Following up on a comment from Spinks over in the Dual Wield Healing comments, I’ve wondered for a while why “players LOVE classes”. I suspect there are a handful of reasons, and I’d love to hear what some of you think. I’m not really disputing that assertion, since I’ve seen plenty of evidence thereof, but I am always questioning why that might be, and if there’s an alternate way (or three) to scratch the underlying psychological itches. While thinking a bit about those itches, I’ve been thinking of other ways to approach the scratching.
One game that I’ve looked to for good ideas is Final Fantasy Tactics. FFT has character “Jobs” that function much like classes: The characters have a core Job that defines their gear permissions (weapons and armor, anyway) and their primary combat abilities. Soldiers are melee fighters, Black Mages are ranged magic cannons, etc. Characters can learn abilities from their active “main” Job, eventually Mastering the Job. They can also use skills they have learned from other Jobs to customize their approach.
Overall, I like FFT’s system, as it allows you to build up a character with a wide variety of abilities that cross-pollinate and synergize, but filters them through the ability to only use a handful at a time. It’s a nice compromise between learning everything and making tactically relevant limited choices. Players can make characters specialists or generalists, and anything in between. This works largely because you tend to field a handful of units in any given skirmish, rather than just a single character. You can build a team that works well as a whole, rather than just try to do everything yourself.
Battletech works in a similar fashion. There are several different ‘Mech chassis designs, and several weapons to put in those ‘Mechs. Players are encouraged to customize their machines by swapping weapons, armor, heat sinks and such, trying to optimize their machine (or team of ‘Mechs in some iterations of the IP) for how they play. Certainly, there are “stock” configurations of the machines, but half of the fun of the Battletech universe is tinkering with the delicate balance of heat, ballistics, energy weapons, range, mobility, size, and half a dozen other aspects, trying to build the most powerful ‘Mech for its weight. The stock designs are not usually optimized for greatest potential, which I suspect was intentionally done to give an impetus to tinker, and a reward for those who master the tuning system.
The rough analogue to MMO class design is the Battletech ‘Mech chassis, and the “spec” for a class (minor tweaks to how the class plays) are the loadout of the ‘Mech. Of course, a MechWarrior need not be tied to a single Mech for his career, which is where the Battletech variability wins out over a class design; it’s like the ability to change your class (chassis) at a whim (or limited by experience/story permissions/bankroll, whatever), allowing for a much greater gameplay variety over the course of a single character’s “life”. This is also where FFT shines; it allows a single character to change their class/spec/loadout often and completely.
I really like this sort of customizability, as I love the freedom it offers, and I can get more invested in my characters since they really are mine. Their progress is dictated by my choice, and ultimately, those choices affect how I approach the game as a whole.
Still, that depth does put off some people. I suspect that it would similarly put off people in MMOs who LOVE their class and can’t imagine playing anything different. It’s a lot to keep track of, and some people don’t want to bother with learning that much. There’s nothing wrong with that.
*Quick tangent… I also see class distinctions as yet another way to artificially extend playtime, since you can’t take an existing character and just change their class like you would a Job in FFT. You must start a whole new character and grind through the levels. The ability to change your class completely in an MMO doesn’t rob you of identity any more than the ability to change your spec or gear. It’s your character, and you can always just stick with one class, even if there are options to change. When there are no options, though, the player interested in exploration of game mechanics is unduly forced to jump through altitis and grind hoops.*
One of the game designs that I’ve toyed with in the last few years is a Tactics-esque game that has a FFT/BT level of depth for character customization, but has what I’m calling Autopilot Character Development. For those who don’t want to make those choices of how to build a character, there would be “templates” that could be assigned to a unit, automating that progress, allowing the player to just focus on the tactics and strategy inherent in a larger campaign/storyline.
For example, a unit might be given the Scout Template, which would automatically assign them to the Scout class for a while, as it learns some Scouting abilities, then later, assign it to a Ninja class where it can learn some greater evasion and attack abilities. At any point, the player can turn off the Template and take control of the progression, but if they just can’t be bothered with the minutae inherent in the system, the Autopilot lets them get on with playing the upper-level game. (Here “upper-level” meaning higher concepts, like tactics and strategy, not high unit level.)
Put another way, this sort of Template system could be overlaid on an open skill system to create a loose sort of “streamlined” class-based system. UO could become Diablo, as it were. The key here is that you would always have the option to go back and take the reins, mixing and matching to make your Scout dabble in magic or your Barbarian toy with bows. This, of course, means that you would also be able to change pretty much everything about the character, from the most basic stats (the prototypical SRT, DEX, whatever) to skill levels to combat skillset (a limited set of usable abilities, like the FFT system).
Is it a lot to keep track of? Of course it is. Is it a lot to dig into and potentially have fun with? If done well, definitely. Is it good design? I think so, largely because of the experience I’ve had with games. (Of course, this mostly applies to those games that require a huge investment of time and character building. Team Fortress 2 and Smash Bros. work because each round of playing with a class only takes a few minutes. When that play session extends to hours, weeks and months, it’s onerous to think of “replay” as “rolling another class”.)
I played Titan Quest through as a Sage, a Hunter/Storm ranged DPS machine. I used Hunter as my “main” class because arrows are infinite, and I could attack at range without burning through mana reserves. I used Storm to augment that plan, buffing my offense with elemental punch, making my basic ranged attacks sufficiently powerful to kill all but the hardiest enemies long before they got to melee range to bother me. Ranged enemies went down even quicker since I had great range and high damage… and they were typically slow casters with little defense. I had a blast, but once I finished the game, I wanted to try another class build.
I didn’t want to spend the time grinding through the lower levels of the game building up a new character, though, playing old content just to see how another class would approach it. So I found a little program called the TQ Defiler. It let me edit my character, changing his class to anything I felt like. I would not have played the game as much as I did without that freedom. In my younger, stupider days I might have jumped back in with another character from the very start, but with life constantly intruding on my gaming time, I don’t have that luxury any more. Of course, the TQ Defiler also allows for other sorts of hacks which make the game much easier or harder, but the part that interested me was the class swapper. There is a “respec” option in the game, but it only allows you to change the way you’ve allocated your skill points, not change your class or secondary, and the cost in game currency increases with each use of the service.
Why? What does that add to the game? “Replay value”? In my time-constrained world, playing through the same content with a different approach is pretty low on the replay value scale. Yes, it’s technically “replay”, but the bulk of that sort of replay is just repetition, which never sits well with me. (Mostly because DIKU design is very repetitious to start with; repeating the repetition just gets too stupid too fast.)
“Class identity”? Thing is, if you have the option to change, you don’t lose that identity; those classes and builds are still there, you just gain the ability to make more choices in the game. Remember, I like choices. Purist players in a freeform system will always have the choice to stick with their initial choice, but it doesn’t work the other way; those who want freedom can’t drag it out of a class system without a hex editor. (Which is effectively making the game behave in ways it wasn’t built for, but arguably should have been. That sort of hacking doesn’t work in MMOs, since the admins tend to frown on it, banhammer in hand… understandably so, if disappointingly so.)
In a freeform system with Autopilot, you could let the Templates handle the minutae of maintaining a “class identity”, and just go ahead and play your class. Those who want to do something more freeform could use the Autopilot a bit, or just go all in and do their own thing.
Guild Wars already has something somewhat like this with their Build Templates that you can save and load when you do your “free respec” thing in any town. They are shorthand precooked “builds” that can be used at any time you would respec, so you can quickly change from a “farming” build to a “questing” or PvP build. You can also change around your “attribute” numbers willy nilly, to accent your particular build of the moment.
I’m just extending the concept to push that freedom into more aspects of the game, all the way down to the most basic of character customization, the “class” choice. I’ll reiterate, though, I’m talking about adding choices, and adding an Autopilot for those who want the more constrained experience. This system wouldn’t destroy the ability to make a killer Rogue or buffalicious Tank, it would augment the game as a whole to allow for more variety and player ownership of one of the few things they truly can control; their character or team. And yes, this design ethos would apply equally well to a Tactics team-based game as to an MMO. Any game that uses classes or jobs could benefit from this sort of freedom.
I know, some people wouldn’t like that sort of freedom. Some want strict predictability and/or relatively simple decision making. That’s the point of the Autopilot, to let those players just get on with playing the game. For those who want to dig deeper, though, why not let them do so?
Ah now we are talking! This is what you meant.
IMO: This works somewhat in GW, but it does not work in WoW at all. The ever-progressing nature of WoW in terms of gear and player power is a stopper for class-switching.
Guild Wars also has restrictions: The primary class cannot be changed, the primary attribute unique to the primary class cannot be used by the secondary class.
Tied to the primary class is also something very important: The equipment.
Ranger Armor is not Necromancer Armor is not Warrior armor. Rangers usually use bows, Necros staves, Warrior swords, axes…
A MECH does not have problems, you buy a PPC, a LRM launcher, it fits on your mech.
But what will my Necro Akivasha say if she turns into a Warrior and has her cloth armor? Or would it turn into a plate mail?
This is the difference between our chars and mechs. If a Necromancer switches to a Warrior, he would need very different gear, and it would not be as readily available as for a Mech.
Would the new Warrior get his weapons from a factory like the Mech, or would he/she have to acquire it in a different way?
I think the idea to completely switch the class is very good, but outside of BattleTech, which is not a MMO, I just have not seen it so far. It also does not work in our current batch of MMOs.
I also wonder if you could just switch classes in Defiler and be done with it. I did not play Titan Quest much, in fact only 3-4 hours in total. So I do not know, what happend to your gear?
Aye, the gear would be a sticking point. In TQ, the Defiler changes class, but it can also change gear, if memory serves. (Though you’ve got to do it manually, it’s not automatic.) To be fair, I found the Defiler about halfway through my playthrough, so I planned ahead and kept gear that I thought would be good for a tank, so I was prepared when I changed my class. Even if that’s not the case, though, playing TQ at high levels with a class-swapped character will generally lead to good relevant gear soon enough (either from drops or shops), and you can survive on whatever you had to start with. Since you can go back to old areas, you can dial back and farm some bosses for drops if you have to.
Yes, going with a gear-based system, you’d either need to magically handwave in new class-relevant gear or give people some other easy way to swap it out for relevant gear. (And if it’s town-based like GW, you could tie the change to an NPC who would give you the proper gear when you swap.)
I just played GW, and well, I have one char of each primary profession (class).
“I’m William Shatner and I’m a Shaman.”
We are just so USED to being a certain class…
“I’m not William Shatner and I am a Shaman, Warlock, Priest, Warrior, Death Knight, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue. Right now I am Shaman, but as I told you, I am not William Shatner.”
It is a bit confusing.
It is not like switching to another Mech when I play another char.
The idea that one of my chars could be all that is not only interesting, it is also very alien… something in me somehow does not accept it and has trouble to imagine it.
I guess roleplayers might find this even more troubling and strange.
I mean, it is just like that. Someone told me that the earth is round, can you believe that? It is interesting as it explains why ships suddenly disappear and appear at the horizon, but it is still against everything I have known and believed so far…^^
Well, that’s the point of overlaying an Autopilot on top of an open system. If the wealth of choices is too much for someone, by preference or by headache, then they can just go with the Autopilot Character Development system and just play it as if it were any other class-based system. The depth is there for players willing to experiment, but it’s not necessary for enjoyment.
It’s sort of like how you can use default Mech loadouts in BT, or customize them to your playstyle. You can be effective with the defaults, but if you dig deeper, you can find plenty of other interesting ways to play. I definitely don’t want to scare off those who LOVE their classes, I’m just trying to build a system that can incorporate both a class-based players and those who want to dig deeper.
I do not think it is realted to digging deeper, but that players say they ARE a Necro/Warlock/Warrior when they are playing it, and changing their class in towns, out of combat or elsewhere… I am not sure if people would like that.
I could use some more input what others think about that.
Allow me to play devil’s advocate with a similarly long-winded response 🙂
The problems with letting people totally customize their abilities are that:
1) Left to their own devices, they’re likely to come up with a sucky character. This is true even for most class-based systems for the majority of people in my experience!
The issue wouldn’t matter in a SP game that maybe scaled its difficulty to suit how well you were playing, but in an online MP game where your e-peen is constantly compared to everyone else’s, you’re going to have some inferior-feeling players.
2) This will cause a lot of people to invest copious amounts of time researching builds on the forums, instead of playing the game. I found this fun for a while and became quite the expert in creating builds with games like Magic the Gathering, the Baldur’s Gate Series, NWN1, Diablo 2 and Guild Wars, but these days I have hit a limit. The majority of more ‘casual’ players would have hit that limit much earlier, I think.
3) So the most over-powered combinations dominate the game, and become pseudo-classes for anyone that wants to be ‘pro’. This kills much of the variety that the system was intended to introduce in the first place.
4) Game balance is much more difficult because there are far more combinations of abilities that can be used together, creating some potentially game-breaking effects.
5) Without classes, tactical considerations are much harder to make. You can’t easily tell what abilities your enemy possesses, or organize your team to do something effective. “eg find that healer and take him down”….”erm, which one’s the healer??”
And if you’re playing with PUG’s, you can often be frustrated as you realize that your team-mates have deviated from the ‘accepted’ template to suck in some way that you didn’t even know was possible (this occurs in class-based systems, so I would imagine would be much worse if you opened up even more options to people).
Next point: Auto-leveling systems.
I’m not sure if people would really use those. IIRC they were present in NWN, there used to be pre-made PvP templates in Guild Wars, I seem to recall Morrowind having a ‘recommended’ button, etc. In my experience, developer-supplied suggestions tend to be either fairly ‘meh’, or sometimes downright awful (our Guild Wars guild was called Premade Paladins, in homage to the Paladin template available on character creation, which was a retarded build that many, many new players took into PvP, much to the dismay of the other PvP-ers).
However, I am strongly of the belief that the devs should be experts at their own game and SHOULD know the best builds and such to make (similar to the ‘Future League’ in Magic, which does a decent job of predicting the more broken things that people will come up with). So it should be possible to give people useful suggestions.
But, would I still take them even then? The best part of playing an RPG for me is when I get that ding and get to choose myself a new skill! If I just had one handed to me, that would make the grind seem less worthwhile to me, I think.
I’m not sure if a game should try and be ‘all things to all people’, i.e. cater for those who want to research their characters AND those who don’t. It’d good if it can be pulled off, but if you end up compromising the experience for both players, it may be better to make 2 different games (hopefully recycling the same engine and much of the art assets) and market one for ‘casuals’ and one for ‘hardcore’.
Next point: The mech thing. Space/sci-fi games get to cheat in the whole class-changing thing, because it makes sense that “you” are the pilot, the thing you drive/fly around is just the vehicle. Fantasy games don’t have the same luxury because it doesn’t make sense.
The issue people have is turning a mage into a warrior, and vice versa. Sure, you could have mage powers conferred by putting on that robe and pointy wizard hat, or tank powers from putting on that suit of plate armor, but that feels a bit contrived.
Changing between more similar classes would not feel that bad I’d think. e.g. say you’re a warrior and you’re holding a sword, well, you’re a ‘sword warrior’, and you have good single-target damage. Now pick up a halberd, you’re a ‘halberd warrior’ and you have good AoE damage. Not inconceivable for my character to master a couple of different weapons… i.e. in a fantasy game perhaps we should let people re-spec between similar classes (compromsing between classic systems and your idea).
Otherwise, you have to get creative to allow people to change classes at will. One idea I had to solve this problem, you may recall, was here: http://word-of-shadow.blogspot.com/2009/02/playable-non-playable-characters.html
Next point: replay value.
Classes ARE there to offer replay value. You’re right, that value is enhanced if there is minimal grind involved. I think it’s also enhanced if there are multiple paths through the game so that the experience doesn’t feel the same, and of course also if the new class plays sufficiently different to the old. For me Diablo 2 offered the former (minimal grind) as leveling was ridiculously fast in online play, and Baldur’s Gate offered the multiple paths thing (different quests/dialogue options/major plot choices)… both had sufficient “cool” factor afforded by the feeling of playing the different classes.
In most MMO’s, the path is the same when you level again, AND there’s too much grind. If SW:TOR isn’t a grindy game, with their focus on story, I’m hoping they solve a lot of these problems. That idea I had recently about ‘customized instances’ would also go a long way towards enhancing replayability, since enemies faced and tactics used would be different depending on class.
Yo Melf, 3, 4 and 5 apply perfectly to Guild Wars.
Feel free to deviate from the formula, and your party leader will often ask you to stick to a tested and true build. Sometimes your build might be even brilliant, but it will not be accepted. GW also has a lot of work to do with balancing skills and builds. Even over a year after the latest addition of skills/expansion especially the “pro” players complain about balance. We have some must have skills for every class, and many skills that are next to useless, and many skills that are the “9th” skill, not bad, but never good enough to make their way on any skill bar.
BTW, taking control of MONSTERS/NPCs – is that not a feature of LOTRO? I never played it far enough to experience it, it is called “Monster play”. You play the baddies.
GW also had something similar. In the so called “Bonus Mission Pack” players got to control a historical person of importance and replay certain key events of the GW history, like being Turai Ossa in the Battle of Jahai, negotiating peace with the Tengu as Master Togo and so on.
Melf mentioned also the issue that is the main problem with the change class at will idea:
I cannot get over the idea that my Mage puts off his plate mail, gets a silk robe and pointy hat and now has wizard powers. It works with Guild Wars change of secondary profession, but something in me just cannot accept this change.
Tesh, I guess you do not feel this to be a problem. But I think it is they key problem with the idea, that people like me and presumably Melf somehow cannot fathom it. As I mentioned, the human mind cries for innovation but in the end often fears change.
You’re both still missing the point a bit. The Automatic system I describe here *is* the class-based system, just overlaid on a UO-like skill system, where the classes are built out of the skill system. If you only ever want one *class*, just set your character on autopilot and go to town. (Perhaps there’s an “Autopilot Light” setting for those who want to choose their “talent points” as in WoW, Melf. That seems like a good idea for those who want more control, but not a lot of control.) And yes, skills would have to be balanced; that’s the designer’s job. If the best they can do is fall back to a class system, to me, that’s a design rut and lazy design. It’s been done and polished to a high gloss by Blizzard; we’re at the “innovate or die” phase in the market.
That’s the whole point of this system; it’s built on freedom, but you can voluntarily restrict yourself if you don’t want that freedom for whatever reason. Thing is, it doesn’t work the other way; a system that is built on restrictions won’t typically offer these freedoms.
The cheap “replay” that classes offer can still be done with this system; just make a new character and restrict it to whatever new alt you want. Again, it’s just one choice of many, rather than being the only way to wring more value out of the system.
Combat roles (like the “kill the healer” concern) aren’t necessarily stuck in the holy trinity rut, either. Still, if it were, visual indicators of role, like gear and twinklie special effects, could be maintained, so the tactical considerations that come from opposing players’ “classes” wouldn’t be an issue. The dude hiding behind the guys with shields, dressed in an overlong kilt is still probably squishy, and when he does his sparklies targeting the armored dudes, it should be pretty obvious what his role is. (Though that enemy healer might be packing Backstab for some reason, so watch out.)
I have no game design sympathy for those who bend to dictatorial guild leaders. That’s their choice. The game doesn’t force you to do any one thing. It could *allow* such existing methodology, but again, the point is that it wouldn’t be the only way. If you’re playing the game to bend to the guild leader’s will, that’s your (perfectly valid) choice, but I’m not interested in making that the only way for the game to function.
Old school WoW or EQ players might be afraid of freedom and innovation (and again, could *choose* restriction, even as other players choose freedom), but there’s one other very important thing to note.
It’s already upon us.
Free Realms gives players the ability to switch their class at a whim. It doesn’t have the same sort of underlying skill system that I’m talking about here, but if we’re just talking about switching classes, SOE is already trying that in a big way. So far, prognosticators seem happy with that, even if hardcore WoW/GW/EQ players aren’t.
Maybe FR isn’t for you guys, and maybe my system isn’t either, but then, I’ve never been about making a WoW killer or clone. I’m aiming for a different target audience.
It’s possible that the system I describe couldn’t find a huge audience or commercial critical mass, but if we as an industry only accept what *is*, rather than what *could be* because we’re afraid to change, what hope is there for advancing the state of the art? If we assume that we always have to be using classes and the holy trinity in a DIKU system, why play anything but WoW? To paraphrase Scott, “A DIKU is a DIKU is a DIKU”, and if we’re just playing with the flavor of the month, people *will* go back to WoW.
Free Realms reminded me of the “Minigames are fun” article. Kart Racing is not my scenario, so I did not play it much. For some reason it does not start downloading on my laptop -waiting for download to complete forever, but it worked on my desktop. Odd stuff.
That is odd. I’ve had problems with FR, too, but that was during Beta, when the servers weren’t stable. I’d hope they were up to speed now.
…and I’m just now struck by the irony of what I’m calling “hardcore” gamers wanting *fewer* choices. Being told what to do, playing on hard rails, isn’t really what I’d have thought “hardcore” meant once upon a time. My misuse of terminology, I think.
@ Longasc:
3 and 4 definitely apply to Guild Wars – my point is that this would be much more of a problem in a system without classes to put some constraints on things!
5 doesn’t apply to Guild Wars… it has classes…
The game-within-a-game aspects of Lotro and GW that allow you to take over monsters a step towards that idea I was talking about. But I want it to BE the game, and to not just have to take over the ‘bad guys’. Instead there should be several different factions that you can join, and you manipulate the NPC’s in the world to further the celestial goals of your particular faction. Or something.
@ Tesh:
“And yes, skills would have to be balanced; that’s the designer’s job. If the best they can do is fall back to a class system, to me, that’s a design rut and lazy design. It’s been done and polished to a high gloss by Blizzard”
This is the key point where we differ. I don’t think this job has been done well by Blizzard, or indeed by anybody. (MMO)RPG combat remains imbalanced and/or tactically devoid (as well as rewarding time invested over player skill and being boring, which are not what we’re discussing here). Yes, WoW is polished in terms of not being buggy, and it has many good features, but the actual gameplay itself is not one of them.
The best MMO gameplay I’ve seen to date is in Guild Wars. They really had things under wraps with the release of the first game, but after the release of the 4 new classes with Factions and Nightfall, they lost the balance and it has never really been the same.
So Arena-Net, the best in the biz at the moment in terms of balanced/tactical gameplay, could manage to keep the game balanced/tactical with 5 classes, but no more? Are they just lazy game designers? I don’t think so. I think it’s just really, really hard to balance even a relatively small number of classes (as we know them). I just don’t see how it could be done if there were essentially an unlimited number of ‘classes’ available to play.
The example you gave of a healer with backstab was not exactly what I was thinking of, although it would still be fairly annoying since your tactics are gimped due to a factor out of your control that you have no way of obtaining information about BEFORE you get stabbed in the back.
What I was intending to get at though is all the interactions/combinations of skills that you have to think of when designing the game. You don’t have to just stop and think, wait, what if this skill was combined with one of the others for this class? You instead have to stop and think… what if this skill was combined with every other skill in the game!
It’s analogous to giving every color in Magic the Gathering the ability to do all the things that are supposed to be the other color’s benefits… giving a red sligh deck a bunch of card-drawing, for example. This leads to introducing a bunch of other restrictions (i.e., double mana costs of different colors, potential for mana screw, etc), which ends up offsetting much of the freedom that such a system promised to deliver in the first place.
Finally, re: your comment about ‘hardcore’ gamers wanting fewer choices.
There is a difference between “complexity” (my definition: amount of stuff about the game that you have to know to make decisions) vs “depth” (my definition: level of tactical depth required to make decisions).
Games with overly complicated rules systems like many online MMORPG’s can have a lot of depth, but they also have a ridiculous amount of complexity. Compare this to something like Starcraft (see, I don’t hate on all Blizzard games, just WoW), which has moderate complexity but much more depth than any MMO. Then there are games like TF2, which have even less complexity, but the depth is high enough that I guess you could say the “depth : complexity ratio” is still much higher than in an MMO.
Hardcore players seem to gravitate towards deeper games. If you are the sort of player who is going to play WoW for 4 years in a row, well…. have fun, but that’s not what I personally would label a ‘hardcore’ player.
The players that I would define as ‘hardcore’ play a game for a little while, and then try something new. If every new game requires learning a new encyclopedia of knowledge, the game is not going to be particularly appealing unless it has massive, massive depth to match.
This is why I dislike games that are more complex than they need to be, as I have reached my fill of learning the arbitrary rules of some game which are liable to be changed on a whim without notice (see: recent incarnations of DnD rules).
To sum up: I don’t think a well balanced, tactical, fun RPG-style game can be created in a realistic time frame (say, < 10 years) that does not have classes.
Even if it could, I wouldn’t really want to play it unless I knew it was really, really going to be fantastic, because I’d have to learn even more arbitrary information relative to a class-based system.
Of course it’s potentially difficult. Is that a good reason not to try? Every major MMO has done classes. Does that mean it’s the only One and True path to MMO design?
“It’s too hard” (either for devs or players) isn’t a good reason to ignore potential design in my book.
It may indeed mean that there are commercial caveats, but if the market is only ever what has been, with minor face lifts, why bother getting invested in a new game at all? (Again, for devs or players; we’ve seen how well WAR and AoC did, which is to say, “me too” design isn’t any more financially viable than “let’s go out on a limb and try something new”.)
Even looking at GW, as you two often do, it found a niche and success by being different on some fundamental levels. In fact, many of the complaints I read about modern GW is that it’s *too much* like the other DIKU MMOs. Ditto for concerns about GW2; the elements that look too much like WoW 2.0 are the ones that are most often complained about.
And again, maybe the average WoW or even GW veteran isn’t really ready for this sort of design I describe, but I ask again, is that a good reason not to try? The average Western MMO gamer is virulently opposed to microtransaction games, and roundly condemns them (often ignorantly), but those games went on and did their own thing, and some of them are actually good games, and profitable.
I’m not content to settle for “what everyone knows to be *the* way to design MMOs”. Classes function, I don’t dispute that. I simply don’t think they are the epitome of design.
EvE Online recently introduced the certificate system, which is somewhat similar:
http://eve-prod.ecsoftware.cz/wiki/Certificates
A certificate is in essence a list of skills recommended for a certain role. While you can follow the certificate to make your character proficient in a certain role, the underlying freedom in the skill system is still there in case you want to step away from the marked path. And while the concept of ships can’t easily be translated into a fantasy genre, certificates can. For example, a knight certificate could contain the heavy armor skill, horseback riding, jousting, longsword skill and shield skill. If you wanted to be a samurai instead, you could skip jousting, longswords and shields and train for spears and katana instead. Or add bows to also be a qualified Mongol raider.
Oh, hey, I welcome you or anyone else to try. I just don’t see it working out very well, and I personally hope they don’t try it with IP’s that I think are going to be fun to play.
It’s interesting that you accuse me of wanting to maintain the MMO status quo! I have seen very few people wanting to change things on the scale that I often suggest…. if I had the time/funding/skill to design my own MMO, the only resemblance to WoW that it would bear would be possibly a fantasy IP, and the presence of classes. Most every single conceivable other thing would be different.
I think there’s a difference between being innovative and being different just for the sake of being different. But as you say, we’ll only know if an idea like this is the former or the latter after somebody pulls it off… and to them I say, good luck!
Thanks for the EVE update, Hirvox! 🙂
It is a nice way to give players a hand while still giving them the freedom to do it their own way.
@Tesh: Yeah, this is what many people fear. I hope the grind for next to everything that they offer right now and the tendency to go in the direction of vertical progression models instead of new content is just for the aging GW1, to throw people a bone while GW2 is in development. Not very tasty, but well.
@Melf: The idea to play for different factions in the game world, in a way that matters, is indeed intriguing.
This could be more complex and meaningful than the Aldor / Scryer difference, or the many other factions that are totally neutral. Or Alliance vs Horde.
Sign up with the smugglers, become part of the royal guard, become a spy – right now you can do such things in WoW, but it is just a quest, you do not feel to be part of the faction, you just increase your standing to exalted over time.
Back to Tesh: I thought a bit more about it and maybe it can be done Ultima Online style: 700 Skill and some 100 Attribute points that can be freely distributed, 100 being the maximum for one “skill”, 50 the maximum and 10 the minimum for the basic attributes (UO had only three, STR, DEX and INT).
You could all the time decide that you swordsman should UN-LEARN (literally) a skill and pick up and “train” another one. The skill was lost, if you changed 100 swords to unlearn and trained to 100 magery, the 100 swords were lost forever. You had to start training them from 0 again.
Why lose progress in your skill training, actually?
Go to town, “disable” the skill, put in a new skill for training and level it up.
You would still have to learn “magery” (everything related to casting spells in UO) and also get the proper gear for your new profession. Spells tend to fizzle if you cast them in heavy armor, the heavier the more likely they are to fail. This is because you need to do complex gestures and body movements to cast spells (nerd UO knowledge, hehe)! 🙂
So Swordsman Longasc goes back to town, to a trainer or temple and there reduces his skill level in swordsmanship from 100 to 50. Now he has 650 skillpoints of 700 max, and can train a new skill, like music, playing a certain instrument. Or he would pick 50 skillpoints in lockpicking, which he already trained to 78. He would still have to get lockpicks and other gear necessary for the new skill/stat combo.
This is a bit borrowed from WoW dual-classing.
I can tell you some other problems: As we could possibly be everything, every class, have every skill, players would be going to fight/roll for every drop.
I still think there would be a lot of resistance to this. Guild Wars initially did not allow respeccing all the time, you had to earn “retrain” points to reduce your attribute levels.
I think someone has to try and show players such a system.
There was a HUGE controversy if free respeccing in town is good. But nowadays it is accepted and people could not even imagine it the old way of having to gain XP to lower attribute ranks and retrain. People would call it utter crap. 🙂
Hirvox, Onimusha Tactics on the GBA did something similar; it’s largely a rethemed FFT, but there were “badges” that were earned by doing certain actions in combat, and those badges unlocked more advanced jobs. (FFT just has you learn lower level jobs to unlock advanced ones.) It was a great system, encouraging experimentation and careful planning, making long term character planning a part of tactical decisions on the battlefield.
Melf, you chose the “devil’s advocate” role this time. I’m well aware of your maverick tendencies, so it’s baffling to me that you’d side with the status quo on this one. Still, it is helpful in clarifying ideas. *shrug*
I’ve also apparently not made my point clear, so I’ll try again: This Automatic Character Development (ACD) system is effectively a class system, *overlaid* on a broader skill based system. There is complexity and depth for those who want it, but for those who want a streamlined experience, just flip a switch. (And maybe it’s on by default.)
Players can easily play with ACD on, and get the same effective experience as a WoW or WAR, complete with talent specs and choices at level-up time. That’s one thing that you’re right to point out; complete autopilot should still be an option, but it’s nice to have some choice when you “ding”, like WoW offers. In fact, that you *do* have that choice and that it’s nice for ownership is the whole point; I’m offering *more* choices to those who want them.
As for the healer with Backstab, I’d argue that such is the whole point of Guild Wars’ dual class system, or even Runes of Magic’s dual classing. You may know that bald dude is a Monk at a glance, but you don’t know what else he’s packing. That variability keeps PvP fresh, as you’re never quite sure what you’re facing. It keeps you on your toes, and makes tactical decisions on the fly more important and interesting.
If it helps, think of ACD in FFT terms like I write way up top there. Any character can learn anything, but they can only use a subset of their education at any one moment. It’s like a GW build; only some skills can be used at any one moment. Or, it’s like FFT, where you have an active “job” and a secondary “job active ability” set, and the rest of your education lays dormant until you respec. But you *can* respec, which is the point; you can try new things without grinding up a new character.
Longasc, yes, a UO-like “skill point cap” would be a way to limit a player’s “active skillset” at any one point, making strategic decisions important (long-term character setup decisions) as well as keeping the decision tree in tactical situations (combat) smaller and manageable. Again, you could learn anything, but you can only *use* a handful of skills at a time.
A WoW guild of Druids already can roll for everything. (Well, not Plate, true.) I don’t really see that as a problem. At least everything could be used, rather than needing to toss hard-won gear to the woodchopper for materials. Yes, there might be drama in cases, but really, if you’re in a guild that is so fussy about such things and you don’t like it, you need a new guild. Of course, that’s assuming that gear is itemized like WoW, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Speaking of gear, and the unfathomable notion that you can change clothes and thereby class, there is already precedent for such in the FFT games. Just switch your Job, and suddenly, you have new gear specs and abilities.
There’s even precedent in WoW.
The whole bloomin’ endgame of WoW is about using gear to define your character. If we can accept that a bit of armor or a fancy cloak can somehow make us stronger or smarter, it’s really not a huge leap of logic to think that such magical gear could change our character in slightly more fundamental ways. If we remove the assumption that “only Warriors/Paladins can wear Plate and Priests can’t use Shields” and let anyone wear anything in WoW, suddenly, you could indeed have a Priest wearing Plate, out there tanking (or at least off-tanking), while throwing out a heal here and there. The gear would make them capable. Push that concept just a little further, and you could indeed argue that “the clothes make the man”, up to and including complete class change.
…and now I’m wondering how FFXI does it. It has Jobs, and anyone can train up any Job. I must research…
[…] 4, 2009 by Tesh This could have been a comment in the discussion thread of the Autopilot Character Development post, but I thought it merited enough attention to separate it out. It might also be a good idea […]
I know you say it’s a class system overlaid on a more free system Tesh, I did not miss the point. *My* point is that it does have one benefit of the class system (less research needed), but not all the benefits (minimizing potential for massive game imbalance).
The monk-with-backstab idea is almost certainly not the point of the dual class system in Guild Wars. A monk should not venture into melee combat because they will be spiked down due to their squishy-ness. Instead in Guild Wars, people choose secondary professions to enhance their class’s style of play.
For example, Warriors take Elementalist secondary to grant them a knock-down that does not have to be ‘charged up’ before use (like the Warrior knockdowns do). Monks take Elementalist or Necromancer or Mesmer secondaries for energy management since protecting the team is hard work, or they take Warrior secondaries to give them a dodge stance to try and avoid spikes, etc.
In short, they take things that diminish their weaknesses, rather than attempting to gain entirely new strengths.
The people who fly against these conventions are honestly not good players. Now, Arena Net could go and buff the armor of that monk and increase his damage to make him viable in melee…. but they don’t. He would then be over-powered as a healer. Healers are supposed to be squishy. The whole game balance is designed around it, and I don’t think it would work if they tried to design it the opposite way (though again, feel free to try and prove me wrong).
Also, not knowing what your opponent is bringing to the table in PvP is not fun. Now, it’s a different story if there is some interplay between this hidden information, the ability to “scout” what the enemy has *and be able to do something about it*, and the ability to deny the opponent from scouting you, etc.
For examples of such systems, consider a game of Starcraft, or Defense of the Ancients, where you choose upgrades over the course of the game that may give you an advantage, but the opponent can, if they’re resourceful enough, uncover information on what you’re doing and attempt to thwart your plans with their own choices.
In the system we’re talking about here, that interplay doesn’t come into it. If that monk with backstab is dominating the other team, there’s nothing for them to do about it, because builds are static (I’m not suggesting they’d *have* to be static, I’d love to see more DotA-style improving of characters over the duration of one match to add more strategical depth).
My point is, if you want to have unknowns that are great enough in degree that they can change the course of the game, you do need to design some way for people to be able to counteract that unknown, so don’t forget about that while devising your ultimate MMO class/combat system 😉
Indeed, the ability to counter things would be wise.
I’m a bit concerned about this notion that there are “not very good players”, though, and that such would limit design. As a designer, it’s not my job to define “good players” or “not very good players”, it’s my job to provide people options and different ways to play. That’s the point of MMOs, and a point that most devs ignore. People play for different reasons, and that’s perfectly OK.
Designing only around the hardcore who try to be “good” players is just one facet of MMO design. A game with options implies that there will always be those who make less-than-optimal choices from a hardcore “best” point of view. If those players are having fun with the game, why try to browbeat them into a social notion of “best”?
I’m pretty sure there’s a Monk/Assassin out there somewhere, having a blast with their character. Should we tell them that they are second class because they aren’t optimized, or playing the game like the hardcore do? I’m not satisfied with that mentality, and I certainly don’t want to cater to it with design. It’s good to be aware of it, certainly, but it’s not going to be the driving force behind what I do.
I’m looking to give players things to do, choices to make, ways to have fun… not a min/max puzzle to solve to reach the top of a digital dogpile. There will inevitably be those who play that way, but I want to make a game that anyone can play and still have fun, even if they are “not very good”. That’s why I write about narrow power bands. That’s why I place the “virtual world” aspects above the “game” aspects.
Maybe it’s a fool’s errand, but I can’t help but be tired of the Achiever min/max design that modern MMOs have steeped themselves in.
Yeah. MMOs are serious business. You have to “work” on this or that. Yeah, people use that term. And unfortunately it is not splitting hairs about semantics, but true.
As always, though, is that the only way that it can be? I think not, but if the market believes so, perhaps there is indeed wisdom in following the herd and making WoW 2.0.
I noticed a shift in the GW since release. People are almost asking for more things that they can follow/achieve in a vertical progression. And it seems that ArenaNet just caters to their taste.
I am not too happy about it, and I really wonder how GW2 will be. They said they learned from GW1, I just wonder what… :>
add “community” after GW. Sorry. 🙂
Either works. 😉
Aye, I’m interested in what GW2 will bring. If it’s more of the same, I’m ready to wash my hands of the genre.
Sometimes I feel as if age 30+ makes one automatically part of a demographic group that is actively discouraged to play MMOs.
I am sure there are tons of “older” MMO players who have grown up with the first MMOs and computer games in general.
They are probably in the right age and personal situation to have a LOT MORE MONEY to spend than the teenies and young adults that seem to be the MMO target group nowadays. That nobody wants my money is a truly new experience to me. 😛
Exactly, we shouldn’t be telling that Mo/A that he’s a scrub. We should be making him feel powerful. Which is why you not only have to give people a variety of choices, but give them *good* choices also.
The way that GW is designed, making a melee monk isn’t a good idea. You can still be a Mo/A though and use assassin stances to enhance your survivability, as well as focusing to varying degrees on the 4 monk attributes (one of which is quite offensive in nature).
I’d love a system with even more choices, but not if it makes it too easy for people to shoot themselves in the foot (even with all my experience as an RPG ‘veteran’, if I don’t research the forums for a new game, I will still come up with some awful build… I hate that).
Heh, you and me both, Longasc. I’ve been turning to handheld gaming more and more. I have more money to spend these days, but far less time, in far smaller chunks. I guess that’s the natural way of things, but I am a bit surprised that more MMO devs don’t really harness that.
Oh, certainly, Melf… but it’s not an impossible task to balance things, at least within a fairly narrow power band. There will always be a chance to have underpowered and overpowered choices, the trick is making them not too far apart.
…which actually comes back around to the Autopilot; make the ACD a nice “middle of the road” route, and let players experiment on either side *if they feel like it*, while tuning the game to the middle of the road. Not unlike the prebuilt MTG decks; you can play with them and dominate scrubs, but a pro will wipe the floor with them.
Tuning to the middle that way incentivizes experimentation, since players can be more powerful if they find the things that work best for them (or create more challenging characters, and most importantly, switch between them at will), but at the same time, it doesn’t alienate those who just want to play, since they can be assured of a reasonably powerful option by going the Autopilot route.
Idle tangent: I’ve read a bit about a “55 Monk” build that is very effective with melee, based on some rather powerful damage mitigation abilities. It’s not a huge DPS build, but being nigh-invincible means that a Monk can tank with the best of them.
Edited to add: OK, upon further research, the 55 Monk isn’t so much a tank as a farmer. Still, it’s a nice fringe case of what craziness can happen with the system. High risk, high reward. As I noted in Broken or Brilliant, I like that sort of craziness.
Put another way, I’m trying to give the “balancing” power to the player by offering choices. It’s a way to set up a personal “difficulty switch” that can be tinkered with at the player’s discretion.
Also, if the devs “nerf” your favorites, you can go out and try something new, rather than sit in a corner and whine about how you used to be special and can’t do anything now. Yes, people will always whine, but whining is easier when you feel powerless.
[…] better, but it needs to be considered carefully to channel it properly). Also, when I write about Autopilot Character Development, I’m talking about letting players take the reins a bit and control some of those bounds. […]
I am well aware this post is quite old, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring so to speak.
First off, the issue or a person gaining abiliteis just by donning armour seems pretty moot to me. Using the example of GW2, it sounds liek they are going the “penalty” route of D&D – a mage can wear plate with the right training, but they can’t expect to cast spells as easily as when they are wearing cloth. They still have the “knowledge” per-say, but their ability is slightly hampered.
I played Guild Wars for 2 years, but in the end I dropped it when the PvE/PvP split occured. Why? Because I’m one of the few players out there that it seems are not meant to be playing MMO’s – I’m an explorer through and through. I spent most of my time playing an Elementalist/Monk combo that used Water and Smite skills…was it optimial? No. Was it fun? hell yeah. Thing is, that the build gave me different tools then the standard elementalist. I played differently, and yes, I would occassionally get kicked from PUGs, but a fair few groups stuck around, and then eventually my guild helped.
As for balance, it’s the reason that I was driven from GW in the first place, and why WoW is slowly sucking the life out of me – by “balancing” for both feilds seperately, you are taking the adaptablibity out of the game. When a skill used to get changed (mostly for PvP reasons) it would shift up the PvE builds, and visa versa. The community became split because of the min-maxers in the end. I honestly loved when skills were changed, but then again I must be unstable or something 😛
I’d be interested to hear whether Ryzom stays “balanced”. It has a very weird skill system, whereby you “buy” the origional skill (let’s say that you buy a standard fireball.) and you then get the “parts” to use in creating skills. In our example, you would get two parts – part 1 would make a spell deal fire damage and part two would cause X damage. Each part then has a corrosponding ‘price’. For example, the fire aspect might cost 5 mana, and the damage would cost 0.25 seconds of cast time. This gives players the option to be flexible, but to also go along routes if they wish.
Wow…that ballooned out. Hpe this gets read, and thanks to anyone reading it 😛
[…] Autopilot Character Development […]
[…] the DNA Codex, a riff on those systems with some flavor for spice. It combines my older idea of autopilot character progression and high flexibility that I’m so fond of, up to and including the potential to […]
[…] but it shouldn’t be the baseline. I’ve written about this before when thinking about autopiloting and broken […]
[…] Autopilot Character Development […]