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Variety Within Classes
parabolas
Member Posts: 4
I played LOTRO back in the beta, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere and story of the game. The one thing that put me off was how at levels there is only one type of hunter, one type of champion, or one type of minstrel. I realize that traits come into play later in the game, but I really wasn't empowered to try anything new with my character.
Does this still hold true now that the game has been out for a while? Is there something that I may have been missing before?
Any responses are appreciated. 
Comments
classes are pretty the same BUT
with traits and used weapons you can make em
more unic...though lots of the good traits and the passiv traits are a massiv grind.
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Well, I'm used to the Dark Age of Camelot style of character customization where you have several different ways to achieve the same role. I.E. a DOT caster, a bolt caster, a DD caster, and a pet caster.
Of course, I realize that LOTRO doesn't offer much magic or as much variety in terms of skill sets, but is it possible for there to be even a minor difference between two level <10 hunters or are they all basically the same.
The skills are pretty much the same, traits adds to some DPS/defense variety. The skills and tactics however allow for quite a bit of differences. You know a good player by his personal skills and conception of his role, not by virtue of his picking the right talent tree. No one is gimped.
The Legendary Traits does make a little difference, you can only equip 2 out of 4 (if you can get all 4, which is not hard). That dictates what you can and cannot do. That also means coordination among members of a raid, so we have enough skills for each encounter.
The skills are pretty much the same, traits adds to some DPS/defense variety. The skills and tactics however allow for quite a bit of differences. You know a good player by his personal skills and conception of his role, not by virtue of his picking the right talent tree. No one is gimped.
The Legendary Traits does make a little difference, you can only equip 2 out of 4 (if you can get all 4, which is not hard). That dictates what you can and cannot do. That also means coordination among members of a raid, so we have enough skills for each encounter.
That makes sense. I just don't want to find myself and every other hunter leading off with the cookie cutter chain of "DOT, snare, nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke.... repeat"
There is a more customization that LoTRO usually gets credit for, largely because traits don't reall start to kick in until pretty high level. They are quite sublte in effect pre-20. A lot of classes also have more options open up as they level. For example Lormeaster has acces to different abilities depending on what pet they have out, and they don't even get their last regular pet until 33 or so.
That said, the customization is not ever going to be on par with DAoC. For example in DAoC, a pure Void eldritch plays almost completely differently from a pure Mana Eldritch because they only have about 60% overlap in their abilities, and the effectivness of the abilities that they do share is wildly different. A hunter with a different trait loadout and that focuses on a different stance can play quite differently, but it isn't like playing a whole different class.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
I disagree, there is not ONE TYPE, there is, only if you choose to do what every one else is doing. There are so many combinations of traits, gear, skills, stances, weapons... Your statement just isn’t really true, And they are still adding more, every two months.
There is a big difference between "Everyone choosing the same stuff" Versus "There are no options".
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Unfortunately no game will compare with the customization that was had with the pre-CU SWG characters. I wish more MMOs would try that level of skill and class "custom-ability". Each character could really be a unique. However, it did prove to be very, very tough to balance. In the end, that may have been the "domino" that started them down the path towards the NGE.
I still think that there has got to be a way to allow us as player that level of control over our characters without making it utterly and completely out of balance. Perhaps that is the answer? Don't worry about balance and just let the players make what they want to play? Not sure what the real answer is, but less customization is NOT the answer to future MMOs.
I guess time will tell which way the new MMOs will go.