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Deja Vu of EQII at release regarding character development
Jackdog
Member UncommonPosts: 6,321
I noticed on the main site FAQ that character development will be a lot like EQII at release. Your character will not start as a specific class but more as a generic type and as he/she develops over time he/she will develop into that wizard or necro or paladin or monk or whatever. I rather liked this in EQII and was not pleased when SOE decided to change it. However I lot of people complained about it, preferring instead to start at level 1 in their chosen class. I have to wonder why it is being used here, when it was already shown not to be all that popular compared to the more simple method. I am not flaming their choice, I like it, but just curious what other here think.
I miss DAoC
Comments
Yep aoc will have archetype system ,i whould prefer to take from level 1 class that you like but perhaps they have some lore within so you will advance like it was the classes quest in EQ2 but most important when archetype system exist is class balance because i guess is more difficult to track and balance so many categories which are a part eventually to a class.
Thats why more games give from start what you want (class) and also people dont have the patients to wait until they adavance to final class goal.
If it will be balance and with some nice lore and staff while you unlock subclass it will be interesting .
I rather liked the EQ 2 system also, especially when combined with the solo instanced class missions. I loved the the assassin and brigand class quests, gave me a feel I was really roleplaying a class, not just mindless hack and slash like every other class. Too bad SOE killed solo play class instances, rather than expand them. Hopefully AoC will follow and expand on this.
One problem I have with EQ 2 is that the assassin can wear metal armor, stand toe to toe with the beasties, and pound on combat keys as well as a tank. I always thought assassins use cover and concealment, stealth, strike from the shadows, kill their target, and fade. Not much reason to do that when you can wear metal armor and tank too.
Same with brigands, why stealth and steal when you can wear metal armor and clunk into battle.
Neither has a true feel for the class to me.
As the old phrase goes, I think you are comparing Apples and Elephants.
Being able to run thru levels 1-20 in 10-15 hours, I dont think it's all that big a deal. Now, I could be wrong, but I certainly dont remember going thru those levels in EQ2 as fast. I would wager they took me longer than that.
Personally, I like the idea, and I did with EQ2 as well, it gives someone a chance to get the feel of an Archtype, and move (quickly) into what they prefer. I think it also will let people get a "vibe" of what other classes within the archtype look like, and that's a good thing.
Of course the biggest benefit here, I feel, is how it can be used to tell a story. It's not overly long, and I think that they'll use this to both push story, and give people a chance to be in touch with it.
If it took far longer to go 1-20....then I think people would have some justifiable reason to be concerned with it.
Personally, I preferred this way of character development from the early days of EQII.
Although, I get the impression the very early levels of AoC will be much more solo-oriented that EQII was at launch - and I suspect in this scenario such an Archtype system development could be ideal.
All I can say is 14,000 feats.
That's not an extra 0 in there, 14,000 feats.
I'd wager that there will be some of the typical Plate 1, Plate 2, Plate 3, kind of thing, but what you are in essence looking at is 1,000 feats per class if you divide that out evenly. If you got 10 feats per level, you'd have all 1,000 ( 80 PvE=800, 20 PvP=200). I dont think that's the case either. I'd think that you'd get far less than that, which would actually give there a chance to be some variation within each class itself. Again, a positive thing from my point of view.
I think that the archtypes will be bear a resemblence thru the 1-20 area, but from that point on, I think you can expect a vast difference between them. I also dont think it'll be a paper difference, I think it'll be a tangible difference, of course that's just based on reading we'll have to see how it plays out.
You did make a great point about the class merges, I think in doing that, FC insured that different classes will have a chance to really be different. FC probably made the right call there from my point of view.
Combat, Control, Class Distinction Designer for Age of Conan
community.ageofconan.com
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
The pacing of this shouldnt be a problem in AoC.
If anything else those preliminary levels are there just to show you the general ropes of things before you start specializing..Im also willing to bet lore/questing has a determining factor in the classes being set up this way.
But, I believe the coolest thing is that, byt he time you're ready for the MMO aspect, your character is starting off pretty new in your specialized class, and therefore the class is something fresh that you havent been grinding on in a single player instance.
I think this sort of system of character developement is good for the RPG aspect of it. Players, I'd think will develope more of a connection to their character; by having to work to getting that character upto a level where they achieve an archetype the archetype becomes a degree of achievement. The make or break is the quality of early game content. This also makes it very clear as to when a player moves on from early game to mid-game. I think the nature of this structure will help more than hurt.
The biggest down side is for people who want to run mulitple characters or experiment with a variety of archetypes.
This system fits perfectly well with the lore and story line in AoC. When you first start the game, you don't even chose your name, you only pick how you look and what race/gender you want to be. As you start the game, you will find out that your character has no memory who he/she is, none at all. So after 5 lvls, through storyline quest(s) you remember who you are and at that point you pick your name and basic archtype. It fits perfectly well with the way FunCom intends on capturing the lore, unlike any other game out there.
Playing: Darkfall Unholy Wars
Played: Darkfall, EVE, AoC, Ryzom, Ragnarok Online, GW2, PS2, Secret World, WOW, City Of Heroes/Villains, Champion Online.
First off : the way to selecting your final class is heavily story driven, which is a good thing, as you get top know the atmosphere of the game, which is a must, otherwise you won't connect.
Second: you have to do the first 20 levels with your first character only, the rest of the characters you can skip the "intro".
There are attributes, skills and feats to put points in to/select, and seeing the number of them, two players with the same class might be radically different.
No, you have to do the first 20 levels 4 times, one for each base class... though not necessarily in a row, or at all if you don't want
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
It will be nice the lore tails and all that but archetype system (which i have seen it in other games) is more difficult to balance among classes and ballance is a huge issue for a games success .I hope in aoc ballance will rock and thats will offer uss great online gaming experience (hope it will best off all i had played or tested trialed).
It would be a mistake to see the word archetype and assume it will turn out like EQ2 without looking at the end resulting classes. I think the class consolidation was a decent indication that they are trying not to fall into the trap you are mentioning happened in EQ2.
Further "archetype" does not have to mean "same play style" even if it probably means fills same or similar "role". Let's take Guild Wars for instance, which does not have archetypes but let's take the "melee range damage dealer" role as an "archetype". You can have either an Assassin, Warrior or Dervish fill that role. But the way an Assassin stays alive is quite different than a warrior or dervish. The way they do damage is a bit different as well. The way an assassin plays will feel quite a bit different than a warrior.
Now GW is a bit of a different example because class balance is based around the 8 skill limit. But essentially a competent skill bar build will concentrate on 1 or 2 roles and class operates to limit what tactics someone has to accomplish that role and what over all generalized roles are available. So yes a Warrior can tank better than an Assassin (usually), but a non-tanking warrior can fill out the melee range damager role very well, and an Assassin can fill out caster roles that a Warrior sucks at. However when Warriors do the melee damage role they tend to stand toe to toe with a few defensive skills whereas an Assassin (if he is competent) is often using hit and run tactics since many of the defensive skills are based around short range teleports and their melee attack are spiky and chained together.
So one becomes a traditional damage oriented off-tank and the other performs in and out, hit and run tactics. But they both wind up surviving to a similar degree and damaging to a similar degree and occupying a mob to a similar degree but use different tactics to do so. Of course they have different strengths and weaknesses. The assassin dies to spike easier but can get out of a corner and usually chase better etc. Of course that is highly variable on skill choice. But of course skills are far more important in GW than items and while a Warrior can have much better armor the effects of skills (feats) are more important so defense is much less archtype/class based than in some other games. Hell elementalists have been known to make nasty tanks in some situations same with monks. Armor certainly has its uses and is class based, but in GW there usually 20+ ways to skin a cat, and every way usually has some sort of counter.
I can literally think of 9 different highly effective tanking strategies in Guild Wars and 80% of them play very different.
1) traditional tank - high armor and stances. Almost always a warrior, or possibly a Dervish using an avatar and certain enchantments
2) Critical hit tank - Assassin using critical defenses, very high self renewing evasioni, requires crits and therefore you must hit and fight constantly. Must keep watch for evasion/blocking of your hits or you lose your evasion after 10 seconds. Does a lot of damage.
3) Monk enchantment tank - require a ton of spell casting and crazy ass energy managment
4) Dervish enchantment unwinding tank - uses special class enchantments to bump up tanking stats, purpsely take them down for healing/regen and secondary effects both offensive and defensive. Playstyle requires planning and tactics to effectively "pop" your stack for maximum defense and offense. Also need wise eneergy management. Unlike some enchantment is less problematic since you are constantly have turnover anyway and turnover causes useful effects.
5) Stance dancer - usually a warrior or ranger. Take a ton of stances, requires good timing. usually mediocre damage
6) ranger pet tanker - as good as a warrior tank, kind of a hybrid between being a life bond monk for your pet and a medium DPSers at the same time. Plus requires pet management
7) Elementalist tank - using various enchantments combinded with some healing
8) Assassin shadow form tank - doesn't last long but lets you solo some nasty stuff, 20 seconds of some of the best tanking in the game. Requires massive damage to be useful. You must get away when its done or you will die.
9) Minion Master tanking - take a necro, have him make a minion army meat shield.
Not all of these fall into the same "archetype" in the traditional sense, but they can all accomplish the same role via anywhere from fairly different to extremely different playstyles and could conceivably be lumped into the same "archetypes" by Devs if they wanted. Even for the strats that seem very similar i.e the Stance Dancer and Critical Defense tank are quite different, because the Stance Dancer is pure reactive whereas the Critical Defense tank must constantly attack, hit and crit. and is inherently offensive and incapable of being purely defensive.
So who knows? Maybe a Dark Templar is an offensive tank and a guardian is a toe to toe tank. Or whatever else. Yeah in EQ2 all things of a particular archetype like say the rogues all had posisitonal attacks and then just differed in slight specialties like more damage (assassin/ranger) or better debuffs(brigand/swash). But it is easily possible it more like what I sketched out for roles in Guild Wars as well.