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

[BugsCoT]

Sort of silly...

Breed itself no longer matters. Breed PERKS are what "sets them apart". If you're gonna fix a problem, fix a problem. Don't tweak the tornado, tweak the butterfly.

[Plektrum]

This is great. But what about toons with names that suggests a specific breed or sex? Is there any chance for a one-time name change too, as long as it's not already taken?

[Odov]

even in my flame retardant teletubby costume i felt the heat from the conversations related to the release of the "first version" of the breed perks last week. I know you guys might find this surprising...but this is a "good" thing. The community is involved, passionate and commited to helping us get this right and i have every confidence that we will get these changes to where they need to go...there was no chance that those documents were ever going to be implemented in their first-version state...good feedback from all our experts is needed. I'm glad i can count on you guys.

That being said a "key" piece of information has been missing with respect the breed perks. Breed perks are currently not "trivial" buffs of little value...it really matters what breed you choose in terms of building your character. The team and i believe that this is part of what makes ao fun...the choice and determination to try out alternate setups to try and push the boundaries of what is possible. Reducing the breed specific perks to irrelevancy would be removing fun from pretty much everyone in the game...nobody wants that. So, the only fair option if we are going to make even small adjustments to breed related actions is to allow everyone to make that important decision again should they so desire.

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. It is also important to note that when this area is done it should be a very tough decision as we hope to make all breeds a viable choice...and removing abilities from breeds is not the route we intend to take on the way to evening the playfield.

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.

****yeah means, you da man

[Dancingrage]

No one should be rerolling anything based on what we've seen thus far, especially due to proposed changes not even coming into the game until who knows when. First as has been said many times there is still plenty of things they haven't shown us like item, nano, research and such changes. Then what we have seen is always subject to change as they have repeatedly said. For all we know they may pull a big 180 degree turn on the detail that is inducing you to reroll before it even gets into the game making doing so a total waste of time. Even after it goes live we will most likely see some adjustments being made. So wait till it's done and the dust has settled some at least before starting some big reroll 220 project.

I rerolled last year about this time, actually, for reasons that were due to some perk changes back then. Now they're rewriting the game from the ground up by the time I get to 220, and finally allowing a breed change when I'm like 3/4 of the way back to where I started from.

[Daspoon]

Here is a HUGE worry of mine, and I hope we can get a response from someone at FC.

Please, please, please dont allow name changes. I know you guys need money etc, but name changes will totally gib the social aspects of this game. People will be ninjaing ganking and just being horrible (like in wow) here and I do NOT want that. Please dont do it.

If I am just assuming (making an ass out of u and me) than forgive me.

Did I say please?


Please.

[majere]

Here is a HUGE worry of mine, and I hope we can get a response from someone at FC.

Please, please, please dont allow name changes. I know you guys need money etc, but name changes will totally gib the social aspects of this game. People will be ninjaing ganking and just being horrible (like in wow) here and I do NOT want that. Please dont do it.

If I am just assuming (making an ass out of u and me) than forgive me.

Did I say please?


Please.

Name changes are already possible via paid points.

[magzu33]

Name changes are already possible via paid points.

no it isnt

[Windguaerd]

Breed/Sex change, to me it looks like Means and the dev team is giving everyone a chance to:

A) Fix poor choices made by players before they knew the real effects of breed on their chosen profession.

B) Allow people who did know the effects of breed, but just wanted to experiment (and for the most part found out, it was a bad choice).

C) Give everyone a chance to adapt to the new rebalance without a complete /reroll and /quit game.

Some people may not agree to the option, so... don't use it. The rest of us, will probably take advantage of this to fix a few snafus we did early on.

My suggestion would be to limit this breed/sex change only to paying customers, and maybe add a small fee (like the $5 fee for mailing system for froobs) so that it would also bring a little bit of income into AO, every cent counts towards the development of the game.

[Metafly7]

In my opinion either ur glad to be able to use it, or u dont care and u dont use it. The option of omg i dont want ppl that could possibly become my opponents to get better is silly and disrespectfull to urself, because that means u dont trust ur own skills.

[Daspoon]

Name changes are already possible via paid points.

That is just AOC.

In my opinion either ur glad to be able to use it, or u dont care and u dont use it. The option of omg i dont want ppl that could possibly become my opponents to get better is silly and disrespectfull to urself, because that means u dont trust ur own skills.

Good point.

[Hulk]

Thanks means and special thanks to macrosun, I knew you could do it!

<3

[madrid]

E
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.

Woot for sex change!

[Autohead]

How about sex change??????

Maybe you should read his entire post.

[IHaveHugeNick]

For the 3rd time - the much bigger , profession specific changes, huge gameplay changes, wont be granted one-time lets save them rerolling offer, so why small change like breed perk changes would?

In my opinion either ur glad to be able to use it, or u dont care and u dont use it. The option of omg i dont want ppl that could possibly become my opponents to get better is silly and disrespectfull to urself, because that means u dont trust ur own skills.

What kind of nonsense is that?

This isn't about wanting or not wanting to use - this is about balancing the game properly. What kind of wicked logic made you drag skills and respect for opponents and tiny white mices with pink spots into this, i'd rather not know.

[Niles]

2 short comments:
1) wow, breed change.. that is, well, huge.. i think most should sit and think hard and long before everyone just hops on the standard bandwagon of cookiecutter setups. After all, that is what makes AO different.

2) I suspect there will be a complimentary full IP reset also at that time, since breed change might change someones setup quite a bit.

Breed change.. That is a small challenge.

[Zeephonz]

Breed change.. That is a small challenge.

I bet Macrosun had it all sorted whilst munching on a twinkie, sculling red bull, and telling errant children to get off his front lawn..... whilst coding on his laptop.

[haxi]

WTB Profession change alongside breed. Don't care if it is overpowered, so are plenty of other elements in this "lol wut first edition of docs k" AO rework.

[Githzy]

For the 3rd time - the much bigger , profession specific changes, huge gameplay changes, wont be granted one-time lets save them rerolling offer, so why small change like breed perk changes would?

My explaination to this...

Game and code wise, there is a huge difference between a 1 time breed change and a profession change. Consider the amount of gear a character can have which is profesion based (this also goes for breeds, but to a lesser extent). Or that you can't just 'get' a 220 character of another profession that you basicly don't know what to play and don't have any nano's for... nor gear.
I think that a profession change would have a much much bigger impact on the game and gameplay then you think of at this moment.

-Do- take a moment for this, now if you will..........

..... now you did so, next imagine all the recoding that has to been done.
I hope you understand where i'm comming from

Even a breed change will impact the game a lot, i don't know if it will be implemented, but i personally don't hope so. The time needed to think this properly out can be used more usefull. I'll accept it if i had to 'just suck up the changes'. FC allready showed over the years that they listen very good to their players. If we just give the proper input about the breed changes it will be heared and hopefully used.

And since it's of no use to say what FC should not do, i'll give my 2 creds on breed perks also (if you like it or not )
-I- don't think that breed perks should have such an impact on the gameplay sometimes less is more. Why not make the perks specials (no the skillup) the same for all, but let the effect boost something profession based? Making it a fundamental skill boost if your 'offspeccing'.
More diversity i'd think?!

[Metafly7]

Breed changes to perks arent that minor at all, in adition some of the "normal" perk changes just work alot better in combination with the breed perks. Like for instance the +nanodamage% from Nanobreed in combination with more +nanodamage% from the Mp line (yeh i know selfish im an Mp, but those are the ones i look for the most).

And what made me drag that stuff out was ur fierce/aggresive approach on a possible change that u have no idea about how its gonna affect the game, nor do u know who and what percentage of ppl is gonna use it. So if u dont know what is gonna be the effects of it, why not write something objective instead of a "semiflame"?

Log into test server once its there, test it see how it works, check other ppl using it, their reactions to it, and monitor the ammount of ppl who arent happy with it and who cry promising they will leave game, also monitor how many ppl come back, if ur so concerned about it. Then if u really find it troublesome u can have a good talk with a bughunter or even with means with solid arguments for it being a wrong move.

Its not easy, but it is simple. It just takes effort and my guess is that u dont wanna put that effort in.

[Prynxkjui]

The issue here would more or less be with the delivery of items. Every player would have a comm which Omni-Com could route text only messages to. However, the new mail system is more physical in nature, hence the terminals. If Omni-Trans wanted to delivery physical mail directly to the person it would be doable using a system similar to the Whom-Pahs. The problem is that while Omni-Trans would have a departure nodethe individual does not have a destination node to receive the mail. This is why the mail is routed to a Mail Terminal.

Yeah I'm well aware of that, but if Omni-Tek has developped a method to transfer souls from a dying body to another one, would it be impossible to come up with a way to deliver a physical box/crate/package? There already is the technology to enter the grid without a grid terminal for fixers, traders, doctors and agents. And everyone can use the fixergrid to leave the grid at spots that have no grid terminal. A more profane way: Have a little drone deliver the mail. Or drop it off a transport, satelite or warship in orbit.
What I'm saying is. With all the wondrous technology that Omni-Tek have at their disposal, it should be possible to get physical objects delivered to any spot on Rubi-Ka almost instantaneously.

We have Gunships and Sleeves, neener neener neener.

Is that really enough when one takes into consideration the whole backstory? I always imagine the relation Omni-Tek vs Clans to be something like USA+China+EU+Russia vs Vatican City just more extreme than that. But it doesn't reflect in any way in the game.