I've not seen any limitations proposed by anyone that wouldn't make me completely ignore the feature and skip the 2 group mission expansion entirely.
Correct, if it's limited to certain zones, might as well put Klanderso on something useful, because this is a lost cause. Not switching is combat is entirely reasonable and shouldnt be allowed. I shouldnt have to gate somewhere to swap.
Frankly I do not understand this weird obsession, and I have observed it as far back as 1999 when Kunark was announced, the EQ player base has with wanting weird restrictions on anything changing the game. Literally no other MMO I play is the playerbase like this. People accept the game is going to change with the release of expansions and major patches, once new features are out, feedback is given. People obviously complain from time to time, but this entrenched anti-change faction is almost unique to EQ. EQ player base has a small but VERY loud, and far too often, listened to, group that has lobbied against every QoL change the game has ever proposed. If these people had their way, we'd not have Out of Combat Regen, Mercs, shared bank, TLPs would not have AOCs, pickzones wouldn't exist, raid currency wouldn't exist, and any number of things that in total would likely turn the game into a graveyard even versus its current diminished population. Suffice to say, anyone opposed to any Quality of Life change is a detrimental force in the game, and in comparison to most other MMOs they have been listened to far too often in the past. It sounds like they are in the process of brigading to make personas (a major advertised expansion feature) all but worthless. Don't let them.
EQ player-base is filled with change-adverse older clientele. It's the saying "Can't teach an old dog new tricks" There are many people who hold McQuaid's original design of EQ as the pinnacle of MMO gaming and anything that strays from it should be lit on fire. However, the people who aren't as stubborn realize that EQ was littered with shortcomings and bad design and want changes to be made. They are normally, out voiced by the vocal minority who still believe that corpse running is actually a skill and a difficult part of the game, rather than just some menial timesink which serves no effective purpose than annoy the end user. If done right, Alternate Personas can be useful and interesting. I, myself, will probably never use it as I like my main chars too much and already box any other class I enjoy, but I'm not going to complain about the implementation. Would I rather see other things in focus? Sure, but they need to make enticing features for an expansion and this is what was decided. I'm a little annoyed by the fact that these "expansion features" are only given to use in limited capacity and to fully unlock it we need to keep leveraging microtransactions. I think that's generally bad business practice and quite predatory. I'm paying for the expansion and it's feature. I should get the entirety of it. That means 16 slots of APs available for all 16 classes.
Hopefully the CRC isn't letting them. Some QoL requests (mine included) are plain silly, but there are some honestly good ones out there that get no love. Some the devs have come out and said that coding was an issue. But most times no one from DPG says anything. We see that problem with Beta threads, people bring up good reasons for QoL changes, with majority support, with supporting facts and math (thanks to Sancus, who should work at DPG), but get crickets from DPG, and the QoL request never makes it.
Shaman? Race Strength Dexterity Agility Stamina Intelligence Wisdom Charisma Total Barbarian 103 70 82 105 60 105 60 585 Iksar 70 85 90 80 75 115 60 575 Ogre 130 70 70 132 60 102 42 606 Troll 108 75 83 119 52 95 45 577 Vah Shir 90 70 90 85 65 105 70 575 Froglok 70 100 100 90 75 110 55 600
I think we should all take what anyone who is not a dev says with a spoon of salt. We all speculate & a few of us also pontificate but very few of us are an authority on anything, what anyone says is often just how they think things "should be" but how things actually end up is likely very much still in flux & anything even planned right now might still be really tentative & sensitive to player feedback. In other words, no point getting hung up on what may end up being small details that don't happen anyway, say what you would like to see, spare us your dictats. What would I like to see from Alternate Personas? Play any class as your pre-existing character's race, don't force me to play another race just because my race did not originally have that class. Swapping Personas can only be done when in OOC & you are not on any npc's hate-list. Each persona's buff bar is unique, to avoid classes using class-specific self-buffs they cannot cast themselves. You cannot use or click class-specific items while not in that class's persona. Each persona has its own gear slots that hold those items while you are using a different persona, I don't want to bandolier gear in & out of slots as I swap personas and having to carry gear for all of the personas you have in your bags. A system that allows you to earn epic weapons for each persona, currently that may not be possible due to lore equipment & lore group restrictions. If players want to quest for each class's epics they should be able to do that. A "Legacy Character" type system for Alternate Personas, so that each persona you reach max level with boosts XP gain for any not yet at max level. Class-based tradeskills are available to personas of Rogue & Shaman. Gnome Racial Tradeskill? Perhaps add a quest that allows any race to tinker so long as they also have satisfactorily helped & gained enough faction with the Gnomes (and maintain it). If the player then loses too much faction with the Gnomes then they lose access to Tinkering as punishment. The Gnomish Gnowledge.
Since they are coding this one from scratch, they should consider the QoL aspect from the start. It's not like personas already exist and they are being asked to modify them. Even if it may seem game breaking to allow someone to persona switch at will, oh well. Consider the state of the game in 2023. This isn't 1999 when the zones are so packed you can't find a camp. In today's game, it's up to you to do everything. You don't have a group of friends always online when you need a bard, rogue, ranger, etc. There is no one in LFG just waiting to join in my adventure. If I need a bard, my choice is either going to be me rolling a bard alt or doing a bard persona. But if personas have tons of restrictions, then they aren't going to be all that useful.
so my question is when we do a /who and some one is on their Persona will the info for that Persona be in the output. Will raid leaders know what class this Persona is?
- I am not against it, but it would take alot of coding and database alteration with no apparent gameplay imrovement. I don't think it is a wise way to spend developers' time. - I am with you on OOC swapping. - Same for individual buff bars. - You got my vote on individualized slots with gear. - not just Epics, a few other unique class-specific items like Cloak, RZ ear, some augs etc. Would require some questlines adjusted for repeats for other class personas but it is worth it. - Not necessarily a good way. I, for example, am looking for many more months of gameplay to actually level multiple personar on multiple accounts for multiple characters and multiple classes. Drastically reducing the leveling would take away the playtime from me. My main team and main alts are maxxed as it is, I want something useful to do. But I'll take leveling at whatever path they offer. On my own, I would like to see some database adjustments from a prospective of "Lore" vs. "Lore Equipped" tags, as with Personas there will be multiple items desired by both personas and it will be lots of "Lore" conflicts when transferring items between personas, like augments, weapons, etc, which are typically "Lore"
I don't see why not, when you are in a Rogue persona your class will be Rogue, reflected in /who & in the guild and raid tools.
Perhaps the option for "Legacy Persona" benefits can be toggled. Level slow if you want to do so, much like how autogrant can be toggled.
This would remove a huge value from personas. Ex. 2 box, one tank, one shaman. Tank has a enchanter persona & alt. Shaman has a cleric persona and alt. Using personas per the above, you could not swap out and take advantage of all those buffs but using alts, you could, making personas useless for such.
I actually agreed with you, until someone brought up Divine Avatar, which is a downright incredible buff for non clerics. There are probably more like it. In an ideal world, we could have buffs be class specific and those be dispelled on swap, but given the time crunch, idk if that is feasible. More likely you choose 1 character to make the red-headed step child of your group and that has all the buffing personas and gets none of the buffs themselves lol.
Not really no, it simply retains some elements of cooperativeness. You use your personas to buff your group, they use theirs to buff you. Having a singular shared buff bar is just way too open to exploitation of powerful class-only buffs. Perhaps the class-only buffs could be wiped as soon as you swap away from that class and perhaps that way a singular buff bar could be maintained, but also you gotta remember buff levels, use a persona at level 1 wiping all of your high level buffs wouldn't be great either.
Ya, super buffing every self burn Ability in the guild hall and bannering in would be pretty broken on many classes, funny, but pretty broken. At that point you may as well enable clicking SK epic on every class.
