Forums » Pantheon Classes

When more choices isn't better

    • 753 posts
    March 19, 2015 1:45 PM PDT
    CelevinMoongleam said:
    Anasyn said:

    I agree and I fully believe we won't have watered down classes. EQ1 and Vanguard had very good classes. I also agree initially Rift was a very polished game and mostly bug free. I enjoyed leveling up and raiding the first few zones but after awhile I learned I hated the class system. Simply put people found out which class combinations did the most DPS and expected you to play one of these combinations on raids. The other DPS combinations would do half the damage as the best combo's. This kind of happened also with AA's in other games like EQ2 and WoW I believe. Everyone figures out what are the best combinations and everyone becomes cookie cutter builds. I'm really off topic but I think EQ1 still has the best AA system to ever come out. :)

    This post makes me think about the original StarCraft.  It took Blizzard a long time and many patches to get the balance of the game so refined.  In a way they dug themselves into a hole.  I know a few die-hards that much prefer the original over the sequel.  In order for any kind of AA system to be balanced, it will need to be tested, and probably patched multiple times.  As much as possible, it needs to be tested before launch.  The general public is not so forgiving when you take the nerf-bat to their favorite toy.

     

    That is the reason that I quit playing League of Legends after they revamped Soraka.  I understand all the reasons why they did it, but I felt betrayed.  I put years into playing that champion, and, for all my effort, I was rewarded with a complete rework that fundamentally changed its base mechanics so far as to make it into a new champion.  There was no way for me to recoup my loss.  Riot had to do what they had to do.  If Riot had "failed faster" with Soraka, and changed her early on when they first knew she was broken, I might still be a customer today.

     

    I think the concept of balance could pose an issue for AA - but - that the problem disappears to some extent if classes are designed around performing a role / function well - rather than being balanced against other classes.

     

    In this way, you might still have balance issues across classes that fill a given role (say AA for healers) - but not balance issue across the entire set of classes in the game.... meaning, if you don't care about all classes being able to do all things equally well - then a Warrior cannot get out of balance from a Cleric.

    • 118 posts
    March 19, 2015 1:52 PM PDT
    Wandidar said:

    Not everything in an MMO should be "fun" - that too is my personal opinion.  I personally want a world with some degree of well designed simulated realism - enough to make it feel like a real world... and that means that things will sometimes be mundane... but the sense of "OMG, all I'm doing is a boring grind" - is SOMETIMES (But not all the time) - players choosing to decide what they are doing is a grind, and is boring - instead of remembering to have fun.

    I like this Wandidar.  It places some of the onus of responsibility of "having fun" on the players.  This invites them to exercise their agency by choosing to do a different activity if they aren't "having fun."  This can be problematic if their are no "fun" alternatives, and they choose to drop the game entirely.  I am reminded of an EQ player who insisted that he hated crafting, and yet he did it anyway because, in his words, he "had to."  My contention is that he didn't really hate crafting, or he wouldn't have done so much of it.  If he did; he should have chosen to do something else that he didn't hate so much instead.

    • 118 posts
    March 19, 2015 2:11 PM PDT
    jezebel said:

    I know it isn't a very modern stance but I'm tired of classes being balanced against each other.  I want rogues to do more damage than anyone but be useless and weak alone because they need someone to make the mob look away from them.  I want warriors to be the best tanks in exchange for having almost zero versatility.  I want clerics to be the best healers in pretty much any situation.  I want necros to have ridiculous versatility that makes them amazing solo or in a wonky group but not so exciting in a more well balanced group.  I want shaman to have debuffs that are virtually required for certain encounters.  I want enchanters to be the masters of CC and bards to be the fastest runners and druids to be able to make any newbies day with amazing buffs and wizards to be able to make everyone feel a bit of peen envy by being able to do the most damage in a single strike and mages to be lazy bastards who's pets do so much damage they can almost sleep through most encounters and....  you get the point.  I want old school class diversity.  Not new classes where everyone is their own unique snowflake...that looks exactly like every other snowflake because everyone can do everything.

    I agree that EQs class system was well done, but chaining yourself to that existing design can close your mind to new creative contributions.  As long as the classes in Pantheon live up to the game tenants, I don't really care if they have a 1:1 mapping to the classes as they existed in EQ.  To the contrary, I kinda hope some things are different.  This so that I will not be rehashing something old, but instead will be learning new mechanics from the onset.  I don't at all mean to say that we need to abandon generally accepted definitions for the genre, but some minor variations could be a good thing.  What say ye jezebel?

     

    Edit: cleaned up a typo


    This post was edited by CelevinMoongleam at March 19, 2015 6:24 PM PDT
    • 118 posts
    March 19, 2015 2:22 PM PDT

    Sorry for the double post


    This post was edited by CelevinMoongleam at March 19, 2015 2:28 PM PDT
    • 118 posts
    March 19, 2015 2:26 PM PDT
    CelevinMoongleam said:
    Wandidar said:
    CelevinMoongleam said:
    Anasyn said:

    I agree and I fully believe we won't have watered down classes. EQ1 and Vanguard had very good classes. I also agree initially Rift was a very polished game and mostly bug free. I enjoyed leveling up and raiding the first few zones but after awhile I learned I hated the class system. Simply put people found out which class combinations did the most DPS and expected you to play one of these combinations on raids. The other DPS combinations would do half the damage as the best combo's. This kind of happened also with AA's in other games like EQ2 and WoW I believe. Everyone figures out what are the best combinations and everyone becomes cookie cutter builds. I'm really off topic but I think EQ1 still has the best AA system to ever come out. :)

    This post makes me think about the original StarCraft.  It took Blizzard a long time and many patches to get the balance of the game so refined.  In a way they dug themselves into a hole.  I know a few die-hards that much prefer the original over the sequel.  In order for any kind of AA system to be balanced, it will need to be tested, and probably patched multiple times.  As much as possible, it needs to be tested before launch.  The general public is not so forgiving when you take the nerf-bat to their favorite toy.

     

    That is the reason that I quit playing League of Legends after they revamped Soraka.  I understand all the reasons why they did it, but I felt betrayed.  I put years into playing that champion, and, for all my effort, I was rewarded with a complete rework that fundamentally changed its base mechanics so far as to make it into a new champion.  There was no way for me to recoup my loss.  Riot had to do what they had to do.  If Riot had "failed faster" with Soraka, and changed her early on when they first knew she was broken, I might still be a customer today.

     

    I think the concept of balance could pose an issue for AA - but - that the problem disappears to some extent if classes are designed around performing a role / function well - rather than being balanced against other classes.

     

    In this way, you might still have balance issues across classes that fill a given role (say AA for healers) - but not balance issue across the entire set of classes in the game.... meaning, if you don't care about all classes being able to do all things equally well - then a Warrior cannot get out of balance from a Cleric.

     

     

     

    I was thinking of balance in terms of avoiding the cookie cutter complaints, within a single class, when I made the statement quoted above.  That is to say that I was considering the balance of individual AAs themselves.  I don't know that I think that all AAs need to be created exactly equal, but its probably good if none of them are suffering from red-headed step-child syndrome.

     

     

    Edit: added a few sentences for clarity, no pun intended =P.


    This post was edited by CelevinMoongleam at March 19, 2015 6:25 PM PDT
    • 70 posts
    March 19, 2015 5:28 PM PDT
    CelevinMoongleam said:

    I agree that EQs class system was well done, but chaining yourself to that existing design can close your mind to new creative contributions.  As long as the classes in Pantheon live up to the game tenants, I don't really care if they have a 1:1 mapping to the classes as they existed in EQ.  To the contrary, I kinda hope some things are different.  This so that I will not be rehashing something old, but instead will be learning new mechanics from the onset.  I don't at all mean to say that we need to abandon generally accepted definitions for the genre, but some minor variations could be a good thing.  What say ye jezebel?

    Edit: cleaned up a typo

     

    I used EQ classes in that post primarily as an example of wanting each class to have either a very specific role or fit a very specific playstyle.  I don't care if they map 1 to 1 so much as I think they should have 1 class that is the best healer, 1 that is the best tank, 1 that does the best sustained damage, 1 that does the best burst damage, 1 that is the best crowd control, 1 that has the best pet, etc.  And then have less niche options where you have classes that are extremely versatile but lose out to niche classes in a balanced group.  Each class should have a distinct flavor (or combine a lesser version of the distinct flavors of other classes in the case of hybrids).  I don't want classes to be balanced against each other.  In fact, I will probably not even bother to play if the classes are balanced against each other.

     

    What I mean there is, I don't care if this super versatile class can take on content solo that would take a group of niche classes to take on.  I don't think the super versatile class should be able to EQUAL a full group of niche classes.  For instance a versatile character might be able to solo an even con mob that no niche class could take alone but a group of niche classes could easily take the same mob or even several of the same mob.  I think the classes should only be balanced within their intended playstyle.

     

    I also do not feel the races should be balanced against one another directly.  An ogre warrior should have advantages over a dark elf warrior but a dark elf magic user might have advantages over a human magic user etc.

     

    I want classes to work the WAY classes worked in EQ I don't care if they are exactly the same.  I wouldn't cry if they were, as most of them are standard fantasy classes but that is not what I really want.  I also don't really care if new mechanics are added in for the classes as some classes I do feel were overly boring in EQ (warrior, rogue, monk) and could use a little love.  I just don't want the same tired **** you see in every other modern game where you are given the illusion of unique classes when in reality every class in every role does pretty much the exact same things with different animation and spell effects and any class excelling within their role is usually unintentional and quickly "fixed".  That is boring.  

     

    I don't want to play a character that can DPS or Tank or Heal and within each of those has some form of CC/interupt/self heal/dps/whatever.  I want to play the badass rogue who's group is like HOLY **** DUDE YOU JUST STABBED THAT THING IN THE DICK FOR 1.2K!  I want to be the immovable warrior who's group is shocked at the fact that I am still standing up to some obscene amount of abuse on a bad pull!  I want to be the healer that lands that complete heal just as the tank is knocked unconscious completely turning the tide of the fight!  To me this is infinitely more appealing than being the rogue who did 3% more dps than the hunter, or the warrior that took 5% less damage than the DK or the healer that had 2% overhealing.  Bring sexy back with defined roles.  F this everyone is a Swiss army knife nonsense.

    • 118 posts
    March 20, 2015 10:33 PM PDT

    Thanks for clarifying your position Jezebel.  I am confident that you will get what you are asking for.

    • 9 posts
    March 21, 2015 12:40 AM PDT

    AA grind COULD be fun in my opinion. However, as time went on and they kept spewing out new AA abilities you simply had to have to perform your tasks properly, it hastily grew un-fun. (to say the least)

    There IS such a thing as getting to much of a good thing after all.

    However. Spewing out AA's or new expansions to keep your player base happy is after all a must. It is, I do believe, tricky to get a balance of which must be upheld. I hope we will see more content released rather than AA's, or should I say, more zones opening up as they get "done".

    I do not mind "grinding" some (it can be a blast in a group) if the game has the necessary healthy approach as to how an MMO is worthy of even being called an MMO. ;)

     

    Vel.

     

     

    • 70 posts
    March 23, 2015 7:26 AM PDT

    I would certainly prefer them to do alternating gear and level based progression like EQ's first two expansions.  So for instance, in Kunark they bumped the level up but Velious was only gear and a few new abilities.  I also like the HUGE EXPANSION style of EQ and WoW.  None of these "expansions" that are like 3 zones, 2 dungeons, 1 raid, 5 levels and a bunch of new gear.  I want Kunark or Velious expansions.  If you want more regularly updated content I think WoW has a somewhat good system for content releases in that they build onto the expansion story every few months until it sort of reaches a finale right before the next HUGE EXPANSION hits.

    • 3016 posts
    March 23, 2015 11:45 AM PDT
    Deadshade said:

    I think we are slightly beating a dead horse here.

    The Pantheon tenets and the many threads dedicated to class diversification here made sufficiently clear (at least to me) that the strategical target of the development is to have VERY diversified and uniquely feeling classes. So no watered down "sub classes" and no large sharing of abilities.

     

    Actually so much so that I remember several threads where people were demanding that unique class/race abilities (like enchant metal etc) were largely shared among the classes.

    If I was asked to give a single point where Pantheon will be most strongly differentiated from other MMOs I would precisely say : very strong class and race differentiation. No use to whine that your cleric can't dot and your Ogre can't be enchanter :)

     

    On one hand that will scare off the big crowd of those players who want it all and at once and who get a fit when THEIR class can't do something that another class can  because I don't really care to play a game that this crowd likes.

    And on the other hand as immersion and identification with the game's world is priority according to Pantheon tenets, I am convinced that this class/race diversification factor is one of those that contribute most strongly to immersion and identification.

     

    Good that means we get to play with grown-ups *wink*  hehehe

    • 52 posts
    November 4, 2015 12:33 AM PST

    My first post so i thought i'd start off with a simple question!

    My favorite class archetype going back has always been the Dark Knight/ Death Knight/ Shadow Knight. One of my pet peeves is not allowing me to play the class i enjoy in the role that i enjoy, which is dps/dd. That is, being forced to only be able to tank if i want to play this class. I'm not a fan of such a closed off and rigid class system stucture. I like having the openess to be able to do either provided i gear for it specifically. Will this be possible or will i be forced to be a tank if i prefer the heavy armore archetype?

    Thanks in advance.