Alternative Advancement (AA) is obviously necessary for the success of the game. My argument is that they should be account-wide like they are in Diablo or ESO. The reason for this is that it will promote people playing the character they want, they will create new toons and explore new areas. If they are not account-wide people will always feel like they have to play their main toon to keep up. If they are not account-wide there will be little reason for an advanced character to start a new toon, why start over with a druid when you have 1,000 AA points on your main bard? This way people will play what they want with who they want and not feel like they are losing out on advancement on their other characters. This will keep the game healthy and keep people making alts.
The argument I have seen against it just don't hold value, such as "why should one character advance another character." Then you shouldn't be able to mail stuff to alts, like coin weight reduction bags, or play with the same people because how would they even know each other and why would this toon be mailing a random different race toon stuff??? Established people have advantages, like friends or established characters for money and loot, and it should be for AA's too. No one would make an Alt in ESO or Diablo if you had to regrind those AA points, it will be the same for Pantheon.
I'm hoping things like the ability points you earn and aa points you earn are rolled over/reset to your progeny character when you restart. That would be a solution to your concern. It would also make more sense that it carries over to a progeny than to simply make them account wide.
philo said:I'm hoping things like the ability points you earn and aa points you earn are rolled over/reset to your progeny character when you restart. That would be a solution to your concern. It would also make more sense that it carries over to a progeny than to simply make them account wide.
We dont know details yet and I dont want to start up the same old discussion that has been had 20 times but...im under the impression that we will likely restart our progeny character with perks at the expense of your higher lvl character.
If you have played games with similar systems you understand that they are, in essence, the same character and that calling them a progeny of the original character is just a lore decision.
We don't seem to think the progeny system will work in the same way...
VR’s implementation of "AA" is the mastery system which does not appear to be something that is account wide, which I'm fine with.
Without knowing the exact calculations of how it’s earned, I imagine it is easier at the beginning of the game, and I do not think they would want people doing easy/cheese quest at low levels to earn mastery points that someone get applied to higher level characters also on the account.
And believe it or not, not everyone min/maxes. People who are playing multiple characters obviously accept that their characters will have less time to develop when they are playing different characters.
I am in favor of keeping AA/Mastery to be individual per character.
Ranarius said:MauvaisOeil said:Every character is a separate advancement, that's how it goes as it's a "character game" and not an "account game".
That is what I would have assumed too. Other than the possible future progeny system, whatever that might entail.
If it's a character and not an accounting game then your early access and access to founders guild and all the cosmetic things should be for 1 character only. You know, because nothing makes sense to transfer to account-wide.... ORRRRRR, we can let things be account-wide because the make the game better and we can let AA points be account-wide because it promotes alts, and playing something other than your main.
If it's a character and not an accounting game then your early access and access to founders guild and all the cosmetic things should be for 1 character only. You know, because nothing makes sense to transfer to account-wide.... ORRRRRR, we can let things be account-wide because the make the game better and we can let AA points be account-wide because it promotes alts, and playing something other than your main.
That is definitely your opinion, and that is fine. My opinion is the opposite. I would prefer your work on one character to be rewarded on that character.
And as Philo said, these "thank yous" for our donation are not meant to be anything that would help your character develop.
philo said:I was under the impression there would be a separate AA system that is not the same as the ability point system? Has that been stated otherwise?
Maybe, I'm under the impression that the mastery system is their version of AA. You earn points through normal experience and additional points through quest. We've only been shown using points to improve spells, but what would stop them from having those points used to improve other things?
I don't know if they would want seperate point based improvement system for spells and then another one for everything else. Why not combine them?
bigdogchris said:philo said:I was under the impression there would be a separate AA system that is not the same as the ability point system? Has that been stated otherwise?
Maybe, I'm under the impression that the mastery system is their version of AA. You earn points through normal experience and additional points through quest. We've only been shown using points to improve spells, but what would stop them from having those points used to improve other things?
I don't know if they would want seperate point based improvement system for spells and then another one for everything else. Why not combine them?
It is similar to an AA system in the way the points are distributed with some differences but I don't think they ever said it would take the place of AAs.
Specifically the way AAs allowed a player to toggle their experience gains into a separate AA pool in order to extend the usefulness of earning experience. It sounds like the ability points will be earned automatically through leveling or through drops/quests.
They didn't mention anything about a separate exp pool which makes me think there will still be AAs separately that utilize exp gains beyond leveling.
Why not just level up all your alts as you progress one as well? And give them all the same money and gear earned?
Why not, not have alts, but just let you change the class and race of your main character, then no progress is 'lost' whatsoever?
Hmmmm... No.
No I don't think any kind of character progress should be transferable, sorry.
As for transferring gear/money, of course you can do that. You can give stuff to strangers, why not to your own characters? Somehow transferring progress though? Nah.
I very much prefer each character to be entirely separate. You can transfer coin or some items between characters but, as disposalist says, you can do the same with strangers.
Some games have account-wide titles. While less significant, because they do not affect gameplay, this rubs me the wrong way too. A level one should not be "Dorotea, slayer of Demons and ruler of Empires". She should be "Dorotea - maybe able to kill a bunny if the bunny is having a bad hare day".
dorotea said:Some games have account-wide titles. While less significant, because they do not affect gameplay, this rubs me the wrong way too. A level one should not be "Dorotea, slayer of Demons and ruler of Empires". She should be "Dorotea - maybe able to kill a bunny if the bunny is having a bad hare day".
Totally agree, and LoL at the example :)
Brooks said:Alternative Advancement (AA) is obviously necessary for the success of the game.
[citation needed]
AAs started as an afterthought. EQ needed a way to keep players engaged after having reached max level so they introduced a system that would take far longer to max out than it took to get from level 1 to 50. Although I loved AAs they were clearly an add-on and not part of the game's original design.
I suggest it would be better to build that long curve in from the start as part of normal leveling and skill building. Design the system such that it is virtually impossible to max out all the skills you care about and even throw in skill decay due to disuse (not offline time but rather not using the skill much). Make advancement dynamic rather than the same linear path for every paladin or shaman. And make it impossible to be maxed out in everything but with the ability to fluidly (through slow, hard work) to shift your primary skills around. Give us a reason to keep playing at max level that is built in from the beginning and has no hard ratcheting effect, i.e. nothing is permanent.
As Akilae says the concept of AAs was as a time sink for bored level-caps. But Pantheon need not have a system modeled that closely to AAs (there are many character personalization systems to use as models) and it most certainly need not have a system that starts at level cap.
A strong argument can be made that in a game with very slow leveling it would be better to enhance the leveling process by allowing characters to be personalized starting as low as level 1 (at character creation you pick one of two specialties for example. This lets you be slightly better at some things and slightly worse at others).
Note the phrase character personalization which I and some others have used to emphasize that the old AA system is just one example and not necessarily the best. Not account personalization. One reason to encourage players to have multiple characters is as a time sink. MMOs live and die by time sinks. An accountwide personalization system would rather sink the time sink benefit.
Much of this discussion has already been answered by the deve team. Just in case you've missed it:
Characters will level up.
Each character will learn new abilities/spells as they level up (every player of a specific class will have access to the same abilities/spells).
Some abilities/spells will be found by adventuring or questing
There will be opportunities to "upgrade" abilties and spells using points that you can earn. Every character will have access to the same upgrades. Not every player will choose the same upgrades in the same order but every player will eventually be able to upgrade everything (if they put in enough time).
If I've said anything that is falsley represented please feel free to correct me. But that is the way I currently understand the systems they have shown us.
philo said:bigdogchris said:philo said:I was under the impression there would be a separate AA system that is not the same as the ability point system? Has that been stated otherwise?
Maybe, I'm under the impression that the mastery system is their version of AA. You earn points through normal experience and additional points through quest. We've only been shown using points to improve spells, but what would stop them from having those points used to improve other things?
I don't know if they would want seperate point based improvement system for spells and then another one for everything else. Why not combine them?
It is similar to an AA system in the way the points are distributed with some differences but I don't think they ever said it would take the place of AAs.
Specifically the way AAs allowed a player to toggle their experience gains into a separate AA pool in order to extend the usefulness of earning experience. It sounds like the ability points will be earned automatically through leveling or through drops/quests.
They didn't mention anything about a separate exp pool which makes me think there will still be AAs separately that utilize exp gains beyond leveling.
So the information I know is from the last few streams where they talked about it. Bazgrim put up a video talking about this and has a lot of the clips where Joppa talks about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaZqEwMj6mE
The mastery experience bar seems a lot like the AA bar from EQ. Also, reminder that it said mastery points can be spent on passive abilities too, which again is very much like AA.
I think that AAs are going to be needed, but I don't think that I would make them account-wide. I think I would like to see them open up after you had maxed everything skill-wise for your class.
I also want to say that I like the mastery system, but if I had to compare it to AAs it would only encompass the class-specific AAs. It is missing the general character advancement in terms of regen increases, carry weight reductions, base resistance increases... etc. It also is lacking the profession line of alternate advancement which helps improve crafting status and efficiency. It's too early to tell if these other forms of advancement will be in the game in some way or form, but there's definitely a lot of the essence of AA's missing based just on what we have seen.