Pre-Made Characters Is A Good Idea

[Dedo]

Just finished reading the latest Gamespot update and they had the same sentiments when it came to people who have played the original and developed many characters.

It would be good to have a pre-made character so you could jump straight into the Act 4 Normal. It would be pretty welcomed for people who have played so much that "normal" is just a bothersome "most-do" do progress to higher difficulties.

After Act 3 Normal most characters [if you've done all the side quests and kill everything once] are around level 32-33. So they could simply have an option to select that character and you can fill in the gaps.

*fingers crossed*

[Infares]

Eh, no. I disagree, part of what makes this game as good as it is is the necessity to start from scratch. It gets bothersome, but just giving people a "blank" character at level 35ish with 2 million gold and all quests flagged in Normal is pretty lame, besides you can always get your own character to 35, edit it with Defiler to be "blank" (with total attribute and skill points pooled and all quests/teleports/fountains in Normal already complete) and save it so that you can import it into Immortal Throne.

Or do like the rest of us and play a single mastery character to the end of Normal and respec into Dream at a later time.

[Dedo]

Originally Posted by Infares

Eh, no. I disagree, part of what makes this game as good as it is is the necessity to start from scratch. It gets bothersome, but just giving people a "blank" character at level 35ish with 2 million gold and all quests flagged in Normal is pretty lame, besides you can always get your own character to 35, edit it with Defiler to be "blank" (with total attribute and skill points pooled and all quests/teleports/fountains in Normal already complete) and save it so that you can import it into Immortal Throne.

Or do like the rest of us and play a single mastery character to the end of Normal and respec into Dream at a later time.

That's just the thing. The vets [including myself] have made plenty of characters and really do not feel like going through normal all the time. A lot of people now just TQdefiler a character straight past normal anyway.

It was like using TQvault to transfer items. Now IL is putting caravans. I do not see why a similar change could happen to pre-made characters. Also a lot of people may not want to use their mega builds incase the expansion passes to quickly [I know I am not going anywhere near my first play with my piercing builds]. This way they can jump straight into the new material with a new character.

TQdefiler is going happen for IT [eventually] anyway, so it would be a good option.

[Infares]

I mean, I'm not condoning character editing, what I am saying though is it would require extra time and effort on IL's part and possibly delay the game to make them do something that many gamers wouldn't like or use and you can already have a character through normal with whatever other mastery you were planning on putting with Dream already leveled.

[Dedo]

Originally Posted by Infares

I mean, I'm not condoning character editing, what I am saying though is it would require extra time and effort on IL's part and possibly delay the game to make them do something that many gamers wouldn't like or use and you can already have a character through normal with whatever other mastery you were planning on putting with Dream already leveled.

Yes but you cannot undo the mastery you first use. This is the point, to have an open character ready for Act 4 normal you will have pick a mastery without knowing how well it will gell with the Dream mastery.

It's quite simple, it's there for people who are are not new and want to jump into the new material without having to go through the tedium of passing normal to set-up a new character.

Most likely this will not be included but it either is or TQdefiler will allow this. From what I know most of the vets community would love this, and it would save them having to have TQdefiler. I mean you play several characters legitimately through normal-legendary, after awhile when you want to experiment with some new builds and you hardly feel like drudging through normal EACH time.

[medierra]

The problem with doing this is that in order for premade characters to really be at the correct level of power by that level, we would need to give them some unique items / rares and completed relics. In order to provide a reasonable sampling of the potential class combinations we'd have to make a couple of these characters. It seems bad to give out a bunch of free unique items and completed relics on premade characters. I imagine a lot of people would end up using the new enchanter feature to strip the relics off their gear and then the caravan feature to transfer the relics and unique items to other characters.

Part of our assumption with the expansion was that people buying it who had played through the original game would already have existing characters to use in the expansion or, if they hadn't finished it, would be able to finish playing through the original game with the addition of the new expansion features. Even if you deleted Titan Quest, I believe your characters remain saved in your MyGames directory.

Unfortunately, even if we decided this was a good thing, we cannot add any new features or content to the expansion at this point.

[Infares]

Exactly, and it's not like Immortal Throne will refuse a character that had its skill/stat points refunded and its masteries reset through editing, which you can equip yourself through Vault before you even install IT.

[Dedo]

Originally Posted by medierra

The problem with doing this is that in order for premade characters to really be at the correct level of power by that level, we would need to give them some unique items / rares and completed relics. In order to provide a reasonable sampling of the potential class combinations we'd have to make a couple of these characters. It seems bad to give out a bunch of free unique items and completed relics on premade characters. I imagine a lot of people would end up using the new enchanter feature to strip the relics off their gear and then the caravan feature to transfer the relics and unique items to other characters.

Part of our assumption with the expansion was that people buying it who had played through the original game would already have existing characters to use in the expansion or, if they hadn't finished it, would be able to finish playing through the original game with the addition of the new expansion features. Even if you deleted Titan Quest, I believe your characters remain saved in your MyGames directory.

Unfortunately, even if we decided this was a good thing, we cannot add any new features or content to the expansion at this point.

Heh, I was just actually going to bring up the item problem with having this feature. You are correct, though I guess people could caravan their existing items over.

Most people will approach the expansion pretty much how you said it. Either a new character from scratch or using an existing one. It's just when playing the expansion for the first time, using your "elite" characters may make the first play too fast. We all know how fun the first play is.

Food for thought anyway. I guess the extra work of sorting it out would not be worth it in the end.

[I_Raps]

medierra,
You could have us, your loyal fan-base, send in pre-made characters for consideration like you did for playtesting the 1.2 patch.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Edit] Just read your last line about it being too late. Sorry.

[Infares]

I can see this working by having the premades equipped with only Rare Epic items from Greece that have a flag for low (or no) resale value and cannot be socketed with relics/charms. No reason to give people a full power character if they're not willing to do the work. Also just give them skill/stat points from level progression and none from quests. If they want the ones from quests they can whip through Normal Mode with their nominally twinked character and get the bonuses for they own damn self.