A Rather Silly Profession Changing Idea

Hello,

I thought of a really odd Profession change mechanic.

Here is how it goes:

1 - You cannot change armour class (Lights stay light etc as you are changing the Magic you have access to, not Your entire character)

2 - To change you must complete a really hard, long, boring challenge each time you want to change just so that people don't CONSTANTLY change.--- Such as Maybe to change to Elementalist you must kill 1000 Fire elementals, ice elementals, air elementals and earth elementals, Or djinns, with a staff equipped in , maybe one day, so it's challenging.

3 - You cannot freely swap back to your old profession, you must re-do the challenge each swap.

4 - to start, and finalise swaps you must talk to a profession training NPC,

5 - There possibly will be a monetary cost ( like 100 gold ) to even further prevent easily swapping, like pay 100g to the trainer, Do the challenge(s), go back to the trainer, and they will teach you.

6 - to keep track, the "achievement" for swapping to X prof would award 0 AP and be infinitely repeatable.

7- When you change, all your Hero Points for all specialisations are refunded, so if you swap BACK to what you were, you have to re-learn the traits and skills.

I feel that this silly idea would help a few people enjoy the game a BIT more, such as myself, as though I do like certain characters as professions, some People, like myself, might want a specific character to be something else, Like your first character is e.g. a warrior, you want to change them into a guardian so that you can stay as "your" character, and feel like youaccomplished something.

Or you can use what's already in game and make a new one who looks the same and has similar name. It will even take less time to get map completion compared to all those tasks you mentioned.

And the best part: you can swap for free, at any time.

@"steki.1478" said:Or you can use what's already in game and make a new one who looks the same and has similar name. It will even take less time to get map completion compared to all those tasks you mentioned.

And the best part: you can swap for free, at any time.

a few flaws 1 - the name, 2 - the birthday, and 3 - the whole "this character is mine" thing, making a new one to replace the old doesn't fix it, which I why I put this idea in the first place.

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@"steki.1478" said:Or you can use what's already in game and make a new one who looks the same and has similar name. It will even take less time to get map completion compared to all those tasks you mentioned.

And the best part: you can swap for free, at any time.

Why would you want to replace it...1- He said SIMILAR name... Also, you can use a name change scroll and swap the names...2- And you don't have to delete a character to make a new one, that way you keep the birthday... Pay the gems (there's your monetary cost) if you don't have a slot for a new one and it's done...3- The character will be yours, i honestly don't see what you mean by that... This isn't Final Fantasy where you only get one character and have to swap between classes, you have multiple character slots to use, and most of the account stuff is shared, so in your case, if you do one of the same armor type, you can swap the armor between the characters.

I honestly don't see how or why anyone would need or want this. Also how it would enhance the game in any way. As someone playing this game since launch and that owns one character of each profession (at least) i see NO reason why this would be a thing.

I think the OP is failing to consider why ANet hasn't enabled profession swapping in the first place. If it were simple enough to implement, I think they'd be all over the ability to charge 800 gems for it. Apparently, the way that characters are set up prevents them from altering certain original choices without breaking other things (mostly related to the stories, but not the only thing). It hardly seems likely that the fundamental issue is which armor weight is used.

Plus, @"ReaverKane.7598" brings up a good point:Who would benefit from this? I'm sure there are some people who would use it, but it's not a good business decision to design an 800-gem feature around just "some."

Of all the people in the game, only a minority feel an obligation to a specific character, rather than being willing to spend 800 gems for a new character slot. Of those, only a fraction have an issue with the chosen profession. Of those, only a minority (perhaps 1/3) would be interested in swapping to one of the other two professions of the same armor weight, rather than the 6 others that use different weights. That's a tiny audience

I don't get it ... we already have profession swapping ... you log out, change profession with another character, you log in. I mean, I don't get how a special mechanic adds value above that already available mechanic.

Clearly I seem to be a minority in this, still don't know why though.

@Kuulpb.5412 said:Clearly I seem to be a minority in this, still don't know why though.

I think it's because the core function of 'swapping professions' already exists. You're idea just doesn't seem to add value to the game. I'm not sure why anyone could go through all that trouble to implement your idea when you can just swap professions by playing another character. Maybe your idea has some added value beyond multiple character approach that we just don't understand.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:Clearly I seem to be a minority in this, still don't know why though.

Well, One reason I want something like this is because that as my necromancer is a character I use a lot, but I also would like to use my ele and Mesmer, but both are charr, don't want to delete either as they are after my cats ( one died one alive), and I don't really have any good names except storage chars, I would find swapping professions on one character would let me experience a profession on a character that I use a LOT that feels like me, and making a clone of them just to be something else seems... Wrong to me. not sure how but it just does.

I like the idea of being able to change the profession of a character :) I also agree that it should not be that simple to do it.

One day I had this idea of having a sort of Total Makeover Kit but for the profession, perhaps a kind of tome. And these "tomes" would allow the character to change to another profession without loosing progress on the previous profession. For example, a player has a level 39 Mesmer, with hero points already spent. Once the character changes to, idk, a Revenant, the character will technically start from zero but the previous hero points will be stored and ready to spend.

One thing I didn't understand about your idea: "light armor stays light", meaning that a Mesmer can only change to Necromancer or Elementalist?

@"TheLadyOfTheRings.9148" said:

And these "tomes" would allow the character to change to another profession without loosing progress on the previous profession. For example, a player has a level 39 Mesmer, with hero points already spent. Once the character changes to, idk, a Revenant, the character will technically start from zero but the previous hero points will be stored and ready to spend.

Forgot to mention, but this "without loosing progress" thing would need to be done in a way that wouldn't spoil the game, which is probably impossible/unrealistic.

First world proplems :D

@"TheLadyOfTheRings.9148" said:I like the idea of being able to change the profession of a character :) I also agree that it should not be that simple to do it.

One day I had this idea of having a sort of Total Makeover Kit but for the profession, perhaps a kind of tome. And these "tomes" would allow the character to change to another profession without loosing progress on the previous profession. For example, a player has a level 39 Mesmer, with hero points already spent. Once the character changes to, idk, a Revenant, the character will technically start from zero but the previous hero points will be stored and ready to spend.

One thing I didn't understand about your idea: "light armor stays light", meaning that a Mesmer can only change to Necromancer or Elementalist?

Yes it would be, like You can't just change from an Elementalist into a warrior since your entire life up to then was about magic, and basically ignoring all magic to hit stuff would be a bit... jarring. I suppose some exceptions might be warrior + engineer, since canach uses both sword/shield and explosives.

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@"TheLadyOfTheRings.9148" said:I like the idea of being able to change the profession of a character :) I also agree that it should not be that simple to do it.

One day I had this idea of having a sort of Total Makeover Kit but for the profession, perhaps a kind of tome. And these "tomes" would allow the character to change to another profession without loosing progress on the previous profession. For example, a player has a level 39 Mesmer, with hero points already spent. Once the character changes to, idk, a Revenant, the character will technically start from zero but the previous hero points will be stored and ready to spend.

One thing I didn't understand about your idea: "light armor stays light", meaning that a Mesmer can only change to Necromancer or Elementalist?

Perhaps if they ever did ( which they won't) maybe it could be like a chain, so Ele can be Ranger, Mesmer or Necromancer. a Mesmer can be Ele, Necromancer or Thief. necromancer can be Ele, Mesmer or Revenant. Then a Thief can become an Engineer, a Ranger or a Mesmer. and it'd chain on so both "other armour types" and then one thematic other type, so necromancers are dead and undead, spirits of the past. Revenant is spirits of the past. But a Guardian is too "Holy" For a necromancer to easily change to.

So - again - if they ever did which they won't - you could do: Elementalist -> Ranger ( Nature Magic from Earth magic) ->Engineer ( Same armour type) -> Warrior ( Lack of Magic/Spells at core) It might give a use for all the extra hero points we have when you map all maps, you get left with over 250 left, and 250 is to unlock an elite spec.

OP makes a topic about something that concerns personal identification with created character and immersion and fantasy achieved by going on a life changing adventure for that character that you strongly identify with.

And people reply with "lol make a new character if you wanna swap".

Its good to know that people still refuse to read what others write on these forums.

I am honestly against this because I think that game has literally countless more pressing and important issues. But maybe when game achieves some hypothetical perfect state this idea of profession swapping on the existing character can be talked about.

This is actually the best idea I've heard so far. This would be the closest we can get to race change.

I'd love it to be a real thing in the game! Of course the numbers of this achievement should be ajdusted but I think this is a very cool concept that wouldn't hurt the race and Personal Story system.

And to people who say thatw such GemStore Item or achievement would be just for "some" I'd like to tell about numerous achievements that only the minority gets + things like Fox Ears helmet, Home City Portal Stone, Black Lion Hunter's Board. These items are made clearly for the minority that also is a part of the community. I guess the resources needed to make this thing work would take away 3 GemStore cosmetics.

I don't want to be convinced that this idea is senseless because it takes away resources - everything does and I'd love to be able to swap my class or race on all od my characters.

Cheers for the OP.

Go play ff11 or ff14