Renaming characters and character selection tweaks?

[nanostrike]

Two quick suggestions me and a few others on some servers have come up with since we've started playing multiplayer:

1) Let players rename their characters.  They already do this anyway, but they have to burn 2 Glyph Transfer Scrolls to do so, which is silly.  Players love to customize and this would be great to have.  Heck, create a new item called a "Scroll of Renaming" or something, even!

2) I know the random names are nice and all, but seeing a random name dying and having to ask "Who was that?" is kinda annoying.  I suggest that in the message board, it adds the player's name in parenthesis after their character name.  So instead of "Bob Johnson has died", it would show "Bob Johnson (Nanostrike) has died."  This would also help pinpoint which players might need help because they die consistently.

3) A lot of players are hating the random character selections randomness.  It's leading to a lot of "None of these characters are good, so I'll pick one and kill it in the Lava Flats until I get the one I want" stuff.  This is really immersion breaking.  But I can understand where they come from.  When I want to play a Pre-Industrial character and there isn't one (But there are a billion Skelebots...), I'm temped to do this too.

A simple "Re-roll" button above the character selection that would generate a new set of random characters would solve this.  It would still be "Random", but you'd get to try until you get generally the character you'd want.  Alternatively, let us choose which era, THEN generate a random selection from that era.  Either one of those would work for me.  Just sick of seeing 1 Pre-Industrial, 1 Bronze Age, then 4 Ice Age and 5 Skelebots...


4) Some of the character unlocks seem bugged.  We rescued a Lizardman from the Lava Flats, but the lizard-men NEVER appear as selectable characters at respawn.  Also, it never seems to spawn a Male character from the Industrial Revolution era.


5) The Male Skelebots, in addition to being really tall to the point of being near-useless in a lot of areas, seem to have some animation issues.  When standing still, they seem to be leaning backwards.  They look like they're about to fall over.  Their casting animation seems tilted as well.  Not sure if this was intentional, but it looks really awkward, especially because the female ones don't have these issues.





I've shifted from Single Player to Multiplayer, so I'll start giving more multiplayer feedback from here on out.  So far, awesome work on the changes, though!

[Dizzard]

1) Let players rename their characters.  They already do this anyway, but they have to burn 2 Glyph Transfer Scrolls to do so, which is silly.  Players love to customize and this would be great to have.  Heck, create a new item called a "Scroll of Renaming" or something, even!

You can already rename your settlers by going to the settler page in the planning tab and right clicking on them.

[Toll]

I assume he meant the character you're playing, since he mentioned being able to do so by using two transfer scrolls (i.e. transferring to a random settler, renaming his character, then transferring back).

[Wanderer]

I assume he meant the character you're playing, since he mentioned being able to do so by using two transfer scrolls (i.e. transferring to a random settler, renaming his character, then transferring back).

I should note that most wide-open servers will have this 'off' by default to protect the NPCs other players have gathered towards being able to use guardian scrolls and the like.  Rename self would be handy.

[nanostrike]

I assume he meant the character you're playing, since he mentioned being able to do so by using two transfer scrolls (i.e. transferring to a random settler, renaming his character, then transferring back).

I should note that most wide-open servers will have this 'off' by default to protect the NPCs other players have gathered towards being able to use guardian scrolls and the like.  Rename self would be handy.

Yeah, most big servers disable glyph transfer scrolls so that people don't steal fully upgraded characters...or walk their only Aquamancer into the Lava Flats...

[nanostrike]

Also, sorry for the double post, but is anyone else getting the Lizard Men from the Lava Flats to appear in character selection?

On three different worlds I've saved them, but they're still not showing up.

[Penumbra]

Also, sorry for the double post, but is anyone else getting the Lizard Men from the Lava Flats to appear in character selection?

On three different worlds I've saved them, but they're still not showing up.

Nope, I usually just get mostly robots, and never Draconites. But it's a known issue, as there are already a couple Mantis reports on it now.

[nanostrike]

Also, sorry for the double post, but is anyone else getting the Lizard Men from the Lava Flats to appear in character selection?

On three different worlds I've saved them, but they're still not showing up.

Nope, I usually just get mostly robots, and never Draconites. But it's a known issue, as there are already a couple Mantis reports on it now.

Did they fix it in the patch?

Also, are there any Male Industrial Revolution characters?  I only see female ones, despite their being males for every other time period and it's really weird.


EDIT: Poked around in the character image files.  There don't appear to be any male Industrial Revolution ones.  Very weird.  A design oversight, perhaps?

[zebramatt]

Not an oversight - Chris literally just hasn't gotten round to it yet!

[nanostrike]

I hate having to do rescue missions for every Draconian I want to play as, still.  And I wish the Draconians weren't so freaking slow.  They're almost unusable.  I honestly think their speed needs looked at.

The slowness is so bad that they are almost completely immobile in Wind Storms and can barely make jumps that even Heat-Suited characters easily can.

[Penumbra]

The slowness is so bad that they are almost completely immobile in Wind Storms and can barely make jumps that even Heat-Suited characters easily can.

You really need to kit them out with speed and jump enchants. Doing triple jumps in the Lava Flats is awesome, however!

[Tallgeese]

I think the character reroll has been suggested before. After seeing 75% of my character selection possibilities being Skelebots, I have to agree.

A Renaming Scroll can be made a store item, why not?

As for the multiplayer player name not being shown... I think you should make a Mantis entry for that. I would call that one an important addition.

[Misery]

Two quick suggestions me and a few others on some servers have come up with since we've started playing multiplayer:

1) Let players rename their characters.  They already do this anyway, but they have to burn 2 Glyph Transfer Scrolls to do so, which is silly.  Players love to customize and this would be great to have.  Heck, create a new item called a "Scroll of Renaming" or something, even!

2) I know the random names are nice and all, but seeing a random name dying and having to ask "Who was that?" is kinda annoying.  I suggest that in the message board, it adds the player's name in parenthesis after their character name.  So instead of "Bob Johnson has died", it would show "Bob Johnson (Nanostrike) has died."  This would also help pinpoint which players might need help because they die consistently.

3) A lot of players are hating the random character selections randomness.  It's leading to a lot of "None of these characters are good, so I'll pick one and kill it in the Lava Flats until I get the one I want" stuff.  This is really immersion breaking.  But I can understand where they come from.  When I want to play a Pre-Industrial character and there isn't one (But there are a billion Skelebots...), I'm temped to do this too.

A simple "Re-roll" button above the character selection that would generate a new set of random characters would solve this.  It would still be "Random", but you'd get to try until you get generally the character you'd want.  Alternatively, let us choose which era, THEN generate a random selection from that era.  Either one of those would work for me.  Just sick of seeing 1 Pre-Industrial, 1 Bronze Age, then 4 Ice Age and 5 Skelebots...


4) Some of the character unlocks seem bugged.  We rescued a Lizardman from the Lava Flats, but the lizard-men NEVER appear as selectable characters at respawn.  Also, it never seems to spawn a Male character from the Industrial Revolution era.


5) The Male Skelebots, in addition to being really tall to the point of being near-useless in a lot of areas, seem to have some animation issues.  When standing still, they seem to be leaning backwards.  They look like they're about to fall over.  Their casting animation seems tilted as well.  Not sure if this was intentional, but it looks really awkward, especially because the female ones don't have these issues.





I've shifted from Single Player to Multiplayer, so I'll start giving more multiplayer feedback from here on out.  So far, awesome work on the changes, though!

I can agree with the whole character select screen. 

In particular, the reroll idea is a good one.... alot of older RPGs did this, and did so quite successfully.... and if they didn't want to take too much randomness out of this process, they could always say, ok, you view 6 characters at a time like usual, but you can re-roll exactly three times.  Or something like that.


And the skelebot thing needs to be fixed.  I think MOST players see that, once they have those guys.   Character dies, 5 of the new possibilities are skelebots.

It's not that the bots arent useful..... because they actually are;  in the right situation, they can be perfect..... it's just that the game seems wierdly obsessed with them.   I keep thinking it's probably some sort of bug, actually.