PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Chessire on September 01, 2011, 06:44:56 am
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I recently have been playing with an alt, I created that one to play as a villain character for roleplays and of course I needed him to be strong (A weak villain is doomed to death upon the hands of all the trained righteous character unless you manage to outwit everyone). I would never have the time or even the motivation to sit countless hours and lvl him up so I ended up roleplaying all of his spells, stats and skills as happens with almost all secondary characters. I have even read forum topics on magic saying that its meant to be impossible for a character to become master in several ways of magic.
But if that's true what about alts? Most people don't want to roleplay as the same character all of the time and roleplay scenarios often need some extra character to bring the change.
So, to address this problem without making leveling easier which would result to perfectly trained and overpowered characters I thought it would be simpler to be able to create trained alts once you have a first, skilled character. In other words, all the training you do to your most played character could be transferred to a new char in the form of points to be assigned to any skill upon character creation.
These points could be measured in tria and pp spent on training. For ex, all the tria and pp the main has spent to train the skills A B and C could be used during the creation of an alt to assign him the skills D, E and F. The skills D, E, F may be higher or lower than A, B and C but equal in terms of tria and pp spent.
This gives us an alt able to participate in rps and duels without being necessarily a feeble and dim.
Such a system can be easily abused, anyone who wants to test the other skills and magic ways could just create numerous alts and abandon them later, thus just filling the database of characters. So perhaps creating such an alt could be restricted to only a few times during a year, for ex no more than two trained alts a year. Or chances to create such characters could be given based on the accounts actual playing time, or granted as a right or reward from a GM.
Apart from all this, i am aware that even if everyone likes this idea it will take a good while to be implemented since it probably requires tables and code to be written and skills like alchemy have been on stand-by due to such reasons. I'm still posting this here as an idea for the game.
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I have exactly the same problem and some RPs already pretty much stopped due to the lack of (time for) training.
A system where I can create an alt that isn't the overall newbie would help that greatly.
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The only argument against it could be - getting a trained char without much effort, which can be unfair to other players.
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More than a year ago, I had some interesting conversations about this and similar concepts with a friend who stopped playing PS in the meanwhile. He was convinced that a system that allows players to create secondary characters with somewhat advanced initial stats and skills would be a great addition, but needs strict rules and limitations to prevent abuse. His reasoning also took into account concepts of aging, limited lifespans and inheritance. These related topics are indeed interesting, but setting up rules that feel fair for everyone is a delicate task.
Back to the actual subject, I think that a somewhat restrictive set of additional features in character creation would already be a big help. Keep in mind that your actual, cumulative training costs for reaching a certain set of skills are not a static quantity, but really depend also on the development of stats like intelligence or strength over time, in conjunction with skill progression.Thus it does not make sense to request a very precise mapping from one set of skills to another one.
The concept which I would suggest here is the following. Add some predefined sets of stats and skills in the spirit of the "quick paths" of character creation. If the paths of "Warlock", "Knight", "Enchanter" etc were reworked for better balance, the same patterns could be used for that, simply scaled to a much more useful sum of skill ranks. These "advanced paths" of character creation may then be available in exchange for the overall time spent with a given Planeshift player account. For example, you could call that "loyalty" points or whatever, hand out one for every 20 hours spent online and assign some loyalty point costs to each of the advanced creation paths. Yes, I intentionally decouple this from skill progression of existing characters, because it really should not give PLers an advantage. Those will find it much faster anyways to grind their alts from scratch. Of course, such a system will benefit from a wider variety of paths, and none of them should be close to a fully trained character, which of course depends on your personal point of view.
I hope there will be some more interesting comments in this thread. The topic deserves some more attention and thought.
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The problem I see with being able to make an alt, and transfering exact ammounts of skills, is a person could, train a character, in say light armor and ranged, Up to 100 each, make an alt, and have mettalurgy at mabey 150.
BAM, get rich quik scheme.
Even allowing half as much, could still end up to the same effect, if its somone like say perlan, whos maxed everything :P
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I like the concept very much, obviously there would be a lot to work out. I too have had the same problem. I don't know if there any real "fair" way to do it because the players make the game, I do believe they should reap some of the benefits. I myself am limited on my time available, but that is just life.
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The concept which I would suggest here is the following. Add some predefined sets of stats and skills in the spirit of the "quick paths" of character creation. If the paths of "Warlock", "Knight", "Enchanter" etc were reworked for better balance, the same patterns could be used for that, simply scaled to a much more useful sum of skill ranks. These "advanced paths" of character creation may then be available in exchange for the overall time spent with a given Planeshift player account. For example, you could call that "loyalty" points or whatever, hand out one for every 20 hours spent online and assign some loyalty point costs to each of the advanced creation paths. Yes, I intentionally decouple this from skill progression of existing characters, because it really should not give PLers an advantage. Those will find it much faster anyways to grind their alts from scratch. Of course, such a system will benefit from a wider variety of paths, and none of them should be close to a fully trained character, which of course depends on your personal point of view.
I actually like your idea better than mine. Its true it would better to base all this on time spent playing rather than skills trained, since there are very loyal players that don't like training skills and I think there will always be some as long as there are hardcore roleplayers. So maybe gameplay hours, perhaps with the timer going off when a character goes afk (i.e. player or charcter performs no action for a long while).
The problem I see with being able to make an alt, and transfering exact ammounts of skills, is a person could, train a character, in say light armor and ranged, Up to 100 each, make an alt, and have mettalurgy at mabey 150.
BAM, get rich quik scheme.
Perhaps some skills used to make money could be taken out of all this although I don't see where the real problem is. If someone managed to train skills to a high level they would need to have money already and if they didn't (which was my case, making money from killing monsters) it took them a very long time to train high enough. Besides, in later versions of the game metalurgy will be only one of the ways to make money.
Still maybe some skills would be better off taken out of the new character's lvled abilities or at least capped upon character creation. Or, if we take Bonifarzia's idea, maybe these would cost more loyalty points to lvl up than combat skills or stats. This is actually a matter of balancing things out.
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Maybe you could creat an Alt, up to the same levels in each things to your main, E.g your main has Maxed stats you can make an alt with max stats or less.
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I actually like your idea better than mine. [...] Perhaps some skills used to make money could be taken out of all this [...] Or, if we take Bonifarzia's idea, maybe these would cost more loyalty points to lvl up than combat skills or stats. This is actually a matter of balancing things out.
I am glad you like the idea. In fact, I mainly thought of PvP relevant skills, i.e. combat arts and magic ways. These are probably enough of a challenge to properly balance out. The inclusion of some job skills may be possible at a later stage, after some extensive testing.
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I don't really like this idea, it's not easy to implement, no other game has it (meaning it doesn't work). However I do believe making an alt needs to be somewhat easier than it is now. I wouldn't care leveling an alt if leveling wasn't so freakin hard!! Winch access now is just ridiculous, and developers didn't listen to players about how hard it was, instead they make it harder!
So I believe that the devs need to concentrate on easier leveling and questing than making alts.
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I don't really like this idea, it's not easy to implement, no other game has it (meaning it doesn't work). However I do believe making an alt needs to be somewhat easier than it is now. I wouldn't care leveling an alt if leveling wasn't so freakin hard!! Winch access now is just ridiculous, and developers didn't listen to players about how hard it was, instead they make it harder!
So I believe that the devs need to concentrate on easier leveling and questing than making alts.
Actually thats not quite true, I played a game once where you could do what was called a 'rebirth' to make your character start back at level one, and i forget if it was either you leveled up faster when you did that proportional to what level you were when you did it, or you had more starting points on him. (Memory is a bit foggy, played it a long time ago)
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Actually thats not quite true, I played a game once where you could do what was called a 'rebirth' to make your character start back at level one, and i forget if it was either you leveled up faster when you did that proportional to what level you were when you did it, or you had more starting points on him. (Memory is a bit foggy, played it a long time ago)
Sounds like an interesting game. I'm also more meaning that the idea is good however I think work at starting characters (whether a noob or an alt) needs more priority than something like this.
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It is my feeling that such player preference can create a two tier game.
After working on a second character a bit more seriously lately, my heart is with the OP.
There is no question it would be a help to loyal players; yet on a MUD, which a similar development was witnessed, playing appeared to, later, become more two tiered in style of play.
The MUD eventually became a MUD of Wizards with top tier Mortal Lord alts. The non-Wizard player base fell away. It would be a situation worth avoiding in PS.
On RPG Table Gaming my favoured is still by far the 1-5th level character. My love of the dice may be hidden in that fact. :D
So instead of developing such a tier of playing style upwards, my suggestion would be to let us cast it downwards. That is that any player creation type which may evolve from this thread should be tempered with the curse of real ageing. That topic deserves; if not already has; a thread of its own. Yet suffice it to say it would be perma at some eventual die roll.
- Nova
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The problem is of course that we are talking about a completely different game with these ideas. And it is not like this idea has never come up before. It might be possible though to have a system where an existing characters attributes and stats could be transferred to a new character. But there would have to be a stiff price for doing this.
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@ Novacanadian: I haven't had the chance to play DnD online or as a board game before so I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say by this post. Could you please post again explaining without the DnD terminology?
So instead of developing such a tier of playing style upwards, my suggestion would be to let us cast it downwards. That is that any player creation type which may evolve from this thread should be tempered with the curse of real ageing. That topic deserves; if not already has; a thread of its own. Yet suffice it to say it would be perma at some eventual die roll.
You mean that alts created with already raised levels would eventually result to numerous very powerful characters that would ruin the balance of the IC world? I actually agree with that. What happens today is having powerful stats roleplayed in order to have a powerful villain or at least an enemy that can provide a challenge but noone will be accepted as powerful if they try to abuse their way through rps with pretended stats. That's also the actual reason that leveled alts need to be restricted to loyal players, not because they are some sort of reward but because they are meant to be used for roleplay, not in-game competition. Perhaps it wouldn't even matter if the leveled alts couldn't train any higher than their starting skills in most cases, since they were never meant to help powerleveling.
So, how about this:
Every account gets loyalty points based on time spent in the game world (without being afk). Perhaps a few points could also be awarded by GMs in events? These points can be used upon the creation of an alt to add skill and stat levels but cannot be used on skills used to make money. The created alt cannot train or gain any levels further than the starting ones. If the alt is deleted all the loyalty points spent are lost.
I think this covers the money making exploit, the overpopulation of alts and the overpopulation of powerful characters. And its certain there will be some balancing needed on how many points are gained for say, every in-game hour and how much every skill lvl would cost upon character creation. thoughts? :)
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I think it will be okay to allow further training for such characters.
I doubt this would interfere much with player strategies to reach high end characters, since those starting stats should really differ significantly from both, untrained alts and characters with high end skills. Moderate abilities are probably useful already.
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That may be true but remember we are aiming on helping roleplayers that cannot level up a character in one night just to play a scenario and nothing more. A moderately trained alt may be fine but also maybe a strong one is needed. And by not allowing to level up these alts after creation power-levelers are deprived of a short route to maxing stats and skills.
Actually there may as well be a limit on how many levels an alt can get on certain areas (for ex, cannot max more than one skill if any, cannot have more than 2 skills above 100, cannot have more than 2 stats maxed etc).
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Interesting idea!
I have spent a lot of time to level more than one alt to a stage acceptable to my needs, to fulfill its requirements for correspondant RP desire - having started to play several alts at once for getting them to a certain stage, merely to maintain the curtain at its later event. Back in the days I had supplied numerous alts with Winch-access, only for being able to entertain befriended ones within the according area in an according setting.
That was back in the time. I just wondered to give PS another try.
I have to start in the sewers, try to figure out which of the beast ones to kill first, I do so, I step to the next ones, the great big one goal of accessing Winch-access on my mind, far away it is.. - of course I could just use my old character, but then one char got a history.
Chiming in: Make previously acquired levels transferable to another char, even to that price of subtracting (read: deleting) those same levels off that old char.
Seriously, that will never happen, will it?
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To give this post a right to exist: Just give those alts a limited "lifespan"...like after 500 hours you can't log in with them anymore. More then enough time to finish almost any RP...but for too less for people PLing.
Now to the real reason for this post:
I just wondered to give PS another try.
Masochist ;). But anyway how are you?
...- of course I could just use my old character, but then one char got a history.
But some chars would be ancient history and nobody nowadays remembers them. And hey...no matter what char you use....now they are all almost untrained again. Have fun with the new stats/skill limits.
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@ Novacanadian: I haven't had the chance to play DnD online or as a board game before so I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say by this post. Could you please post again explaining without the DnD terminology?
Some off thread reading if it was mention of the MUD which was alien to you. ;)
M.U.D. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=M.U.D.&go=Go)
MUD Wizards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard_%28MUD%29)
The odds are against the survival of a 1st level character in an average RPG Table game world unless the GM is just one of those that caters to players instead of the dice. To me, a fun range of character to play is from 1st to 5th level characters. Some have argued that Gandolf the Grey was about a 5th level Mage in D&D. A lot of dice rolls. A RPG Table game hero normally carries the proof; in stories of incredible luck or the scars.
- Nova
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It's quite some time I am thinking to this feature. What I would like to have are roleplay characters, created and used only for roleplay. At char creation you will select traits. stats, skills and items with certain limitations on total ranks (example total 500 ranks and not more than 120 on a single skill) and certain limitations on item strength (like high quality but not magical). They will not be able to gain exp or raise their skills/stats in any way also they will not be able to trade items with other players nor drop their items ( will be used just within the char inventory). selling items will give no money, buying will have no cost.
Few important open points:
- should everyone be allowed to create such new chars at anytime or not (I 'm more in favor of yes)
- should we prevent the ability to do quests (I'm in favor of yes)
- what about the restricted areas like the winch, should they get access? This will not be easy to have, unless we create a list in char creation and they select the ones to have access.
- will this spoil the game for people, so at the end they will play less?
- abuse: create a char to win tournaments. Impersonate a guard while you are not. Cast healing spells on your main char in combat to buff him and PL even harder.
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would these char's be able to cast spells at all? without access to quests they will have no access to glyphs.
also the dropping of items is usually pretty necessary in RP, especially player created RP items such as books which aren't books but symbols for some object that doesn't exist in game.
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They choose the items at char creation including glyphs.
I understand the drop problem, then we can allow drop, but those items will not be pickable by others.
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- should we prevent the ability to do quests (I'm in favor of yes)
I've actually felt that quests have helped with my role play - as a new player way back when and even now. It gives you a feel for atmosphere, possible personalities and behaviour, lore, races, laws, the way factions interact - everything to do with the game. It's like the IG wikipedia. Perhaps quests can be there for the sake of...learning how to 'get in character' and role-play... If that makes any sense.
- what about the restricted areas like the winch, should they get access? This will not be easy to have, unless we create a list in char creation and they select the ones to have access.
Maybe if your character or their parents hold an occupation/faction that would require/permit entry to said areas, they'd get them automatically unlocked.
Just my thoughts.
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Maybe another possible solution.... allow players to make a char. that they have the ability to rename and even change race of at their whim. The char. will always retain all possessions and stats achieved. No idea how doable this would be, but just an idea.
The character could have an invisible name by which the database keeps track of it and possibly not even show a name in game other than what a player might put in the descrip. Seems like this would be easier than making a special char. with all sorts of restrictions. I'm guessing the hardest part would be making it possible for the player to change races. If so, forget that and just make the suggested name changing ability and the player can make alts for each race needed.
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Not that it probably will affect me but still putting down my thoughts on it here:
Dropping of items is absolutely necessary for almost every RP.
The same for trading. Not only to be able to order drinks for a whole group and give a drink to each one later but also to offer payment for jobs you offer or exchanging books with infos.
Yes, everyone should be able to create such a char. I was first thinking if a time limit like for the advisor channel might be acceptable...but then realized that this would make it impossible to just create a new account for a new RP char. I don't think it would be very nice if you have no more char slots on your current account but need another RP char...and then have to play 30 hours on a new account only to be able to create on.
Quests? Not needed in my view...I can't really see any advantage in allowing RP chars doing them...but also can't see any disadvantages.
Restricted Areas: No question there...every RP char should have full access to ALL restricted areas...no matter what is chosen at the char creation. It are RP chars...people playing them should be capable to RP and only go to the areas suitable for that char. As you can't say how a RP turns out disallowing access to the BF temple for all times is a far bigger problem than the players creating a RP char just to see it once.
Spoil the game? Why does nobody ever ask how all the level 200 in magic and weapons and armor and everything chars insisting on them being the strongest and unbeatable spoil the fun for others?. Seriously...yes, some people will complain, can't be helped. The chance of solving this conflict by offering different servers for the individual player's needs is long gone.
Abuse: Almost everything can be abused in some way. But I think it's easy to prevent almost every kind of abuse. First off...those chars don't need to have the same label color. With a slightly different label color it's visible for everyone what chars aren't "ordinary" chars...and everyone can decide if he/she wants to play with that char. Impersonating guards is and was always godmodding...I know PS has no rules against this....but the community can deal with this by their own means (meaning /ignore). For the casting of spells...ahm...please just disallow casting of any magic for those chars. Magic can be RPed what allows even far more creative ways for it. The spells and their effects usually disrupt any RP more than help it.
The buying and selling for nothing is a pretty nice idea...but allowing trading between all chars is far more important than this one. And I can't think of a way to have both without making it exploitable. The same for the items right from the start...if it prevents trading it shouldn't be done. Rather I would prefer a solution that allows easy item and money transfer to these chars even from chars on the same account. It are RP chars...the players should decide themselves how much money they have available and what items they need.
Having all items dropped by those chars seen a "fixed/locked" items would be even a great help for any RP...but I fear it can be easily misused again. Imagine someone creating a RP char just to do some swearword apple-art on the plaza.
Some further limitations which I think are not problem for those chars..maybe even help a bit:
- Disallow them to do any PVE battles (No attacking of monsters). Not needed for RP at all. I see no advantage to allow this to RP chars
- PVP...good question. My opinion is of course it should be disallowed it as well...but here I have to admit that interaction between player chars is of course helping RP and that there are players who see PVP as valid RP.
- No mining, crafting, cooking for those chars. Again unnecessary for RP...can just be played out in text. And disallowing it will prevent others from yelling "abuse".
And some nice to have things:
- Extended shopping...like making a lot more stuff available for buying for those chars. All crafted and cooked items could be available for buying for those chars (with quality 1, doubt anyone would complain they spoil the fun and work of others then).
- Also these chars should already start with all available mounts and pets. Again up to the player which he wants to make use of.
So in general...trading and dropping are a must for RP. Preventing abuse by disallow those options is not very convenient. I think it's better to just disallow all actions that could lead to "spoiled" items.
So, that's about what was suggested. Now how I think it should be done:
Forget about special RP chars. Allow something like RP-instances. I mean...give players some mechanics like the guild mechanics to create a "player event group". Within this group some player can get "local" GM rights to organize the RP. They can create items, fix items on the floor, change skills of all other involved players, spawn monsters, /impersonate, change names...But here comes the point: All their actions only influence other players in the same RP group. If they change the sword skill of one char to 200 it will only have an effect in PVP against other players in the group or monsters spawned by the group GMs. If they create a sword item it can be only used against players in the group...even only seen by those if equipped. Spawned monsters are only visible to the group as well..all other players can't see them. If a player in that group got it's crafting skill raised by a group GM and creates a new weapon it gets two sets of stats. One set with the normal skills of that char which is used in interactions outside of the group (and for the selling price) and another set that is only valid within the group. RP group items can be only traded within the group (Okay, in fact with the crafter example it could be even traded outside of the group with its ordinary stats but once it gets back in the hands of a char inside the group get its group stats back).
Of course player should be able to join more than one of such RP groups. Joining and leaving such a RP group should be possible at any time. And once the RP group is disbanded everything created by the local GMs should disappear again. It's up to a player if he wants to join one of these groups and if he trusts the group GMs to give him some fun. It could need official GM approval to be allowed to form such a group in the first place.
Do I think this will get implemented: Lol, of course not. Do I think it's possible: yes, but it would required some major changes. The database would need a lot of restructuring to allow "instancing"/"shadowing" of items and char skills, the server would need a lot more checks but I think it should be possible in general without creating an environment that can be "abused". I think it could be even implemented step by step..like first only creating such a RP group mechanic and allowing giving out a right to "/impersonate" to a few within that group.
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If there is a problem creating a well developed alt then it seems to me that it would be better, for the ongoing development of the game, that character development be made easier, somehow, rather than making a sub-class of character types. Such a sub-class of the character type will only increase the divide between those who use game mechanics and those which decry it. It will also reinforce the old adage of the PS players base; that it consists of 15 players and all their alts.
One big reason that such alts are required at the moment is the present lower player base. This proposal will not bring new players. Although the change would perhaps help RPs in the immediate; in my opinion; it would have a negative long term effect; by creating a greater divide between developed characters and strictly RP ones.
My character is mid-range in development; so my thoughts do not come from a maniacal power leveller. However to introduce such a sub-class of characters which is being talked of here would have me rethink my commitment to the game.
- Nova
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how about this compromise:
the items given to the character at its creation CAN NOT be traded or dropped.
any items gained during game play CAN be traded or dropped.
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After looking back to the OP it is still not clear to me why the so called developed alt cannot simply be Rped to have the stats. Could someone explain please or point me if it has been explained already?
Thanks,
- Nova
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...
Few important open points:
- should everyone be allowed to create such new chars at anytime or not (I 'm more in favor of yes)
- should we prevent the ability to do quests (I'm in favor of yes)
- what about the restricted areas like the winch, should they get access? This will not be easy to have, unless we create a list in char creation and they select the ones to have access.
- will this spoil the game for people, so at the end they will play less?
- abuse: create a char to win tournaments. Impersonate a guard while you are not. Cast healing spells on your main char in combat to buff him and PL even harder.
I think having everyone able to create such an alt anytime can actually cause problems since players will be able to know advanced skills, spells and have closed areas revealed at a very early stage. It won't be good to give a new player the chance to have all of the game's secrets revealed from the very beginning. So perhaps this could be restricted to accounts with some hours of gameplay already running, I don't know if its possible to measure that at the moment. Those who play for a long time already, know about the several kinds of spells, combat skills, mounts and locked areas as the winch. They just can't repeat the procedure of obtaining all this for every alt, or even spend days to obtain them on their main instead of roleplaying.
So, give a player the chance to discover the game by themselves, then let them create alts. And maybe the limit of the alt's skills could also rise with longer playing time.
But abusing the alts to win tournaments or other rewards I think it can be prevented since it will be easy to have the character marked as "alt" in the character description and have him excluded from any tournaments. Or even let them participate if the players organizing the tournament wish to do so.
About abusing the alts to powerlevel I'm afraid I don't have an answer... Perhaps when AI will be more advanced a solution will appear (for ex, npcs could always have a great dmg bonus over alts and agress them in priority, thus making it pretty tough for the person running the two clients). Also, is there a way to have a zero drop rate for an alt?
After looking back to the OP it is still not clear to me why the so called developed alt cannot simply be Rped to have the stats. Could someone explain please or point me if it has been explained already?
The point is being able to use the game mechanics in RP, as well as having certain objects, accessing areas etc. This might not seem like a big deal at the moment but the combat system will not always be as boring as now. The game is already being enriched in such content.
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Regarding the issue of accessing restricted areas and earnable knowledge, perhaps an alt could be derrived from a non-alt character. This way the alt could only have access to areas that the player has already seen?
As for combat, I really don't see a need for a strict RP alt to be able to engage in combat with either a player or mob. An alt that cannot attack or be attacked would be very useful. ( Invulnerablility would help with stray aggressive mobs)
Armor with zero quality (useless to anyone else ) and a selection of q=10 weapons (too crappy to use, too good to train with) would be perfect. If q=O weapons could not be abused for training purposes, then that would be even better.
I agree with most of what Aiwendil said so I won't repeat those points.
The only thing that kind of concerns me is the use of a different colored tag for alts. I fear that people will treat these characters differently - either by swarming as they do with gm alts, or by ignoring them. The way I see it, a character is a character - whether its a main or an alt. I do see pros and cons on both sides here though.
For me, what I care about most in an alt is stamina and strength.I don't want to have to stop every 5 minutes to recharge. A knight character is usually sufficient for me stat-wise, though I don't know if in the current revision a newb knight could wear plate (for looks)
Since we seem to have your ear for the moment Talad, the ability to spawn and name a limited number of items for rp might be nice too. They could have zero quality and sales value, perhaps even a limited lifespan - though memoirs are nice to have.currently we make custom items by making a book and naming it to whatever.
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The problem with your tying an alt to its main is you end up having to level one character for every account or be limited to having three role play characters of any ability. As it stands now it is extremely tedious to earn levels in many skills. Armor training can be a snap but pretty much everything else takes too long and weapon/shield/armor making takes ridiculous amounts of time. It took me 7 hours one time to get one low level of shield making (8-9) compare that to 10 minutes to get one level in the 60-70 range in two armor types at the same time. Crafting is a waste of time.
Maybe you could make the quick character creation results more robust and with more variety. Certainly they have not been significantly updated since they were developed, the results you get may have changed but no new types have appeared. It sure would be helpful to get a head start on some of the trades. I think that if there were more character types available through quick creation at higher levels of ability you wouldn't need to change much else.
For example, a Metallurgist character could have 20 BS 30 Met ~100 for Str and End. A Swordsmith character could have 20 BS 30 SM similarly high Str and End. The other trades could be set up the same way.
One thing I think is that as the skills and stat have doubled in maximum value the startup character has been devalued by half. Moreso, really as when I started very few things got so high as 100 and yet the character creation still limits you to the same feeble values. This is not exactly true but it is effectively so. Someone starting with a 25 intelligence out of a possible 400 is a congenital idiot and really ought not be able to learn anything much at all. Someone starting with 25/80 is much more on the ball, if you see what I mean.
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@Chessire: Thanks for the clarification.
After getting a good feel of GMs' duties on another thread (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=40454.0;topicseen) it appeared to me that the alt development issue might be best handled by adding another title. Let's call them RPAs (Role Play Administers) for now.
RPAs would deal with requests from Players asking for Alt pps. There could be two fields added to the Players' records which the RPAs could modify. They could be named Alt PPs and Duration.
When a Player creates an alt they could be asked if they wish to use any of their Player Account's Alt PPs. If they do then that newly created character will be assigned the Alt PP value which the Player chooses and tagged with the Duration value.
The Duration value could represent the time logged in with that Character. When the Character is logged in and the Duration value is found to be at zero; then the Character would resort back to new character skill values if no RPA intervention is done.
To help avoid abuse, perhaps a voting amongst RPAs for Alt PPs approval could be put in place with software.
There could also be bonuses automatically given to the Player at certain Achievements.
- Nova
Edit : P.S. Duration should have the option of being set as permanent.