Good use of Dev time? Personas vs. real improvements!

Make achievements account wide: BAD idea
Why: Getting xp is build up on achievements, so what would you do with a char that cannot get xp from that ?

It sounds like achievements will be on applied persona characters, so this issue has to be addressed either way unless persona characters are level linked somehow. I think they should add some repeatable mission that gives decent regular xp, similar to the old heroic adventures which have since been nerfed.

I really do not understand what's so difficult about the Persona concept.

Example, "Brutasia the Ogress began her career as a young Beast Lord hunting in The Feerrott. She was mighty and achieved fame and glory and participated in many great raids against numerous mighty foes. She was excited to find that she would now be allowed to study the ways of the Shadow Knight as well. Though her skills in those ways were not as great she still maintained all of her magical keys and flags as was her right."

We don't yet know how application may work out but multiple "jobs" were a great feature in Free Realms.

It's not the concept, it's what they are planning and why. I'm very excited to be able to switch classes on one guy, that will add a ton of fun, going from bard to rogue to mage to SK, whatever class is most useful in the situation. Question is, do we have to level up a persona from level 1 or can we import another toon we already have on that account, into a persona instead of an alt? I know the later probably won't happen, but if I have a max mage and SK on an account, I would rather have them combined into one toon I can move around, than have to level another mage from 1-120 and all the AA, so I can have it as a persona.

Level up from level one. Alt absorption is not currently planned. When you create a persons imagine if similar to being sent to character creation for a “branch” of your current toon. It won’t make Freddie the gnome rogue suddenly a rogue beastlord combo or limit your race or Clas selections based off your main identity but will allow you to use the same name, share gear, and other things. Xp and aa will have to be accumulated in each persona.

You have an actual source (link) for all that, or are you just speculating like everyone else?

Grind (tm)

And the ToV+ Grind will be so much fun to repeat for every Persona you want to add.

I suspect it is most liked by raiders who like the additional options its gives them re raid forces. I could be wrong but that would be my guess.

Probably a lot more fun then having to do all the flags again. I think its about making the time sink attractive enough to use for some plus give raiders more flexibility.

I can't give you a source officially, they arent apparently yet ready to release the official FAQ/docs or whatever they intend to release, however they did give CRC members permission to discuss persona things as it was outlined in a recent discussion. most aren't, because they are busy, dont want to be harangued by the general populace as like you, most of us have more questions then answers, but this was the basic, general gist of what was explained to us at that time. as always, things change particularly in the face of a challenging implementation, but i've been trying to share some bits i feel are most likely to remain the same so that maybe some folks will be reassured and others can adjust expectations such that they may not be as disappointed, etc. i know its hard to wait.

additionally, i want to encourage folks to really participate in beta testing. not just testing to get a sneak peek of upcoming content etc, but helping to iron out/smooth the wrinkles of things that we know are wrong on beta, but need some adjustment before they make it live. This is an area that just about anybody can be of great service to the entire community with even a small amount of effort, in your area of interest whether its making sure quests work, testing recipes, exploring zones, looking at raids, playing missions, whatever you enjoy. posting constructive and detailed reports of issues/bugs/things on the forums is a great path to seeing results.

my opinions are mine and only mine, as always.

Could I be misunderstanding the new mechanic coming? Will this let me be a magician or enchanter on my Iksar (theoretically)? Or am I hoping for too much?

I think you're hoping for too much. I think selecting a new class will take you to a character creation screen where you will then create a new character with the exception being that it has the current characters name, all flagging and inventory access.

Thank you for more details.

We talking design or code? B/c you saying the coders will be doing most of the work and a byproduct would be they can't work on new content or class balance? What I initially suggested had more to do with design than coding specific to "dev time" and best use of it.

1. Coders don't create zones.
2. Coders don't create group missions or raids.
3. Coders are not involved in QA testing.
4. Coders don't determine class balance, at best they would make any code changes requested by the devs who do make class balance.
4b. Coders don't create class abilities, discs, spells or other items.
5. Lag is something they are always working on.

Most of the things you mentioned are not in the job description of the coders.

Yea that was my understanding as well. Your initial comment to me was(which is why i'm confused bc everything in your second comment makes sense to me that it would be on the design side):
The coders are going to be doing most of the work on this and they would not be making any new content or doing class balance. They might be put to working on code that can impact lag but as for the rest that is outside of their duties

The whole persona thing makes my head hurt. Just go ahead and drop that and give us 2 more group missions and another evolving item.

The community has spent so much time discussing personas (mainly due to there being so little information provided), that by the time they are released, they will only serve to disappoint.

When an expansion drops with only mere bullet points to cover the content, a video without sound and a few sentences around their flagship update - personas, what is the exact purpose of the pre-release process?

Is it just to get involved in the beta testing so you can see the content in advance?

Not shared is the intended direction of personas. Not just upon first implementation, but perhaps a subsystem to move toward another goal.

Shrouding DID work. People used it to help guildmates and to plow AAs and were so successful at it, that the developers nerfed it.

a level cap that keeps going up leaves new/returning players with a lonnnnnng road. Revamping something like shrouds, but using actual character class models, istead of the RIDICULOUS constraints on gearing a shrouded form could actually be an excellent opportunity to advance the new players commingling with tenured players side of things.

Players models can at least wear gear.

Shrouding was an excellent idea, but poorly implemented in some major ways.

"shroud bank" and zero class / race wearables with actual stats and mods, mod2s to actually be functional would have helped.

Maybe, just maybe...

and FWIW raiders just PL whatever class they need. not like they would need a whole subsystem to have another zerker show up to raids.

For me it’s about helping ensure raids (and other content of course - especially tradeskill etc) are mostly functional in a meaningful way.

I don’t know how many folks still playing were on the cutting edge back in planes of power but let’s just say as a first guild that made it through plane of time phase one to find the non functioning doors blocking access to the remaining phases, it stunk. Or before that on fennin went it went live with the nifty feature of slowing the mob actually sending it into a frenzied hastened state.

The fixes for those types of problems sometimes came in days. Sometimes weeks. And every once in awhile you’d have a bug that would take months and multiple patches to remediate.

This is far less likely to happen (although it does still happen every once in awhile where things break or wasn’t enough time to fix something we knew about) with the greatly expanded testing that takes place now. We’ve tested many years now and I really feel like this is an excellent way to serve the greater community.