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64 distinct classes
ArchivedUser
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This is very concerning.
The idea is pretty cool at first but 10 years of game updates later what I saw was a giant cluster of skills and mechanics that devs all but gave up on trying to balance. Key individuals leaving the dev team, consolidation of roles and what were likely half hearted knowledge transfers led to much of the chaos so hopefully this game takes that to heart from the beginning and doesn't fall into the same pitfall with classes.
This experience came from Everquest 2. It appears some of the team came from the Everquest space.
P.S. Please don't use gear bot 5000 to do all your itemization, working 20 hours on a quest line or weeks of farming on a raid boss only to get some generic pos is not rewarding at all.
The idea is pretty cool at first but 10 years of game updates later what I saw was a giant cluster of skills and mechanics that devs all but gave up on trying to balance. Key individuals leaving the dev team, consolidation of roles and what were likely half hearted knowledge transfers led to much of the chaos so hopefully this game takes that to heart from the beginning and doesn't fall into the same pitfall with classes.
This experience came from Everquest 2. It appears some of the team came from the Everquest space.
P.S. Please don't use gear bot 5000 to do all your itemization, working 20 hours on a quest line or weeks of farming on a raid boss only to get some generic pos is not rewarding at all.
0
Comments
The idea is pretty cool at first but 10 years of game updates later what I saw was a giant cluster of skills and mechanics that devs all but gave up on trying to balance. Key individuals leaving the dev team, consolidation of roles and what were likely half hearted knowledge transfers led to much of the chaos so hopefully this game takes that to heart from the beginning and doesn’t fall into the same pitfall with classes.
This experience came from Everquest 2. It appears some of the team came from the Everquest space.
P.S. Please don’t use gear bot 5000 to do all your itemization, working 20 hours on a quest line or weeks of farming on a raid boss only to get some generic pos is not rewarding at all.
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Do you think we would be better off with less classes?
Do you think we would be better off with less classes?
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Yes. Although this is without knowing how interdependent the classes will be in game.
If some of the key people on their team came from EQ\EQ2 they will know how things ended up. What's hilarious is with the newest release in EQ2 they just gave up and created a new "Ascension" class that completely invalidated the class you picked 10 years ago.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/#post-8356" rel="nofollow">midnight-shadow wrote:</a></div>
<blockquote>
Do you think we would be better off with less classes?
</blockquote>
Yes. Although this is without knowing how interdependent the classes will be in game.
If some of the key people on their team came from EQ\EQ2 they will know how things ended up. What’s hilarious is with the newest release in EQ2 they just gave up and created a new “Ascension” class that completely invalidated the class you picked 10 years ago.
</blockquote>
[/quote]
The Dev team is aware of the potential problem and are planning on making a concerted effort to make all the classes viable depending on the situation. They don't want to have a situation where one class is OP for a couple of months, then gets nerfed and another class is OP, and the cycle continues. Their approach will be to try and make all the classes viable in specific situations. This is according to the Discord QandA they did last month, so a lot can change.
Discord QandA: https://soundcloud.com/darkweebl/discord-qa/s-5hV1E
You got your base classes and then specializations you can work into.
[/quote]
Who cares about balance anymore. That is what has hurt MMORPGS. Some classes should be better at PVP than others, and some should be better at Arenas than others, and a lot should be good at PVE but not all. SWG had 30 some classes when it came out, all classes had some weakness and then something they were great at. Except the Jedi which really screwed SWG.
Also if you think 64 would be too much, i dare you to try path of exiles XD In that game you can have idk hundreds of millions of different builds. Not only that you can freely choose all your talents from a tree with like idk 1k+ talents there is tons of items in game that directly affect damage calculations and alter talents and many of them with combination alter even more and often make op stuff that wasnt intended.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/#post-8482" rel="nofollow">Hartwell wrote:</a></div>
I agree. I’m not against the idea of 64 classes, but 64 classes at launch is really ambitious. Classes at launch of a game are usually not too balanced and having them all out at once could be dreadful to adjust during the most chaotic time of an MMO’s life span. I hope the devs aren’t afraid to make adjustments to that number if needed. More classes can always be added at a later date.
</blockquote>
Who cares about balance anymore. That is what has hurt MMORPGS. Some classes should be better at PVP than others, and some should be better at Arenas than others, and a lot should be good at PVE but not all. SWG had 30 some classes when it came out, all classes had some weakness and then something they were great at. Except the Jedi which really screwed SWG.
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Also fuck you
I am a game-breaker. Yes, in ESO I made an orc into a Sorc because it was strong in Skyrim, and I needed something to plow through to endgame to find out what would really be strong. As luck would have it, I made a combo that is STILL strong.
The problem comes from when you don't get a strong combo, or another combo is more effective for something, and there's no flexibility beyond rolling a new character.
I don't think 64 character combos is healthy for THIS game without some way to change it. MMOs require players, and more importantly, their social group will require their most progressed character. In this game, your character should matter to the point where you don't need an alternate character for effectual capacity, and there should be no 1-3% difference. If it's roleplaying based, that's something else, but racial bonuses that provide performance boosts for certain styles of play tend to lead to larger accounts with more characters. Add to this: the frustration of guilds who want someone to play their main, and the player who doesn't want to play their main because it lacks performance or some fancy perk that a race/class gets.
From past experience, at traditional endgame... your character is pretty heroic, but apparently they tend to be an old dog that can't learn any tricks. I used to work on automobiles, switched to carpentry, became an electrician, bought into equity and retired, and started working with UE4 and attending game development seminars in St. Louis to begin bringing one of my stories to life. You're telling me that my in-game avatar who kills legendary foes and obtains huge piles of loot can't take a staff out back to the training dummy and learn him some magic? What a toad!
I feel the same about crafting; hopefully we can drop a profession if it just doesn't suit us anymore.
Finally, I hope this facet gets resolved, like having some way to change your primary class, along with racials providing no performance boosts (dwarves being better smiths; I'm ok if it takes more booze before they suffer from inebriation).
Also if you think 64 would be too much, i dare you to try path of exiles XD In that game you can have idk hundreds of millions of different builds. Not only that you can freely choose all your talents from a tree with like idk 1k+ talents there is tons of items in game that directly affect damage calculations and alter talents and many of them with combination alter even more and often make op stuff that wasnt intended.
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if what Mister Shinigamiqt said is true i would like that a lot, starting out as one class getting used to it and picking the skills both passive and active that work well for you then mastering them, so when you get to pick your sub class you pick the one that complements and matches what you already have or to fill out some glaring weakness like mobility or ranged/close combat effectiveness.
and maybe like path of exile you could have magic weapons and armor that mix up your skills, e.g. a charged power swing with an air enchantment could do a blast wave with a great axe/ hammer but with a sword or spear makes wind blades.
here hoping i like the sound of that
If it is even close to GW1s system it will be amazing. The amount of skills isnt neccesarily limited to 10, but player loadouts may be.
Anyone who ever played GW1 will understand that character specilization etc in that game was leaps ahead of most MMOs released now.--> plus for pvp implications this will allow for a lot of gimmick characters people would never think possible
I too came from EQ2 and I LOVED the distinct feel you got from there being so many different classes. I've missed it ever since I stopped playing. Everything else feels generic and watered-down.
But admittedly, I don't PVP in MMO's so balance doesn't matter to me at all. If I want to PVP I play BF1 or LoL.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/#post-8644" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
<blockquote>
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/#post-8482" rel="nofollow">Hartwell wrote:</a></div>
I agree. I’m not against the idea of 64 classes, but 64 classes at launch is really ambitious. Classes at launch of a game are usually not too balanced and having them all out at once could be dreadful to adjust during the most chaotic time of an MMO’s life span. I hope the devs aren’t afraid to make adjustments to that number if needed. More classes can always be added at a later date.
</blockquote>
Who cares about balance anymore. That is what has hurt MMORPGS. Some classes should be better at PVP than others, and some should be better at Arenas than others, and a lot should be good at PVE but not all. SWG had 30 some classes when it came out, all classes had some weakness and then something they were great at. Except the Jedi which really screwed SWG.
</blockquote>
Also fuck you
[/quote]
What an intelligent response
Each class represents a major MMO playstyles, the subclasses will allow you to tune your class to a more unique playstyle that suits your aims. The 8 main classes will be balanced in a rock, paper, scissors format; which is the best way to do it without homogenising the classes abilities.
I don't think there is anything to worry about.
The ever rotating flavour of the month class balance that happens in WoW is a terrible thing.
Now, I don't think the game is in a situation where they're going to be unbalanceable. Intrepid just needs to be careful how much each spec changes each class.
The ever rotating flavour of the month class balance that happens in WoW is a terrible thing.
Now, I don’t think the game is in a situation where they’re going to be unbalanceable. Intrepid just needs to be careful how much each spec changes each class.
[/quote]
Balancing every class can go out the dam door. You get Flavor of the month because of WOW because you keep trying to Balance every dam class. Every Class needs to have its Strengths and Weaknesses, you are playing an MMORPG and Balancing is the core of an MMORPG outside the streamlined MMORPGS that keep failing. Yes 1 class setup with a certain 2nd class might be crap at PVE but great at PVP and vice versa. You cannot endlessly balance classes without making 1 class the same as the other which happens to be why people cannot stand WOW or FFXIV or the many other MMORPGs anymore. So what that 1 class is better in a situation than another? That is the fundamentals of an RPG going all the way back to pen and paper.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/page/2/#post-11042" rel="nofollow">cryolithic wrote:</a></div>
Having unbalanced classes is a great way to lose players. Having a situation where balancing becomes very difficult is also bad for players.
The ever rotating flavour of the month class balance that happens in WoW is a terrible thing.
Now, I don’t think the game is in a situation where they’re going to be unbalanceable. Intrepid just needs to be careful how much each spec changes each class.
</blockquote>
Balancing every class can go out the dam door. You get Flavor of the month because of WOW because you keep trying to Balance every dam class. Every Class needs to have its Strengths and Weaknesses, you are playing an MMORPG and Balancing is the core of an MMORPG outside the streamlined MMORPGS that keep failing. Yes 1 class setup with a certain 2nd class might be crap at PVE but great at PVP and vice versa. You cannot endlessly balance classes without making 1 class the same as the other which happens to be why people cannot stand WOW or FFXIV or the many other MMORPGs anymore. So what that 1 class is better in a situation than another? That is the fundamentals of an RPG going all the way back to pen and paper.
[/quote]
Being better in a single situation is not the balancing act going on in most MMOs, most of them presently on the market being better in ONE situation means being better at PVP. Sorry , but the majority of people who enjoy playing MMOs at one point in time will be involved in combat whether its with npcs or with plaers. Having one class be the cookie cutter I win button doesnt really inspire confidence in any dev team
Why then, are we accepting the idea of linear classes? Why aren't we given player limits, and then the ability to move forward with our own classes? Path of Exile is an amazing game where you can make just about anything with a little push in one direction or another.
For me, I'm tired of making alts. I want one character that I can set up to do anything PvE, and PvP, with only a moderate amount of time and resources to transition. I don't want to have to make a bunch of alts, grind stuff out, so that I have this account of tools instead of an account with a character that I can feel good about.
I have no respect for a "hero" with a myopic capacity, they're simply less than the person driving them, and so I can't get immersed.
[/quote]
Well there will always be only 3 arc types:
- Caster
-Warrior
-Thief/rogue
Sometimes casters And Rogues Split into :
Caster:
- Mage
- Cleric/priest
Rogues:
- Thief
- Ranger
Warrior types are in most MMOs and RPGs warriors or different words for the same arc type sometimes they split into a different class such as Berserker, and sometimes that is just a spec for the same class and rarely Warriors and Cleric merge into a new Class paladin (egg: WoW and D&DO and Neverwinter) .
Anyway my point was that there are only 3 arc types and the rest are (if you analyze them in detail) just off shoots of those that shed more detail on the creator's vision for said class.
One significant downside is it makes the amount of gear you need to keep much, much higher - but that also stimulates the economy.
I would really like to see AoC consider a class-change system, whether that system is instant-change (FFXIV), situational change (FFXI - you have to be in a 'home'), or complicated change (as in it takes effort, like a quest chain, or is gated behind a time gate)
Thoughts?
[/quote]
I hope they do it seems like they should.
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/page/2/#post-11059" rel="nofollow">Helzbelz wrote:</a></div>
<blockquote>
<div class="d4p-bbt-quote-title"><a href="https://www.ashesofcreation.com/forums/topic/64-distinct-classes/page/2/#post-11042" rel="nofollow">cryolithic wrote:</a></div>
Having unbalanced classes is a great way to lose players. Having a situation where balancing becomes very difficult is also bad for players.
The ever rotating flavour of the month class balance that happens in WoW is a terrible thing.
Now, I don’t think the game is in a situation where they’re going to be unbalanceable. Intrepid just needs to be careful how much each spec changes each class.
</blockquote>
Balancing every class can go out the dam door. You get Flavor of the month because of WOW because you keep trying to Balance every dam class. Every Class needs to have its Strengths and Weaknesses, you are playing an MMORPG and Balancing is the core of an MMORPG outside the streamlined MMORPGS that keep failing. Yes 1 class setup with a certain 2nd class might be crap at PVE but great at PVP and vice versa. You cannot endlessly balance classes without making 1 class the same as the other which happens to be why people cannot stand WOW or FFXIV or the many other MMORPGs anymore. So what that 1 class is better in a situation than another? That is the fundamentals of an RPG going all the way back to pen and paper.
</blockquote>
Being better in a single situation is not the balancing act going on in most MMOs, most of them presently on the market being better in ONE situation means being better at PVP. Sorry , but the majority of people who enjoy playing MMOs at one point in time will be involved in combat whether its with npcs or with plaers. Having one class be the cookie cutter I win button doesnt really inspire confidence in any dev team
[/quote]
No one is talking about Cookie Cutter builds that automatically win. What I AM talking about is Certain Builds will have more advantages in their respective playing areas. Example is a Melee that has no ability to close with range classes, Range classes will beat this melee if they keep at range. That setup is not idea for PVP and really not as useful as lets say a Melee that cant teleport or close the distance with Range. They have a higher chance of success in PVP than a built that is more of a PVE build.
Balance in an RPG comes from knowing what your strengths and weaknesses with your class. Not with making sure every class and every build is good at everything. That is what WOW and countless MMORPGs have done and why they are all streamline piles that people want something else. Because there is no differences between 1 class to the next and why classes keep getting changed.