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Devoloper Question: In terms of classes
Talint
Member UncommonPosts: 168
Hello MMORPG community,
I was sitting here thinking of all the MMOs that succedded and all that failed. While there are definately MMOs that have failed with this concept I think it plausible to bring up.
In terms of classes, is it true that it is more likely that when a game has seperate classes on each side, IE. Warhammer Online, and tried to mirror them, than a set number of classes in a game were the "Good" and "Bad" side plays the same classes, IE. WoW or EQ that it has a higher chance to fail?
I was just sitting here thinking and I thought that my question was true, but I could be wrong. I would also like people to discuss this so we can come up with some resonable decisions.
Thanks!
Talint
Comments
This is not a significant reason WAR failed. At all.
And since WAR is basically the only major MMORPG to have attempted it -- and failed for completely unrelated reasons -- we certainly can't draw any conclusions based on popularity.
Personally I think it makes games more compelling (and thus more likely to be successful) to have unique classes per faction. But it's a small factor -- you're certainly not going to choose a game purely on that trait alone, despite the rest of the game being bad.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Word.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
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Didn't WoW initially restrict Paladin to just Alliance races and Shaman to just Horde races? Not 100% sure. And EQ did not really have "sides". There were races which were KOS to most factions outside their home, but your choice of deity had a lot to do with that too, and also you could change that by faction grinding. Even if you do consider Teir'dal, Ogres, and Trolls to be the "evil" side, they didn't have access to the same classes as everyone else. They couldn't be Paladins, Rangers, Monks, or Bards.
Yeah but they gave every faction paladins and shamans for balance reasons (to make it easier to balance raid encounters mostly; and also to avoid the two classes becoming mere copies of each other.)
Really that's the main argument against faction-specific classes. You basically have to devote a lot of design attention to keeping things balanced, which is that much less design effort spent on the other aspects of the game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I really can't think of an MMO that had its failure hinge on having faction specific classes.
World of Warcraft did indeed have paladins and shaman as specific faction classes and all it ended up doing was making player sides mad that the other side had something they didn't, as well as making endgame encounter balance a royal headache for the Devs. The exclusive reason they made the change and shared them out was to solve that Dev headache.
I can think of at least one game with faction specific classes that is still regarded as a solid success.
Dark Age of Camelot.
There were some really hectic times with the class balancing and some of the specific mechanics like Left Axe and crowd control spell access for pvp, but the large percentage of the player base apprecated the split of characters because it helped to make the 3 different factions very distinctive.
Racial restrictions, like Everquest 1 Dark Elves not being able to be bards or paladins only ever seemed to make sense for a game if there was some HEAVY lore being wrapped into the game's setting. Which that one did. Other games seem to throw that feature in "for the hell of it" half of the time, like it's expected.
I think the reason Warhammer didn't do well is that it controlled like arse and didn't have much content.
Mirroring classes, like PQs was one of Warhammer's best ideas, you can really give each race or faction their own style without sacrificing balance between races and factions. You could even apply mirroring as a means to let players choose different looks for their character class or skills.
I think if you wanted you could use the concept of mirroring to let players create their own unique skin for base classes or skills and really differentiate themselves visually, like CoH costume creation but for skills and abilities.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
It could just be fundamentally harder to implement 'mirror' classes. It adds more things to worry about if you need to balance things and increases the number of things you have to create from scratch for the 'mirror' classes. Which adds some upfront costs and so long term costs as well. Then there's the whole thing of someone liking one faction, but liking the classes from the other faction. Now your player has to make a choice that they fundamentally don't want to make.
If developers don't create mirror classes, I think it's because it brings up issues where developers don't want them. Money and players making choices they essentially don't want to make. But mostly money.
I don't think this is why WAR failed to deliver though. When I stopped playing, it was just that the overall game didn't deliver. I didn't have to get into all the classes or anything like that. Had I played for many months it might have been an issue, but not one where I would have quit the game after playing for so long.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I hate the very concept of Character Classes - it's old, stale, cliched and lazy. The same old bloody Cleric, Fighter, Thief, etc. and so on. I hate them even more when mirrored across factions. It all just ends up as yet another supefyingly tedious version of Rock, Scissors, Paper dressed up as an MMO. The tactics the classes use in PvP, in particular, are so stratified that the sheer predictability ruins any immersion or sense of risk.
What I'd like is a Fantasy MMO with a skill system akin to that in Eve Online, where you can do what you want. You never know what skills the other guy as up their sleeve in PvP and the emphasis would be on character development and player skill, not just what "class" it is.
I don't really think that matters.
You don't even have to have classes in a MMO at all, you could just have some templates for anyone who wants and let the rest build their own class, even if that is harder to balance.
Of course if you have 2 or 3 sides and one of them have all the cool classes it will hurt a open world PvP game, but that isn't really what happened to WAR.
WAR cut out a lot of content before launch including 4 of the 6 cities in the game. The intended endgame wasn't possible so they made a new one too fast and it just didn't work out.
There are many ways you can solve classes, including having 4 like Rift with high customization, no classes at, 20 classes like EQ 1 & 2 and many more. Any of those can be well made or badly made.
The important thing anyways is customization, not the number of classes or their names. I rather have a single class with plenty of customization for each side than 20 in which all rangers are the same. My favorite there is still Guildwars where you pick all your skills from a list, even though I think GW have too few skill slots (it has 8, I would like 12 or possibly 15).
Well made games with great mechanics and good programming will win every day.
Basically what I'm saying is, do you think when there are classes on each side, as apposed to the same number of classes, that the devolopers have to spend all this time trying to balance them so they can't spend all that time on other aspects of the game.
Talint
Developers are about as lousy at balance as they are at common sense. Maybe moreso. That's why you see the rock-paper-scissors design almost everywhere, and constant needs to nerf and re-nerf.
I think this entire industry would benefit if they just took all the Devs out back of the woodpile and beat them senseless. Except that they don't have any sense...so........
Once upon a time....
Mirroring classes and skills and having seperate classes and skills are two different things
If the factions have different classes and skills then that means they are fundamentally different. This usually leads to balance issues as each side will say the other has some advantage due to their class and skill selection and sometimes this is true.
Mirroring is merely applying a new skin to a class, like in Warhammer, one side has a pyromancer, one has a umbramancer, they function the same and are balanced by virtue of being the same class, they just have different visuals, one being fire the other shadow.
I don't think mirroring requires much extra work, mostly it involves reconstituting art assets already in the game to give the mirrored classes and skills different looks, at most the art team would have to make some new art assets.
Comparing mirroring classes and skills and making different ones per side, then mirroring takes less time and doesn't affect balance. Making classes and skills different per side or race requires both new art assets and extra playtesting and development.
All men think they're fascinating. In my case, it's justified
I don't believe a game would fail because of this. In fact, Warhammer Online has some of the funnest classes I have ever played in an MMORPG. However, what does happen is that I usually end up playing one side only. For instance, in Warhammer Online I played a Shadow Warrior, a Swordmaster, an Archmage, a White Lion, a Witch Hunter, a Warrior Priest, a Knight of the Blazing Sun, and a Bright Wizard. All of these are in Order, and since their mirrors have similar gameplay mechanics, I only play these.
Ah, one very important point I forgot to mention: Since classes in this game have mirrors, there are always people crying about how a class is overpowered compared to their mirror.
BTW, you should edit the OP as it is rather confusing.
I actually think there are players quitting because of unbalanced things between classes from two different factions. I saw it happen in Warhammer and in DAOC when they released the Warlock, Necromancer and Bonedancer that made the PvP boring.
It sometimes also make people move to a special faction to play with the winning side. Many players want easy mode.
But we also have the situation when the classes are balanced but the losing side are whining about the unbalance and they almost give up before the battles because they think it's unfair. I saw that in Warhammer as well.
I like when there are different classes on each side. To me it makes it more fun and it was one of the reasons I truly loved Dark Age Of Camelot. The balance thing is an issue for me as well though.
I don't think it matters one bit,people buy play whatever is new,then move onto the next game.
Personally speaking i don't like anything repeated in a game.I don't like good side classes mimmicking the evil side classes and i don't even like the way EQ2 used the exact same models with different names on their gear/items.Repeating material/content is just VERY lazy game design.
I also don't need to have a good side evil side,i prefer cooperative game play,the way FFXI began,grouping and everyone gets along,works together.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
It depends what the core of the game is and whether it revolves around min-maxing and the *optimal* class.
Raiding revolves around the optimal.
One on one PvP revolves around the optimal.
Levelling doesn't revolve around the optimal - except when min-maxing bleeds in from raiding.
Group PvP doesn't have to revolve around the optimal if the factions as a whole can be made roughly balanced.
Even then games should only base class balancing on hours played imo. The number of hours played per faction and per class is the real measure of your balancing because people like different things. If you try and balance based on forum QQ and min-maxing then you'll inevitably trend towards multiple identical tank/dps/healer classes with different skins.
Forum QQ on class balance is mostly just another form of PvP. It should be ignored until hours played shows there's a problem and then check the forums for the reasons why.