Another advancement system

[Sairon]

Okay I've spent quite some time thinking about advancement in MMORPGs and the problems which arise. Usualy you make some ireversible choices in the start, normaly being race, class and gender at the least. Then you start out on your journey to max lvl. There's a couple of problems with this though as I see it.

First of all the advancement in practicaly every MMORPG is done in such a way that a certain class is never the same at max lvl as it is in the start. This is pretty natural since the players would get pretty bored if nothing changed in the way you played your character while advancing. The problem is that the choice of class is always made when you have the least information, when you're a beginer. This can be seen very well in for example World of Warcraft where people on the boards are complaining about their class diffrent capabilities in all diffrent areas, when in the end it's all pretty much balanced out, they just expected the balance to be in some other way.

It also has very little flexibility. Some days you can often stand around for hours looking for a specific class which is pretty much needed, more than often being a healer.

Another problem is that the player can't be identified when he plays on more than 1 character. If there's someone which has a notoriously bad reputation, he can easily start alts and you will have no idea what their names are. In World of Warcraft people use this to "launder" items. For example if they're in a team and something phat drops, they claim they need it when they don't. They then send the item to their lvl 1 alt which puts it up on AH, after which he can't be caught as a lamer. There's a lot of other problems directly relating to this one.

There's also the problem that people grow tired of their class and the playstyle it has, often resulting in rerolling an alt or ending subscription.

What I propose is 1 toon per server, which has only gender and race as ireversible choice at start. The game would have 2 diffrent advancement paths, lets call them General lvl and Class lvl. General lvl is the actual power of your character. General lvls increases stats by a fixed ammount every time you gain a lvl. General lvls won't yield you any combat skills.

Now when you're thrown into the world you're presented with what I'l call the basic class trainers. Lets say I feel like playing a mage, I then head over to the mage trainer which would start me out at lvl 1 mage. Becoming a lvl 1 mage means that you get access to a start up set of very few mage skills, and it also gives you percentage based stat changes. The advancement as mage then continues in the normal manner which will grant you both General xp and Class xp ( class xp towards mage lvls ). Gaining Class lvls unlocks mage skills. The power of a skill is decided by your stats alone.

However, when you're a lvl 30 mage you might be geting a little bit tired of being mage. You can then just go to for example the warrior trainer which would start you out at lvl 1 warrior, your advancement as a mage will then be saved and you will be presented with the start up skills and stat changes of a warrior. You can then at any time you please go back to the mage trainer and he would change you into a mage of lvl 30 again, and saving your progress as a warrior.

Maxing out a class should be rather fast, much faster than maxing out your General lvl. Maxing out mage for example might take 1 week for someone who plays frequently, while maxing out General lvl would take like 3 months.

A cool side effect of this is that you can have classes which has certain requirements to start out in. For example becoming a warlock, which in our particular game is a warrior / mage hybrid, requires that you've reached atleast lvl 40 in both warrior and mage. Becoming necromancer might require that you've totaly maxed out mage first and you do some quest of some sort proably relating to the dead in some way, there's lots of possibilities here. A necromancer doesn't have to be more powerful than a mage but simply plays diffrently ( naturaly ). The diffrent classes past the basic ones could be unknown to the player base to keep a sense of exploration present, even if in due time all will be revealed and guides circulating on the web.

This system would remedy all 4 problems which I presented in the begining, but I wouldn't be suprised if there's hidden problems which won't be noticed until it's actual tried in practice ( if it hasn't been already ).

[Samwise]

Have you played SWG?  Your system sounds fairly similar to their profession system.  (They even have the "general level" thing as a new feature of their recent combat revamp.)

[Trippy]

Have you played SWG?  Your system sounds fairly similar to their profession system.  (They even have the "general level" thing as a new feature of their recent combat revamp.)

The class switching is the same as FF XI as well.

[Sairon]

Ok, no I haven't played those 2 game because I was in a desperate need of a new computer at that time when those 2 were released hehe.

[Strazos]

Yp, you can do all sorts of class switching in XI.

It's still a horrendous grind, and there's still a shortage on healers.

[SomeKindOfMoron]

I'm in agreeance with most of this.  I like the idea of consolidating all of an account's resources (at least on a single server) into a single identity.  As you mentioned, there is increased accountability and, of personal interest to me as a player since I often create numerous alts when I first start a game, the ability to dabble in all of the game's core roles and playstyles without having to start from scratch each time.

It's worth asking though, what if the player doesn't like the race he or she chose at the beginning?  Do you allow the player to somehow change race after character creation?  You almost can't force the player to make *any* important decisions at character creation if you're only going to allow a single character.

Perhaps an alternative would be to allow each player a stable of different characters, each with varying races, genders, and appearance, but all share the same stats, equipment, property, etc.  Perhaps, in order to tie them all together, they all share a surname.

In any case, I don't think that my dream MMO would have quite this system (for instance, I'm not a big fan of class-based systems), but the logic behind this design is sound. 

[Margalis]

Things like the job system in FFXI are preferable to different characters for a couple reasons that might not occur to you at first. Because all the jobs are the same character, you have all your items and have accomplished all your quests with all of them, which means you don't have to do things like get your Chocobo license one per character, get your airship pass for each character, beat all the same bosses, etc.

Having a bunch of different characters share surnames and items and such might work, although it would be a bit weird. I guess you can say it's a very communistic family. But sharing items and history is definitely important.

The FFXI job system is really awesome. I can't imaging playing any game where you can to reroll to get new chars. And the best thing is, although FFXI is very slow paced in general, you can switch jobs as often as you want and the switch is instant. You don't have to earn "respec points" or level up your abilities every time you switch. One second you are a level 60 white mage, next second you are a level 60 Ranger.

[Sairon]

The problem I can see with not forcing race is that it's not a logical to be able to change your race, while change class is more like changing your profession. You could perhaps have some sort of ritual in game which would change your race, but it's still not a sound way to go imo. I don't think the RP freaks would like it either. One way could be to have race having very minor impact on game balance, but that's kind of boring in a way too. If you're only allowed 1 toon per server, you could still choose another race on another server, but in a way that kind of defeats the purpose of designing the game like this. I haven't really came up with a good way to handle this yet.

[MrHat]

The problem I can see with not forcing race is that it's not a logical to be able to change your race, while change class is more like changing your profession. You could perhaps have some sort of ritual in game which would change your race, but it's still not a sound way to go imo. I don't think the RP freaks would like it either. One way could be to have race having very minor impact on game balance, but that's kind of boring in a way too. If you're only allowed 1 toon per server, you could still choose another race on another server, but in a way that kind of defeats the purpose of designing the game like this. I haven't really came up with a good way to handle this yet.

You could have it be soul based.  You get a perma death type thing on yer character, and yer soul inhabits another race.  Then to make up for it, you get super fast advancement of all skills you had before (to learn then anew).

[Kail]

I don't know, personally, I don't see this system working that much better than, for example, Guild Wars.

First of all, this business with switching classes and all... I'm not nuts about it.  I've never played FFXI, but other Final Fantasy games (single player, obviously) which have used it have been less than impressive to me.  Basically, you're forcing a player to level multiple classes.  I mean, say I roll up a thief, because I like thieves.  I max out my class level in a week, but I've still got around eleven weeks to go before I hit my max character level.  What are my options?

-Continue playing as a thief, gaining no new abilities and not improving anything other than general character stats, with every single fight over the next three months being waged with the exact same skills and abilities.

-Change classes to something I don't like as much, to gain their abilities and add a bit of spice into the gameplay.

It seems like the player who chooses to specialize only as a thief would be taking a serious penalty if he went up against a player who mastered thief and ten other classes.  The pure thief would have every thief ability, while the player who played everything would have every thief ability PLUS every other class ability and the same overall stat levels (the same character level).  It seems like you're really kicking specialist players pretty hard.

Yes, you could make the argument that a L60 Warrior in WoW is different from an L1 Warrior, but in your game, I suspect a L1 Warrior would also be different from an L30 (or whatever the cap is) Warrior.  The only difference is that in your game, your levelling curve for getting a warrior to maximum power is way shorter.  If you shortened the levelling curve in any other game to a week or two, you could achieve the same effect, basically, without having to mess around with this general level/class level stuff.

A cool side effect of this is that you can have classes which has certain requirements to start out in. For example becoming a warlock, which in our particular game is a warrior / mage hybrid, requires that you've reached atleast lvl 40 in both warrior and mage. Becoming necromancer might require that you've totaly maxed out mage first and you do some quest of some sort proably relating to the dead in some way, there's lots of possibilities here. A necromancer doesn't have to be more powerful than a mage but simply plays diffrently ( naturaly ). The diffrent classes past the basic ones could be unknown to the player base to keep a sense of exploration present, even if in due time all will be revealed and guides circulating on the web.

That sounds dangerously close to Everquest 2's system, which I assume you're trying to avoid.  The problem is that if you come into the game looking for a specific class (e.g. Necromancer) then you have many more problems with classes changing over time than you did before.  You're saying that characters at max level being different from newbie characters is bad, but you're proposing introducing a system whereby players are forced to pass through entirely different classes to reach upper tier classes?  That seems like it would amplify the problem to me.

If you're just looking to keep track of alts, then I personally would suggest going the Guild Wars route.  Basically, it counts all a player's characters as the same "basic" character: they all share the same bank account, if one of them joins a guild then they all do, and so on.  If you add Frank to your friends list, and then Frank logs on as his alt Joe, it tells you "Joe (Frank) has logged on" or whatever.  Seems to work very well.

To address your four original concerns:

-"a certain class is never the same at max lvl as it is in the start" - I don't see how your system would help this.  Shorter levelling curves would make it less annoying, true, but shortening the levelling curve of any MMORPG would do the same.  If anything, the addition of multiple tiered classes would make this problem worse.

-"It also has very little flexibility" - Again, not something I think that really calls out for a separate class/character level system.  Individual characters in your system are used to achieve what multiple alts are used to achieve in other systems, and I don't see how yours is objectively better.

-"Another problem is that the player can't be identified when he plays on more than 1 character" - A significant problem that I think might be helped by your system (the strongest aspect of it, in my opinion), but there are tons of other ways (like the Guild Wars way) to handle it without limiting the player to a single character.

-"people grow tired of their class and the playstyle it has" - Again, not something I see being fundamentally different with your system.  If someone on your system is tired of being a mage, they can switch to a warrior.  If someone playing World of Warcraft is tired of being a mage, they can roll up a warrior alt.  Again, I don't see how your system is better.

[SomeKindOfMoron]

If I'm not mistaken, part of the original idea is that you could only ever be one class at once, so a character couldn't run around as both a warrior and a mage at the same time.  If that wasn't part of the idea, then it ought to be, for the reasons you listed, among others.

-"people grow tired of their class and the playstyle it has" - Again, not something I see being fundamentally different with your system.  If someone on your system is tired of being a mage, they can switch to a warrior.  If someone playing World of Warcraft is tired of being a mage, they can roll up a warrior alt.  Again, I don't see how your system is better.

The difference is that, if I decide I'd rather play a warrior than a mage, I don't have to forfeit all of the progress I've already made.  For a lot of players, getting to, say, level 30+ and then discovering they made a mistake back on day 1 by choosing the incorrect class and the only solution is to start over, is enough to warrant quitting the game. 

I do, however, agree that there are viable alternatives to the just-one-character design, the Guild Wars system you describe being one of them.

[Sairon]

You could have it be soul based. You get a perma death type thing on yer character, and yer soul inhabits another race. Then to make up for it, you get super fast advancement of all skills you had before (to learn then anew).

Yea that's an option.

I don't know, personally, I don't see this system working that much better than, for example, Guild Wars.

First of all, this business with switching classes and all... I'm not nuts about it.  I've never played FFXI, but other Final Fantasy games (single player, obviously) which have used it have been less than impressive to me.  Basically, you're forcing a player to level multiple classes.  I mean, say I roll up a thief, because I like thieves.  I max out my class level in a week, but I've still got around eleven weeks to go before I hit my max character level.  What are my options?

-Continue playing as a thief, gaining no new abilities and not improving anything other than general character stats, with every single fight over the next three months being waged with the exact same skills and abilities.

-Change classes to something I don't like as much, to gain their abilities and add a bit of spice into the gameplay.

Yes this is a flaw which I agree on, but if I remember DAoC had it pretty much the same, in a way. You got pretty much all your abilities very soon, and after that every new train just yielded a better version of the same spell, might be wrong about that one though because it was long time since I played DAoC. Ultimately it's the same feeling which basicly every MMORPG has, just that you get to it a little sooner. It took little over a month for me to max out in WoW and after that you don't even have the option to increase in power, I also got pretty bored of rolling alts because it's pretty much exactly the same grind again, in exactly the same areas. That game had very little in forms of twinking as well so you easily get discouraged imo.

It seems like the player who chooses to specialize only as a thief would be taking a serious penalty if he went up against a player who mastered thief and ten other classes.  The pure thief would have every thief ability, while the player who played everything would have every thief ability PLUS every other class ability and the same overall stat levels (the same character level).  It seems like you're really kicking specialist players pretty hard.

As SomeKindOfMoron pointed out you can't be all classes at the same time. If you specialize as a thief and stayed as it you would generaly have better equipment since you're only focusing on geting equipment fiting for a thief. I can agree that sticking with thief would probably not be the optimal way to go in a way, but you would probably be one of the best thiefs around.

Yes, you could make the argument that a L60 Warrior in WoW is different from an L1 Warrior, but in your game, I suspect a L1 Warrior would also be different from an L30 (or whatever the cap is) Warrior.  The only difference is that in your game, your levelling curve for getting a warrior to maximum power is way shorter.  If you shortened the levelling curve in any other game to a week or two, you could achieve the same effect, basically, without having to mess around with this general level/class level stuff.

Shortening the lvling curve wouldn't achieve the same effect because General lvl is what decides your power. For example if you start out as warrior and max it out and get to lets say General lvl 30 in doing so, you would have access to the same equipment and dealing the same dmg with auto attack as a lvl 1 warrior of General lvl 30, diffrence being that you have a lot more skills to play around with and therefor be more powerful. What this in reality means is that when you change your class you will still be fighting the mobs and runing around in the areas for General lvl 30s, you won't really be starting over again.

A cool side effect of this is that you can have classes which has certain requirements to start out in. For example becoming a warlock, which in our particular game is a warrior / mage hybrid, requires that you've reached atleast lvl 40 in both warrior and mage. Becoming necromancer might require that you've totaly maxed out mage first and you do some quest of some sort proably relating to the dead in some way, there's lots of possibilities here. A necromancer doesn't have to be more powerful than a mage but simply plays diffrently ( naturaly ). The diffrent classes past the basic ones could be unknown to the player base to keep a sense of exploration present, even if in due time all will be revealed and guides circulating on the web.

That sounds dangerously close to Everquest 2's system, which I assume you're trying to avoid.  The problem is that if you come into the game looking for a specific class (e.g. Necromancer) then you have many more problems with classes changing over time than you did before.  You're saying that characters at max level being different from newbie characters is bad, but you're proposing introducing a system whereby players are forced to pass through entirely different classes to reach upper tier classes?  That seems like it would amplify the problem to me.

This is clearly a problem, perhaps providing alternative paths to the higher tier classes should be an option. World of Warcraft is probably going to face the same problem though when they're introducing Hero lvls, diffrence being that if it turns out that you clearly want to play the hero class of a mage when you're a lvl 60 warlock, then you must go through the very tedious and long lvling from lvl 1-60 again, while in this system maxing out a class is much faster. If it turns out that Black Knight or something lies beneath warrior you're only looking at a week of warrior grind. If you're a guy which likes necromancers and that whole deal you're probably the guy which would choose mage instead of the other basic types, atleast probably more likely to.

If you're just looking to keep track of alts, then I personally would suggest going the Guild Wars route.  Basically, it counts all a player's characters as the same "basic" character: they all share the same bank account, if one of them joins a guild then they all do, and so on.  If you add Frank to your friends list, and then Frank logs on as his alt Joe, it tells you "Joe (Frank) has logged on" or whatever.  Seems to work very well.

Yea this also sounds like a sollution.

-"a certain class is never the same at max lvl as it is in the start" - I don't see how your system would help this.  Shorter levelling curves would make it less annoying, true, but shortening the levelling curve of any MMORPG would do the same.  If anything, the addition of multiple tiered classes would make this problem worse.

In reality the real lvling curve isn't faster since the power of your character is your General lvl. The way this system would remedy it is because class isn't a choice set in stone and since maxing a class is relatively short you haven't "wasted" so much time by making a bad choice. For shortening the lvling curve being the same I refer to what I said before in this post.

-"It also has very little flexibility" - Again, not something I think that really calls out for a separate class/character level system.  Individual characters in your system are used to achieve what multiple alts are used to achieve in other systems, and I don't see how yours is objectively better.

Imagine you and your mates being around the same general lvl and all of you are up for some xp, the one who's usualy the healer just happens to be away for this weekend. One of you can then start playing a priest ( which in this particular game would be a healer ), and he would heal with the same power as your mate which currently is away. Yes that new guy which just turned into a lvl 1 priest isn't going to have access to most of the priest spells but he would have access to the essential ones which makes advancement possible. If I again were to compare to World of Warcraft, the priest could start out with Greater Heal and Flash Heal, he wouldn't get PW:S, PW:F, Renew etc, which are all nice to have but not cruical to your lvling. In most MMORPGs this wouldn't be possible, and rolling an alt up to whatever lvl your group is would mean that the guy who is going to be healer for the weekend is geting no progress on his main, which he probably wants to progress with.

-"people grow tired of their class and the playstyle it has" - Again, not something I see being fundamentally different with your system.  If someone on your system is tired of being a mage, they can switch to a warrior.  If someone playing World of Warcraft is tired of being a mage, they can roll up a warrior alt.  Again, I don't see how your system is better.

Again I refer to what I said earlier hehe. In WoW I see very few people with lvl 60 alts, atleast on euro servers. Most people are pretty discouraged by going to through pretty much exactly the same gameplay which their main saw. Of course there's one kind of gamer which does nothing but rolling alts, but they usualy grow tired before even seing the end game with any of them. In a way it would also something else to do when you max out General lvl. Loging on and have nothing to do is a common problem when you've reached max lvl ( max General lvl in this system ). Sometimes I feel like I would like to progress my main in WoW for example but the only option I have is farming instances. I would really like to have a lvl 60 mage but don't feel like creating an alt.

[Calantus]

This is an idea that struck me when playing FFX-2 a little while ago, it's good to see someone posting it here cause I think it has alot of merit. I'll just give a rundown in pointform on how I see the benefits (I'll use WoW for examples as it's what I am playing):

- Dynamic class choices. In WoW, dungeons are static, but what if the dungeons were alot more random in what they threw at you? I personally would think it would be alot more fun, but what if, for instance you ran into a random scenario where a number of powerful elementals attacked your group but you have no warlocks? Or, equally as bad, what if the system takes into account you having no warlocks and you have 3? It's a big swing in difficulty just by whether you have the right class combination. If you can change classes, and people are likely to have multiple classes, a few of your group could just switch to warlocks and get the CC you need to defeat the encounter. The same could be for PVP, if you run into a group with multiple CCs of the one type and have no way to cure people, you're gonna lose badly. It adds a whole new tactical and strategic layer to combat.

- The scenario of not having a priest given just above is a good example of it's strengths too. Many times I wanted X dungeon only to find we lack a warrior or priest available in the guild at the time. If we could change our class to get what is needed this would be alleviated. It also allows "required" classes without fucking over people who just can't get their hands on said class.

- I'm SICK of Elwynn Forest, Teldrassil, Dun Morogh, Mulgore, Durator, and Tristfall Glade. I've rolled so many alts that just get deleted because I get sick of doing the newbie quests again and again and just think about the road ahead and get disheartened. If I could get new classes while not having to do the same fricken content over and over I'd be much happier.

- One thing to keep in mind, class progression does not need to be done via the same method as general levels. You could have many levels, spells, abilities open up as you complete quests for the class. That way you could make the advancement of every class unique while not running into the problem where 90% of the playerbase wont see the content simply because they will never play that class.

- It lessens the need for class balancing and "need". Basically if you can switch to priest effortlessly then it doesn't matter TOO much if your druid's healing isn't up to par. And if your hunter isn't needed for groups? Who cares, you can switch to warrior and be more uselful. It even allows classes that are meant purely for one type of play. Maybe they truly truly suck in groups but it doesn't matter cause you only switch to it when you farm for gold or w/e. Maybe they suck SO hardcore alone (healer with no offence at all for instance), but you can switch to a solo friendly class when alone so it wont matter.

[Koyasha]

You described FFXI's job system almost to a T.  6 initial classes, 9 advanced classes (which require you being level 30 and completing a quest to unlock).  You can switch between your classes at your Mog House anytime you want.  My character is a level 56 Paladin, 36 Red Mage, 29 Warrior, 27 Dragoon, 26 White Mage, 18 Black Mage, 15 Thief, 15 (or so) Samurai, 12 Ninja, 10 Dark Knight, 5 Monk, 5 Summoner, and I haven't leveled Ranger, Beastmaster, or Bard, all of those being at 1.  Try it out, sounds like FFXI is exactly what you're looking for as far as the class system goes.  They even have the subclass system, where you can assign a subclass and get all the benefits of your subclass up to 1/2 the level of your current class, although it should be noted that many combinations are ineffective (melee/mage doesn't generally work, neither does mage/melee, in general, for example).  The primary disadvantage of this system (at least in FFXI) is inventory space.  With a very limited amount of inventory slots, even after you do all the inventory expansion quests, you just don't have room for equipment for all your classes.  Add in extra equipment for all of them for when you're in level-limited areas, and you really don't have enough room.  None of this, however, really helps you know what lies at the end of the road, and while switching classes doesn't cause you to lose progress in your old class, your new class gets no particular benefit, besides the funding that you can provide through being higher level already.

On the other hand, knowing what lies down the road is something I've pondered in many games (the most recent in my case being Lineage II).  There are often several classes that sound fun, but being an experienced MMO player, I know I won't really understand them until I have played them at endgame levels, no matter how many websites I look up or read.

Planetside had a rather lacking system, but it was the best of them that I can think of: the VR training ground.  An area in which you can try anything you want to see how it really works.  What these games need, imo, is an area designed for max level characters, where you can roll up fully levelled, skilled, buffed, equipped characters at max level, and try it out.  There's just one little area you can explore, and it should have sufficient enemies, both of the solo and group type, to give you a decent understanding of how you're going to behave at max level in the class you're trying out.  Armed with such information, you can then make a truly informed decision abut what class you want your real character to be.

And to the game companies: this would be a good thing for you.  Take my comment about L2..  Currently I'm rather discouraged with the game, because I don't know if the game will be fun or not once I'm 40 and have promoted to my 'real' class.  Or once I'm 70 and have all my abilities.  Were I to experience the game at 70 in a 'tryout' area, I would likely be encouraged by the knowledge.  I'd be able to say, 'yes, I WILL like my character when I get there!' and be motivated to keep playing.  The same thought applies to most games which I haven't reached max level in.  At some point, the journey to max level got somewhat dull, and I got tired of working toward a goal that I didn't even know if I'd like or not.  Thus, I have likely quit several MMOG's I may have continued playing, if I had first-hand experience of my goal actually being fun for me.

[Sairon]

Yes FFXI as described to me in this thread sounds a lot like what I'm looking for, I should probably give it a shot. When you change to your lvl 5 Monk will you be like every other lvl 5 Monk even though you have a lvl 56 Paladin?

[Koyasha]

Right, mostly.  I have the advantage of having my subclass, over truly new characters that haven't done the subjob quest yet, but besides that, I'm like any other level 5 monk.

[pxib]

What these games need, imo, is an area designed for max level characters, where you can roll up fully levelled, skilled, buffed, equipped characters at max level, and try it out.  There's just one little area you can explore, and it should have sufficient enemies, both of the solo and group type, to give you a decent understanding of how you're going to behave at max level in the class you're trying out.

If you keep the sandbox small, this is a brilliant way to introduce in-game story. Let the players sample hero versions of each character class in one short incident from their heroic pasts. Should they then hear tales of this hero's exploits, or run into her as an NPC, they can think "Oh I remeber her, she's awesome!" Then, when they discover "modern" versions of the same areas these heroes fought in, they automatically have some visceral sense of history.

Even if you only group with NPCs, and even if the quest is five minutes of scripted content, and even if the hero has only one of a wide variety of specs, it'd still be a moment of encouraging fun... a way to know what you're in for. That said, it's single-player content. Expensive to produce and hard to recycle, and once classes get nerfed and buffed things may turn out to have been wildly misrepresented. Also, good and bad, this method gives players a narrow view. It doesn't give away all the surprises.

Having players go into the game thinking "I want to be an Shadow Conjurer like Mariad the Usurper!" would be pretty awesome though, and might be worth the risks.