I’m totally with you here. If I had to make a choice…
This is by the way the WOW system, in which 13 million people timewise were happy with. Of course there are some “profession” overlap between races. Just to mention.
So generally, it’s not a bad thing for lots of people. I guess, it’s just a problem, if you are able to discuss. Bet, all of us would play the game even, when there are race based professions
Even though, I’d also like to have a free choice of skin / skilltree combination.
True statement, even though people are free to choose their “skin” with or without skill tree caps.
Picking your profession before you start playing is a pretty common choice in an RPG. You read through the descriptions and pick one that sounds good. This system is also why people have alts.
An open ended system allows you to be and do what you want without needing to switch characters. This system worked well for Asheron’s Call many years ago and it works well for EVE Online right now.
Most games have like 8 or so professions, allow you have up to 2, and allow you to freely switch. If we went with Ben’s first thoughts and had a number of races with predetermined professions, it’d greatly restrict the number of choices and combinations available.
Reading through the Boundless professions and picking your three before playing seems fine to me. Tying these professions to race does not. That’s where I think the difference is.
Just to note: Profession =/= Class. In WoW and similar games, you choose your class before you’re able to play. Boundless doesn’t really have a class system. You start as sort of an empty canvas and use your professions to shape your character instead of starting out with the outlines of a painting or something and using professions to fill in the lines.
I’d still argue that they’re separate if only because you cannot change classes in WoW and can change professions in Boundless. I’ll agree that they’re similar and have the same weight (although to be fair professions seems more like the class while talents seems to be more akin to the skill-tree skills). But not comparable.
Well I guess (and hope) that if you switch your profession, you’ll not be able to transport the progress from old into antoher new profession (like in most other games).
So basically you have to decide for a profession once (like for a class in wow). And if you want to change your profession, you have to gain progress from zero in that profession.
So it’s still very comparable. Because you of course in other games can also start a new game, with a new class. From zero. Just with the difference, that maybe your skin changes.
Don’t a lot of discussions like these really revolve around the design of the rest of the game as much as with the potential open/closed usage racial stats and skill trees?
If you design a game where people are able to easily switch between characters, that’s how people will be happy using it. If you design a game where you reward spending more time working on a single character (for example, with very slow and gradual skill progression), people will lean towards wanting more flexibility within that favourite character(s).
What about beacons? Is that system under development with the intention that you’ll probably make many characters so that you can beacon off enough area for a number of projects? If that’s the general idea, then limiting the capacity of any single character to learn skills makes sense. People will end up with a wide breadth of varied characters. On the other hand, if you’re looking to limit the number of people with beacons plopped all over the place, making a one or two characters the more appealing choice by opening up their options per character makes more practical sense.
As to Race abilities… I’d still prefer not to feel that my choices are limited to specific races for specific professions, but that’s a personal opinion and not a deal breaker.
