Too Big for your Boots?

Jules

Eld said:

I'm assuming "Prestige Class" means I get to reincarnate as Christian Bale.

I was thinking that it entitled us to Boats 'N Hoes.

Garao

Just thinking multiclass is (very, very sadly) a lot trickier than people are giving it credit for. What about Dragons that hail from guilds that only accept a single class? I dunno if being able to switch back and forth from Serpent and any-decent-pk-class is a good idea at all.

Ognog

I'm finding the task of getting to dragon once daunting enough. I'm getting RSI at the mere thought of doing it a second time.

Kazu

@Garao Just do what Aetolia does and put a really long timer on the change. I think you can switch once per  RL day there. As far as the whole house deal, I don't really see a problem with the second class not having any impact. You still have the primary core of your character. The second class is just something you developed after being around for so long, etc. Should work fine as long as certain combos ,Infernal/Priest for example, are banned.

Garao

The issue for me is being able to infiltrate just about anywhere and then switch over to your pk class. Mainly with artied occies and monks.

Kazu

Could require them to be in a specific neutral site to make the change?

Trevize

Enough stealing serpent abilities. You could gain the ability to...

Ink runes (Algiz, Jera, and Berkana) on yourself only.
Universe Tarot!

Penwize

Multiclass would be delightful, but would need balancing factors, I'd say along the same lines as dragonforming: changing takes 30ish seconds of uninterrupted channeled action.
Alternatively, give me lesserform pierce the veil plz.

Veldrin

Penwize said:

Multiclass would be delightful, but would need balancing factors, I'd say along the same lines as dragonforming: changing takes 30ish seconds of uninterrupted channeled action.
Alternatively, give me lesserform pierce the veil plz.

Also losing all non-class defenses upon doing it (ala dragonforming), not being able to have a permanent grove if your main-class isn't druid/sylvan, always starting at 0 necromancy/devotion/grove energy/karma/whichever of that nature (Donno if that should be start at 0 at the time you login or when you class-change though)

And give me multiclass AND lesserform pierce the veil <.<

Xith

No multi-class, cause 'chaea just ain't got time fo dat.

People just think Dragon is stale. I would say either add a different raceclass to choose (adult Ra'zac), or add more dragon colours/variety.

I don't know what the highest level Dragon is, but at what level would these other factors come into play?

Sylvance

@Blujixapug's idea is still the one that's getting me hot under the collar.

Arador

Multiclass would be insanely hard to Balance. Bad idea. Maybe a utility skillset that would give convenience but no combat stuff please.

I would like another race with its own class.

Antidas

Xith said:

I would say either add a different raceclass to choose (adult Ra'zac)

Lethrblaka?

/nerd

Iocun

Garao said:

The issue for me is being able to infiltrate just about anywhere and then switch over to your pk class. Mainly with artied occies and monks.

Occies can already astralform, so switching to serpent (with whatever delay that takes), going to phase, going in, unphasing, switching back to occultist without being caught by defenders inbetween, would seem needlessly complicated compared to just astralforming in (or, you know, having a serpent buddy phase and in portalling). Or tracking to somebody. Or flying in.

Sure, it adds convenience and further utility, but I don't see how it would be OP.

Arador said:

Multiclass would be insanely hard to Balance. Bad idea. Maybe a utility skillset that would give convenience but no combat stuff please.

Can you give an example of what would make it hard to balance? (Compared to currently balancing dragon with all the classes?)

Of course there may be some difficulties needing to be worked out, but I'm sure there are solutions.

As for the single-class house issue: hrm, well, it might be fine to allow multiclassing to any other class allowed by your city, without having house-class requirements interfere. Rogues would simply be banned from any combination containing classes of opposing factions (so no Priest-Occultist or Druid-Necromancer). Some other combinations like knight-serpent are questionable too and might be banned as well.

Nellaundra

I would flat out adore once-per-rl-day multiclass.  Give it a forty second windup and remove all defenses after it happens, then it should be fine.  You still have to balance your traits and such, get new weapons/armor for your new class if needed and if you simply restrict it to which city you belong to instead of house, there shouldn't be any real issues.  The most "abuse" I can see with this method is someone using the trade skills of their multi-class to assist in their former, and that's not really abuse at all.  That's using your class.

also restrict stupid things, Occultist/Devotion user, Necromancer/Tree-huggers, etc.  That should be it.

Hell, this would actually motivate me to bashing to dragon-level if this was an alternate prize.

e: also I clicked the wrong vote because I wasn't wearing my glasses and am a derp in general

Blujixapug

I hope they never do multiclass in the monk/serpent, druid/priest sense (although I'm pretty sure that is not what any of Sylvance's original suggestions referred to). Diversity is a cornerstone of Achaea's questionable economy. If everyone multiclassed alchemist to do their own refills and runewarden to do their own runes and forging, blech. Not to mention people casually going monk for raids and bashing, or serpent to spy on events. I think it would have a strong negative influence on House culture.

It also just seems like a weird reward for reaching level 99.

Nellaundra

So is turning into a giant god damn lizard.

Ognog

Here's a crazy idea - both beautiful and terrible as the dawn - what if you could choose between dragon and dala'myrr.

Dragons vs Dala'myrr!

Hmmmmmm ...... maybe not  :-t

Shahai

I would like there is other possible races than Dragons. Mayeb something class-specific.

Sylvance

I think the problem may be that people are using different definitions of 'multi-class'.  The DnD model of multi-classing (which is essentially, have as many classes as you want/are willing to train in) would be impossible to balance.  We've already seen what a KnightBard is capable of, eh, @Aerek?  The MKO model (which should be called class-switching) would work with no problems with balance per se, but, yes, it does leave us open to a Serpent sneaking into Househall, switching to Blademaster and lol'ing his way through the loyals and pets, then flipping to Monk when the confused defenders arrive, still buckling on their scabbards.  Add to that idea the fact that there are now two players with morphable level 3 weapons... and I'm scared and want my mommy.

Perhaps a system of being able to choose a Prestige tertiary skill for your existing class at top level might work?  So when Sylvance finally hears the final ding, she might drop Harmonics and then choose between Dancecraft and Loremastery.  BMs might toss aside Shindo for either SteelDevil (a -real- glass canon skillset) or something more Samurai like SacredBlade (which continues down the 'you are one with your weapon' theme, almost like a NWN Weaponmaster).  I've always wanted to be able to specialise a bit more in Achaea, maybe this is where it fits?

Kyrra

I want to specialise in totems :x

Sylvance

@Kyrra - True, but if they made a HighTotemer speciality, it would just encourage other players to try and outTotem you.  And then somebody would get hurt.

Aerek

The biggest obstacle to that is simply that Achaea is more complex than most other games out there. It's existed for 17 years now, and we're only just getting to the point where most classes are "balanced" against each other. Adding one or two whole new skills for each class? A balance nightmare. (Not to mention all the time and effort it takes to actually create a new skill)

Personally, I think end-tier Achaea is fine. There are a lot of ways to play, and bashing day and night is only one of them; I don't feel that particular playstyle needs to be rewarded more than it already is. (You're already getting a free class, huge amounts of health, and even more bashing power, which lets you bash up the credits for pretty much anything you might want, entirely IG) If something was to be added, though, I would suggest "Prestige Traits," small but coveted bonuses too good to be handed out for free. Whether class-specific or generic, those would be easier to balance, but still have the potential to impact your gameplay.

Still, you run into the conundrum that those traits will either be too inconsequential for people to care, or so powerful that anyone who doesn't bash autisticly will be at a disadvantage, thereby validating that playstyle over any others.

Nim

I kind of like the idea of specialty skills, but that's just because I like variety in general. It's kind of boring that every monk uses the same fighting style, and that every spy/thief type character is a snake.

Personally, I sort of hoped that becoming a dragon would sort of stop being a thing, and that people would just get some basic primal utility powers when they reached a high enough level. Sort of like the bonuses you get for reaching Logosian, but taking it further. Mostly non-combat powers.

Like, the ability to teleport to people or to a house you own (in an easily-stopped manner), send or receive items at a distance, maybe a trance ability that combines the benefits of sleeping and meditating, or an ability that cured all afflictions if you spent 10~15s channeling it. Also, for some reason, I feel like the ability to weakly zap fellow (lower-ranking) city/house-members would be cool. I think it'd be cool if there was, at least, some sort of primal blasting ability, even if it was mainly just a hunting ability.

I could even see a system for getting these powers being sort of like the traits system, where every X levels above 99 grants you a new power of your choice. I can't say I'd become the next Penwize if they implemented something like this, but I'd certainly have a reason to try!

Tael

I really wanted to answer some combination of prestige race/prestige skillset/something new.

While another game has obviously already done it, I really like most of the Aetolian system and would love to see something roughly in that vein of rewarding endgame with enhanced customisations.

I like the idea of it being an opportunity to make your character more special and unique rather than the present system of making them more generic.

And, while Aetolia's endgame definitely has combat implications, it would be very possible to do it without them - just convenience abilities and special little things like custom messages (but not entrance/exit, you can't have my precious!). This would remove the fundamental tension of balancing around an endgame and having combat effectiveness as the primary incentive to reach endgame: either the endgame gives a significant enough advantage that you can't compete with it or it's not worth getting. The current system avoids this somewhat by making it dependent on the person (dragon is good for raiding and an easy way to kill less-experienced people, but much worse than many classes at higher tiers of combat - at least that's my understanding of it).

Also, and I realise this probably isn't such a big deal for people who care less about RP, the whole dragon things just creates such an incredible multitude of immersion problems from huge dragons using tiny items to not being able to fit into rooms.

Sidonia

Re: multiclass, if people are worried that it would be too quick to switch, could be made like Imperian multiclass, where you have to learn your skills again after switching (I think at no lesson cost and only a couple of sets or something?)

Sylvance

Sidonia said:

Re: multiclass, if people are worried that it would be too quick to switch, could be made like Imperian multiclass, where you have to learn your skills again after switching (I think at no lesson cost and only a couple of sets or something?)

I like the sentiment of this (i.e. slow it down) but honestly there has got to be a better solution than forcing people to sit through an automated marathon of tri-transing their skills again.  Perhaps an opposite of the kind of skill-degredation that we saw at the end of the Demigod event. So, you switch classes and start at Inept, and eventually your skills start to come back passively at a slow rate.

That said, I don't actually like class-switching as a solution to balancing multiclass. I think it's probably a least-bad solution, but it also isn't multiclassing.

Sidonia

Sylvance said:
I like the sentiment of this (i.e. slow it down) but honestly there has got to be a better solution than forcing people to sit through an automated marathon of tri-transing their skills again. 

By a few sets I mean, you'd have to do learn subterfuge from X like 2-3 times. I think that's how it works in imperian, just a few lessons to reactivate the knowledge, not the whole 1700+ lessons.

I don't particularly like the idea of mutliclass/class switching but this could be a solution to the serpent infiltrate -> switch monk lolchoke/radiance/whatever.

Zeon

Veldrin said:

Penwize said:

Multiclass would be delightful, but would need balancing factors, I'd say along the same lines as dragonforming: changing takes 30ish seconds of uninterrupted channeled action.
Alternatively, give me lesserform pierce the veil plz.

Also losing all non-class defenses upon doing it (ala dragonforming), not being able to have a permanent grove if your main-class isn't druid/sylvan, always starting at 0 necromancy/devotion/grove energy/karma/whichever of that nature (Donno if that should be start at 0 at the time you login or when you class-change though)

And give me multiclass AND lesserform pierce the veil <.<

If i recall correctly your grove and class defs are two of the only things you lose when you change class. When you change back to an old class you get your old poes/essence/devotion/karma. Unsure about truenames, haven't been an occie since truename was changed.

Ryukishi

I think its the cup of coffee I just chugged, but how about making upper tier dragoncraft like seafaring where you have skillpoints to put into various trees.