Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I think he needs a friend.

And a hug.

[Vatoreus]

Ok, you say what would be the point of looking for a healer if you could turn into one? How about that the group you are in, needs a healer, but you have 5 guys that are all DPS. Now, instead of having to wait, you realize that one of the 5 guys have some healer skills leveled up, or a healer class leveled up. He can hop over to the nearest town and switch his current mode. Now, you still have the same 5 guys because you still need the group to do whatever it is you are doing. How does this hurt the MM in MMO? I only see benefits to it, because you have more people able to do shit when they have the time to do it, meaning more people interacting with one another.

How many times have you wanted to do a dungeon, but couldn't because a healer wasn't online? or a tank?

[Cadrid]

Originally Posted by tad10

[...] This is a fucking viral marketing stunt that I, for one, am happy to participate in. [...]

Without setting off another series of tirades, I just wanted to point out that this thread was started by a long-time forum member, not Curt or anyone else from 38 Studios. Furthermore, I don't believe our input was asked just to kiss our collective ass; the members of this board can have some genuinely innovative and unique ideas when they aren't quibbling over dead-horse issues like the class system.

I mean no disrespect to anyone, and you're certainly welcome to your opinions, but wouldn't your time and energy be better spent conceptualizing, refining and debating new ways to make an MMO fun rather than having an e-slugfest on something that, as mentioned earlier, has almost certainly already been settled in-office?

[Plorkyeran]

I really don't see what the problem with letting players change classes at any time is. Personally, I think being able to take 25 players and having the optimal raid balance for every fight in the game sounds pretty fucking awesome. How is getting rid of people sitting outside of the instance waiting to get swapped in (or sitting in a city LFG because there aren't any healers or tanks) make a game not "massivly multiplayer"?

[Vatoreus]

That's the question I posed, still awaiting an answer from those that are against it.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Cadrid

... the members of this board can have some genuinely innovative and unique ideas when they aren't quibbling over dead-horse issues like the class system.

I mean no disrespect to anyone, and you're certainly welcome to your opinions, but wouldn't your time and energy be better spent conceptualizing, refining and debating new ways to make an MMO fun rather than having an e-slugfest on something that, as mentioned earlier, has almost certainly already been settled in-office?

Part of the problem is simply that.

Assuming that because something has been "Quibbled" over incessantly, exempts it from the need to be addressed at all.

Personally I really don't care if GMG has decided on their class mechanic already. It doesn't change the simple fact that the leading criticism of MMO's today (that they are nearly all essentially EQ part X) is caused by the implementation of class based leveling mechanics. Most especially because of the compromises in content developers are forced to make throughout the rest of the game, as a direct result of that implementation...

Pardon the analogy, but it seems to me most people are resigned to the belief that the sickness is terminal, and that we should just focus on controlling the symptoms while we can, hoping that the next dieing patient will come along before the current one finely kicks the proverbial bucket.

[Twobit Whore]

What evidence do you have to support the claim that 'being class based' is the leading criticism of MMOs? I mean, I can understand you don't like them.. and probably quite a few other people don't either, but the vast majority either do like them or simply don't care one way or the other. Dropping the class sytem isn't going to solve LFG issues, it isn't going to make games more accessible and it isn't going to bring back the glorious community you had in Lower Guk in late 1999.

[Vatoreus]

Other than "That's just not the way." what arguments can you support against allowing all skills trainable on a single character if you aren't able to use them all, but only to fill a certain role, but able to switch between these skill templates to switch roles.

[Agraza]

Since we're still on this subject.

I'd like to see someone try to emulate EVE in its method of giving you a temporary role based on your equipment. In EVE it is your ship and it's fittings that determines your role. Surely inventory management and current equipment could emulate that. Guild Wars has a slightly gay way to lock you into a specific direction for a mission by preventing you from accessing spells that you didn't add to your hotbar before the mission. WoW is halfway there. There is differing gear even for the same class based on your role. The only things standing in the way of WoW being based solely on equipment are talents. Talents provide a very powerful corollary for your equipment which encourage you to follow one path and all but ignore the others.

Perhaps my character is well versed in all kinds of physical combat, and by bringing the right equipment I could either backstab and gouge my opponents with agility or use a maul to crush their bones with all my strength. Make it so that I have to switch most of my gear to be effective in using a different set of skills to augment an entirely different weapon. Then you have people who have preferences, their class, to which they are very well attuned, but can adapt to different situations and environments given the proper preparation.

This would require ancient concepts like encumbrance to be emphasized. The rogue skills would be heavily penalized for carrying around extra weight in the form of a maul and chainmail. And with the heavy weight of the base gear to be a heavy fighter, carrying around rogue gear would preclude you from obtaining any treasure. Besides, if you did later switch to rogue gear you'd run into the penalty mentioned before. It would be wiser to carry around items that relate to your current role and perform complete gear swaps at a bank/stash area.

If you could do it right you could have a combination of classes and derivative skills, which define specialties, but it would be an inventory meta-game that determines how many choices you have at any one time. [sarcasm]I'm sure we would all really enjoy farming necessary offspec loot and finding places to put it.[/sarcasm]

Everyone gets the illusion of choice at the same time that classes are well defined for the benefit of high end PvE design. You aren't freely designing your own class, you're following the prescribed route set by the developers. They could also, then, design events that render huge sets of skills unnecessary without them also rendering players unnecessary as they have some limited options to change. This would be similar to fire-immune mobs that mages have changed spec for, with a slightly different flavor of gay.

Furthermore, as the game progresses you can add additional skills and equipment to effectively create new classes like a "berserker" or "death knight" or whatever. You don't need to make sure your new class has an individual role in raids, is balanced in PvP, etc. You might design a few events to benefit from your new skills which would encourage, but not require, players to employ them.

I've got a running theme of gradients rather than boundaries.



I'm more interested in the creation of sandbox social atmospheres. I like slaying dragons, I do. But I'm more interested in crafting and trading. I don't think the emphasis on non-combat classes hurts combat either. Especially in a PvP atmosphere, this means that the people you run across are less likely to be able to defend themselves against you. Gatherers, crafters, traders, etc. are all less well equipped to fend off an attack, giving you an advantage if you're an "adventurer". This opens the door for the existence of pirates, a.k.a. griefers.

I play the successful combat-oriented MMOs because I disagree with most PvP game designers to a fault. I think they're all wrong, they focus on the wrong shit (1 on 1 combat), etc. Whereas in PvE the epitome of combat is raiding, in PvP it is often 5 on 5 combat. Larger fights either don't exist because there isn't anything worth fighting for or they break down due to lag. At the least EVE has siege equipment (capital ships) that lack power in a 1v1 fight, unless those individuals are piloting siege equipment themselves.


I'm paying some attention to AoC and WAR, but I don't think they've got the sandbox atmosphere at heart. Crafting and Trading will be the bitches of Combat and I will once again become bored after I slay the dragon because the dragon doesn't respawn for another 4 days

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

Other than "That's just not the way." what arguments can you support against allowing all skills trainable on a single character if you aren't able to use them all, but only to fill a certain role, but able to switch between these skill templates to switch roles.

We've been over this ad nauseum, not going to get into it again. Let's just say that there are just as many, if not more, drawbacks and problems with this system or any other system. It basically comes down to your game, the vision and how you want it to play to determine what sort of character system you need. If you want to see some reasons why I think it is bad, you can go back all of 2 pages or so and read..

[Draegan]

Why do people keep saying mana mechanics, class mechanics, group mechanics are all broken? They seem to be working fine in an ever increasing MMO market. Just because you're tired of it doesn't mean it's broken.

I have no problem with people switching classes as a game mechanic I guess. It's the same thing as having an alt but you share equipment and other stuff you collect. Just seems to defeat the purpose of having a connection with your character.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Plorkyeran

I really don't see what the problem with letting players change classes at any time is. Personally, I think being able to take 25 players and having the optimal raid balance for every fight in the game sounds pretty fucking awesome. How is getting rid of people sitting outside of the instance waiting to get swapped in (or sitting in a city LFG because there aren't any healers or tanks) make a game not "massivly multiplayer"?

I don't necessarily agree with it, but there is the idea in MMO design that making things "too easy" leads to boredom of the game and loss of subscription.

The MMO keep-your-subscription carrots range from social interaction (irc), ego-identification, PVP, PVE, leveling, questing, lore, on, and on, and on. Not all carrots apply to all people.

Don't underestimate how powerful the connection is people share with their characters. The whole "special snowflake" idea is a powerful draw, and the more powerful, unique, etc you make your snowflake the tighter the bind. Letting a character morph, imo, loses some of that.

Ideally if I wrote an MMO and I could figure out a way to make you enjoy the smallest amount of content I can create and have you (re-)use that content for a long period of time, I win. One of the great big content sinks is character leveling, akin to replaying single player games in different difficulty modes or playing as different characters. Throwing out that "sink" is a scary idea for a content dev, especially since its been shown time and time again that people creating alts is a big time sink.

My personal feeling is that somewhere in between is good. I really do like LOTRo's way of "spec"ing or Tabula Rasa's "clone" feature, which allows you to switch character configurations for a small amount of money anytime. LOTRo is way, way too easy though and lacks enough carrots at endgame currently. WoW on the other hand has an insanely high amount of carrots at endgame, and a reasonable character reconfiguration (50g respec, create alts). If they would allow 2-3 talent templates and fix up bagspace in WoW to better allow for multiple roles, imo that would be close to an ideal.

And I agree creating 20+ classes is not a good idea, a game works out much, much better if it gives the illusion of simplicity when you start and works to greater and greater complexity as you progress. Unlocking new classes at endgame is fine, but having a character creation screen with 100+ options when you start doesn't seem like a wise move.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

What evidence do you have to support the claim that 'being class based' is the leading criticism of MMOs?

Allow me to reiterate for clarification…

Originally Posted by grimsark

It doesn't change the simple fact that the leading criticism of MMO's today (that they are nearly all essentially EQ part X) is caused by the implementation of class based leveling mechanics.

In other words… The leading criticism IS NOT the reason all MMORPG’s today are EQ light… But the class based mechanics that, as a result of being used, force developers to emulate EQ. Leading most people to say the trouble is that most MMORPG’s are EQ part X…

Put simply, people complain about the WRONG THING.

[Dandain]

Changing class in town, is no different than logging onto an alt in that same town. Not having to double up on faction grinds, having your characters reputations remain valid across all alts, even to those you do not know very well. The motivation to be capable of toggling you/your guilds friends and characters to meet what's online for leveling, or small group content is really nice.

I realize probably no one arguing against the idea of the class change has played FFXI. Being max level isn't the only important aspect to PvE based progression. Gear still doesn't grown on trees, and "Alt" job/class is still worthless at level cap without the supporting gear. There are a lot of nice things that swapping allows, but trivializing the game or creating a game of a billion warlocks is not one of them. In a game that requires more "forced" grouping than WoW, and has a longer level curve. The class swap is invaluable.

[grimsark]

Originally Posted by Draegan

Why do people keep saying mana mechanics, class mechanics, group mechanics are all broken? They seem to be working fine in an ever increasing MMO market. Just because you're tired of it doesn't mean it's broken.

Personally, I do not think that class based mechanics are broken. However, they are holding back the evolution of the MMORPG industry. Much like the automobile industries love affair with gasoline is holding up the evolution of personal transportation.

My attempt at drawing such a parallel is also an attempt to capture the frustration people like myself experience when trying to make our points. Much like the REAL PROBLEM with cars today is the internal combustion engine, which forces the manufacturer to make the car around the engine, class based mechanics are the REAL PROBLEM with MMORPG’s today, forcing the developers to make their content around it.

Both are old, inefficient, and obsolete. But not broken.