Out with upgrades, in with initial custom characters?

[BenMiff]

Okay then.

Part of where this idea is coming from is that people who want specific stat arrays at the moment are killing off hordes of characters somewhere unimportant until they get the stats they want.

Adding an "allocate stats randomly" button seems like it would be popular, so you can just hit that to get a random loadout rather than allocating the points yourself. (I wouldn't use it myself, but it would likely get heavy use from those who would prefer to retain random stat arrays.) That way, both camps are happy.

I'd like a random name generator as well.

Having point templates for each Age saved might be decent.

Attachment to a character (for me at least) comes from what they do and their history, not their base mechanics, so this wouldn't ruin any attachment.

Permadeath is fairly weak in this game already, though being able to always get your "perfect" build will weaken it a little more; the difficulty is avoiding a grind period after dying to get back to where you were. The main thing of permadeath in AVWW is (to me, at least) losing the character's history rather than their specific stats; it's more of an intangible loss that strictly mechanical, though increasing that is a bunch of other suggestions floating around on Mantis.

[IIE16 Yoshi]

I kinda like the idea, but what about permadeath? Would I have to sit and rebuild my character each time I derped and died? I can see that leading to ragequits on my part, because all of my deaths have been derps on my part, I've yet to be killed by a random stray attack that's hit me for like, trololo~ damage and killed me.

[darkchair]

I enjoy the fun of having a random character. As long as that capacity stays in some way I'm cool with this.

What to replace upgrade stones with is a good point.

As others have noted, with custom characters the "perma-death" concept starts losing meaning.


For special abilities I think it would be neat if the different time periods had different bonuses relating to enchants and spells.
Skelebots get a higher bonus to melee attacks, pre-industrial gets a bonus to long range attacks, ice-age gets a higher bonus on damage prevention enchants,...

[jonasan]

This will completely negate the 'suicide for reroll' effect - which is undoubtedly a good thing. And the upgrade stone process is essentially something that happens at the beginning of every new characters life so there seems like no reason to not integrate this part of the game into character selection - 10 upgrades from the word go. My initial reaction was we would be loosing one of the ways in which the game encourages you to specialise and play different builds by limiting your character selection - but with a little thought its pretty clear this system might do that even better... unlocking and learning new spells, then upon death creating new character builds to fit the new opportunities and play styles you open up as you adventure. The addition of dex to nerf the jump enchants and make different characters even more distinct sounds like a great idea. I also very much agree with the idea to make characters from different time periods more unique with special attributes for each time period.

But... inline with what Martyn v. B. (and others now) said it seems to me that we are going to end up with a situation where many players pick one style of character (one time period, one stats build) and then 'reroll / rebuild' that character every time upon death. Sure there will be room for adjusting your build each time but i think many people will refine their character creation choices pretty quickly and end up with something very similar every single time. So in effect we might end up with something more like one character with infinite lives who has to be recreated (grind?!) every time upon death. Don't know if that really has the feel you are going for with this game and from what i can see will kind of  remove the significance of permadeath completely (aside from the pesky ghost - who really isn't so pesky right now).

Also, for me, this will not create greater attachment to my character - attachment to my build yes, attachment  to my chosen time period yes, but to my individual character no. If i can have the same stats, graphic, picture etc.. every time after death then i think my hero with infinite lives is going to feel all the more expendable. If increased attachment to your player character and actively avoiding death as a result is what your going for with this then i think this is maybe the wrong approach.

Martyn talks about special abilities to enhance you attatchement to your character...

I'm very pro special abilities, but would favor them giving you things that are totally unavailable otherwise. The brief flight idea on Mantis is cool. Also perhaps a toggleable mana drain/health regeneration? It would be OP as a spell but it could be fair in the hands of some of the really low-mana types.

I agree with this... i think it makes sense to combine the character creation change with something to make each character you play more unique and special to you.

So, you select your preferred time period (with associated attributes and stat builds), and then choose a character from a range of options - and each of those options having unique characteristics dealt out buy the RNG - unique 'innate enchants'. these could be uber and special enough to get you to really want to keep that character alive, and without knowing when the RNG might throw that innate enchant your way again - you would get really attached, really want to keep that guy alive. Also, if you created almost the same stats each time then each new innate enchant would add freshness to your regular build make it seem more like a string of different heroes.

i posted something about this idea (and some other suggestions) a while back on the 'Design goal: getting players to specialise' thread

http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10460.msg102093.html#msg102093

for me this kind of unique attribute for every character would put a bit of excitement into the character selection screen/process (rather than becoming a fomality of just clicking 'load saved stats') and would enhance my character attachment immensely. I don't think people would feel the need to reroll for the right enchant - not with all the other customisation avaliable.

It might counter act the 'hero with infinite lives' effect from the character creation changes (if you all think that would exist?).

What do you all think??

(oh i'm agreed on the random name button as well!!)

[keith.lamothe]

Sounds like a positive step overall.

One thing I think would really help overall is if we could find some way of making the pool of available characters be the characters in the settlement (resorting to wanderers only when there's less than X in the settlement).  Obviously it'd have to be a lot easier to get more characters in the settlement (with or without professions, dunno), but just having an endless supply of "wanderers" seems to inevitably cheapen permadeath (which can be made expensive in terms of something like upgrade stones, but then that just feels like grind).

If each type of character, or some of them, had unique special abilities to set them apart; like draconites having an inherent self-heal ability in exchange for _really_ poor max-mana or whatever, then it could be a positive step for playstyle variety and permadeath consequences.  Kinda like the different classes in Desktop Dungeons, just to pull a random example out of the air.  Those characters feel really different.

But making all that work in a balanced and non-incredibly-annoying fashion, particularly in MP... yea, not so easy   And it's just the sort of thing which appeals to me, and may have nothing to do with that which appeals to the people who actually paid to play the game

(edit: semi-ninja'd, it seems)

[TechSY730]

Hmm, how about innate base stats for every time period and innate "enchants" for each time period, there could also be on top of that a randomly generated innate enchant.
Not sure how to stop the "suicide to reroll" that could give (maybe a reroll on the create screen for the innate enchant?), but it would give each individual character something unique, in addition to what each time period could uniquely offer.
Maybe even have the pool of allowed random enchant types the RNG can pull from be dependent on the time period of the character it will be for.

Basically jonasan's idea, but with an extra clarification that this new enchant would be on top of a possible enchant provided by the time period of the character.

[Penumbra]

Every time a player is present for an NPC rescue, could give that player one rescue "point." If there is a rescue point left when death occurs, it could give a slightly better character. Each NPC rescue could actually be more than one NPC, but only one of which has any useful profession (the others could be "weapon experts" or something else equally useless in the post-cataclysm world )

These NPCs would represent which slightly higher powered time zones players could draw from. But, they wouldn't be running around in the town, they would be in a "house" or something, representing the source for new player characters. A player would always have a choice of letting the Illari get them a new one of any unlocked time period, but maybe that process is dangerous and injures the new character, or whatever, but they get 2(?) fewer points to assign.

[Bluddy]

I think it might be worthwhile to limit the character selection to 2 choices rather than the current 5/6. That way, you don't have the ability to always go for your preferred race. I also like the random special abilities idea.

But there's something else I want to throw in here: the current system of upgrade stones works pretty well IMO. If I keep losing characters, I need to go on some kind of hunt for new upgrades. It makes me want to conserve my upgrade stones/points/whatever. And there's some penalty to death. I think the mistake here was making the upgrade stones so cheap at the store -- they should be a lot more expensive, so that there's still an incentive to find stashes. And stashes should have a lot more of them.

Maybe you want to give 2/3 free upgrades upon customization, and the rest can only be applied from the settlement's upgrade stone stash. That balances out the need to customize every character with the upgrade system that, I want to reiterate, worked quite well until the store made the stones dirt cheap.

[EtherealOne]

As I suggest on Mantis, I really like the idea of drawing some settlement characters.

This could then lead to a couple of further options:
1) Hardcore mode where running out of settlement survivors means that continent dies and you start on a new one.
2) If you are going to add a unique ability to each of the classes, make it so that Settlement characters are the only characters with these abilities. That way, if you run out you can still continue onwards using a wanderer but you will be disadvantaged. Hopefully enough that it should encourage you to take care with the characters you rescue.

I'm in two minds about the whole randomness of a character. I feel that having some randomness in the character creation definitely enhances the experience but at the same time too much can just feel unfair. The problem is that each random character has to feel equally viable which is incredibly difficult to balance. Although, hopefully, the innate ability might be able to provide an opportunity here.

[Bluddy]

Every time a player is present for an NPC rescue, could give that player one rescue "point." If there is a rescue point left when death occurs, it could give a slightly better character. Each NPC rescue could actually be more than one NPC, but only one of which has any useful profession (the others could be "weapon experts" or something else equally useless in the post-cataclysm world )

These NPCs would represent which slightly higher powered time zones players could draw from. But, they wouldn't be running around in the town, they would be in a "house" or something, representing the source for new player characters. A player would always have a choice of letting the Illari get them a new one of any unlocked time period, but maybe that process is dangerous and injures the new character, or whatever, but they get 2(?) fewer points to assign.

Penumbra that's a great idea! You rescue several NPCs at a time (they are all lifted by the magic glowing thingie). If you don't guard them well, they die one by one on the way. So you only lose the mission if they all die.

I would modify your idea to say that the professional NPCs cannot be glyphbearers. This way you can't have people stealing important NPCs in an MP game. The non-professionals will be running around where you can inhabit their bodies.

If you run out of (non-profession) NPCs in the settlement, you'd warp into the body of a wanderer on the continent. You don't have the selection of settlement spells -- just a random weaker spell, and you have to make your way back to the settlement.

[Jerebaldo1]

I'm all for the idea of assigning points and getting rid of upgrade stones; I enjoy the enchant mechanic a whole lot more for the purpose of scavenged stat boosting. If upgrade stones are removed I'd like to see minibosses dropping three regular enchant containers instead.

Also, I fully support the idea of dexterity, but as a more granularly implemented mechanic. Such that:

Points in dexterity influence how high double and triple jumps are, where 0 points is barely any lift at all (especially for the third jump) and 4 gives more than the current lift. The third jump will always provide less lift than the second, and the second providing less lift than the first. Points in dexterity will give disproportionate benefits to the height of the third jump at levels 3 and 4 (or 8-10 if you decide to go with a 10pt scale).


edited for clarity

[Chex Warrior]

Also, I fully support the idea of dexterity, but as a more granularly implemented mechanic. Such that:

Points in dexterity influence how high double and triple jumps are, where 0 points is barely any lift at all (especially for the third jump) and 10 gives more than the current lift. The third jump will always provide less lift than the second, and the second providing less lift than the first. Points in dexterity will give disproportionate benefits to the height of the third jump at levels 3 and 4.

This sounds like a good idea to me, besides that I'm fine with customized characters as long as I have the option to randomize the stats.

[x4000]

A few notes:

1. This clearly needs more time in the oven.  I'm not going to make any changes on this until next week at the earliest, so please feel free to keep discussing, this is good stuff.

2. I'm now leaning a bit more against the "lots of customization" thing.  It's true, this would just encourage players to specialize less, and to try and recreate the same character repeatedly.  Which, while attachment to ones' character is good, the former is actually detrimental to gameplay so that's not so hot.

3. I really prefer Jerebaldo1's suggestion on dexterity and how that would work.  Regardless of how the rest of this goes, I think that makes a lot of sense.

4. Penalty for death is something that can't really be nailed down until how the whole character-creation stuff works settles down.  It's like building a house, you have to have the foundation before the roof.  Permadeath consequences are of lesser importance to me than the other stuff here, so those get decided on last.  Same thing with boss drops.  As we start including more and more spellscrolls, it may be that bosses simply drop spellscrolls.

5. Customizing NPCs that you find is definitely flat-out-no.  That really makes it feel completely wrong in my opinion: this is somebody you met, not somebody you designed.

6. That said, having a stable of characters in your settlement that are all useful and that you can switch between sounds really good to me.  My thought is that there would be some sort of "retirement" scroll that you could get.  Using that in a settlement would abandon your character but leave them alive and in the settlement, with a profession of "Retired Glyphbearer."  So you couldn't use this to game the system and get NPCs of other professions.  But you could use it to retire one character and create/choose another one, then later swap between the two of them.

7. Clearly there's a desire for more customization than we now have, and also the fact that you have to collect upgrade stones at all is an annoying grind at first and then pointless.  So that needs to be solved either way.  But there also seems to be a strong desire for some randomization and for the game to make you have to play outside your comfort zone, which I also am frankly a little relieved to see.

8. Perhaps, therefore, the past idea of just having a "re-roll characters" button that you can click is a better thing.  And then it gives you something like 3 choices always, completely at random.  And you get to choose a name for them, and allocate some extra stat points to them rather than having the upgrade stone business (so, still a new character selection screen, but not build-from-scratch).

9. It strikes me that if people can't play as their favorite time period, there's going to be some problems because they may have their enchants and spell unlocks built around something that is then inaccessible.  IE, if they are geared to a high-mana strategy and cannot get anyone with high enough mana that could be enormous trouble as they are then basically stuck.

Clear as mud, eh?

[Dizzard]

Related to the above: what do folks think about then removing the ability to rename characters and NPCs?  Basically, no nicknames.  An NPC has a name that you can't change, and once your character is "born" they are stuck with whatever you called them until they die.  My thought is that if you have more flexibility in the first place, the need for the renaming stuff goes away.

I don't like this and I really don't see any need to remove it. I often rename my npcs.

It would really get under my skin if I saw an npc with a name I didn't like and not be able to change it. (or worse couldn't pronounce) Really hope this doesn't happen. 

For example, I actually have this thing where I rename every single Skelebot I recruit. They usually have a number in the first part of their name before the -, so I replace it with a letter. Like ZEN-5483 or RET-4543. So it's like the first part is a brand/model name and the second part is a product code.

Overall I do like the suggestions made though, although perhaps you could have an option for custom point allocations that you can save and then apply to every character you play. (so you don't need to reallocate points every single time if you have a point allocation setup that works for you)

[x4000]

Related to the above: what do folks think about then removing the ability to rename characters and NPCs?  Basically, no nicknames.  An NPC has a name that you can't change, and once your character is "born" they are stuck with whatever you called them until they die.  My thought is that if you have more flexibility in the first place, the need for the renaming stuff goes away.

I don't like this and I really don't see any need to remove it. I often rename my npcs.

It would bother me like crazy if I saw an npc with a name I didn't like. (or worse couldn't pronounce) Really hope this doesn't happen. 

Fair enough.  It won't happen.


I'm leaning increasingly away from doing changes that are too drastic here.  There are some things that need to change, certainly -- but we need to find the least-destructive way to change things that don't impact what people are already enjoying doing.  And which doesn't cause people who don't read the forums to be incredibly confused and/or frustrated the next time they start up the game.