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Getting Away From Stereotypical "Classes"

This is really big for me. When I see tank/dps/heals, it frustrates me. I think that I'd suggest a combat system that is more reflective and interactive with the world. I envision a system where you grow your class as you go along.

I picture having a sort of T shaped spectrum, but sort of on its side:

Light
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Balance ----- Realism
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Shadow

And, superimposed on this would be "melee, ranged, casting." You would then have subcategories within melee, ranged and casting, depending on what you do.

Light
Melee - Paladin-esque
Ranged - unique
Casting - priest-like
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Balance ----- ----- ----- ----- Realism: Melee - warrior, ranged: military archer, casting: telekinetic
Melee - kind of monk like
Ranged - hunter/ranger(in the explorative sense)
Casting - druidlike
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Shadow:
Melee - kind of death knight esque, shadow warrior who drains life with each hit
Ranged - stealthy sort of sniping assassin, poisons
Casting - warlock-like

All characters, even casters, would be athletic. You'd choose between a quicker, more dextrous character or a stronger character. You'd eventually want to strike the best balance. A strong archer might use heavy war bows with heavy pulls, and, likewise might have no problem switching to a hefty melee weapon.

So, you'd basically get access to basic skills that cover all bases right away, but as you specialize in one, one starts to go away, so you'll only ever really have a few abilities to use. You'd go out in the world and do different things to change your alignments over time.

Combat would ultimately be simple. There would be many trees, but few things you could do all at once. Utility bloat is a gross problem of many MMOs. Skyrim is fun as hell, and you just run around swinging a god damn sword most of the time as a "warrior." Yet you can make classes that emulate paladins, mages, rogues, etc. in your own sort of fun hybrid.

You might have the same attack do different things based on your alignments. A shadow warrior's attack might drain life in proportion to damage dealt, or do extra damage. A light warrior's attack might burn nearby targets and heal other nearby friendlies at once. An magical warrior's attack might freeze or set the target on fire. You'd get some new abilities for going deep into a tree: a shadow warrior might reanimate corpses. A telekinetic might blast people away.

A balance caster's sort of basic cast might just send an invisible force wave at the opponent, knocking them back, sort of like a telekinetic.

You might have one more spectrum, like an H bar, to help you determine your classes:

Strength vs. Dexterity on the physical, and focused vs. intuitive on the mental.

I.e. an focused realistic mental would be a mage, using fire and ice. An intuitive would be a telekinetic.

A strong realistic warrior would be a berserker. A strong, physically and mentally balanced warrior on the light would be as close to a paladin as you'd get. But, you'd have opportunities to invent new things, like a dextrous light wielding warrior.

This isn't an exact suggestion, but it's more of a generalized suggestion that would need a lot of refinement as to how you make a combat system that matches the way that this game develops. Again, the key to making this work is to make the overall number of abilities available at any given time pretty low.

Comments

  • They have been very open from the very beginning about their vision for the game. High fantasy utilizing the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps. There are support classes like the bard that will hover in the gaps between. Feel free to wishlist all you want, but realize the chance of them scrapping all their envisioned mechanics and restarting the development process is 0.
  • They have been very open from the very beginning about their vision for the game. High fantasy utilizing the holy trinity of tank, healer, and dps. There are support classes like the bard that will hover in the gaps between. Feel free to wishlist all you want, but realize the chance of them scrapping all their envisioned mechanics and restarting the development process is 0.
    Yea, this is why I probably won't end up playing it then. I'm kind of looking for a Star Citizen of fantasy, been waiting for that before Star Citizen was a thing.
  • ArchivedUserArchivedUser Guest
    edited January 2018
    Well Star Citizen is nothing like this game, it's impossible to compare them. Star Citizen is building an entire universe in space, so space sim on a massive scale. And Star Citizen "classes" are nothing like this, they are basic roles you can play but don't necessarily have to, so you can be anything you want anytime you want and all at once haha (pirate, freelancer, bounty hunter, trader, miner, crime fighter, etc. etc. etc.) They are broadly split into 4 huge segments: Fight, Explore, Unite, and Trade. Mostly self-explanatory, except that Unite stands for "organizations" or guilds as we know them in RPGs. Basically, it would like saying that you want to be a warrior, a rogue, and a healer all at once and that would totally erase any sense of danger, skill, and so on. Star Citizen players will be self-sufficient, they won't need a healer or a tank or even other players to play the game. This game relies on group-mechanics and community to get you through the content. But Star Citizen just entered Alpha 3 so if you are interested in that game, you should check it out.

    Besides, this game will have support classes to supplement the trinity so there will be bards and others that don't neatly fit within the traditional roles. In total, this game will have 64 classes, so you might find something you like. Here is the link to classes on dev page: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/class-list/
  • Well, I would still have tanks, DPS and heals, though. This system basically allows you to play with hybridization a lot like WoW already does, i.e Retribution paladins during many patches could shield themselves and heal up despite being primarily a damage role. Or, they could pitch in with heals if things got especially sketchy.

    So, I'm still suggesting classes, but with more interest and nuance.

    It looks like they're somewhat doing the same thing, thankfully.
  • Memmi said:
    Well Star Citizen is nothing like this game, it's impossible to compare them. Star Citizen is building an entire universe in space, so space sim on a massive scale. And Star Citizen "classes" are nothing like this, they are basic roles you can play but don't necessarily have to, so you can be anything you want anytime you want and all at once haha (pirate, freelancer, bounty hunter, trader, miner, crime fighter, etc. etc. etc.) They are broadly split into 4 huge segments: Fight, Explore, Unite, and Trade. Mostly self-explanatory, except that Unite stands for "organizations" or guilds as we know them in RPGs. Basically, it would like saying that you want to be a warrior, a rogue, and a healer all at once and that would totally erase any sense of danger, skill, and so on. Star Citizen players will be self-sufficient, they won't need a healer or a tank or even other players to play the game. This game relies on group-mechanics and community to get you through the content. But Star Citizen just entered Alpha 3 so if you are interested in that game, you should check it out.

    Besides, this game will have support classes to supplement the trinity so there will be bards and others that don't neatly fit within the traditional roles. In total, this game will have 64 classes, so you might find something you like. Here is the link to classes on dev page: https://www.ashesofcreation.com/class-list/
    I'm not actually suggesting that you're everything at once. If you pick your specialization poorly, you'll just be a bad DPS, bad tank and bad healer in the system I proposed.
  • Well the 64 classes they want to introduce will have a variety of combinations. So if you look at the cross between Tank and Cleric, you will see that it's called Paladin. I don't know if it will be just like WoW, but seems similar. Here is another link to some abilities they released so far: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/35577/class-skills-and-posters#latest

    If they were to introduce a split between light and shadow that would also split players into different factions and they don't want to do that.
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