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What is the Arc Client?
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Race change
bernatk
Member Posts: 1,089 Bug Hunter
Race change?
Race change!
Race change.
Race change please for zen. Ty.
Throw in gender change too please. Ty.
Race change!
Race change.
Race change please for zen. Ty.
Throw in gender change too please. Ty.
Dahar Master Mary Sue Fleet Admiral Bloody Mary
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I see no info on race change there or what do you mean?
And I don't get the need for it either. This isn't a game that's all that much about min/maxing, the differences between one species and another are minimal. If it's for roleplay purposes, make a new character.
I think some are asking for it because they were so impatient with waiting for a Cardassian species to be released that they made an alien gen toon that looked Cardassian. now that they exist, people want a token so they can be a proper Cardassian.
Hey I created a Vorta, and if they do give us playable Vorta I will simply decide if it is worthwhile to delete/recreate or not.
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
Yes, to that I do agree.
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
The day that actual playable Cardassians are released, I'll make another one and I'll give it a different name. I don't see why anyone else would worry about this at all.
Actually, I am not sure about it. It all depends on how similar the engine that STO uses and Neverwinter uses are since Neverwinter allows species changes. If STO's engine is similar enough to Neverwinter's engine, then species changes are possible.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
1: You could dump all the character specific data (outfits/traits/etc) without dumping bank/inventory content, then take the player to the character creation screen. The player then effectively rebuilds the character, that's something that should be doable.
2: You do it through the ticket system, might take some time to process, but it gets sent to a team that has the power to make changes to the database, they can build a new character in a separate environment, then transfer that data to the player.
I don't think it's impossible to do, there should be ways, it just depends on if there is value in working on implementing a solution. Which there probably isn't, so they haven't done it.
1. Assuming that the back-end doesn't make more references to player species than see in visible content. If it does then doubling back on character creation is still going to break things. Developmental hierarchies are complicated (it's a branching series of interdependencies, similar to gene interactions in biological development) and the best way to make changes it to create a whole new individual or focus on downstream changes. STO probably needs to be rebuilt to preserve the original modularity of species options to make changing them after the fact viable (essentially what we've been told in the past, this is an FCT.
2. Dev time spent manually changing player species is time not spent on other dev things. Ex. content and bug fixes. I really don't want people taken off Cryptic's staff (or new hires wasted not working on the game) to manage a QoL feature like this. That's definitely a no-go.
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1: I've not really seen anywhere in the game where it references your character, outside of loading into the tailor and checking what ships you can use. So as long as the change is within the faction you are a part of, and not a faction change, it shouldn't cause too many mistakes. Ideally, every component is separate, and referenced, rather than interconnected through various files, but that depends how it is all built! If they are all deeply connected, then yes, this path wouldn't work.
2: You don't need devs to work on it, just trained support staff, who have a basic set of tools. The tools would have to be created, but once created, you can train staff to use them. But that comes down to cost of hiring more staff, and investing time into building the tools and training.
1. That's the point, we players don't see it but that doesn't mean that references or other dependencies aren't being made in the game's code. This is a case of arm chair game development, based on our perspective we might think something should be easy (taking systems completely empirically) but as it turns out it's more complicated. Species is a core option that's embedded deeply into the working of the game. We have been told this explicitly by the devs. We might not appreciate why, but it's difficult to argue against it because we comprehensively lack the support or justification to claim otherwise (apart from making the unsubstantiated assumption that the devs working on the game know less about it's inner workings than we do on the outside.)
So, it's something we just have to take as is. There's no easy fix for species changes. Options have been explored, none have been found viable. Unless Cryptic revamps the character creation system (a la Neverwinter) it's probably not going to happen.
2. It's still new hires and money wasted to manually manage a slight quality of life feature, and do nothing else. One staffer is not likely to be significantly cheaper than, say, an entry-level bug tester. Which do you honestly think will have a greater contribution to the success of the game? Will it be at all a positive move for the studio to hire on a staff of species changers when the devs are doing as much as they can to meet content deadlines and fix bugs? Any amount of money spent on any other cause is a infinitely greater investment. This suggestion is a non-starter, if an automated solution can't be found then species changing simply isn't an option.
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And I add my opinion that this should be addressed in the FCT's, as this is 3rd time in a month this has come up.
1: I'm basing my assumption on the way I have coded things, although my level of knowledge is limited, and I haven't done software programming, it made more sense to keep things quite modular. So if you make a user profile page, each element that makes it up can be separate, so they can be updated without needing to update the whole of the profile page code. I mean, the devs will know more about the game, unless it's something that has been lost, like demorecord. Maybe it isn't possible to dump data, or maybe it's just not cost effective to code a way to dump player data and rebuild it, cost is the main factor I think.
2: Of course, it costs money, but they would be doing general support work as well as specialised work. It just depends on what the deemed value is in training/hiring people to do this.
I'm not saying either of these solutions are worth it, or viable, just putting up two possible solutions. I don't care one way or the other for changing species, I personally think that the cost of implementing something would not have a high return on investment.
The issue I think is that after spending tons of real money on character bound items, and then having a species you've always wanted (and possibly been pretending to be with aliengen) finally get released, the subsequent need to spend all that money again to get those ships and items on the species you want is enough to make you just say forget it and stick with what you already have.
There are other ships you could use for a theme like that though. A better example is what I did with my Delta recruit, I spent a ton of cash getting a Jem'Hadar Strike Ship, JHDC, and Jem'Hadar Lobi uniforms, and that monetary commitment means I'll never consider making a real Dominion character even if my preferred race, Vorta, were to become a playable option.
Now, since the code makes race changes unfeasible the other option is to introduce a way to unlock some of these things account wide.
Well that's the problem: it apparently isn't a modular system. Cryptic built that into their subsequent game (Neverwinter) but STO was designed with fixed character attributes in mind. Who know how much the original developers built downstream from those initial decisions (in generating and managing your character data). Well...modern Cryptic (hopefully) but the saying stands.
The easiest way to effectively change a character's species is to start over completely from scratch. We might imagine a system that takes all of your character's data, copies what doesn't relate to your species (inventory, resources, XP, crew, ships, accolades, ect.) and then effectively applies that to a new character...but how easy that is depends on how simply the system was laid out and whether such a copy-paste operation can in fact be setup in the character creation process. From what we've been told: it's very complicated and the incentives to Crpytic (ie. player satisfaction and monetization of the feature) aren't sufficient to invest in replacing the current character creation system (a major project, replacing something else Cryptic could be working on, and carrying with it the substantial possibility of introducing new bugs to core systems.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!