We NEED race change! [Merged]

[The Greyhawk.9107]

On 8/30/2022 at 2:37 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Because it's not just personal story. It's all the choices you make about your character that are tied to your race that get baked into your character data, and then start influencing other things (like some story elements in later expansions, or LS chapters). And some of those choices are made at the very beginning of the game - in the character selection.

And example i have already given in this thread: during IBS, if your character is a charr, the legion and warband picks they've made get referenced by the story, and even by some dynamic events. What you'd think could happen if you were a charr, the game tried to reference those datapoints, and then realized they were never set, because when there was a time to make choices you were still a sylvari and so never even saw those choices? Or the other way around - what might happen if you were a sylvari, but with legion picked because you happened to be a charr before?

Your race influences a number of choices you make throughout the story. Those choices in turn have impact on other stuff, which has impact on even further stuff, and so on and so on. The interactions are apparently so complicated, that Anet mentioned having problems with tracing all those even before HoT, and since that time the amount of stuff that might break only increased.

At some point in the past they have tried to make race change possible, and they have tried to make core personal story repeatable (so it would be similar to how LS/latter expansion story works). In both cases they were unable to make it work, and always ended up with even small changes resulting in character data corruption and stuff breaking.

It does not mean this suggestion is impossible to implement, but it does mean it is likely very complicated, costly and time-consuming to do. And very risky to implement.

 

[PinkTacoLover.7603]

28 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

they were unable to make it work

 

Desire to read the source code increased by 9001%

[eXruina.4956]

race change and class change features please. 🙏

[disco.9302]

Lmao these threads getting combined into one is just going to be the way forward I guess.

 

It's always the same story:

OP: I want race change!

Posters: have you tried making alts?

OP: *leaves thread without a reply*

[Ashen.2907]

10 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Maybe, just maybe, people really want this function, and investing in it would be a good idea?
Just maybe?

Wild idea, I know.

And yet no one has offered to cough up the thousands of dollars it would take to hire and train developers to perform the task. You got an extra 100k lying around?

[Sobx.1758]

6 hours ago, disco.9302 said:

It's always the same story:

OP: I want race change!

Posters: have you tried making alts?

OP: *leaves thread without a reply*

True. There was one situation I wanted to change my character's race and that's exactly what I did. I don't see a problem.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[The Boz.2038]

7 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

And yet no one has offered to cough up the thousands of dollars it would take to hire and train developers to perform the task. You got an extra 100k lying around?

There have been some low quality responses to this suggestion, but wow.
Please, here, take the cake. The entire cake. Eat it, too!

[Astralporing.1957]

17 hours ago, PinkTacoLover.7603 said:

 

Desire to read the source code increased by 9001%

Notice, that one of the reasons dungeons were abandoned was because the new devs (those that replaced original dungeon team) did not want to read through the dungeon code.

When you're rushing things, and you are working with a nonstandard, non-relational database system, things happen. Things better left unmentioned and unseen.

[Labjax.2465]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice, that one of the reasons dungeons were abandoned was because the new devs (those that replaced original dungeon team) did not want to read through the dungeon code.

When you're rushing things, and you are working with a nonstandard, non-relational database system, things happen. Things better left unmentioned and unseen.

Honestly, nothing against you at all on this, but I hate this type of defeatist trope about coding, along with memes about spaghetti code and the like. I know enough about coding to know there is an opportunity cost to refactoring poorly documented and/or written code, but that doesn't mean it's inherently indecipherable and spooky hieroglyphics. Computer programming languages are written as logical sets of instructions. If it can be logged, it can be deciphered. Certainly you will struggle if you understand none of the terminology of the language, but many video games are written in C++ for performance, which is a very common language. It's highly unlikely it's written in something where you'd be hard-pressed to find an expert in the language.

If there is anything my experience in video game modding and modding communities has shown me, it's that deciphering opaque code is more about time and determination than anything else. Which again, yeah, is an opportunity cost. Time spent deciphering is time lost that you could be spending refactoring or writing new systems. But I would rather the common trope about coding be that... that systems get left behind because of the opportunity cost. Rather than this idea that the code is too intimidating and messy to overcome.

It's one thing for programmers to commiserate and joke amongst themselves about code that is especially awful to deal with. There is even a common joke about that being your own code six months later (or whatever amount of time later you'd like to use there). It's another thing for people to take that as a literal explanation of the limitations of coding and what can realistically be improved.

[Sigmoid.7082]

35 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Honestly, nothing against you at all on this, but I hate this type of defeatist trope about coding, along with memes about spaghetti code and the like. I know enough about coding to know there is an opportunity cost to refactoring poorly documented and/or written code, but that doesn't mean it's inherently indecipherable and spooky hieroglyphics. Computer programming languages are written as logical sets of instructions. If it can be logged, it can be deciphered. Certainly you will struggle if you understand none of the terminology of the language, but many video games are written in C++ for performance, which is a very common language. It's highly unlikely it's written in something where you'd be hard-pressed to find an expert in the language.

If there is anything my experience in video game modding and modding communities has shown me, it's that deciphering opaque code is more about time and determination than anything else. Which again, yeah, is an opportunity cost. Time spent deciphering is time lost that you could be spending refactoring or writing new systems. But I would rather the common trope about coding be that... that systems get left behind because of the opportunity cost. Rather than this idea that the code is too intimidating and messy to overcome.

It's one thing for programmers to commiserate and joke amongst themselves about code that is especially awful to deal with. There is even a common joke about that being your own code six months later (or whatever amount of time later you'd like to use there). It's another thing for people to take that as a literal explanation of the limitations of coding and what can realistically be improved.

That's is what people mean when they say the code is spaghetti. Its that the opportunity cost to understand said, potentially messy,  undocumented, and system pervasive program is not worth the time compared to building something new and sustainable. Like you said, its code. A nice set of, albeit sometimes incredibly convoluted, logical instructions. Many a thing is doable...but many a thing is also not worth doing. Not that its intimidating or messy. 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by Sigmoid.7082

[Labjax.2465]

37 minutes ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

That's is what people mean when they say the code is spaghetti. Its that the opportunity cost to understand said, potentially messy,  undocumented, and system pervasive program is not worth the time compared to building something new and sustainable. Like you said, its code. A nice set of, albeit sometimes incredibly convoluted, logical instructions. Many a thing is doable...but many a thing is also not worth doing. Not that its intimidating or messy. 

 

 

Wording like "did not want to read through X code" is implying the code was so bad they were put off from dealing with it on a personal level. Want and opportunity cost are two completely different things here. One is a calculated business decision, the other is an emotional response to seeing bad code. And in instances where players clearly are trying to talk about what is worth doing, they have no specific insight into what the opportunity cost is, so it becomes this speculative thing where we're saying "X is not worth the development resources" and we don't even know if it is. Which is pointless and misleading in its own way.

Also, as an aside:

Quote

compared to building something new and sustainable

While we're on the subject, I thought I would mention for anyone unfamiliar with programming that "building something new and sustainable" is sometimes a big trap. It's easy to think "I'll write this in a better way because I know what I'm doing" and not realize that some of the worst parts of an existing codebase came about precisely because someone was trying to work around limitations you have yet to understand. Not all messy code is because the programmer was inept. This is where you'd hope the programmer left some comments as to why something seemingly odd is written the way it is, but that's not always going to happen.

[PinkTacoLover.7603]

13 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

And yet no one has offered to cough up the thousands of dollars it would take to hire and train developers to perform the task. You got an extra 100k lying around?

Theres ppl that will do it for free.

For example, the l2j server has been devloped for free over the years by tons of people that liked the game 😒

Also the l2j server is alive since Lineage ][ was still pay to play and is still alive now that is free to play 👨‍🏫

 

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

the new devs (those that replaced original dungeon team) did not want to read through the dungeon code.

> Le old times

Hire devs

"Hell that code is a mess"

Proceed to do the work nonstop for 15h/day

 

> Le new times

Hire "devs"

"What is this seeplasplas i know html"

"My god this is not a 10k$ macbook uberpro how im supposed to do my art"

"KYAAAAA TASUKETTEEEE that code is so ugly i dun wanna touch it *cry in kawaiii* "

Proceed to *start riots due to toxic white patriarchy that pretend something called "work for what you are paid for"*

 

🤦‍♂️

 

  

59 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Not all messy code is because the programmer was inept.

In this case, from what i have read here on teh forum, is a bad code design from the start.

 

Some example:

1. The armors skin-stats are somehow locked by the weight in some weird relationship somewhere in the code
2. The legendary weapons cant keep the sigil stack on template swap (like the ascended) because each time you swap the  template the weapon is "reset"
3. Cant change race because the data is stored in some weird file (that i suppose have a different structure based on race) instead of a db where you can gust pick the cells you need on the whole tables
4. Mortar can spam skills backward because any skill that target the ground can be used in that way (like necro marks/granade, etc..)

Edited September 10, 2022 by PinkTacoLover.7603

[pallas.8150]

Needs and wants.

This is a want.

 

[Sobx.1758]

36 minutes ago, pallas.8150 said:

Needs and wants.

This is a want.

I'd even go further and say this is a want that's already solved by options available in gemstore. (someone above asked 'but what if someone doesn't want to delete a character because birthday gifts?" -well, in that case they can leave the character and buy a character slot)

[kharmin.7683]

2 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

I'd even go further and say this is a want that's already solved by options available in gemstore. (someone above asked 'but what if someone doesn't want to delete a character because birthday gifts?" -well, in that case they can leave the character and buy a character slot)

Right.  In other words, working as intended.

[yoguil.7320]

10 hours ago, PinkTacoLover.7603 said:

Theres ppl that will do it for free.

Wow! Really? Could you get me in touch with them? Right now we* run a huge software project in our company we really really need done as soon as possible. Those pesky devs we employed until recently told us it would cost 40 millions. Hah! We fired them and went to some devs in India doing it for half the price. And now you tell me we could save even more money because there are devs out there doing it for free? I NEED those contacts!

</sarcasm>

*Disclaimer: No ties whatsoever to Anet or NCsoft, not even gaming industry.

Edited September 10, 2022 by yoguil.7320

[PinkTacoLover.7603]

17 hours ago, yoguil.7320 said:

Wow! Really? Could you get me in touch with them? Right now we* run a huge software project in our company we really really need done as soon as possible. Those pesky devs we employed until recently told us it would cost 40 millions. Hah! We fired them and went to some devs in India doing it for half the price. And now you tell me we could save even more money because there are devs out there doing it for free? I NEED those contacts!

</sarcasm>

*Disclaimer: No ties whatsoever to Anet or NCsoft, not even gaming industry.

 

Theres ppl that will do it for free*.

 

* If you make it opensource.

 

 

 

[VooDoo.9014]

On 9/9/2022 at 6:09 PM, Ashen.2907 said:

And yet no one has offered to cough up the thousands of dollars it would take to hire and train developers to perform the task. You got an extra 100k lying around?

No, not personally but last I checked we are paying money for these products so I am sure Anet does. Do you work for them or something?

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, VooDoo.9014 said:

No, not personally but last I checked we are paying money for these products so I am sure Anet does. Do you work for them or something?

You say you're paying for the product, so I guess just buy a character slot?

[VooDoo.9014]

33 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

You say you're paying for the product, so I guess just buy a character slot?

Already have. I would buy a race change for the character in that slot as well if available. Probably more than once. I like to mix things up.

[Sobx.1758]

17 minutes ago, VooDoo.9014 said:

Already have. I would buy a race change for the character in that slot as well if available. Probably more than once. I like to mix things up.

It just goes back to the same solution. Apparently you might as well buy more slots, create different race/class mixes -as the number of those is obviously limited- and then you can play whichever you want at any time you want to "mix things up".

[VooDoo.9014]

Or I could just not and buy a race change. 

[Linken.6345]

34 minutes ago, VooDoo.9014 said:

Or I could just not and buy a race change. 

 Well since there is no race change you cant just buy one.

There is another character slot tho unless you bought all of them.

Untill then Anet got no reason to implement race change and probabely not even after that to be honest.

[yoguil.7320]

7 hours ago, PinkTacoLover.7603 said:

Theres ppl that will do it for free*.

* If you make it opensource.

Sorry, can't do that. There's 3rd party ip involved.

But just out of curiosity: Your friends would guarantee the same support level paid devs do? You know, stuff like 24/7 availability in case of critical bugs, fast path patching of vulnerabilities? And they provide somebody we can sue in case they break their contractual liabilities? You know, because we as a commercial service might get sued by our customers for bugs and service interruptions they might cause with sloppy coding.

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, VooDoo.9014 said:

Or I could just not and buy a race change. 

You can't buy what doesn't exist, so no.