War December Newsletter + Looks like it's coming to a console

[eldaec]

What is it about more classes that really has some convinced this is a selling point?

When talking about classes specifically as opposed to character development options in general, the difference is flavour.

It's easy to draw people into the possibilities that a character has when you describe the options in class terms.

Classes have no inherent game mechanic advantage over adding more spec lines or ability choices (and they do have some disadvantages), but they are probably the easiest way to carry flavour.

It's a lot easier to make 1,000 classes when they only do three or four things in an offline game. Realtime is different though, as you know. Either it hasn't happened yet, or I'm not aware of it. I invite insights into games that got it right across the board.

The example I keep coming back to when discussing what MMOGs are doing wrong is M:tG, which manages to add several hundred new spells a year, without destroying balance.

I'd also refer you to CoX again - which adds several power sets each year - and power sets are approximately equivalent to a daoc class. Admittedly the game doesn't have the same PvP focus, but it certainly provides far more variation in play than other Dikumuds, and is far more flexible about group makeup as well.

Finally Guild Wars, allowing people to pick any primary and secondary job, and dripping new skills into all of them, gives everyone a big 'character development space' to search through for new synergies and new solutions to the metagame.

If other players are going to be the bulk of the 'content' then you need that large character-development-space, and it needs to keep expanding one way or another, simply to ensure that there is always a new and developing challenge available for players. Classes are only one tool to do that - and they probably aren't even the best tool, since a class decision is usually irreversible, but more classes will always expand the character development space, and therefore will always contribute.

[Venkman]

I agree on the flavor vs Class thing. So far, most flavor is defined by that base class. A Mage is a damage caster. WHAT he specifically casts to do it and how good he is at it is where the flavor comes in.

And I appreciate the analogies, but I think there are some specifics to consider:

• M:TG: Each new set of spells generally comes with the forced obsolescence of previous ones. So it's not new spells added to a total system. It's new ones added to an ever evolving one. This could work in an MMO I suppose, and sorta does with new introductions forcing the nerfages and fotms. But that seems sorta accidental rather than planned.
• CoX is a good example, except the lack of big focus on PvP makes it hard to relate to WAR. I do like the archetypes and powersets thing they have going, always have.
• GW is probably the best example. However, their control system is the gate on how many spells can be brought to a battle. This is the fundamental difference between the crazy class(es) customization of GW and everything else. In EQ through WoW, you can bring everything you know everywhere you go (for the most part). In GW, you can have a zillion spells and be all big and bad, but only 8 of them are following you into battle. To me this actually makes GW akin to M:TG in many ways.
  
  

Having said all that, I really prefer open template systems. Yea, I know, balance nightmare and such. But I like not being hammered into a choice immediately after installing the game.

[Chenghiz]

Your M:tG analogy is thought-provoking, but WotC also bans a fair number (relatively) of those cards each year, don't they?

[eldaec]

M:TG: Each new set of spells generally comes with the forced obsolescence of previous ones.

Yes, though the two most played formats keep spells playable for 2 years and for 5-8 years respectively (three year's worth of cards get rotated out all at once every third year). The 5-8 year format is generally considered the most varied and least solvable. And since 5-8 years is probably as long as a MMOG will last - I don't think the obsolescence mechanic is necessarily essential.

One more thing M:tG has that I do think it is essential for developers to accept is a flat power level over time - patches and expansions have to bring new abilities - not just strictly better versions of existing abilities. Devs have to keep thinking up new and interesting combat mechanics - they can't just rely on mudflation to make new spells abilities and gear desirable.

Turning off mudflation altogether is a critical part of keeping a large character-development-space. In current mmogs mudflation is what causes spells/ability/gear to be removed from the list of possible character options; it happens far too quickly and much faster than the m:tg rotation mechanic.

The choice of mmog developers to always make new abilities and gear strictly better than old abilities and gear is really what makes so many classes hard to manage, and is what makes players feel they have to conform to the obvious character design choices. Mudflation reduces the character-development-space, and makes it easily solvable.

The power of M:tG spells does shift over time to reflect the themes and concepts that the developers wish to push - but printing a spell that is strictly better than any other spell in existence is a rare event, and causes an almighty fuss.

Your M:tG analogy is thought-provoking, but WotC also bans a fair number (relatively) of those cards each year, don't they?

They haven't banned anything for a couple of years - they used to end up banning around half a dozen in a block of 600ish. Certainly fewer than 1%. The bans would be balance nerfs if wotc could remotely alter the text on everything they've already printed.

You do get a few more bans in alternate formats - if alternate formats have a parallel in MMOGspace it would be alternate ruleset servers.

GW is probably the best example. However, their control system is the gate on how many spells can be brought to a battle.

My understanding was that WAR are also doing this.

In the end a real time game also always has a natural limit on how many spells one player can usefully manage ofc.

n EQ through WoW, you can bring everything you know everywhere you go

I may remember it wrong - but didn't EQ also limit you to 8 spells memorised at once?

Swapping in and out would take several seconds.

[Venkman]

Yes, though the two most played formats keep spells playable for 2 years and for 5-8 years respectively (three year's worth of cards get rotated out all at once every third year). The 5-8 year format is generally considered the most varied and least solvable. And since 5-8 years is probably as long as a MMOG will last - I don't think the obsolescence mechanic is necessarily essential.

Interesting. Had no idea it was that long.

I do entirely agree patches and expansions need bring new abilities, to keep interest going. Change management rather than strict reliance on linearity. I suspect this'll happen more often going forward. We started seeing before WoW that the retention period for these games was declining. It was like four to five months before WoW hit if I recall. That's down for the year or so of EQ1 and UO. The old formula wasn't working as well in the descendant games because players saw the exact same cycle of growth over and over. Play to get better at playing and then do it all again with an expansion.

After you've played your seventh diku, are you that interested in playing until the end the 8th? Or will you pick from the zillions out based on where everyone else goes? And as such, are you going where they're going because the game is easier to win?

Replicating the scope and success of WoW is not an option for most developers, so they'll be looking for new ways to retain. Episodic content, more customization of abilities, and probably what you're talking about. For the future, they almost have no choice but to think along these lines.

[Endie]

Stuff...

Interesting. Had no idea it was that long...

That was eldaec, not me.  I bear towards all CCGs the religious, zealous grudge of a PnP RPGer who lived through the shrinking AD&D/Vampire groups of the M:tG craze.

[Venkman]

Doh! Sorry Eldaec :)

[tazelbain]

One good argument against Guild Wars system is the complexity can be daunting to a new player.  You need experience to know what combos work.  So I'd like the class to be a default path.  A new player can follow the path to have a solid character. Additional specs lines  give additional skill options to choose and you can swap these out to suite yourself (I will use 2-handers today to try to score big crits) or to suite the metagame(People use tons of AOE yesterday, I'll load my AOE resist shout.)  A maxed out character has more options not necessarily more raw power.  This puts a soft-cap on mudflution of skills.  When passing out new skills, it won't automatically add power characters unless it is better version of a skill they were already using.  The perfect example is CC in Old School DAoC.  As soon it was discovered that CC was dominate, everybody would stocked up on anti-CC skills.  People would start droping CC, for skills that people didn't have anti's for.  Then people would swap out the CC anti for the anti for the new flavor of the month.  This dynamic would shift back and forth.  Basically, a huge flaw becomes a dynamic element in the metagame.  The key elements are a) there are no one trick ponies, b) there are effective counters to any abilty, c) people can shift skills in their class inexpensively.

[Nebu]

The perfect example is CC in Old School DAoC.  As soon it was discovered that CC was dominate, everybody would stocked up on anti-CC skills.  People would start droping CC, for skills that people didn't have anti's for.  Then people would swap out the CC anti for the anti for the new flavor of the month.  This dynamic would shift back and forth.  Basically, a huge flaw becomes a dynamic element in the metagame.  The key elements are a) there are no one trick ponies, b) there are effective counters to any abilty, c) people can shift skills in their class inexpensively.

Nice analogy.  I'm still debating the one-trick pony issue as I'm one of the minority of players that enjoys being a specialist.  The problem is that specialists are more reliant on others, which is a fair trade off if the rewards for grouping are significantly better than for being solo.  DAoC is a game rich with specialists yet there is still some (not much, but some) variability in group builds.  This aids in replay value.  The only downside I see in character versatility in a pvp game is that having a lot of class utility can seem overwhelming to those not well-versed in mmog gameplay.  I guess it's better to have utility and learn to use it all than to be stuck with one thing to do and nothing else to look forward to.  Though the latter would encourage rerolls.

[tazelbain]

Specialist classes don't need to be one trick ponies.  If your specialty is in damage dealing, you just need multiple method to acheive the goal.  But I don't specialty because it leads to the specialty being required.  No one wants to level up and find out they are fryars. Everyone should be able to be a battle-turner under right conditions.  And being able to set those conditions up for yourself and deny them for your enemy adds skill to the game.
 

[CassandraR]

I yearn for a good generalist class. Tankmages are always great fun. One thing I believe strongly is every class should have good self-healing so no one is reliant on another person for that vital ability. Or no one has healing and its made less important. I really hate playing characters without self-heals but dislike being shoe-horned into a group healer position when I do it.

[Nebu]

The problem with generalist classes is that players are seldom willing to accept trade-offs.  Hybrid classes invariably end up overpowered or underpowered rather than balanced.  This is especially the case when you have both PvE and PvP balance to consider. 

[WindupAtheist]

I yearn for a good generalist class. Tankmages are always great fun. One thing I believe strongly is every class should have good self-healing so no one is reliant on another person for that vital ability. Or no one has healing and its made less important. I really hate playing characters without self-heals but dislike being shoe-horned into a group healer position when I do it.

I'm exactly the same way.  I fucked around thinking about being a rogue or warrior in my latest return to WoW, but in the end I went shaman.  Yes I know everyone makes a shaman.  What can I say, it seems to 0wnz0r so far.

[CassandraR]

I know the feeling there. I played a Paladin up to 60 but I would of much rather played a Shaman if I had known how it all worked at the beginning. If Warrior-Priests are anything like WoW Paladins then... Grr.

[dornam]

Classes carry flavor and classes prevent beginners from gimping themselves too much.

We all know how it turned out in UO, where basically everyone had the same few skills because they were the best.

No classes would mean that most chars would be alike, the skill fotm, and that ultimately tactical variance on the battlefield would be lost.

Same with WoW-Shaman-style classes. A capable meleer with ok ranged damage, buffs and heals - of course everyone wants to play a Shaman. Now nerf the Shaman just a bit and people will whine that he is UP'ed - broad ranged hybrids are hell to balance and therefore not really fun.

Archetypes/classes are fine as long as they are not too narrowly designed.

As for healing, every class having a heal is fine if it is an out of combat heal/regeneration. Noone likes too much downtime sitting and regging when all meters are long full but the health meter.

However every class having capable combat heals is a bit too much. Healing is a powerful skill, just like ranged/melee damage, cc or buffs. So there should be classes that are much better in it than other classes or else tactical variety and the advantage for playing in a well rounded group are lost, and that leads to monotone kill and suicide solo farm runs.

[CassandraR]

Shaman not fun? That makes my head hurt right there. WoW shaman is the very model for the type of class I find fun. Balance is not a major issue and I believe there should be no specialists. Specialization is for ants not rpg characters. Giving every class an iconic feel and flavor is great but all of them should have at the very minimum three different roles where they can potentially outshine everyone else.

[WayAbvPar]

No classes would mean that most chars would be alike, the skill fotm, and that ultimately tactical variance on the battlefield would be lost.

Wholeheartedly disagree. If you make your skill system both broad enough and deep enough, there will be far more variance than cookie cutter classes. A broad skill system also allows players to play different roles without having to start new chraracters or play alts.

[Venkman]

A skills structure allows players to constantly chase fotm templating in order to keep up with the current overpowered template.

But that's specifically in a PvP setting. You can't be competitive and all la-di-da about poking around different templates, not if there's real winnings to be had and people really getting htem.

In a PvE setting, it would be as your describe. I still long for the days I can be my 7xGM Mage/Bard hybrid. That rules for PvE (paralyze field, charm one dragon onto the other, help the winner, grab the next one, rinse, repeat, gate to Moonglow bank to deposit).

[WindupAtheist]

Skill-based systems for the win.  I've met exactly one character in UO over the last year who had the exact same template as me.  One.

[Rasix]

I yearn for a good generalist class. Tankmages are always great fun. One thing I believe strongly is every class should have good self-healing so no one is reliant on another person for that vital ability. Or no one has healing and its made less important. I really hate playing characters without self-heals but dislike being shoe-horned into a group healer position when I do it.

Heh, that's been my recent sentiment as of late. For any game I play nowadays, a character I make must be able to deal out melee pain and be able to save their ass when needed through healing.  Tankmaging is OK (I had a decent elemental shaman setup + gear) but I like the primary means of damage to be up close and personal.

Examples of this:

Feral Attendant in AC2 (can't heal others, but could steal health with ease)
Prelate got close in Shadowbane (was more of a tank mage)
Enhancement Shaman in WoW (now perfect with dual wielding)
Feral Druid in WoW

In the last 3 examples, people wanted me primarily to be the heal bitch in PVE.  I'm still leveling the druid, and anytime I get a request to join a group, I just tell them I'm feral specced and am wearing feral gear.  I rarely get a response back.  With the shaman, my raiding guild would not allow me to transition into a DPS role even for trash mobs.

People still have problems with flexible classes that can pull off multiple roles.  If you've got a healing button, most everyone wants you using it 95% of the time.  Forget that if one of healers goes down mid fight, the rogue/warrior/warlock/etc are never going to be able to fill that role, but the feral druid isn't in the raid currently, because.. they're useless! (Please don't take this as a raiding/raid guild gripe, I really don't care about stuff currently)

Skill-based systems for the win.  I've met exactly one character in UO over the last year who had the exact same template as me.  One.

You have become better at resisting the urge to make snarky comments.  59.5% (+0.1%)

[Sairon]

People still have problems with flexible classes that can pull off multiple roles.  If you've got a healing button, most everyone wants you using it 95% of the time.  Forget that if one of healers goes down mid fight, the rogue/warrior/warlock/etc are never going to be able to fill that role, but the feral druid isn't in the raid currently, because.. they're useless! (Please don't take this as a raiding/raid guild gripe, I really don't care about stuff currently)

I'm well aware of this problem, to some extent it's the devs fault because the group experience is always more or less tailored for a specific group setup. It's also partly the fault of the players.

I played a shaman in WoW which was elemental specced, that meant that I could do mana free low DPS, high mana expensive DPS and heal on top of that. Most people who played with a similar specc at that time usually exclusively nuked, because that's what the specc is primarily made for. However, the specc was really the best in group PvE when you switch between the 3 roles. If you're running so low on mana that you know that you can't heal if stuff goes bad, you melee. If you're at full mana and the healer is keeping up, you nuke. If the healer can't keep up, you switch to healing. On top of this you have the usual totem stomping to keep up with. It's a very useful guy to have in a team since often you want a back up healer, but you usually don't want to sacrifice to much dmg. But it was often hard to get team because the specc came with a bad reputation.

In high end raiding though, WoW by design has shut out a lot of speccs. A raiding guild will always try to optimize their setup to the fullest. What they should do imo is granting a melee dmg boosting debuff furthest at the bottom of the melee trees, make the bonus low, the cooldown as long as the duration and make it stackable. So if it's lets say 3% melee dmg a raid would obviously want at least one, but at one point it be more beneficial to have pure melee DPS classes such as rogues or warriors.

[Nebu]

Skill-based systems for the win.  I've met exactly one character in UO over the last year who had the exact same template as me.  One.

Ah, what template did the third person have?

 

(sorry, I had to!)

[WindupAtheist]

Given the number of once-vaunted games which now boast fewer paying subscriptions than UO, your taunts bounce off my fanboy armor of invulnerability.  Go find all the people who ever enjoyed the 'exciting dynamic world' of Shadowbane, pile them on top of everyone actually paying money for the 'amazing user-created cyberscape' of Second Life, and then have them all kiss my ancient pixelated samurai elf ninja ass.  Buahahahahahah.

/fanboy off

Anyway, what the hell were we talking about?  Classes versus skills, right?  What the hell is so great about classes, except that they're easier for lazy developers to balance?  Enough of this "A mage can never pick up an axe, ever, no matter what!" bullshit.

[Venkman]

It's the players. Most seem to like a clearly defined goal and growth strategy. Classes do that. Skills do not. The best way in my miind is to use a skills based system, but make strong recommendations to players throughout. If they seem to like swining a sword, be sure to inform them CLEARLY that taking Arms Lore is going to help.

Skills based systems get a bad rap because they are confusing. But people make the mistake of thinking skills based systems are fundamentally confusing. They're not. They just need better and more clear instructions to the player.

Nobody wants to take a chance with that though because they are also considered hard to balance. And yes, what is a Class except a series of unique skills? You're still balancing skills. Classes just make sure they are only ever used by people who made choices at the start of the game.

[Johny Cee]

Your M:tG analogy is thought-provoking, but WotC also bans a fair number (relatively) of those cards each year, don't they?

The last bans in Standard (main Constructed format, on a 2ish year rotation) were related to Ravager Affinity in Mirrodin.  That was about 3 years ago now.  Before that,  don't think there had been a Standard ban in quite a while.

There are regular bans in "alternate" formats for MODO (Tribal, Prismatic, etc) because the formats are new,  and have specific rules that clash with regular Constructed.

Extended sees semi-regular bannings of a card or two (out of the 5-8 years legal in that format,  so thousands of cards) just because of bad interactions.  Wizards is a big fan of combating something overpowered by printing/reprinting a hoser card,  that hamstrings the overpowered combination.

[Cheddar]

Classes vs Skill based arguments are weak.  Except for power gamers I have yet to find any skill based person who follows a strict template.  Besides the fact that is is easier to keep your character while changing.  As a matter of fact, that should take more thought into retention. 

[WindupAtheist]

Why are you pink?

[Ironwood]

To make the boys blink.  Or summat.

[Endie]

Why are you pink?

Yeah, I was wondering why he was pink and schild was blue.  I'm sure that if i had the detective skills of Arthur Parker i could venture outside the warm safety of MMOG Discussion and find that those, and the postcount value of "Leet" I saw on Darniaq, are explained in some crazy-fun happening in a Snoopy's doghouse sort of party over in politics or something, but my autism won't let me.

[Ironwood]

Or you could hang out in IRC where all is explained.  Something to do with Gay Redecorating.

[Arthur_Parker]

Yeah, I was wondering why he was pink and schild was blue.  I'm sure that if i had the detective skills of Arthur Parker i could venture outside the warm safety of MMOG Discussion and find that those, and the postcount value of "Leet"

Ironwood nailed it, it's a pastel revolution.  There's going to be new forums to discuss handbags and interior design.

[tazelbain]

Completely disagree for two reasons:

1) The time and energy it takes to balance more classes just doesn't add enough to the game to warrant the expenditure of effort.  I'd rather see them work on siege warfare, housing, collision detection, crafting, randomized loot, player character customization or anything else then go through year after year of balance discussion and tweaking.  I'd also rather see either no hybrids, or all hybrids.

2) No developer can balance player perception.  Your lowest common denominator player cannot accomplish the necessary level of thought to come to the "different, but balanced" conclusion when that player is losing in a given scenario to another class type.  Listening to players is important.  Deliberately adding noise to what your player base is trying to tell you makes little sense.

In my opinion this is another case where WoW has broken down accepted thought, in this case the thinking is that "more classes = better".  Better to have fewer classes, but allow a bit more customization/differentiation within the class itself.  As long as one configuration within a class is nominally powerful, the class can be considered "balanced".

However, I think WoW should act as a cautionary tale in regard to giving the same class different abilities depending upon race.

1) It doesn't add anything, if the class doesn't add anything.  Like making a fighter class that is like the warrior class but wears an ascot and has a few statistical differences, it doesn't add much but creates a pain to balance those stats.  Now a fighter class the relies on rapid damage dealing and interrupting enemy skills with combos and a warrior class relies on area shouts to soften the enemy up and big hits to knockdown those with low strength.  These classes fight differently and add different strategic options to the game.  I don't care if you achieve this with 2 classes, 1 class and 2 specs, or no classes.

2) I agree, players are going to complain no matter what.  So that is why I say go for lots of classes with big differences.  Give them something interesting to complain about.  As a bonus in my second example of a warrior vs fighter, it be harder for player to directly compare how the classes because the they fight in a different manor.  "My logs show fighters do .1% more damage.  Nerf Fighters!" is less relevant because the effectiveness of the classes will depend on situation in the battle.

[shiznitz]

It's the players. Most seem to like a clearly defined goal and growth strategy. Classes do that. Skills do not. The best way in my miind is to use a skills based system, but make strong recommendations to players throughout. If they seem to like swining a sword, be sure to inform them CLEARLY that taking Arms Lore is going to help.

Skills based systems get a bad rap because they are confusing. But people make the mistake of thinking skills based systems are fundamentally confusing. They're not. They just need better and more clear instructions to the player.

Nobody wants to take a chance with that though because they are also considered hard to balance. And yes, what is a Class except a series of unique skills? You're still balancing skills. Classes just make sure they are only ever used by people who made choices at the start of the game.

That is really the rub. If a game is skill-based, then all the cross-skilling effects need to be clearly communicated to the player. The devs cannot rely on outside websites to do it for them. It bothered me quite a bit that it took a player to write CoH's Hero Planner and that is a class-based game technically. If players cannot easily respec or reallocate skill points, then everyone is entitled to a detailed roadmap.

CoH comes close to meshing the two as long as one sees the archetypes as classes instead of Eng/Eng Blaster being a class by itself.

[tazelbain]

Another question the whole zone and race structure asks is 'how do you do expansions?'

You do not want to add more pvp zones, because spreading the population breaks pvp. But building such a strong rvr focus and then saying 'oh it's a pve expansion' seems odd - plus the inevitable new races need a battlefront.

Adding new races is also hard, because with classes tied explictly to a single race, you need 4  new classes for each new race (maybe you can get away with 2 or 3 and copy 1 or 2 from another race?), and you'll need to add a race to both sides.

So to do the obvious first expansion 'add a new area, and a new race for each side' in the most straightforward way would require 2 races, 8 classes, a 33% increase in PvP landmass, and the equivalent of 11 new zones of PvE content, just to fit in Skaven/Bretonnia or Wood Elf/Chaos Dwarf.

It seems that the 4 tier area will have some sort of dynamic battlefront thing. When you add new areas, you could rotate which battlefronts are active.  Heck maybe you would want to rotate areas with just 3 lands to get people use to the idea and prevent a default area, like  Emain, from forming.

[Strazos]

I heard the Skaven, being rats under cities and shit, and going to (mostly) reuse existing zones, and come up out of the cities and stuff.