosmetic rewards and perks) that you will get from doing so.

But resetting the perks on prestige will considerably drop your power level (much more for some classes than the others),​ making it less plausible to keep playing the game on Lethal/Absolute.

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Difficulties lower than Ruthless probably won't be impacted by this, as people will keep playing whatever difficulty they can consistently clear while getting the most exp. And since their weapons also remain untouched on prestige, it will probably be Ruthless+. With maxed out weapons, pretty much anything lower than Ruthless is going to be a walk in the park, especially for people that played long enough, so they might not even go there.

So what's the point of resetting perks, really, outside of just making it more of a hassle for the player?

In contrast, prestige systems in games like Deep Rock Galactic allow you to​ keep all your progress, without resetting anything besides the level, since the players are already incentivized to keep grinding by the rewards.

Instead of doing this, maybe consider implementing a resource sink for requisition/armory data, with each prestige level requiring more of these resources. Anything would be better than resetting the perks, since doing so simply takes away player agency.

Please, consider this approach rather than just taking away things that were already previously unlocked. Cheers.

UPD In response to to some common arguments people have against changing prestige:

"You just don't want to grind/want everything handed to you" 

That is literally not the case. We want the grind, and we want to keep progressing. What we don't want to do is to have the class complexity taken away on each prestige, because SM2 is way less complex at lower levels. In a game like this, leveling is a great learning tool for introducing people to the game, gradually giving them more and more things to play with, and hooking them in as it gradually gets more complex. 

While SM2 doesn't have the most impressive build variety, it's still there, and this aspect of the game will be less feasible to enjoy until you max out prestige, since the prestige system incentivizes you to keep prestigeing if you want to get the rewards as quickly as possible. 

"Prestige is something you earn. You need to sacrifice something and grind again, or what's the point?"

People are fully ready to spend the needed time to progress. Is this not a "sacrifice"? Why not spend this time in a way that we want, using builds/loadouts/difficulties that we want? I understand that a lot of people compare this to CoD, but this is a wholly different game with a very static progression, with not a lot of variety in it. 

You start with no perks, you unlock the perks as you level up, and that's pretty much it. It's going to be the same every time. Depending on how long you've played, you already did this 6 times before prestige was even a thing. It's not going to change in any way, and your classes will simply lose any nuance they had at max level over and over again.

I can see this making some sense in a (primarily) multiplayer PVP game, but even all the way back when the "Prestige" system was introduced, many people opted to not interact with it because of the progress reset.

I wholly believe that a system should aim to get everyone to want to interact with it, or at least attempt to do so. Like a lot of other people in this thread, I truly do not find the process of progress reset appealing, since it only takes the variety and choice away from players who decide to engage with prestige. You don't have to suffer through an insane hassle just to feel validated.

"This is a challenge you need to overcome as a player to get the reward"

With the way the system works, it's not about being a challenge, it's about having to play with less variety for a very arbitrary reason. A system like this allows you to grind the game on Minimal, it will just take even more of your time. 

Is it truly a challenge if the only difficulty is the amount of hassle you're willing to put up with?

"Casuals just wanna ruin everything, they won't even play the game for long"

Has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation at all. It is true that "casual" players wouldn't even want to interact with the system in its current state, but is it really a good thing?

Shouldn't a system try to engage as many people as possible? Without perk reset, there's a chance that people that wouldn't have tried it otherwise may at least give it a go.

"It'll make the game fresh again, it will give players something to do"

It won't change the freshness of the game in the slightest, because the game wasn't designed in a way to make the leveling process engaging enough. You learn how the class is played while leveling up, you get a kick out of unlocking everything the class has to offer for the first time, and then you come up with builds/loadouts that compliment your desired playstyle.

After this, once you have enough experience, you don't really need it anymore, as you have already acquired the gamesense to understand the game. At this point, I feel like you would like to be challenged by game mechanics instead.

People can STILL grind the EXP without the perks being reset, and that'll give them something to do because they'll want to get the new perks and cosmetics. They can still show their veterancy by the amount of time they've actually invested into the game.

"It'll be very quick to do since the weapons don't reset, it doesn't matter"

It'll still take a certain amount of time, time people would've liked to spend playing on Lethal/Absolute instead (or whatever other difficulty they find enjoyable), with their chosen builds and loadouts.

And you have to multiply this time by the amount of classes and the times you have to prestige to get all the rewards. It adds up. It's one thing if it's just a long-term grind, but it's a long-term grind that's forcing you to downgrade your gameplay experience, over and over again.

As I've mentioned before, you are incentivized to keep doing this until you unlock everything, so you have to go out of your way to not progress to be able to play with your max level characters on maximum difficulties.

"Well, just don't interact with this system if you don't like it"

We want to keep progressing in the game and to play with the build variety that we already have. Many people think that resetting progress is bad and it does nothing outside of attempting to trick your brain into thinking that you're going somewhere. This is a sentiment that existed for as long as prestige systems existed.

And seeing how much traction this thread has gained, I truly hope that the devs can reconsider this if we keep voicing our opinions.

"It's not a prestige system otherwise"

Sure, call it "Honor Levels", "Emperors Balls", it doesn't really matter. What matters is to create an engaging system (regardless of its name) that will make players want to interact with it, instead of considering if they should avoid it all together, imo.

This is the type of info players need to give good feedback 

Reset to level 1 on prestige level is a huge mistake and people will hate it. 

I don't think it will get more people to play lower difficulties. Would it not be better to use the quick match button to give xp based on level and then make it random on what difficulty match you get. I think people would be much more open to some thing like that. Down side would be it may feel crappy as a new player when high level players are in those matches.

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Skeletalsam wrote:

This is the type of info players need to give good feedback 

Reset to level 1 on prestige level is a huge mistake and people will hate it. 

I don't think it will get more people to play lower difficulties. Would it not be better to use the quick match button to give xp based on level and they make it random on what difficulty match you get. I think people would be much more open to some thing like that. Down side would be it may feel crappy as a new player when high level players are in those matches.

  

Genuinely, the idea behind "prestige" systems in general is to give people that want to keep playing the game more stuff to work for. Or to keep players playing longer to work for said stuff.

I think it's not a bad thing in general, and resetting back to 1 objectively means nothing if you keep your perks, and you can still keep grinding while gaining more rewards, on whatever difficulty you'd like to.

But lowering the powerlevel means those difficulties, the ones you previously worked to get into, may become impossible for you again. And that's not fun at all, imo.

DRG really approached the progression in a beautiful manner in this regard.

Reset to 1lvl when change/reset prestige perks? Seriously? What if I want to have different prestige perks for different weapons? Or for different teams? Changed the review in steam to negative, deleted PTS and the game itself from the device. My warm greetings to the designer who came up with this.

I just learned that prestiging classes works the exact same way in WWZ, with prestige perks unlocking for multiple times you prestige, so we probably won't see this changed. Really unfortunate, because I sure as heck won't be unlocking the perks I've previously unlocked, for each class, multiple times.

I've played enough games with this archaic approach to know for a fact that I don't want to waste my time doing absolutely useless stuff to have my brain tricked into feeling like I'm progressing anywhere. I would've liked to keep playing games at the difficulties I want, but a system like this simply won't allow this. A real shame.