Originally posted by Hexxeity demarc outlined the arguments well, and I have only this to add: I have played many MMOs with classes and several MMOswithout classes. I enjoy the games with classes a lot more, and I think it is because I like to group with people. Classes encourage and facilitate grouping. Period. Classless games are full of people who like to solo. I would venture to guess that 95% of classless/sandbox fans are also solo players at heart.
I would venture World of Warcraft has bout 95% solo players maybe you want to rephrase that argument....
His post wasnt very good. Like most Class based proponents, he is claiming in real life people are only good at one thing which is not true at all. How would Class based proponents explain the owner of 38 studios Curt shilling? Baseball player (pro-athlete) + Business owner? Obviously, he is good at more then one profession?
How bout their VP? He can fly a plane plus helps run 38 studios
Class based games have never been close to realistic. They are a reflection of sports games whereas each player has a role. In sports, there is no redundancy per se. Only one quarterback on the field
In real life there is redundancy. If NASA lived by Class based principles we'd see shuttles falling down to Earth left & right. In real life, we believe in redundant systems, backups, fail safes.
Class based systems are tightly oiled engines that fall apart when you remove an essential piece.
Skill-based systems are closer to real life for the redundancy (people are hybrids)
Skill-based games can infact overlap Class based games completely. But Class based games cant expand dynamically
Its a difficult topic to argue though. I'd rather just conclude that I would like to see more different types of MMOs.
Originally posted by Zindaihas Ok, there are many things about MMOs that I feel are outdated, levels are probably the best example. But classes are not one of them. Not only are classes good for an MMO, I believe they are vital. It's my understanding that CoH was originally beta tested without classes and it was a fiasco. Nobody knew their roles in group play..
You forgot to mention that Cryptic realized their error and is going back with skill-based on Champions Online
In a recent interview with Gamasutra Jack commented they found out Classes way were too rigid and inflexible. It prevented them from easily adding on new power sets.
demarc outlined the arguments well, and I have only this to add:
I have played many MMOs with classes and several MMOswithout classes.
I enjoy the games with classes a lot more, and I think it is because I like to group with people.
Classes encourage and facilitate grouping. Period. Classless games are full of people who like to solo.
I would venture to guess that 95% of classless/sandbox fans are also solo players at heart.
I would venture World of Warcraft has bout 95% solo players maybe you want to rephrase that argument....
His post wasnt very good. Like most Class based proponents, he is claiming in real life people are only good at one thing which is not true at all. How would Class based proponents explain the owner of 38 studios Curt shilling? Baseball player (pro-athlete) + Business owner? Obviously, he is good at more then one profession?
How bout their VP? He can fly a plane plus helps run 38 studios
Class based games have never been close to realistic. They are a reflection of sports games whereas each player has a role. In sports, there is no redundancy per se. Only one quarterback on the field
In real life there is redundancy. If NASA lived by Class based principles we'd see shuttles falling down to Earth left & right. In real life, we believe in redundant systems, backups, fail safes.
Class based systems are tightly oiled engines that fall apart when you remove an essential piece.
Skill-based systems are closer to real life for the redundancy (people are hybrids)
Your not getting the point of my message are you?
Maby i can spell it out better for you ... /deep breath
I never said people cant be *good* at more than 1 thing. I just said you cant *MASTER* more than 1 thing. Life aint that long. Now re-read my post where i talked about *mastering* a skill. A black belt at judo is *far far far* from a *master* I also noted that your not including any scale .. saying Curt can do this that and the other .. does not quantify any of those statements. As i explained .. saying I am an Electrical Engineer and i can cook and ride a bike .. it not a good qualifyer for a classless system.
Sure I can ride a bike .. am i a master at it? a master cook? In fact i'll go so far to say that even after 15 years in the field i am *far* from a master engineer also. Its about perspective.
Your avatar in the game aims to master his field. Your supposed to be a Hero. An Adventurer. Above the common man. Your supposed to strive for perfection .. be that in arms (tank) Magic (caster) whatever.
People (even in todays world) strive for perfection .. mastery in an area. Only the most arrogant ever claim to achieve it. It takes a lifetime to master skill at arms ... we cant even speculate on how long it would take to *master* magic ... suficed to say it would'ent be a weekend hobbie.
You say people are hybrids. True enough. We're not very good at it tho. Take your sports example .. sure the linebacker can step in for the QB .. hes not gonna be very good at it tho is he? The Mechanic can step in for the electrical engineer ... lotta guesswork there tho. Your own example Curt Shilling can fly a plane .. would i want him landing my 747 tho? Not really. Hes hardly *mastered* flying planes .. sure he may know his way around a few models .. hes not a master tho. Hes a VP .. i assume his company is sports related? Sure would hate to see him controlling the oil market .. so he hardly *mastered* the world of commerce.
Again .. i *never* said people cant be good at more than one thing .. i said they cant *master* many thing ... like you seem to think your healer / tanker / nuker can ...
Sitting here watcing CSI and just wanted to add a couple of points before i leave this thread. (its been an interesting and *mostly* constructive thread btw !! Thanks all who participated)
The poster above me (Vajuras) made a good point. Its all relative. True. When I say *Mastered* in a real world situation I can never accept that anyone has *ever* mastered anything. To my mind there is always something new to learn in a field .. the human situation is in constant evolution so mastery of anything is, to my mind, impossible. You can always improve is my point .. you can gain more knowledge, be a little faster .... if you could talk to any of the great artists they would all cite a piece of work that they felt was thier *best* Lots of people would agree, lots would disagree. I will warrent that none (if they were honest) would claim to have mastered thier art. They always strive to do better *next time* Human nature. We always see room for improvement.
So its relative in how people view the word and the expression of *Mastered*
To some people .. someone that can consistantly score 100% on a math test could be viewed as mastered. Not to me. There is always other schools of math .. there are harder problems .. they can be done faster .. with less intermediate steps (working out) .. theres always room for improvement. So i agree with the above poster .. its relative to your view point.
This brings up an interesting point as far as MMORPG's are concerned.
Real life has no hard caps ... like i say everything can be improved upon. You may think your moms apple pie is perfect and cant be improved upon .. until the day you find that little diner off the beaten track ... see my point? Real life has no experiance bars.
MMORPG's have hard caps. Once your Warrior reaches the skill cap / level cap ... hes mastered it. Short of magical augments (Gear / enchants / etc) there is no way (short of an expac) that he can ever overcome this artificial hard cap.
For a pure skill based game to even come near to reality .. it would have to have no artificial cap. A constant learning curve that goes ever onwards. In this way people who wanted to truly devote themselves to a particular skill (or skill set) would always be striving to improve. People who wanted to work on mutiple skill sets could spread thier time learning many skills.
Of course no game company would develop a game in this way. Scaling encounters would be a nightmare, with no skill cap content would have to constantly expand to present a challange to the players.
I guess my point is that in order to present a truly skill based game a developer has 2 choices. Either have no hard caps (not bloody likely) or impose artificial caps. 500 points spend them how you want (Al-la UO)
The capped system presents all the problems i've outlined in previous posts ... player enforced skill sets etc.
Thats not to say i'm against pure skill based systems .. i just see the flaws in that game design and they dont appeal to me. Dev's design game content based on certian people filling certian roles .. tank .. healer .. dps. This is a coding issue .. its not viable (at this time) to program encounters to scale to a group of players skill sets. They are set to scale to a level range and the *expected* abilitys of archtypes in that range. (I am of course talking specifically about group orientated content .. the whole point of a MMORPG is group content right?) You cant expect the Devs to code encounters to be viable for a mixed bag party of various skills and at the same time viable for a group who skilled in a more *traditional* way.
The *traditional* groups tank undoubtedly has better mitigation / avoidance than the hybrid skill-set tank. Thier healer (being pure) has better / more mana efficient etc heals. So you scale the mobs to hit harder to offset the Mitigation / healing of the traditional group. But then the hybrid group has more DPS but less mitigation .. the mob just hits too hard for them to heal though. So you scale it to hit lighter but have more HP. Now the traditional group is in no danger whatsoever (the mobs dmg is pathetic) but they have to grind alot more since thier DPS is lower .. see my point? Its a scaling issue.These are of course examples taken to the extreem ... many hybrid groups could manage group content with either more or less difficulty (depending on mob weaknesses etc) My point is just that its alot harder to scale an encounter / dungeon when you add more variables (ie totally free skill allocation as opposed to some core mechanics)
Until game design can make intelligent encounter choices based on the Players facing a particular encounter .. Skill based games will suffer from this.
Some people will say .. *but my groupmates are a pure healer and we have a tank and 4 hybrids* .. kewl. So basically you want a server where you can be a nice shiney hybrid and pick your skill sets ... as long as there are some other people to play the traditional tank / healer roles for you? Thats conciderate of you. Until a company can design a system where all skills are valuable enough that *cookie-cutter* player spec's dont emerge 4 weeks after launch .. and can balance MoBs to the group facing them's level AND skill set .. i just dont see a pure skill set game working well (unless there are nice people who adopt the non-shiney *traditional* rolls) At least not working well enough to interest me. I'm in no way inclined to play a game where instead of Devs telling me the skills i have (Full archtypes) i have players telling me instead (*OG is uber spec, anything else is n00b* /sigh)
As I outlined in a previous post ... I love games with alot of customizable options, skill sets, abilitys, AA's whatever .. but I still feel that the 4 prime archtypes should retain thier *core* abilitys. (Tanks tank healers heal etc)
After those core abilitys .. make things as customizable as possible .. just retain the game balance on all those other abilitys to prevent a set of *required* abilitys !!
Maby i can spell it out better for you ... /deep breath
I never said people cant be *good* at more than 1 thing. I just said you cant *MASTER* more than 1 thing. Life aint that long. Now re-read my post where i talked about *mastering* a skill. A black belt at judo is *far far far* from a *master* I also noted that your not including any scale .. saying Curt can do this that and the other .. does not quantify any of those statements. As i explained .. saying I am an Electrical Engineer and i can cook and ride a bike .. it not a good qualifyer for a classless system.
Sure I can ride a bike .. am i a master at it? a master cook? In fact i'll go so far to say that even after 15 years in the field i am *far* from a master engineer also. Its about perspective.
Who needs to be a master in everything? If that were true, why do paladins exist? Nobody can learn to fight and cast magic, right? Oh wait, they're worse at fighting than warriors and worse at healing than priests.
Why are Hunters in WoW forced to be beastmasters? What if I want to be a pure ranger, and not have to worry about a pet? What if I want to be a stealthy sniper-type shooter, combining ranged attacks with stealth? What if I want to be a ranged healer hybrid? Or a ranged/caster? What if I want to be a tank with a pet? Or a DPS with a pet?
Not only do skill based systems allow you to create hybrids, they give players the flexibility to customize their "hybrids" to the degree of their liking. What if I don't want to be a Paladin, but a Warrior with very basic healing spells for soloing?
And the customization doesn't have to end there. What if I want my warrior to know how to ride a bike to cut down on travel time? I don't have to be Lance freaking Armstrong to ride a bike.
We don't have to be masters at everything we do, and even masters can learn other skills, albeit at a lower level of proficiency.
Your avatar in the game aims to master his field. Your supposed to be a Hero. An Adventurer. Above the common man. Your supposed to strive for perfection .. be that in arms (tank) Magic (caster) whatever.
People (even in todays world) strive for perfection .. mastery in an area. Only the most arrogant ever claim to achieve it. It takes a lifetime to master skill at arms ... we cant even speculate on how long it would take to *master* magic ... suficed to say it would'ent be a weekend hobbie.
How come a warrior or mage can't learn to shoot a gun, but both can learn to be expert blacksmiths or tailors? It's retardedly easy to learn basic proficiency with firearms. You can learn in a day. If you want to learn actual tactics, tack on 13 weeks. There. That's still much faster than the years of learning you'll need to learn blacksmithing worth a damn.
You say people are hybrids. True enough. We're not very good at it tho. Take your sports example .. sure the linebacker can step in for the QB .. hes not gonna be very good at it tho is he? The Mechanic can step in for the electrical engineer ... lotta guesswork there tho. Your own example Curt Shilling can fly a plane .. would i want him landing my 747 tho? Not really. Hes hardly *mastered* flying planes .. sure he may know his way around a few models .. hes not a master tho. Hes a VP .. i assume his company is sports related? Sure would hate to see him controlling the oil market .. so he hardly *mastered* the world of commerce.
Again .. i *never* said people cant be good at more than one thing .. i said they cant *master* many thing ... like you seem to think your healer / tanker / nuker can ...
Right. In a realistic game, you'd never be able to all the skills necessary to be the best fighter/mage/etc. In real life, we don't have the time to be the best in multiple fields. But we can and do diversify, because nobody does just one thing.
Polymaths are rare in the modern world, where the sum of human knowledge is far to vast for people to master multiple fields with much meaningful depth. In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades.
Ok, there are many things about MMOs that I feel are outdated, levels are probably the best example. But classes are not one of them. Not only are classes good for an MMO, I believe they are vital. It's my understanding that CoH was originally beta tested without classes and it was a fiasco. Nobody knew their roles in group play. Not only that, but having classes follows our real life situation. We all (well those of us who are motivated) pick a "class" or more appropriately, a profession in life. Some people become doctors, some become engineers, some become janitors, etc. So this is how it works in the world of MMOs. Someone who trains to fight with a sword is not just going to be able to go out and start casting spells on mobs. It's too unbelievable. Having classes brings structure to the game. No, my opinion is that they must remain.
And my dad picked Mechanic, but he makes a mean cook, has been a kindergarten employee for 3 years now.
I used to be a soldier, trained to kill, then they made me medic, trained to heal.. left the army, then worked as a cashier, then later librarian.. Also worked in factory.
People today rarily know 1 thing and 1 thing only. Even in fiction no one is "1 thing". Luke wasnt just a jedi, he was a soldier, a officer, a politician a teacher a pilot and a mechanic.
The "Class" is just because the people making the games want it easier for them. And us players have been formed into accepting it as how it should be... We've become Pavlovs dogs... Becaue we no longer can think for ourselves and decide what job we have in a group based on the skills that we like to play with for our character.
Well... I've not become Pavlovs dog... I hate the class system and have never had problems figuring out my role or job based on my own choices of playstyle and skills that fit it.
Looks like I'm going to have to defend my post, which is fine. First of all, it was a very brief response without much depth. So let me add a little bit more detail.
While I believe that classes are a good thing in an MMO, they don't have to be so rigid that you can't learn some other skills. For one thing, I have always been in favor of multi-classing. Giving your character a broader range of playing options. Also, I don't see any reason why there can't be some crossover in skills between classes. Casters should be able to learn some basic melee skills and fighters should be allowed to learn some basic magic skills, etc.
But, let's remember what we're trying to become in these games. We're trying to turn our characters into heroes. Legendary figures who are the talk of the land. You don't achieve that by being a jack of all trades. Heroes are generally remembered for being great at one thing. Beethoven was a great composer. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player. His baseball career was less memorable. To become great, to become the best at what you do, you have to devote the majority of your time to that pursuit. A warrior is not going to become a great warrior by reading spell books all day long. A mage is not going to become an arch-mage by shooting arrows at a target. Skill advancement should require some kind of realistic discipline. But I'm not saying that characters can't have some hobbies outside their primary class. They just shouldn't be able to become great at all different areas. They'd never have time to sleep.
Also, there seems to be a common perception that if you have classes, you cannot have a skill based game. The two are not mutually exclusive. I think the best system in an MMO is to have classes with skill based advancement, not level based.
Finally, I'm also not in favor of locking yourself into a class at the character creation screen. Create a character with the options the game allows, enter the world, have a look around and then begin your journey down the path you wish to follow. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer on this subject, but I do believe classes are better than no classes.
Maby i can spell it out better for you ... /deep breath I never said people cant be *good* at more than 1 thing. I just said you cant *MASTER* more than 1 thing. Life aint that long. Now re-read my post where i talked about *mastering* a skill. A black belt at judo is *far far far* from a *master* I also noted that your not including any scale .. saying Curt can do this that and the other .. does not quantify any of those statements. As i explained .. saying I am an Electrical Engineer and i can cook and ride a bike .. it not a good qualifyer for a classless system. Sure I can ride a bike .. am i a master at it? a master cook? In fact i'll go so far to say that even after 15 years in the field i am *far* from a master engineer also. Its about perspective.
Who needs to be a master in everything? If that were true, why do paladins exist? Nobody can learn to fight and cast magic, right? Oh wait, they're worse at fighting than warriors and worse at healing than priests.
Why are Hunters in WoW forced to be beastmasters? What if I want to be a pure ranger, and not have to worry about a pet? What if I want to be a stealthy sniper-type shooter, combining ranged attacks with stealth? What if I want to be a ranged healer hybrid? Or a ranged/caster? What if I want to be a tank with a pet? Or a DPS with a pet?
Not only do skill based systems allow you to create hybrids, they give players the flexibility to customize their "hybrids" to the degree of their liking. What if I don't want to be a Paladin, but a Warrior with very basic healing spells for soloing?
And the customization doesn't have to end there. What if I want my warrior to know how to ride a bike to cut down on travel time? I don't have to be Lance freaking Armstrong to ride a bike.
We don't have to be masters at everything we do, and even masters can learn other skills, albeit at a lower level of proficiency.
Your avatar in the game aims to master his field. Your supposed to be a Hero. An Adventurer. Above the common man. Your supposed to strive for perfection .. be that in arms (tank) Magic (caster) whatever.
People (even in todays world) strive for perfection .. mastery in an area. Only the most arrogant ever claim to achieve it. It takes a lifetime to master skill at arms ... we cant even speculate on how long it would take to *master* magic ... suficed to say it would'ent be a weekend hobbie.
How come a warrior or mage can't learn to shoot a gun, but both can learn to be expert blacksmiths or tailors? It's retardedly easy to learn basic proficiency with firearms. You can learn in a day. If you want to learn actual tactics, tack on 13 weeks. There. That's still much faster than the years of learning you'll need to learn blacksmithing worth a damn.
You say people are hybrids. True enough. We're not very good at it tho. Take your sports example .. sure the linebacker can step in for the QB .. hes not gonna be very good at it tho is he? The Mechanic can step in for the electrical engineer ... lotta guesswork there tho. Your own example Curt Shilling can fly a plane .. would i want him landing my 747 tho? Not really. Hes hardly *mastered* flying planes .. sure he may know his way around a few models .. hes not a master tho. Hes a VP .. i assume his company is sports related? Sure would hate to see him controlling the oil market .. so he hardly *mastered* the world of commerce.
Again .. i *never* said people cant be good at more than one thing .. i said they cant *master* many thing ... like you seem to think your healer / tanker / nuker can ...
Right. In a realistic game, you'd never be able to all the skills necessary to be the best fighter/mage/etc. In real life, we don't have the time to be the best in multiple fields. But we can and do diversify, because nobody does just one thing.
Polymaths are rare in the modern world, where the sum of human knowledge is far to vast for people to master multiple fields with much meaningful depth. In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades.
LOL i am totally confused by your post I'm afraid. I'm really not sure if your agreeing with me or disagreeing .. it seems your doing abit of both maby?
The post of mine you quoted was a responce to another post ... if you want to get the *whole* story you'll need to read the post i was responding too and the post that was in responce too etc. It seems your arguing (like me) that players should not be able to master (for my deffinition of *master* see a couple of posts up) more than 1 skill or skill set (warriors skill at arms for example would cover armor / weapon / shield etc)
It also seems that your arguing for a skill based system .. which I disagree with .. but not in the way you think. I am also opposed to strict Archtype like classes and have infact on this very thread sited how I would like to see characters develop. (With a Core skill base - from archtype - and a far more customizable skill set making up the rest of a characters skills)
With the system i was proposing you could indeed have your *stealthy killer ranger* or any other type of ranger .. since ranger would only have the *core* archtype skills locked (DPS) and be free to pick any combination of other skills. (Look a few posts up for a more detailed accounting)
Heh just not sure if your agreeing or arguing with me is all ... since most of what you said was covered in my earlier posts .. maby I can implor you to scan over them before you write me off as a *Die-hard-must-have-classes* type of player !
Again .. I only argued against free range skill selection that allows people to master different aspects of the core game .. a Fighter / Wizard .. should in no way scale with either a fighter or a wizard ... if they did .. why the hell would you play a fighter or a wizard? lol
I did clarify that *I never said people cant be *good* at more than one thing* ... (The hybrids your suggestion all fall into the *good at more then 1 thing* area. Now asking for a ranger / wizard who can bow DPS like and ranger and pop off fireballs like a wizard .. would be something i vehemently disagree with.
" In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades."
Thats a matter of perspective really. The word mastery can be taken to mean anything from *Expert knowledge* which he would indeed fall under. He indeed had Expert knowledge at that peroid of certian subjects. On the other hand another deffinition of Mastery is *Full command of a subject of study* This is alot more ambiguious. Full command .. theres no limiting factor really .. Can he be described as having full command of Science when he knows knowing about the A-bomb? Which children today know of? Its basic teaching for us .. his lack of knowledge on aspects of science would tend to argue that his mastery was far from compleate (as i'm sure people 1000 years from now will view ours)
Thats the whole issue with *mastery* .. Given a long enough life span .. i'm sure da Vinci could have developed an A-bomb .. and thats the argument i put forth. Until *everything* is know .. until there is no possible way to improve an item or a process .. then we cant claim to have mastered it. I'm sure stone age man figured he had that transportation thing mastered when he carved up the wheel ... Total mastery ... from thats theres no improvement .. and we're (as a species) along way from that in any field.
LOL i am totally confused by your post I'm afraid. I'm really not sure if your agreeing with me or disagreeing .. it seems your doing abit of both maby?
Both.
The post of mine you quoted was a responce to another post ... if you want to get the *whole* story you'll need to read the post i was responding too and the post that was in responce too etc. It seems your arguing (like me) that players should not be able to master (for my deffinition of *master* see a couple of posts up) more than 1 skill or skill set (warriors skill at arms for example would cover armor / weapon / shield etc)
I've never played SWG, but other skill based games limit you from being an uber warrior/mage/etc all at once. UO caps you at 700. You can learn as many skills as you want in EVE, but you can only put certain ones to use at a given time based on your ship and loadout. Darkfall will have skill decay for high levels of skills, so if you mastered swords but didn't use them for a long time because you were mastering magic, your swordsmanship would get rusty.
It also seems that your arguing for a skill based system .. which I disagree with .. but not in the way you think. I am also opposed to strict Archtype like classes and have infact on this very thread sited how I would like to see characters develop. (With a Core skill base - from archtype - and a far more customizable skill set making up the rest of a characters skills)
With the system i was proposing you could indeed have your *stealthy killer ranger* or any other type of ranger .. since ranger would only have the *core* archtype skills locked (DPS) and be free to pick any combination of other skills. (Look a few posts up for a more detailed accounting)
Understandable. That would be far superior to the more restrictive class-based systems we currently have. I see your rationale for wanting a core-based class system, but I believe it's not necessarily required (depending on the rest of the game's design).
Heh just not sure if your agreeing or arguing with me is all ... since most of what you said was covered in my earlier posts .. maby I can implor you to scan over them before you write me off as a *Die-hard-must-have-classes* type of player !
I was mainly disagreeing on the real life class/skill equivalents.
Again .. I only argued against free range skill selection that allows people to master different aspects of the core game .. a Fighter / Wizard .. should in no way scale with either a fighter or a wizard ... if they did .. why the hell would you play a fighter or a wizard? lol
You mean a character 100% as strong as a fighter, and 100% as strong as a wizard? With you so far. But why should a fighter be completely unable to cast a spell? Why should a wizard be completely unable to hold a shield?
Depending on how open your core classes are, the advantage of a skillbased system is the even greater flexibility.
I did clarify that *I never said people cant be *good* at more than one thing* ... (The hybrids your suggestion all fall into the *good at more then 1 thing* area. Now asking for a ranger / wizard who can bow DPS like and ranger and pop off fireballs like a wizard .. would be something i vehemently disagree with.
And of course the skill based system would have measures to discourage this. Darkfall has a soft cap plus high level skill decay. You could theoretically have an expert ranger who's also an expert at casting spells, but that player would have to work a lot harder. Not only to keep his skill levels current, but because of the soft cap he'd be spending proportionally even more time than a specialist.
The developer, by controlling the values for the softcap, rate of skill decay, and rate of skill gain, can determine exactly to what degree a player can master how many skills.
If you have a hard time understanding your role in a system that is not class based, you aren't going to understand the mechanics of games any more complicated than WoW.
I saw someone mention that classes make it easier to balance. The thing is, without classes you don't need balancing. I played WoW for about 2 years and classes were nerfed and buffed over and over again to try and balance them, it never really helped.
I like really open class-based systems for example Lineage 2. You start off as a Fighter or a Mystic and then specialize as you go along. This is my favorite type of system.
I do admit I've played very few MMOs. So when I hear classes like merchant or blacksmith. I'm most familiar with the class systems in WoW and PSO so that's what I'm basing most of my opinions on. I like how WoW has both professions and classes because really, your style of combat should be classified differently than what you craft/gather.
In games like WoW it wouldn't have mattered if everyone looked exactly the same since you had to inspect people to be completely sure of their class or their role in a group.
I don't care for fantasy races but I'd like to be able to be any role no matter what race I played. (I know a Tauren rogue be silly and I wouldn't want to be one, but it makes as much sense as a friggen Gnome warrior).
I don't think the class system needs to be done away with, just improved. Though I'd like to see a good skill system. (as in one that doesn't let you be everything at once)
Originally posted by demarc01 I'm back.For a pure skill based game to even come near to reality .. it would have to have no artificial cap. A constant learning curve that goes ever onwards. In this way people who wanted to truly devote themselves to a particular skill (or skill set) would always be striving to improve. People who wanted to work on mutiple skill sets could spread thier time learning many skills.
Wurm Online. There are MUDs that do that as well but you incur diminishing returns of course. Such a system usually strongly favors time investments
Of course no game company would develop a game in this way. Scaling encounters would be a nightmare, with no skill cap content would have to constantly expand to present a challange to the players.
Already done...... Its not that hard really. City of Heroes dynamically spawns encounters based on team composition for example.
I guess my point is that in order to present a truly skill based game a developer has 2 choices. Either have no hard caps (not bloody likely) or impose artificial caps. 500 points spend them how you want (Al-la UO) The capped system presents all the problems i've outlined in previous posts ... player enforced skill sets etc.
Problem is there is a theoritcial (sp?) limit to what a human can do. There is always a cap. If your post was remotely realistic then surely I can get to a point where I can move a mountain? Lift a car single handedly? Drive my car at 100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide? Impossible. In real life there is a cap.
Skill-based systems that most any designer will agree upon is way more realistic then Class based. You should have been arguing against Use Based systems and that skill-based gaming is TOO realistic. That is a much better argument to bring. But then of course we would smack you down anyway since skill-based games can use XP or be time based training, etc. Still, would've been a much better argument you could've at least argued against use-based games
Thats not to say i'm against pure skill based systems .. i just see the flaws in that game design and they dont appeal to me. Dev's design game content based on certian people filling certian roles .. tank .. healer .. dps. This is a coding issue .. its not viable (at this time) to program encounters to scale to a group of players skill sets. They are set to scale to a level range and the *expected* abilitys of archtypes in that range. (I am of course talking specifically about group orientated content .. the whole point of a MMORPG is group content right?) You cant expect the Devs to code encounters to be viable for a mixed bag party of various skills and at the same time viable for a group who skilled in a more *traditional* way.
You're talking about sports games aren't you? Where all the content is preknown. All of our challenges are already known so we can optimize for that. Classes are horrible for dealing with dynamic situations. This is why skill-based games are much better for sandboxy games with dynamic content. Classes are pretty good for Sports games (like football and raiding). They breakdown fast though when a cog in the engine breaks. Due to lack of redundancy, a 5 man team that loses a healer is devasted.
In real life we have redundancy.
The *traditional* groups tank undoubtedly has better mitigation / avoidance than the hybrid skill-set tank. Thier healer (being pure) has better / more mana efficient etc heals. So you scale the mobs to hit harder to offset the Mitigation / healing of the traditional group. But then the hybrid group has more DPS but less mitigation .. the mob just hits too hard for them to heal though. So you scale it to hit lighter but have more HP. Now the traditional group is in no danger whatsoever (the mobs dmg is pathetic) but they have to grind alot more since thier DPS is lower .. see my point? Its a scaling issue.These are of course examples taken to the extreem ... many hybrid groups could manage group content with either more or less difficulty (depending on mob weaknesses etc) My point is just that its alot harder to scale an encounter / dungeon when you add more variables (ie totally free skill allocation as opposed to some core mechanics) Until game design can make intelligent encounter choices based on the Players facing a particular encounter .. Skill based games will suffer from this. Some people will say .. *but my groupmates are a pure healer and we have a tank and 4 hybrids* .. kewl. So basically you want a server where you can be a nice shiney hybrid and pick your skill sets ... as long as there are some other people to play the traditional tank / healer roles for you? Thats conciderate of you. Until a company can design a system where all skills are valuable enough that *cookie-cutter* player spec's dont emerge 4 weeks after launch .. and can balance MoBs to the group facing them's level AND skill set .. i just dont see a pure skill set game working well (unless there are nice people who adopt the non-shiney *traditional* rolls) At least not working well enough to interest me. I'm in no way inclined to play a game where instead of Devs telling me the skills i have (Full archtypes) i have players telling me instead (*OG is uber spec, anything else is n00b* /sigh)
As I outlined in a previous post ... I love games with alot of customizable options, skill sets, abilitys, AA's whatever .. but I still feel that the 4 prime archtypes should retain thier *core* abilitys. (Tanks tank healers heal etc) After those core abilitys .. make things as customizable as possible .. just retain the game balance on all those other abilitys to prevent a set of *required* abilitys !!
You keep talking about "sports gaming". Never mind people enjoy creating their own roles. Some might just want to be a pure crafter and never fight. Others want to be a pure trader. Skill-based games allow this.
Class based games are just like sports. Everyone has a role and all of our challenges are preknown. Its great for static content.
But for PVP and such Classes fall way down. In every other genre, you can switch your role at anytime basically. Class based MMORPGs is pretty much only genre that locks you into one role and disables a player's ability to adjust for dynamic situations
There, my post is much shorter then yours btw. You can get a good point across in a paragraph. most of us just dont have time to read a long post in a thread consider Blogs or Dev's corner
[quote]Originally posted by Zindaihas Looks like I'm going to have to defend my post, which is fine. First of all, it was a very brief response without much depth. So let me add a little bit more detail. While I believe that classes are a good thing in an MMO, they don't have to be so rigid that you can't learn some other skills. For one thing, I have always been in favor of multi-classing. Giving your character a broader range of playing options. Also, I don't see any reason why there can't be some crossover in skills between classes. Casters should be able to learn some basic melee skills and fighters should be allowed to learn some basic magic skills, etc. [/b][/quote]
Yeah even D&D allows multi-classing.....
But, let's remember what we're trying to become in these games. We're trying to turn our characters into heroes. Legendary figures who are the talk of the land.
Here we go not everyone wants to be a hero. I enjoy crafting and helping other players in the game.
[quote You don't achieve that by being a jack of all trades. Heroes are generally remembered for being great at one thing. Beethoven was a great composer. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player. His baseball career was less memorable. To become great, to become the best at what you do, you have to devote the majority of your time to that pursuit. [/quote]
Nice point but it of course omits the heroes in real life that were diverse. Like the famous leaders in history that had Charisma, intelligent, and could wield a sword.
A warrior is not going to become a great warrior by reading spell books all day long. A mage is not going to become an arch-mage by shooting arrows at a target.
Hidden potential. Sometimes in real life people lose fights because someone does something unexpected..
When everyone does the same exact thing- I know everything you can do. In PVP, sometimes its that "Hidden Potential" that nets the win.
Am I the only one that feels this way? I hate picking a class that I know I'm stuck with for a long time (if I want to each end game).
It's so restricting, as well as boring. I'd much rather everyone be on the same level, and merely choose which skills they want from a huge setlist. Something SWG did very well, since changing was very easy as well.
What I consider dull is when everyone has access to the same set of skills.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
A warrior is not going to become a great warrior by reading spell books all day long. A mage is not going to become an arch-mage by shooting arrows at a target.
Hidden potential. Sometimes in real life people lose fights because someone does something unexpected.
When everyone does the same exact thing- I know everything you can do. In PVP, sometimes its that "Hidden Potential" that nets the win.
Strategy!! Doing something unpredicted to win. That's what is missing from most of the class systems (and honestly almost all MMOs). They are mostly very rigid... even the ones that claim to allow you to 'specialize' become a simple min/max game where 1 or 2 choices become 'optimal'. And with that optimal choice, everyone has the same optimal 'strategy' (if you ask me, it's not really a strategy as much as a recipe since you don't really change anything based on your opponents reactions... just who your opponents are)... boring and rigid.
I am 100% for class systems, but not restrictive ones. It should be more open ended... basically you pick a class and have a substantial bonus to up related skills and bonus to such skills, but the ability to learn other non-class skills to supplement them. The more related the non-class skill is to your class skills, the easier to learn (not as hard for a tanking warrior to learn ranged bow attacks than to learn magic). If you want to use the 'realistic' argument (although this is fiction and the suspension of disbelief is important to that), it makes sense in the fact that the original career you start in is like your class... yes you can learn and do other things and bring your previous experience to help you change, but it requires more effect to change and if you stayed with your career path it would have been easier (might not have made you happier, but easier).
It has to be tough to balance that, because you have to make it worth it to want to spend time learning non-class skills so their isn't one clear optimal choice. You almost need to make sure that 99% specialization in class skills ISN'T the optimal choice... it would be tough to do right... probably why it hasn't been done yet. Hopefully we'll get some more interesting MMOs soon.
Many of these companies have been doing this "No player left behind" crap. To make it so everyone is playing on the same level they dumb the game down to the simplest form of gameplay to try to make everyone happy.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
"Already done...... Its not that hard really. City of Heroes dynamically spawns encounters based on team composition for example."
Your only getting half the point. DAoC spawns dynamic dungeons based on group size / level. 100% skill based games add a new variable, skills, that this dynamic system would have to factor. CoH is a very bad example as it reinforces my point (being a class based game) and much easier to build dynamic content for.
"Problem is there is a theoritcial (sp?) limit to what a human can do. There is always a cap. If your post was remotely realistic then surely I can get to a point where I can move a mountain? Lift a car single handedly? Drive my car at 100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide? Impossible. In real life there is a cap."
No .. you say theres a cap I disagree. In 1000 years from now driving "100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide" may be childs play. 10,000 years from now .. who knows? Humans are still going through the process of evolution .. theres no saying what we can accomplish given enough time (and after all .. the common feature of all MMORPGS is .. time) If you could live long enough .. i'm sure theres no limit to what you could accomplish (Be it manually or through the use of improved technology - gear)
"You keep talking about "sports gaming". Never mind people enjoy creating their own roles. Some might just want to be a pure crafter and never fight. Others want to be a pure trader. Skill-based games allow this."
Your only looking at parts of my posts. You keep talking about *pure* class based games which i've never supported. All my posts say a *Core archtype* with as much customization as poss. Within such framework you could have crafters and traders .. anything you want. You really should try reading my whole posts and not just quoting parts.
"There, my post is much shorter then yours btw. You can get a good point across in a paragraph. most of us just dont have time to read a long post in a thread consider Blogs or Dev's corner"
True .. but i like to explain myself fully when i take on a topic.
While i have no problem with skill based systems i prefer class based systems. I guess that is the old D&D player in me. What i really like is class based systems that have multiple skill sets in them which you have to build up. This makes for a class system that still has some diversity on how you play your class.
You're looking at D&D and saying it is a class system, and it is... but it's not like the systems used in class-based MMOs.
In D&D you are not limited to a single class, you can multiclass, pick up prestige classes, etc. Also, your skill, feat and gear choices are only partially limited by your class(es), if at all. That is infinitely more customization than you have an most class based MMOs.
While i have no problem with skill based systems i prefer class based systems. I guess that is the old D&D player in me. What i really like is class based systems that have multiple skill sets in them which you have to build up. This makes for a class system that still has some diversity on how you play your class.
You're looking at D&D and saying it is a class system, and it is... but it's not like the systems used in class-based MMOs.
In D&D you are not limited to a single class, you can multiclass, pick up prestige classes, etc. Also, your skill, feat and gear choices are only partially limited by your class(es), if at all. That is infinitely more customization than you have an most class based MMOs.
Very true.
But the *core* of a class holds true. Learning skills outside your core classes realm of knowlege (a warrior learning UMD for example) comes at a higher cost. Multi-classing has advantages and disadvantages .. a warrior/mage can do both .. but neither as well as a pure class with the same XP and neither at the same time .. its very difficult to cast spells in Armor and very difficult to *tank* in a robe.
There is a vast system of check's and balances in D&D (heck the games been running 30+ years they've had time!)
I've said it already in this post and i'll say it again. I dont favor total skill based games. (Simply b/c i've yet to seea developer get one right) and i dont favor pure class based games (Too constricting) A nice balance of core abilitys with as much user customization as possible is the way I'd lean.
Ok, there are many things about MMOs that I feel are outdated, levels are probably the best example. But classes are not one of them. Not only are classes good for an MMO, I believe they are vital. It's my understanding that CoH was originally beta tested without classes and it was a fiasco. Nobody knew their roles in group play. Not only that, but having classes follows our real life situation. We all (well those of us who are motivated) pick a "class" or more appropriately, a profession in life. Some people become doctors, some become engineers, some become janitors, etc. So this is how it works in the world of MMOs. Someone who trains to fight with a sword is not just going to be able to go out and start casting spells on mobs. It's too unbelievable. Having classes brings structure to the game. No, my opinion is that they must remain.
I think you have the tail wagging the dog here. Classes were not invented to fit group roles. Group roles were invented to give people a reason to play classes. I blame this on EQ and unfortunately it has carried on to games today. I had a Shaman in EQ whose sole role to was to cast attack slowing spells on mobs then sit and regain mana the rest of the fight...Enchanters had a similar role...keep extra mobs mezmerised and have a seat. Any divergence from these roles was met with sharp ridicule....group roles taken to the extreme.
Using grouping as a reason to have classes in a game is stopping short of the real innovation needed to free us from classes in the first place....a new approach to grouping. I think what gets tired in grouping is the recipe (1 tank + 1 crowd control +1 healer + various DPS).
I had a Shaman in EQ whose sole role to was to cast attack slowing spells on mobs then sit and regain mana the rest of the fight...Enchanters had a similar role...keep extra mobs mezmerised and have a seat. Any divergence from these roles was met with sharp ridicule....group roles taken to the extreme.
For real? No one you grouped with with your shammy ever asked for buffs? Your friends were pretty stupid, because as far as I can remember shamans had some pretty god damn nice buffs.
But seriously, you are exaggerating the class roles in everquest. A shamans primary role was as a debuffer, but they did that with more than just slowing mobs, though this was the primary was of debuffing. They also did more than just debuff; they could heal in a pinch, especially in regular groups, had a few decent DoTs, etc.
Enchanters, similarly, had a primary role, that of crowd control. But in a 5 man group the odds of a shaman being around to slow and debuff weren't great, so an enchanter not only worried about keeping extra mobs mezzed, but about tashing, slowing, perhaps debuffing. Stunning, an ocassional dot or nuke, and of course keeping the breeze and alacrity lines up and going were all of vital importance to the class.
In summary - EQ classes had primary roles, yes, and these were the most important reasons to have that class around. But, for the most part, each class also contributed in other ways than their primary role (except rogues maybe? I suppose they only did damage and more damage).
I've said it already in this post and i'll say it again. I dont favor total skill based games. (Simply b/c i've yet to seea developer get one right) and i dont favor pure class based games (Too constricting) A nice balance of core abilitys with as much user customization as possible is the way I'd lean.
Perhaps something along the lines of still being able to choose any skill you want on a character, but the class/achetype/focus you choose at some point in the character's career (not necessarily at "level 1", and not necessarily only once in a character's lifetime) either gives some kind bonus to certain types of skills or allows certain types of skills to be improved more easily?
Why do people still make these posts, there hasn't been a skill based game released in ages, so these can't be new mmo players who played a new skill based game as their first game.
I've discussed it before
Classes=Skills
Skill system=Class system.
you hate leveling? Classes don't require levels, sorry. Skill system is in fact leveling, you can say "it's faster this way." ummm your a idiot. These systems have no speed, no max, no direction. It's the games that have them that dictate speed.
More customization? Perhaps. A better question is, how do you justify the customization arguement, when guild wars is class based and has more customization in it, then every single skill based game ever created combined together? UO? pathetic in all honesty in comparison.
The issue most skill based advocates fail to realize is that, in a skill based game, there are limits naturally built into it. And these limits generally cause each individual style, flair, power pool, or skill choice(you can't max all skills sorry, your a idiot if you think you should be able to) to be toned down to balance around every other power. What may make one build fun, may make another overpowered, which will then cause it to be nerfed and make the fun build unplayable.
Whereas in classes, each individual class generally has more style, more uniqueness, more everything built into it. Since you don't have to balance it's abilities to be used in conjunction with another classes abilities. Class mixing in GW would cause you to, i'll admit defeat on that in my own post.
It comes down to.
Do you want to play something that has more flair, style, and function, or something that was chosen by you?
And i find the "too constricting" arguement users to be the people who want to be the "tank mage healer" and be able to do anything.
*edit* the fact is, both systems are the exact same in the long run, they both cause you to make a choice of what to be. There is NO rule that you can't change class, nor is there a rule that you can automatically be able to change your skills in a skill based game.
Which is why most people see a combination of the two, such as the upcoming champions online, to be a good system. It's less of a extreme in comparison to the pure systems.
Good post Bladin but EVE Online blows away Guild Wars when it comes to character custimization. In GW you can only run like a total of 9 skills on a bar at a time. EVE Online has more indirect constraints.
Skill-based games are considered way less confining because you dynamically generate the avatar you want to play rather then be forced into a template that the Developers worked out
Static class based games suffer from huge "envy" problems. See World of Warcraft Class forums and all the nerf cries. I dont see any of that drama on eve online boards since any player can train any skill they want
Skill-based games totally encapsulate Class based games if they desire. The developer can easily and simply attach a Class tag that says "Warrior" if you have a lot of melee skills invested.
Skill-based games are much better for a sandboxy environment for games that have player driven content. Allows players to conceive of their own roles to play making them much more diverse then just Warrior, Healer, and Mage.
What is nice to due to the freeform nature newbies and veterans can really team together. No artifical barriers between. That alone makes skill-based games smoke most any class based game for me
Class based games are suffering in a big way in the marketplace. Gamers are starting to notice "omg this looks like WoW/EQ. It plays like WoW/EQ. All my friends are still playing WoW I'll just go back"
The latest Class based games like LOTRO, D&DO, Tabula rasa, etc all have less subs then EVE Online..... Granted LOTRO is pretty close around 200k the last figure they released though. Still, for such a huge license that's kind of sad. Especially for all that content. I would say these flashy EQ clones have way more content then EVE Online but for some reason just cant hang.....
Comments
I would venture World of Warcraft has bout 95% solo players maybe you want to rephrase that argument....
His post wasnt very good. Like most Class based proponents, he is claiming in real life people are only good at one thing which is not true at all. How would Class based proponents explain the owner of 38 studios Curt shilling? Baseball player (pro-athlete) + Business owner? Obviously, he is good at more then one profession?
How bout their VP? He can fly a plane plus helps run 38 studios
Class based games have never been close to realistic. They are a reflection of sports games whereas each player has a role. In sports, there is no redundancy per se. Only one quarterback on the field
In real life there is redundancy. If NASA lived by Class based principles we'd see shuttles falling down to Earth left & right. In real life, we believe in redundant systems, backups, fail safes.
Class based systems are tightly oiled engines that fall apart when you remove an essential piece.
Skill-based systems are closer to real life for the redundancy (people are hybrids)
Skill-based games can infact overlap Class based games completely. But Class based games cant expand dynamically
Its a difficult topic to argue though. I'd rather just conclude that I would like to see more different types of MMOs.
You forgot to mention that Cryptic realized their error and is going back with skill-based on Champions Online
In a recent interview with Gamasutra Jack commented they found out Classes way were too rigid and inflexible. It prevented them from easily adding on new power sets.
I would venture World of Warcraft has bout 95% solo players maybe you want to rephrase that argument....
His post wasnt very good. Like most Class based proponents, he is claiming in real life people are only good at one thing which is not true at all. How would Class based proponents explain the owner of 38 studios Curt shilling? Baseball player (pro-athlete) + Business owner? Obviously, he is good at more then one profession?
How bout their VP? He can fly a plane plus helps run 38 studios
Class based games have never been close to realistic. They are a reflection of sports games whereas each player has a role. In sports, there is no redundancy per se. Only one quarterback on the field
In real life there is redundancy. If NASA lived by Class based principles we'd see shuttles falling down to Earth left & right. In real life, we believe in redundant systems, backups, fail safes.
Class based systems are tightly oiled engines that fall apart when you remove an essential piece.
Skill-based systems are closer to real life for the redundancy (people are hybrids)
Your not getting the point of my message are you?
Maby i can spell it out better for you ... /deep breath
I never said people cant be *good* at more than 1 thing. I just said you cant *MASTER* more than 1 thing. Life aint that long. Now re-read my post where i talked about *mastering* a skill. A black belt at judo is *far far far* from a *master* I also noted that your not including any scale .. saying Curt can do this that and the other .. does not quantify any of those statements. As i explained .. saying I am an Electrical Engineer and i can cook and ride a bike .. it not a good qualifyer for a classless system.
Sure I can ride a bike .. am i a master at it? a master cook? In fact i'll go so far to say that even after 15 years in the field i am *far* from a master engineer also. Its about perspective.
Your avatar in the game aims to master his field. Your supposed to be a Hero. An Adventurer. Above the common man. Your supposed to strive for perfection .. be that in arms (tank) Magic (caster) whatever.
People (even in todays world) strive for perfection .. mastery in an area. Only the most arrogant ever claim to achieve it. It takes a lifetime to master skill at arms ... we cant even speculate on how long it would take to *master* magic ... suficed to say it would'ent be a weekend hobbie.
You say people are hybrids. True enough. We're not very good at it tho. Take your sports example .. sure the linebacker can step in for the QB .. hes not gonna be very good at it tho is he? The Mechanic can step in for the electrical engineer ... lotta guesswork there tho. Your own example Curt Shilling can fly a plane .. would i want him landing my 747 tho? Not really. Hes hardly *mastered* flying planes .. sure he may know his way around a few models .. hes not a master tho. Hes a VP .. i assume his company is sports related? Sure would hate to see him controlling the oil market .. so he hardly *mastered* the world of commerce.
Again .. i *never* said people cant be good at more than one thing .. i said they cant *master* many thing ... like you seem to think your healer / tanker / nuker can ...
It's all relative. The idea that a person cannot master <more than> one skill is not even worth arguing...
I'm back.
Sitting here watcing CSI and just wanted to add a couple of points before i leave this thread. (its been an interesting and *mostly* constructive thread btw !! Thanks all who participated)
The poster above me (Vajuras) made a good point. Its all relative. True. When I say *Mastered* in a real world situation I can never accept that anyone has *ever* mastered anything. To my mind there is always something new to learn in a field .. the human situation is in constant evolution so mastery of anything is, to my mind, impossible. You can always improve is my point .. you can gain more knowledge, be a little faster .... if you could talk to any of the great artists they would all cite a piece of work that they felt was thier *best* Lots of people would agree, lots would disagree. I will warrent that none (if they were honest) would claim to have mastered thier art. They always strive to do better *next time* Human nature. We always see room for improvement.
So its relative in how people view the word and the expression of *Mastered*
To some people .. someone that can consistantly score 100% on a math test could be viewed as mastered. Not to me. There is always other schools of math .. there are harder problems .. they can be done faster .. with less intermediate steps (working out) .. theres always room for improvement. So i agree with the above poster .. its relative to your view point.
This brings up an interesting point as far as MMORPG's are concerned.
Real life has no hard caps ... like i say everything can be improved upon. You may think your moms apple pie is perfect and cant be improved upon .. until the day you find that little diner off the beaten track ... see my point? Real life has no experiance bars.
MMORPG's have hard caps. Once your Warrior reaches the skill cap / level cap ... hes mastered it. Short of magical augments (Gear / enchants / etc) there is no way (short of an expac) that he can ever overcome this artificial hard cap.
For a pure skill based game to even come near to reality .. it would have to have no artificial cap. A constant learning curve that goes ever onwards. In this way people who wanted to truly devote themselves to a particular skill (or skill set) would always be striving to improve. People who wanted to work on mutiple skill sets could spread thier time learning many skills.
Of course no game company would develop a game in this way. Scaling encounters would be a nightmare, with no skill cap content would have to constantly expand to present a challange to the players.
I guess my point is that in order to present a truly skill based game a developer has 2 choices. Either have no hard caps (not bloody likely) or impose artificial caps. 500 points spend them how you want (Al-la UO)
The capped system presents all the problems i've outlined in previous posts ... player enforced skill sets etc.
Thats not to say i'm against pure skill based systems .. i just see the flaws in that game design and they dont appeal to me. Dev's design game content based on certian people filling certian roles .. tank .. healer .. dps. This is a coding issue .. its not viable (at this time) to program encounters to scale to a group of players skill sets. They are set to scale to a level range and the *expected* abilitys of archtypes in that range. (I am of course talking specifically about group orientated content .. the whole point of a MMORPG is group content right?) You cant expect the Devs to code encounters to be viable for a mixed bag party of various skills and at the same time viable for a group who skilled in a more *traditional* way.
The *traditional* groups tank undoubtedly has better mitigation / avoidance than the hybrid skill-set tank. Thier healer (being pure) has better / more mana efficient etc heals. So you scale the mobs to hit harder to offset the Mitigation / healing of the traditional group. But then the hybrid group has more DPS but less mitigation .. the mob just hits too hard for them to heal though. So you scale it to hit lighter but have more HP. Now the traditional group is in no danger whatsoever (the mobs dmg is pathetic) but they have to grind alot more since thier DPS is lower .. see my point? Its a scaling issue.These are of course examples taken to the extreem ... many hybrid groups could manage group content with either more or less difficulty (depending on mob weaknesses etc) My point is just that its alot harder to scale an encounter / dungeon when you add more variables (ie totally free skill allocation as opposed to some core mechanics)
Until game design can make intelligent encounter choices based on the Players facing a particular encounter .. Skill based games will suffer from this.
Some people will say .. *but my groupmates are a pure healer and we have a tank and 4 hybrids* .. kewl. So basically you want a server where you can be a nice shiney hybrid and pick your skill sets ... as long as there are some other people to play the traditional tank / healer roles for you? Thats conciderate of you. Until a company can design a system where all skills are valuable enough that *cookie-cutter* player spec's dont emerge 4 weeks after launch .. and can balance MoBs to the group facing them's level AND skill set .. i just dont see a pure skill set game working well (unless there are nice people who adopt the non-shiney *traditional* rolls) At least not working well enough to interest me. I'm in no way inclined to play a game where instead of Devs telling me the skills i have (Full archtypes) i have players telling me instead (*OG is uber spec, anything else is n00b* /sigh)
As I outlined in a previous post ... I love games with alot of customizable options, skill sets, abilitys, AA's whatever .. but I still feel that the 4 prime archtypes should retain thier *core* abilitys. (Tanks tank healers heal etc)
After those core abilitys .. make things as customizable as possible .. just retain the game balance on all those other abilitys to prevent a set of *required* abilitys !!
Who needs to be a master in everything? If that were true, why do paladins exist? Nobody can learn to fight and cast magic, right? Oh wait, they're worse at fighting than warriors and worse at healing than priests.
Why are Hunters in WoW forced to be beastmasters? What if I want to be a pure ranger, and not have to worry about a pet? What if I want to be a stealthy sniper-type shooter, combining ranged attacks with stealth? What if I want to be a ranged healer hybrid? Or a ranged/caster? What if I want to be a tank with a pet? Or a DPS with a pet?
Not only do skill based systems allow you to create hybrids, they give players the flexibility to customize their "hybrids" to the degree of their liking. What if I don't want to be a Paladin, but a Warrior with very basic healing spells for soloing?
And the customization doesn't have to end there. What if I want my warrior to know how to ride a bike to cut down on travel time? I don't have to be Lance freaking Armstrong to ride a bike.
We don't have to be masters at everything we do, and even masters can learn other skills, albeit at a lower level of proficiency.
How come a warrior or mage can't learn to shoot a gun, but both can learn to be expert blacksmiths or tailors? It's retardedly easy to learn basic proficiency with firearms. You can learn in a day. If you want to learn actual tactics, tack on 13 weeks. There. That's still much faster than the years of learning you'll need to learn blacksmithing worth a damn.
Right. In a realistic game, you'd never be able to all the skills necessary to be the best fighter/mage/etc. In real life, we don't have the time to be the best in multiple fields. But we can and do diversify, because nobody does just one thing.
Polymaths are rare in the modern world, where the sum of human knowledge is far to vast for people to master multiple fields with much meaningful depth. In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades.
I used to be a soldier, trained to kill, then they made me medic, trained to heal.. left the army, then worked as a cashier, then later librarian.. Also worked in factory.
People today rarily know 1 thing and 1 thing only. Even in fiction no one is "1 thing". Luke wasnt just a jedi, he was a soldier, a officer, a politician a teacher a pilot and a mechanic.
The "Class" is just because the people making the games want it easier for them. And us players have been formed into accepting it as how it should be... We've become Pavlovs dogs... Becaue we no longer can think for ourselves and decide what job we have in a group based on the skills that we like to play with for our character.
Well... I've not become Pavlovs dog... I hate the class system and have never had problems figuring out my role or job based on my own choices of playstyle and skills that fit it.
Looks like I'm going to have to defend my post, which is fine. First of all, it was a very brief response without much depth. So let me add a little bit more detail.
While I believe that classes are a good thing in an MMO, they don't have to be so rigid that you can't learn some other skills. For one thing, I have always been in favor of multi-classing. Giving your character a broader range of playing options. Also, I don't see any reason why there can't be some crossover in skills between classes. Casters should be able to learn some basic melee skills and fighters should be allowed to learn some basic magic skills, etc.
But, let's remember what we're trying to become in these games. We're trying to turn our characters into heroes. Legendary figures who are the talk of the land. You don't achieve that by being a jack of all trades. Heroes are generally remembered for being great at one thing. Beethoven was a great composer. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player. His baseball career was less memorable. To become great, to become the best at what you do, you have to devote the majority of your time to that pursuit. A warrior is not going to become a great warrior by reading spell books all day long. A mage is not going to become an arch-mage by shooting arrows at a target. Skill advancement should require some kind of realistic discipline. But I'm not saying that characters can't have some hobbies outside their primary class. They just shouldn't be able to become great at all different areas. They'd never have time to sleep.
Also, there seems to be a common perception that if you have classes, you cannot have a skill based game. The two are not mutually exclusive. I think the best system in an MMO is to have classes with skill based advancement, not level based.
Finally, I'm also not in favor of locking yourself into a class at the character creation screen. Create a character with the options the game allows, enter the world, have a look around and then begin your journey down the path you wish to follow. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer on this subject, but I do believe classes are better than no classes.
Who needs to be a master in everything? If that were true, why do paladins exist? Nobody can learn to fight and cast magic, right? Oh wait, they're worse at fighting than warriors and worse at healing than priests.
Why are Hunters in WoW forced to be beastmasters? What if I want to be a pure ranger, and not have to worry about a pet? What if I want to be a stealthy sniper-type shooter, combining ranged attacks with stealth? What if I want to be a ranged healer hybrid? Or a ranged/caster? What if I want to be a tank with a pet? Or a DPS with a pet?
Not only do skill based systems allow you to create hybrids, they give players the flexibility to customize their "hybrids" to the degree of their liking. What if I don't want to be a Paladin, but a Warrior with very basic healing spells for soloing?
And the customization doesn't have to end there. What if I want my warrior to know how to ride a bike to cut down on travel time? I don't have to be Lance freaking Armstrong to ride a bike.
We don't have to be masters at everything we do, and even masters can learn other skills, albeit at a lower level of proficiency.
How come a warrior or mage can't learn to shoot a gun, but both can learn to be expert blacksmiths or tailors? It's retardedly easy to learn basic proficiency with firearms. You can learn in a day. If you want to learn actual tactics, tack on 13 weeks. There. That's still much faster than the years of learning you'll need to learn blacksmithing worth a damn.
Right. In a realistic game, you'd never be able to all the skills necessary to be the best fighter/mage/etc. In real life, we don't have the time to be the best in multiple fields. But we can and do diversify, because nobody does just one thing.
Polymaths are rare in the modern world, where the sum of human knowledge is far to vast for people to master multiple fields with much meaningful depth. In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades.
LOL i am totally confused by your post I'm afraid. I'm really not sure if your agreeing with me or disagreeing .. it seems your doing abit of both maby?
The post of mine you quoted was a responce to another post ... if you want to get the *whole* story you'll need to read the post i was responding too and the post that was in responce too etc. It seems your arguing (like me) that players should not be able to master (for my deffinition of *master* see a couple of posts up) more than 1 skill or skill set (warriors skill at arms for example would cover armor / weapon / shield etc)
It also seems that your arguing for a skill based system .. which I disagree with .. but not in the way you think. I am also opposed to strict Archtype like classes and have infact on this very thread sited how I would like to see characters develop. (With a Core skill base - from archtype - and a far more customizable skill set making up the rest of a characters skills)
With the system i was proposing you could indeed have your *stealthy killer ranger* or any other type of ranger .. since ranger would only have the *core* archtype skills locked (DPS) and be free to pick any combination of other skills. (Look a few posts up for a more detailed accounting)
Heh just not sure if your agreeing or arguing with me is all ... since most of what you said was covered in my earlier posts .. maby I can implor you to scan over them before you write me off as a *Die-hard-must-have-classes* type of player !
Again .. I only argued against free range skill selection that allows people to master different aspects of the core game .. a Fighter / Wizard .. should in no way scale with either a fighter or a wizard ... if they did .. why the hell would you play a fighter or a wizard? lol
I did clarify that *I never said people cant be *good* at more than one thing* ... (The hybrids your suggestion all fall into the *good at more then 1 thing* area. Now asking for a ranger / wizard who can bow DPS like and ranger and pop off fireballs like a wizard .. would be something i vehemently disagree with.
Cortanya -
Not picking on you .. this just caught my eye.
" In the medieval-Renaissance era more typical to our fantasy games, men like Leonardo da Vinci were capable of being masters of many trades."
Thats a matter of perspective really. The word mastery can be taken to mean anything from *Expert knowledge* which he would indeed fall under. He indeed had Expert knowledge at that peroid of certian subjects. On the other hand another deffinition of Mastery is *Full command of a subject of study* This is alot more ambiguious. Full command .. theres no limiting factor really .. Can he be described as having full command of Science when he knows knowing about the A-bomb? Which children today know of? Its basic teaching for us .. his lack of knowledge on aspects of science would tend to argue that his mastery was far from compleate (as i'm sure people 1000 years from now will view ours)
Thats the whole issue with *mastery* .. Given a long enough life span .. i'm sure da Vinci could have developed an A-bomb .. and thats the argument i put forth. Until *everything* is know .. until there is no possible way to improve an item or a process .. then we cant claim to have mastered it. I'm sure stone age man figured he had that transportation thing mastered when he carved up the wheel ... Total mastery ... from thats theres no improvement .. and we're (as a species) along way from that in any field.
Symantic's I guess .. but food for thought !
Both.
I've never played SWG, but other skill based games limit you from being an uber warrior/mage/etc all at once. UO caps you at 700. You can learn as many skills as you want in EVE, but you can only put certain ones to use at a given time based on your ship and loadout. Darkfall will have skill decay for high levels of skills, so if you mastered swords but didn't use them for a long time because you were mastering magic, your swordsmanship would get rusty.
Understandable. That would be far superior to the more restrictive class-based systems we currently have. I see your rationale for wanting a core-based class system, but I believe it's not necessarily required (depending on the rest of the game's design).
I was mainly disagreeing on the real life class/skill equivalents.
You mean a character 100% as strong as a fighter, and 100% as strong as a wizard?
With you so far. But why should a fighter be completely unable to cast a spell? Why should a wizard be completely unable to hold a shield?
Depending on how open your core classes are, the advantage of a skillbased system is the even greater flexibility.
And of course the skill based system would have measures to discourage this. Darkfall has a soft cap plus high level skill decay. You could theoretically have an expert ranger who's also an expert at casting spells, but that player would have to work a lot harder. Not only to keep his skill levels current, but because of the soft cap he'd be spending proportionally even more time than a specialist.
The developer, by controlling the values for the softcap, rate of skill decay, and rate of skill gain, can determine exactly to what degree a player can master how many skills.
If you have a hard time understanding your role in a system that is not class based, you aren't going to understand the mechanics of games any more complicated than WoW.
I saw someone mention that classes make it easier to balance. The thing is, without classes you don't need balancing. I played WoW for about 2 years and classes were nerfed and buffed over and over again to try and balance them, it never really helped.
I like really open class-based systems for example Lineage 2. You start off as a Fighter or a Mystic and then specialize as you go along. This is my favorite type of system.
I do admit I've played very few MMOs. So when I hear classes like merchant or blacksmith. I'm most familiar with the class systems in WoW and PSO so that's what I'm basing most of my opinions on. I like how WoW has both professions and classes because really, your style of combat should be classified differently than what you craft/gather.
In games like WoW it wouldn't have mattered if everyone looked exactly the same since you had to inspect people to be completely sure of their class or their role in a group.
I don't care for fantasy races but I'd like to be able to be any role no matter what race I played. (I know a Tauren rogue be silly and I wouldn't want to be one, but it makes as much sense as a friggen Gnome warrior).
I don't think the class system needs to be done away with, just improved. Though I'd like to see a good skill system. (as in one that doesn't let you be everything at once)
Wurm Online. There are MUDs that do that as well but you incur diminishing returns of course. Such a system usually strongly favors time investments
Already done...... Its not that hard really. City of Heroes dynamically spawns encounters based on team composition for example.
Problem is there is a theoritcial (sp?) limit to what a human can do. There is always a cap. If your post was remotely realistic then surely I can get to a point where I can move a mountain? Lift a car single handedly? Drive my car at 100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide? Impossible. In real life there is a cap.
Skill-based systems that most any designer will agree upon is way more realistic then Class based. You should have been arguing against Use Based systems and that skill-based gaming is TOO realistic. That is a much better argument to bring. But then of course we would smack you down anyway since skill-based games can use XP or be time based training, etc. Still, would've been a much better argument you could've at least argued against use-based games
You're talking about sports games aren't you? Where all the content is preknown. All of our challenges are already known so we can optimize for that. Classes are horrible for dealing with dynamic situations. This is why skill-based games are much better for sandboxy games with dynamic content. Classes are pretty good for Sports games (like football and raiding). They breakdown fast though when a cog in the engine breaks. Due to lack of redundancy, a 5 man team that loses a healer is devasted.
In real life we have redundancy.
You keep talking about "sports gaming". Never mind people enjoy creating their own roles. Some might just want to be a pure crafter and never fight. Others want to be a pure trader. Skill-based games allow this.
Class based games are just like sports. Everyone has a role and all of our challenges are preknown. Its great for static content.
But for PVP and such Classes fall way down. In every other genre, you can switch your role at anytime basically. Class based MMORPGs is pretty much only genre that locks you into one role and disables a player's ability to adjust for dynamic situations
There, my post is much shorter then yours btw. You can get a good point across in a paragraph. most of us just dont have time to read a long post in a thread consider Blogs or Dev's corner
[quote]Originally posted by Zindaihas
Looks like I'm going to have to defend my post, which is fine. First of all, it was a very brief response without much depth. So let me add a little bit more detail.
While I believe that classes are a good thing in an MMO, they don't have to be so rigid that you can't learn some other skills. For one thing, I have always been in favor of multi-classing. Giving your character a broader range of playing options. Also, I don't see any reason why there can't be some crossover in skills between classes. Casters should be able to learn some basic melee skills and fighters should be allowed to learn some basic magic skills, etc.
[/b][/quote]
Yeah even D&D allows multi-classing.....
Here we go not everyone wants to be a hero. I enjoy crafting and helping other players in the game.
[quote
You don't achieve that by being a jack of all trades. Heroes are generally remembered for being great at one thing. Beethoven was a great composer. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player. His baseball career was less memorable. To become great, to become the best at what you do, you have to devote the majority of your time to that pursuit.
[/quote]
Nice point but it of course omits the heroes in real life that were diverse. Like the famous leaders in history that had Charisma, intelligent, and could wield a sword.
Hidden potential. Sometimes in real life people lose fights because someone does something unexpected..
When everyone does the same exact thing- I know everything you can do. In PVP, sometimes its that "Hidden Potential" that nets the win.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
A warrior is not going to become a great warrior by reading spell books all day long. A mage is not going to become an arch-mage by shooting arrows at a target.
Hidden potential. Sometimes in real life people lose fights because someone does something unexpected.
When everyone does the same exact thing- I know everything you can do. In PVP, sometimes its that "Hidden Potential" that nets the win.
Strategy!! Doing something unpredicted to win. That's what is missing from most of the class systems (and honestly almost all MMOs). They are mostly very rigid... even the ones that claim to allow you to 'specialize' become a simple min/max game where 1 or 2 choices become 'optimal'. And with that optimal choice, everyone has the same optimal 'strategy' (if you ask me, it's not really a strategy as much as a recipe since you don't really change anything based on your opponents reactions... just who your opponents are)... boring and rigid.
I am 100% for class systems, but not restrictive ones. It should be more open ended... basically you pick a class and have a substantial bonus to up related skills and bonus to such skills, but the ability to learn other non-class skills to supplement them. The more related the non-class skill is to your class skills, the easier to learn (not as hard for a tanking warrior to learn ranged bow attacks than to learn magic). If you want to use the 'realistic' argument (although this is fiction and the suspension of disbelief is important to that), it makes sense in the fact that the original career you start in is like your class... yes you can learn and do other things and bring your previous experience to help you change, but it requires more effect to change and if you stayed with your career path it would have been easier (might not have made you happier, but easier).
It has to be tough to balance that, because you have to make it worth it to want to spend time learning non-class skills so their isn't one clear optimal choice. You almost need to make sure that 99% specialization in class skills ISN'T the optimal choice... it would be tough to do right... probably why it hasn't been done yet. Hopefully we'll get some more interesting MMOs soon.
Many of these companies have been doing this "No player left behind" crap. To make it so everyone is playing on the same level they dumb the game down to the simplest form of gameplay to try to make everyone happy.
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
"Already done...... Its not that hard really. City of Heroes dynamically spawns encounters based on team composition for example."
Your only getting half the point. DAoC spawns dynamic dungeons based on group size / level. 100% skill based games add a new variable, skills, that this dynamic system would have to factor. CoH is a very bad example as it reinforces my point (being a class based game) and much easier to build dynamic content for.
"Problem is there is a theoritcial (sp?) limit to what a human can do. There is always a cap. If your post was remotely realistic then surely I can get to a point where I can move a mountain? Lift a car single handedly? Drive my car at 100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide? Impossible. In real life there is a cap."
No .. you say theres a cap I disagree. In 1000 years from now driving "100mph around a tight curve on a slick road and never glide" may be childs play. 10,000 years from now .. who knows? Humans are still going through the process of evolution .. theres no saying what we can accomplish given enough time (and after all .. the common feature of all MMORPGS is .. time) If you could live long enough .. i'm sure theres no limit to what you could accomplish (Be it manually or through the use of improved technology - gear)
"You keep talking about "sports gaming". Never mind people enjoy creating their own roles. Some might just want to be a pure crafter and never fight. Others want to be a pure trader. Skill-based games allow this."
Your only looking at parts of my posts. You keep talking about *pure* class based games which i've never supported. All my posts say a *Core archtype* with as much customization as poss. Within such framework you could have crafters and traders .. anything you want. You really should try reading my whole posts and not just quoting parts.
"There, my post is much shorter then yours btw. You can get a good point across in a paragraph. most of us just dont have time to read a long post in a thread consider Blogs or Dev's corner"
True .. but i like to explain myself fully when i take on a topic.
You're looking at D&D and saying it is a class system, and it is... but it's not like the systems used in class-based MMOs.
In D&D you are not limited to a single class, you can multiclass, pick up prestige classes, etc. Also, your skill, feat and gear choices are only partially limited by your class(es), if at all. That is infinitely more customization than you have an most class based MMOs.
You're looking at D&D and saying it is a class system, and it is... but it's not like the systems used in class-based MMOs.
In D&D you are not limited to a single class, you can multiclass, pick up prestige classes, etc. Also, your skill, feat and gear choices are only partially limited by your class(es), if at all. That is infinitely more customization than you have an most class based MMOs.
Very true.
But the *core* of a class holds true. Learning skills outside your core classes realm of knowlege (a warrior learning UMD for example) comes at a higher cost. Multi-classing has advantages and disadvantages .. a warrior/mage can do both .. but neither as well as a pure class with the same XP and neither at the same time .. its very difficult to cast spells in Armor and very difficult to *tank* in a robe.
There is a vast system of check's and balances in D&D (heck the games been running 30+ years they've had time!)
I've said it already in this post and i'll say it again. I dont favor total skill based games. (Simply b/c i've yet to seea developer get one right) and i dont favor pure class based games (Too constricting) A nice balance of core abilitys with as much user customization as possible is the way I'd lean.
I think you have the tail wagging the dog here. Classes were not invented to fit group roles. Group roles were invented to give people a reason to play classes. I blame this on EQ and unfortunately it has carried on to games today. I had a Shaman in EQ whose sole role to was to cast attack slowing spells on mobs then sit and regain mana the rest of the fight...Enchanters had a similar role...keep extra mobs mezmerised and have a seat. Any divergence from these roles was met with sharp ridicule....group roles taken to the extreme.
Using grouping as a reason to have classes in a game is stopping short of the real innovation needed to free us from classes in the first place....a new approach to grouping. I think what gets tired in grouping is the recipe (1 tank + 1 crowd control +1 healer + various DPS).
But seriously, you are exaggerating the class roles in everquest. A shamans primary role was as a debuffer, but they did that with more than just slowing mobs, though this was the primary was of debuffing. They also did more than just debuff; they could heal in a pinch, especially in regular groups, had a few decent DoTs, etc.
Enchanters, similarly, had a primary role, that of crowd control. But in a 5 man group the odds of a shaman being around to slow and debuff weren't great, so an enchanter not only worried about keeping extra mobs mezzed, but about tashing, slowing, perhaps debuffing. Stunning, an ocassional dot or nuke, and of course keeping the breeze and alacrity lines up and going were all of vital importance to the class.
In summary - EQ classes had primary roles, yes, and these were the most important reasons to have that class around. But, for the most part, each class also contributed in other ways than their primary role (except rogues maybe? I suppose they only did damage and more damage).
Perhaps something along the lines of still being able to choose any skill you want on a character, but the class/achetype/focus you choose at some point in the character's career (not necessarily at "level 1", and not necessarily only once in a character's lifetime) either gives some kind bonus to certain types of skills or allows certain types of skills to be improved more easily?
Why do people still make these posts, there hasn't been a skill based game released in ages, so these can't be new mmo players who played a new skill based game as their first game.
I've discussed it before
Classes=Skills
Skill system=Class system.
you hate leveling? Classes don't require levels, sorry. Skill system is in fact leveling, you can say "it's faster this way." ummm your a idiot. These systems have no speed, no max, no direction. It's the games that have them that dictate speed.
More customization? Perhaps. A better question is, how do you justify the customization arguement, when guild wars is class based and has more customization in it, then every single skill based game ever created combined together? UO? pathetic in all honesty in comparison.
The issue most skill based advocates fail to realize is that, in a skill based game, there are limits naturally built into it. And these limits generally cause each individual style, flair, power pool, or skill choice(you can't max all skills sorry, your a idiot if you think you should be able to) to be toned down to balance around every other power. What may make one build fun, may make another overpowered, which will then cause it to be nerfed and make the fun build unplayable.
Whereas in classes, each individual class generally has more style, more uniqueness, more everything built into it. Since you don't have to balance it's abilities to be used in conjunction with another classes abilities. Class mixing in GW would cause you to, i'll admit defeat on that in my own post.
It comes down to.
Do you want to play something that has more flair, style, and function, or something that was chosen by you?
And i find the "too constricting" arguement users to be the people who want to be the "tank mage healer" and be able to do anything.
*edit* the fact is, both systems are the exact same in the long run, they both cause you to make a choice of what to be. There is NO rule that you can't change class, nor is there a rule that you can automatically be able to change your skills in a skill based game.
Which is why most people see a combination of the two, such as the upcoming champions online, to be a good system. It's less of a extreme in comparison to the pure systems.
the first company to launch a good bug free sandbox will make millions. players are getting sick of Mcdonalds
fantasy crap.
www.youtube.com/watch
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
Good post Bladin but EVE Online blows away Guild Wars when it comes to character custimization. In GW you can only run like a total of 9 skills on a bar at a time. EVE Online has more indirect constraints.
Skill-based games are considered way less confining because you dynamically generate the avatar you want to play rather then be forced into a template that the Developers worked out
Static class based games suffer from huge "envy" problems. See World of Warcraft Class forums and all the nerf cries. I dont see any of that drama on eve online boards since any player can train any skill they want
Skill-based games totally encapsulate Class based games if they desire. The developer can easily and simply attach a Class tag that says "Warrior" if you have a lot of melee skills invested.
Skill-based games are much better for a sandboxy environment for games that have player driven content. Allows players to conceive of their own roles to play making them much more diverse then just Warrior, Healer, and Mage.
What is nice to due to the freeform nature newbies and veterans can really team together. No artifical barriers between. That alone makes skill-based games smoke most any class based game for me
Class based games are suffering in a big way in the marketplace. Gamers are starting to notice "omg this looks like WoW/EQ. It plays like WoW/EQ. All my friends are still playing WoW I'll just go back"
The latest Class based games like LOTRO, D&DO, Tabula rasa, etc all have less subs then EVE Online..... Granted LOTRO is pretty close around 200k the last figure they released though. Still, for such a huge license that's kind of sad. Especially for all that content. I would say these flashy EQ clones have way more content then EVE Online but for some reason just cant hang.....