Originally posted by Eronakis You look for tanks or healers and they are spec'ed dps.
Just want to comment on this little snippet.
In WoW, it was harder to find a tank or healer before the majority of hybrid roles were made viable.
In the past if you needed a tank then you would look for just Warriors, quite a few of which would be specced for grinding, PvP or whatever. Now, you have the choice of 4 classes that can tank, which vastly increases the chance that you will be able to find someone to fill the role that you need.
Also, Blizzard is further expanding on the ideal of flexibility by (soon) permitting each character to have two separate talent specs and allowing them to switch between without the conventional "respeccing".
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Originally posted by Eronakis You look for tanks or healers and they are spec'ed dps.
Just want to comment on this little snippet.
In WoW, it was harder to find a tank or healer before the majority of hybrid roles were made viable.
In the past if you needed a tank then you would look for just Warriors, quite a few of which would be specced for grinding, PvP or whatever. Now, you have the choice of 4 classes that can tank, which vastly increases the chance that you will be able to find someone to fill the role that you need.
Also, Blizzard is further expanding on the ideal of flexibility by (soon) permitting each character to have two separate talent specs and allowing them to switch between without the conventional "respeccing".
Yeah, before BC. I remember. I still don't like the idea. Eventhough I swear someone has some easdropping equipment in my apartment because I have a very similar idea but it works 10x better.. lol
Another reason why I like enjoy based games rather than class based titles. In a scenario where you pick your skills it becomes very feasible for pure healing and support players to coexist with Hybrid support players. This also gives players the option to try other roles without discarding their characters should they choose to do so.
Unfortunately for me, it's popular to have rigid class systems that offer the illusion of customization with some form of 'Talent trees' or some kind of trait system.
Most companies do this now days to make sure we don't have buffbots and healbots so that not one class has the buffs or heals. Now with that being said if they can find away to get rid of people being able to run 2 boxes 4boxes, I wouldnt mind seeing these classes put back into the the games.
NOTE: I have enough comps to 3 box but i don't boxing is cheating and exploiting imo!!
One of the bigger problems with a MMOs from the last 4-5 years is the way they deal with support/healing/etc. The developers seem to think people don't like these tasks very much, so they are scared to make pure support/healer classes any more. The problem is, some people actually LIKE being pure support. So instead, they create these weird DPS/healer hybrids that are virtually impossible to balance. And in the end, people who LIKE support are frustrated as heck. Here's a blog post where I go into more detail on the theory: Some People Actually Like Healing Anyone else out there who likes a pure support class? Should MMO developers heed this, and create pure support classes again, in addition to hybrid support classes?
Quite frankly, the numbers just dont support your argument.
While it can be said yes, some people like playing pure healer/support classes. The vast majority do not. The problem is if you cater to the few who do, that class becomes too powerful in the context of the game compared to ther classes.Its no they are too powerful in 1v1, but that they are too useful in most aspects of the game compared to ther classes. Look at WOW, or EQ the raids and ability for a majority of the players to attend high end content relied on the few players who actually played these few healer classes to be online.
No other class was in as high demand for groups or raids as healers or support classes(like EQ enchanters.)
So I commend games for trying to break the "Holy Trinity" mold.
The fact that the pure healing class is a minority is part of what made it so attractive to begin with. If you played the healer or support class, you are almost guaranteed a spot in a party. Now days, take for instance WoW, you have Paladins, Druids, and Shamans are almost as popular (if not more popular in many situations) than a Priest. Even the Priest in WoW can dps to some extent. I miss the old days when a healer healed, a tanker tanked, and a dpser dpsed. Now almost every class in all the new games has a heal, can tank (or at least off-tank), and/or DPS. I miss the days when a Druid was for casting lightning bolts and other nature phenomena. Now Druids are shapeshifters/healers primarily. The old MMOs with each class having a defined role were simple, but at least they were fun. I can't help but notice the more a game becomes an "Any class can fill any role" game, the more people hate it.
Get rid of classes and you won't have this problem.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff ) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
I'd have to disagree. If anything designing mmo around the holy trinity tank/heal/dps is what has mmos so screwed up because the trinity is based on solo group games.
I'd have to disagree. If anything designing mmo around the holy trinity tank/heal/dps is what has mmos so screwed up because the trinity is based on solo group games.
If there is going to be more solo, I agree with no classes. If there are going to be alot of group play, I say keep with the classes.
Get rid of classes and you won't have this problem.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff ) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
Get rid of classes and you won't have this problem.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff ) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
Get rid of classes and you won't have this problem.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff ) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
I think a class system is better than skill also. I've posted before too about such. With skill, I end up seeing less diversity because everyone is getting the same 2-3 optimum skill set. A skill based ends up being a hybrid class basically that most people gravitate towards. If people do focus on certain skills, they end up just making a class. It really is all the same, skill and class.
Imagine looking for someone to tank some bad ass boss. Everyone can tank, but theyre not specialized enough to have that extra blocking because they can all dps and heal to have the optimum skill set. The the monster hits so damn hard, that weaker healing everyone has is useless. I guess you can have someone respec, but then they are playing something and using new skills they haven't before. If you have people already with those specialized tanking and support skills in a skill based game, then people don't want them when they pvp, or why bother grouping when they can solo, thus those people aren't around.
I like classes and the diversity and dynamic different classes bring to a group and gameplay. I hate seeing everyone running around as a freaking tank mage.
LF1M. Must have these skills, this spec. Bleh
Could be similar to LF healer, but at least most likely you got someone who wants to play a healer, while someone else has certain skills because they can't play otherwise.
One of the bigger problems with a MMOs from the last 4-5 years is the way they deal with support/healing/etc. The developers seem to think people don't like these tasks very much, so they are scared to make pure support/healer classes any more. The problem is, some people actually LIKE being pure support. So instead, they create these weird DPS/healer hybrids that are virtually impossible to balance. And in the end, people who LIKE support are frustrated as heck. Here's a blog post where I go into more detail on the theory: Some People Actually Like Healing Anyone else out there who likes a pure support class? Should MMO developers heed this, and create pure support classes again, in addition to hybrid support classes?
Do you have actual stats? Personally I am DPS and most people I know are DPS. Very few want to heal. That is why WOW (and most other games) are balanced on groups with fewer healers than other classes.
Get rid of classes and you won't have this problem.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff ) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
I think a class system is better than skill also. I've posted before too about such. With skill, I end up seeing less diversity because everyone is getting the same 2-3 optimum skill set. A skill based ends up being a hybrid class basically that most people gravitate towards. If people do focus on certain skills, they end up just making a class. It really is all the same, skill and class.
Imagine looking for someone to tank some bad ass boss. Everyone can tank, but theyre not specialized enough to have that extra blocking because they can all dps and heal to have the optimum skill set. The the monster hits so damn hard, that weaker healing everyone has is useless. I guess you can have someone respec, but then they are playing something and using new skills they haven't before. If you have people already with those specialized tanking and support skills in a skill based game, then people don't want them when they pvp, or why bother grouping when they can solo, thus those people aren't around.
I like classes and the diversity and dynamic different classes bring to a group and gameplay. I hate seeing everyone running around as a freaking tank mage.
LF1M. Must have these skills, this spec. Bleh
Could be similar to LF healer, but at least most likely you got someone who wants to play a healer, while someone else has certain skills because they can't play otherwise.
You know, I do agree with you. From what I have seen is, you still make that archetype style of a class, but you do it instead of having the classes already lay out for you. For GROUP play for me, I can see this really frustrating. This is why I wanted to make this thread to see how a skill based system can out perform than a class based system in GROUP play.
Let me ask this for those perferred standbox players...
Would it be reasonable to say there are four archetypes, you can choose, from, such as fighter, priest, theif and mage. Maybe, once you picked that skill set from that archetype there is a massive veriety of skills to choose from with penalties for choosing others over some. Maybe down the road, you can mix abilities from different trees, and if you decide not to, you can some kind of bonus for being that pure style. Or is this way still leaned towards a class system? (Pretty much, there are set skills for the archetype and different players will have different skills within that archetype so it's kind of sandboxed)
For directed content type games, I really dont see how you tune it to skill based games.
Having the ability to be different is good to a degree....but full skill based takes it too far IMO.
Classes with added skill points is the way to go AFAIAC. Have didfferent trees, and only allow folks to take one of them.
Or ala EQ...allow folks to get AAs. The amount of them is dependent on how much time you wish to put in. That gives the "hard core" their leg-up so to speak. Those that have limited play styles will tend to fall behind the top AA grinders over time.
Not that those playing less wont be able to get thru content...they just might not be as efficent at it.
All the debates around here always seem to mention the easy vs hard mindsets.
They never seem to take into account that there can be shades of things in lots of things when it comes to MMOs.
The only thing that you really cant blend IMO is putting a loot oriented game with a tradeskill based one. The tradeskillers want the best items to come from them, and the adventure types wanna kill for them.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
It really depends on the game. Normally I do enjoy the support type role, but not in a game like WoW, where it is solo dependant, and PvP is rather impersonal and solo as well.
L2 I really enjoy it, because leveling 90% of the time involves group work, and supports play their role in PvP with a frantic and most important role, and they win fights when you are playing competitively with team work. WoW can have some of that but 90% of the time you'll be running around in a BG with people you don't know, and healing them would be kind of boring.
The problem is, some people actually LIKE being pure support.
Yep, that's the problem exactly. "Some" like it, but not enough.
The largest grouping problem by far in every mmo I have played has been a lack of healers. I don't know if it is because people are scared of being a non-dps'r or tank or whatever, the fact is, there are not enough - period. So kudo's to developers for playing around with the support classes to make them attractive to more than just 'some'.
If you have a game with a six person 'basic' group, then healers need to be roughly attractive to 1/6th of the total population of the game. If you have a five person basic group, the number jumps to 20% of subscribers should be attracted to the healer class.
I would assume, they know what their real percentage is, and if my gaming history is any indication, it is much, much lower.
I always choose the full-support class, if a game offers it. Having other people depend on you, and being praised for your abilities is always a plus. I also try to help noobs as much as possible, and being a support class is definately the easiest way to accomplish that.
The problem is, some people actually LIKE being pure support.
Yep, that's the problem exactly. "Some" like it, but not enough.
The largest grouping problem by far in every mmo I have played has been a lack of healers. I don't know if it is because people are scared of being a non-dps'r or tank or whatever, the fact is, there are not enough - period. So kudo's to developers for playing around with the support classes to make them attractive to more than just 'some'.
If you have a game with a six person 'basic' group, then healers need to be roughly attractive to 1/6th of the total population of the game. If you have a five person basic group, the number jumps to 20% of subscribers should be attracted to the healer class.
I would assume, they know what their real percentage is, and if my gaming history is any indication, it is much, much lower.
Well not kudos enough. Take LOTRO for example, when they upgraded the Minstrel to have the new War-Speech stance and gave us a bunch of AoE attacks and increased melee that didn't work at all. There is still a major lack of us and it gets annoying sometimes getting 80-100 tells every play session begging to join groups. Even on Anon, players can clearly see that you're a Minstrel running by or have you on friends list and bug you till you give in or put them on ignore.
Then with the recent changes to the combat system for MoM not only did they reduce our healing output from -50% to -80% while in War-Speech but now our melee and AoE dmg was severaly reduced along with our defences. Now were weak once again, and we can't stay in War-Speech for long while solo cause we can't heal ourselfs enough to stay alive and with our defence so low now we have to drop out of it to heal and survive.
We used to be able to solo 3-5+ mobs even lvl while in War-Speech and now we can barely survive 1-2!
I would rather developers stick too us being great healers, weak DPS and defences and require groups to advance, and don't bother trying to make us a hybrid!
Unfortunately for us, there aren't enough people that enjoy the role. From a developer's standpoint, it's a bad design to put content reliance on a pure (but heavily underpopulated) class. If you make the pure class mandatory, then the wait for a group for a considerable amount of the game population becomes increasingly frustrating. If you balance the content over the hybrids (so as you don't run in the above problem), you trivialise the challenge whenever a pure class is part of the group.
That is why developers are moving away from the pure healing aspect and differientate healers by giving them utility toolset, instead of stronger heals.
I've played the part of pure healer for years. If there was a happiness gauge, when I'm inside a team, it would show 100%, when outside 20%. As a DPS class I was sitting at a 60% in or out of team. And that's the reason you don't see many people in the pure healing/tanking role. If you can keep yourself in the 100% happy zone most of time you spend gaming, then it's worth it. When it starts moving to a 50 in/ 50 out territory, then the pure role becomes unbearable and you start regretting the pure role decision.
It would be interesting to see what role all these advocates of forced grouping are interested in performing in a group.
Comments
Just want to comment on this little snippet.
In WoW, it was harder to find a tank or healer before the majority of hybrid roles were made viable.
In the past if you needed a tank then you would look for just Warriors, quite a few of which would be specced for grinding, PvP or whatever. Now, you have the choice of 4 classes that can tank, which vastly increases the chance that you will be able to find someone to fill the role that you need.
Also, Blizzard is further expanding on the ideal of flexibility by (soon) permitting each character to have two separate talent specs and allowing them to switch between without the conventional "respeccing".
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
Just want to comment on this little snippet.
In WoW, it was harder to find a tank or healer before the majority of hybrid roles were made viable.
In the past if you needed a tank then you would look for just Warriors, quite a few of which would be specced for grinding, PvP or whatever. Now, you have the choice of 4 classes that can tank, which vastly increases the chance that you will be able to find someone to fill the role that you need.
Also, Blizzard is further expanding on the ideal of flexibility by (soon) permitting each character to have two separate talent specs and allowing them to switch between without the conventional "respeccing".
Yeah, before BC. I remember. I still don't like the idea. Eventhough I swear someone has some easdropping equipment in my apartment because I have a very similar idea but it works 10x better.. lol
Another reason why I like enjoy based games rather than class based titles. In a scenario where you pick your skills it becomes very feasible for pure healing and support players to coexist with Hybrid support players. This also gives players the option to try other roles without discarding their characters should they choose to do so.
Unfortunately for me, it's popular to have rigid class systems that offer the illusion of customization with some form of 'Talent trees' or some kind of trait system.
To Each His Own.
Most companies do this now days to make sure we don't have buffbots and healbots so that not one class has the buffs or heals. Now with that being said if they can find away to get rid of people being able to run 2 boxes 4boxes, I wouldnt mind seeing these classes put back into the the games.
NOTE: I have enough comps to 3 box but i don't boxing is cheating and exploiting imo!!
Quite frankly, the numbers just dont support your argument.
While it can be said yes, some people like playing pure healer/support classes. The vast majority do not. The problem is if you cater to the few who do, that class becomes too powerful in the context of the game compared to ther classes.Its no they are too powerful in 1v1, but that they are too useful in most aspects of the game compared to ther classes. Look at WOW, or EQ the raids and ability for a majority of the players to attend high end content relied on the few players who actually played these few healer classes to be online.
No other class was in as high demand for groups or raids as healers or support classes(like EQ enchanters.)
So I commend games for trying to break the "Holy Trinity" mold.
I totally agree with the OP.
The fact that the pure healing class is a minority is part of what made it so attractive to begin with. If you played the healer or support class, you are almost guaranteed a spot in a party. Now days, take for instance WoW, you have Paladins, Druids, and Shamans are almost as popular (if not more popular in many situations) than a Priest. Even the Priest in WoW can dps to some extent. I miss the old days when a healer healed, a tanker tanked, and a dpser dpsed. Now almost every class in all the new games has a heal, can tank (or at least off-tank), and/or DPS. I miss the days when a Druid was for casting lightning bolts and other nature phenomena. Now Druids are shapeshifters/healers primarily. The old MMOs with each class having a defined role were simple, but at least they were fun. I can't help but notice the more a game becomes an "Any class can fill any role" game, the more people hate it.
The only truth on this entire site.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff
) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
The only truth on this entire site.
QFT.
I like UO, skill based system, no "classes".
Multiplayer Games!
I'd have to disagree. If anything designing mmo around the holy trinity tank/heal/dps is what has mmos so screwed up because the trinity is based on solo group games.
If there is going to be more solo, I agree with no classes. If there are going to be alot of group play, I say keep with the classes.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff
) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff
) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff
) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
I think a class system is better than skill also. I've posted before too about such. With skill, I end up seeing less diversity because everyone is getting the same 2-3 optimum skill set. A skill based ends up being a hybrid class basically that most people gravitate towards. If people do focus on certain skills, they end up just making a class. It really is all the same, skill and class.
Imagine looking for someone to tank some bad ass boss. Everyone can tank, but theyre not specialized enough to have that extra blocking because they can all dps and heal to have the optimum skill set. The the monster hits so damn hard, that weaker healing everyone has is useless. I guess you can have someone respec, but then they are playing something and using new skills they haven't before. If you have people already with those specialized tanking and support skills in a skill based game, then people don't want them when they pvp, or why bother grouping when they can solo, thus those people aren't around.
I like classes and the diversity and dynamic different classes bring to a group and gameplay. I hate seeing everyone running around as a freaking tank mage.
LF1M. Must have these skills, this spec. Bleh
Could be similar to LF healer, but at least most likely you got someone who wants to play a healer, while someone else has certain skills because they can't play otherwise.
Do you have actual stats? Personally I am DPS and most people I know are DPS. Very few want to heal. That is why WOW (and most other games) are balanced on groups with fewer healers than other classes.
The only truth on this entire site.
Not really. I think I am the only person on this damn site who thinks a class system works better than a skill based system...
Damn site eh? Well the way I look at is, the top mmorpgs right now are all based on a class system. Therefore, it is easier to automatically assume that class system is the most successful. But, hopefully, a game will come along and break that mold...SWG I think was a prime example of this before they drastically altered it. I personally could go either way with class or skill based systems.
Anyways to go back on topic, Ive played ALL class roles and loved and loathed them all at one point or another. Tanking was great because my role was so vital and I found little to no competition when fighting over a spot in the guild or upgrades. Healing was similar except, in my own personal opinion, it is the hardest role to play and also the most important; if you mess up, the whole group messes up. Dps will always be the most fun (all you do is kill stuff
) , yet you compete the most with other dps and you are easily replacable.
In my opinion, allowing diversity to the classic roles (tank, heals, and dps) is the best way to keep up the fun factor of playing. WoW has been doing this very well. In vanilla wow, ONLY warriors tanked in raids. Druids, shaman, priest, and pallies were the only healers.....dps specs were ignored if you raided. Now in wotlk... ALL classes have viable dps specs. Hybrids no longer need to be confined to one role, they can choose from 3. It really helps keep players coming back for more.
Obviously, I have yet to seen anyone agree. I am curious though to see the ratio so I may post a poll, even though I am sure someone has posted it awhile ago.
Sorry but WoW does not do a good job on the class system. If you say one class can play multiple roles? Okay, fine, but as a whole that class system is bad times.
I think a class system is better than skill also. I've posted before too about such. With skill, I end up seeing less diversity because everyone is getting the same 2-3 optimum skill set. A skill based ends up being a hybrid class basically that most people gravitate towards. If people do focus on certain skills, they end up just making a class. It really is all the same, skill and class.
Imagine looking for someone to tank some bad ass boss. Everyone can tank, but theyre not specialized enough to have that extra blocking because they can all dps and heal to have the optimum skill set. The the monster hits so damn hard, that weaker healing everyone has is useless. I guess you can have someone respec, but then they are playing something and using new skills they haven't before. If you have people already with those specialized tanking and support skills in a skill based game, then people don't want them when they pvp, or why bother grouping when they can solo, thus those people aren't around.
I like classes and the diversity and dynamic different classes bring to a group and gameplay. I hate seeing everyone running around as a freaking tank mage.
LF1M. Must have these skills, this spec. Bleh
Could be similar to LF healer, but at least most likely you got someone who wants to play a healer, while someone else has certain skills because they can't play otherwise.
You know, I do agree with you. From what I have seen is, you still make that archetype style of a class, but you do it instead of having the classes already lay out for you. For GROUP play for me, I can see this really frustrating. This is why I wanted to make this thread to see how a skill based system can out perform than a class based system in GROUP play.
Let me ask this for those perferred standbox players...
Would it be reasonable to say there are four archetypes, you can choose, from, such as fighter, priest, theif and mage. Maybe, once you picked that skill set from that archetype there is a massive veriety of skills to choose from with penalties for choosing others over some. Maybe down the road, you can mix abilities from different trees, and if you decide not to, you can some kind of bonus for being that pure style. Or is this way still leaned towards a class system? (Pretty much, there are set skills for the archetype and different players will have different skills within that archetype so it's kind of sandboxed)
For directed content type games, I really dont see how you tune it to skill based games.
Having the ability to be different is good to a degree....but full skill based takes it too far IMO.
Classes with added skill points is the way to go AFAIAC. Have didfferent trees, and only allow folks to take one of them.
Or ala EQ...allow folks to get AAs. The amount of them is dependent on how much time you wish to put in. That gives the "hard core" their leg-up so to speak. Those that have limited play styles will tend to fall behind the top AA grinders over time.
Not that those playing less wont be able to get thru content...they just might not be as efficent at it.
All the debates around here always seem to mention the easy vs hard mindsets.
They never seem to take into account that there can be shades of things in lots of things when it comes to MMOs.
The only thing that you really cant blend IMO is putting a loot oriented game with a tradeskill based one. The tradeskillers want the best items to come from them, and the adventure types wanna kill for them.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
It really depends on the game. Normally I do enjoy the support type role, but not in a game like WoW, where it is solo dependant, and PvP is rather impersonal and solo as well.
L2 I really enjoy it, because leveling 90% of the time involves group work, and supports play their role in PvP with a frantic and most important role, and they win fights when you are playing competitively with team work. WoW can have some of that but 90% of the time you'll be running around in a BG with people you don't know, and healing them would be kind of boring.
Yep, that's the problem exactly. "Some" like it, but not enough.
The largest grouping problem by far in every mmo I have played has been a lack of healers. I don't know if it is because people are scared of being a non-dps'r or tank or whatever, the fact is, there are not enough - period. So kudo's to developers for playing around with the support classes to make them attractive to more than just 'some'.
If you have a game with a six person 'basic' group, then healers need to be roughly attractive to 1/6th of the total population of the game. If you have a five person basic group, the number jumps to 20% of subscribers should be attracted to the healer class.
I would assume, they know what their real percentage is, and if my gaming history is any indication, it is much, much lower.
I always choose the full-support class, if a game offers it. Having other people depend on you, and being praised for your abilities is always a plus. I also try to help noobs as much as possible, and being a support class is definately the easiest way to accomplish that.
Yep, that's the problem exactly. "Some" like it, but not enough.
The largest grouping problem by far in every mmo I have played has been a lack of healers. I don't know if it is because people are scared of being a non-dps'r or tank or whatever, the fact is, there are not enough - period. So kudo's to developers for playing around with the support classes to make them attractive to more than just 'some'.
If you have a game with a six person 'basic' group, then healers need to be roughly attractive to 1/6th of the total population of the game. If you have a five person basic group, the number jumps to 20% of subscribers should be attracted to the healer class.
I would assume, they know what their real percentage is, and if my gaming history is any indication, it is much, much lower.
Well not kudos enough. Take LOTRO for example, when they upgraded the Minstrel to have the new War-Speech stance and gave us a bunch of AoE attacks and increased melee that didn't work at all. There is still a major lack of us and it gets annoying sometimes getting 80-100 tells every play session begging to join groups. Even on Anon, players can clearly see that you're a Minstrel running by or have you on friends list and bug you till you give in or put them on ignore.
Then with the recent changes to the combat system for MoM not only did they reduce our healing output from -50% to -80% while in War-Speech but now our melee and AoE dmg was severaly reduced along with our defences. Now were weak once again, and we can't stay in War-Speech for long while solo cause we can't heal ourselfs enough to stay alive and with our defence so low now we have to drop out of it to heal and survive.
We used to be able to solo 3-5+ mobs even lvl while in War-Speech and now we can barely survive 1-2!
I would rather developers stick too us being great healers, weak DPS and defences and require groups to advance, and don't bother trying to make us a hybrid!
Unfortunately for us, there aren't enough people that enjoy the role. From a developer's standpoint, it's a bad design to put content reliance on a pure (but heavily underpopulated) class. If you make the pure class mandatory, then the wait for a group for a considerable amount of the game population becomes increasingly frustrating. If you balance the content over the hybrids (so as you don't run in the above problem), you trivialise the challenge whenever a pure class is part of the group.
That is why developers are moving away from the pure healing aspect and differientate healers by giving them utility toolset, instead of stronger heals.
I've played the part of pure healer for years. If there was a happiness gauge, when I'm inside a team, it would show 100%, when outside 20%. As a DPS class I was sitting at a 60% in or out of team. And that's the reason you don't see many people in the pure healing/tanking role. If you can keep yourself in the 100% happy zone most of time you spend gaming, then it's worth it. When it starts moving to a 50 in/ 50 out territory, then the pure role becomes unbearable and you start regretting the pure role decision.
It would be interesting to see what role all these advocates of forced grouping are interested in performing in a group.
I love support healing and games that dont have a needed healer.support person I dont stay long.