Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Gaereth]

I think at its most basic it comes down to the ability to tinker. To change, experiment, and play with your character. You need to feel like you actually have some choice in how your character progresses rather than just following the path of every other -insert class-.

Character customization. Be it in the form of what your character can do, to how he looks, to his home, etc, etc. WOW and most other games fail horribly at this right now....your character is essentially a Barbie or Ken doll that you dress up in the cool things you get from the world and your ability to fight is based on those cool things.

That is damn near the extent of customization in these games right now....itemization. That is not in any way shape or form building/growing/customizing a character..that is simply playing dress up. Yes, it can be fun, but its not even hitting 25% of what we can do.

If you strip all warriors of their gear they end up essentially the same. The gear is what really makes them different. We need to have the ability for the character to contain the customization with gear being an extra rather than the gear being the focus and the character being the extra.

I would love to see the gear focus fall away to be replaced by character skills and customization. Rather than questing for that new BP you quest for a new skill. Rather than raiding for that uber gear you raid for skills. Hell, you can even quest and raid for skills that are little more than emotes yet make your character unique.

-shrug- Gear is a great carrot but it becomes the unique snowflake rather than your character. You could delete you character and slap your gear on another of the same class and be exactly the same in these current games. Thats wrong.

[Draegan]

The same thing will happen. People will quest for the best set of skills/spells. It really doesn't matter it will always come down to min/maxers. In some form or another.

[tad10]

It doesn't come down to min/maxers. They, like high-end raiders, are a small part of the total mix. I'm reminded of the penny-arcade series on pokemon where some kid had an all-pikachu army (or whatever -- I don't fucking play pokemon. I just like penny-arcade) because "she liked pikachu."

There's 80% of your player base right there. Just because everyone on this forum is a min/maxer doesn't mean that everyone is a min/maxer.

[Twobit Whore]

Actually it does, because the people who do min/max will dictate the flow of the game. Builds will be planned, guides will be posted. As soon as it is found out that you need X abilities to defeat Y dungeon then only people with X abilities will be defeating dungeon Y. The alternative would be to allow anyone to beat dungeon Y which then allows people with X abilities to utterly decimate your game.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

What you people really want but are too stupid to realize it is a classless skill-based system. Except some of you apparently need the devs to outline every possible combination and slap a title on it for you.

The irony is, that most will never admit it because they are either still hung up on some half assed implementation of some long dead (or dieing) game that screwed up, ruining the idea for them, or are incapable of creative thought.

***WARNING: RARE RANT INCOMING***

IMO the problem is simply that class based hierarchies are the cause of player imbalance, not the solution. They are also the most significant drain on development time (after actually building the content) due to the need to ‘Balance’ every zone/encounter/boss around the ‘utility’ of each one, insuring that none are left behind or made unnecessary. Which, ironically, only becomes necessary because the developer forced the entire player base to chose *ONE* of a handful of their cookie cutter classes to begin with!!

The main reason a customer feels shafted after their class is nerfed, or another’s buffed, is because they where forced to chose one class in the first place and must now re-start from the very beginning if they don’t like it anymore and want to do something different.

They feel neglected by the uncaring developers because the developer is both the reason they are stuck in their class (having been forced to chose one) and the reason they feel shafted versus those who chose right the first time (due to that class being given the proverbial gift).

And no, the problem of balance is not exaggerated by classless skill based systems because all skills are available to all players at all times and thus all players are by default BALANCED. Any unintended mechanics caused by badly designed skills, or poorly implemented content, can be altered without making 90% of the entire player base feel shafted because they where the only one effected, or left out, of the change. In essence after every nerf, or buff, the entire player base remains BALANCED because the change affects everyone EQUALLY.

In the end, the only reason a customer would chose one set of skills over another is if they WANT to. Thus as a customer they are always playing the game the way THEY WANT TO. And that way is not imbalanced because anyone else in the game can play exactly the same way if THEY WANT TO as well.

In the end, class based hierarchies do not serve the player base and are nothing more then a way for a games producers to MAKE MORE MONEY in the long run. (Note I said PRODUCERS, as in THE FINANCIERS.)

Why?

Because any time you want to do something different, you need to START OVER.

The real ass kicking irony of this all, is that the extra time invested by the developers, making class based hierarchies work, can instead be re-directed in over all variety of content in a non-class based mechanic, and more then make up for the greater amount of content that will be necessary with a game that didn’t make you start over every time you wanted to do something different.

Chew on that a while and see how it sets with ya…

Or just insult me and make yourself feel better. I honestly don’t care. This was a self serving rant anyway…

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Actually it does, because the people who do min/max will dictate the flow of the game. Builds will be planned, guides will be posted. As soon as it is found out that you need X abilities to defeat Y dungeon then only people with X abilities will be defeating dungeon Y. The alternative would be to allow anyone to beat dungeon Y which then allows people with X abilities to utterly decimate your game.

This post makes Z=Zero sense. If you have designed a dungeon only able to be beaten (or much, much more easily beaten) using a specific ability then you are a shitty designer (and yes I'm thinking of fear ward here).

In any event looking at the 5-man dungeons you're telling me that a specific ability set (beyond healing/tanking/dps) was required for every dungeon ever? I think we just had the EQ1 discussion how most dungeons could be beat with different group combinations and you didn't need the Holy Trinity for the most part. That's what I'm talking about willis.

Edit: Re rant above. That only applies if you can't shift classes with your main. So if you a job/subjob system that permits you to be any class (though only the abilities of two classes are applied at any one time) even if a class is nerfed you can just switch your main to a different class. You still have all your equipment and etc.

[Twobit Whore]

Grinding on mobs at the entrance of a dungeon != beating it. Overlevelling/gearing a dungeon != beating it either.

And I'm not sure why you keep bringing up WoW, but so be it.. but yes, many WoW dungeons require healing and tanking and CC. Without one of those then some of the dungeons are flat-out impossible, or so awkward and time consuming as to not be worth it.

[James]

Suggestion: If you allow character transfers, don't be gay and not let PvE transfer to PvP, or the other way around.

[Drtyrm]

Originally Posted by tad10

Edit: Re rant above. That only applies if you can't shift classes with your main. So if you a job/subjob system that permits you to be any class (though only the abilities of two classes are applied at any one time) even if a class is nerfed you can just switch your main to a different class. You still have all your equipment and etc.

Ah, you didn't play FFXI at all it appears. You want main/sub jobs with universal gear? Are we going to have like two stats, Stamina and Killypower? This design idea of yours has more holes than swiss cheese.

[Draegan]

Any good multiplayer PVE RPG game will need classes or subsets of skills required to get jobs done, regardless of what those jobs are. Making everyone everything is just stupid. Then it becomes pointless.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Drtyrm

Ah, you didn't play FFXI at all it appears. You want main/sub jobs with universal gear? Are we going to have like two stats, Stamina and Killypower? This design idea of yours has more holes than swiss cheese.

Did you ever play WoW -- the gear comment was pretty obviously a direct reference to BOE WoW-style gear. Or didn't you get that?

I would think that it would be an obvious assumption that some classes have gear that is interchangable -- e.g. both Tanks and Melee DPS classes can usually use swords. And that, as discussed in the rant above, if someone's class was nerfed (say rogue) they would typically switch to a similiar (melee) class -- oh say ranger. So typically, in a non-BOE world, they would be able to hand off some but not all gear to an alt. Its worse in a BOE world because you lose all gear when you switch -- only gold transfers.

As to subjobbing, of course I played and loathed FFXI, but when I talk about it I talk about it in context of what it could be -- not what it was. I have no desire to play FFXI as made by Green Monster Games. I would like to play a fantasy game with a form of sub-jobbing that gets rid of the idea of alts and helps balance classes by improving soloability and class 'purity' through subjobs (e.g. no healing for monks and etc). When I speak of subjobs I refer to the concept of subjobs, not the specific implementatoin of subjobs found in FFXI.

That's about as clear as I can make it -- though I would have thought that would have been obvous from the getgo. If you can't figure it out at this point well not much more that I could say to help you. This is where we would get the "Kids Stay in School" moment or something. Lack of reading comp ftl.

[Draegan]

Isn't making so many specific classes like you posted a few pages back pigeonhole everyone to some so specific that if they do nerf one skill of a class it basically nerfs the whole class not just one aspect of it?

[spentmotiff]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Any good multiplayer PVE RPG game will need classes or subsets of skills required to get jobs done, regardless of what those jobs are. Making everyone everything is just stupid. Then it becomes pointless.

I agree. The problem isn't class roles and the Holy Trinity of grouping or not enough classes in general, it's in making the Healer/Tank classes fun and exciting to play. Most MMOs out there have the pure tanking classes and pure healing classes rather bland to play, past the fun inherent of being needed and rare. Even WoW falls into this trap with the Prot. Warriors and Holy Priests being relatively gimped outside of their designated roles in groups or instances.

From what I've seen the only upcoming MMO that looks to change this is WAR; so far it appears that they are making all classes and races desirable enough to play that there won't be a drought of the tanking/healing classes and an over abundance of DPS classes, which seems to the problem of most MMOs.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Any good multiplayer PVE RPG game will need classes or subsets of skills required to get jobs done, regardless of what those jobs are. Making everyone everything is just stupid. Then it becomes pointless.

First, no one said anything about making everyone everything. It is this kind of reasoning that causes the whole class vs. skill discussion to become overwhelmed with hyperbole.

The simple fact of the matter is that if a particular segment of content is designed to require, or indirectly results in the need for, a specific subset of skills to complete/defeat then it is designed badly. On the other hand, granting someone an advantage if they chose a particular subset of skills when completing/defeating said content is completely acceptable, if not expected in a skill based mechanic. Otherwise people wouldn't find it necessary to experiment with new ways to complete/defeat game content.

If content is sufficiently diverse, the FOTM phenomenon becomes lessened… As does the likelihood of everyone in the game choosing the same basic combination of skills.

In the end it boils down to choice.

edit: BTW... Such skill based mechanics also make it possible for a developer to implement content that would require the player base to experiment with their skill selections. helping avoid the FOTM even further.

[Draegan]

WAR is easier to balance because each race basically gets 4 different classes and thats it. Tank, Melee DPS, Range DPS, Healer with different flavors.

Tigole did mention something about fixing WOW holy priests for example, buy converting +healing gear to +dmg gear as well.

When you get down to it, you can't decide or design a class system unless you know what kind of game you're gonna have. If you're gonna be heavy PVE with raids, you will need the holy trinity. If it's mostly solo and very small group content (2-3 people) then you can generalize classes.