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What I've pieced together about class design

SussurroSussurro Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
edited August 2020 in General Discussion
From what I've seen, there will be eight base archetypes or what would be called classes in most other games. The game will seemingly have a hybrid system whereby the selection of a second base archetype will create what this game calls a class. Regardless of your second choice your capabilities will primarily be informed by your first archetype*. The selection of the second archetype provides a set of transformations to your current skills in the form of augments that alter the appearance, effect and/or (perhaps rarely) the behavior of those skills.

I have a feeling our base archetype will inform our environmental/traversal skills but I hope we get the choice between either our primary or secondary archetype's skill.

I presume, from the language they've used**, that our primary archetype will have the skill tree and not our class. The class may plug values into talents affecting the skills they transform. The talents that affect skills may be designed in such a way that they change the functionality/limitation of that skill which is compounded by the choice of class and therefore the set of augments. This would mean that despite the talent changing the skill in the same way, the player's choice of class and then of augment would make that skill distinct; if we are able to put a variable amount of points into the talent this would make it even more distinct.

I have been and continue to be excited with how this project has progressed since backing it on KS. I used to be active in the early days of the forums but I thought I'd return and clear up some confusion I've seen and show that the things they want to do are very much achievable***. If I'm underinformed, misinformed or reading too much into what they've shown I expect a respectable internet fight in my replies.

*The choice of weapons and armors available to everyone may change this to some extent
**Sharif, in the latest video, described a talent which made Blink omnidirectional; Similar reasoning could be applied to skills like Charge where a talent could increase it's range, resource generation or provide a form of CC (root, silence et cetera)
***To me, the design is vaguely reminiscent of how skills are transformed in ESO (a successful title)
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Prachett, Reaper Man

Comments

  • AdaonAdaon Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Sussurro wrote: »
    From what I've seen, there will be eight base archetypes or what would be called classes in most other games. The game will seemingly have a hybrid system whereby the selection of a second base archetype will create what this game calls a class. Regardless of your second choice your capabilities will primarily be informed by your first archetype*. The selection of the second archetype provides a set of transformations to your current skills in the form of augments that alter the appearance, effect and/or (perhaps rarely) the behavior of those skills.

    I have a feeling our base archetype will inform our environmental/traversal skills but I hope we get the choice between either our primary or secondary archetype's skill.

    I presume, from the language they've used**, that our primary archetype will have the skill tree and not our class. The class may plug values into talents affecting the skills they transform. The talents that affect skills may be designed in such a way that they change the functionality/limitation of that skill which is compounded by the choice of class and therefore the set of augments. This would mean that despite the talent changing the skill in the same way the player's choice of class and then of augment would make that skill distinct; if we are able to put a variable amount of points into the talent this would make it even more distinct.

    I have been and continue to be excited with how this project has progressed since backing it on KS. I used to be active in the early days of the forums but I thought I'd return and clear up some confusion I've seen and show that the things they want to do are very much achievable***. If I'm underinformed, misinformed or reading too much into what they've shown I expect a respectable internet fight in my replies.

    *The choice of weapons and armors available to everyone may change this to some extent
    **Sharif, in the latest video, described a talent which made Blink omnidirectional; Similar reasoning could be applied to skills like Charge where a talent could increase it's range, resource generation or provide a form of CC (root, silence et cetera)
    ***To me, the design is vaguely reminiscent of how skills are transformed in ESO (a successful title)

    The way I read it, and hear it described - it'll be exactly like Diablo III's rune system for skills, except instead of every rune being independent and configurable with other rune applications for other skills in any combination - you'll have a set combination of rune selections(augments) based on your secondary class, as to whether or not given runes(augments) will fundamentally alter a classes skill as much as some of them do in a game like Diablo, that remains to be seen - example for one or more of the summoning abilities , there are runes to go from summoning multiple minions, to summoning one strong minion, etc. Short of playing the game though, it's hard to verify ;)
  • SussurroSussurro Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The way I read it, and hear it described - it'll be exactly like Diablo III's rune system for skills, except instead of every rune being independent and configurable with other rune applications for other skills in any combination - you'll have a set combination of rune selections(augments) based on your secondary class, as to whether or not given runes(augments) will fundamentally alter a classes skill as much as some of them do in a game like Diablo, that remains to be seen - example for one or more of the summoning abilities , there are runes to go from summoning multiple minions, to summoning one strong minion, etc. Short of playing the game though, it's hard to verify ;)

    Certainly, I would say that the augments resemble the runes from Diablo III or the merges from ESO; they're cleverly gating the transformations behind a hybrid class gimmick. Hopefully, after iteration, the sets of transformations make sense and fit thematically within AoC's classes. I can't express enough how excited I am to help them iterate on what they implement. :)
    “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Prachett, Reaper Man
  • skearnzskearnz Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited August 2020
    Adaon wrote: »
    Sussurro wrote: »
    From what I've seen, there will be eight base archetypes or what would be called classes in most other games. The game will seemingly have a hybrid system whereby the selection of a second base archetype will create what this game calls a class. Regardless of your second choice your capabilities will primarily be informed by your first archetype*. The selection of the second archetype provides a set of transformations to your current skills in the form of augments that alter the appearance, effect and/or (perhaps rarely) the behavior of those skills.

    I have a feeling our base archetype will inform our environmental/traversal skills but I hope we get the choice between either our primary or secondary archetype's skill.

    I presume, from the language they've used**, that our primary archetype will have the skill tree and not our class. The class may plug values into talents affecting the skills they transform. The talents that affect skills may be designed in such a way that they change the functionality/limitation of that skill which is compounded by the choice of class and therefore the set of augments. This would mean that despite the talent changing the skill in the same way the player's choice of class and then of augment would make that skill distinct; if we are able to put a variable amount of points into the talent this would make it even more distinct.

    I have been and continue to be excited with how this project has progressed since backing it on KS. I used to be active in the early days of the forums but I thought I'd return and clear up some confusion I've seen and show that the things they want to do are very much achievable***. If I'm underinformed, misinformed or reading too much into what they've shown I expect a respectable internet fight in my replies.

    *The choice of weapons and armors available to everyone may change this to some extent
    **Sharif, in the latest video, described a talent which made Blink omnidirectional; Similar reasoning could be applied to skills like Charge where a talent could increase it's range, resource generation or provide a form of CC (root, silence et cetera)
    ***To me, the design is vaguely reminiscent of how skills are transformed in ESO (a successful title)

    The way I read it, and hear it described - it'll be exactly like Diablo III's rune system for skills, except instead of every rune being independent and configurable with other rune applications for other skills in any combination - you'll have a set combination of rune selections(augments) based on your secondary class, as to whether or not given runes(augments) will fundamentally alter a classes skill as much as some of them do in a game like Diablo, that remains to be seen - example for one or more of the summoning abilities , there are runes to go from summoning multiple minions, to summoning one strong minion, etc. Short of playing the game though, it's hard to verify ;)

    race, religion and social organization (i think guild allowed also for some augments?) will also provide augments to choose from, not just the secondary class:D
  • SussurroSussurro Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    race, religion and social organization (i think guild allowed also for some augments?) will also provide augments to choose from, not just the secondary class:D

    I had no idea this was the case. If true, that would kick ass. I would quite enjoy such a convoluted system. I suspect such augments would be more 'trivial' than the augments one would gain from their class or, I just had the idea, perhaps they could be appearance modifiers - augments that change the color, particle effects, lighting and/or volumetric fog of your skills. This would be less development time overall if the augments you gain from these sources don't just change/add values to your skills (which I would be perfectly fine with).
    “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Prachett, Reaper Man
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