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Class choices. (poll)
waroku
Member Posts: 34
OK after looking at just about every MMO out there (and trying way too many) I've started to notice a trend where most new MMOs only offer a few class options. I for one want to see a game with tons of choices making each group combination fun and interesting. And sorry if this has been posted b4.
Comments
"You cant say civilization isnt advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way." Will Rogers
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history." - George Bernard Shaw
A very basic set with lots of potential customisation.
Warrior
Scholar
Rogue
Postmortem Studios
Roleplaying games to DIE for
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Skill based please.
none
F' Classes
Sandbox FTW
A Work in Progress.
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The problem with games built around grouping is that regardless of whether it is class based or skill based, and whether there are 5 classes or 50 classes, the ROLES within a group don't really change. In the current combat paradigm, you need someone who can hold agro and avoid/take damage, someone to perform crowd control, someone to DPS, and someone to heal. Those are sort of the essentials, right? So if you have 40 classes, but one is best at tanking, one is best at healing, one is best at CC and one is best at DPS, you will see those be the most popular classes among people who group, with most of the rest of the players soloing a lot because (a) they prefer it, and/or (b) they can't get groups.
This applies to skill-based games too. You might not have classes, but don't you still have those roles to fill? You need someone who is "good at healing", someone who is "good at tanking", etc. It might be more fun to make the character you want in a skill based system, but as it pertains to the OP's opinion, it doesn't really matter, I think.
And then considering all the interesting aspects of team builds and then considering the differnce between pvp and pve builds it gets very intersting. I can go onto Guild wars wiki or other community sites and read about builds and subtle variations for hours and hours and hours.
For the most part MMORPG are getting things ass backwards and should learn from Guild Wars. They restrictive where they should be open and are too open where they should be restrictive. They give a everyone in a class basically every single ability and then when they specialzie they lock them in.
But guild wars forces you to choose your abilities but gives you unlimited ability to swap things around. The limits of the GW system are inherently superior when it comes to having a player come up with their own stuff. When you give someone 100 options but then tell them but you can only use 8 at a time you force them to think. But most other online RPGs go the other direction. They force no thinking by giving you 90% of the class skill no matter what and even the choices you make are close to set in stone, so the limited abotu of thinking you can do is only isolated to a one time thing anyway. Yet GW still manages to keep class flavor. Only Rangers can trap or be marksman, only Assassins can short range teleport, etc.
GW used to to have a much more buttoned down respec system. They used to require xp gain to redo your attributes. But in a stroke of insight they realized that the more freedom they give players the more builds you get and the more interesting yoru overall system. Kind of like open source software.
Edit: I would like to say that those who say no classes are missing the problem. Classes aren't the problem. Bad/boring class design is the problem. I like skill systems. But the Guild wars class/feat system is extremely flexible and varied. Anyone who claims classes are more limiting than skill based system is proven wrong by Guild Wars. Do not agitate for skill systems, agitate for some decent frigging open ended design. There is no dichotomy between class and skill systems that is an illusion brought about by lazy designers.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I agree with gestalt11 that guild wars does have a good skill system (although there are other aspects of the game I'm not so fond of).
In my opinion WoW would be alot better game if it was considerably cheaper to respec. As it is, many players are locked into cookie cutter builds because it's simply too expensive to experiment freely.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
I voted 11-15. Ideally a game should have enough classes to give a variety of game play options and to suit various individual preferences.
However if a game has too many classes then, by necessity, less time is spent on each one, and who wants to play an under-developed class? Large number of classes also considerably complicate game balance, resulting in more frequent and drastic rebalancing and nerfs.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Guild Wars is a great test bed and it has been out long enough that we can now make good predictions abotu what players wil do when given unlimite freedom in this regard. They will test builds, they will hammer them out, they will talk abotu in a community. And a majority will stick with whatever build or collection of builds they like.
In the end what does it matter if a level 40 druid does Sacrlet monastery as a REsto druid and then an hour later does it again as a Feral Druid? Is anything really hurt? Those two differences in specs only have mmmm a two ability difference anyway; feral fairy fire and Nature's swifntess. In the end though WoW doesn't need unlimited respec, because well it actually doesn't matter that much. A bunny thumper ranger in Guild wars is radically different than a Marksman ranger. A beastmaster hunter and marksman hunter are extremely similar comparitively. I think unlimited hourly repsecs in WoW would only be for the good, but it goes deeper than that because of the example I just mentinoed.
But its ingrained that it must be set in stone or else it doesn't have meaning.
Both Eve and Guild wars show that, while it may be true of a EQ-like game, it is not necessarily true. Why do I say this? Because these two games have separated balance from class/skills albeit in radically different ways.
In Eve, skills are important but balance is based on ships. Someones capabilites at anyone time are solely based on the ship they are flying. In guild wars class is important and skills build is important, but balance is based around their system of counters and limited skill set. As long as each feat fits within their balance parameters and does not have some kind of funky synergy they really don't need to worry about classes. The only thing they do when they make classes is make sure that each class has a flavor and theme. But balance itself is feat based.
Again the problem is not class systems or skills system, but lazy or misguided designers. If you do Rock, Paper, scissors based on static cookie cutter classes, yes you may be right. But when you have a more elegant system in place then you can divorce them and wind up with a better ssytem.
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Although this would be my #1 option, I don't think doing a skill-based MMORPG at the complexity level of EQ2, VG or WoW is manageable as far as balance is concerned, without greatly sacrificing other (more) important aspect of the game. It needs to be an hybrid system of class vs skill, IMHO.
Not sure you disagree either - you seem to be talking at something of a tangent. My point was actually that if a game does have classes then 11-15 is a reasonable choice.
In my opinion skill based systems and class based systems both work well in different game systems, and I don't see alot of merit in arguing which is better (both have strong advantages and ideally there should be games available that take both options). Even in a skill based system people are normally forced to adopt some form of specialised role in order to advance.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
From Waroku:
"OK after looking at just about every MMO out there (and trying way too many) I've started to notice a trend where most new MMOs only offer a few class options. I for one want to see a game with tons of choices making each group combination fun and interesting. And sorry if this has been posted b4."
I think MMO companies are trying to keep the number of classes low because it is easier to balance them all for solo, pvp, grouping , and raiding. Easier to balance them all as an individual package, so everyone can participate, and not be left out.
From what I have seen , players get snooty and picky and only want x_class before they form a group/guild and go do something. It is useless to have 100 classes if players are going to hold out for the "best healing class", the "best crowd controller"," best damage taker", "best damage dealer", and ignore 96 other classes. So that makes it you only need four classes.
It might be generic but if the game has the fun, "I can't stop playing" magic that some games have then four classes would be plenty.
Not sure you disagree either - you seem to be talking at something of a tangent. My point was actually that if a game does have classes then 11-15 is a reasonable choice.
In my opinion skill based systems and class based systems both work well in different game systems, and I don't see alot of merit in arguing which is better (both have strong advantages and ideally there should be games available that take both options). Even in a skill based system people are normally forced to adopt some form of specialised role in order to advance.
My main point is that if you consider the system of Guild Wars you could conceivably eventually have hundreds of classes and still be fine. It would take a very long time to have that many in that game at the rate of 4 new classes per year. And of course hundreds of classes in that game would be probably pointless. But given enough time they could certainly craft them all well enough. And since the balance is separated from classes you could have hundreds and still be fine.
Clearly you could never release with hundreds of classes as each one takes a modicum of effort in order to not be crap. But I think that it is possible to have a class based system that does not fall into the traps you have mentioned. Yes some class system do fall into that trap. There is a reason WoW is not releasing new classes.
I think that with WoW's current design they will run into the diminishing returns you are talking about. As they add more and more classes the game will become so top heavy that quality will suffer. They are, probably wisely, trying to avoid that progression or at least slow it down.
However I think that Guild Wars' design is mostly immune to the ill effects of this progression. Yet they are both class/feat based systems. Unless they make a mistake with specific feats, it really just doesn't matter how many classes GW has. If WoW had say double the classes they had now, I think you would see a real mess and perhaps a perpetual mess.
And I think the werewolves work o na similar principle.
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Classes eat pen0r sandwiches.
Skill systems are better, with skills being raised as you practice them. See Roma Victor for an example. UO is another one.