I'm in the boat of 'I like being able to combine my favorite race with my favorite class, despite what lore may dictate is normal for said race'. But I do totally understand that anyone freely being able to break lore whenever they please can be immersion breaking for many.
So, a middle ground, a unique benefit to the progeny system, and a lore reason that a given race will be a class outside of their normal selection all bundled into one. Although, it may be better to rename it the 'protege' system, instead, in this particular case.
When a character reaches max level or whenever they would normally be able to progeny the character may retire and upon creating the new character that character and that character only would have access to their mentor's class, regardless of race. So it doesn't unlock the class for anyone and everyone you create from then on, only that one character and only that one time. If you want to make another character with that same class that normally wouldn't be able to you would have to progeny again.
Additionally, to add to the socialization aspect of the game, it may be interesting to be able to cross-progeny with other players so that two can get the benefit at once. So, say you have a druid but want to make a warrior, and you have a friend who is a warrior but wants to make a druid. Through a process similar to a GM officiated marriage, you can both send in a ticket to be able to retire one another's characters.
This gives people a lore reason for an otherwise impossible class/race combination, it limits accessibility to said race/class combination so that it isn't in everyone's face and all over the place, and, in the case of the 'cross-progeny', can further enhance the social and community driven aspects of the game. And because players would need to send in a support ticket identifying themselves and their intentions it would make anyone 'selling' their character's progeny for real world money that much easier to smack down.
Counterfleche said: Personally, I don't really see the lore reason for unlocking by class. If my Human Paladin retires, how would that explain my new Dark Myr Paladin?
Counterfleche said:The most lore-consistent way, in my opinion, is to unlock the race of your retired character. My Dark Myr Cleric could gain faction with and retire in Thronefast, this allowing his child to train as a Paladin and have his starting city be Thronefast.
Counterfleche said:The "marriage" idea is interesting, though it should be automated and not require a support ticket. Butfor lore consistency, it would make more sense as a partnership or training pact than a marriage, because there aren't mixed race characters in game. Also, this prevents the issue of making the pairing require opposite sex characters because the progeny aren't supposed to be the offspring of the two characters. And a partnership could allow for more than two characters to join or, allowing for more flexibility and not leaving anyone out if it's a group of friends.
This is a great idea that I had not thought of before. My initial thought on progeny was to allow one or two abilities, maybe gated to either utilities or combat, that can be passed down to the offspring. So I can have a wizard that learned to rope climb from his father, or a monk who has the ability to use one distinct fireball spell he learned from his mom.
The only issue with this is that class generally is the driver when creating alts, not race. Not sure if I've met anyone who maxed out an Erudite cleric then thought they'd like to see what it would be like to be a high elf cleric. But, on the other hand, that would be a great way to make the progeny system neutral enough to not be meta. But then, as Joppa put it, would it be worth it to have in game as a feature to players? Not that I wouldn't love to see a Skar druid skipping with some bunnies through Faerthale...
Benonai said:This is a great idea that I had not thought of before. My initial thought on progeny was to allow one or two abilities, maybe gated to either utilities or combat, that can be passed down to the offspring. So I can have a wizard that learned to rope climb from his father, or a monk who has the ability to use one distinct fireball spell he learned from his mom.
The only issue with this is that class generally is the driver when creating alts, not race. Not sure if I've met anyone who maxed out an Erudite cleric then thought they'd like to see what it would be like to be a high elf cleric. But, on the other hand, that would be a great way to make the progeny system neutral enough to not be meta. But then, as Joppa put it, would it be worth it to have in game as a feature to players? Not that I wouldn't love to see a Skar druid skipping with some bunnies through Faerthale...
Sounds like a system I'd not particularly like as presented.
If I could do some epic questing on my first character that involves but is not limited to maxing reputation with different player races to allow future characters to have expanded race/class options, but not have that at all tied to whatever race/class my character currently is? I am all about it.
I wouldn't mind seeing VR's take on the old EQ2 "Betrayal" system. For those unfamiliar, certain classes were 'locked' to the two main cities - "good" classes/races (e.g. high elf paladin) belonged to Qeynos and "evil" races/classes to Freeport (e.g. dark elf shadow knight). Because the original class system was broken into 2 tiers where you started as a base class (warrior) then got to choose your specific class at lvl 10 or 15 (warrior-> paladin), you had the option to create whatever race you wanted and then do a quest to "betray" your home city and switch sides. Since they aren't using a tiered class system it would have to be something different, like allowing you to do a quest at a lower level in one of the cities that house the class you want, to effectively "re-roll" that character back to lvl 1 with the desired class but I doubt that's something we would be able to see at launch.
The only bad thing (from my point of view) to those types of systems isn't so much the lore breaking, as much that it just personally drove me nuts in EQ2 to see the 8 million variations of Drizzt Do'Urden dark elf rangers running around Qeynos.