Big news really: an old joke (or old dream) comes true.
When the new Professions Balance is implemented, everyone willl be able to change breed ONCE and you'll also be able to change the genders of your characters as well.
Of course, Devs are working hard to prevent an all-Atrox world from being our future!
Edit: here is now the official statement from Means.
Even in my flame retardant teletubby costume I felt the heat from the conversations related to the release of the "first version" of the breed perks last week. I know you guys might find this surprising...but this is a "good" thing. The community is involved, passionate and commited to helping us get this right and I have every confidence that we will get these changes to where they need to go...there was NO chance that those documents were ever going to be implemented in their first-version state...good feedback from ALL our experts is needed. I'm glad I can count on you guys.
That being said a "key" piece of information has been missing with respect the breed perks. Breed perks are currently not "trivial" buffs of little value...it really matters what breed you choose in terms of building your character. The team and I believe that this is part of what makes AO fun...the choice and determination to try out alternate setups to try and push the boundaries of what is possible. Reducing the breed specific perks to irrelevancy would be removing fun from pretty much everyone in the game...nobody wants that. So, the ONLY fair option if we are going to make even SMALL adjustments to breed related actions is to allow everyone to make that important decision again should they so desire.
When these changes are eventually ironed out and they go live EVERYONE will have the opportunity to change breed once (and the sex of your character if you like) for free. This is the only fair way to handle this issue. It is also important to note that when this area is done it should be a very tough decision as we hope to make all breeds a viable choice...and removing abilities from breeds is not the route we intend to take on the way to evening the playfield.
the only question would be can you do so WITHOUT removing all of your gear? I just put all alphas on my NM crat. I'd love to change to trox or opi perhaps but not if it means losing out on that. But then again could this be an avenue to sploit. roll your profs ideal breed to equip all high end stuff then change breed.
Elrojo wrote:the only question would be can you do so WITHOUT removing all of your gear? I just put all alphas on my NM crat. I'd love to change to trox or opi perhaps but not if it means losing out on that.
anything that makes rulz sad must be a good thing.. j/k.. yes it would be a bad thing to make it that easy. I would perhaps change Elrojo to Trox. Since he is in crap gear anyhow.
Making a breed change possible is a huge programming work. It is comparable to the whole implementation of org markets or the implementation of the mail system. So, things are going to be quite sophisticated.
First, in the plans, no character should be stripped if you change your breed. For example, switching from Trox to Nanomage shouldn't end up in a stripped nanomage character. So, some items will become "switchable": if you have a QL300 item for Trox, it will be possible to switch or trade it for a (relatively) similar nanomage version.
Now, how many items will be automatically given to you this way? No one knows at the moment. But the idea is that no character must become unplayable after breed chnage. (For example, no symbiants and no armor.)
My initial post was just out of curiosity but it seems to have been accurate. Even though I would benefit by having a trox crat in full alphas, I dont think it would be fair to those who rolled a trox to begin with. Perhaps if they make other breeds more viable for certain profs then the need or desire to change wouldn't be as strong.
Not looking fwd to AO full of Trox docs in full alphas.
Name change will allow peoples to change their identity.. and in a game like this where your reputation is VERY important, that would just be silly. For example you could ninjaloot your Burden of Competence, do a name change (possibly breed/sex change too), and pretend nothing ever happened. Noone would know how to find you.
I definatly agree with Lupus on that name change, although it would be nice from here on out to be allowed to put spaces between your name, fairly maybe on new rolled charaters. But thats just a dream of mine, if it doesnt happen no harn done. And yes I also was wondering if you could change breed without taking out all your syms and gear. I wonder if someone was to roll a solitus enforcer to have a better balance to equip new items then reroll trox for the better hp, sounds like it could be exploited easy. But what do I know, Im just an idiot paying to be in this Fun Com operation.
Name change will allow peoples to change their identity.. and in a game like this where your reputation is VERY important, that would just be silly. For example you could ninjaloot your Burden of Competence, do a name change (possibly breed/sex change too), and pretend nothing ever happened. Noone would know how to find you.
It would kill the game tbh.
You are just being silly, it would in no way kill this game...it's dying on it's own! Don't over react so much. And hmm...people ninja loot stuff and still play all the time...rep means alot and that's why changing your name isn't the thing to do if you are in trouble, then you have a new name, nobody has heard of...and then prolly wont' team you. What about us that dont' want to GRIND yet another toon? Why shouldn't we be allowed, AoC has it, WoW has it, has it hurt WoW? Nope, so pfft to you, i'll be bumping a name change in AO until the day the close down the forums!
Name changing would also be bot-trackable, since bots use UID, not name (name is a string related to the UID). Meaning you could develop a "stupid list" of people's names and keep track of the toon even if it's name changed. No one has written it yet, but that's mostly because there hasn't been a real big need.
Not to mention, at least way in the past, FC would actually change your name for you if you got such a bad rep that the playerbase was harrassing you just because you were "you".
Additionally, if FC were to implement a name-change paid service like Mud wants, they could easily put an "AKA" field in your target information.
