One Character?

Dranack

You would be happy to pay $500 per account? because that's effectively what it would mean, losing all the other stuff we have gained

 

How did you come to the $500 amount? If there are 4 expansions planned (plus the original core game), at $60, that comes to $300 tops. Now realize that you are paying this over 5 years minimum, so $60/year.

You could buy the game twice and still not spend as much money as a yearly subscription to UO.

Also, what other stuff have we gained? I'm really not sure to what you are referring.

 

500 per account is not accurate. If you chose to support the game for $500, that is your business. you could have elected too donate $30, and still gotten the free digital download. Anything above that is for the other things that higher contributions bring.

After the he game goes live, if you wish to buy another account, it won't be for $500, so take that into account.

 

My Biggest concern is the proficiency. If I spend so very much time leveling a skill, a tailor for instance, and then decide to go out into the world and learn magic, and then later down the road decide to learn how to tame a dragon, I don't want to have to give up my proficiency at tailor or magic. It takes a LOT of work to reach the pinnacle of a skill, and to lose that pinnacle ability because you want to learn the pinnacle of a different ability is completely ridiculous in my mind.

It is the ONLY reason I ever created alts. If I put all that hard work into something, I don't want to lose it. Ever. That's like saying well I learned to create a magical cloak of great skill, imbued with effort and care and magic and soul, and then want to learn to tame a dragon. So I study animals and beasts and tame and tame and eventually gain skill to harness the power of even the dragon...and now that I've learned to tame a dragon, when I pick up the needle and thread my skills have so diminished that I have days, weeks, or even months to relearn my ability at being a tailor to craft a magic cloak again...but then wait, now that I relearned that, I forgot how to tame a dragon.

Really?

And with some 50 to 65 skills to choose from it could takes months, or even years to learn them all, to be a jack of all trades you might want to be. If a person is willing to focus on that grind to learn each one in turn with the same devotion and passion and patience, (DILIGENCE, it's a virtue) it should be that they could improve all they wish to up to a masterful level.

Should a person be so limited as to have only one or even only a few master trades? No. It is NOT realistic. Not in the complete sense. If someone is willing to grind them all, they should be able to become a master of all. I'm not saying it wouldn't take an absolute devotion and a lot of time and work, but it is still nonetheless <i>possible</i>.

Because there are people in the world like that. We might call them savants. It might take being someone with a genius IQ. But there are people that have a plethora of skills at a masterful level. DaVinci for instance, was a master Tinkerer, Sculptor, Painter, Alchemist, Writer, Architect, Geologist, Biologist, Botanist, Mathematician, Theologian, Philosopher, Cartographer, Astronomer, Engineer, Musician, spoke 3 languages, and was a Teacher.

Is everyone a DaVinci? No. But people like him exist. I always wanted the fantasy portrayal of myself to be a DaVinci. I always wanted to know Archery, Tailor, Carpentry, Tinkering, Taming, Alchemy, Magic, Fishing, Sailing, Leatherworking, Medicine, Biology, Cooking, Cartography, Music, Psychology, Theology, Dance, Writing, and Language. To be forced to choose just 1, or choose just 3, or even to choose anything less than ALL of them is a poor juxtaposition. Granted there are some skills I currently don't have particular interest in. I never had a great interest in being a Swordsman...but what if the spark for that came alive later in my life? I have to forget what I learned about Music? Or give up knowing how to be a master chef? Or I have to forget how to fire a bow?

I would be fine having only one character. So long as there was NEVER such a thing as a limit on multiple proficiencies.

 

With respect to proficiency, I am a bagpiper, and I play with a pipeband in various competitions in the Western US. Every year, we practice a particular set of tunes for competion, and through practice, we become proficient with those tunes. We also play in other venues, and we frequently bring back tunes from competitions from previous years. The longer we have not practiced a particular tune, particularly difficult tunes, the more work is required to again become sufficient proficiency to play that tune in public.

So yes, it is not unrealistic for you to discover that you have forgotten how to effectively tame a Dragon, and if you are not longer proficient, you might get eaten.

 

RG has already stated that learning skills will not be the exact same method as in UO. It may not be the grind we are accustomed to. We just don't know enough about how the game will work to jump to these conclusions.

 

I see the way around this to flesh out the companion system. By this I mean both pets and NPC follower henchmen / hirelings.

You want to play a bard, get Iolo, mage Mariah. (Or whatever is in SotA). I loved the video where they talked about the mouse opening the door. I did the same thing.

My feeling is that there's even a revenue opportunity for them to sell a more fleshed out companion that you can name, cloth, and have more depth as part of your "family".

Training up companion's skills would allow a solo player to still grind away and be self sufficient if that's really what they want to do.

 

A companion you can level is an interesting idea, but I'd discourage having named companions like Iolo in online play. What do you do in FPO or OPO when you have multiple instances of Iolo?

For solo play offline, it might be interesting for you to be able to 'inhabit' any NPC, train them to suit how you want your world to develop. You would 'recruit' a weapon smith in your home town, for example and either let the game autotrain him, or train him yourself to experience the blacksmith skill, and the same with any other skill in game. You woulld have the option to populate your own world, in other words.

 

@Owain

I do kind of like that idea, that a particular companion could do certain skills for you, that you could play as them or set them to train in certain instances, and that could answer to how you can still master everything you want to without it being all attached to one single person, your character. Simple enough to say while I am out taming dragons, I have a Companion at home maintaining their Tailor skill so I can have both skills at mastery without causing a detriment to each other.

But then i would say, how is that any different than having multiple characters? If you "own" both and can control both, then it is the exact same thing as having an alt, except both you and your alt can be one the screen at the same time.

 

I would only have this, as I say, for single player offline. I want to encourage player interaction in the online modes, so the dedicated Armorer will be better than I would be as a warrior that dabbles in armor.

 

I could see single player offline allowing multiple characters. I don't see any problem with that, even if online multiplayer only allows one.

After all, everyone has a favorite, which would likely be the online character, while alts would be offline. Doesn't seem like that big a deal.

I could also see them caving later on and allowing the purchase of a second character slot for half the price of the game(~$30). I don't want to see more than a couple of characters per account, though, if more than one.

 

I wasn't a fan of the one-character-per-account, but it's too early for me to accurately judge any negative or positive impacts of this. Part of the mystery here is solo vs online play. Is a person just able to jump in and out? It seems like it. How does the balance and openness of multiplayer change compared to someone confining themselves to a solo campaign? How big is multiplayer? At first it sounded pretty limited, though now more like you could potentially run into a lot of people, (for good or bad).

One consideration for the person who put in $500. You are at the developer level. You can bring your opinions and suggestions to the rest of the team. Basically, you have a voice to make changes more beneficial to you, and likely access answers that most of us won't see.

 

@Thamin T

I'm not sure what you mean by jumping in an out of single/multiplayer, but you cannot move characters back and forth.

Your single player character must remain in the single player world only, and your online character remains in the online world only. There are too many opportunities for hacking if you could transfer characters in and out of single player.

You will, however, be able to play a single-player online game. Essentially, playing the online game by yourself with access to all the changes that they team makes as the game progresses. With that online character, you can switch between single, friends only, and "open" online play.

I hope that helps explain it. for you.

 

I was concerned that having only 'one' character meant one character for all kinds of play. So, in essence, you can have two characters: one for offline, and one for online/multiplayer? I don't mind that. Though I'm still confused that your first paragraph explanation conflicts with your later explanation about playing both single and open with your "online" character.

So, are you saying the online character still has the ability to mix with others when they want, or to go into a "private" mode when they don't? Or is it that an online character is like in a MMORPG, but free to just go off and do their own thing?

And if you can have a second character, your "offline" character, I'm surprised more folks haven't discussed this or argued why you couldn't have multiple characters for the offline gameplay. (Since offline wouldn't affect anything in the balance of online play.)

By the way, sorry if I've missed a lot of info in some other posts. My computer has a hard time seeing the forums, so I haven't read much yet.

 

I always only focus on one character and min-max him for the most part. Why be mediocre with 3 characters when you can be good with one? However, if it's like UO and there is a skillcap, I would want the possibility of at least making a crafter or something. As long as there is a cooldown on swapping between characters so you can't do any trickery, I don't see the big deal probably with having maybe two or three slots.

 

I may be wrong, but I believe they intend for our one character to have three specific abilities: resource collection, crafting, and exploring. The crafting skills are: Blacksmithing, Cooking, Tailoring, Alchemy, and Carpentry. Resource collection is: mining, hunter(skinning/tanning), forager(herb collection/preparation), woodsman(lumber collection/lumber cutting and planing), fishing(fish catching, fish cleaning). They haven't announced all the exploring skills yet, but lets assume they are the traditional archer, swordsman, mage, bard, tamer classes.

You can't play your offline toon in online mode, and they haven't said if the two will be clones of each other. I doubt it and I hope not. I intend on testing various skills out in offline to pick exactly the combination I want online. I'm ok now with the one toon as I have the ability to do all three skill trees as opposed to solely relying on others for collection of my resources or making goods out of my resources or what have you.

 

Sorry for the confusion, I will try to be more clear this time. I was posting fairly late last night after a 14 hour workday.

Modes of play:
Single-player offline - this plays just like the old Ultima games. I'm not sure how content updating works, or if there will be content updating at all, but this is a mode all its own. You play the character by yourself, and this character will never interact with anyone online.

Single-player online - you play by yourself, but with constant access to the real-time events in the world. You will not see any other players this way, but you will be in the MMO world. If your character crafts a bow and puts it on his vendor, another person can buy said bow, because it is in the online world, and you vendor is always available.

Friends-play online - you play with only a select group of people that you allow to see you. No one except your friends will know you are there.

Open-play online - you allow the server to decide who will see you. This could range from your friends to friends of friends or even people that live in your real life hometown.

The three online modes use the same character and can be switched back and forth at will. The offline mode uses a separate character that cannot be brought online.

 

Thanks for explaining Dranack. I like that the online mode isn't "locked in stone" so that you could change modes depending on how you feel. I like that you can contribute and buy from the larger world without necessarily jumping into it and running into the PVP crowd. (I like to PVP on occasion, but not often.) Hopefully those who engage in PVP can't suddenly drop to a private world until some time has passed since they killed someone.

A late thought strikes me. The developers have said that pretty much any NPC is attack-able, although in the campaign sense you have to live with those repercussions. I wonder how the server balances it if you're in online play and someone else kills the quest NPC. (Especially if you unintentionally helped them in some way, such as an area buff or heal.)

 

Thought LB said they would be Avatars so let do away with this toon, character ect rubbish hey guys
I don't really care how many Avatars I have so long as the dang game does what i'm looking for.

 

Not sure on this one.
What if every time you start a new character you drop their skill cap down.
I'll go by UO style since I don't know the current system.
1 char - 10 skills to max out at 100 or 1000 skill points
2 char's - 8 skills on both char's to max out to 100 or 800 skill points each.
3 char's - 6 skills to max out on all three char's to 100 or 600 skill points each.
Something like that.

But that still takes away from the story.
Maybe in the story setting if your friend or your other character gives you a sword where the player is known to be good then it would help you but if that character gives you a stolen sword or is known to be bad then that would go against your character.