Number of Classes in AoC

Initially, IS was planning to have 12 base archetypes in the game. This would result in a whopping 144 classes. Obviously, this was an almost impossible task to take on and hence they removed 4 of those archetypes, leaving us with 64 classes.

I feel that 8 is still too many FOR LAUNCH. I feel like the ideal amount of base archetypes should just be 6 for launch: Tank, Cleric, Mage, Fighter, Rogue and Ranger.

The reason I say this is because designing and balancing abilities is something that you improve at with experience. Having 64 classes to do this for, is simply too much. If you only have 36 however, it gives you a lot more room to better design and balance these classes. This will result in the newer classes being much more better designed and balanced from the get go, as IS will have more knowledge and experience doing this.

That's why, I feel like there should only be 36 classes for launch. Every 6 months, they could add a new archetype. So we'll get bard and summoner a year after launch. After releasing bard and summoner, they could create polls to ask the community what class they want next.

What do you guys think?

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Comments

Medrash1

To all the people that feal bad about a cut of the classes ... trust me, the devs work the same . They just get better results with each classes. it's way better to get better classes than many and badly or poorly made and balanced. It's better to get a better game overall than an infinite list of names.

i have an idea to fix this problem, why not making less classes but with 2 specs each ... so you can get the bard or the summoner as a spec of the mage for example. I whould rly like this to happen. it solves the problem that i see on the game right now ... and gives you more Classes and more quality with probably less effort.
What do you think about that?
A mage with 2 or 3 specs: Summoner, Sorcerer, Bard? or a Fighter with with 2/3 specs : Melee fighter (warrior), tank , ranged archer? and maybe the Assassin class with hunters and rogue .
it's just an idea of course, the build and the specs need to be designed properly

Beekeeper

What are you guys even talking about? "8 is too much, 6 is just right" is completely arbitrary, based on nothing, not even a hint that IS is struggling to form those 8 base classes.

If you can't come up with 8 class designs, don't act like nobody can.

Songcaller

nidriks wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

Fuck that. I will main Bard and I do not agree Bard should be removed. Thankfully, we have Jeff Bard who worked on Everquest and Jeff understands the use of Bards.

Only EQ2, I think. Though EQ2 did have bards, even if it suffered from too much bard love (see my other thread today).

No one like a Bard to design bards though. D'ya think he changed his name?

Nah, Nidriks, We have a cycle of new players who want to change fundamental aspects which have been in the design since I invested. It is not acceptable to request IS make such changes before testing has even begun.

When Levitate was OP no one asked for Mage to be removed, only levitate was removed.

nidriks

Neurath wrote: »

All of the classes will be in Alpha 1 (primary classes) at that point you build on the foundations, not decrease the foundations. In all your threads you have weird logic. I havent invested all of my investments for someone to cut the class I want to play.

When SWG cut classes to compete with WoW the majority of players left SWG.

This. The SWG point is excellent and very relevant.

daxiongmao87 wrote: »

Did they ever mention what the 4 they dropped were going to be? My guess:

Monk
Druid
Berserker
Enchanter

I do remember druid being talked about early in development, but don't recall seeing it in early class tables. I actually remember when we saw the first class table, but I think it was the one we see now.

I suspect the other 4 were Steven's and were dropped prior to kickstarter.

nidriks

Neurath wrote: »

nidriks wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

Fuck that. I will main Bard and I do not agree Bard should be removed. Thankfully, we have Jeff Bard who worked on Everquest and Jeff understands the use of Bards.

Only EQ2, I think. Though EQ2 did have bards, even if it suffered from too much bard love (see my other thread today).

No one like a Bard to design bards though. D'ya think he changed his name?

Nah, Nidriks, We have a cycle of new players who want to change fundamental aspects which have been in the design since I invested. It is not acceptable to request IS make such changes before testing has even begun.

When Levitate was OP no one asked for Mage to be removed, only levitate was removed.

I know. I agree with you. Just saying Jeff didn't work on Everquest, just Everquest 2.

CaptnChuck

Redacted

CaptnChuck

daxiongmao87 wrote: »

Did they ever mention what the 4 they dropped were going to be? My guess:

Monk
Druid
Berserker
Enchanter

My guess is Druid, Shapeshifter, Witchcraft like in Archeage, and Masochist like in Archeage as well.

CaptnChuck

Beekeeper wrote: »

What are you guys even talking about? "8 is too much, 6 is just right" is completely arbitrary, based on nothing, not even a hint that IS is struggling to form those 8 base classes.

If you can't come up with 8 class designs, don't act like nobody can.

Its not about coming up with class designs. Its about balancing them. No one has managed to find balance and they had FAR fewer classes than in AoC. So its not unrealistic to assume that IS won't be able to balance them all well either.

CaptnChuck

@Neurath

Don't bring your personal disdain towards me, to this thread. You made insensible comments on the previous post that I made, simply because you didn't read my post completely. After I stated this, you then wisely chose not to reply further as you realised how dumb you looked. So, keep your salt away from my posts please.

CaptnChuck

@Medrash

I'm sorry but i disagree with pretty much everything that you said. I would love to see new classes being added regularly, BUT ONLY after the ones that already exist have been balanced. As for limiting classes to 2/3 specs, NO.

CaptnChuck

@grisu

Incorrect. Steven clearly stated that augmented abilities will have CLEAR vertical progression, along with flavor. So yes, whilst you won't be designing new abilities for all 64 classes, its still a lot.

Assume that you design about 7 augmented abilities for every school of every class. Also assume that a class's augment gives similar augmented abilities to all classes. This means that you have to design 64x4x7/8 abilities, which is about 250 distinct abilities. (Assuming some variance)

That is still A LOT to balance.

Drokk

CaptnChuck wrote: »

@grisu

Incorrect. Steven clearly stated that augmented abilities will have CLEAR vertical progression, along with flavor. So yes, whilst you won't be designing new abilities for all 64 classes, its still a lot.

Assume that you design about 7 augmented abilities for every school of every class. Also assume that a class's augment gives similar augmented abilities to all classes. This means that you have to design 64x4x7/8 abilities, which is about 250 distinct abilities. (Assuming some variance)

That is still A LOT to balance.

What is balance? See, that's the heart of this issue. Mmo players, largely thanks to WoW, have a distinct definition about class balance. Essentially that every class has to be equally viable in every role in every type of content in the game.

But why is that the standard? What is it besides 15 years of being brainwashed that that constitutes 'balance'?
People obsess over that word. Fun doesn't matter, immersion and rpg aspects don't matter. Oh no, my class does 3% dps less than that class. The game is broken! It's such utter nonsense. Balance it like an actual rpg. This is an mmorpg, it's right in the name. Some classes excel at certain things which other classes are weak at. There are niches. Classes rely on each other to compensate for what one class lacks in a certain area.

We need to drop this absurd e-sport mentality. It's a video game, it's supposed to be fun. You can obsess over numbers and min/maxing and efficiency but none of those things makes the game more FUN. WoW is the most obvious example of this. Players complain now more than ever, when things are objectively the most 'balanced' it's ever been. Because the emphasis has been turned away from simply playing a video game and having fun to obsessing and nitpicking over this red herring called balance. Ultimately it leads to mass homogenization, and sucks the immersion and rpg elements out of the game. WoW isn't even an mmorpg anymore; it's an interactive calculator.

So my suggestion is chill out and relax. Enough of this fascination with balance. Are you having fun? That's really the only question that matters. Now, I'm not saying it should be a crazy free-for-all of absolute chaos. But there's a difference between that and breaking out pie charts and spreadsheets to calculate the perfect composition for maximum efficiency. Let me put it this way: balance should never have priority over fun. That's something other mmos (WoW in particular) have lost along the way. And I hope Ashes doesn't make the same mistake. But it also requires the playerbase to unlearn this nonsense they've been programmed to think over the years. That's the tough part.

grisu

@CaptnChuck I mean eliminating 1 second of charge time is obviously an upgrade, vertical progression so I don't see where I am incorrect there.

You can assume all day long, we got a few examples and none of them change the core of the ability or dramatically as you claim. It gives something extra and as stated before you will see repeats because they will be economical with those augments. The blink will surely come up in a lot of appropriate skills.
Something else to point out is that augments ARE the "vertical progression" enhancing combat skill progression.
Quote:

These archetypes represent the staple fantasy classes; Fighter, Tank, Rogue, Ranger, Mage, Summoner, Cleric, Bard. As the player progresses vertically with their primary class, they will have the opportunity to add a second class. This second class will be chosen again from the 8 archetypes, and will follow more of a horizontal progression. The second class will allow the player to augment their primary skills from their main class, with effects from their secondary class

Anyway, unless an augment is just wrongly coded and gives more than it should, augments are the least of my worries when it comes to balance. It's synergy that I personally worry about. Stats that work well with specific other stats and blow up exponentionaly at certain thresholds. I worry about skill synergy that will inevitable lead down cookie cutter builds simply because they work way better with each other than the other options.

There are a lot of things to worry about when it comes to balance and augments is certainly one of it, I am just pointing out that it's a more minor thing than people make it out to be. Especially compared to all the other things IS has proposed that they will do.
Skill pool, stat variety, skill progression, just to name a few.

Debase

I don't think 8 classes is too many at all. While I also am not arguing about needing more, I do find it interesting that for a trinity based game, there are seemingly 1 (1.5 maybe with Bard?) primary healing option, 1-1.5 (Tank/Fighter?) primary tank options, then 6 damage dealers with varying utility and flavor. Not to say this is a problem per se with subclass options, but I certainly wonder whether there will be class distribution challenges.

The other interesting question is how different the same class/subclass pairings will feel. For example, how different will a Rogue/Fighter (Duelist) feel from a Fighter/Rogue (Shadowblade).

Warth

debase wrote: »

I don't think 8 classes is too many at all. While I also am not arguing about needing more, I do find it interesting that for a trinity based game, there are seemingly 1 (1.5 maybe with Bard?) primary healing option, 1-1.5 (Tank/Fighter?) primary tank options, then 6 damage dealers with varying utility and flavor. Not to say this is a problem per se with subclass options, but I certainly wonder whether there will be class distribution challenges.

The other interesting question is how different the same class/subclass pairings will feel. For example, how different will a Rogue/Fighter (Duelist) feel from a Fighter/Rogue (Shadowblade).

I think 1:1:6 almost fits the ratio of tanks:healer:dps in other games. I'd hope that this alleviates the classic lack of tanks and healers to a certain extend.

nidriks

CaptnChuck wrote: »

Don't bring your personal disdain towards me, to this thread. You made insensible comments on the previous post that I made, simply because you didn't read my post completely. After I stated this, you then wisely chose not to reply further as you realised how dumb you looked. So, keep your salt away from my posts please.

Be careful not to get too angry over this. It's not worth it at this stage of development.

The problem is, as @Neurath said, a lot of people backed Ashes becuse of an idea. The extensive class system was one of those ideas. Some of us are still very passionate about what was promised. We remember the old MMOs, and want a return to what we consider "the good old days".

I'm not saying others should be able to be aggressive towards you, but trying to suggest radical changes to Ashes now is going to get that response from older members of the community.

We all want a good game, so let's keep the community spirit.

Warth

Scaling down is never a good choice. WoW has practiced that for the past decade and we saw where it ended up.

The game doesn't need perfect balance at launch, it need continous support. Keep tweaking at it and they'll eventually get there.

Medrash1

@CaptnChuck what do you disagree? i don't understand, I'm not a soothsayer, can you be more precise pls? thz

Most of the things i said where your idea ... so i don't get what you disagree .
y
so you don't like a finished game with a finished design .. instead you prefer to chance it overtime. Actually you are not going to set a prize for each game/expansion you make, as i understood. So it make more sense. Becouse if i have to pay a game that i Will lose, it sound pretty bad XD like WoW has done.
So are you going to make different servers for older expansions? like Classic WoW

so is this the only thing we disagree? Will we have each class unique .. or the mixed one are going to be an hybrid with already existing features of the second class?

i absolutelly agree to add new ones only after balancing the already-existing ones, that's awesome. Otherwise it means you will never balance the game xD .

what do you mean about limiting the specs to 2/3? so are you planning to add specs for each class? i didn't want to limit anything ... i want to build a better and more efficient way to develop the character , adding specs to the game and deleting meaningless and extra classes like summoner and Bard. As you already said, you don't feal them to be too much important for the first launch of the game. They are an extra.
Anyway i have one more question right now ... how are you going to balance the game if you remove or add a dps / healer / tank? Becouse the ratio of the characters rule in combat is going to chance ... for example ... with 6 classes is 1 tank, 1 healer and 4 dps, but with the Bard is going to be 2 healers every tank and 4 dps. And this will happen every time you add a new class with his single and monotonous rule. Are bosses and enemies suitable for every type of group composition?
thz

nidriks

debase wrote: »

I don't think 8 classes is too many at all. While I also am not arguing about needing more, I do find it interesting that for a trinity based game, there are seemingly 1 (1.5 maybe with Bard?) primary healing option, 1-1.5 (Tank/Fighter?) primary tank options, then 6 damage dealers with varying utility and flavor. Not to say this is a problem per se with subclass options, but I certainly wonder whether there will be class distribution challenges.

The other interesting question is how different the same class/subclass pairings will feel. For example, how different will a Rogue/Fighter (Duelist) feel from a Fighter/Rogue (Shadowblade).

I'm curious about the trinity ratios too. I almost think there should be another class that heals and another that tanks.
In most other MMOs you would have a warrior and a paladin, maybe even a shadow knight. As well as a cleric there will also be shamans and druids.
After 25 there will be more options to just clerics, but I wonder about pre-25. Will clerics be numerous enough to cover all the healing? Can tanks handle all the tanking, or can fighters tank a group?

I'd actually like to have seen two more primary archetypes, taking things to 10 by 10. Druid would have been my second healer type and shadow knight my second tank.

Have the druid combinations along the lines of aspects of nature or wildlife. Druid/Tank = Bear? Druid/Rogue = Cat? Druid/Mage = Storm? Some work needed there.
For the Shadow Knight I feel this is where necromancers would come in. I never understood summoner/cleric being a necromancer. Shadow Knight/Tank = Brute? Shadow Knight/Summoner = Necromancer. Shadow Knight/Mage = Cultist?

Summoner/Cleric should be more about summoning such elemntals as wisps, who could aid healing.

I'd also like to see two stages to augmenting your primary archetype. Maybe give some basic abilities at 10 or 15 and more augments at 30. That gives more to look forward to throughout progression. I don't mean having two augmented classes; still just the one.

BaSkA_9x2

Drokk wrote: »

So my suggestion is chill out and relax. Enough of this fascination with balance. Are you having fun? That's really the only question that matters. Now, I'm not saying it should be a crazy free-for-all of absolute chaos. But there's a difference between that and breaking out pie charts and spreadsheets to calculate the perfect composition for maximum efficiency. Let me put it this way: balance should never have priority over fun. That's something other mmos (WoW in particular) have lost along the way. And I hope Ashes doesn't make the same mistake. But it also requires the playerbase to unlearn this nonsense they've been programmed to think over the years. That's the tough part.

I agree with you, except for one thing: I don't think that having fun and having balanced combat are mutually exclusive. Even though obsessively focusing on balancing the game has its flaws and can remove the fun of games like you pointed out, the lack of a balanced combat can make a game just as bad.

"Fun" is something subjective, and while some people will gladly play a class that sucks and still have fun, other people would like to play that same class and wish it didn't suck.

You never said there shouldn't be any balancing at all, so I'm only trying to convey that, although it could indeed be the result of 15 years of brainwashing, I do believe it's possible to have a balanced game without mass homogenization and without removing immersion and RPG elements which should be fundamental to Ashes.

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