Character Creation and Class Selection Idea

[deep6ixed]

Okay Guys and Gal's here's another one of Deep6ixed's Crazy ideas:

We've had some talk about when we pick classes in game after the player has started.  Well here is my idea submission.

Every account upon gets first use, gets just one unlocked class that is common to all players.  Call it Survivor or something else.  Each player will complete the starting quest chain and some other plot quests to get them up on the story of what is going on in Maruum.  You know get them used to our style of game play.  Once they get this character to a decent level (5, this number can be changed.) All the other classes become unlocked at creation.

Then each of the main classes can start in their own specific location, and pick up from there.

Would work like the death knight class, except instead of having all classes but one until 55, its one class till level 5.  

Here's why it could help us:

1.) We can have 1 intro plot quest chains that wouldn't depend on classes or any specific features.
2.) Players don't have to play the same thing over and over just to get a new quest.
3.) We can add in classes easier.  Instead having to weave a new quest line for each added class, we can make in game and simply activate them as we go.
4.) This wouldn't have any effect on how the classes work, so the leveling by skills or how the classes themselves work would be completely separate.

[Jøk3r]

This idea is quite ok but i don't like it that much. Just my opinion.

My idea would be that there are some basic classes. You start with every class with the Maruum intro questline (shipwrecked and stranded on a isle). When a specific level is reached you get the opportunity of choosing a more specific class. This yould be done after a questline.

So for example:
You got four basic classes. Some will be better with swords, some can use magic or something like that. As you level up you get better and when you reach level 10 you get some class quest which send you to a master of your class. Then will start a questline in which you will be shown three different specific kinds of your class.
For a wizard it could be fire, ice and whatever. Arcane for example. After the questline you can choose to learn one of these. So you have the basic class wizard and can then choose fire, ice or arcane. You are still a wizard an no other class. This could be like choosing a talentree but you only have one chance to do this and after that point you won't be able to change this or few the other two "talentrees".
And you only can cast fire spells as fire mage and no ice spells for example.

If something is not clear enough just tell me. I could explain this better in german^^

[Steff]

You should i mind devide the demo from the final game.

This startin szenario is planed to show that it all works and that we can doe great new things.
In next patch we want to integrate different cultures with own starting zone.

The question is if and how we could then implement the shpwrecked map again. Perhaps every cutlure have after 2 or 3 levels a ship pasage and get during this shipwrecked and jump in at the current demo map.

Or we reuse it and just swap some story stuff there to make it fit to final game.

So later we can jsut start with the neutral class and the player needs to chouse class ingame.
So there should be recruiter NPCs for the existing classes that start the questlines for them.

I build in the moment on a magic academy in emptiness. Where you will get with an teleporter stone that you get from local mages of this organization.

[Jiushi]

Yeah i also try this in english (in german it would be lot better)

My prefered way (thanks to DK for the inputs) is that you chose at char creation the direction of your class (magicall talented/strong muscles etc) so this will be the frame of the classes you can chose later ingame (and it sets the seconde bar you have, mana etc.) and so you play and the teachers of the real classes are somewhere over the map and you have to find them to learn a real class.

For the thing with the Cerill Map. I think we should it integrate in final game after alpha and only alpha chars did this alpha quests
Now there is the problem that new players will not know about the cult etc. for this point (was DK idea xD) we just send some NPC's with the players back to future and let them (NPC) create a organisation against the cult (like argent dawn or something) and maybe we can also say that the NPC of this organisation let the player throught their memory do some of the adventures that were only aviable on alpha.

i hope you can read it xDxD

[Steff]

Yes but then why not pick up the idea of let the player choose?
If you get new accoutn you MUST play once time the cerill story line.so the player know the plot. Andwith secondchar you can choose if you.

1. want to play cerill or
2. Want direct start in culture area with level 5.

If you do thecerill pregame you start a bit stronger into culturearea and have someindividual times. Else you get just a fitting starter set. This way everyone can play the story part. You can play it with every char if you like. But you can also just skip it for twinks and can have a direct look at the different cultures.

[Jiushi]

BEcause it makes Alpha something special xD and for new player to know the plot we have the anticult organisation ^.^ with your way we make Cerill just to a better tutorial and we have the known problem with the inrease of races and classes and the space in Cerill. And if you let every player start the "real game" on lvl 5 we have a game with only 15 lvls (and not 20)

but yeah some points are here important:

i think only the ghosts will be sent back in time so the player wont have any gear from Cerill?? (other is not rly realistic)

so after Cerill the gear will be reseted and without special gear the only difference between a starter player @lvl 1 and a after Cerill player @lvl 5 are the spells he know

and i thought also that with lvl 5 you should have chosen your real class but this dont fit with the other model where you just choose the way of you char in char creation and not the real class...?

[Steff]

But I dont want to trow all the work away only because of something special
Also this way every player MUSt do this story part in minimum once and I think it is importand for the game mood.

[deep6ixed]

Any idea how this will be handled in game?  I'm just curious.

[Steff]

No I hoped you can find a way

I think it will need a core manipulation. As there will be an extra data fild missing for this we could add it with some special char seperated to something that gets send. Like the name 1;name 0;name and then the server creats 2 different characters.

If it is not possible without having all races double we have to think about something else.