Ark's thread of tough love and abuse: character turnover
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 4:52 pm
I had intended to do one of these and Zydana kind of reminded me to do so in another topic.
there are a couple things I wanted to touch on in this thread, things like character progression and its systems, character turnover (death or starting a new character), and anything else related I can think up.
I'm starting with the raw mechanics of character progression:
1) first I would say that Final Havens character curve on character progression is off, and mentioned this in a PM last year. its not an even curve of character strength starting high at the beginning and lowering over time before finally evening out over time. but rather very low at first (0) spiking the second event (1-4) then proceeding to lower (5-20) before finally evening out (21-) I think in terms of both players starting a new character and something as key as new player retention this needs to be looked at, because starting a character at 0 is garbage and not fun. new players should be able to get at least full advanced path and 3rd level discipline, as this is were some of the most interesting skills in the game reside.
2) next is the "perk" system in relation to skill points. why was a completely detached and secondary skill system created (the perks) when they could have simply been introduced into the skills we have in game and the amount of skill points we gain increased? early on it was decided there would be almost no progression past 20 so you got no skill points. . .then people started leveling and wanted something for being a high level. the game said "fine" and instead of altering the pre existing skill points it added a completely separate progression system. . .wow. I would have loved to see a more in depth and interesting path / discipline / floating skill system that all worked together providing all sorts of varied choices and combinations within a single system that you use from day one to year 20.
3) character turnover: death does seem to be avoided and frowned upon at all costs. simply playing the same character for long periods of time makes it hard to let go, add in all the forms of progression such as character level, in game RP, Investment system, etc. it makes it really hard to say "okay I'm done" and walk away. there are many facets to this, some people don't care, some want a good story, some have grown really attached to the character, some are in an IG position they cannot really walk away from, some don't want to loose the mechanics, etc. some of this can be fixed, others cannot. but I will go in depth on some reasons in my point of view.
-starting from 0 SUCKS (it really does)
-PC driven NPC acknowledged social status within the world (yeah convince us to give that up)
-level progression (you have 11 soak from levels and perks alone at level 80, extra skills, and specialties that make you badass, go start at 0)
-IG location (find a reason your character would be in this horrible little town when an alliance of established, safe, well off, comfortable, secure, diverse, well RP, well written cities and nations is LITERALLY right over there.)
-Itemization (you have a dozen magic items, 100's of various resources, tons of gold, potions to keep you stocked for years, have a giant military, and more money flowing in from the investment system. . .now let all that go and start at 0)
-ETC.
see the problem there?
Final Haven does NOTHING to encourage any sort of willing character turnover, and many of its soft and hard mechanics are completely against it, in fact its nearly avoided at all cost and serves as this games biggest fear of death.
there are a couple things I wanted to touch on in this thread, things like character progression and its systems, character turnover (death or starting a new character), and anything else related I can think up.
I'm starting with the raw mechanics of character progression:
1) first I would say that Final Havens character curve on character progression is off, and mentioned this in a PM last year. its not an even curve of character strength starting high at the beginning and lowering over time before finally evening out over time. but rather very low at first (0) spiking the second event (1-4) then proceeding to lower (5-20) before finally evening out (21-) I think in terms of both players starting a new character and something as key as new player retention this needs to be looked at, because starting a character at 0 is garbage and not fun. new players should be able to get at least full advanced path and 3rd level discipline, as this is were some of the most interesting skills in the game reside.
2) next is the "perk" system in relation to skill points. why was a completely detached and secondary skill system created (the perks) when they could have simply been introduced into the skills we have in game and the amount of skill points we gain increased? early on it was decided there would be almost no progression past 20 so you got no skill points. . .then people started leveling and wanted something for being a high level. the game said "fine" and instead of altering the pre existing skill points it added a completely separate progression system. . .wow. I would have loved to see a more in depth and interesting path / discipline / floating skill system that all worked together providing all sorts of varied choices and combinations within a single system that you use from day one to year 20.
3) character turnover: death does seem to be avoided and frowned upon at all costs. simply playing the same character for long periods of time makes it hard to let go, add in all the forms of progression such as character level, in game RP, Investment system, etc. it makes it really hard to say "okay I'm done" and walk away. there are many facets to this, some people don't care, some want a good story, some have grown really attached to the character, some are in an IG position they cannot really walk away from, some don't want to loose the mechanics, etc. some of this can be fixed, others cannot. but I will go in depth on some reasons in my point of view.
-starting from 0 SUCKS (it really does)
-PC driven NPC acknowledged social status within the world (yeah convince us to give that up)
-level progression (you have 11 soak from levels and perks alone at level 80, extra skills, and specialties that make you badass, go start at 0)
-IG location (find a reason your character would be in this horrible little town when an alliance of established, safe, well off, comfortable, secure, diverse, well RP, well written cities and nations is LITERALLY right over there.)
-Itemization (you have a dozen magic items, 100's of various resources, tons of gold, potions to keep you stocked for years, have a giant military, and more money flowing in from the investment system. . .now let all that go and start at 0)
-ETC.
see the problem there?
Final Haven does NOTHING to encourage any sort of willing character turnover, and many of its soft and hard mechanics are completely against it, in fact its nearly avoided at all cost and serves as this games biggest fear of death.