My feelings on character creation

[Gonshu]

First of all I want to aplogize in advance if something I write down is not clear enough, english it's not my native language and I can do some vocabulary/grammar mistakes.

 

Second, this far I have only really played the ranger class, so I am not aware of all classes ingame posibilities. Have in mind I will be talking from that perspective, just consiering character creation.

 

Third, there is a lack of tooltips everywhere during the creation, in the second step you are making choices on modifiers that you don't know what they do modify, so a tooltip would be helpful in these cases.

 

That said, here I go:

 

GENDER PICK

 

Nothing odd about it. I LOVE the fact that there is an explanation of the role of each gender within the diffent cultures.

 

RACE PICK

 

Race modifies attributes and subrace adds up an ability. An odd thing I see here is that human subraces making no difference but background, making the only race where subraces have no effects. This raises for me the question: "Does subrace will change the interaction you will have with NPC during the game?"

 

Then I would have treated godlike in a lot different way that they are treated.

As I see it, Godlike are not a race on their own, they are other races persons which have been gifted on birth. In the creation you allow to pick in which race is based the character but it has no effect on anything. I think this in concept is really strange, so a Aumaua blessed by the moon god has lost his might? weird. It is also weird that all Godlike have the same modifications (this is also argable to all subraces)

I am not going to enter in how would I fit it into the UI, but I would make the godlike race to modify attributes and add the ability depending on the race you pick. For instance (just a sample of what I have in mind):

I pick a fire godlike which gives +1 to Might -1 to Constitution, plus the ability.

Then I pick to be a Aumaua which gives me the +2 Might bonus.

Ending up with a +3 Might and -1 Constitution

 

To finish this section I want to congrat you for the Aumaua and Orlan work, the first I thought I was going to dislike them and after seing them I have to say I really like them, also good job making hobbits/gnomes more appealing.

 

CLASS PICK

 

Ok, I will sepparate the classes in 3 groups: Flavored, Single path and Customizable.

 

Flavored: Paladin and Cleric

You pick a flavor subclass that makes you feel better what kind of character you are creating. I don't know if the choice changes anything (not afaik) but at least you have a better defined of what your character is or his motivations. It would be nice that they add up an ability or something, but making flavor is good enough for me.

 

Single path: Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Ranger, Rogue

As you can imagine what I said above raises me the question, why did not they do flavor with this class list. This classes have no customization, neither in abilities nor flavor. I don't know if there is a plan to add up subclasses.

 

In my particular case I was VERY dissapointed on how the Ranger class is represented this far. In roleplaying I always made my main character an archer, and I really dislike that in the character creation I was pushed into a hunter/beastmaster, there is no other shooting based class and the only one that exists forces me into that :/

It comes a bunch of subclasses to my mind: Beast master, Archer, Gunslinger, to name some.

 

The same can be done for the rest of the classes on this list, Fighter (Gladiator, Legionnaire, Guard), Barbarian (Launch random tribe names here), Monk (Rising sun, Palm strike, etc etc school) and Rogues (Assasin, Thief, Smuggler).

 

Even if it is only for flavor it will be worth and please don't force rangers to pick a companion yes or yes, otherwise make it posible to build a ranged type out of the Fighter class.

 

Customizable: Cipher, Wizard, Druid and Chanter

This are customizable because are the only ones that allow you to pick abilities that customizes your character on the gameplay direction you want to give them, I would rather make to choose a subclass and set abilities based on the one you choose but you are more or less able to do that how the characters are created and you don't close the options for less roleplaying persons (you want to launch illusions and firebolts? got it!)

 

ATTRIBUTES PICK

 

I like the idea of being able to distribute an amount of points as you wish. This is very classical and it works perfectly, you can't create overpowered characters as with random re-dicing and it forces you to make hard choices. Or it would force you if all attributes where as much important.

Sadly, as some people has already stated, Perception and Resolve are not as appealing as the rest

 

What I would make:I would make perception to affect the critical hit chances and or damage, it completely fits with the description of the attribute and would open up a whole new range of choices between the classes, do I prefer a character that does more sustained damage or do I prefer a character tha can get a huge damage explosion.

 

On Resolve I would make it to affect attack speed, I see someone with high resolve as someone vigorous, maybe they don't hit you as hard as someone with high might, but they hit and hit and hit, and their pace does not slow down because they are resolved! I hope you get the idea. Another approach would be to give resolve some sustainability modifier, maybe you can beat them down, but they will get on their feet again!

 

The rest of them are appealing enough to not need a modification. Since I don't know how much they modify dialogues/situations I won't say anything, but I REALLY like the idea that every attribute has it's own dialogues and that they are not necessarily the best option (they can be even the worse sometimes) and also LIKE that sometimes some attribute checks are done when picking some dialogues.

 

CULTURE PICK

 

I LOVE this section, I love that you pick the region you are from (and that the lifestyle of that region affects your attributes) and also that you can pick the Background, don't know if it is only for flavor or it actually modifies anything withing the game, but I love it!!! Nothing bad to say about this section.

 

APPEARANCE PICK

 

Well, I think this section is very in early stage, I really hope that there are much more choice options than the current ones, specially portrait wise. I like that there are some basic portraits with modification and hope that in the future are enough options both in color, body parts and portraits to at least pick one you enjoy.

 

VOICE PICK

 

Same as above, hope to see more options!

 

 

And that is all, these are my impressions on the character creation, hope it helps!!

 

 

 

[haffu]

I am very dissapointed that Fighter class is forced to play melee character. I allways like to play archer based on fighter class.  Also I would like to see more variation of how I can play my characters in same classes. Now the combat seems to be always forced to take a certain path.