Dancer Archive

Message Edited by Esharra on 04-27-2005 01:18 PM

1. One skill point pool for all professions.

I like the set up as it is. EQ2 and WoW have the other setup where you can be both and I don't like it. I like the fact that in SWG you make choices. If you choose to be a 250 point crafter you can be more effective/efficient than other people (greater range of goods, merchant abilities, etc.). If you choose to be a 250 Entertainer you have more versatility than other people. And if you choose to be a 250 point combat character you can be more independent in combat than other people. You make choices, and when you change your mind you have the ability to change your profession. It is a choice.

One of the things attracted me about SWG is that I could be a real person in the game. If I wanted to do combat I could concentrate all my training on that and become really good at it. If I wanted to be a businesswook I could do that, and watch the war pass by. Being able to be equally good at everything would make the game loose a lot of realism and interest for me.

I admit it is painful to drop a profession you have had fun doing and enjoy, but it opens up that space for someone else to try it and be successful. As a Master Ranger/Master Rifleman/CH/Master Tailor/Master Artisan/Master Armorsmith I would have a distinct advantage over the person who did not like combat and just wanted to be the Master Tailor/Master Artisan/Master Armorsmith crafter.

Since combat characters would be able to be as good at crafting as crafting-only characters, there would be no space for a successful crafter-only playstyle. And I know a lot of people who just do not like combat.

#1 and I just steal Nalfi's reason why

/steal!!
/run!

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NalfeinQ wrote:

No doubt, 1. I don't really see it as right if every person gets to be both combat and non-combat. This takes away far too much from both the combat side of things and the non-combat side. Suddenly, everyone is a combat template. No crafters would ever require the need of, say, a ranger to gather hides/bones/meat, no crafters would need to buy loot from combat people, when they can get it themselves. This detroys a large portion of that market. As for entertainers, if everyone is allowed noncom SP, we lose a lot of our uniqueness. Pretty soon everyone grabs at least one ent prof (or two) in addition to a crafting prof, and all of a sudden, no need for ents anymore! Might as well just set our classes to 0 sp cost and be done with it. Crafters are also hurt by any sort of change like this, because the more crafters there are, the less of a market each one has to sell for. Essentially, this would be a 'Ok, let's screw over the game's economy now! Yay' sort of move. Definately 1.

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Seeing how the CU levels work I grudgingly vote for option #3.

I really liked how the pre-CU system forced you to make a choice for your character without requiring investment of all points in combat to be useful on the occasional hunt, or even to beat-up some less than friendly patrons. If in the future there will be a noticeable level and health bonus for non-combat professions I would happily return to #1.

Hmmm, I kind of think that this question, like the skill point reduction question before, is not really appropriate to ask without a proper context. We might all have a particular opinion based on the way the game is now or where we think it's going, but the problem is we don't really know where it's going. That answer might change 180 degrees if, a week from now, the devs state that they are going to start adding a new series of non-combat quests and missions with rewards similar to combat loot items. So let me answer your poll question in the following way.

As a solution to the problem, I would rather see the second character slot easier to obtain or even automatic for all players. This alone would solve most of the issues that lead to this problem in the first place.

If that idea is not open to discussion, then considering the way the game is now (including the CU), and assuming that it is going to continue in the same direction with heavy bias toward combat oriented content (and mostly mid- to high level combat content at that) and little else, then option 3 seems the best to me. Especially now with the CU I feel that noncombat players are at a disadvantage and are shut out of a lot of the content in the game. Option 3 could allow everyone the chance to take up a combat profession and participate in the bulk of the content, and also allow people to do the non-combat professions if they wish. I think there would still be choices made either way, and plenty of options so that no one character will be too self sufficient which I think might happen if we tried to subdivide the current professions into more pools. Of course it also depend on how they would implement such a system. Would you have 250 skill points for each pool? I think I would prefer to see something like 125 for each pool plus another 125 that can be used for either.

Finally, if we were to find out that there are some new and interesting and fun abilities, content, and rewards coming down the pipe in the near future for noncombat players then I could be more satisfied with the way it works now and perhaps choose option 1.

So that's my answer. I'm sorry for being difficult. I'm not sure how you're gonna tabulate that exactly, but maybe it might give you some new ideas to talk about.

I think I like things the way they are, by and large.

The problem, the reason people are talking about different pools of skill points and the like, is that so many of the non-combat profs have little or no utility. So if you give every player the option of doing some combat, then if their non-combat prof has no utility it is less of an issue.

But wait! We can already do that.

So what, will we have 250 pts in both pools? (I.e. combat and non-combat) Or 100 pts of non-combat, 150 of combat? How are they going to divvy it up? I can see tons of problems here.

The issue is not that non-combat characters can't do combat if they want (they can). It's that some of them don't want to do combat at all and just want to be able to play 3 full profs of non-combat flavour and still be viable (example: Master Dancer, Master Artisan, Master Architect). I don't see how splitting up the points into pools will help this situation. We can ALREADY split our skills up if we want. That is not the problem. The problem is that if you don't do some combat, it's hard to have a viable character. Oh you CAN do it, no question -- but it ain't easy. And to be blunt, almost everyone I know who has a completely non-combat toon, also has a 2nd account and a combat alt... and they usually support their non-combat toon with the combat alt. For instance, we have an armorsmith/artisan/merchant whose alt is a ranger/swordsman and gets hides, bone, etc for the armorsmith. I play a dancer/chef but my alt is a TKA/CH who goes out and gets meat, hide, and does all my artisan surveying for the non-combat character. We are not alone -- the entire guild is like this... The people who have one account are almost exclusively combatants, and the people who play multiple accounts usually do it because it is hard to play the game in totally non-combat mode. Again you can do it, but it ain't easy. So it seems to me the ultimate message in all this is that the non-combat profs are much harder to scrape the skill points to do. So, unless they make us have 500 skill pts -- 250 combat, 250 non-combat, and thus let everyone have 6 (!) professions (which I don't see as logical at all), cutting the skill pts in half and saying you can only use half of them for non-combat will not make the non-combat players' lives easier -- it'll make 'em harder.

C

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Sighryn wrote:

I =think= I vote for 1.

If I understand correctly, having a combat and non-combat pool would divide the 250 available points? I would rather chose how to divide those myself. And I am chosing some entertainer and some combat. There are non-coms who would not use combat at all, and of course combat types that wouldn't know what to do with non-combat points.

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No no, forget the 250 number for the moment and just think that you can build two totally separate templates that do totally different things.

3. Two skill point pools; one for combat professions and one for non-combat professions.