Account VIP Status, Epic ATs, etc

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, Riverdusk said:

Honestly, the biggest one that I was disappointed with is that they just entirely got rid of SG prestige.  I enjoyed collecting that and working to build up my base.  I would have much preferred if they'd have just massively cut prestige and upkeep costs, but still kept prestige around so that people had to at least work a "tiny" bit to build a SG base.  

Having seen what has been unleashed, creatively, without that, I wouldn't say building SG bases isn't work... for me, just like costumes, I'd rather not see someone's creativity hampered because they're 10 prestige short of buying a wall section or something. Some people are fine just throwing on generic tights and a pattern (or a room with some storage and teleporters,) others fold, spindle and mutilate the system and create some pretty incredible things they probably couldn't if they were restricted by prestige.

[Tigraine]

17 hours ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

City of Heroes has long dominated the role of "-the- MMO where your character is YOURS," and I've failed to see any other MMO approach the level of personal ownership which this game offers to players.  

I'd argue that the original iteration of Star Wars Galaxies (pre-NGE) did this well.  Not just in terms of character appearance, but also in the customization options of choosing and combining different skill trees.  But it's definitely not something you see much of in more modern MMOs.

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Tigraine said:

I'd argue that the original iteration of Star Wars Galaxies (pre-NGE) did this well.  Not just in terms of character appearance, but also in the customization options of choosing and combining different skill trees.  But it's definitely not something you see much of in more modern MMOs.

I think Ultima Online is probably the ultimate in terms of powers/skills customization.  There were no trees, only points values - and you could have any combination of any skills with any amount of points (below the per-skill cap) assigned to that skill.  The only other limit was that the total number of available points was capped.  You could have (IIRC) 7 skills maxed (100 points), or 40 skills with 17 points each, or any combination in between.

For combat skills, you didn't even have to train (though most did), you could earn points in that skill through more-or-less normal gameplay.

For non-combat skills...  Lordy but I was glad there was a legal 3rd party macro/automation mod.  Non-combat skills could be a right pain in the butt to earn points in as you had to do/make specific things which varied by your current points in the skill.

[Tigraine]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I think Ultima Online is probably the ultimate in terms of powers/skills customization.  There were no trees, only points values - and you could have any combination of any skills with any amount of points (below the per-skill cap) assigned to that skill.  The only other limit was that the total number of available points was capped.  You could have (IIRC) 7 skills maxed (100 points), or 40 skills with 17 points each, or any combination in between.

For combat skills, you didn't even have to train (though most did), you could earn points in that skill through more-or-less normal gameplay.

For non-combat skills...  Lordy but I was glad there was a legal 3rd party macro/automation mod.  Non-combat skills could be a right pain in the butt to earn points in as you had to do/make specific things which varied by your current points in the skill.

The SWG system was actually fairly similar.  There were something like 39 professions (classes), some combat, some non-combat.  Each had four different skill lines, consisting of four skills each of increasing level.  You had 250 points that could be used to acquire as many skills as you wanted from as many professions as you wanted (IIRC; there might have been a limit to the # of professions, but I know most of  my characters had 3-4).  Once you paid the initial point cost to learn the base profession, you could train as many of the four skill lines up as far as  you wanted, each skill requiring a certain type and amount of XP, and a point cost (all corresponding to that skill's level).  If you maxed all four lines, you could train a "master" skill, but mastering a profession was by no means required.  As I recall, the 250 points given was enough to max out two full professions and train about half of a third.

[Doc_Scorpion]

18 minutes ago, Tigraine said:

The SWG system was actually fairly similar.  There were something like 39 professions (classes), some combat, some non-combat.  Each had four different skill lines

That's thing about UO though...  there are no classes.  Every skill (there's currently 58 skills in game) is available to every character, almost without limitation.  (There's a handful that require precursor skills.)  There's a lot of Very Dumb and/or Self Gimping combinations, but skill locks (setting a skill to gain or lose points, or stay at current levels) made it pretty easy to experiment and back out of dead ends.  (You can also copy skill points to a Soulstone...  essentially creating a backup of your template (build).  Something akin to an alternate build here in CoX.)

[Tigraine]

26 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

That's thing about UO though...  there are no classes.  Every skill (there's currently 58 skills in game) is available to every character, almost without limitation.  (There's a handful that require precursor skills.)  There's a lot of Very Dumb and/or Self Gimping combinations, but skill locks (setting a skill to gain or lose points, or stay at current levels) made it pretty easy to experiment and back out of dead ends.  (You can also copy skill points to a Soulstone...  essentially creating a backup of your template (build).  Something akin to an alternate build here in CoX.)

That's why I said "fairly similar" and not "identical." 

And 58 skills?  Let me see... 16x39=624, and that's not counting the novice and master skills for each.

 

Anyway, we've derailed this thread enough.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Tigraine