Profession Ranks
We are considering simplifying this process down more for people. It seems to be overly complicated for newbies (and normal players) coming into the game. After reading through the profession help files, I can see why.
Some things we are considering.
- Moving to 3 ranks instead of 5.
- Giving novices all three skills instead of just two.
- Allow novices to forget a skillset to get the lessons back (if they learn the wrong skillset for example)
- Removing the guild rank requirements.
- Removing the time limit to apprentice people.
- Removing the skill rank limits for novices.
- Profession ranks are determined by the number of lessons you have put into the skillsets.
- Rank will determine how many lessons you get back should you forget the profession. (100%, 90%, or 50%)
- Cerise would be set to only help newbies.
And probably a few other things I am forgetting. Thoughts, ideas, feedback?
4
Comments
2. This would be a bad idea. Give them only the 2 you give them now until either A) they outlevel newbie areas (past level 30) or
3. This is a good idea.
4. Withholding comment until other questions are answered.
5. This would be a good thing.
6. I like this idea generally, it would allow for much more sensible skill suggestions I think.
7. If you do it based on total lessons, am I going to be screwed if I only pick up knight for smithing because I'm a merchant at heart and I only trans smtihhing? What sort of cutoffs are you looking at for class stages.
8. What sort of breakdowns are you looking at for how soon you're locked in? I feel like how punishing it is to people who aren't hugely invested but realize they made a mistake is going to be the make or break point here.
9. I'd be mostly okay with that.
The biggest problem with the skills in Imperian is that a mistake with them is so hugely punishing, especially to new people. A person who learns to tri-trans in guild skills has learned lessons equivalent to ~$300 worth of credits. If they later decide that they don't really like that class in combat or whatnot, changing profession is asking them to eat a 50% loss. This is a crippling blow to new players, because so many classes are reliant on all their skills, but by the time a player learns enough about his class to understand it, he's already committed to it.
Ideally, I think there should be a time period as a profession before you drop from 90% loss down to 50% loss. 36 hours online. 7 RL days. Something that lets people get their feet wet in a profession without risking ~$150 on it.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Defiler
Torment - This has your primary bashing attacking in it.
Treant - This is almost strictly pvp.
Shadowbinding - This is your utility skillset.
It would help cut down on buyers regret when you blindly buy because a skillset sounds cool and ends up not helping you at all.
People might game it too much, but I'd still like to see something to make switching circles less of an investment.
While I can understand that Avasyu and such think that circle-switching RP is lame and awful and blah blah blah, it's still a fairly large problem in Imperian. Back in Achaea, every side had a monk guild, a mage guild, a serpent guild, and so forth. Aside from the Devo/Necro/Occie classes, you could get bounced from Ashtan and the Ashura and move to Shallam and the Sentaards without any problems aside from RP ones, and this gave you a certain degree of freedom in how you acted and RPed.
Imperian's a whole different story, though. If I get bounced from the AM circle, I am almost certainly looking at a pretty huge lesson loss, and this means that there's a certain metagame knowledge behind all your RP interactions. This was a huge issue for me during the Godwar. Interacting with Visyra was completely and totally awesome, and every time I interacted with her, I was risking ~$150 worth of lessons, because there's a pretty good chance I'd have gotten tossed out of the magick circle for it. After it was over, people were asking about why Kinsarmar wasn't punishing us, why we were refusing to take an RP stance that we might somehow be deserving of some kind of punishment for our role in killing off all the gods, and that sort of stuff. Maybe even put us on trial, whatever.
And the answer is that, as interesting as that stuff could be, I'm very, very, very hesitant to risk the losses that those lines of RP could incur, and so I based my choices around "what protects my investment the best?" and not "what is the most awesome?"
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
So, yes, while you're considering from a metagame perspective of "what protects my investment best," your character should probably be also thinking, "What risks am I taking in doing this?"
The whole issue I have with that is that with some characters, citizenship and organizations, as well as professions, as seen as so meta and so disposable flavour-of-the-week that there is next to no roleplay and no justifications or backgrounds behind their actions. It honestly frustrates me when orgs like Kinsarmar go, "Well, these guys just raided us two days ago, let's just make them pay a fine and let them in!"
If we're going to argue RP, then we'll also have to argue that really, hopping circles all the time for skills and/or because the circle you're in is boring as of the moment isn't very good for the RP environment, either. I think the discouragement of circle-switching is because the admins want you to make the circle you're in awesome, rather than bandwagoning to the next cool thing, which is what a lot of circle-switching folk tend to do.
tl;dr: Awesome = risky, circle-hopping should carry risks, make things awesome with the hand you're dealt.
I'm not ok with derp-tron-veteran picking up trans ability, using it, and returning it for 98% because he knows how the system works, x 10.
Everyone who's gotten trans skills and artifacts got it somehow, whether through hard work or spending cash. There is a risk still, and will always be. Some dude in EVE Online just lost a ship worth 11k US money, with nothing he could do about it.
Here, you choose what you do, and for the most part, can control if you lose those lessons or not. Sorry, but "I spent cash on it" is not a valid argument as to why you get a free ride on anything.
I do like the option of gaining the profession in another way. Like I have RG at specialist because I'm above GR 5. So even if I left the Vindicators I still have the profession to learn or not as I please. It is one of the few benefits of Guild rank besides, haha, I'm higher then you and being able to favour.
I'd really like to know more details on how this is going to work out. It would definitely be nice if it were more simplified, as it's hard to explain to newbies right now.
I'm not saying that you should be exempt from the rules. You should be held accountable for your actions - be that being unable to return to your circle, being denied entry to a new one, etc. These are player-based consequences. I am asking for things to be reviewed at a mechanical level. The rules - and your roleplay - should not make you beholden to your circle simply because some people believe that changing circles isn't 'kosher'. That is asking some people to settle for a stale gameplay experience, holding their investment hostage to make them accept it.
@Ahkan : A way to ensure it isn't abusable is to look at how the system currently operates - when you change Knight classes, you still lose 50% of your lessons, you just retain half the rank. Quitting the class directly after still costs you quite a bit in lessons (moreso than just quitting knight and going to a different class entirely). I would basically ask for that conversion in a slightly intelligent lineup, such as Trailblazing -> Pioneering -> Some Demonic kit, etc.
EDIT: Furthermore, a single person should not obligated to solve long-standing issues that they as a single player don't have direct control of - disagreement with laws when they are a massive minority, being in a politically unsound position in terms of what you think your org should be doing, etc. The onus of quality of experience in a circle should fall on the group, not JUST the individual. If the group does not wish to comply, then 'making things awesome with the hand you are dealt' becomes significantly more difficult and significantly more dangerous due to some people being capable of holding your investment hostage by way of robbing you of a safe place to go - in which case, to gain it, you must change circles or hope the other half of your circle is more kind.
All of these skills are equally valuable from a lesson/credit standpoint. There's no justification to prioritize cost of refund on a skill by skill basis. The only issue to be addressed here is that newbies may learn the wrong skill because it sounds cool. You can address that by a grace period of no-lesson lost forgetting/class switching and updating admin-side help files/discussions that tell newbies "If you want to bash, learn Brutality."