Friday with Means - November 20th, 2009 - Nanomage says "Wut?"

[IHaveHugeNick]

Right


So when FC does a major overhaul of the breed perks, ensuring that all breeds are viable and attractive for different reasons.
Instead of forcing you to reroll to take advantage of this, and give you a 1 time option of a change, this is a bad thing


Yes you really are stupid.

So when FC does a major overhaul of the breed perks, ensuring that all breeds are viable and attractive for different reasons.
Instead of forcing you to reroll to take advantage of this, and give you a 1 time option of a change, this is according to you, is good thing, right?

Meanwhile, when FC does a major overhaul of the:

- profession specific perks
- group perks
- perk landing mechanics
- profession specific special attacks
- hotswap mechanics used by certain professions
- run speed changes, HD/ND changes, propably hundreds of other stuff,

and with all this, they are not ensuring that all proffesions are viable and attractive for different reasons, , they are forcing you to reroll in case you don't like something, and don't give you a 1 time option of a change, this is ...also good thing? Rite?

Logic, loverboy. Try it everyonce in a while.

[Klod9002]

When these changes are eventually ironed out and they go live EVERYONE will have the opportunity to change breed once (and the sex of your character if you like) for free. This is the only fair way to handle this issue.

Gratz Means, you are almost there dude. All you have to do now is a...

One time offer, profession change as well, so we can all enjoy our atrox shades and NM NTs.

How about actually balancing the breeds so every breed has to offer something for any profession you have out there, but in a different way, with additional specific downsides of course?

I have no idea how to do that, but hey, I'm not payed to think it out either. Edit: you were almost there actually, you just needed a few tweaks, not such drastic changes as you announced.

Seriously, all those announced changes will greatly cripple certain breeds/professions combinations. I understand why are you offering this "one time offer breed change" now (IHHN dumbed it down so well Teh Tzar Bandaid of teh bandaids - seriously, king would be an understatement), but do we really need the future game where only atrox shades/soldiers/advies/MAs/keepers and NM NTs/MPs/docs/crats/engies/traders/fixers are running around?

[Ebondevil]

but do we really need the future game where only atrox shades/soldiers/advies/MAs/keepers and NM NTs/MPs/docs/crats/engies/traders/fixers are running around?

I think everyone would laugh and jump for joy at the lack of Agents around to gank them

[Klod9002]

I think everyone would laugh and jump for joy at the lack of Agents around to gank them

Someone once said that their extinction might have something to do with the disappearance of opisex.

[dritst]

BrEeD SwAp oO Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ye!

opi female for all!

[Manicmouse]

NM females have bigger... nvm... figure it out yourself

As for breed changes, nothing FC can do would make me change breeds for my toons I have played for years. They are who they are! (I'm no RPer either)

[Alternity]

/snip

Come again major Tom, you just aint making any sense

[majere]

*blinks*

Oh, I'm going atrox!! (no, not really)

Means, what about stuff that's breedlocked to our character? What about my cyberdeck, for an example?

That's probably going to be your own problem. I'm just guessing, since a breed-change is something you do out of own decision. To replace every single breed specific item would be a hell of a hassle, and you would need to wait for years. The queue starts............................................ .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .............here!

[Klod9002]

Come again major Tom, you just aint making any sense

Please, read carefully what you wrote here:

...FC does a major overhaul of the breed perks, ensuring that all breeds are viable and attractive for different reasons....

What they are doing is completely opposite. Each breed will be viable and attractive for specific reason only (read: specific profession) and yes, that's BAD.

Edit: that's actually the case today (just not with such drastic differences between the breeds), minus "one time offer breed change".

[Kintaii]

*blinks*

Oh, I'm going atrox!! (no, not really)

Means, what about stuff that's breedlocked to our character? What about my cyberdeck, for an example?

For things like the NT cyberdeck we'll make sure that players can either receive another cyberdeck for their breed/gender/fatness, or update the cyberdeck during a patch cycle to turn it into an item that can be right-clicked to change its mesh to the appropriate setting.

[Ayria]

What they are doing is completely opposite. Each breed will be viable and attractive for specific reason only (read: specific profession) and yes, that's BAD.

Edit: that's actually the case today (just not with such drastic differences between the breeds), minus "one time offer breed change".

So you've read every document they have on future plans to balance?

Fascinating, a deity indeed. Tell us, what exactly is Funcom's plan for every breed? So far I've seen some perk changes.. something tells me there's more room in which to balance each breed left.

Who's to say they won't all be good for any profession for different reasons in the end? Keeping in mind that profession balance will have a say in it too and that's also far from done or totally explained.

[Klod9002]

So you've read every document they have on future plans to balance?

Yes.

Fascinating, a deity indeed. Tell us, what exactly is Funcom's plan for every breed?

They published it, you might consider reading it yourself.

So far I've seen some perk changes.. something tells me there's more room in which to balance each breed left.

Exactly.

Who's to say they won't all be good for any profession for different reasons in the end?

Means said so. With his "one time breed change offer" nonsense.

[MajorOutage]

*blinks*

Oh, I'm going atrox!! (no, not really)

Means, what about stuff that's breedlocked to our character? What about my cyberdeck, for an example?

You'll most likely have to unequip everything, just like you already have to do for IPRs.

[Digitization]

In a sci-fi world why shouldn't breed change be an option?...this is also likely to be an option heading into the future for AO.

Why can't we check our mail from a portable device >_< , oh yea we don't have pda's in the future :P

[Axtilmor]

Every person makes two major choices at character creation that will affect gameplay for the rest of that character's career--profession and breed. The rest is just cosmetic. Choosing a profession has the biggest impact, and choosing a breed has always been less of a determining factor.

If you want to make a naive slippery-slope argument, then yes, changing breed means we have to be allowed to change profession as well. In the real world, the Dev team makes compromises. Changing both breed and profession would be tantamount to a complete recreation of your character. They could've allowed us to change our profession but not our breed, as well. Since breed is the lower-impact choice, though, it makes more sense to let us change it rather than profession. This is a reasonable compromise.

There's two ways the breed balancing could go.
1) Breeds are relatively balanced across all profs, and people who change will not all select the same breed. There would be little noticeable difference in breed distribution.
2) In the worst case, the balance is completely screwed up and only one breed is viable for each profession. In this case, at least everyone has the option to switch to that breed. If the Dev team decides to take another shot at breed balancing, the breed change mechanic exists for them to use again, as well.

What they are doing is completely opposite. Each breed will be viable and attractive for specific reason only (read: specific profession) and yes, that's BAD.

Edit: that's actually the case today (just not with such drastic differences between the breeds), minus "one time offer breed change".

You admit that's the case today, and yet people still roll 'non-optimal' breed/prof combinations, don't they? Maybe they don't PvP much with them, but I see plenty doing PvM. I don't think I could tolerate the level of drama in the little world you inhabit.

[Kintaii]

So you've read every document they have on future plans to balance?

Yes.

We have not released any rebalancing documentation outside of some of the perk information. Documentation pertaining to nanos, items, research, or any other aspect of the rebalancing has not been released. So no, neither you nor anyone outside of this office has read every document related to this endeavor.

[trousers]

I'm in ur officez, reading ur documentz

[shishu]

whit bread/sex change can we change our name too?i mean if we have a opi girl name and we go for trox will be a lil "gay"

I dont now if any1 post this problem ...to many post here :-)

Tx

[Mereditche]

Breed change is disturbing.

[Hacre]

If the one time breed change happens (note I'd rather see the breed perks -not- produce no brainer prof+breed combinations) then it should be brought in at -minimal- disruption to the end user.

So no stripping everything off the toon.

If there are things that are breed locked then they should be edited in the database to have a playshift check on them.

Normally I'm a big supporter of "you want something, then work for it" but if your proposed breed perk changes go live in anything close to the form you've proposed (and I hope they don't, even if I could breed change to be an OP NM NT) then the end user shouldn't be suffering as a result of changes FC decided to make, either because you feel a direction change is needed, or to fix mistakes of the past. Neither of those are the user's fault so the user shouldn't be penalised for either.

However, here's hoping you still see some sense in what people have been saying about the breed perks. I've said, repeatedly, they should be a nice bonus to have based on the breed, not be something that encourages every newly rolled profession to pick a specific breed.