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