Image Designer Archive
Thread: Image Designer Alternative Advancement Skills
Alternative Advancement Skills
Massively multi-player online role-playing game (MMORPG); need to give players things to do in their game. This is accomplished in two ways, using progressive advancement and content. These two items have to be present to keep an "end game" in their world. Without the end game, people get board of the game, and leave.
Star Wars Galaxies is finally on the road to adding enjoyable content its world however even with the content the other side of the formula is unbalanced. SWG lacks in progressive advancement. After you have full filled your characters template you have nothing left to advance on. In many cases, creating that template and getting all the skills takes a few days for the hard-core, a few weeks for the average player. Thus we are left with a new goal for the developers to work on. While content is the most important feature of any game, progressive advancement needs to be present.
This will eventually need to be addressed by the developers, it may be 3-6 months down the road, but it will need to get addressed by developers. One of Sony’s other MMORPG’s added progressive advancement in the terms of Alternative Advancement points. This game was called Ever Quest. To say the least, the system worked, you delegated however much exp you wanted into a new "skill point" system after you obtained a certain level.
This can work in Star Wars Galaxies also. Alternative Advancement might be the most streamline thing to add to the game, rather then elite-elite professions. I propose a system to the developers and players of Star Wars Galaxies. As a player, I have mastered many professions and played out many more. I personally think that an AA system will work in SWG.
How would a AA system work out in SWG? Well that’s some of the questions we want to kink out. The system I thought of is to make it so that AA points only are accessible to players who have mastered a profession. Each profession will have there own set of AA skills. Along with a universal set of AA Skills that everybody has. Even a Racial set of AA points that you can earn. Perhaps even a Faction AA points.
AA skills primarily are the same skills that you can get from skill tapes. Dodge, Melee Defense, Rifle Speed, Weapon experimentation, Armor Repair, creature level ect. Along with new skills that have never before been in the game. There should be profession specific AA skills that can only be gained in certain profession
Purchasing AA skills require experience, like pistol experience, combat experience, weapon crafting experience. Each AA point should require different types of experience logically. Like rifle speed should not require pistol experience, and weapon experimentation should require combat exp.
AA points should be expensive, EXP wise, starting out double of the top tier skill of that profession. Example: The first Master Pistoleer AA point would cost 900,000 pistol exp. As you gain more AA points the cost should increase. How much should it increase? I’m thinking 10-20% each skill.
Learning a AA skill grants additional skill mods to your character template. Putting 1 AA skill points into say: Pistoleer Speed. Will give you +1 to your Pistol Speed Skill. Putting additional AA points into Pistoleer Speed will add to that your character template.
Should there be a cap on the amount of AA points a player can earn? Say 50 per master profession? Or should it cost 1 skill point out of your 250 skill points for 1 AA point?
With the help of the community lets work out some cool ideals for each profession on what AA points they can get, what racial ones we can come up with one, the universal ones too. Also we should work out the few questions throughout the post.
What Specific AA Skills should ID's have?
What new AA skills can you think of?
How much should they cost?
Perhaps new skin colors and tattoos/hairstyles gained with Image Desiging AA points??
Should there be a cap on the amount of AA points a player can earn? Or should they cost skill points to learn?
Should the additional AA skills not count towards the max increase skill mods? (IE: +25 Pistol Speed is the most you can add with clothing attachments and then another +25 with the AA points for +50!, or should it be max at 25)
pretty decent idea i think if the do institute an AA system it should use another set of SP so that we wont have to drop things
i think bounty hunters only get 35 extra norm sp after they master so they will get slighted
also i think it should be 50(or whatever) skillpoints for each elite mastered proffession
you can spend the AA to get lets say scout bonuses as a bh (master scout/masrksmen/bh) but 150points will be a little much
also i think over and above skills they should have special ability AAs such as healthshot 3 or 4(forget if they have 3) for a pistoleer or mindless image design(or lowered cost) for IDs
good job tho and 5star)
-Biana
Thank you for sharing, I'd like to hear what ID'ers think
Kwee wrote:
Very interesting idea
Its an interesting idea, but I don't see how this is different from the way the system is now. It seems to me that all this would mean is that once you reach master, you have more grinding to do in order to not be a "substandard" master. I think it would be great in professions that attract a lot of achiever types of people, but I am guessing that image design does not attract a lot of these people (except for hologrinders). There is really no sense of achievement in becoming a master image designer (at least not for me) since I didn't do most of the clicking, and it doesn't take very long. The sense of achievement comes from actually doing a makeover on someone and seeing their reaction when you do a really good job! It really has nothing to do with grinding up extra skills.
well i found a great sense of achievment when i become master because i didnt macro and didnt have food or spice that early in the game(cept gubaki at the very end)
and i would love to be able to become a better id
-Biana
mh307 wrote:
well i found a great sense of achievment when i become master because i didnt macro and didnt have food or spice that early in the game(cept gubaki at the very end)
and i would love to be able to become a better id
-Biana
Thats true if you didn't grind. Considering that we don't have huge lines of people waiting to be image designed anymore, that is an amazing achievement and I am kind of jealous that I didn't have the patience to do that! I'm not even sure if it would be possible to become a master ID in less than a year without grinding anymore (and yet you can still master ID in 17 minutes if you are a power grinder 
) since at least for me, if I do a dozen ID sessions in a day, that is really busy! Maybe I am not good at promoting myself, though. Anyway, I want to be a better ID too and I want more content, but I would rather add the content to the system we have now instead of basically giving it to the people who are willing to either wait a really long time or grind to get the new content. I might agree with extra advancement if there was a way of rewarding people who are commited to actually doing image design as their profession and it was done so that people would still come to the newer image designers.
I didn't know about macroing the first time, but I did "grind" ID. No muon, no buffs, nada. Took about 3 weeks, but I had a captive audience (the fiance gets to click and click until I'm happy!).
The second time I got some brandy and had at it, with macros. Was about 3 days (well not constantly, because it took a while to make the money for some brandy...).
Aynianu wrote:
same as i said in the dance thread, i like the idea depending on how it would be implemented.
I didnt macro ID either btw (still dont know how to, nor really feel a need to learn)