Eve has actually dropped that now. Simple reason was it was based on race so everyone (well every min maxer at least) ended up going for the same race. Nowadays race is just a flavour you select and dictates what your starter ship is. The only skill you get dependent on race is frigate lvl 2 I think. A skill that can be trained in about 30 minutes :)
Goblin Squad Member
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What I think the OP means is that during creation EVE asked you questions like what particular type of faction you were (Siebiestor Minmatar are more technically oriented while Brutor are pew pew etc.) or what school you went to (military academy vs. business school). Stats had been tied to race and then separated, not skills.
Your answers led to about 56k skill points of basic skills so when you started the game you could do more than float in space in your pod while you selected and trained your first skill. I picked pew pew so I started with a basic core skill Gunnery at level 5; along with a smattering of other supportive skills at level 1-3. Industrial and economic people started with Industry or Trading 5 or whatever, and everyone started out with [Your Faction] Frigate 2 so you can fly a spaceship.
It seems like PFO should do something analogous so we're not bored standing in a spot in the starter towns for the first half hour before we can DO anything. A little bit of weapon and armor skills plus basic tracking to find the first PvE crypts for combat people or the starting crafting plus market trading feats for those people, with the first level of HP and saving throws for everyone.
@Proxima
Yes and Eve no longer does this....all characters regardless of race and bloodline start out with exactly the same skills and stats
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Goblin Squad Member
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Zen is correct, Eve no longer does this.
At one time you could start anywhere from 56k and go up to 800k depending on what you picked.
Now its a flat across the board skill and attribute set. Only thing that matters is the race you chose which changed the gun and ship skill.
I am curious whether PFO will have learning skills like Eve did. I was glad Eve did away with these, you were basically stuck for the first few months of your characters life training these. You could of course skip it but trained skills much much slower then everyone else.
The problem with learning skills as I understand it was too many people were doing nothing for the first three months of Eve except sitting in station waiting for learning skills to max out
I don't think PFO should start with any special skills right off the bat. ESPECIALLY not tracking. Tracking should be something that not everyone can do and even fewer people can do it well. In my opinion it should have an ability requirement of at least 12 before you can even get started (not sure which ability score). Finding a dungeon at this point should be complete luck. Getting to the dungeon's entrance as a newbie should require a lot of luck and effort and probably a decent group of newbies. Stepping foot inside a dungeon should strike geniune fear into the heart of a brand new character. Finishing a dungeon should be beyond the wildest dreams of a group of brand new characters.
That being said, there should are things that everyone can do regardless of whether they have skill in it or not. Everyone should be able to run around and to pick up the lowest level of rocks and herbs and sticks off the ground. Everyone should be able to wield thier fists and trade with other people and buy things on the market and have the starting small number of hit points. Everyone should be equipped with tattered burlap pants and a tattered burlap shirt. Maybe the ability to equip all simple weapons and swing them, but not with any skill whatsoever. Putting on a piece of armor, if you even manage to get one somehow, should be possible but you shouldn't really expect much from it.
Everything should be an upgrade from that point.
The very first people in the game will be running around the first couple hours picking up sticks and rocks to try to make an axes and picks so that they can pick up ore and wood so that they can make knives and clubs so that they can get some leather to make... etc. A character who is less than an hour old should have to group with two other newbies in order to take down a goblin whelp. Yeah, it'll be slow to start. And that's okay with me.
As a new player once everyone has already made a handful of knives and clubs you'll probably want to go collect your own rocks and sticks and grass so that you can either craft something useful yourself once you learn the skill or be able to trade your stuff for one.
All of the basic skills should be available relatively quickly, like the ability to swing a sword and maybe even hit something with it once in a great while. Even if you're the type of person who quickly gets bored picking up rocks and sticks, you'll be able to log in on day two and have the experience available to be able to wear some armor and swing a weapon. I believe they said somewhere that it would be something like three weeks till you'd be able to be a fully contributing member of a dungeon party.
You will not be sitting on your hands during those three weeks when you aren't yet a very good character. You'll be earning money, collecting equipment, building reputation and maybe most importantly: making friends.
If anyone wants to NOT play the game for three months while they're paying the subscription just so that they can log in at the end of that three months as a completely broke and totally clueless but semi-competent character then that's just fine with me... I know that Goblinworks will put those funds to good use, (as well as the money they saved by you not playing the game).
I write walls of text as much for my own entertainment as anything else.
I would fully expect a starter character to have a couple of low grade gathering skills, suitable for node harvesting low end resources, a couple of generic fighting skills which are not necessarily part of any archetype such as "stab in the guts". Maybe a low level crafting skill as well. This should give the character enough to get started and initially at low level it won't take long to acquire basic skills.
For example in eve autocannon level 1 takes about 9 minutes to train, autocannon level 5 may well take 15 days.(Note to pedants I didnt go look up the times but guessed so no point correcting me :) )
I would have no problem with having to wait the first nine minutes of my character's life before being able to equip a weapon, assuming I'm given the ability to pick up rocks. It would also give me a few minutes to decide which type of weapon I wanted to start on and give me a couple minutes to gather some stuff to be able to afford a dented, bent, mostly-broken or otherwise low quality version of that weapon.
And at the end of that 9 minutes I would equip that weapon and hold it aloft to the heavens, displaying it for all the world to see. And then I would charge into combat completely unarmored and quickly die. It will be glorious.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I believe everyone should have a single background skill that they bring into the game.
I am talking about a Professional skill or similar, something that you can do socially but won't much affect the mechanics. It would be nice to tie this with a character background, so that a former farmer and a former nobleman don't both start as exactly the same character. After all, adventurers don't just suddenly appear (<ahem>), they are usually the result of an individual making the decision to leave their current life.
GW2 feeds the different background choices in with the separate Personal Quest storyline, but obviously PFO won't have anything like that. Starting with a Professional skill would be a way of making your backstory background make sense.
I realise that it would make more logical sense to start with a handful of appropriate skills, but this would be too easily abused ('oh yes, I was a Pit Fighter before I became an adventurer').
WHFRP (the first one) had a nice set of starting background skills that were determined by your background. Too involved for PFO, but maybe something to consider?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.
I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.
I STILL don't think that background skills are a good idea, but I do like your ideas about having a background, Sadurian. (not even 100 xp) As they've stated, this area of the map is rife with adventurers who intended to pass through to get to another place where they could hunt demons or something. I think it is a pretty good bet that every person who shows up at the starting town was simply someone who thought that they could make a better life here.
I think the background of a player might help to determine what starting gear they have. That starting gear should be limited to something very small like a couple of coins (possibly), a practically broken tool or weapon and a set of clothes. These items should be SO minor that if you didn't have one it wouldn't even stop you from doing the same thing as a character who started with the tool/weapon.
I think everyone's immediate background would be that they'd somehow lost everything. Making up your immediate background could be like playing madlibs: "I lost all the rest of my gear to (fire/flood/my ship sunk/bandits/taxes/plague/misplaced). Before that I was a _______." Background before that would just be a story with no affect on your actual character.
At some point in your character's life s/he decided to give up the lame thing that he was doing before and be a crafter/adventurer/other. That point just so happens to coincide with the exact moment that you made your character and now is your chance to become great.
Unfortunately that doesn't lend itself to a background like "I've always been a great crafter all my life." If you want your character's background to be that he's a great crafter then you're going to have to become a great crafter right now and then in the future that will be your actual background.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I believe everyone should have a single background skill that they bring into the game.
I am talking about a Professional skill or similar, something that you can do socially but won't much affect the mechanics. It would be nice to tie this with a character background, so that a former farmer and a former nobleman don't both start as exactly the same character. After all, adventurers don't just suddenly appear (<ahem>), they are usually the result of an individual making the decision to leave their current life.
GW2 feeds the different background choices in with the separate Personal Quest storyline, but obviously PFO won't have anything like that. Starting with a Professional skill would be a way of making your backstory background make sense.
I realise that it would make more logical sense to start with a handful of appropriate skills, but this would be too easily abused ('oh yes, I was a Pit Fighter before I became an adventurer').
WHFRP (the first one) had a nice set of starting background skills that were determined by your background. Too involved for PFO, but maybe something to consider?
Setup your background so I can PM you.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.
It might also make sense for a smallish, finite amount of XP to be gained through the course of play, as a way to encourage F2P players to join and participate and then convert.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.It might also make sense for a smallish, finite amount of XP to be gained through the course of play, as a way to encourage F2P players to join and participate and then convert.
I think any XP gain over and above the time based one would lead to grinding and defeat the purpose of the system proposed.
In Eve, missions and killing NPCs is done to gain standing with various factions and make in-game cash not XP. Also in EVE your starting race determines what "free" skills you get (for example you get a number of levels in your races frigate skill but are unable to fly opposing races frigates).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.It might also make sense for a smallish, finite amount of XP to be gained through the course of play, as a way to encourage F2P players to join and participate and then convert.
I think any XP gain over and above the time based one would lead to grinding and defeat the purpose of the system proposed.
In Eve, missions and killing NPCs is done to gain standing with various factions and make in-game cash not XP. Also in EVE your starting race determines what "free" skills you get (for example you get a number of levels in your races frigate skill but are unable to fly opposing races frigates).
F2P will not be as most MMO's. Again with the skill system, F2P will also follow Eve's style. You have to play the game and pay for it, then once you make enough game money, you can buy game time with game money from someone that purchased it with real money. That is how PFO's F2P will work.
Any extra XP above time base skill increases will be game breaking. If that is available in game, everyone will do it and only it.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The suggestion I made was for a small finite amount to be available; maybe 30 minutes worth in a couple of hours of playing, up to a month's worth of experience for a hundred hours of so worth of work, and no higher amount available.
The goal would be to provide pieces of candy for F2P players to pick up for a while, while they get socially invested in the groups they discover and converting them to direct or indirect customers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The suggestion I made was for a small finite amount to be available; maybe 30 minutes worth in a couple of hours of playing, up to a month's worth of experience for a hundred hours of so worth of work, and no higher amount available.
The goal would be to provide pieces of candy for F2P players to pick up for a while, while they get socially invested in the groups they discover and converting them to direct or indirect customers.
New players will have a vast number of short 15-20 minute training schedules to juggle as it is. There is also a very high risk that new players will invest those XP points in totally useless skill trees as they do not understand the game yet.
Such a system would mainly advantage experienced players creating ALTS who would meta-game it to accelerate the ALTs progression.
More significantly it is important to educate new players (new to this sort of system) into understanding that missions/quests etc are NOT about XP and they need to abandon the XP obsession they have developed from other games.
New players wanting to PvE will particularly need to learn to focus on the PFO equivalent of faction/alliance standings as it is those standings that will see them offered the more lucrative dungeons.
You will grind missions partly to make gold but MAINLY to improve standings with the alliance offering the quests to get access to the really good quests and dungeons.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I was expecting that 'grinding' wouldn't be a "feature" at all; my "a few hundred hours" of work would be the complete accomplishment of all of the truly basic content, including exploration and practice with every basic skill in every basic situation (although not all the permutations).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was expecting that 'grinding' wouldn't be a "feature" at all; my "a few hundred hours" of work would be the complete accomplishment of all of the truly basic content, including exploration and practice with every basic skill in every basic situation (although not all the permutations).
A few hundred hours is a week or two for a dedicated player.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.
If I'm accumulating 100 XP/hr, hopefully the clock starts at the beginning of character creation. I might spend a couple hours getting my character just right.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm accumulating 100 XP/hr, hopefully the clock starts at the beginning of character creation. I might spend a couple hours getting my character just right.Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.
If I understand correctly, when you have nothing at all on the skill queue you just lose the points, so you will need to begin training something straight away just so the points do not go to waste.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Neadenil That's the way I understood it as well. So I'd like the character creation process to teach me how to train skill early in the process, and nudge me to queue up more skills if I take a while in creating my character. The character will need to complete deeds/earn badges to advance skills, but a character might pick up a few skills in the time it takes me to work through the process.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I understand correctly, when you have nothing at all on the skill queue you just lose the points, so you will need to begin training something straight away just so the points do not go to waste.If I'm accumulating 100 XP/hr, hopefully the clock starts at the beginning of character creation. I might spend a couple hours getting my character just right.Every hour your character is able to advance (via being subscribed or otherwise buying advancement time), you gain Experience Points (XP) whether or not you're logged into the game. These accumulate at a fixed rate throughout your career (currently at a rate of 100 XP per hour, but that may change as we get deeper into pricing). After 24 hours in the game, you'll have earned 2,400 XP; after 10 days you'll have 24,000; and so on.I'm not sure if this is something Ryan would consider a good idea, but it would make sense to me to have new characters start out with 100 XP they can use to buy their starting skills.
PFO is doing this different then Eve. We will accumulate xp and then spend them where we want. Defeats the problem with Eve, requiring you to login. Some people travel and are unable to but still want to play, so GW thinks since they are paying, they should get the xp.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If there's available training, you meet the prerequisites, and you can afford it, purchase immediately deducts the XP and coin and awards you the feat (though we might throw in a little fade-to-black to indicate that you're going into the back and having a quick training montage).
What this means practically for your advancement is:
-You'll never have to worry about losing progression because you were away from the game and didn't set a new skill to train.
-You will need to go out and get the appropriate achievements/badges (we're not sure what name we'll settle on calling them) before you can buy a lot of feats.
-Feats that are generic, low-level, and otherwise common will be easy to find and train. As they increase in focus, level, and rarity, you'll have to travel to settlements that have the requisite training halls with training in stock or convince your own settlement to build what you need. -Either way, it will probably be much cheaper to train as a member than to rely on training as a guest. Some settlements may gain an advantage purely because they've followed an upgrade path that unlocks feats that no other settlement can train yet.
From the blog "Are You Experienced."
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Goblin Squad Member
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PFO is doing this different then Eve. We will accumulate xp and then spend them where we want. Defeats the problem with Eve, requiring you to login. Some people travel and are unable to but still want to play, so GW thinks since they are paying, they should get the xp.
That is definitely an improvement. It will also overcome the issue in Eve where your preferred next set of skills depend on the one currently in training and hence cannot be queued at all until after your current skill completes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that any Starter Skill Sets should be selected by a menu at character creation. The Categories could be:
Menu "A": Choose One
Stealth
Melee Combat
Ranged Combat
Magic - Utility
Magic Combat
Healing
Menu "B": Choose One
Commoners focus on gathering and harvesting skills.
Experts focus on refining and crafting skills.
Aristocrats focus on leadership and social skills.
Menu "C": Choose up to three other skills from complete list of starter skills.
This should lead to a very diverse starting build, not likely to produce exact duplicates.
While I agree that everyone should be given a set of 'generic' skills, i.e Attack, Block, Parry, Dodge, Sprint, etc., I will be very annoyed if we aren't given the ability to have a few of the starting skills for the archetype we want to be in. If I'm a cleric, I should be able to cast a healing spell as soon as I enter the game from character creation. At the very least, I should be able to do so after a short tutorial. Same thing goes for the other classes, too.
A 'n00b island' similar to what DDO has right now would be a good way to get people started, explain the starting cities and factions as well as let people try out the different types of jobs/professions/classes.
Will a brand new player make worse choices than one who is experienced at playing the game? Certainly, without any doubt. However, considering that everyone is a brand new player at some point AND the fact that there will be such a large amount of content added after EE and even after OE starts, I don't see that being any kind of a limiting factor at all. What's an 'efficient' way of spending points at the beginning of EE might not even be in the game at the start of OE.
I don't see the problem with this... as long as everyone gets the same number of points.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While I agree that everyone should be given a set of 'generic' skills, i.e Attack, Block, Parry, Dodge, Sprint, etc., I will be very annoyed if we aren't given the ability to have a few of the starting skills for the archetype we want to be in. If I'm a cleric, I should be able to cast a healing spell as soon as I enter the game from character creation. At the very least, I should be able to do so after a short tutorial. Same thing goes for the other classes, too.
A 'n00b island' similar to what DDO has right now would be a good way to get people started, explain the starting cities and factions as well as let people try out the different types of jobs/professions/classes.
Will a brand new player make worse choices than one who is experienced at playing the game? Certainly, without any doubt. However, considering that everyone is a brand new player at some point AND the fact that there will be such a large amount of content added after EE and even after OE starts, I don't see that being any kind of a limiting factor at all. What's an 'efficient' way of spending points at the beginning of EE might not even be in the game at the start of OE.
I don't see the problem with this... as long as everyone gets the same number of points.
Assuming EVE is some sort of vague guideline ... you start in Eve at a training school with a couple of very basic skills and training the EVE equivalent of say "level 1 healing spells" might take maybe 14 or 15 minutes at most. You then would face the choice of learning the next level of healing (which may take an hour or two)or cherry pick a few more basic skills at 15 minutes each.
You can acquire the basics of a very broad range of skills very very quickly or get competent in a particular area in a short time, however narrowing in and mastering one specific skill to maximum may take months.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just for reference, it has already been stated in the blogs under "Commoners, Experts, and Aristocrats" that:
"All players will start out as Level 1 Commoners, even before choosing to follow another role, and can slot some feats that improve gathering and harvesting."