Feedback talk:User/Ouatis/The Ability to Change Your Class

Done properly, this can work. I applaud your desire for a more convenient system balanced by how you don't want such a feature to cheapen the game experience or provide people with an exploit. Dropping character level down and providing a different track for his or her completed and available quests shows a lot of foresight. Executed carefully, this will even work with GW2's Personal Storyline; where the Personal Storyline will provide a specific bunch of quests tailored to a character, all that is needed is to track different quests according to the profession currently active.

I must point out:

• 1. Character appearance, especially body size and type, is based on one's race, not profession. You can make a big, tall Thief and a tiny Warrior. Of course, this wasn't really part of your main point...
• 2. In GW1, if a players is in a Guild or a Friend List, they would always be identifiable to others even when they changed character. For example, if you become a friend of mine under the character "Alpha", when you switched to your alt "Beta", you would appear in my Friend List as "Beta (Alpha)". Long story short, I'd know it was you. I'm sure ANet is carrying this over to GW2, especially where it can help stop or kill trolls.
• 3. Advice from a fellow writer: I know about the desire (or compulsion) to be as descriptive as possible. However, more often than not, all those extra words just get in the way. Editing is a vital skill for any writer's refinement; restraint is a very practical modern day virtue.

I hope all goes well for your suggestion! --Messenger 16:40, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Class changing is something I would definitely want, especially since having a second profession won't be possible, because the professions have unique mechanics. Profession changing should also be difficult and limited (though not requiring RL cash). I see two possibilities:

1. Make it so that players can only change professions to something in their same class (scholar, adventurer, warrior). This would make it easier to change armor when switching professions. (though you would need to store extra weapons and whatnot at your home instance)
2. Allow players to select a secondary profession to be able to change to at their home instance. This way, they could easily have all of their items and stats pre-set into the secondary profession. This would also be nice because there are 5 character slots and 8 professions, allowing everybody to get a taste of everything.

Kormon Balser 23:03, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Great replies, guys. Really appreciated.

I didn't think of how character names work in GW. True, if character "Alpha" were added to a friendlist, character "Beta" on the same account would indeed be "Beta (Alpha)" on that same list. Assuming it's the same in GW2, that does help to an extent. And yeah, I should practice decreasing my text amounts.. heh.

The fact that there are 5 character slots but 8 professions is a great point. That really adds to my desire of being able to change profession. I think the primary reason that this would not be a feature, is due to lack of actual experience with it, and belief that it would ruin some aspects of the game. But the truth is it doesn't really change anything; it just allows you to keep the same name floating above your head, and lets your progress all be stored in one place, instead of making an alt named "Alphaa" who looks precisely the same as his Warrior cousin, but wields a staff and spells instead of a greatsword and melee abilities.

One more thing; I imagine ANet may see it as a negative thing that players may not need to purchase as many character slots, and that they will lose profits. But not to worry; those players who choose to play on a single character will still want "mules", characters who carry gear and other items as an extra item bank, which is needed a little extra when you might have multiple sets of gear for several professions.

Ouatis 22:29, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

One good reason to implement your suggestion: No one really knows what classes will work well with them until they've had some significant experience with that class or the game in general. Even experienced MMO players can end up abandoning the first (or even second) character they made in an MMO to play something else. Differences in game mechanics can mean that a veteran Warrior player from one MMO can end up struggling with the Warrior class of another.

Result: In trying a new class to figure out what's right for them, they end up doing the same quests and tasks they'd already done before. Tedium and repetition are the enemies of fun.

Sure, they can pick a different race so that they won't have to repeat quests they already did with a previous character, but it's quite possible that they're already happy with the race they chose and want to stick to it.

This link will take you to an article from a World of Warcraft blog that is greatly pertinent to this suggestion. This phenomenon is common not just in WoW; I experienced it in GW1. I'm even worried I'm going to repeat it in GW2 despite already planning out my characters.

Your suggestion can thus save players time, effort- and even protect them from heartbreak where creating a character often involves emotional investment. I've had characters I ended up not liking and playing but whom I couldn't bear to delete.

--Messenger 12:51, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Aye, that's true. I can think of another reason this would be wanted. I once leveled a support-class to be able to assist my guild's activities better due to our shortage of such classes, and rarely did I get to bring my damage dealing professions along. If it wasn't for the fact that I was still on the same character, all of my own rewards and drops would've had to be for my support class, which I was only playing for the benefit of my guild, and my preferred classes would rarely ever advance.

--Ouatis 19:33, 21 December 2011 (UTC)