Developers Corner

In the game I'm designing one of the 10 different species of player characters is a quadruped feline.  Now I feel I've got it fairly balanced in comparison to the other playable races but my playtesters don't seem to favor it to well.

Cons:

1. No hands, so obviously that limits it drastically in the things it can do, especially in a Sci-Fi universe.

2. It can't speak to anyone that isn't psychic. (in the PnP version this isn't a big deal, but in the videogame chat will not show up except for people that have at least a few points in psychic ability)

3. Armor options, while the game its NOT lootcentric in any way, surviving a laser blast without armor on is slim to none.

Pros:

1. Superior psychic ability. Can access more psy abilities earlier than anyone else, and they increase faster than anyone else.

2. Intelligence and wisdom beyond all the other races, and a natural leadership ability increases team skill gains for all that can "hear" them. Means on their own they learn much faster, and in a team the whole team benefits from their knowledge, if you're able/willing to listen.

Psychic ability's can be combined in this design. Meaning you can "cast" a telekinetic force bubble around someone and then an empathic calming bubble and it changes to a generic heal, as an example. (healing in my game is limited to only "psychic" heals which only makes the user think they're not in pain, but after the effects wear off real medical treatment needs to be administered, and you need someone trained in some form of medicine to do this)

A better example of this would be someone trained in pyrokinesis and telekinesis summoning up some fire, encasing it in a tk bubble, and hurling it at someone.

Anyway, with the above pros and cons, what do you think?

I also may need to divulge some storyline but I'll wait to do that if it's needed.

Well, you can circumvent most of the problems with the psychic abilities.

Telekinesis would allow them to do pretty much any action you can with your hands. Except for actually weilding weapons. If players are complaining about lack of weapons, you can always add things that 'strap-on' to their paws.

As for the lack of armor, well, you could always use psychic power to generate shields.

Balancing may be an issue. They could take psychic damage when their shields are active. Or make them expend energy whenever to do anything telekinetically.

Originally posted by GaminKWB

Well, you can circumvent most of the problems with the psychic abilities.

Telekinesis would allow them to do pretty much any action you can with your hands. Except for actually weilding weapons. If players are complaining about lack of weapons, you can always add things that 'strap-on' to their paws.

As for the lack of armor, well, you could always use psychic power to generate shields.

Balancing may be an issue. They could take psychic damage when their shields are active. Or make them expend energy whenever to do anything telekinetically.

I'm not worried about my playtesters to much as they're a small group and the majority of my ideas they love. I'm thinking more of the long term playability of a quadraped race that can't by nature of their own evolution do things that are done by everyone else.  (opposable thumbs?)

Skill sets are different for the most part, some skills are non-existent for this character, but that goes for all races in the game. Different ALIEN mindsets make skills we think as being must haves a non-issue.

I'm not getting my point across satisfactorily enough even for myself.

while tossing in aliens(and their seperate evoloution paths messing thing up a whole lot) I have played around with a griffin avatar in RP areas in second life.   A few of those times being no voice. 

Since everything is from earth that obviously allowed me to emote very 'loudly'(IE some growling type things and even breaking  'traditional' RP rules of forcing minor actions on people), even then some stuff was 'black boxed' through the use of IMs.  If I stuck around I'd probably would have ended up making a bot that was a human and my caretaker(IE something I was in complete control of). 

I'd recommend something along the lines of a few dozen responses that they can use to respond to people, and a way to temporarily buff peoples psy skills even if they don't have them trained.  The last part is mainly because if you get too restrictive people will solely relay on third party tools instead of ingame tools to communicate.

Then you can also consider something along the lines of a few areas having semi-organic tech that's capable of repeating anything the quadruped says (some interesting quest things like the translators lying about what the cat is saying and the cat attempting to steer everyone to the repeaters, would be a good introduce psy abilities to other races quest).

edit: 

as for why their not being favored the biggest thing is the fact that it's not even remotely similar to to a human.  even in second life in fantasy RP areas that have 'voice' on everything that has a human behind it you're looking at about 1 in 12 people playing something that isn't human and out of those 1 in 12 most of them are something like fae(flying elf thingies), mer(maid/man), or whatever else so you're down to about 1 in 50 playing something 4 legged like a dragon in most cases or a shape shifter and most of the time those people are in a human form(I stuck to my small griff form 90% of the time in the RP SIMS and only changed out for something like official duels or dancing which I still don't understand).   This isn't to say that it's a bad design it's actually very good and I would totally play it for a few reasons: you're very different, you're very rare(atleast as a main account), and that it would be an interesting play style(likely similar to a ritualist in guildwars which I'm enjoying).  Oh stats are from actual group data in a few RP SIMS that I remember looking at 6 months or so ago.

then not being able to communicate in an MMO is likely the largest punishment you can give someone short of banning them, even if it plays balanced in everyway it's not balanced in 'funiness'.

a bit too many I and mes for my liking but it's what you asked for.

Hmm, well if you are having faction based PvP here then no; as I would guess that these kind of classes would be drastically underplayed (with no arms and all...)

It is important to make them equal combat wise.  While they gain skills quicker, will they be able to use any skills without the use of arms?  While I know there are no levels, will they be able to match the strength of people who use other classes?

Those are the important thigns to take into consideration.  The fact that they cannot communicate with most people will turn some off immediately.  Then  again, the fact that they learn abilities quicker than others.

My point is, they have to be considered even; it won't be fair if they learn skill too fast, or they can;t use most skills without arms, etc.

I like you guys!

Ok, on with the answers.

paulscott  Thanks for the replies and I do plan to implement /emotes and things like that. My pet cat may not be able to speak to me but I understand to some extent what he wants just by his actions.

A few of the races I've put into my game came out of some of my short stories I used to tell my kids years ago. One of the races, this quadraped, or Mon'Za "Mind". This is actually one race of people, but with 3 sub-species, Mind, Body, and Soul as they call themselves. With the Mind being the leaders, which is why the get a leadership buff. As you can imagine all Mon'Za are psychic to some extent but moving on.

In my stories when dealing with other races, the Mon'Za Mind (the quadrapeds) were able to speak with others, but it would usually inflict pain on the recipients because of the overpowering psy abilities being rammed through their brains.

I toyed around with how to implement something like this but couldn't come up with anything realistic that wasn't nuts.

After I ran into a roadblock on how to make this psychic race able to communicate with non-psys(Only the "Minds" can't speak verbally, the other 2 can speak just fine,,,, sorta) I ran across SWG for the first time.

I logged on to find that while I was trying to skill up my Artisan this wookie dude kept ARWOOOOING me,,,, I finally figured out that he was just as newb as I was and didn't know I couldn't understand him.

So most races in the game won't understand each other anyway, at least not in the beginning and being a hi-tech sci-fi setting I figured there would be translators you could purchase, and at character creation you may if you so choose to do so spend some starting skill points in any language you choose.  You type out something and it pops up as growl growl arwoo or something like that.

This however doesn't do anything for the "Mind".  I want to keep it, well none of it is real but I want to keep it realistic to an extent that you can't understand what they're saying if you have no psy abilities, so maybe adding in more /emotes that pertain to this type of character, or maybe to all characters for folks that like to play mutes. Like covering your mouth and shaking your head no or something like that.

Something else I've toyed with is realistic learning, being around another being who's speaking another language long enough and you gradually pick up on it. With no psy abilities this could translate into flashes of insight along the lines of ,, here's an example of what you might see--

"arwooo growl mmfff snort", I get the feeling they want me to follow them."

what the Mind actually said was "We should go this way" the game picks up on key words, does a quick check of the non psy's stats or time in contact and gives them a "feeling",,,,,,,,,,,, or something .

I played a Mute hobo priest in WoW,(I accepted no drops, and looted nothing, the only things I owned were given to me as donations to the cause of healing the sick)  but people being thick headed didn't quite get it without me drawing them a freakin' picture. Even once I had it all explained in FlagRP folks didn't get it.

mike470

Hmm, well if you are having faction based PvP here then no; as I would guess that these kind of classes would be drastically underplayed (with no arms and all...)

I mentioned that I may need to divulge some storyline in order to answer some questions. The Mon'Za for one don't pick sides. They may fight in pvp and NPC battles, but the NPC government will never choose a side, ever. No matter what happens in the game they will not choose a side. They'll pack themselves up, and leave first. The Mon'Za are not  indigenous to the Patrolled Sectors and can leave just as easily as they arrived.

As far as balancing goes, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yeah you can't fire a laser gun, or wear armor. Who needs them when you can crush a mans skull with a thought, or deflect light as easily as you blink.?

Psy abilitys are on par with their equivalent items in game. To be generic,-- at skill lvl 1 in TK, you'll do as much damage with a TK thrust as you would playing a human shooting stuff with chemically propelled  slug chuckin' pistol. The bonus to having mad psy abilities is the fact that while that human can only shoot things with his pistol at any skill level. You can shield yourself, crush people, throw people, levitate, combine your psy abilities with others and make different effects. Where as a pistol will always be just a pistol.

I know I want them to skill up faster, but I haven't quite nailed down how much faster, and how big a buff it gives other players in their aura.

Posted by developer

 

mike470

Hmm, well if you are having faction based PvP here then no; as I would guess that these kind of classes would be drastically underplayed (with no arms and all...)

 

I mentioned that I may need to divulge some storyline in order to answer some questions. The Mon'Za for one don't pick sides. They may fight in pvp and NPC battles, but the NPC government will never choose a side, ever. No matter what happens in the game they will not choose a side. They'll pack themselves up, and leave first. The Mon'Za are not  indigenous to the Patrolled Sectors and can leave just as easily as they arrived.

 

As far as balancing goes, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yeah you can't fire a laser gun, or wear armor. Who needs them when you can crush a mans skull with a thought, or deflect light as easily as you blink.?

 Well, wouldn't a blinjk be faster than a laser sword.........which could lead to a disadvantage of other classes.

Psy abilitys are on par with their equivalent items in game. To be generic,-- at skill lvl 1 in TK, you'll do as much damage with a TK thrust as you would playing a human shooting stuff with chemically propelled  slug chuckin' pistol. The bonus to having mad psy abilities is the fact that while that human can only shoot things with his pistol at any skill level. You can shield yourself, crush people, throw people, levitate, combine your psy abilities with others and make different effects. Where as a pistol will always be just a pistol.

 

I know I want them to skill up faster, but I haven't quite nailed down how much faster, and how big a buff it gives other players in their aura.

 Well, when a pistol is just a pistol, yet they can blink faster than a pistol can shoot, AND they level faster, isn;t that an unfair avantage when it comes to combat..?  I mean, when people can skil up faster, what is worth being a character that skills slower and has to use a pistol?

Originally posted by mike470

Posted by developer

 

mike470

Hmm, well if you are having faction based PvP here then no; as I would guess that these kind of classes would be drastically underplayed (with no arms and all...)

 

I mentioned that I may need to divulge some storyline in order to answer some questions. The Mon'Za for one don't pick sides. They may fight in pvp and NPC battles, but the NPC government will never choose a side, ever. No matter what happens in the game they will not choose a side. They'll pack themselves up, and leave first. The Mon'Za are not  indigenous to the Patrolled Sectors and can