Wow. Good thread. I think most of the points I wanted to make have been made nicely. That's not going to stop me, however. I like ranting too much.
I got started on computer games in the old days. EAMON. Your stats really didn't change. There wasn't a lot you got to keep from one adventure to the next. Or even very much you got to spend your gold on. You bought armor. A starter weapon. And the game's three or four spells. The only thing resembling improvement outside this was getting a better weapon. Of course, a really good weapon did more damage to the wielder on a critical fumble, so caveat emptor. Simple design, you were as good as a human could get very early on... but you had fun exploring, and survival was never certain.
In a class vs skill discussion, I'd be remiss if I failed to reference a few historical examples.
Shadowrun. This system, when I got into it, had a very interesting take on character generation. The system, at heart, was skill based. But there was a little more to it. You prioritized a few things. Stats, skills, money, race, and magic. Some races were better than others. And the capacity to use magic took top place. Limited magic use took 2nd tier. Race took lower rank slots. Human, non-magic would free up priority among stats, skills, and money. Starting cash means something in most games. In this one, it was mostly for cybernetics and gear. Now, considering that most MMO's have stat-enhancing gear... this is still relevant.
Shadowrun used a highly complicated world to put balance in perspective. A nearly inhuman combat cyborg was too fearsome to fast-talk past a receptionist if you needed a quiet entrance. A mage could have cyberware, but it'd cost him power. A normal person wouldn't set off any metal detectors or magic wards, but couldn't get around racial maximums for stats... which would take a lot of xp to buy up. The best cybernetics had hefty pricetags and while they could make you a lot stronger... it wasn't easy to increase further.
The tradeoffs were pretty intense. The system allowed for a vast amount of viable character types. Con men, code crackers, head-bashers, martial artists, gadget freaks... you could even establish a vast network of contacts to dig up dirt on your employer. Any combination was feasible. And it was hard to say what would prove more or less useful. While combat was almost inevitable at some point, a lot of skills could cut it down to the times it was inevitable and the times things go wrong.
I don't suppose anybody is familiar with Alternity? Kinda went away when D&D 3 hit the shelves. Point-buy for different skills, and 4 classes that mostly just determined which skills were a little cheaper... and if you had a favored weapon category. The skills gave added benefits and synergies at certain levels. Some of them were valuable only for this synergy. Like, armor skills reduced your penalties for wearing a bulky carapace. You certainly didn't need the skill to wear most armors. Only to look comfortable while doing so. The big balancing mechanism with this system was the variation in cost for skills.
Enough of the history lesson. These games started you at a certain level of competance, and would let you grow how you liked. Only time stood between you and mastering every possible ability. But then, these games also tend to involve starting over when you die. Not an easy sell in MMOs these days.
With skill based systems, EVE makes it mathematically impossible to make the uber-character. The game isn't going to be running in 24 years, barring a miracle. And if it did, can you picture the gulf in power between the newbies and the ancients? In shadowrun, everyone starts about halfway competant. Just a few skill points from having their core competancies covered, and starting to branch out. (of course, in that game, muscle is simple to acquire... finesse is tricky... and magic unmasterable, but anyway.)
Class or Skill, even WoW agrees that there's a need for players to be allowed to customize their hero. Balance always depends on how that character is used. I had a group through Deadmines, and I played a 'lock. Very frustrating experience. My casting time was longer than the lifespan of a mob in combat. So, I didn't focus on the DoT. I just kept Curse of Recklessness on the mobs, making them die faster and preventing them from running to larger groups... and aiming my pet at anything that aggro'd on the healer. And one helpful partymember suggests using the ultra-slow Curse of Agony on the mobs we were fighting... where it might get a tick or two and do a whopping 10 points of damage if I were quite lucky. People are bad at math, I tell you. Now, in this case, even with a low-level toolkit, huge difference in usefulness between two players.
This brings me to a vital point: Balance is a myth.
Think about it. There's always going to be that one slightly off-kilter combo. That one thing this class can do that that one can't. That one trade-off that's not quite even. Or that new item nobody's figured out how to abuse... yet. It's not going to change with a skill-base.
But not everyone knows these tricks... And it's awfully hard to learn what is truly effective. Most games hide statistics from the player. Some just obfuscate them. In WoW, what's the relationship between attack rating and damage-per-second? How much damage does another 100 AC really block? Sometimes, things get coded funny so there's duplicated data. My 'lock with improved imp has +10 stamina with blood pact up. I can verify this from the blood pact description and the character sheet. But the red bubble icon at the top of the screen says it's +7. Some games (CoX, I'm looking at you) actually leave highly inaccurate %s in their buffs, according to egghead fans with the interest to crunch the numbers.
With class vs skills discussion, subtler issues are overlooked. Either way, a player wants to customize, and wants to know what they're *really* getting out of each decision beforehand. It's annoying to invest time into an utter waste. Especially if that time investment is expressed in terms of grind. Grinding isn't fun, rewarding, or in many cases, particularly necessary.
I'd like to suggest another method. Quest-based. No skill points, no classes. Doing relevant quests for trainers gets you skills and improvements. Or, to phrase it another way... achievement-oriented. As you keep fighting a given type of critter... you get better and better at hitting them, and avoiding their blows. And titles relevant to this... like, say for spiders, arachnologist. This doesn't, however, help you out much if Frankenstein attacks you. (I have heard of something similar to this in LotR, but... killing spiders to earn a teleport to your hometown? WTF?)
Another point I have to make... practice/quest/accomplishment based growth makes a wee bit more sense than level/xp based growth. There's something wierd about slaughtering that 50th rat and "ding!" and suddenly you have another 20 hp, +3 dps, 15 mana, and you've learned the Circle Strafe combat skill! Even though you were clearly using a dagger, your ranged combat just improved. Or sometimes, it happens when you finish a quest. Sometimes this makes sense. Usually tho, it's not when you finish the requirements... but when you show up for the reward. Like a soldier's aim improving only because it's payday.
I think we've got a ways to go before technology lets us build in anything approaching realism or freedom. I can't think of a single MMO that lets me climb a tree. And very few that would let me cut down the same tree. And none that are going to make the tree stay down. Still, we're making progress. Whatever you might say about poor implementation or documentation of the existing crop... it's better than EAMON. Back then, your heal spell only worked intermittantly. Your attack spell did almost no damage. And the other spell was random. It would teleport you, kill you, or... actually, that was about it.
I'm hoping for good things out of Tabula Rasa, and from Fallen Earth... Age of Conan... even though they shall have classes and levels, they shall not limit me to only *bad* choices. The endgame isn't the important part anyway. It's always been about exploring. Doesn't matter if it's a cave system or a game system. Rules, roleplay, or terrain. The question is, at what point does it stop being worth exploring further?
------------------------------ There is no signature file that still seems witty 50 posts in a row.
I'm not much of a MMO Gamer since I have trouble obtaining Internet access, or a job. But concerning Skill vs Class, I found that games like Morrowind, and Oblivion have done some great things with Class/Skill. Your Class simply determines your major and minor skills that are slightly above the rest. But that does not prevent you from working on the other skills that your Class does not specialize in. I Choose to be a Battlemage because I love spells and good hard Melee Grit.
I hope and pray that the future of MMOs involves a less painful way to raise stats than The Elder Scrolls series. If you've ever thought "Ok, I need to stop using my sword and work on my sprinting 'till I level so I can get both strength and constitution to improve by 5..." I find it amusing as heck that Oblivion has so many fan-made levelling schemes that are all superior to the default. The best of them remove levels from the equation. It really does become a different game when it's modded to not use a level basis. The monsters still have levels. But there's also a mod to make normal animals neutral. Of course, this also makes the top-end armor very rare loot, since the bandits of the world don't suddenly all have glass armor when you approach level 20.
------------------------------ There is no signature file that still seems witty 50 posts in a row.
Comments
<OR>
Class Based = disposable.
Skill Based = reusable.
I miss the good ol' days when nerds were actually intelligent.
Wow. Good thread. I think most of the points I wanted to make have been made nicely. That's not going to stop me, however. I like ranting too much.
I got started on computer games in the old days. EAMON. Your stats really didn't change. There wasn't a lot you got to keep from one adventure to the next. Or even very much you got to spend your gold on. You bought armor. A starter weapon. And the game's three or four spells. The only thing resembling improvement outside this was getting a better weapon. Of course, a really good weapon did more damage to the wielder on a critical fumble, so caveat emptor. Simple design, you were as good as a human could get very early on... but you had fun exploring, and survival was never certain.
In a class vs skill discussion, I'd be remiss if I failed to reference a few historical examples.
Shadowrun. This system, when I got into it, had a very interesting take on character generation. The system, at heart, was skill based. But there was a little more to it. You prioritized a few things. Stats, skills, money, race, and magic. Some races were better than others. And the capacity to use magic took top place. Limited magic use took 2nd tier. Race took lower rank slots. Human, non-magic would free up priority among stats, skills, and money. Starting cash means something in most games. In this one, it was mostly for cybernetics and gear. Now, considering that most MMO's have stat-enhancing gear... this is still relevant.
Shadowrun used a highly complicated world to put balance in perspective. A nearly inhuman combat cyborg was too fearsome to fast-talk past a receptionist if you needed a quiet entrance. A mage could have cyberware, but it'd cost him power. A normal person wouldn't set off any metal detectors or magic wards, but couldn't get around racial maximums for stats... which would take a lot of xp to buy up. The best cybernetics had hefty pricetags and while they could make you a lot stronger... it wasn't easy to increase further.
The tradeoffs were pretty intense. The system allowed for a vast amount of viable character types. Con men, code crackers, head-bashers, martial artists, gadget freaks... you could even establish a vast network of contacts to dig up dirt on your employer. Any combination was feasible. And it was hard to say what would prove more or less useful. While combat was almost inevitable at some point, a lot of skills could cut it down to the times it was inevitable and the times things go wrong.
I don't suppose anybody is familiar with Alternity? Kinda went away when D&D 3 hit the shelves. Point-buy for different skills, and 4 classes that mostly just determined which skills were a little cheaper... and if you had a favored weapon category. The skills gave added benefits and synergies at certain levels. Some of them were valuable only for this synergy. Like, armor skills reduced your penalties for wearing a bulky carapace. You certainly didn't need the skill to wear most armors. Only to look comfortable while doing so. The big balancing mechanism with this system was the variation in cost for skills.
Enough of the history lesson. These games started you at a certain level of competance, and would let you grow how you liked. Only time stood between you and mastering every possible ability. But then, these games also tend to involve starting over when you die. Not an easy sell in MMOs these days.
With skill based systems, EVE makes it mathematically impossible to make the uber-character. The game isn't going to be running in 24 years, barring a miracle. And if it did, can you picture the gulf in power between the newbies and the ancients? In shadowrun, everyone starts about halfway competant. Just a few skill points from having their core competancies covered, and starting to branch out. (of course, in that game, muscle is simple to acquire... finesse is tricky... and magic unmasterable, but anyway.)
Class or Skill, even WoW agrees that there's a need for players to be allowed to customize their hero. Balance always depends on how that character is used. I had a group through Deadmines, and I played a 'lock. Very frustrating experience. My casting time was longer than the lifespan of a mob in combat. So, I didn't focus on the DoT. I just kept Curse of Recklessness on the mobs, making them die faster and preventing them from running to larger groups... and aiming my pet at anything that aggro'd on the healer. And one helpful partymember suggests using the ultra-slow Curse of Agony on the mobs we were fighting... where it might get a tick or two and do a whopping 10 points of damage if I were quite lucky. People are bad at math, I tell you. Now, in this case, even with a low-level toolkit, huge difference in usefulness between two players.
This brings me to a vital point: Balance is a myth.
Think about it. There's always going to be that one slightly off-kilter combo. That one thing this class can do that that one can't. That one trade-off that's not quite even. Or that new item nobody's figured out how to abuse... yet. It's not going to change with a skill-base.
But not everyone knows these tricks... And it's awfully hard to learn what is truly effective. Most games hide statistics from the player. Some just obfuscate them. In WoW, what's the relationship between attack rating and damage-per-second? How much damage does another 100 AC really block? Sometimes, things get coded funny so there's duplicated data. My 'lock with improved imp has +10 stamina with blood pact up. I can verify this from the blood pact description and the character sheet. But the red bubble icon at the top of the screen says it's +7. Some games (CoX, I'm looking at you) actually leave highly inaccurate %s in their buffs, according to egghead fans with the interest to crunch the numbers.
With class vs skills discussion, subtler issues are overlooked. Either way, a player wants to customize, and wants to know what they're *really* getting out of each decision beforehand. It's annoying to invest time into an utter waste. Especially if that time investment is expressed in terms of grind. Grinding isn't fun, rewarding, or in many cases, particularly necessary.
I'd like to suggest another method. Quest-based. No skill points, no classes. Doing relevant quests for trainers gets you skills and improvements. Or, to phrase it another way... achievement-oriented. As you keep fighting a given type of critter... you get better and better at hitting them, and avoiding their blows. And titles relevant to this... like, say for spiders, arachnologist. This doesn't, however, help you out much if Frankenstein attacks you. (I have heard of something similar to this in LotR, but... killing spiders to earn a teleport to your hometown? WTF?)
Another point I have to make... practice/quest/accomplishment based growth makes a wee bit more sense than level/xp based growth. There's something wierd about slaughtering that 50th rat and "ding!" and suddenly you have another 20 hp, +3 dps, 15 mana, and you've learned the Circle Strafe combat skill! Even though you were clearly using a dagger, your ranged combat just improved. Or sometimes, it happens when you finish a quest. Sometimes this makes sense. Usually tho, it's not when you finish the requirements... but when you show up for the reward. Like a soldier's aim improving only because it's payday.
I think we've got a ways to go before technology lets us build in anything approaching realism or freedom. I can't think of a single MMO that lets me climb a tree. And very few that would let me cut down the same tree. And none that are going to make the tree stay down. Still, we're making progress. Whatever you might say about poor implementation or documentation of the existing crop... it's better than EAMON. Back then, your heal spell only worked intermittantly. Your attack spell did almost no damage. And the other spell was random. It would teleport you, kill you, or... actually, that was about it.
I'm hoping for good things out of Tabula Rasa, and from Fallen Earth... Age of Conan... even though they shall have classes and levels, they shall not limit me to only *bad* choices. The endgame isn't the important part anyway. It's always been about exploring. Doesn't matter if it's a cave system or a game system. Rules, roleplay, or terrain. The question is, at what point does it stop being worth exploring further?
------------------------------
There is no signature file that still seems witty 50 posts in a row.
I'm not much of a MMO Gamer since I have trouble obtaining Internet access, or a job. But concerning Skill vs Class, I found that games like Morrowind, and Oblivion have done some great things with Class/Skill. Your Class simply determines your major and minor skills that are slightly above the rest. But that does not prevent you from working on the other skills that your Class does not specialize in. I Choose to be a Battlemage because I love spells and good hard Melee Grit.
Dan the man
I hope and pray that the future of MMOs involves a less painful way to raise stats than The Elder Scrolls series. If you've ever thought "Ok, I need to stop using my sword and work on my sprinting 'till I level so I can get both strength and constitution to improve by 5..." I find it amusing as heck that Oblivion has so many fan-made levelling schemes that are all superior to the default. The best of them remove levels from the equation. It really does become a different game when it's modded to not use a level basis. The monsters still have levels. But there's also a mod to make normal animals neutral. Of course, this also makes the top-end armor very rare loot, since the bandits of the world don't suddenly all have glass armor when you approach level 20.
------------------------------
There is no signature file that still seems witty 50 posts in a row.