Intellectual class design

delete5230 · June 2019

I like the saying "easy to learn hard to master". With an off-line game you can choose difficulty levels easy medium hard. With an mmorpg you cant, everyone plays at the same difficulty.

Any level 10 Warlock can kill two level 10 bandits, but can you manage your Voidwalker to distract four dinosaurs while you grab that near impossible relic that’s otherwise guarded.

Any level 45 Rogue can kill a level 47 Orc using backstab first, but can you venture deep atop Jintha'Alor in the Hunterlands BY YOURSELF and snatch The Mallet of Zul'Farrak otherwise done with a group of five.

Any Hunter can Kill a hard Merloc, but can you kill Murkdeep that nasty one surrounded by a bunch of regular merlocs in Darkshore. By selectively picking each one off using concussive shot arrows and timing your pet to engage half way.

I remember creating my first character in Vanguard. Wanting to heal so I chose a Cleric, a heavy armor solo class that can heal.

My first dungeon run I stood in the back passing out heals to anyone in need. Easy right ?.... Well a group member asked me what I'm doing ?... Simple answer " I'm healing, why ?... Well you have heavy armor, you should be fighting too !!!!........ That day I learned how to fight and heal

We used to be creative remember ?

The good old days

Tell us a story ?

delete5230 · June 2019

lahnmir · June 2019

I could tell a story about Astrologians in FFXIV and how their basic roulations are quite simple and on a gcd. But then you play and weave an entire cardgame through that. Drawing cards, stacking, discarding and playing them on various team members for short buffs and boosted ones etc. Its like playing two classes at once with a random factor to it.

I could tell you that story, but Shadowbringers happened.

/Cheers,
Lahnmir

Eronakis · June 2019

Intellectual class design died during Blizzards pinnacle. At that time game studios were copying the WoW model by making class design as one dimensional and simplistic as they can. Current retail WoW has unintelligent class design with their current design philosophy of homogenization.

Intellectual class design takes into account several variables.

1. How does the class design engage and interact with NPC Encounters and NPC AI. (Traditional trinity gameplay model, non traditional gameplay model, etc.

2. How does the class design compliment the combat mechanics?

3. How does the class design interact with the world/environment in combat and not combat ways.

There are a ton more variables to consider and take in account. I would say those are the three major elements to consider.

The mmorpg with 'intellectual class design" right now is Pantheon. They're taking into account these three elements with depth and substance.

Scot · June 2019

The design principle now seems to be if you can do it all solo or in a zerg why does your class have to have a tactical element? What follows on from that is if your avatar has little in the way of tactics why should mobs have to display any more tactics than you do? From dumb classes to dumber mobs.

Aeander · June 2019

For me, smart class/build design in a game allows for extreme flexibility, but also presents minimal barriers to experimentation.

I want to be able to make thousands of different builds, but I also don't want to be punished for getting it wrong. Respecs should be free, convenient, and quick.

bcbully · June 2019

ESO Nightblade main heals Whitegold Tower and Imperial City Prison. First week.

BOSS

Hatefull · June 2019

I started playing Crowfall recently. To me, so far it feels like they are trying to bring thought back into classes, as well as the importance of having diverse classes. I won't say they have perfected it, but I will say it is a lot better than anything else I have played recently.

Again, not perfect. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Cryomatrix · June 2019

i like creating classes or combinations but MMO's usually are too limited for that. PoE was good for that, but it is really a solo game.

Great quality post Delete.

Vermillion_Raventhal · June 2019

I'd like to see classes have more group abilities and shared powers to be given to randoms. Also more powers that aren't combat related.

Po_gg · June 2019

Aeander said:

For me, smart class/build design in a game allows for extreme flexibility, but also presents minimal barriers to experimentation.

I want to be able to make thousands of different builds, but I also don't want to be punished for getting it wrong. Respecs should be free, convenient, and quick.

TSW. It was like that, and look how ill it ended.

The dumb masses don't want flexibility, just one FotM build to smash through everything...

If you want the theory-crafting and flexibility, probably CO with FreeForm is your best available bet. However -unlike TSW- it lacks on the second part, respec ain't free, neither convenient.

Still, the thousands of different builds, totally there. You can even make "bad" builds -again, unlike TSW- which are fun in concept but in practice not really working.

I don't know of any other games have that, considering the new generation of gamers' attitude of "this shit ain't working, fuck it I'm out" instead of "ain't working, why is that, let's try it a different way".

Theory-crafting is not something these players like.

CO is also a good nomination for OP, since he started with

delete5230 said:

With an off-line game you can choose difficulty levels easy medium hard. With an mmorpg you cant, everyone plays at the same difficulty.

delete, in CO you can set the difficulty... just as you could in CoH. (that was beyond the optional level scaling, the sidekick/exemplar system)

Scot · June 2019

Hatefull said:

I started playing Crowfall recently. To me, so far it feels like they are trying to bring thought back into classes, as well as the importance of having diverse classes. I won't say they have perfected it, but I will say it is a lot better than anything else I have played recently.

Again, not perfect. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

This is one reason MMORRG's started to go the bland class route, the less differences between players in combat the less chance of issues. Issues which may lead to the one unforgivable sin in MMO design, making someone think they have made the wrong choice and leaving the game. To me it seems developers have almost become obsessed about that not happening, which means that in the end classes become meaningless.

Limnic · June 2019

I do tend to think that an archetype system rather than a rigid class would work better for allowing players to find the right niche of gameplay for themselves. I'd echo what another said regarding how Archeage assembles classes, as being one of the better mechanics out there. It's just unfortunate it's wedged into a game that has been rather poorly managed.

Something that I feel like gets lost in many cases in seeking uniqueness within a class is the focus on class skills rather than class mechanics. IE, how it feel to play a given class more so than just fulfilling a classical role of having a lot of heals, cc, health, or otherwise.

Even within the context of a game like EQ or WoW for example, you can have two characters that are ostensibly the same role, such as tanking, and theoretically they could play entirely differently. One may work better for a slow/methodical player, spending time to focus on facing and canceling out enemy movements/actions. Another might be all about lots of back and forth action between different mobs to interrupt and harass mobs while positioning them for team mates.

Lahnmir's comment regarding the Astrologian is an example of such. Having meaningful mechanics that are not just a gimmick, but an actual change of playstyle that affects how you interact with the game as compared to another "class". It's good to have some roles to fulfill, but if everything plays the same in an overarching sense, it can lead to homogeneity in user experience all the same.

Vermillion_Raventhal · June 2019

Scot said:

Hatefull said:

I started playing Crowfall recently. To me, so far it feels like they are trying to bring thought back into classes, as well as the importance of having diverse classes. I won't say they have perfected it, but I will say it is a lot better than anything else I have played recently.

Again, not perfect. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

This is one reason MMORRG's started to go the bland class route, the less differences between players in combat the less chance of issues. Issues which may lead to the one unforgivable sin in MMO design, making someone think they have made the wrong choice and leaving the game. To me it seems developers have almost become obsessed about that not happening, which means that in the end classes become meaningless.

The genre seems driven by whims if players and not long term consequences and how to monetize those whims into microtransactions.

Margaretaville · June 2019

Most MMOs are limited by the intellectual design of the player...….the dumber the player the dumber the game.

Seems to work out well for the industry......

delete5230 · June 2019

Margaretaville said:

Most MMOs are limited by the intellectual design of the player...….the dumber the player the dumber the game.

Seems to work out well for the industry......

The dumber the player..... Meaning, if someone hands you $20 take it.

I should have an mmorpg player party at my house.... everyone please bring money

anemo · June 2019

Enjoying it in AlterAeon. Leveling is like playing a class builder. Currently playing a mad brewer type class where I use poisons to make DoTs more effective, and stat buff potions that can grant 3 to 10 levels of stats. If I'm willing to put in the pregame/prefight effort can go total Hulk if I want to, which is nice since most games wouldn't let you alternate between having a hard time to having a way too easy of a time (most devs are obsessed with giving everyone the same average experience after all).

If you actually want something or a certain playstyle, you'll be willing to give up some features (like having graphics at all in the case above). If there aren't numbers shoved at a game type, it'll never be made by bigger publishers. For instance the survival fad has gotten Funcom/Bethesda/Amazon all making their own version of the game type. The looter shooter Fad has been successful enough to even get EA to make their own version. The Battle Royale genre has gotten EVERYONE making their own of it every year as well. In all cases it was after the success of very small studios that drew the attention to the genre (let's be honest pubg/similar fail so many AAA check boxes).

AlBQuirky · July 2019

There really is no way that developers can "forethought" every player's mindset when designing a game, yet they sure could do a better job in their character design jobs.

I do like City of Heroes' "archetype" design, where the archetypes had many variations to choose from. Originally, there were 5 archetypes: Blaster, Controller, Defender, Scrapper, and Tank. City of Villains added a few more like Dominator and Mastermind. Within these archetypes were so many variations that rarely did 2 of one archetype mirror another. Then they added "enhancements" on top of this and the powers changed even more.

I'd like to see some of what delete suggested, but then I think of the workload to accomplish such things and my dream dies... not anytime soon

Amathe · July 2019

You don't have to go back to the old days to find interesting class design. Lots of games have interesting design.

For example, the mesmer class in GW2. It is filled with interesting choices, twists and turns. They are better appreciated in PvP, imo, but fun all around.

Adamantine · July 2019

I prefer relatively fixed classes because then different classes can play very differently from any other.

For example, in Vanguard many classes had a point system unique to their class.

Cleric was trivial. It went up over time and it was the limit of the uses of Turn Undead.

Monk and Disciple got a point system in which certain attacks and a specific stance would give them Ki points (not 100% sure if they've been called Ki though, its been a while) and that allowed to use certain other abilities to spend these points.

Thats how Disciple could constantly emit quite massive healing, without ever using Mana.

Blood Mage was much the same, except you would always start at Blood Points of zero, the maximum points was only like five (Monk and Disciple could with increasing level gain increasing amounts of Ki points), and the moment your current mob died you'd be back to zero points.

Paladin had something called valor or something like that. Was really hard to raise so points for it was very precious.

Druid had phemonea points and they could cause some truely epic effects, like a whole raid not needing endurance or mana for a while to use their abilities.

Dread Knight had Dreadful Counterance which was the biggest debuff in the game. It would go up on the mob they currently fought. I think the maximum value was five, after that one could stop pushing the value with certain abilities and rather spend endurance on doing more damage.

Other ways was how different aspects of the game would be irrelevant for certain classes. For example Sorcerer couldnt exploit any weakness, only put them up, so on a Sorc one could pretend that the whole weakness/exploit system didnt exist in the first place.

I would definitely say that Vanguard had intelligent class design. I was amazed how even after years of playing Cleric as a main, I kept having ideas how to play them differently. Everyone also praised how Vanguard made every class implementation feel like the definite implementation, with no features missing.

Eronakis · July 2019

For me, Intelligent class design incorporates several elements. Like @Adamantine I too, like a dedicated class design. Quality creativity comes from a structured design with specific limitations that allow freedom inside those limitations.

Here are the elements I believe that must be integrated into the class design to have successful, intelligent class design.

1. Develop a structured class system that gives players limitations (such as, a limited combat bar) to make meaningful choices.

2. Correspond fluid combat mechanics with classes that keep combat engaging that also exploits fear of the player to increase player awareness. (a moderate to high death penalty)

3. Design thematic core mechanics that increase the immersion of the class, don't stream line the now popular (builder + spender or spender + dump mechanics).

4. Do not homogenize your class abilities with a mass distribution of utility.

5. Use the "Weight of Power" method to balancing and ability type distribution. (IE: If abilities are assigned a high Weight of Power value, balance that with weaknesses of the class via role and thematic core mechanics. Also, the distribution of abilities with a high Weight of Power value should be spread thin.

6. Come up with a reinvention of the trinity combat model without omitting trinity roles and devaluing trinity roles; that classes can correspond to this system.

7. Classes have clear thematic, and role weaknesses and strengths.

8. Don't implement class trees or specs that bottleneck the class into a specific linear role. Allow the player to have access to their full class but with limitations in combat but can freely change their playstyle out of combat.

9 For PVE gameplay, design a more dynamic NPC AI that players can adapt to different encounters based off several key variables. (IE: NPC Race, NPC Class and NPC AI Rank). Allow for players to adapt to different encounters by simply limiting combat bar space while choosing what abilities would work best for the npc encounter based off, class composition and NPCs.

10. Make sure each class has a specific feel to it, some may have a rhythm, some may be more choatic and some may have a balance of both depending on specific variables.

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