Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Swapping jobs...sub and main?
So I've recently been reading through some of the wiki and noticed something that I would love to see happen. As a long time player of FFXI and FFXIV, one of the things I absolutely adored about the games was the ability to just have 1 character that could everything/play every job. You could switch your main job and play as anything you liked. One of the main reasons I like this was because I always felt that it made players look after their reputation a bit better as you can't hide behind alts. That and the fact that you didn't have to go through all the same quests/story/areas etc again and again to level different jobs.
There was a Q&A bit in the wiki where they said that you can switch your subjob (which is great), but they haven't decided on if we would be able to switch our main job. I'd be interested in hearing what the community feels about this prospect. I know some people love alts and re-leveling/questing etc, but I often feel that its just increasing the longevity of the game through artificial means.
Thoughts?
There was a Q&A bit in the wiki where they said that you can switch your subjob (which is great), but they haven't decided on if we would be able to switch our main job. I'd be interested in hearing what the community feels about this prospect. I know some people love alts and re-leveling/questing etc, but I often feel that its just increasing the longevity of the game through artificial means.
Thoughts?
0
Comments
Adding/Changing sub class (later in the game) is probable, but this will only 'augment' and not 'replace' base class abilities anyway.
I believe with regard to the artisan system, you can go shallow and wide... or deep and thin... into gathering/crafting/processing. The finer details of that are unknown at this time. But I assume it means you wont be able to be exceptionally skillful if you want to be a jack of all trades. Nor will you have widely varied capability if you choose to specialize instead.
Leveling in my opinion would also work very well with the node system, as you could work in lower level nodes to level up new classes that you're working on. That's if they do go with separate class levels instead of base level with a system like this.
The hope should be that we know which players to go to for help with specific kinds of tasks - rather than not being able to depend on a character who is no longer capable of the task we need help with.
RPGs are about character roles - not player roles.
There will be plenty of secondary roles for us to re-spec - Religions, Thieves Guilds, Scholars Academies and Traders Companies... Military, Divine, Economic and Scientific nodes. And whatever people are doing on their freeholds.
Right now, I'm reading the Clockwork War series.
It's a great two-book series for RPG lovers.
In no way should the Paladin be able to just up and switch to being a Forger or the Forger just up and switch to being a Paladin.
That being said, being able to switch the secondary classes should give one character enough of a taste of the other classes that the inability to switch primary class won't feel like a major restriction.
Ashes has alts - which is great.
Sometimes I want to play the role of a male Human priest.
Sometimes I want to play the role of a female Orc mage.
And, yeah, if I enjoyed ganking people, I would have a heroic main and a few alts with stacked Corruption.
(I am a casual challenge player: casual challenge/hardcore time)
As for it being difficult to build a reputation on a character that switches classes, I was thinking more along the lines of the actual player, not the character. I know way back when in FFXI you had one character that was everything, if you were an idiot or rude or helpful people got to know and the same if you were helpful. I feel that it somehow makes for a better community if people can't hide behind alts.
Suffer? That seems dramatic - maybe not everyone cup of tea but certainly not suffer. FF14 is a very thriving game that -- in my expericne of playing it -- is oftened highly lauded for that aspect.
That... didn't even make sense.
In the class blog, Steven said that we won't be able to change our primary archetype and I am happy with that decision.
That however is irrevelent. I can see both sides of the argument, the pros and cons of both situations. Personally I don't like alts as people do tend to be d***ks and have a tendency to hide behind them. I like to sink what time I have into getting better and creating a great character, with great gear and often feel like alts takes away from that and spreads the numerous hours I invest in a game across too many things. I like that I don't get confused having to remember which 57 alts belong to which person and who everyone is in my guild.
But, I can see why people like alts, its gives them something else do and tackle stuff over again from a different perspective. Both views are valid and I'll admit it does worry me slightly that people use the "no more carebears" and "we hate casuals" line to justify every stance against other people ideas or suggestions and how quickly posts can degenerate into that.
After scouring the wiki lately, I thought this was an interesting possibility that could potentially still be added to the game and still feel that even if it doesn't make it in, the ability to switch secondary job will be an great addition to help to stop the game feeling stale and allow people to be flexible enough in the their character builds to not have to log off to an alt every time someone in their guild wants to run something. One can only hope.
Mind you, the ability to switch classes does not mean that you could or should not create alts. It would simply allow those who prefer having a single character to play all the classes that interest them, without having a character for each class - while still allowing everyone else to only play one class per character.
FFXIV's approach made multi-classing necessary to an extent, but if you simply remove that necessity, that system would not harm anyone.
If you have a character who is a Tank but sucks at that class - that is a great quirk for that character and makes for great story-telling... everyone should react to the character accordingly.
In Wizard101, my main character cracked the petnome puzzle for consistently breeding pet types and pet traits. An elite PvP group was so appreciative that my methodology helped them breed the combat pets they wanted that they power-leveled my characters. I was so far below them in levels that they did most of the work in battle - I wasn't much better than a pet compared to them in combat, but... they didn't care because they weren't depending on me for combat. My value to the group was something other than my direct influence on combat.
That was my reputation both as a player and for those characters - although...
As my alt began to make it to the mid-levels, my training with the elite PvP group caused my alt to be frequently invited to help with battles that were difficult for average players because of the combat strategies I had learned as a player.
My Vek Rogue should have a very different reputation than my Py'Rai Necromancer or my Niküa Charlatan.
I am fashion over function, so my characters typically have quirks that impact the gear they wear.
My main in EQ2 was only allowed to wear starting rags - her gearscore was improved by her weapon and crafted Jewelry from one of my alts. My main in WoW could only wear kilts, so if there was no upgrade available that was not a kilt, that character would wait however many levels until a kilt upgrade became available. Because that becomes part of the story.
And then players react to the reputations of those characters however they choose to react.
But, yeah...
A Tank who sucks at being a Tank or who doesn't gear their alt may find it more challenging to level.
I'm not sure that casual/hardcore challenge really factors in there, although, I typically think of hardcore challenge people as wanting to maximize their combat success.
Maybe I'm just a bit old school in thinking that people still care about their reps in the mess that is the anonymous internet today, but I'd like to think there are a few brave souls out there that still care.
One character trying to be everything is not really an RPG, in my view.
The intention of RPGs is to recreate stories and worlds like Tolkien or Star Wars.
Those characters don't swap races and classes in order to try to be everything. Which is why players who wish to experience different roles switch characters.
Not to mention that it would save a lot of relogging. If you are currently playing your tank and you see a group that is looking for a healer, you could simply switch classes instead of having to relog and hope the group won't have found somebody else in the meantime.
But, we shall see.
What makes you think that? Did they say anything that would suggest that the secondary class has to be leveled in some way, separately from your primary class?