The Quest for Glory games are a quirky series of adventure/RPG hybrids offered by Sierra. Part King’s Quest, part class-based RPG, they provided me and my friend with plenty of hours of gaming goodness.
Looking back at those games, the part I wish I would see more in modern games is the differences between classes. A Thief and Fighter would play very differently as would a Mage and Paladin, almost creating four different games. The strong class identity wasn’t just in the title and different DPS rotation, each class had their own animations and skills. Each hero type would play through the same game, but a mission where you were trying to retrieve a Tchotski of Greed from the local fantasy mob boss would play very differently if you were a Thief instead of a Mage. You could literally sneak in and just swipe the widget and get full credit for the “quest” as a thief, as a Mage, you could use a “fetch” spell. On the other hand, as a Fighter, you’d have to just go kill everything and take the spoils. Paladins might be able to talk their way through, or bluff the bad guys.
The thing is, any of those solutions would work and give you full credit for the quest. You didn’t have to kill everything to gain XP to level up and progress. You just had to complete tasks, and many tasks could be completed in different ways. I loved that flexibility, and I believe the game was stronger for it, and the class identity was stronger.
So, when I see something like this little postlet from Ghostcrawler
I naturally compare and contrast that with the stymied desire from the player base to have class-specific questlines. Also, there’s the unfortunate tendency to make every problem a nail, solved by liberal application of the Kill-Stuff-and-Loot-It Hammer.
I tend to agree that classes should feel different. Yes, I’d prefer a classless system where I could mix and match to my heart’s delight, but if you’re going to use classes, do it right and make them feel different and have different playstyles. I want to play as a Rogue in WoW and gain XP from stealing stuff. I want my Mage to gain XP by using their unique talents to escort a friendly to a succession of friendly cities (and keeping them OUT of combat), or to get to places only a Slowfall could help access. I want to gain XP for healing if I’m playing a Priest. I want to gain XP for helping nature as a Druid, rather than always being asked to kill reskinned rabid rats. I want to gain XP as a Paladin for making peace or for setting an example. I want raids and dungeons to have class-specific solutions and alternates to “find and kill the boss”.
I want there to be a reason to play a class beyond finding the best way to kill stuff or tank stuff or heal stuff. If I’m stuck in a class (or subclass thanks to the new WoW talent tree locks), I want it to be something other than just combat, to offer unique gameplay options.
It might even make me like the class-based system.
Oh, and bonus reading: An article from the 1-Up RPG blog…
It looks like Etrian Odysseys 3 has some wacky class mechanics going on. It’s a different take on the idea of expanding the point of classes.
Incidentally, I happened across this article from Jason last night, but I’ve had this written for almost a month. Bloggish hivemind at work?
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I loved the Quest for Glory games, and I want that kind of differentiation between classes… however, every time I spend any serious effort thinking up a design for it, it always fails in an MMO sense. Yes, I want the rogue to advance by sneaking around and stealing things, planning jail breaks, cheating at games of chance, etc… but how do I fit those skills into a group dynamic?
Ultimately, I always end up at the idea of every character having two lives. The first if your traditional MMO style play, and the second is solo or specific group tailored quests that can cater to the class of the individual or the class set of a group (a rogue goes to the quest giver and is told “this is a two man job. you’ll need someone tough and good with a blade to pull this off.” meaning you need to duo the quest with a warrior, each of you having parts of the event tailored to your class’s strengths.
In the past, I’ve always tried to avoid this because it leads to heavy instancing… but I’ve gotten to the point where I think a better game design is giant city hubs of social activity with the majority of all adventures/quests in instances.
[…] like GURPS, but we always came back to D&D or some variant thereof. Reading Tesh’s Quest for Glory post this morning (read it, it’s worth it – I’ll wait), I made the following […]
I don’t have experience with many games, but in one sense I believe I agree in that if you’re going to use a class system, they should feel different and be able to complete a certain task in a unique way.
If anything, games lack the ultimate class that epitomizes uniqueness. The “Snowflake” Class. Able to generate localized snow storms that rooted bad guys in place until they shoveled their way out giving you time to escape. The problem is they would be so popular, everyone would think they are special.
The problem with current MMO iteration and class design is that if you make a subset levelling option, recent history shows that players will take that route.
If you allow mages XP for porting, pretty soon that’s all they’ll do – it is the path of least resistance for levelling. Two easy ways to help make that work are either making the XP contribution from those tasks minimal (which takes away the spirit of having it contribute in the first place) or design the content that it is part of bigger quests – but that means that you aren’t rewarding the action as part of the class itself, but giving XP for the class specific quest.
For example, a quest where a Mage is trying to prove the innocence of a quest giver who is to be executed may be designed for that Mage to have to travel to many destinations to collect evidence. Boom, there is the reward for porting – but it would be a one timer and once proven innocence, Mages are back to selling easy player movement for 10g a port.
I do agree that having classes rewarded for class specific things could be a great immersion factor. Could be a RPG/MMO mix. Teshlonian, the human farmer requests I go kill the wolves that are thinning his herd of cows night in and night out. My human warrior takes on the task gladly. He gets xp for helping out his faction and the farmer.
My Elven forest fairy declines the quest, but still gets XP for staying in tune with his character – he has helped the forest animals live and turned down the human request (silly humans, always using the land as their own and now how nature intended!) – To further the experience the Elf could trap and relocate the wolves for additional xp away from human lands, where they can hunt freely (as nature intended) and be safe from humans hunting them.
Sorry, tangent. I agree there are a world of possibilities that exist to enhance current quest systems, and while the article isn’t about that specifically, it goes in line with making classes more ‘classlike’.
I like the idea of freedom in skill/power selection in classes as long as they work together in the chosen world. A plate wearing mage just feels off, so some restrictions should be in place – IE:, if you have the plate armor skill (and strength to wear it) casting time goes up by a %. You already weakened your magic ‘skill’ as well by putting points into strength instead of magic to wear it in the first place. A happy balance of tradeoffs would be needed.
Of course, the min maxers would find the best combination of stats, skills, and powers (battle mage anyone)?
Having several ways to complete a quest, all of which grant the exact same XP/reward, really gives the player a choice.
If the different ways are pitched at a moral level, like if you just fold your arms and don’t help the orphans cause, like, your evil, AND you get the reward, suddenly the mechanics actually engage the story, instead of sitting in parralel with it.
I’ve always been a little torn on the classes subject, I’m totally in favour of pure and unique classes, at the same time I also like the class system of for example FF11 or FF14, whereby you have lots of freedom to create and develop your character’s class.
I think WoW especially leaves me somewhat unsatisfied in that respect, because we got neither freedom nor uniqueness – in the end it comes down to everyone using more or less the same specs, hybrids aren’t really played like hybrids and while i’m forced down a talent tree, i am also utterly replaceable by many different ‘classes’.
i’d say go one way or another, but make your mind up please!
Tangentially, I love the FFTactics use of classes. (Also seen in FFIII, FFV and FFX2 in other forms.) There are classes, but players can swap between them and even mix and match elements. That sort of “job” system makes me happy, since I can tailor my approach as the game changes (or as I change). Being locked into a class (Cataclysm talent tree locking makes me unhappy) never sits well with me… and I think that it’s one underlying cause of altitis.
Even so, those are still largely combat-related concerns. I’d love some noncombat class-based stuff like Isey notes. Solving every problem by killing stuff gets old fast.
Thanks for the comments, y’all!
Sorry Tesh, I got nothing to add and just wanted to ask you where’s that banner pic from? The one with the green and orangey tree tops/leaves.
That’s a photo I took last Fall at my old college stomping grounds. I’ll post the full version if you’d like. I sure liked the transition from Springish colors to full on Fall colors in a single photo.
Yeah, that caught my eye too. I’d love to see the full version!