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Changing secondary class
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Hi all.
We know that you'll be able to change your secondary class and augments and that it won't be a quick or easy process.
So, my question to you is, how would YOU like to have this done? Or to put it another way, what do you think should be involved in changing a secondary class?
Very interest in reading what you guys come up with
We know that you'll be able to change your secondary class and augments and that it won't be a quick or easy process.
So, my question to you is, how would YOU like to have this done? Or to put it another way, what do you think should be involved in changing a secondary class?
Very interest in reading what you guys come up with
2
Comments
- have a master alchemist craft a Class Change Potion
- complete a quest (has a 30 day cooldown upon completion)
- Buy an item from a shop (expensive)
Eternal Guild
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From there, I like the idea of an item needing to be crafted (requiring the use of every gatherer, processor and crafting class). If it is hard enough to produce the item needed to respec, this could work really well.
Failing that, I think a quest of some sort is needed.
Ooooh, I like that.
They had that sort of idea in one of the tier upgrades in a game called "Gothador", and you had to get certain items from different types of class. Worked well there, I can see it working here too.
1) You have to find a group of people that want to change their class, be it guild or randoms, dare a challenging place, like ruins or evil monastery, reach the heart of that location after dealing with the lv X mobs. Find the NPC that offers that service over there.
There can be 4 dungeons for players lv:
20
30
40
50 and under.
The mobs in these special locations should offer 0 XP and 0 loot as to not make them a place where people hang out 24/7, thus making it a challenge. Not instanced dungeon.
2) Kill one of these 10 raid bosses and bring proof to an NPC. (Hardcore method).
3) An easy quest which will be very tedious and a bit of time consuming after a few times (the most boring method).
4) Pilgrimage. You have to travel to a very distant NPC, 15 minutes away on a mount. Just talk to the NPC and done. Still, not on the fly.
Whatever it is it has to take around 20 minutes to an hour.
However I feel requiring components from every crafting class is a bit much. I feel like you should have multiple avenues to get a kind of item that allows you to swap, but it's maybe from a few crafters that make sense (Alchemy, enchanting, cooking) where you have some kind of consumable.
I think there should also be a more expensive option that can be bought from NPC vendors, but as long as the player crafted version is far cheaper. I personally dislike the notion of a cooldown. If I get a free weekend and want to blow a stack of gold on trying out a lot of different specs, nothing should stop me from doing so.
I wouldn't want to grind out a spec swapping mission half a dozen times just to experiment either.
It feels fitting to the theme of AoC that the price should be one of economics and not one of time gating or repetitive quests.
If it was for me I wouldnt allow secondary class change, never, just because it has to matter a lot. If you want to try another, make a new character.
This in only my opinion, and i'll be happy with the team decision, but I would like it to be very limited.
If there were 15-20 distinct, olid class I would prefer that.
But since there is only 1 Fighter with 8 flavours I think players that dont have access to testing should have a way find what they like.
e.g. say our secondaries are given to us by the gods. Then revoking one archetype will anger some gods - thus they won't allow you to simply switch back whenever you want, and you must therefore complete a quest for redemption. (And so you change augments via quest)
or another example:
Say our secondaries are acquired by consuming certain items that attune our bodies to an archetype. So switching between secondaries means going "cold turkey" on one archetype to return to a generic state. And once you have returned to a generic state with no secondary, it is safe to consume the augment change. (so the change is limited by crafting a consumable and doing a "detox")
It would be easier to just roll another character to try out multiple specs at that point xD
You never know what future balance patches will bring to the table. No game is ever perfectly balanced and metas can shift from one spec to another.
This is why some players, who already have max level characters, might choose to change classes rather than starting a new character, which would be a waste of time.
Eternal Guild
( Web | Discord )
What if you are a main tank for a group? You are a Guardian. You have had some problems here and there with some threat. You know Knights deal a bit more damage with their augs so you give it a shot. The new extra damage for picking up threat quickly is nice, but your mitigation has suffered quite a bit more than you expected. So now you are just stuck with an unsatisfactory build for a month? That seems like quite a poor design choice, to me. The point I was making is that it would be quicker to level up another entire character, than to wait for a 30 day cooldown to be over.
I personally feel like the process of swapping your secondary class should be a matter of crafting/gold sink. If I have a three day weekend pop up and know I can get a solid 30 hours of gameplay in and I want to spend the entire time watching movies/youtube while gathering, then it should be a calculated cost factor into deciding to swap my subclass to one thats more 'slippery' to try and avoid PvP. Weighing in the benefits of lost time traveling from being PKed and loss of looted resources vs the cost of wanting to respec two times.
People could either buy all the things from other players or work for it.
Additionally: Implement a grace period, where you can change freely between secondary classes after you reached lvl 25. Not everyone will know exactly what they want.
\o/
Curious what people think the cost of re-rolling augments within the same secondary class should be then?
With the number of cookies you give out....
This sums up my thoughts pretty well.
Questing as a healer is usually a massive pain in MMOs so whereas I might do a DPS hybrid for when I need to just go out and farm/quest I don't think switching back to be a healer/healer should be a massive process. Once you've unlocked it once you should be able to swap w/ a modest cost of some sort of resource, whether gold or something dedicated to Archetypes.
Wait until you’ve played with some of my guild mates before you say that. They’re all incredible people, but things can get a bit . . . scattered at times. 😂
Oh no! Are we only allowed to change secondaries before a certain age?!
NO! I was really just referring to the frequency of changes. I’m hoping they aren’t so rapid that some of the folks I play with are constantly redefining themselves and their group roles.
I am way ahead of you
So I would have you do a questline to unlock the secondary class initially that takes say 1 hour of gameplay or so and then if you ever wanted to swap back into a secondary class that you have previously unlocked you would get another quest line. This other quest line is to "repent" or sharpen your rusted skills with the secondary class and should take around half the time the original quest took to complete. The quests should differ for each class as well, so a rogue would need to go disarm x amount of dungeon traps or a tank would have to do an npc escort quest. Little lore-friendly activities that get you in the mindset of the secondary class.
At level 50: 1 change allowed per month
Cost: a ton of gold and a lengthy class-based quest
Keep 'em coming frands!
I'm not a fan of hard limits like this.
There are likely to be many things that change once we hit the level cap. Item progression will change, we will dedicate more time to getting augments from non-class paths, not to mention that we don't have access to the full class until the level cap.
To me, if someone are ds hoursor even days working through all these avenues to get various augments, they should be able to swap out second dairy classes to try them out.
Not necessarily at will, but if a quest to change secondary class takes 2 hours, a player should then be able to go out and do that quest again right away - if they want to.
The limit should be in either how much time it takes to change, or how much it costs - not some arbitrary timer.