This is actually a major problem with modern games. The classes themselves are no longer fun. Balanced, yes, but fun not so much.
I have to say i'm really digging the class switching system in Twin Saga. Its just so dam fun to play. One character can play all classes and you have to battle for last few to unlock them.
In an ideal setting, one potential solution would be to weaken (or remove) the dedicated tank and healer roles, and spread these abilities out to the dps as a whole - in essence give the skillsets (Classes) more power instead of the roles. I'd really like to see an MMO where everyone "tanks" at certain times depending upon the armor they choose to wear (with its own penalties and bonuses), and mitigation and control is spread among all of the group members, so that in essence every member of the group is supporting the group as a whole at different times in different ways by briefly taking on each role in ways defined by their skillset. Of course I doubt this would have mass appeal, since it requires more than a casual glance at the screen once in awhile, as well as a drastic re-envisioning of the system as a whole.
I disagree. The differences between classes is about choices and balance. A Wizard spends their time learning arcane magic and how to manipulate it. Give them armor and shields and there is no need for martial fighters, who spend their time with weapons and armor instead of study of the arcane.
Everyone should be able to deal damage. DPS should not be a "trinity pillar", yet it is. WoW really messed things up when they started keeping track of damage per second. After this, combat became all about "the damage."
For variety, MMORPGs have always had "Hybrid" classes that combine two roles less well than a character who specializes. How does a fighter heal by swinging their weapon? What mechanic id this?
GW2 does do some nice synergy things, like a Ranger shooting arrows through an Elementalist's wall of fire to create fire arrows, but a Guardian's "heal attacks" make very little sense to me.
To me, Role Playing (the last part of MMORPG) is all about differences. Just because "Joe" can do something doesn't mean my character has to do the same. Most "old school" players accept this, many coming from tabletop RPGs where players played with others. But new players, many coming from single player video games, expect to do everything on their own or with NPC helpers.
When I played old EQ, CoH, or WoW and shook my head at that "TAUNT" button, I imagined future MMORPGs figuring out how to manage players and positioning, not what actually happened.
Just my opinion, of course.
Very well said! It seems like a generational difference. Very old pnp dnder here and I love classes. We did accept it but then a new group of people came into gaming that wanted it all now. This being able to switch classes idea is just catering to them. It feels like we went from players having fun together to me me me. Stupid snowflakes!
My old vanilla/tbc guild had a no damage meter rule. One warning then kicked from the raid if you did it again. Get rid of the numbers and let players figure it out the old fashion way.
Bring back CC and Debuffing and the rest for Gygax sake.
I posted this video (2 HR) a while back. It brought back to me all the old feelings about when we played back then and how it is has changed.
Well, playing D&D long before mmorpg's even that game with strict rules had multi classing... allowing for a fighter/mage or rogue/priest class... however with all the drawbacks not many people where willing to take the disadvantages of multiclassing...
the only games with good multi classing where D&D online, the orriginal GW1.. FF multiclassing didnt yield the wished for results to me in both versions of the game
That is where the BS started in a way. I want an elf as it has all the extras but has the downside that raise dead won't work on them. So things happened: Like suddenly lots of resurrections by DMs or worse "A good GM never kills a character". So why have downsides if you don't enforce them?
Look at magic-users and intelligence. You spell limits and chance to learn a spell were important but people tossed those rules out. If you character couldn't learn sleep, it wasn't the end of the world and it gave your character character!
I had a first edition bard. It was OP as hell.
Most of the old groups I played with in the 70s and 80s did it old school. It was the newer younger players who hated the downsides. I believe it was because my core group were wargamers and board gamers before dnd existed. You accepted things like that.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Original EQ.... Enchanter. So much fun dropping a dagger by noobie log in Neriak then cast minor illusion. Then watch people try to pick me up. XD I miss crowd control classes. Ha we almost had to kill our tank once when the beholders charmed him and had him attack us. The good old days.
One of old EQ friends just loves his Enchanter. He hates newer mmoRPGs because things like lack of CC and how dumbed down it has become. To quote him: "games are so dumbed down that people think actually think they have evolved".
In PvE crowd controll is a perfect tool, sadly the reason it got nurfed down is PvP.... fun thing tough, everyones favorite PvP game GW2 has a huge amount of CC but no true CC class...
where they went weong is removing CC grom the genre instead of adapting it for pvp
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Necromancer EQ1 Bard EQ1 Enchanter EQ1 Minstrel DAoC Valewalker DAoC Paladin WoW (before the loss of talent tree's and skills being dumbed down for the masses) Counselor SWToR Trooper SWToR Guardian GW2 Enchanter GW2
In an ideal setting, one potential solution would be to weaken (or remove) the dedicated tank and healer roles, and spread these abilities out to the dps as a whole - in essence give the skillsets (Classes) more power instead of the roles. I'd really like to see an MMO where everyone "tanks" at certain times depending upon the armor they choose to wear (with its own penalties and bonuses), and mitigation and control is spread among all of the group members, so that in essence every member of the group is supporting the group as a whole at different times in different ways by briefly taking on each role in ways defined by their skillset. Of course I doubt this would have mass appeal, since it requires more than a casual glance at the screen once in awhile, as well as a drastic re-envisioning of the system as a whole.
I disagree. The differences between classes is about choices and balance. A Wizard spends their time learning arcane magic and how to manipulate it. Give them armor and shields and there is no need for martial fighters, who spend their time with weapons and armor instead of study of the arcane.
Everyone should be able to deal damage. DPS should not be a "trinity pillar", yet it is. WoW really messed things up when they started keeping track of damage per second. After this, combat became all about "the damage."
For variety, MMORPGs have always had "Hybrid" classes that combine two roles less well than a character who specializes. How does a fighter heal by swinging their weapon? What mechanic id this?
GW2 does do some nice synergy things, like a Ranger shooting arrows through an Elementalist's wall of fire to create fire arrows, but a Guardian's "heal attacks" make very little sense to me.
To me, Role Playing (the last part of MMORPG) is all about differences. Just because "Joe" can do something doesn't mean my character has to do the same. Most "old school" players accept this, many coming from tabletop RPGs where players played with others. But new players, many coming from single player video games, expect to do everything on their own or with NPC helpers.
When I played old EQ, CoH, or WoW and shook my head at that "TAUNT" button, I imagined future MMORPGs figuring out how to manage players and positioning, not what actually happened.
Just my opinion, of course.
Very well said! It seems like a generational difference. Very old pnp dnder here and I love classes. We did accept it but then a new group of people came into gaming that wanted it all now. This being able to switch classes idea is just catering to them. It feels like we went from players having fun together to me me me. Stupid snowflakes!
My old vanilla/tbc guild had a no damage meter rule. One warning then kicked from the raid if you did it again. Get rid of the numbers and let players figure it out the old fashion way.
Bring back CC and Debuffing and the rest for Gygax sake.
I posted this video (2 HR) a while back. It brought back to me all the old feelings about when we played back then and how it is has changed.
Well, playing D&D long before mmorpg's even that game with strict rules had multi classing... allowing for a fighter/mage or rogue/priest class... however with all the drawbacks not many people where willing to take the disadvantages of multiclassing...
the only games with good multi classing where D&D online, the orriginal GW1.. FF multiclassing didnt yield the wished for results to me in both versions of the game
That is where the BS started in a way. I want an elf as it has all the extras but has the downside that raise dead won't work on them. So things happened: Like suddenly lots of resurrections by DMs or worse "A good GM never kills a character". So why have downsides if you don't enforce them?
Look at magic-users and intelligence. You spell limits and chance to learn a spell were important but people tossed those rules out. If you character couldn't learn sleep, it wasn't the end of the world and it gave your character character!
I had a first edition bard. It was OP as hell.
Most of the old groups I played with in the 70s and 80s did it old school. It was the newer younger players who hated the downsides. I believe it was because my core group were wargamers and board gamers before dnd existed. You accepted things like that.
Splitting this into two posts due to limitations:
Strict adherence to classes is exactly what broke them in the long term. So, if I'm a wizard who doesn't have max int, I can't learn every spell. And that would be fine if the trade-offs were worth it, or added something to a character. In all cases I can think of back then (I grew up on AD&D) they weren't, because characters were too defined by their class instead of their character. If you were a wizard you could not wear armor, you only had one attack per round and all you had access to were low damage weapons.
So, it came down to, if George The Wizard was less intellectual, but had more strength, he wasn't more well-rounded, he was just "gimped", because he was still only able to use a staff, still made weak and inefficient attacks, couldn't wear armor, and now he couldn't learn as many spells or be as potent with them. Because of this, people built around max potential. As this happened Tank Roles, Healer Roles, CC Roles and DPS Roles naturally evolved out of it, since certain classes were better able to CC, Mitigate, etc. just based on their class skills/armor capacity/melee capacity. What is even more unfortunate, is that strict adherence to character tropes actually lowered the roleplay value of a character, since all characters of that class were fundamental copies of each other. George The Wizard who grew up as Son of a Master Swordsman knew nothing about swords under those rules, even if in his backstory, his father gave him basic training (explaining his slightly higher str).
Part 2: Mostly in response to previous posters: As I mentioned in an above post, I proposed removing the Tank/Healer roles, since No One should be able to completely fulfill these on demand. The concept was designed to empower skill sets. Now you are free to make meaningful design choices when designing your game. The idea is: You take a druid on an adventure because of the advantages his druid magic has, not because he can be your "heal bitch". You take a warrior on an adventure, not so he can have every enemy hit him instead of someone else, but because his martial skills give him and his group greater advantage when dealing with martial foes. The wizard chooses to wear heavy armor for the added physical protection it adds, despite now he has less maximum carrying capacity for bandages/travel gear/spell components, as well as a lot less gold.
Since no one can tank, everyone has to at certain times, and party play comes from actually supporting your group, using the skills given to your "kit", as well as preparing for the adventure beforehand. You play as an Archer and notice the Warrior is getting overwhelmed, so you drop your bow, and pull out your melee weapon to intervene and start "tanking" to relieve pressure on the Warrior . Realizing what the archer intends to do, the druid entangles both enemies with vines allowing the warrior to escape and the archer to engage. The warrior then bandages his wounds using the healing kits he had prepared beforehand, and once recovered enough returns to the fray so the archer can disengage before he is overwhelmed.
Ultimately the argument against classes is less, "I want it all". Its more along the lines "Classes are too restrictive to natural roleplay and character development", since to accommodate every potential character, you have to create a nigh infinite amount of classes.
Believe it or not,the best class developer Square Enix,proved you wrong.Too many of these devs are amateurs at class design,never thinking outside the box. An example a Monk in FFXI could not only deal tons of dps but coudl actually be a tank and could also heal itself,all that and i did not even include the sub class which it could use ANY class and get a secondary fill on the other roles.
The BlueMage,a class that learned from creatures/mobs in the game,so the class had a huge arsenal of choices to fulfill roles.The class could tank could heal,could dps and could even CC,so an extremely versatile class without getting into sub class choices again. Point being too many have been playing terrible game designs,either lacking in a sub class choice,FORCED to alt alt alt alt...yuck sickening OR simply making WEAK class designs that caused the ruckus over "Trinity" is bad.Yeah it's bad if your a bad developer,ahem...right Arena.net?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Believe it or not,the best class developer Square Enix,proved you wrong.Too many of these devs are amateurs at class design,never thinking outside the box. An example a Monk in FFXI could not only deal tons of dps but coudl actually be a tank and could also heal itself,all that and i did not even include the sub class which it could use ANY class and get a secondary fill on the other roles.
The BlueMage,a class that learned from creatures/mobs in the game,so the class had a huge arsenal of choices to fulfill roles.The class could tank could heal,could dps and could even CC,so an extremely versatile class without getting into sub class choices again. Point being too many have been playing terrible game designs,either lacking in a sub class choice,FORCED to alt alt alt alt...yuck sickening OR simply making WEAK class designs that caused the ruckus over "Trinity" is bad.Yeah it's bad if your a bad developer,ahem...right Arena.net?
Was this directed at me? If so, could you point out where specifically you disagree with me, as I may not be articulating myself properly. After reading it in the entirety, I felt like you were agreeing with me. By downplaying the class dominance on tanking via subclassing (essentially removing tank/healer from class definitions), FF11 did allow for more "tanks", though there were still certainly preferred tanks. I much preferred a Ninja over a Monk tanking for me when I played (RDM and SMN back in the day). However, this did not hold as true for healers, since the MNK/WHM wasn't used to heal for parties.
In an ideal setting, one potential solution would be to weaken (or remove) the dedicated tank and healer roles, and spread these abilities out to the dps as a whole - in essence give the skillsets (Classes) more power instead of the roles. I'd really like to see an MMO where everyone "tanks" at certain times depending upon the armor they choose to wear (with its own penalties and bonuses), and mitigation and control is spread among all of the group members, so that in essence every member of the group is supporting the group as a whole at different times in different ways by briefly taking on each role in ways defined by their skillset. Of course I doubt this would have mass appeal, since it requires more than a casual glance at the screen once in awhile, as well as a drastic re-envisioning of the system as a whole.
I disagree. The differences between classes is about choices and balance. A Wizard spends their time learning arcane magic and how to manipulate it. Give them armor and shields and there is no need for martial fighters, who spend their time with weapons and armor instead of study of the arcane.
Everyone should be able to deal damage. DPS should not be a "trinity pillar", yet it is. WoW really messed things up when they started keeping track of damage per second. After this, combat became all about "the damage."
For variety, MMORPGs have always had "Hybrid" classes that combine two roles less well than a character who specializes. How does a fighter heal by swinging their weapon? What mechanic id this?
GW2 does do some nice synergy things, like a Ranger shooting arrows through an Elementalist's wall of fire to create fire arrows, but a Guardian's "heal attacks" make very little sense to me.
To me, Role Playing (the last part of MMORPG) is all about differences. Just because "Joe" can do something doesn't mean my character has to do the same. Most "old school" players accept this, many coming from tabletop RPGs where players played with others. But new players, many coming from single player video games, expect to do everything on their own or with NPC helpers.
When I played old EQ, CoH, or WoW and shook my head at that "TAUNT" button, I imagined future MMORPGs figuring out how to manage players and positioning, not what actually happened.
Just my opinion, of course.
Very well said! It seems like a generational difference. Very old pnp dnder here and I love classes. We did accept it but then a new group of people came into gaming that wanted it all now. This being able to switch classes idea is just catering to them. It feels like we went from players having fun together to me me me. Stupid snowflakes!
My old vanilla/tbc guild had a no damage meter rule. One warning then kicked from the raid if you did it again. Get rid of the numbers and let players figure it out the old fashion way.
Bring back CC and Debuffing and the rest for Gygax sake.
I posted this video (2 HR) a while back. It brought back to me all the old feelings about when we played back then and how it is has changed.
Well, playing D&D long before mmorpg's even that game with strict rules had multi classing... allowing for a fighter/mage or rogue/priest class... however with all the drawbacks not many people where willing to take the disadvantages of multiclassing...
the only games with good multi classing where D&D online, the orriginal GW1.. FF multiclassing didnt yield the wished for results to me in both versions of the game
That is where the BS started in a way. I want an elf as it has all the extras but has the downside that raise dead won't work on them. So things happened: Like suddenly lots of resurrections by DMs or worse "A good GM never kills a character". So why have downsides if you don't enforce them?
Look at magic-users and intelligence. You spell limits and chance to learn a spell were important but people tossed those rules out. If you character couldn't learn sleep, it wasn't the end of the world and it gave your character character!
I had a first edition bard. It was OP as hell.
Most of the old groups I played with in the 70s and 80s did it old school. It was the newer younger players who hated the downsides. I believe it was because my core group were wargamers and board gamers before dnd existed. You accepted things like that.
Well in the end it all depends on the DM and the immersion, if a D&D game comes a numbers game then you have lost me... its mostly about the immersion into the world and the stories and about roleplaying...and what ruleset you use does not matter much to me.. i vallue the rulesets based on the freedom it gives players to create a character based on the things that happen in a roleplay session... Imagine that a 3rd level warrior gets immersed in the church of Ankh trough the story he plays, why shouldnt he be able to become a Priest from that point on?
And characters not dying is only a trade off of a bad DM, to spice up the game, people need to know that every fault could essentially kill them...and that does not happen witouth characters dying from time to time..
With our core D&D group in the 90's we allways had our own houserules... like multiclassing and duall classing for all characters.... but also resurection could only be done at holy places within 24 hours of a characters death... combined with the fact that resurection scrolls and other items where extremely rare... and many many more of these little rules....
In the end D&D or any other pen and paper game is not about the rules, but all about the roleplaying and the immersion in the characters and the world... As said before, people thinking in numbers where gamekillers for me, there needed to be a healthy ballance between the character sheet and the actions of the characters...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
tie between two classes from the same game ironically. Enforcer and Engineer and Anarchy Online. It was an awesome feeling "Mongo'ing" while tanking raid bosses for an hour getting complete heals while 3 stories tall from the Mongo and Challenger buffs while swinging a gigantic Enhanced Queen Blade or later on the Shadowland variant swords. And then for the Engineer, it is a soft spot as it was my first MMO class and I remember working towards wanting the infamous Slayerdroid, the climb in levels and then finally obtaining all the buffs from other people needed to cast it at the same, felt amazing.
This thread shows the problem with modern gamers not games. Rift has as in depth a system as you could hope to find. literally thousands upon thousands of possible combinations per class. yet all the 'hardcore' players migrate to the same 2 or 3 builds per class with the exact same skills and even give 'rotation' guides on exactly when and how to cast those skills they all share. And the worst part is if you dont follow these or worse you misclick and screw up your DPS rotation by a few hundred youre deemed worthless.
WoW started it and Rift is now perpetuating it.
Thats why games dont even bother with depth or options anymore these developers know people will just migrate to th flavor of the month set up or builds so why make interesting options?
99% of the old school classes or set up would never ever get played today by most people because they werent good enough.
You can go play Rift and make maybe 50 'fun' builds but most of them would be seen as vastly inferior to the best options and clearly not as good as a more optimized build that wasnt quite 'perfect'.
This thread shows the problem with modern gamers not games. Rift has as in depth a system as you could hope to find. literally thousands upon thousands of possible combinations per class. yet all the 'hardcore' players migrate to the same 2 or 3 builds per class with the exact same skills and even give 'rotation' guides on exactly when and how to cast those skills they all share. And the worst part is if you dont follow these or worse you misclick and screw up your DPS rotation by a few hundred youre deemed worthless.
WoW started it and Rift is now perpetuating it.
Thats why games dont even bother with depth or options anymore these developers know people will just migrate to th flavor of the month set up or builds so why make interesting options?
99% of the old school classes or set up would never ever get played today by most people because they werent good enough.
You can go play Rift and make maybe 50 'fun' builds but most of them would be seen as vastly inferior to the best options and clearly not as good as a more optimized build that wasnt quite 'perfect'.
Actually, i agree with you... Meta builds are killing the game... But thats not only the players, thats also by design. If you build content that requires different tactics and different setups to perform best in different encounters... which actually makes the players realise, there is no best way to build your character... then the problem is overcome... But i agree with you, a game like GW2 is currently killed by the meta builds..
The winner is that company creates a game where players finally realise they can build their own character as they like.... In my book this can be done by a huge huge amount of little choices in character builds... freedom.... and a system that slowly debuffs spells and abilities used to much, so whenever there is a meta build or must have overpowered spells the game regulates this by its own...This is not hard to do, thats just a single mathematical formula, backed up by a buildin monitoring system that resistrates all actions taken by players...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Original EQ.... Enchanter. So much fun dropping a dagger by noobie log in Neriak then cast minor illusion. Then watch people try to pick me up. XD I miss crowd control classes. Ha we almost had to kill our tank once when the beholders charmed him and had him attack us. The good old days.
One of old EQ friends just loves his Enchanter. He hates newer mmoRPGs because things like lack of CC and how dumbed down it has become. To quote him: "games are so dumbed down that people think actually think they have evolved".
Agree, when was the last time you heard of any class with the levitation spell, not since Vanguard.
The best class I played was an Enchanter in EQ1...The reason why? In groups and raids, my character did no damage, didnt do any heals, but yet was considered a very valuable team member......How many games today can you have a class that can say that?
I would be surprised to see that in a new game.
That's because MMO's now are alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll about the shiny new loot and how fast you can obtain it. Nothing else. Not that EQ wasn't about loot because all of us that played it, know that gear in that game definitely made an impact but EQ was also about community, helping each other, each person actually bringing something to the table weather it was strong buffs(Which really no longer exist with any oomph behind them in MMO's sadly), debuffs(Another thing that really doesn't exist and if it does, doesn't have any significant effect how it did in EQ), CC(Enchanter's were the weakest, yet strongest class in the game because of this). These are just a few...
EQ1 Enchant to this very day is still one of the most unique classes I have played in my 17 years of playing MMO's. The one true risk vs reward class. You were significantly weak, yet significantly strong at the same time.
Comments
That is where the BS started in a way. I want an elf as it has all the extras but has the downside that raise dead won't work on them. So things happened: Like suddenly lots of resurrections by DMs or worse "A good GM never kills a character". So why have downsides if you don't enforce them?
Look at magic-users and intelligence. You spell limits and chance to learn a spell were important but people tossed those rules out. If you character couldn't learn sleep, it wasn't the end of the world and it gave your character character!
I had a first edition bard. It was OP as hell.
Most of the old groups I played with in the 70s and 80s did it old school. It was the newer younger players who hated the downsides. I believe it was because my core group were wargamers and board gamers before dnd existed. You accepted things like that.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
In PvE crowd controll is a perfect tool, sadly the reason it got nurfed down is PvP.... fun thing tough, everyones favorite PvP game GW2 has a huge amount of CC but no true CC class...
where they went weong is removing CC grom the genre instead of adapting it for pvp
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Bard EQ1
Enchanter EQ1
Minstrel DAoC
Valewalker DAoC
Paladin WoW (before the loss of talent tree's and skills being dumbed down for the masses)
Counselor SWToR
Trooper SWToR
Guardian GW2
Enchanter GW2
Splitting this into two posts due to limitations:
Strict adherence to classes is exactly what broke them in the long term. So, if I'm a wizard who doesn't have max int, I can't learn every spell. And that would be fine if the trade-offs were worth it, or added something to a character. In all cases I can think of back then (I grew up on AD&D) they weren't, because characters were too defined by their class instead of their character. If you were a wizard you could not wear armor, you only had one attack per round and all you had access to were low damage weapons.
So, it came down to, if George The Wizard was less intellectual, but had more strength, he wasn't more well-rounded, he was just "gimped", because he was still only able to use a staff, still made weak and inefficient attacks, couldn't wear armor, and now he couldn't learn as many spells or be as potent with them. Because of this, people built around max potential. As this happened Tank Roles, Healer Roles, CC Roles and DPS Roles naturally evolved out of it, since certain classes were better able to CC, Mitigate, etc. just based on their class skills/armor capacity/melee capacity. What is even more unfortunate, is that strict adherence to character tropes actually lowered the roleplay value of a character, since all characters of that class were fundamental copies of each other. George The Wizard who grew up as Son of a Master Swordsman knew nothing about swords under those rules, even if in his backstory, his father gave him basic training (explaining his slightly higher str).
Mostly in response to previous posters: As I mentioned in an above post, I proposed removing the Tank/Healer roles, since No One should be able to completely fulfill these on demand. The concept was designed to empower skill sets. Now you are free to make meaningful design choices when designing your game. The idea is: You take a druid on an adventure because of the advantages his druid magic has, not because he can be your "heal bitch". You take a warrior on an adventure, not so he can have every enemy hit him instead of someone else, but because his martial skills give him and his group greater advantage when dealing with martial foes. The wizard chooses to wear heavy armor for the added physical protection it adds, despite now he has less maximum carrying capacity for bandages/travel gear/spell components, as well as a lot less gold.
Since no one can tank, everyone has to at certain times, and party play comes from actually supporting your group, using the skills given to your "kit", as well as preparing for the adventure beforehand. You play as an Archer and notice the Warrior is getting overwhelmed, so you drop your bow, and pull out your melee weapon to intervene and start "tanking" to relieve pressure on the Warrior . Realizing what the archer intends to do, the druid entangles both enemies with vines allowing the warrior to escape and the archer to engage. The warrior then bandages his wounds using the healing kits he had prepared beforehand, and once recovered enough returns to the fray so the archer can disengage before he is overwhelmed.
Ultimately the argument against classes is less, "I want it all". Its more along the lines "Classes are too restrictive to natural roleplay and character development", since to accommodate every potential character, you have to create a nigh infinite amount of classes.
An example a Monk in FFXI could not only deal tons of dps but coudl actually be a tank and could also heal itself,all that and i did not even include the sub class which it could use ANY class and get a secondary fill on the other roles.
The BlueMage,a class that learned from creatures/mobs in the game,so the class had a huge arsenal of choices to fulfill roles.The class could tank could heal,could dps and could even CC,so an extremely versatile class without getting into sub class choices again.
Point being too many have been playing terrible game designs,either lacking in a sub class choice,FORCED to alt alt alt alt...yuck sickening OR simply making WEAK class designs that caused the ruckus over "Trinity" is bad.Yeah it's bad if your a bad developer,ahem...right Arena.net?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well in the end it all depends on the DM and the immersion, if a D&D game comes a numbers game then you have lost me... its mostly about the immersion into the world and the stories and about roleplaying...and what ruleset you use does not matter much to me.. i vallue the rulesets based on the freedom it gives players to create a character based on the things that happen in a roleplay session... Imagine that a 3rd level warrior gets immersed in the church of Ankh trough the story he plays, why shouldnt he be able to become a Priest from that point on?
And characters not dying is only a trade off of a bad DM, to spice up the game, people need to know that every fault could essentially kill them...and that does not happen witouth characters dying from time to time..
With our core D&D group in the 90's we allways had our own houserules... like multiclassing and duall classing for all characters.... but also resurection could only be done at holy places within 24 hours of a characters death... combined with the fact that resurection scrolls and other items where extremely rare... and many many more of these little rules....
In the end D&D or any other pen and paper game is not about the rules, but all about the roleplaying and the immersion in the characters and the world... As said before, people thinking in numbers where gamekillers for me, there needed to be a healthy ballance between the character sheet and the actions of the characters...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
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WoW started it and Rift is now perpetuating it.
Thats why games dont even bother with depth or options anymore these developers know people will just migrate to th flavor of the month set up or builds so why make interesting options?
99% of the old school classes or set up would never ever get played today by most people because they werent good enough.
You can go play Rift and make maybe 50 'fun' builds but most of them would be seen as vastly inferior to the best options and clearly not as good as a more optimized build that wasnt quite 'perfect'.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Agree, when was the last time you heard of any class with the levitation spell, not since Vanguard.
EQ Beastlord.
Lotro Burglar.
EQ1 Enchant to this very day is still one of the most unique classes I have played in my 17 years of playing MMO's. The one true risk vs reward class. You were significantly weak, yet significantly strong at the same time.
If you think about it and plan well enough you can do it.