After painstakingly thinking for, oh, about 2.5678291 minutes, I realized how great it would be if we could transfer skills from one character to another. I know vIce is player-run, but would there be any way to implement this idea into the game as some similar form of vIce? I've got two main chars I normally play, one more a little bit more than the other. I've only gotten to 1 level on one char. (will improve over several weeks) but the other one has none yet. I want to transfer some of the few skill points I have (will get bigger) to my other char. so that I won't have to waste as much time botting and carrying cargo around. Please get back to me if you can, even though this sounds kind of hard to do. Thanks.

Agreed; the skills should be player-bound, not character-bound. The game allows for a player to have 6 characters, but even leveling one up is so damn frustrating... It's hard to support a second undercover/spy char when it takes ages to level up in the first place.

Also, as someone (I believe it was ciuciu) noted: when you ask someone's charinfo, it displays his levels... That's nobody's business. If someone scans me they might find out what ship I'm flying and deduce from that, but they got no business nosing around in my records to see what level I am at combat/liwep/hewep/trading. Besides, it's unrealistic. Do you really think pilots in the future would regard their privacy to be of so little value that they frickin' broadcast their whole skillset and high school grades to the enemy?

I'm sorry, but I think that's ridiculous. I'm not known for giving even pretty good ideas a fair shake, so you can take this with a grain of salt, but that idea is so polarly opposed to the whole concept of an RPG that I don't even see why I should explain that its bad.

i'm totally in agreement with celebrim here. IMO that is the single worst thing that Guild could do to the character system. I LIKE the idea that not many people will have secondary characters. Besides, when guildsoftware has a pay to play system in, they will WANT people to spend lots of time to make a second character. thats more hours playing, more time spent, more $$ from a greater number of months subscription.

Michael: That is the worst idea I have ever heard.

Samir: Yes. . . horrible. . . this idea.

While I do agree this goes against the concept of RPGs, I feel there should be a way that people can switch nations without having to start from scratch, and that for some purposes some people who might want to conceal their true identity can do so without having to make a new char and level it up from scratch.

On the other hand I also like the idea of not many ppl having more than one char; it's hard enough already to tell whether you know someone or not. Lots of people I know changed their ingame names so now when I see them I don't know it's them, and vendetta feels kinda empty... Lots of "noobs", few people I know. Many of those so called noobs are in fact old comrades or esteemed enemies, but I wouldn't know since they started new chars.

But I still like the idea of people assuming false identities to do some spying/infiltration/whatever without losing their skills in the process... After all, just because I do some covert work for the government with a false ID card in real life doesn't mean all of a sudden I forget how to drive a car.

Maybe the devs could just allow less characters per account? Two to three, make leveling a bit harder and more time consuming when you got more than one char, but allow for keeping the skillset of the different chars in sync. This way you could simultaneously level two chars, but it would take say 1.2 times the time required for leveling one, or level 3 chars in double the time it takes for one. There's still a significant penalty associated with multicharring, but it is possible for those who really want to do so.

"I feel there should be a way that people can switch nations without having to start from scratch"


Well duh, you know that thing, called the faction system? Yeah, just piss of your own nation and you may be recruited by another nation. Of course we just have the basic faction at the moment, but it will be possible in the future. But don't think it's gonna be easy to just switch, it will take time and will have it's consequences.

You seem to be so sure of this. Please mail me your design docs, so I can read exactly which features the devs will and won't implement, so I can stop making stupid suggestions.

What, you don't have the design docs already? I thought everyone had them! Sheesh, but you're out of the loop.

I STRONGLY disagree. this brings back the days of character hopping again. **** that. it leads to cheap gameplay.

Well, maybe you're right; it does have it's downsides as well.

How about we do it so that you get penalized somewhat for switching skills, and you can't transfer all of your skills? Then people would...oh, nevermind. You can decide on what you feel and keep it that way.

Transferring skills is a bad idea. It undermines the entire concept of a RPG. For example, say you spend 3 years learning to program ANSI C, okay? Then, you go press a button, and you friend can magically program ANSI C just as well as you? Umm....

/transferskill "Phoenix" (7/6/6/5)
/explode
/logoff

Rogue: I see it more like: You, Bill Pratt, spent 3 years learning Ansi C. Then you enter Russia with a false pasport; now your name is Harvey Meyers, and you wouldn't know the first thing about coding Ansi C because you left that skill in your other pasport.

But anyway, since I don't have a strong opinion either way, both approaches have their merits, I don't really care.

Ahh, i see what you are going for Nighty, you dont want to be able to transfer your skills, you want to be able to change your name/nation. I'm sure the devs will have something planned for that.