@Roccandil said in Player Professions and possible implementation idea:
@Flet said in Player Professions and possible implementation idea:
You define things by removing everything they arent, not adding all possibility. Then you just get a nebulous blob identical to all the others.
Hmm. I think philosophically I disagree on some level. But, from the Fractured perspective, there are more quantifiable factors:
Opportunity cost. Even if one toon can potentially be everything, it can't be everything at once. If a toon is being used as the best crafter, it can't simultaneously be gathering or fighting.
In the event that the solution to this is to simply make more characters then effective everyone is everything, and changing characters becomes the equivalent to 'changing stances'. Its not really a difficult thing to change characters in game. If you have a game where you can freely switch like this then you may as well have every character simply doing all things at all times because you effectively have that anyway with a trifle of a technicality.
In that regard, I think the best way to guarantee uniqueness is not to put obstacles or straightjackets on toons and players, but to provide as many options as possible.
Options are when you pick between things. To choose a thing requires not choosing something else. You weigh the pros and cons. In reality there is often no real choice, and correct consideration leads you to an obvious path you are obliged to go down. In a game we desire balance, which is a form of escapism. In a balanced game there are not bad choices but just different experiences.
It is restriction that really gives you those experiences. When you are restricted you must approach any given situation from the perspective of those strengths and weaknesses. The skill and strategy becomes one of figuring out how best to take what you have available to you and 'solve' the problem at hand. In such a game then the correct approach to a situation will vary based on the options you have available to you. One player will not only approach a situation differently from another in a soft sense, but in fact be facing an entirely different situation, because the situation is a combination of those restrictions and the problem at hand interacting generating a different optimal for each player.
The skill in a game with out restrictions simply because a single encounter, and the considerations are not 'how to approach this with my strengths and weaknesses' but 'how to make a character optimized for this'. This dilutes the pool of situations by effectively making them not the number of restrictions * the number of situations, but simply the number of situations.
This is a little more abstract than crafting however. In the end if crafting is a thing everyone eventually maxes, either on a single character or on crafting alts, then crafting simply stops existing. The difference in outcome is no different from if you just gather materials and there is no crafting specialization or leveling at all. Before that point however, you are presented with a crafting system you must grind not to actualize some character ideal, and thus motivate you, but simply as a checkbox you must tic as you are setting up your basic capabilities in the game. Grinding which furthers your character vision is rewarding and satisfying, you enjoy the steady increase in progress towards your goal. Grinding which is a prerequisite however is tedious and painful, because all that effort is not to carve out something, but just to prepare the baseline.
