Skill based game design without classes, does it work?

[Draegan]

First, in my game, stats affect the power or result of your skills and spells. 
Second, your base stats affect your skill level ceiling.

I was actually thinking about how you raise your base stats.

It's an interesting problem.  I'm trying to "create" a game where levels don't matter and nothing else takes their place.  I don't want a system where you grind stat points instead of levels.  I want you to develop your skills and not worry about anything else.

Here's one way I thought of creating time investment in a character.  Once you completely fill up your skill/spell slots up your character is "complete".  This means every skill you have has maxed out to it's top capability.  Also you need to set up a system where you just don't learn a bunch of low tier skills and spell just fill up slots.  Something a long the line of like a College Degree where you need 101 level, 301 level etc courses to graduate.  Once you graduate you wipe all your skills and spells and start from scratch all over again, but you gain stats and additional skill/spell slots.

You can also tie hps/mana/whatever resource to certain skill/spells in a tree.  So the higher you go in the melee tree you get more hps or something. 

Not sure if that would educe to much grinding or not, or over balance old players with new ones way too much.

[Sheepherder]

That concept is really just dodging around the issue, you're still just grinding up skills even if you've hidden the mechanism in your graduation scheme.  The easy way around levels is sidekicking, unless you have some irrational fear of a little number under your character pane.

[Venkman]

Well you don't NEED to macro the skills to make the better.  Skilling them up either makes them miss less/fizzle less or (maybe) satisfy a prereq.  The potency of the ability would be based off stats.  

Memory fuzzy here, but was this effectively how old UO was set up? You skilled up, but the potency was based on the base stats. I might be mixing the skill-up of UO/EQ1 with the potency ratings in DA:O. So many RPGs...

As to your more recent idea of reseting character stats but rewarding with a larger pool, I don't know that players would go for it. Every time a concept like that has been explored (usually through a concept of permadeath and offspring/lineage), the feedback has always been a strong disinterest in losing prior gains. Mentally, this is similar to XP and item loss. Nobody wants to lose the access to the rewards they previously got.

That doesn't mean you can't apply your idea to creating alts. For example, why does someone whose got 3 level 80s in WoW start a fourth alt no better than someone who just entered the game (except for twinkage)? At this point you're just going to solo to 80 (soon 85) anyway so not like you're impacting anyone. Going this route prevents the loss of prior rewards though, still giving access for the occasional face melting just for the fun of it (or performing a critical role in a guild).

[element_of_void]

I'm not exactly sure I like the concept of remort because the amount of remorts would be like the level count again.

I'd like to see "my" game to encourage people to pick skills guildwars like but with some training involved. Whether you choose swords, archery, magic or whatever should not be based on "how much bang do I get for my bucks" but "how do I like to play the game". Different skills offer different effects (knock back, pummel, ranged damage, single target damage, multiple target damage, heals, buffs etc) while at the same time offering the same thing as other skills. Many skills should actually do the same thing while looking and feeling differently. If you choose between axes, swords, maces and stuff it should be about "how do I like to play" and not "maces are slower, so I get more dmg from cleave and crushing blow".


Still I'd prefer it if people have to actually play a little before they can use all the skills they like and start with some basics to work with that are already fun to use in the beginning but get better in the end. The game itself could be the "trainer or calculator" many people go to allakhazam or thotbot for. If you have to display all the skills anyway why not spend more time on developing that interface and make it a guide and a training help at the same time. Let the player chose the direction he wants to go for from the beginning and let him then work through the process by playing.

"Ok, I want to use swords and a shield and wanna be some mean melee combatant. I'll chose these skills from the combat tree and swords tree and add shields and armor. Hmm, I'd like to go for heavy armor but lack the points. Ok, I'll remove skill Y from the combat tree and then I have enough points for heavy plate armor."
The interface could display your current stats, attributes and skills (in a list with hover-info and clickable pop ups for further information on single skills) as well as those when you have everything maxed. Add in an option to save and load two or three skill sets and you can work out some nice combos of skills on your own.
This interface could also help if you want to relocate your skills. Mark some of your skills as "unlearn" and free skillpoints. Choose where they should go to and start using the new skills while unlearning the old ones. (carefully implemented to keep people from "unlearning" and relearning skills to get more available skills like some bards used to switch their songs in some games)

A game with a massive amount of available spells, skills and stuff has to have a pretty impressive interface for managing those or it will scare away new players. Let the player adjust filters (skill tier and more options) and set them to minimum so that new players only see the first skills available and can choose to look at the rest. Presenting them with 200 skills on character creation... well, that would cause many players to leave instantly.


Furthermore you could label some skills "advanced" and have people master some skill trees before the new skill trees are available. Once they decide to go for the advanced, they slowly unlearn the old skills replacing them with new ones. After finishing the advanced skills, they are no stronger then someone with only base skills maxed but have more diversity or more specialization in their skills (or maybe the skill animations and weapons only look bigger, better, more fierce or more colorful).



One more thing about attributes and skill points via races... I am really torn about this. One the one hand, I'd like to see people playing what they like with every race and not thousands of troll fighters and elf mages because those races offer the best combinations of stats and skill points. On the other hand I think that a troll should have different attributes then an elf, dwarf or human. Maybe different races could start with stat differences but the max stats are the same for all races in the end? Dunno. Maybe I'd make it harder to max int based skills as a "stupid" troll but in the end after working hard to reach that goal, a troll should be as intelligent and capable of magic as any elf.

[Draegan]

That concept is really just dodging around the issue, you're still just grinding up skills even if you've hidden the mechanism in your graduation scheme.  The easy way around levels is sidekicking, unless you have some irrational fear of a little number under your character pane.

That's only the case if you need to grind those skills.  I would say that you either make it so you don't have to macro your abilities because they gain in potency easily enough or you they get up high enough to so they don't bottleneck you for further skills and the rest of the way is just gravy from usage.

Sidekicking is fun when you're playing with your friends, but I want to get rid of levels completely.  And who wants to really sidekick down on a daily basis?

[Draegan]

As to your more recent idea of reseting character stats but rewarding with a larger pool, I don't know that players would go for it. Every time a concept like that has been explored (usually through a concept of permadeath and offspring/lineage), the feedback has always been a strong disinterest in losing prior gains. Mentally, this is similar to XP and item loss. Nobody wants to lose the access to the rewards they previously got.

Well, the only difference is that it's your character, with the same gear and the same everything except you're rebuilding the skills.

Now the rebuilding skills part should take THAT long.  Part of the game in aquiring those skills so you have to go out and redo PVP/PVE content to gain them back.

As you remort you gain a slight advantage, but not a major one.  You're not all of the sudden able to take on 4-5 people or something like that.

[DLRiley]

Unlocking a skill should be a global effect. Why in the world would I need to relock skills every time I start a new char? Sounds like clownshoes riding a tricycle.

[Draegan]

Your first mistake was thinking I was discussing alts anywhere in this thread.

[element_of_void]

Despite the warning and the somewhat dated topic I started like a year ago, I'll revive this thread (or at least try to do so).

I thought a lot about how to implement skills into a game that allows for casual gameplay and still appeals to people that want to build up their character. This is what I came up with so far:

1) no character level
2) no classes to choose
3) starting the game should be easy and fun
4) playing the game should be fun!
5) working towards ingame goals should be fun as well
6) a (not completely) new implementation of skills, stats and progress


1) Seems to be a no-brainer. Remove experience based character level progression. Limit attribute progress so that the difference between new characters and trained characters doesn't become to big. Base progress more on versatility, diversity and cool looks for everybody.

2) This one is a bit trickier. Without classes and with a large amount of skills available, new players might be overwhelmed by the number of possible choices. Also without classes, it makes skill implementation difficult. See 6) for details

3) This point gets neglected way too often... with a little background in online marketing I know that selling something online is hard enough as it is. It has to be appealing, easy to use and either a real timesaver, really handy or fun!. Even if you add all that glitter to the front page, people will move on if they don't like what they see inside. MMOs are a bit different as most players are used to hardship, starting with a dirty knife and torn cloths fighting rats and beetles. Still I think that starting a game should be fun. Call me insane but I still believe in fun...
   Starting a game with lot's of tough choices about my hair color, class, race, stats, skills, edges and flaws and your mother's brother's daughter in law's profession... I don't know how much time I spent with the char creation of my first DAoC character and in the end I found that I was wrong about the meaning and usefulness of one important stat. Starting a DDo Character was one of the worst things I went through in my MMO experience (even though I played pen&paper and even some Dungeons n' Dragons).

When starting a character in an MMO you already have to choose a player race which can be hard enough. Limit the rest of the decision making process to some simple choices with no permanent effect other than the starting set of skills and equipment.

a) Do you wanna be an average human, a slinky elf, a chunky orc or a gnarly dwarf?
b) Do you like hitting people, shooting people or casting stuff at people?
c) Choose a weapon
d) Have fun!

This example is simplified but as long as the game allows the player to make and undo choices in the game, that could be all you need to start playing. Equip the new player with a melee Weapon, a ranged weapon, some armor and some basic skills and spells. Improve some aspects based on his choice (replace the sling with a bow, add some melee, ranged or magic skills) and let him start playing (which leads us to...)

4) Playing the game should be fun. I don't mean end game fun, I don't mean maxed out skill/equipment fun... I'm talking about actual fun playing even with only the starting equipment. I know MMOs are not that much about fun as action games but why? If I knew the answer to that in detail, I wouldn't be writing here right now... I'd be sitting somewhere in an office, writing it down and selling it for lot's of money. But let's assume that someone who just started a fantasy MMO as sword wielding strong muscle man actually enjoys wielding his sword. I'm sure it's looooots of fun to swing the sword in the same way every 2 - 3 seconds, seeing the rat wince and after a while even die... whoo... nearly as fun as the last 4 rats you killed.
 If you give the player more power to start with (making him look strong, not the enemies look weak) and make his skills shiny (add some swooosh and bang to it) it will give him a better feeling about his character and abilities. He doesn't have to start in a shiny armor with a flaming broadsword but I think you get the point. If you now even manage to make the gameplay fun and interesting, he'll bite and maybe buy the game, start a sub or get addicted and pay for fremium privileges.

5)
*fake edit for the sake of shortness*
Bla Bla in MMOs Bla over and over again.  Bla Bla not much fun and feel like work  Bla the threadmill (mention of crafting system and reaching the end game) ...
*/fake edit*
Let's assume that the game has enough stories and a game design that provide you with things to do (pvp, quests, building stuff and even some roleplay if you want to). Why should it take weeks to train your character? To keep you entertained? To make it feel worthwhile? To distinguish you from all those other warlocks at lvl 99?
Without levels and classes you need other ways to reward them for being good. Badges, titles, special equipment and other things that show others that this player is good at doing XY will reward people for playing their character well. With pvp, those rewards will be even more interesting to many people. So why not make it easy to reach a certain point where you can use a large set of skills for the progression path you have chosen and make implement challenges that you can only win by playing your character well. This way there might be many people with max skills (equivalent to max level in other games) but only those that are good at using those skills will stand out and therefor won't feel cheated for reaching max skill so fast.

What's that good for, you may ask. A well measured progression pace will give you more of that "cool new spell" feeling in a shorter span, make it more enjoyable to actually play the character and even try out different sets of skills. Playing with a new set of skills will be a possible choice for pvp or difficult pve challenges. In a player community you will be able to switch duties/roles, try new group tactics etc. This brings us to 6) and skills


6) As mentioned earlier in this thread, building a skill based game instead of a class based one confronts you with a whole lot of new challenges. The available skills have to be accessible (good overview, descriptions, understandable menu structure etc) and still offer as much variety as possible. Combining those skills in different ways should produce new tactical options and different ways to play the game. Picking skills should be easy, getting new skills shouldn't take to long and skill requirements should be logical, useful and not cockblocking.

6a) choose skills from different skill sets (weapons, armor, elemental, spell casting, summoning etc)
6b) allow synergetic effects and different combinations
6c) let people learn and unlearn skills in an easy way
6d) allow people to master chosen skills to get slightly better results (and make the game remember mastered skills even if unlearned afterwards)
6e) let the player save sets of skills as favorites to enable easy switching of roles
6f) allow people to get some sort of starter equipment for his current skills
6g) allow people to create their own spells/attacks etc once they mastered the basics


6a) I'm thinking of a system that allows you to choose the basic skills like you choose your weapon/vehicle certificates in Planetside
Go to some place for skills and stuff (a temple or an academy) and select some of those sword wielding and shield bashing skills, a little bit of fire elemental attunement and some offensive and support spells. You get a combat mage (Red Mage anyone?) that can fight with his sword and shield, cast a fire spell on his sword and from time to time nuke his enemy with a little fireball.
Want more sword and less magic, put more points into sword skills and skip on the magic skills.

6b) Choosing an element and a type of spell will unlock a combination of both. Choosing the fire element with certain offensive spells (i.e. bolt spells) will unlock a firebolt spell and so on. With game mechanics that allow many combinations and a large set of skills you can create many characters that do the same thing but with different styles as well as lot's of different play styles (more offensive, defensive, controlling etc)

6c) Having many skills to choose from requires a system that let's you unlearn some skills to choose others instead while making int possible to relearn skills you discarded. (see 6d) )
 
6d) By selecting certain skills you will be able to use them. If you learn to use them well, you get a small bonus (+3% more damage, 1% higher chance of success/hit). Mastered skills will remain mastered, if you unlearn and reselect them later.

6e) There should be slots for skill sets you want to remember. You like your Red Mage build but want to try out some ranged combat for a while? Save the current skill set under some name (call it uber leet redmage roxor or whatever) and unlearn some or all your skills to replace them. Want to go back to playing your Red Mage? Visit a temple/academy or whatever and select your saved template. You could even lock certain equipment to certain builds (magic rings with + fire magic skills and your wand).

6f) Switching roles might make all your current equipment useless (i.e. switching from caster to ranged combat fighter). Therefore there should be a way to get starter equipment for your new role. One way to do so would be to implement realm armor/weapons that can be selected by any player, are bound to the player and can't be sold. Those clothes, armor and weapons offer a starting point to build on, allow you to jump into the game, carry your realms colors and emblems and so on.
New players as well as those that switched roles are able to play right on and as everybody else seems to have the same equipment, there is a good motivation to improve the stuff you wear by collecting new skill specific equipment.

6g) By selecting skills the player gets generic attacks and spells. Once he mastered the basics, a player could be able to create his own spells by using some sort of construction set.
 - take a basic spell, add to the damage, lower casting time and increase cost
 - combine a basic spell with a new secondary effect
 - allow the character to use some spell effects in melee combat (flame strike on melee hit)
 - create an attack that chains a successful block, another attack or other requirements for additional damage or secondary effects

Using this spell/attack construction set should always represent higher costs for added effects. Costs might be less damage, longer cast time/preparation, certain requirements, more energy/endurance drain etc while the added effects might be anything from reduced costs to added damage or special effects.
Using this builder might also offer certain cosmetic changes like visual effects or character animations for no or low costs.




In this system you wouldn't need to reroll another char for another class. Still you might reroll another race. I don't think unlocking skills globally would go that well. If you wanted to play another character, starting would be easy (as explained above) but mastering the skills would have to be repeated for the new character.