Forums: General Aethora Chat

Is there a way to delete characters from your groups? I decided to remove some of the ones I have and wanted to replace them with others.

The way character development works, there’s not really any reason to delete a character. The “classes” are just to get you started, but if you decide to advance a character in a different direction, you just have to give them different equipment and start using new skills. The skill bonuses given to the classes at the beginning are really pretty small and can be achieved in a battle or two.

You can rename and/or change the image for a character at any time from that character’s details screen. To get there, go to Party on the menu, then just click “equip” next to a character’s name.

But if I accidentally click and create a charakter of a type I dont wont it would be much less work just to delete the character, than to go out and find the equipment I would need.
So it may be possible to train it the way, I want to have it, and change the equipment, but it would be much more work, then just delete it and create a new one…

Huh.
When I started this game, we had no character types.
We all started with no equipment, and with 10 in every skill.
The first elemental weapon I had was after I left the city.

Count your blessings.

Well then I’m happy, that I got a better start than you.
If the option to delete Characters will be implemented in a month or two it will have not much use for me. But for new players who will start after the new feature was written.
And than they can be happy, that they get a better start than me.

That there was a time when it was worse is no reason, not to create a better future.

True.
However, it’s not really all that hard to get the weapons you want and to raise the skills you want.

Think about it this way:
What is worse? Choosing the wrong class when you create a new character and being unable to delete it, or accidentally deleting a character you worked months on?

What I’m saying is that there’s no real NEED for a delete button, since you can always switch weapons and train new skills, and that the delete button might cause even worse problems then it solves.

Although I, like Tremir, belong to those who started “in a time before there were starting classes”, my point of view is slightly different, as I do not see any use or benefit in the starting classes at all. (READ: While I am happy for everyone who appreciates the starting classes, they have not improved the game a bit in my opinion, and thus I can’t pull the “back when I started, it was worse”-point. The only drag in that system was, that the first two fights only allowed for brawling-grappling combos, as ALL characters had only bare fist/bare fist. That was TWO fights – one with character 1-4, one with 5-8.) The equipment, especially equipment of that level as you start with, is easily and cheaply available on the players market, and after a couple of fights – one or two, maybe five to ten, tops – any advantage the starting class would give you is WAY outgrown by the character improvement.
Thing is: Active and Passive skills are bound to each other. If one increases too much, the other will level up as well. This essentially means two things: Given time, and fights, characters will steadily become better in ALL of their active skills, as their passive ones rise due to attacks. Second, if you change a characters weaponry and fight style, he will still benefit from his old fighting style by having a larger passive skill in it and thus a better defense against such kinds of attacks.
Plus, the higher the difference between your skill level and that of the enemy, the more likely your skill level will increase. The last advantage is that an already existing character who buys a weapon from the market or finds one, will likely have a better weapon than the starting weapon, and even more likely a better armor as well!

Plus: As you can change name and appearance of the character at any time…
And all the leveling is really not that hard, it even works still if you’re around the 70-80 skill levels and choose to change one characters weapon to a skill he has never trained, which is thus still like 30-40. The result? If only one of his classes is changed, he still takes advantage of the other weapon (especially on combos involving the still-in-place old skill and the new one), if the change is only small (long blades to short, or blades to blunt…) he or she still takes advantage of the training in the “higher branches” (Melee/Metatherics, maybe plus the level below) aaand… as long as you don’t change all the skills of all your characters, he is still supported by a good team, likely gaining a level in every single one of his “new” abilities affected with every single action he does involving these.

Thus, there is no need, and worse, not even a use, to a deletion button. The starting classes are very limited in everything, have only minimal bonuses and maluses/penalties (yeah, I know, it’s boni and mali technically, in latin) that, once you have mastered your first handful of fights, can mostly be ignored.
Equipment of the quality the starting classes have equipped costs 1-5 gold the piece on the players market, and there is much better stuff available for little more money.

And in addition to this, the starting characters don’t use the ideal skill combinations.
I haven’t really looked at them, but I saw one class with a short blade-club starting combo, which as far as I can tell is useless.

A large part of the early game fun for me was finding which combos worked best for me, and which didn’t.

There is an easy way to prevent, deleting a character accidentally: a textfield, were you have to type “KILL” or “DELETE” or something, so you can’t delete a Character by hitting the button accidentally.

When I started and created my characters I had no real idea how this game works. I hit a button and then thought “oh, that was the wrong one! How can I undo it?” And there was no way. Only becouse I thougt, I may just have overseen the butten and looked in the forum I found out, that it is not that hard to skill another way. But I was close to exit the game and never come back. If you want this game ever become popular, you should prevent to discourage new players in this way.
After I read, that I only have to buy other equipment, I went to the market and there was – no fire item – no flesh item – no stone item. Well … happy hunting! Come and find some. I still didn’t get more flesh or stone items, than I got at the beginning, so please tell me again, it is so easy to reskill and there is no need for that button.

Okay, if you’re after Stone/Flesh (and Plant, maybe, too) that’s a different thing. Those were considered advanced enough back in the days… much like Mindwind, Airwind and Gravity are today (which you can’t take as starting class, and which you have to reskill later, when you happen to stumble across an appropriate weapon). Can’t see why you shouldn’t find fire weapons, though. They were lootable in abundance normally…

And well, back in the days, people would sell much more stuff… as newcomers wouldn’t start equipped already, so more stuff would actually get bought. (And subsequently, as it’s all a matter of supply and demand, more stuff would get sold, too!) If today, you get some Kratian weapons, or Plateney Stuff, (READ: the highest/best stuff in the game, currently) and you post it on the market for barely above minimum price (like: Minimum Price is 91 gold, and you put it on for 100 or 120), and even advertise it, you’ll still have to wait a good week to have everything sold. Maybe I should go and get some Flesh, Stone and Fire weapons to put on the market…

EDIT: I’ve seen that I still have some throwaway equipment of the named classes, so I’ve put a fire, a stone and two flesh weapons on the market for prices between 30 and 50 (should be affordable) Minimum Prices for all was between 20 and 40, btw.

Yeah. the main problem with leaving something in the market is that you have to leave a character with it.
And since most mid-level and higher players don’t hunt in the Hopitan area, leaving a character there is a major problem.

I, too, have some spare equipment I can sell, and would gladly sell it cheaply to new players.
They’re remarkably easy to come by once you can fight higher-leveled enemies.

There. posted some relatively high-end items, for minimal prices.

I agree with Kran and tremir, with how simple it is to go out and loot equipment you really shouldn’t have any problem finding the gear you need to respec a toon. Just because some of the skills dont have “low end” weapons and arent available for a while except through starting gear shouldn’t force Sheck to throw in a delete character button/field

if this causes new players to quite then they really dont have the patience for this game anyways… I try to rotate the gear I loot and sell so there should always be some stuff you want on the market, or is on it’s way. Eventually it’ll be easier, once more players join there will be more buyers and more players will start selling stuff.

There are hundrets and hundrets of browsergames and if I try out one of them to see, if it is good and it discourages me within the first 2 minutes before I really understood the gameplay it is not necassary a lack of patience that makes me stop playing.
If I have the choice, which class I want to create it suggests that this choice makes a difference. If it doesn’t matter, how you all say, than why do I have to decide?

In the long run, it doesn’t matter.
You won’t be using the starting equipment for long, and the skill bonuses given by the classes can be easily equated by a few battles.

In the short run, it’ll help you learn about the different skills and actions faster, and make the first few battles easier.

I understand your frustration Thyl. As the others have said, it used to be there were no starting classes or equipment. But, as you say, there are hundreds of browsergames out there and if a player gets turned off right away, it’s easy for them to walk away and go to the next game. In fact, that’s the whole reason I introduced classes to begin with. While I like that the game is pretty unique in the sense that it is classless, people who are used to jumping into an RPG might give it more of a chance if they had some pseudo roles to start with. Also, as Tremir points out, it allows us to introduce a wide variety of possible actions to a new player right off the bat (before that, I saw people try the game and quit before they got any interesting equipment because they thought the game was all about brawling).

Back to the character deletion thing – I’m not really sure how to solve that problem, and I’m open to suggestion. See, the way it is now, if I were to just enable character deletion, there’s a bit of an exploit that would arise. You get equipment when you create a new character, so if you were to create a character, you could sell that equipment, then delete the character, repeating the process indefinitely. Sure, you only get 1 gold per piece of equipment, but in the beginning a bunch of extra gold might be an unfair advantage. So here are some options:

• Make newbie equipment “unsellable” (the concept of equipment that can’t be sold, traded or dropped has always turned me off and I’ve been fighting to avoid it)
• Make newbie equipment “worthless”, selling for 0 gold (it’s similar to above except I don’t have to worry about making it “unsellable”, rather it’s just not worth anything, but you can sell it anyway if you really want. I don’t know if this would frustrate players or not…)
• Limit the number of “re-rolls” – in other words, you can only delete each character once, or use X number of deletions throughout the party (it means adding another field to track number of re-rolls, but that’s not a big deal)
• Only allow people to delete characters before they fight their first battle (this would probably be sufficient for most players, but there would be some who only create 4 PCs at the start and want to create more later, and then the same problem could arise)

Any other ideas?

I guess, Thyl, the most appropriate way of saying how much the class selection does impact the game is “the longer in the game you are, the less it does matter” – it does affect your first battle the most, your second possibly already less (that is, if you don’t play your first four characters for the first battle, and your second four for the second), and so on. After a couple of battles, the speed with which the impact of the class selection diminishes increases, it really is already a lot less important after five or six battles, even. After the ten, maybe 15 battles, you barely even notice it, and after 20 or so battles, longer in the game, when the missions start, you likely won’t be able to tell anymore – your adventurer may be a better swordfighter than your warrior from start, and your elementalist may have changed into an avatar of destruction, compared to whom your former volcan, now a defensive support character, seems like a shy rabbit or something.

But now, to the four ideas already mentioned by Sheck:
1 – not a good idea. Never implement something you fight against.
2 – better, but seems like some sort of cheap buy-out for 1.
3 – possibly the best solution, I’d like the second variant better than the first, if any.
4 – doesn’t really make sense. I guess half of the wishes to delete a character come from making one, and not being able to use it the way desired in combat, so making characters only deletable before combat… would be somewhat redundant.

I do have something to remark, about NPC traders offering a selection of “starting equipment” at somewhat fairer prices (still a bit high, so players selling comparable stuff might still make a little profit at least) … that comes from the discussions on market and economy over at the test server. Not sure if that is appropriate for here (it’s a long and tedious discussion, with no true results as of now).

as another possible option, we could always get rid of the classes but give people some starter gear, like 4 metatherical coils and a couple clubs a couple swords and what not, let people switch them around and make there own “classes” you could give some suggestions and use pop up reminders to lead players into there equipment and inventory page and tell them to test it in the training arena for a few battles and see what they like

How about this:
A new Character is not created with fixed attributes, but the player has some freedom to configure the starting attributes with a point-system.
There are some predesigned “Classes” which set the attributes based on the system, so new players don’t have to think much about how exactly the skills work but can find it out while playing.
Any characters can be deleted anytime.
There is a shop with some starting equipment, which is sold and bought at the same price, so it can be switched without any extra cost.
Every new player gets enough money to equip 8 characters with 1 or two items (lets say 12 Gold if every item has a price of 1 Gold)

good:
Deleting and recreating could be done without getting new equipment, so it can not be abused.
Any new player sees, that there is no unflexible charactersystem, but has an idea, how to create i.e. a healer or a fighter.
New Players can test out configurations without any losses.
bad:
the items contained in the startingpool would not be traded on the market, because no one would sell it with a price lower than the fixed and no one would buy it for a price higher than the given.
The screen would be some work to do.