Class change item
Well if you think about it. IF they added this, it would reset you to level 2 most likely. Would be silly to just get on warrior, level to 80, then switch to mesmer and be level 80 mesmer and skip leveling a harder class to level.
So your better off actually just making a new character instead of spending money on making a new character
Big problem actually….. Soul Bound equipment. Since classes define what equipment you can use, it can invalidate several gear items that you will no longer be able to use due to class compatibility. Top that off with store bought skins, and the severity can grows exponentially. On the surface this seems like a minor concern….. but given the average player’s ability for logical reasoning (or lack of), the large time investment for a lot of the gear, but low time investment to level a character to 80, theres not enough incentive to deal with the fall out of impulsive players destroying their characters with what would undoubtedly be an expensive item.
But from a developer and business standpoint, there are tons of incentives to encourage players to roll alternates. Character upgrades, more skins, 2nd sets of conveniences items, more TP interaction, inherent recycling of existing content, and doesn’t have any potential collateral damage of removing the original character, its accumulated time/gear value, nor the problems of reversing it should the player want to switch back.
Characters are actually the least valuable aspect of the game, now that the majority of high end progress is account bound. What the character is (class and gearing), or what crafting capabilities they have are now the measure of value behind them.
We already have a way to do this already, to an extent. Either delete your character or make a new one and tome them to 80.
This way is far simpler for A-net: it doesn’t require any development. An item like you suggested is bound to introduce a load of complications (as already mentioned by other posters) as well as a huge amount of bugs.
It’s also more profitable for A-net if you make an entirely new character. Not only might it mean that the player will purchase a character slot, but the player will also be more likely to buy gemstore aesthetic stuff, boosters and convenience items to customise the new character and to help with the levelling process.
Moreover, I’m sure it’s one of those “hardcoded” values that A-net have. Much like character’s race, it was never intended that such a thing could be changed. Thus it would be very difficult for A-net to isolate it without it having a knock-on effect on loads of other aspects of the game.
So yeah… it comes down to this:
-Very little reason for A-net to include such a thing, as there is already a way to do it in respects
-Would require a heap of development time
-Is likely to introduce many bugs and problems
-Is less profitable for A-net
Eh y not. The players know the risk. If their system is capable and they can through it in the gem store, might be another way to meet their quarterly goal after HoT. Give players another catch aside from equipment loss and missed story. Maybe add a short quest or cinematic. Yea. Y not. An option for people who haven’t pre ordered. I’m not but I’m sure alot of players would type in those account numbers and press enter to switch their dead alt to a revnant or another class/elite spec they like.
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(edited by LTREEVEY.2348)
If they implemented a significant change to the armor weight system, it could potentially eliminate a lot of the reasons why it currently wouldn’t work.
Proposed changes:
1. All professions can wear all armor weights.
2. Heavy would have the most armor rating and light would have the least (same as now).
3. Wearing a full set of armor of the same weight gives you a 5% increase to both Vitality and Toughness.
4. Each piece of light armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 4.16% (25% if all 6 slots are light)
5. Each piece of medium armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 2.5% (15% if all 6 slots are medium)
6. Heavy armor grants no increase to movement speed.
7. All traits, signets, and runes that grant movement speed increases have their movement speed increase removed (so that only armor weight determines movement speed).
This will allow players to choose between movement speed and armor rating.
Server: Devona’s Rest
Mtpelion, sure, a change to the weight system could be a very good thing. However, it would mean literally recreating every single piece of armor in the game, from scratch, thanks to the technical limitations inherent in their original design. Are you willing to give up on pretty much every other game change and fix while they divert all their resources to this?
Normally I don’t adhere to the “there are more important things to work on” counter to suggestions. However, this change would mean essentially stopping game development for months, so I think for once it applies.
Mtpelion, sure, a change to the weight system could be a very good thing. However, it would mean literally recreating every single piece of armor in the game, from scratch, thanks to the technical limitations inherent in their original design. Are you willing to give up on pretty much every other game change and fix while they divert all their resources to this?
Normally I don’t adhere to the “there are more important things to work on” counter to suggestions. However, this change would mean essentially stopping game development for months, so I think for once it applies.
This change would actually eliminate the need to recreate any armor in the game as the weights are retained.
Server: Devona’s Rest
If they implemented a significant change to the armor weight system, it could potentially eliminate a lot of the reasons why it currently wouldn’t work.
Proposed changes:
1. All professions can wear all armor weights.
2. Heavy would have the most armor rating and light would have the least (same as now).
3. Wearing a full set of armor of the same weight gives you a 5% increase to both Vitality and Toughness.
4. Each piece of light armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 4.16% (25% if all 6 slots are light)
5. Each piece of medium armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 2.5% (15% if all 6 slots are medium)
6. Heavy armor grants no increase to movement speed.
7. All traits, signets, and runes that grant movement speed increases have their movement speed increase removed (so that only armor weight determines movement speed).This will allow players to choose between movement speed and armor rating.
I think you grossly over estimate the practical value of movement speed when most classes have swiftness, with a number of them having group swiftness options. This effectively eliminates any downside of heavy armor in a group setting, while simultaneously upsetting the crafting economics in the opposite direction that it currently sits.
The 3 armor weights, in development, were designed as a balancing mechanism between the classes. The reason it fell apart is due to the marginal difference in Armor rating compared to the stat bonuses, along with the lower scaling potential of defensive stats verses offensive ones. The entire armor value thing is an artifact from its prototype design, that was based on GW1, and kept in the game because its spreads out the crafting.
If we’re opening this pandora’s box, to be honest, I think that rigid class systems are outdated and ruin immersion by encouraging altholism. I’d love to have a way to just acquire and mix skills from different classes on one character.
If they implemented a significant change to the armor weight system, it could potentially eliminate a lot of the reasons why it currently wouldn’t work.
Proposed changes:
1. All professions can wear all armor weights.
2. Heavy would have the most armor rating and light would have the least (same as now).
3. Wearing a full set of armor of the same weight gives you a 5% increase to both Vitality and Toughness.
4. Each piece of light armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 4.16% (25% if all 6 slots are light)
5. Each piece of medium armor you wear increases your base movement speed by 2.5% (15% if all 6 slots are medium)
6. Heavy armor grants no increase to movement speed.
7. All traits, signets, and runes that grant movement speed increases have their movement speed increase removed (so that only armor weight determines movement speed).This will allow players to choose between movement speed and armor rating.
I think you grossly over estimate the practical value of movement speed when most classes have swiftness, with a number of them having group swiftness options. This effectively eliminates any downside of heavy armor in a group setting, while simultaneously upsetting the crafting economics in the opposite direction that it currently sits.
The 3 armor weights, in development, were designed as a balancing mechanism between the classes. The reason it fell apart is due to the marginal difference in Armor rating compared to the stat bonuses, along with the lower scaling potential of defensive stats verses offensive ones. The entire armor value thing is an artifact from its prototype design, that was based on GW1, and kept in the game because its spreads out the crafting.
So we pair movement speed with an increase in endurance regeneration.
Server: Devona’s Rest
So we pair movement speed with an increase in endurance regeneration.
Getting better, but thats really ham fisted way of tacking on value to the concept. If you look the potential endurance regen options for the classes, the 2 classes that would benefit from it are already light armor, but Eles, and 3 Adventurer classes could move up to Heavy no problem. Light armor would have to be +33% to even consider it- But then the entire meta shifts that direction, as the already marginal defense difference is upstaged by a significant increase in dodge frequency.
If we’re opening this pandora’s box, to be honest, I think that rigid class systems are outdated and ruin immersion by encouraging altholism. I’d love to have a way to just acquire and mix skills from different classes on one character.
GW1 sort of did it. And TSW does it. So the industry has toyed with the concept, I’m just not sure if the wider mmo playerbase like having so many options to play with.
If we’re opening this pandora’s box, to be honest, I think that rigid class systems are outdated and ruin immersion by encouraging altholism. I’d love to have a way to just acquire and mix skills from different classes on one character.
GW1 sort of did it. And TSW does it. So the industry has toyed with the concept, I’m just not sure if the wider mmo playerbase like having so many options to play with.
They loved the options….. But it was the Devs that felt the problems. GW1 is admittedly a massive nightmare to balance with how its classes were laid out, and the possibility of a few million build combinations with the skills. Just like here, PvP and PvE were not symmetric… so GW1 had resorted to [PvP] versions of skills (usually heavy nerfs) to aid in game balance.
2 names is all thats needed to explain how badly it got out of hand.
-Bunny Thumper
-Touch Rangers
But thats not to say that a mix and match system can’t work. It just doesn’t work with any form of class system, no matter how fluid it is. Simply put, inherent restrictions make equality impossible. And unequal-equality (or asymmetric balance) doesn’t function when your units are bound by standardized mechanics.
The best implementation I’ve seen to date for asymmetric freeform would have to be Planetside 1. It wasn’t perfect, and had endless problems with fine tuning, but the game’s approach to balance took advantage of the strengths of both FPS and RTS games. The premise was simple… all players are equal in design on a common, basic level. Players would then augment themselves entirely through gear choices. Each piece of gear was mechanically and functionally different, and attempted to minimize overlap within your choices. This allowed you to build out for wide utility, or heavily specialize in a narrow set of tactical situations. Since several strategies were always viable at any given moment, and battle flow could change rapidly over the course of a couple minutes (keep in mind this a 400+ player 3-way battle, with friendly fire enabled), each player would have to individually adapt their loadouts and strategies as the battle progressed, while the battle group as a whole coordinated to capitalize on their strengths, and cover their weaknesses.
They also followed a “macro level” Rock/Paper/Scissors methodology to balancing gear. This meant that there were no hard counters against equipment, only that certain choices were well suited for shutting down a strategy normally associated with the opposing weapon. If you were skilled enough, or at least coordinated enough, you could reasonably beat the odds against a weapon thats well suited to defeating you, by simply out playing or outsmarting your opponent. (This game was done by the same guys that made the original Starsiege Tribes; And both games were known for adapting diverse Arena style weapon building to large scale open ground warfare)
The game play that resulted from this philosophy looked like Chaos on the surface; But below the surface it was groups at various levels of coordination working toward a common objective. Highly adaptive players could adhoc into any group, either complimenting or supplementing that group’s composition. Highly organized groups could focus on specific tasks, yielding efficient results, and act as a logistics or offensive foundations for the less organized players. Even otherwise useless players could find purpose by being fodder, distractions, or meat shields for friendly forces. Ultimately there was only 1 type of player that was useless to the empire….. the ones that would cross everyone’s line of fire and stop friendly bullets from reaching the enemy. If GW2 had friendly fire, this game would be SOOOOO much different.