Starhammer's page

No, I'm not asking what character everyone wants to make.

I would like to see an in-depth survey be an optional part of character generation (which continues to be editable after generation). Anybody ever taken a personality profile survey during a job application, where they look for traits to potentially disqualify you? Something like that, along with other "personal information" from the character's point of view. Things like names of family members, friends, and even rivals or enemies. Things the character likes and dislikes, or even fears or is strongly supportive of (like religious views or patriotism). Basically a vast data reservoir that can be drawn on by queued variables in adventure generation, whether controlled by the game or for player generated content.

This way, instead of seeing the same "So-and-so hasn't been heard from, go fedex them and then kill 10 rats" we could have more of our adventure content personalized in ways specific to our character, or even to the extent of our guilds and friends. BuddyFromNextVillage might have a nemesis that wants to hurt him by ambushing me while I'm protecting a caravan, or my guildmaster's daughter may be kidnapped, and everybody in the guild gets a notification that it happened and we have to go find her, possibly each getting different clues that will mean more if we work together.

The idea requires a more sophisticated level of mission generation coding than most contemporary MMORPGs provide, but can provide a reward of offering a vastly more individualized play experience. And of course, being optional it's not like anyone would be required to fill out anything more than a name for their character (which we do anyway). The system can also keep track of adventures we've taken part in, adding salient details to our "journal" and occasionally making use of that information for providing new adventure hooks as well.

Theoretically, with a sufficiently integrated character database system, the vast majority of random adventure hooks could involve other active player characters, giving players who don't otherwise play together reasons to search one another out to solve their own quests or learn some piece of lore that wasn't covered in a storyline that caught their attention. Seems like a great way to promote the social aspects of being a "multiplayer" game other than just making the important encounters too difficult to solo.

I got started in my MMO hobby back in the UO days, but the game that has kept my attention for the greatest duration has been City of Heroes. I don't like how it does everything, and I can think of a lot of ways I would prefer it to be vastly different... but the Control Interface is one area of CoH that satisfies me in functionality where almost every other game I try (except to some extent SWG) leaves me severely disappointed to the point of becoming frustrated and quitting.

First off, I'm not talking about where I move windows on the GUI, or being able to give something a Hello Kitty layout like some other games. That's nice, and I like being able to put my windows where I want them of course, but what I'm talking about is what most people view as their macro/keybind system. Unlike what some people think, this is not a method by which you can turn your character into a bot and have it play while you go to work (ok, you probably could with the use of external products, and I know there was limited capability for this using in game macro code back in SWG), but rather the capability of being able to tell the game how it should react to what input you choose to give it.

I don't type very well. I have big fingers, never learned to type, and have to look at the keys to do so with any accuracy. I'm also painfully uncomfortable just being hunched over long enough to type forum posts. I'm almost 40, and having used computers more or less the same way for the past decade, I'm unlikely to go take a typing class and suddenly be just like everyone else who grew up on them. None of this qualifies me as having an interface disability like some people do, but it gives me some limited understanding of their plight, and makes me view a highly customizable control interface as an extremely important aspect of any game that I may be interested in playing for more than 10-20 hours total.

For my CoH gaming experience, I use an old XBOX S-pad controller (not 360), some nearly impossible to find drivers, and a program called Joy2Mouse2 that allows me to redefine joystick buttons as keyboard or mouse activity as needed. Add this to the tremendous flexibility offered by the City of Heroes keybind system (including the capability to have a button press load a new file and rebind itself), and I can play every aspect of the game aside from chatting in game and some seldom-used utility abilities (like costume changes or fast-travel teleport powers) without ever touching my mouse or keyboard.

This means that City of Heroes adapts to me and my playstyle, unlike most other games that expect me to adapt to a playstyle favored by the lowest common denominator. This is what I'd like to see from a lot more games in the future. This is what I'd like to see from Pathfinder Online. Furthermore, it has the added benefit of opening up accessibility to a wide audience of people with physical disabilities that prevent them from being capable of adapting to traditional control interfaces. That's gotta be worth something.