Changing Origins (Null the Gull)

[Perma-Newbie]

Please allow Null to change origins.  Sometimes I roll a character, start playing it, like the character, but decide that my original idea doesn't work in my brain.  Then I need to delete and reroll because Tech should be Mutant and that seems... inefficient.

[Greycat]

You cannot change origins. It's one of four things, including AT, primary and secondary, that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

 

[Perma-Newbie]

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

[Rudra]

17 minutes ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

Your alignment has never been determined during character creation when you choose your origin, AT, and power sets. Alignment was always chosen after your character was made as part of entering the game itself.

 

(Edit: That's why the alignment and tutorial choice does not come up until you finish designing your character and click the final "Next"  on the Register page to enter the game. Because alignment is not part of character creation, it is part of game play.)

 

Edited August 5 by Rudra

[Greycat]

16 minutes ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

 

The live devs repeatedly acknowledged that AT, Origin, Primary and Secondary could not be changed.

They did not say so about alignment, and... GEE, DID IT THEMSELVES.

 

Your attempt at a... point? Rebuttal? Snark? fails.

[UltraAlt]

17 minutes ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

 

Comic book characters change alignments.

(Honestly, I'm opposed to this on a pure mythological level. I would comment further on this topic but it gets somewhat political fast, so I won't. But I understand that some feel that the comic books need to be more "adult" or "literature" so they have to live in that grey area that makes Praetorian content so over-populated.)

 

But you have to do a retcon to change origins in comic books.

 

Make the retcon version if you need to change origins.

[UltraAlt]

19 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Your alignment has never been determined during character creation when you choose your origin, AT, and power sets. Alignment was always chosen after your character was made as part of entering the game itself.

 

(Edit: That's why the alignment and tutorial choice does not come up until you finish designing your character and click the final "Next"  on the Register page to enter the game. Because alignment is not part of character creation, it is part of game play.)

 

 

I have to disagree.

 

Picking alignment is simply the last step of character creation, it is the last action you perform in the character creator before entering the actual game.

 

36 minutes ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment.

 

... and, when they were getting ready to add the ability to change alignments, I was strongly against it.

 

But back to the retcon bit.

Back on live I made retcons - of one of my more "main" characters - across all the servers. They had different origin stories, origins, power sets, gender, and slight costume variations. Enough the "same" that you could tell that they were all the same basic character conception but coming at it from different angles.

To me it was like making the "multiverse" versions of the character. That is to say, I felt that they needed to have a "presence" in all shards/existences and followed the established comic book mentality of other universes/existences having similar characters but ones that are not exactly the same as the "prime" version of that character.

 

 

Edited August 5 by UltraAlt

[Enamel_32]

In software, restrictions like this are never impossible to remove, just incredibly difficult. Given enough time and effort it could be done, but often that time and effort is better spent elsewhere, on things that more people are asking for.

[Wavicle]

I would LIKE this to be possible, but it's not high on my priority list.

[Rudra]

32 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

51 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Your alignment has never been determined during character creation when you choose your origin, AT, and power sets. Alignment was always chosen after your character was made as part of entering the game itself.

 

(Edit: That's why the alignment and tutorial choice does not come up until you finish designing your character and click the final "Next"  on the Register page to enter the game. Because alignment is not part of character creation, it is part of game play.)

 

 

I have to disagree.

 

Picking alignment is simply the last step of character creation, it is the last action you perform in the character creator before entering the actual game.

The very last window in character creation is the Register window. Up to that point, nowhere do you choose your alignment. And nowhere on that window do you choose your alignment. Once you have finished with that last window of character creation, you click the "Next" button which tells you on mouse over that it takes your character into the game. So after character creation, as part of loading your character into the game, the game asks you if you want to do the tutorial with the tutorial determining your alignment or if you want to skip the tutorial at which point you choose your alignment so the game can do your character's initial spawn.

 

(Edit: During character creation, the "Next" button for every window other than "Register" says "Next" on mouse over. Only the Register window's "Next" button says "Enter Game" on mouse over.)

 

 

Edited August 5 by Rudra

[Greycat]

36 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I have to disagree.

 

Picking alignment is simply the last step of character creation, it is the last action you perform in the character creator before entering the actual game

 

 

 

... unless you run the tutorial, in which case you pick it as part of the tutorial.

Or you play goldside, in which case you can swap back and forth.

 

It's never been as baked in as AT, primary, secondary and origin. Which I still suspect is a holdover from... what, alpha days, when origin (of which there were more) affected things like how many powers you could have and how far you could develop them

[lemming]

Alignment wasn't a thing at first and then was tacked on later.

The AT, Origin, Primary, and Secondary were all baked in early.

 

Now, I think it may have been costumes or capes that Jack said could never be changed that wound up changing later.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, Enamel_32 said:

In software, restrictions like this are never impossible to remove, just incredibly difficult. Given enough time and effort it could be done, but often that time and effort is better spent elsewhere, on things that more people are asking for.

Well, depends on your definition of "impossible"

 

In databases there are fields that are known as "keys" it is technically possible to change a key field into a non-key field, but the only way to do it is to drop the entire table and recreate it.

 

I'd say that makes it impossible to change, because recreating a table the with the importance of, say, character information is not worth the risk involved in dropping the table and recreating it.

Edited August 5 by Psyonico

[Jacke]

I have rerolled Characters to change their Origin and nothing else.

 

I think that won't happen again to me.  But I would appreciate the ability to change the Origin of a Character at Null the Gull.

 

Right now, Origin only has bearing on some conversation in a mission or two.  (Used to give access to different special enhancements at Yin's Market, but that was changed.)  But it does matter to me.  And in the past, I didn't get it right.  I try to be very careful about it now.

 

 

Edited August 5 by Jacke

[megaericzero]

5 hours ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

Alignment probably didn't exist as a character flag before Rogue and Vigilante were added; the game likely just checked your archetype to determine if you should be treated as a hero or a villain, as those were side-specific at the time. Tacking those on to the existing character structure would be much easier than trying to change something as fundamental as the live devs alluded to those other things being.

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, megaericzero said:

5 hours ago, Duuk said:

You cannot change alignment. It's one of five things, including AT, primary and secondary, and origin that are baked in and unchangeable. Been that way since live.

 

oh wait.

Alignment probably didn't exist as a character flag before Rogue and Vigilante were added; the game likely just checked your archetype to determine if you should be treated as a hero or a villain, as those were side-specific at the time. Tacking those on to the existing character structure would be much easier than trying to change something as fundamental as the live devs alluded to those other things being.

If you want to go back even further, when the game was just City of Heroes, there were no alignments. You simply had a player character.

[UltraAlt]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

So after character creation, as part of loading your character into the game, the game asks you if you want to do the tutorial with the tutorial determining your alignment or if you want to skip the tutorial at which point you choose your alignment so the game can do your character's initial spawn.

 

Yep,  you choice the Galaxy tutorial, you do chose your alighnment in game.

You also pick your alignment in game if you go Praetorian.

 

However, if you don't pick the Galaxy tutorial or go Praetorian, the last thing that happens while you are still in the character creation window is pick your alignment.

 

 

 

... and then ....  after you pick our alignment ....

 

 

 

... your asked if you want to "Complete character creation and enter the game?"

 

 

 

Edited August 6 by UltraAlt

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

If you want to go back even further, when the game was just City of Heroes, there were no alignments. You simply had a player character.

 

And you were playing "City of Heroes".

The game manual indicates "Creating a hero", and not "Creating a player character".

[Rudra]

25 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

And you were playing "City of Heroes".

The game manual indicates "Creating a hero", and not "Creating a player character".

Because all player characters were heroes. Even if you were making a vigilante or if you were making a demon bound to hunt specific targets (NPC factions) or anything else. All player characters were heroes. However, not a single one of them way back then had an alignment. Because the alignment system wasn't created until City of Villains underwent development.

 

29 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Yep,  you choice the Galaxy tutorial, you do chose your alighnment in game.

You also pick your alignment in game if you go Praetorian.

 

However, if you don't pick the Galaxy tutorial or go Praetorian, the last thing that happens while you are still in the character creation window is pick your alignment.

 

 

 

... and then ....  after you pick our alignment ....

 

 

 

... your asked if you want to "Complete character creation and enter the game?"

 

 

 

Back when the game was just City of Heroes, the only popup choices you had were did you want to enter the tutorial or not (after you at least had a completed character before making another, otherwise you had to play the tutorial), and if you chose not to do the tutorial, if you wanted to start in Atlas Park or Galaxy City. The character creation system did not address alignments because it was not part of the character creation system. There were no alignments because everyone simply had a player character, and as far as the game was concerned, everyone was playing a hero for the sake of the game's story. Then City of Villains was released and the alignment system was added. However, even in character creation as the game is now, the character creator we make our way through for any new character does not incorporate an alignment choice. It is only after you finish creating your character and click the "Next" button to load your character into the game that the popup that lets you choose your alignment if you did not choose to go through any of the tutorials comes up because the alignment choice is required to determine what zone your character will be initially spawned in. For all intents and purposes, that "Hero" or "Villain" button choice is only an "Atlas Park" or "Mercy Island" choice with the alignment being added as part of initial character spawning. (Edit: Which is why your character can enter the Galaxy City tutorial as non-aligned and get their alignment in the tutorial. Otherwise, you would have to pick your alignment as part of character creation and enter the tutorial already a hero or villain.) Because the alignment is not part of character creation, it can be changed. It is tacked on after. (Your character's battle cry and description can be changed because those are just simple text files that don't interact with any of the game's core mechanics. Just something that others can read or something that your character can localize with a key press, but does not interact in any meaningful way with any of the game's actual game play/mechanics. So that being part of the character creator doesn't affect anything and can be changed by the player at will. Anything else that is part of the core character creator cannot be changed. [Edit again: Obviously not counting the costume. I'm referring to the core mechanical parts of your character. The costume also has no meaningful interaction with the game's core game play/mechanics.] So no hitting up Null to change origins. Players simply have to keep their current origin or make the character over again. Just like if they want to change primary power sets, secondary power sets, and ATs.)

 

Edited August 6 by Rudra
Edited to correct "si" to "is".

[Perma-Newbie]

So, to summarize:

 

Things can be changed because the game evolves and changes.  And there is no reason Null shouldn't be able to help you tweak your origin and retcon yourself so you don't have to reroll.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Duuk said:

So, to summarize:

 

Things can be changed because the game evolves and changes.  And there is no reason Null shouldn't be able to help you tweak your origin and retcon yourself so you don't have to reroll.

Except that as per the Live devs, a character's AT, primary power set, secondary power set, and origin are locked and cannot be changed once the character has been finalized/created except by deletion and creation of a new character. Not that they weren't willing. Not that it was not worth the effort. That it simply could not be done with the way the game is designed.

[UltraAlt]

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Because all player characters were heroes.

 

Yes. Exactly.

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Back when the game was just City of Heroes, the only popup choices you had were did you want to enter the tutorial or not (after you at least had a completed character before making another, otherwise you had to play the tutorial), and if you chose not to do the tutorial, if you wanted to start in Atlas Park or Galaxy City.

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Because all player characters were heroes

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

There were no alignments because everyone simply had

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

heroes.

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

However, even in character creation as the game is now, the character creator we make our way through for any new character does not incorporate an alignment choice.

 

Okay. I'll post the images again.

 

 

 

I took these screenshots last night!

 

If you don't go to the Galaxy tutorial or go Praetorian,  you are asked if you want to be a hero or villain and then you - clearly - get a prompt asking you if you want to "complete character creation and enter game?'

 

I don't know how picking an alignment isn't part of the character creator in that instance as you clearly pick an alignment and then ask you if you want to "complete character creation".

I will give you the point that you can't pick rogue or vigilante but don't think you can to that from the Galaxy tutorial or the Praetorian content either. Both of those other option only grant the choice of hero or villain as well when you initially pick an alignment.

 

I know we have had agreements and disagreements in the past, but I'm simply not understanding this where you are coming from, and I don't think this discussion has any need to continue.

 

Feel free to reply, but I won't respond again on this one.

[Greycat]

12 hours ago, Duuk said:

So, to summarize:

 

Things can be changed because the game evolves and changes.  And there is no reason Null shouldn't be able to help you tweak your origin and retcon yourself so you don't have to reroll.

 

No. Please go back and work on your reading comprehension.

[Rudra]

42 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

12 hours ago, Rudra said:

Because all player characters were heroes.

 

Yes. Exactly.

You are misunderstanding me. City of Heroes did not have a Hero alignment that player characters had. All player characters way back then were simply player characters. No Hero alignment. No Vigilante alignment. No anything alignment. All they were, were player characters. The game's story was written from a hero point of view. So by virtue of playing the game and going through the game's story, you had to be a hero. That was the game's story. That was what you had to play. That had nothing to do with any character's alignment. Because the entire game's story revolved around the player assumedly playing a hero, the game manual was written from the point of view that you were going to make a hero and the story itself assumed you were playing a hero. However, there was still no hero alignment. No character had any alignments, it was all just the game's story. When City of Villains underwent development, alignments had to be added to differentiate between hero player characters and villain player characters. It wasn't until City of Villains was added that there was even any alignments for any characters to have. It wasn't until City of Villains was added that player characters could finally actually have an alignment that wasn't simply an assumption from the game's story. So prior to that, there were no player character alignments because there was no reason to devote any code to something the game simply did not need back then.

 

 

49 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

I took these screenshots last night!

I am and already was aware of that. However, what I am trying to point out is that the character creator does not itself include any alignment choices. You do not get any alignment choices until you finish going through all 8 character creation tabs. The alignment choice is fit in between registering your character and loading your character for initial spawn into a tutorial zone or a game zone. And anything past the first 4 tabs of character creation do not interact with the game except in a visual manner. Anything in the first 4 tabs were declared by the Live devs to be something that cannot be changed after character creation except by deleting and remaking the character because of how the game works and was originally designed. Probably because they were figured as essential data for game play. How did that earlier post put it?

 

 

18 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Well, depends on your definition of "impossible"

 

In databases there are fields that are known as "keys" it is technically possible to change a key field into a non-key field, but the only way to do it is to drop the entire table and recreate it.

 

I'd say that makes it impossible to change, because recreating a table the with the importance of, say, character information is not worth the risk involved in dropping the table and recreating it.

Right, that was it. How is the database set up? How can that database be changed? How bad will it fuck up the game trying to do so? (Thanks, @Psyonico.)

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I don't know how picking an alignment isn't part of the character creator in that instance as you clearly pick an alignment and then ask you if you want to "complete character creation".

 

 

Because that was tacked on afterward, when we had alignments to *choose* from. It is not as baked in as origin, AT, primary or secondary.