It builds character

This thread is intended purely to discuss the concept of how characters are built, how our choices make them different, and how different they should be.

Some people like generic, "push start and away we go" type mechanics, some people like to tinker with complex options, trading one ability or advantage for another.

The old UO mechanics allowed players to technically learn anything, but limited how many skills can be active at any one time, so that a character had to have a "build" that worked, contained everything he was supposed to do, and hopefully did it well.

Many, many, MANY modern MMO's and RPG's use this kind of thinking, and I wanted to divert the comments pertaining to how we want SOTA to work building characters into a spot where all our communal opinions could be reviled equally.

 

The old UO mechanics, AFAIK, allowed players to have multiple characters. In SotA we are limited to one only. It'll be only fair to let us master all the skills (at the cost of lots of time wasted leleving, I presume) and limit to usage of some at any given moment of time.

 

One thing I'd like to see is a system that both seperated and interlaced the weapon fighting circle, the magic circle, and the secondary skill circle, so that each could be seperately chosen, invested in, and tuned.

To see some sort of benefit from mastering one skill that somehow enhanced other skills. Pehaps a knowledge of archery could grant increased range bonuses to some magick skills, or hard work mining and smithing could help with your hammer and mace weapon skills.

It would be important to have multiple conflicting bonuses though: if blacksmithing specifically gives, say, a 3% damage bonus to maces, and maces are the preferred weapon for PvP (due to armor mechanics or whatever) then every single PvP melee character will be a mace wielding blacksmith. But if there were several secondary skills that helped maces, and all of them also helped other things, then it wouldn't be a matter of matching up the obvious combination so much as WHICH combination you decided to employ.

 

My issue is not with how many options our characters have, but with how many options become permanently locked out for our characters as we develop them.

In a game where players can easily "respec" an unlimited times I love to have as much customization as possible, in order to be able to reach builds that I can really call my own, builds that I've designed myself. I count among those the games where characters can in time learn all available skills but must choose a limited number to be available for combat, BTW.

In a game where a choice not taken is forever lost, though, I prefer for such choices to not exist at all. I'm happier in a game with no customization whatsoever than in a game with a lot of customization but no way to re-customize our characters after the initial choice. It's the reason I quickly abandoned a few MMOs I started playing in the past, including DDO and CoH; too many options, too hard or expensive to respec.

BTW, this is why I already have two pledges for SotA, and I might take more copies of the game depending on how many characters we can have per account and how many are needed to master all crafting professions. When it comes to crafting in MMOs, I don't choose; I take all options, even if I have to use multiple accounts in order to do so, or else I stop playing altogether.

 

I hear you on the respec, and something that should be added to that argument: Inevitably, the game designers will have to edit some power. It won't work right, or it will work too well, or it will turn out that 2% is actually a really BIG bonus and has to be altered, and then suddenly every build that used that power isn't workin as it did when built, and every build that DID use that power has to reconsider it.

It blows chunks to find that because the game got re-written, however legitimate the reasons, my spec is now locked as "wasteful and ineffective".

I think respec should be an integral part of a game like this, with the price/cost/penalty/quest/whatever set to make it too hard to do it on the fly, but easy enough to solo after a long day if you already know how you want to do it next time.

 

Let people unlock everything and limit by the number of slots in a build.

 

I want ultima-like skills, but with a few exceptions.

For example, there should be "Primary skills" and "secondary skills". For example cooking or skinning animals is seondary.

So if for example I had 700 skill points, i'd like those to be spent only on primary skills. Then we should have like 400-700 for secondary skills. Because, right, no onewould like to ditch Parrying or Meditation for dat Cooking or Taste ID skill.

 

Character customization, and skill customizing are two totally different things so im going to answer both, as far as what i look like and armor and stuff, as much customization as i can possibly have, as far as skill there should be a cap, if you want to raise in another skill, you need to lose some points in another, there is no way anyone can know everything! (even in a fantasy world) your inclined in one skill and not so much in another, orcs may be good barbaric fighters and its a rareity in any fantasy book they can cast any spells, all fantasy characters are skilled in different aspects, everyone should have a prime skill, then add to others that wont be as great, that could be made up into 2 different prime skills if needed. But to excel in all is bs! thats why some chracters are great fighters and others great crafters etc...

 

So you want people to have to sacrifice crafting skill to be good at combat, and vice versa?

 

No, crafting should be separate no effect on combat, but like in combat have a primary skill blacksmithing etc,,, instead of being a blacksmith, tailor,tinker, crafter,alchemist,

if everyone was the greatest at everything, no one would be different from the other, might as well make one clone and all of us look alike, do everything the same etc... pretty boring to me!

 

I don't get how you figure that option one is for "None" customization. Sounds pretty customizable to me, moreso that 99.9999% of all games. I think a lot of the other ideas go way too far and would be a turn off to a large number of gamers, plus it would mean that the game is going to be a "spreadsheet game" and they have said many times that it is not.


I think you will get customization in the form of you chose what you want to use, you use it and get better at it. Doubt it's going to be much more indepth than that. I think we can count on some skills and abilities being tied to armor and weapons based on a couple things they have said tho, and that with the skills is enough quite frankly. Supposed to be an RPG not a micro-management game.


Also, UO after release never let you learn any skill but just activate the ones that you want. Never. Seriously where did you get this, I'd like to see a source cuz I'm pretty sure I remember the skill cap being in effect for beta when I was watching my brother play. I remember a time before the easy up and down arrows for raising and lowering skills I'm 99% sure, but that's not "learning any skill" and it usually screwed you over because you would waste some points in junk skills and not be able to recover them. I think you must have meant something else entirely.







For SotA they have pretty much said that we can learn anything and just chose to use whatever skills we want, with the "deck" system in place to penalize people who try to have too much at their disposal. We can count on the fact that this has probably not changed since the combat hasn't changed.

 

@GimmeUOPlz I don't see how YOUR suggestion differs from the first option I put in. I suppose I could have given an option for "You get no customization, we give you a character and you play it as we built it. Quit whining.", but it would have been only as a joke. The reason that 99.999% of games are using that level of customization is because anything less than that level of customization and free will tends to turn off ALL gamers, plus it means that the game is rated for twelve and under.

Also I'm so sorry that I trespassed on your proprietary knowledge of UO, I wasn't aware I needed your permission to so much as refer to it. Do you know what "technically" means when used in a sentence like that? It means it was a sandbox-build-it-yourself system that let you choose any skills you wanted, even if they are bad choices, though it won't let you learn and use everything all at once. Did you want cited references and screenshots before I was allowed to refer to the UO game system in a post asking people for constructive opinions?

Oh, and welcome to my ignore list.

 

Actually, I don't think that is true at all. Many games offer little to no customization, including many games clearly not aimed for children (by customization I mean lasting customization, I'm disregarding temporary power ups here).

Now, if you think about RPGs, then this discussion becomes biased. Players tend to assume character customization as a requirement for a game to be a RPG game, so you likely won't find a RPG game without some kind of character customization simply because said game would be shoehorned into a different genre. There are games out there that offer everything you would expect from a RPG except for character customization, though, and in the right hands this can work beautifully.

I'm not defending this route for SotA, mind you; merely pointing that it is viable and has good games out there that go that route. (Though, as I said earlier, I would rather play a game without any kind of customization whatsoever than a game without respecs...)

 

This is the kind of people I wouldn't wwant to interact with in SotA.

Wait, I won't cause I will be on your mighty ignore list before I can say "Thy money or thy life".
Not sure if I might get banned for the word "pathetic" so I'm not gonna say it.

 

Yes, I was in fact referring to RPG's, such as SOTA, not implying that Bejeweled has character customization. Thanks for making the distinction.

 

Well that is the POINT of it all, dude. You feel that you'd hate encountering me in game, and frankly I don't want to be the thing that ruins someone else's game experience. I know I'm not everyone's favorite, or even tolerable to everyone. Thing is, it cuts both ways. Someone who would find my approach so vile that they had to cuss me out over it, or who would find my simple "welcome to ignore" instead of going off on them in turn to be so 'pathetic' that I'd ruin their game experience, I don't want to meet them.

It kinda makes the allmighty ignore list function on our phased server shards almost sound like a good idea, neh?

Now, getting back to the concept of character build, he raised it in the most petulant and immature way he thought he could get away with, but he did raise a good point:

Who would LIKE a "you get what skills you level as you play, they work the way they work, no customization, done" style? I personally don't get the appeal of my character being a carbon copy of the four thousand other players who made the same general choices, but that's me. I actually want to hear from the people who think skill/power/spell/gear customization is inherantly bad and cannot ever be done right. It's an interesting concept to me.

 

Whatever, my point was that ignoring each other is the worst decision to be made in the world of humans.
It's the worst in real life, and it's the worst in MMOs.

I saw how you welcomed this guy to your ignore list and I just had to reply.

Ignore funtions and crap like that will ruin the MMO aspect of this game. It will affect the multiplayer slowly, and in the end SotA will be no better than some WoW server. Or even worse.
It's already hard enough to find a really immersive MMO that allows a good level of freedom of interactions between players. If SotA fails to provide this certain level of freedom, I'm gonna get angry. Because if SotA doesn't do the job of replacing UO, who knows, maybe no other MMO will in the near future.

 

Wow, worst thing in real life? Ya ever have your fingernails yanked out with pliers and then have lemon juice poured on em? Pretty sure dieing of radiation exposure sucks. Have you ever tried testicular cancer? With a side of hypothyroidism? I don't think being ignored is the WORST thing, EVEN if you are being ignored not just by those you have insulted, but by everyone on Earth.

Yeah, I've got a point. It's that sometimes, in real life, ignoring people is the only good response. I PERSONALLY would like to be allowed to beat jerks unconcious, drag them home, hang them up in my garage and torture them to death, but it turns out the cops don't like that. Who knew.

I've played in games that had ignore functions, and YEARS after game start, people were still talking to one another. Whole GUILDS, entire factions, broad marketplaces. Most people who are given an ignore function don't spam it on anyone who looks at them funny, but if you start whispering foul language and insults at people... hey... maybe the problem you have with ignore is that you are always the target of it? With an attitude like the one you are showing, I'm surprised they let you into this forum. Maybe if you try being nice to SOME of the people, you won't wind up all alone?

Oh, and you really should try to remember that SOTA is not intended as a replacement for UO, or as an MMO for that matter. Maybe you should stop haranguing everyone, criticizing the game engine, and verbally assaulting forum thread posters. Unless of course, you want to be ignored?

 

Personally, I think being a thief or a murderer is kind of cool, and although that's not the way I'll be playing, I really would like it if the game could accommodate everyone somehow.

The only problem is, sometimes, if you're not playing a combat character, you don't want to be murdered or robbed while you're playing a game. Life sucks enough on the outside that our fantasy worlds should be fun, not a chore because of some players.

That's why I think a compromise should be reached, but I agree it is a difficult problem to solve adequately so everyone is happy ...

 

How would you like to see it built?