I've always loved games that have either tons of different classes, or very unique/atypical classes, and am interested in seeing what else is out there. Most of the ones I know of are either quite old, or fairly poor quality. In terms of unique classes, one of my favorite games was LOTRO. The Warden in that game probably had one of the most unique play-styles of any game I've played...you basically had 4 skills that you would chain together in different combinations to cast bigger skills with different effects. The game also had a lot of interesting class synergies, and every class felt like it had a specific niche it could fill.
I'm playing marvel heroes right now, and while I can't stand the game itself, I'm having a blast trying out all of the characters and their abilities. It has something like 40 heroes you can play! I find it exciting to experiment with all of the different heroes and test out what their skills do.
Does anyone have any good suggestions, aside from MOBAs? The traditional fighter/mage/priest/rogue class system just seems boring to me these days!
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If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
http://www.tosbase.com/game/classes/
If you want to go way off the beaten path, Uncharted Waters Online has more than 70 classes, including some really weird ones like Interpreter, Yarn Dealer, or Surgeon. As with just about everything else in UWO, however, the class system is weird. For starters, you're expected to change your class fairly often--and this can and often does include switching back to a previously played class that you switched away from.
The gambit system is really fun, and it puts your mind to test, and not just the reflexes like the action combat craps which even a monkey could play
(and for the same reason never understood those who play the warden with a macro keyboard... I too have one, but for the warden I still play "as intended")
If you like the warden, give a try to AoC's combo system, it is not as flexible as the gambits, but still pretty fun - I used to cite that as my second (and last) option for a combat, all the other games are meh at most.
Since you seek classes, I'd say go with the "special" classes in AoC, each archetype has one: for tanks it's the DT (magic using tank with some heals, a bit similar to the warden just without the effectiveness of ranged - javelin rocks for us ), for casters the HoX (clothie melee damage caster with a cool demon-form side), healers it's the Shammy (heal through melee damage, bashing heads with hammer to heal the party, what's not to like? ), and there's the Sin, but I never really liked it, Barb and Ranger are more fun, without any extra gimmicks.
Depending on your fondness of the warden I'd say DT (if you like tanking and the self-reliant approach, the "small group rolled up in one" setup of the warden), but if you just like building up the attacks then any melee classes are good. It is not the exact same though, in AoC it's "backwards", first you fire up the skill, then "fill it" with the combos, hence the less flexibility.
(unless comboskipping, but it's like fight club, the very first rule is to never even speak about it, so this line never happened )
The roles you're asking about are typically the popular roles in most MMORPGS. Vanguard had some interesting classes with Blood Mage and Disciple. But Vanguard is long gone. If you're not picky on genre, have you tried EVE or Swotor?
Orin Firestaff played by Jim out of Newark and Christy Stormcaller played by Jennifer from Seattle end up becoming the indistinguishable "wizard" of the party the second you institute classes. MMORPG's don't feel very "mmorpg" to me when there is essentially only clones of 10 different people running around.
Redneck Gamer Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59QVuMC0suY-jjTHneKYgAOnly other game I've played with similar distinction has been WAR. Every class looked and played very uniquely and there were some interesting mechanics. Only problem was there was a large amount of CC in the game which was largely pointless in PvE, so the depth of the combat system only really became noticeable in group-based pvp.
See this video for some Magus action - the group-pull (rift) skill was always fun to see.
I played a Black Orc in WAR (I just love orcs) but I also loved the squig herder class. Not a particularly effective class but had awesome pets and you could get eaten by a squig to use it as armour!
You also had two forms of minion masters. The Death Necromancer which used a horde of undead minion but needed bodies to create them (Not super original but still not something you see very often) and the ritualist that used these chained spirits that essentially functioned as turrets and needed no bodies.
The protection monk was also pretty cool. It had minor healing capabilities but focused primarily on damage prevention. For instance there was a spell that would take the next damage received by the target into a big blast of healing or a buff that capped the damage you could take from a single hit.
Really cool options overall. I haven't seen a game since to give as good of options within a class based system, and even most classless games don't have abilities that unique.
I don't think I ever made it through the first zone beyond the tutorial. It just wasn't a fun game to play and I was incredibly disappointed with how much less character customization there was in terms of abilities.