What classes do people think will be popular and unpopular?
From my experience rogues, Dire Lords, and Paladins will likely be unpopular as melee tends to be more of a pain to play. Popular classes feels a little more difficult though. My mind goes to the base classes such as Warrior, Cleric, Wizard since they will likely be the best at the holy trinity roles but that one is hard to tell. What do you all think?
It's hard to really say at this stage, as we know so little about the various classes and how they will play out. Typically I would say that classes focusing on dealing damage are more popular, such as the Rogue, Ranger and Wizard. If Necromancer makes it in, also that.
My mind goes to the base classes such as Warrior, Cleric, Wizard since they will likely be the best at the holy trinity roles but that one is hard to tell.
This is something I really hope they shy away from. Right now we have three classes tagged as healer/support, and we have 3 classes tagged as tanks. They all need to be able to fullfil that role without being put aside for a more community favoured option. It's obviously only natural that for specific type of content one class will do better than others, that comes with the territory of making all classes unique, but generally speaking all tanks need to be able to tank, and all healers need to be able to heal.
Dire Lords, and Paladins will likely be unpopular
In games where "Dire Lords", or any variation of that tank theme is done well, and competitive to other tanking classes in terms of mitigation, it's been my experience that they're vastly more popular than your generic sword and board Warrior. Paladins too, to some lesser degree.
I always felt Paladins were one of the popular classes in MMO's, but in Pantheon only 2 races can be Pallys so they may be unpopular. As far as tanks go I think Warrior will be most and Dire Lord will be least. Melee I guess Ranger as most and rogue as least. Mage Wizard as most summoner as least. Cleric and shaman as most and least with the healers.
Its hard to say honestly, not a lot of in depth info on classes are out there. primarly I'm just basing my opinion from what I seen from previous games, so it will be interesting to see if Pantheons adaption will change things.
Shea said:Personally i think ALL classes will be popular ... at least at first :)
^^^this^^^
Play what you enjoy, enjoy what you play. Unpopular classes usually arise when there are serious balance issues, often the unintended consequences of later expansions. I trust VRi to make all classes fun at the start. The pinnacle of popularity will, of course, be bards (*wink wink nudge nudge*) - which is why Brad & crew are delaying them until some time after launch. Otherwise the first day would be one massive choir of feathered cap wearing, mandolin slinging rockstars sonically slaying all the starter area rats, snakes and skellies...(*insert favorite heavy metal riff here*)
Just hope ppl will refrain from degrading class talk, which could upset objective view; specially when a balance is not found yet. or at all.
(some aspects of this thread made me think about a good laugh guildies had in EQ1)
So I think this is more something for the https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/55/expansion-classes forum.
Interesting that you say rogue paly/direlord. I think of rogue being the most popular melee class. Pally/DL I understand but rogue? Everyone and there mother wants to be a high dps class. Other than wizard...which is very limited time/burst dps...and squishy... rogue is the dps choice.
Not to mention we have seen rogues get lots of extra abilities...CC abilities...stun/sap, besides their normal hide/sneak/backstab etc...and they seem to have very good climbing abilities. Maybe it's just because Kilsin likes to show off the rogues abilities, but the rogue seems like the most powerful class we have seen imho.
It's literally impossible to say at this point. The only way you could guess is based off experience from other games, which only prevents you from being able to approach Pantheon with an objective view as its own unique game. Predicting that a class will be unpopular would only serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy, because most people don't want to play a class that is expected to be unpopular. Even when there may not actually be anything wrong with it. We'll just have to wait and see what happens naturally.
My personal preference is to play the unpopular classes, so I don't really view it as a negative thing. I just don't have a desire to play the dime a dozen classes and compete with grouping spots. Some things will never change, if youre playing a fantasy MMO with Rangers, people are going to play them just cause they want to RP Legollas or Drizzt. As far a rogues go they tend to be pretty bad at solo play, and eventhough this game isn't about that people just like to have the option available.
Just an observation on these forums about what classes received the most interest, in ranking the number of posts from least to highest:
Class Posts
Warrior 220
Rogue 250
Wizard 300
Summoner 321
Dire Lord 346
Paladin 370
Druid 428
Enchanter 428
Ranger 440
Monk 460
Cleric 492
Shaman 506
Bard 689
No, Kamu, I think what it proves is that there will be bards all over the place. Everyone will make a bard. There will be groups of six bards, all arguing over which song to play, who sang it better, and whether the monster was enjoying the song a particular bard was singing. Raids will be all bards, but they will fail because half of the raid gets drunk before the first pull. A quarter of the raid was singing about some adventure that happened years ago, with only a minutia of truth. Almost all of the remaining bards were rolling their eyes about that adventure trying to make corrections. One bard went insane and pulled the entire zone trying to kite.
zendrel said:What classes do people think will be popular and unpopular?
From my experience rogues, Dire Lords, and Paladins will likely be unpopular as melee tends to be more of a pain to play. Popular classes feels a little more difficult though. My mind goes to the base classes such as Warrior, Cleric, Wizard since they will likely be the best at the holy trinity roles but that one is hard to tell. What do you all think?
From what I have seen. DPS classes have always been the most popular. Cleric and warrior being the least popular.
Most popular would perhaps be dps and solo capable classes
hybrid is perhaps falling a little short because if they lack of above or just that they just dont have a clear classrole
Endangered species might be clerics and defently warriors.
Thats just a uneducated guess but some might be tru ><
Well...since MMO's are pretty main stream..I would say the people that want to have fun will choose w/e they want. People who go out of the way to pick a weird race/class combo that less people will do in order to be unique, and then min/maxers who say you need to be an ogre warrior or you can't raid with us.
I will say Warriors, Clerics, and Enchanters will be the most popular along with monk.
Paladins, Summoner, and Druid will probably be least played.
However, if the devs keep to their promise about making the 3 healer classes equal in healing and getting rez, but different in how they heal, and the 3 tank classes being equal in tanking, but different in how they tank, like vanguard, then tbh I don't know.
As crazy as this sounds, I think it's still too early to even guess at this (feels crazy to say since we've been hammering away at class discussion for 4+ years). And I don't say this because we're too far from launch or so much is subject to change. I say this because we've now entered external testing and we still don't know even the most basic of information regarding the majority of the classes. There still hasn't even been official reveals for classes we've seen in the streams.
Until we get more than 1-3 sentences for the classes and actually have a concept of how they will play, it's all just wild speculation (and I know that's the point of the thread to some degree, but it would be nice to have this conversation with some definitive information). I know we all think we know how the classes will play out based on Everquest and Vanguard, but even those two games handled a very similar lineup of classes very differently. Until its at least in writing is so difficult to say. Heck, I can't even narrow my main down to 3 or 4 classes because we still know so little.
Just taking a peek at P99 and you see druids and necros everywhere. Classes with a high solo potential tends to be chosen by lonely players to ease with their timeframe and activities.
The same is present in most mmo's at various degrees, but usually a class that depends of no one feels more rewarding on a daily basis.
There are two things i check to know if i want to play a mmorpg : i check skills trees and crafting tabs. Less than 30 active skills per class i don't play. And 30 is a minimum or there are alternate ways to influence environment. Boring crafts i don't play.
There is one thing i do to choose my class : i check the skills description. Some games make one class more fun, another time it's the other.
So there are two ways for me to know what i will play : play all the classes then decide if there is no information, or wait for full class descriptions. Untill then, i can't really tell. I would maybe go for a rogue, but say if there is no challenging stealth system, no lucrative pickpocketting, no traps to craft and set and only straightforward stabs and poisons for example (sad example in my view), i might choose another class or even stop playing if the fun isn't there elsewhere.
So i can't tell right now.
Let me start by stating my post is mostly speculation. In a couple of years, going solely by "population" I'm predicting Bard will be the most popular and summoner will be least popular. But that will likely be due to the players that enjoy pet classes will play the Necro or Enchanter instead of the summoner.
At first, nobody is going to know which classes are weaker/stronger than others so I recommend playing what you will enjoy role playing or has a game mechanic that you find fun. Although there will be the wiki and other online resources to theorycraft with, nobody will really know until the game has been live for at least several months maybe even a year given the rate at which players are expected to level.
It has been mentioned that race/class balance is not something that is going to be a focus; Some race/class combos will be stronger than others. All "tanks" may be able to hold threat and all "healers" may be able to heal, but "some will be better than others in some situations", which translates to "some will be better than others" (period). i.e. DireLord may be better at AoE threat but have reduced mitigation on single target fights due to no mitigation buff from draining multiple targets.... so if you have CC, not only would you not need a DireLord, but bad ones may mess up your CC and start to give DireLords a bad community reputaion. That's obviously a ficticious example, but probably not far from accurate...
So there will definitely be classes more popular than others once the game has been live for a while, but at the start I think there will be a fairly even representation of classes (maybe not races though). I also predict Dark Myr to be the most popular race, and Skar the least popular.
:)
Darch said =>
...I'm predicting Bard will be the most popular...
and I agree, even if we are the least played class. Who doesn’t love a charming minstrel...making the group look good, while looking good.
Admit it, it’s not a party until someone wears a feathered cap, and sings!