Bio Engineer Archive

Completely Cool Idea:

I would however suggest a waiting period of longer than 24 hours to prevent exploits. For example, Imperials who are not human must purchase faction items at higher prices due to the racial prejudice, so if you could switch to human, buy your stuff and change back all within 24 hours this could cause a problem for the Devs.

Other than that, this idea is completly awesome. It gives us a new purpose, it gives the image designers new fun things to play with, and it gives everyone an option to make the game even more customizeable and adjustable, without sacrificing all the time and effort that you put into building your characters. It also gives us reason to interact more often, and I know that the devs were hoping for a lot of player driven change and ideas, not to mention the working together of the classes for common goals.

Excellent Idea, lets at least hope it gets a look

Aginor

Field Scientist

Bloodfin

Something else sprung to mind to help make this a little more costly, but someone who gets gene-sequened also suffered 50% wounds to all the pools. Just a little something to help the entertainers and medics out there. As for the factional thing, I'd say it's a little bit of an iffy situation. On the one hand yes i can see people switching to human to buy things and then switching back to normal so perhaps a 24 hour period it's a little short. But then again that simply delays the exploit rather than removing it so why bother. If you want to really make sure that people don't exploit it how about this. For someone to switch species they need to go neutral thus they lose their rank and if they are over the maximum for a private then it's reduced to the maximum faction points for a new private officer. Thus the switching exploit is totally removed for everything but the really cheap stuff plus I'm sure folks wouldn't want to give up their rank status.

The fiction for that might be that the empire doesn't allow officers to genetically alter themselves and the rebellion generally frowns upon the situation as well since they follow the moral codes of the old republic. However that's a little hard to justify considering every city and outpost has a cloning facility where anyone can walk in a get themselves clone. Last time i checked in the EU and original trilogy all cloning technology was under strict imperial control laws. So if they can make one exception then they won't mind making another for the sake of conveniance.

I still think only allowing them to use that exploit once/twice every 2 months is a much better alternative, using the fiction of it being so hard on their bodies. That way you're not changing Star Wars fiction anymore than we have to plus people won't have to lose faction ranks.

I thinkthe penalties for species switching should be even more sever, perhaps a 95% wound across all three HAM bars. This would represent the significant trauma that I think would be associated with the process. Cloneing causes now about a 25% wounding, at an uninsured facility, and that is on a completely new organism, what we are talking about is doing this to the "living and breathing". Having ones genes torn apart and recombined should not be something easily and painlessly done.

Also I do think limiting it to perhaps once a month is a good idea. It will stop some of the potential exploit problems. If you can not get back to being your own "wookie" selffor a monthonce you switch to human and buy your Imperial faction perks, then you may be reluctant to do it. Especially if you have to re-migrate all your stats from baseline, oh and buy yourself a proper fitting wardrobe, and get your appearance altered. However it also allows the people that find they want to be Imperials and unfortunately started as something other than human the opportunity to better themselves in the eyes of the Empire.

I agree with the very heavy HAM wounds. 95% (or even more) is what I would expect to have happen. And since I'm a doctor/BE, that would even be much better for xp and business!

You do have a point that it would allow people to better themselves in the eyes of the Empire by changing to Human but I don't have any problem with that, even if I were Rebel (I'm neutral right now but Rebel-friendly).

I'd say the empire penalties should still apply (the most severe penalty from whatever race you have been).... I mean, the empire still knows you are a zabrak inside, right?

Rei'

I think this is a very interesting idea. :-) The way you presented it was also very helpful, and incorporating other classes is always a plus for everyone. Heck, how about we throw in the need for hides so scouts can have a part in it too? After all, you're going to need some extra skin to graft onto a few holes. ;-) I think this is a great solution for people who want to change species once the new ones come out, and even though there's a bit of a penalty, it's still not as bad as starting completely over. I have a friend wo more than anything wants to be a Chiss (sp?) when they get introduced, but he's already a novice BH, and I know he doesn't want to go through all that again. :-P A wonderful idea, I seriously hope the devs see it. Maybe it can be included in the letter to them? After all, fixing a problem before it even occurs should make them really happy. :-)

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Themble wrote:

I mean, the empire still knows you are a zabrak inside, right?

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Well, maybe they'd forget...

This wasn't an idea I proposed a while ago but some people rejected it because they felt it fell into the catagory of the image designer, I argued that it actually falls more fittingly into the catagory for bio-engineers but none the less I could see their point. As SWG expands to include new player species types I can see folks wanting to change to these new species without giving up all of the hard earned effort they spent on their current character. It's not unfair to say that you can change your appearence anyway in the game and that a species change is really not any different from a gameplay and balancing point of view. Also this idea will open up more business for imagine designers, architechts, master artisans and bio-engineers as well. Let me explain.

Lets say that Tosk Lightwalker is a transhodan who is sick of the alien penalties associated with being in the empire and wants to switch to being a human. However they have invested alot of time building their character into a master bounty hunter and doesn't like the idea of having to delete this character or play on another server away from their friends in order to be happy with being in the Empire. So in comes this new ability for the bio-engineer to change someone's species with the help of several of the other professions.

Step 1. First of all after the bio-engineer and Tosk have arranged to go through with this the bio-engineer needs to own a gene-sequencer device. This looks exactly the same as the clone template machines seen in the cloning facilities where people store a clone to be activated if they die.

Step 2. The gene-sequencer is a very complex peice of machinery which requires master artisan components and can only be put together by a architects who has tech furniture 4. The bio-engineer also needs to synthesize a human dna template for use in the sequencer.

Step 3. Tosk the transhodan goes into the house/lab of the bio-engineer. And steps into the gene-sequencer. The Bio-engineer then has to load the human dna template into the sequencer. Depending on the skill of the bio-engineer the process will either trasnform the transhodan into the default appearence of the human or they'll fail and have to try again.

Step 4. Assuming things work the transhodan now looks like the default human. In order to get allowing how they want they now have to visit an image designer to get their features changed. Tosk has also reverted to the default stats of a human as well. The change is 100% and they cannot go through another species switch for 24 hours (dueto physical stresses on the body)

The market potential

On the whole you're looking at expanded business not only for the under used image designer but also for master artisans. Architects also benefit from the furniture line now having a higher perpose than decoration. Bio-engineers gets something other than tissues or clones to play around with. The gene-squencers would also require maintaince and alot of power each time they are used to change someone's species thus increasing the flow of money to people who sell the power sources.

The money sink

The developers are always saying that we have too much money and they'd like to introduce new money sinks. Well the gene-sequencer is the ideal solution to having money flowing out into the virtual abyss. The successrate for changing someone's species would be based on the quality of the dna tample made, the bio-engineer themselves plus the quality of the gene-sequencer as well. Thus there's alot which factors into the successrates meaning there's alot of risk for failures. Since the sequencer would need power, maintaince plus the template you're looking at something which can result in money flowing out with nothing in return. Something the developers are working very hard to introduce with the inclusion of the casino games, the gene-sequencer is just the same as the roulette wheel or someone trying to slice a locked container which then fails. The loss of the power, the wasted upkeep from maintaince and the dna template would be enough to slowly drain some of the money from the economy. As long as the process is suitable expensive.

The conclusion

Sooner or later the new player species are going to come in. Players are going to see something new they want to try out without the risk of deleting their character which they worked so hard to build. In the long run the majority of players will complain enough to make SOE allow for species changes and they know it's a reasonable request since they already allow us to drop skills and alter what our character is on a whim. Species changes which also add a market AND a money sink are an ideal solution to a very simple request.

Thank you for you time.

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Nilumbus wrote:

I think this is a very good idea.

However i feel that the waiting period should definitely be longer then 24 hours. 1 month sounds good, that way you have to be completely certain about changing your race because you won't be able to change back, or to another species, for a while.

When you change species you should be able to (or have to) change your name, because not all species have both first and last names (i.e. wookiees don't have last names). And to prevent any exploit with factions you should lose any and all faction standings. You are essentially becoming a new person with a new identity.

The major wounds when successful and death when not is a good idea. You are, as others stated, completely altering a living body. Plus it gives medics a role in the alteration of race.

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You know, now that I think about it, I agree that you should lose all faction points and ranks since you are becoming a totally different person. However, I disagree with the name. You don't want high-level people being able to screw people out of things or whatever and then be able to erase their identity. That would detract from the game in my opinion.

If you could change someone's race, you should probably be able to change their gender as well. Probably wouldn't be nearly as much demand for that, but it could be an option.

Maybe the BE could change their gender but then the player would need an Image Designer to tweak the look.

Of course when said species changes I did also assume people would understand that gender would be an option as well. The situation with name changing is a little tougher and is a very good point, I still think that the names should carry over and they can have an exception to the naming rules in this occasion. Considering how a name is just a name after all there isn't really an issue but you don't want people to change their identity in order to exploit something such as selling someone a deed for a guild hall which actually isn't and then running off to change their name nad identity forever. That's a bit of an extreme example but its the kind of loophole you need to consider. I was going to think that perhaps they'd include previous aliases in your examine details but the issue is also with altering the playerdatabase which uses your first name for email and tells ect... on the whole the names should stay fixed even if they aren't normally allowed for your new species.

Very well thought out =)

Another thing that would keep people from exploiting this, is the fact that this whole proccess will probably cost a ton, especially if you want to get the best results.