Ultima X: Odyssey Dev Diary #3

GameSpy has posted their third Ultima X: Odyssey developer diary, in which lead designer Jon “Calandryll” Hanna talks about character development. An excerpt to follow:

UXO’s tier structure organizes the abilities into six rows (tiers), each having nine abilities (three per discipline). When you first start your character, you’ll have access to any ability in the first tier. Once you’ve earned a certain amount of ability points, the second tier becomes available and you’ll immediately have access to all nine abilities within that tier. So, if you happen to really like the first tier of abilities in the mage discipline, but aren’t interested in the second tier mage abilities, you can simply choose to learn the abilities in the second tier of the tinker or sorcerer disciplines instead, or you can take one ability from each of the disciplines or any combination thereof. This tier structure allows you to create a character that focuses on one discipline (class), or a character that is more of a hybrid. It’s up to you.