Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Draegan said:

I want to repeat this again. If I"m a new player and I log into your game to try it out and I see this in the character creation section:

<SNIP>

I"d tell the game to go fuck off because my desk just broke under the weight of the 500 page manual the game came with to describe each class.

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Clearly you dont like variety. So lets just make games with...
WARRIOR
CLERIC
RANGER
MAGE

For you simple minded folks.

Well even in classless skill based system, you have balance issues. Melees sucked in general in UO and AC for a long time, before they buffed it enough that melees were overpowered, because you can stack various skills in combinations that the devs might not have expected. I think it"s just as much of a pain to balance a skill based game than it is for a class based game, but it"s easier to pinpoint issues in class based(eh barbarians are doing too much dmg, just nerf their ability, and it won"t affect paladins dmg)

And Draeg I don"t really agree, while it might definitely be a problem for casuals who log in the game for the first time when they see that, it doesn"t have to be presented that way, mainly with path choosing after certain levels and all the usual crap you see in those games. You don"t have to get a 27classes choice right from the start. Also, as an experienced mmo player, out of that list I can probably pinpoint it down to like 4choices I"d like to play, simply based on the name or on a short description. I don"t need to know what a pirate does cause I won"t play one anyway.

Twobit Whore said:

What you people really want but are too stupid to realize it is a classless skill-based system. Except some of you apparently need the devs to outline every possible combination and slap a title on it for you.

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And then you have in essence what you are advocating against... One Spec of skills which is better than the rest. Its inevitable in a pure classless skill game.

Heloo Cookie Cutter build of the month. Battle mage!!!!!

Did you play FFXI long enough to get into grouping at all? Subjobs in FFXI operated at half the level of your currently selected main job. So many combinations were just fruitless that I didn"t ever see subjobs as a fix for set class roles. Your group needed a healer, period. Not someone with a white mage sub to throw level 25 heals with no mp. My favorite part of the system was that you were always advancing your character, no alts etc. Also made your rep a bit more important, since all your playtime was linked to one name. You could probably get Vinen in here for a lot better information as to how the subjob system affected that particular mmorpg.

In addition, I shudder to think how a class system like you are proposing would effect the itemization of your game.

Twobit Whore said:

What you people really want but are too stupid to realize it is a classless skill-based system. Except some of you apparently need the devs to outline every possible combination and slap a title on it for you.

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No. I do not want a classless skill-based system. Classes are useful in that they are a identification shortcut to other players. This is why talent trees are fucked they obfuscate what should be a simple id. Skill-based systems are even worse.

Edit: tym -- yeah I know it operates at half-the level. I recognize you still needed a healer. But I"m saying that if there are no pure healers and that everyone is based off a dual-role archetype also allowing subjobs helps soloability so you don"t have to fuck with the dual-role (which caused ability bleed in VG).

My main point is that balancing for solo and group play fucks things up because inevitably healer-types solo better (for all the obvious reasons). What VG did was to do shitty things like give DPS classes minor healing abilities -- which choad up the attribute bar and are still pretty fucked up. What they should have done is have subjobs. Being a 20/10 (Monk/Disciple) wouldn"t make me a potential healer for a group -- it would allow me to solo much, much better. That"s what I mean by subjobs solve the soloability balancing problem -- which is all I care about for this discussion.

Draegan said:

I PUG a lot in WOW when I want to run 5 mans. If I"m looking for a tank I can look for warriors, palidans or druids. All work fine. Same with healers. I don"t waste hours at all.

Only time you run in to trouble because of spec is when you"re raiding or doing some heroics.

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Baloney, I pug all the time too and you aren"t doing 5 man bosses without the 2 pures easily and you know it. You can get away with non heroic instances if the paladin for example is actually protective with solid gear but so few are. And you"d want that feral druid not the balanced one. But any warrior can still handle the role when he puts on his shield and changes his stance. Maybe a resto shaman could handle some of the lower instances, but on those high end boss fights you want a dam holy priest plain and simple.

Skill based would be preferable to many of us....but they tend to have issues in the balancing and it also tends to get dismissed with the comment "Flavor of the week" and a chuckle.

Personally, I have always felt that was a cop out. A well designed system has built in checks and balances and more of a tree feel than anything. You start down a branch and you are unable to go down some other branches.

But, the devs always talk about people screwing up their characters, too many choices, blah blah blah.

How about someone makes a game with those choices that allows the folks that think they know what they are doing to make those choices themselves....but you also provide templates for those that just want a certain feel. That would allow many among us to pick and choose the minutia while others can have a path shown to them in pretty sparkles. Some folks can cookie cutter and others can pick and choose as they like.

I do believe that you have to have the ability to change your spec though. It really isn"t fun to find out what you picked isn"t what you thought it was going to be. But, you shouldn"t have to start new unless you want to. Let us change who we are and what we do by picking the right talents and gear rather than having to pull up another character. For instance...it wouldn"t really work to have rogue talents and tanking gear, or magic gear.

Then I would actually support the respec cost like in WOW, the travel to a trainer, etc, etc. Make it mean something. At the moment in WOW they should just let you have 2 specs saved and you can switch them while out of combat and out of instances for free.

Maxxius said:

Baloney, I pug all the time too and you aren"t doing 5 man bosses without the 2 pures easily and you know it. You can get away with non heroic instances if the paladin for example is actually protective with solid gear but so few are. And you"d want that feral druid not the balanced one. But any warrior can still handle the role when he puts on his shield and changes his stance. Maybe a holy shaman could handle some of the lower instances, but on those high end boss fights you want a dam holy priest plain an simple.

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Actually it depends a lot on the quality of the player too. You could be 5maning some crap with a shitty prot warrior and have more trouble than if you were doing it with a holy paladin tanking. I know cause I tanked as a holy paladin quite a bit with guildmates, for shards/rep farming and stuff, and it was fine on most encounters, but when I used my hunter in PUGs, I sometimes had to tank with my pet because the prot warrior couldn"t do shit(I guess prot wasn"t really a good spec for 5mans anyway, because of how rage is generated).

This is one of the issues tho, while you can design hybrids who can fill the role of pure classes, if they"re played by retards, it doesn"t help one bit, and I have yet to see a Retard filter on LFG tools. That"s why I think having only hybrids might help a bit, since it wouldn"t matter which class the retard is playing if they"re balanced equally.

Shadowbane had a wicked Class/skill/race/rune system which rocked. You still had some cookie cutter BS going on, but you also had some off the wall viable builds which made you go WTF? Untill you got owned by them.

On the FFXI angle, there were many combinations that were inherently stronger than other combinations of a similar type. You wanted a Ninja/Warrior or Paladin/Warrior for a tank, not a Warrior/anything. They were just better combinations. A Dark Knight/Thief was better damage than a Dark Knight/Warrior. They both had very similar abilities, but certain ones complimented the desired role better. That"s just how the game was designed. Yes, it allowed you tons of flexibility, but there were "great" combinations that quickly became obvious as you leveled. The option to have that second job also was given at a relatively low level (18) and you could change your current job at any time when you hit one of the major cities if you wanted to level your desired subjob before it became available.

Regardless, a skill based system would only be appealing to me if certain armor types and abilities required a certain amount of synergy between certain trees, so that in the end there"s no point in having it be a skill based system in the first place, imo. I like being a distinct class with a distinct role, regardless of whether I perform that role better or worse than other similar styled classes in different situations. But I want a distinct role. If I have the ability to change that role but it also changes the way I"m labeled and the way my avatar is presented, then that"s A-OK too.

And there was a pretty large difference between how the tank classes did their jobs in Vanguard, it was -not- like EQ2 in the slightest.

I think at its most basic it comes down to the ability to tinker. To change, experiment, and play with your character. You need to feel like you actually have some choice in how your character progresses rather than just following the path of every other -insert class-.

Character customization. Be it in the form of what your character can do, to how he looks, to his home, etc, etc. WOW and most other games fail horribly at this right now....your character is essentially a Barbie or Ken doll that you dress up in the cool things you get from the world and your ability to fight is based on those cool things.

That is damn near the extent of customization in these games right now....itemization. That is not in any way shape or form building/growing/customizing a character..that is simply playing dress up. Yes, it can be fun, but its not even hitting 25% of what we can do.

If you strip all warriors of their gear they end up essentially the same. The gear is what really makes them different. We need to have the ability for the character to contain the customization with gear being an extra rather than the gear being the focus and the character being the extra.

I would love to see the gear focus fall away to be replaced by character skills and customization. Rather than questing for that new BP you quest for a new skill. Rather than raiding for that uber gear you raid for skills. Hell, you can even quest and raid for skills that are little more than emotes yet make your character unique.

-shrug- Gear is a great carrot but it becomes the unique snowflake rather than your character. You could delete you character and slap your gear on another of the same class and be exactly the same in these current games. Thats wrong.

The same thing will happen. People will quest for the best set of skills/spells. It really doesn"t matter it will always come down to min/maxers. In some form or another.

It doesn"t come down to min/maxers. They, like high-end raiders, are a small part of the total mix. I"m reminded of the penny-arcade series on pokemon where some kid had an all-pikachu army (or whatever -- I don"t fucking play pokemon. I just like penny-arcade) because "she liked pikachu."

There"s 80% of your player base right there. Just because everyone on this forum is a min/maxer doesn"t mean that everyone is a min/maxer.

Actually it does, because the people who do min/max will dictate the flow of the game. Builds will be planned, guides will be posted. As soon as it is found out that you need X abilities to defeat Y dungeon then only people with X abilities will be defeating dungeon Y. The alternative would be to allow anyone to beat dungeon Y which then allows people with X abilities to utterly decimate your game.

Twobit Whore said:

What you people really want but are too stupid to realize it is a classless skill-based system. Except some of you apparently need the devs to outline every possible combination and slap a title on it for you.

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The irony is, that most will never admit it because they are either still hung up on some half assed implementation of some long dead (or dieing) game that screwed up, ruining the idea for them, or are incapable of creative thought.

***WARNING: RARE RANT INCOMING***

IMO the problem is simply that class based hierarchies are the cause of player imbalance, not the solution. They are also the most significant drain on development time (after actually building the content) due to the need to ?Balance? every zone/encounter/boss around the ?utility? of each one, insuring that none are left behind or made unnecessary. Which, ironically, only becomes necessary because the developer forced the entire player base to chose *ONE* of a handful of their cookie cutter classes to begin with!!

The main reason a customer feels shafted after their class is nerfed, or another?s buffed, is because they where forced to chose one class in the first place and must now re-start from the very beginning if they don?t like it anymore and want to do something different.

They feel neglected by the uncaring developers because the developer is both the reason they are stuck in their class (having been forced to chose one) and the reason they feel shafted versus those who chose right the first time (due to that class being given the proverbial gift).

And no, the problem of balance is not exaggerated by classless skill based systems because all skills are available to all players at all times and thus all players are by default BALANCED. Any unintended mechanics caused by badly designed skills, or poorly implemented content, can be altered without making 90% of the entire player base feel shafted because they where the only one effected, or left out, of the change. In essence after every nerf, or buff, the entire player base remains BALANCED because the change affects everyoneEQUALLY.

In the end, the only reason a customer would chose one set of skills over another is if they WANT to. Thus as a customer they are always playing the game the way THEY WANT TO. And that way is not imbalanced because anyone else in the game can play exactly the same way if THEY WANT TO as well.

In the end, class based hierarchies do not serve the player base and are nothing more then a way for a games producers to MAKE MORE MONEY in the long run. (Note I saidPRODUCERS, as in THE FINANCIERS.)

Why?

Because any time you want to do something different, you need toSTART OVER.

The real ass kicking irony of this all, is that the extra time invested by the developers, making class based hierarchies work, can instead be re-directed in over all variety of content in a non-class based mechanic, and more then make up for the greater amount of content that will be necessary with a game that didn?t make you start over every time you wanted to do something different.

Chew on that a while and see how it sets with ya?

Or just insult me and make yourself feel better. I honestly don?t care. This was a self serving rant anyway?

Twobit Whore said:

Actually it does, because the people who do min/max will dictate the flow of the game. Builds will be planned, guides will be posted. As soon as it is found out that you need X abilities to defeat Y dungeon then only people with X abilities will be defeating dungeon Y. The alternative would be to allow anyone to beat dungeon Y which then allows people with X abilities to utterly decimate your game.

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This post makes Z=Zero sense. If you have designed a dungeon only able to be beaten (or much, much more easily beaten) using a specific ability then you are a shitty designer (and yes I"m thinking of fear ward here).

In any event looking at the 5-man dungeons you"re telling me that a specific ability set (beyond healing/tanking/dps) was required for every dungeon ever? I think we just had the EQ1 discussion how most dungeons could be beat with different group combinations and you didn"t need the Holy Trinity for the most part. That"s what I"m talking about willis.

Edit: Re rant above. That only applies if you can"t shift classes with your main. So if you a job/subjob system that permits you to be any class (though only the abilities of two classes are applied at any one time) even if a class is nerfed you can just switch your main to a different class. You still have all your equipment and etc.

Grinding on mobs at the entrance of a dungeon != beating it. Overlevelling/gearing a dungeon != beating it either.

And I"m not sure why you keep bringing up WoW, but so be it.. but yes, many WoW dungeons require healing and tanking and CC. Without one of those then some of the dungeons are flat-out impossible, or so awkward and time consuming as to not be worth it.

Suggestion: If you allow character transfers, don"t be gay and not let PvE transfer to PvP, or the other way around.

tad10 said:

Edit: Re rant above. That only applies if you can"t shift classes with your main. So if you a job/subjob system that permits you to be any class (though only the abilities of two classes are applied at any one time) even if a class is nerfed you can just switch your main to a different class. You still have all your equipment and etc.

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Ah, you didn"t play FFXI at all it appears. You want main/sub jobs with universal gear? Are we going to have like two stats, Stamina and Killypower? This design idea of yours has more holes than swiss cheese.

Any good multiplayer PVE RPG game will need classes or subsets of skills required to get jobs done, regardless of what those jobs are. Making everyone everything is just stupid. Then it becomes pointless.