Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Why do people keep saying mana mechanics, class mechanics, group mechanics are all broken? They seem to be working fine in an ever increasing MMO market. Just because you"re tired of it doesn"t mean it"s broken.

I have no problem with people switching classes as a game mechanic I guess. It"s the same thing as having an alt but you share equipment and other stuff you collect. Just seems to defeat the purpose of having a connection with your character.

Plorkyeran said:

I really don"t see what the problem with letting players change classes at any time is. Personally, I think being able to take 25 players and having the optimal raid balance for every fight in the game sounds pretty fucking awesome. How is getting rid of people sitting outside of the instance waiting to get swapped in (or sitting in a city LFG because there aren"t any healers or tanks) make a game not "massivly multiplayer"?

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I don"t necessarily agree with it, but there is the idea in MMO design that making things "too easy" leads to boredom of the game and loss of subscription.

The MMO keep-your-subscription carrots range from social interaction (irc), ego-identification, PVP, PVE, leveling, questing, lore, on, and on, and on. Not all carrots apply to all people.

Don"t underestimate how powerful the connection is people share with their characters. The whole "special snowflake" idea is a powerful draw, and the more powerful, unique, etc you make your snowflake the tighter the bind. Letting a character morph, imo, loses some of that.

Ideally if I wrote an MMO and I could figure out a way to make you enjoy the smallest amount of content I can create and have you (re-)use that content for a long period of time, I win. One of the great big content sinks is character leveling, akin to replaying single player games in different difficulty modes or playing as different characters. Throwing out that "sink" is a scary idea for a content dev, especially since its been shown time and time again that people creating alts is a big time sink.

My personal feeling is that somewhere in between is good. I really do like LOTRo"s way of "spec"ing or Tabula Rasa"s "clone" feature, which allows you to switch character configurations for a small amount of money anytime. LOTRo is way, way too easy though and lacks enough carrots at endgame currently. WoW on the other hand has an insanely high amount of carrots at endgame, and a reasonable character reconfiguration (50g respec, create alts). If they would allow 2-3 talent templates and fix up bagspace in WoW to better allow for multiple roles, imo that would be close to an ideal.

And I agree creating 20+ classes is not a good idea, a game works out much, much better if it gives the illusion of simplicity when you start and works to greater and greater complexity as you progress. Unlocking new classes at endgame is fine, but having a character creation screen with 100+ options when you start doesn"t seem like a wise move.

Twobit Whore said:

What evidence do you have to support the claim that "being class based" is the leading criticism of MMOs?

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Allow me to reiterate for clarification?

grimsark said:

It doesn"t change the simple fact that the leading criticism of MMO"s today (that they are nearly all essentially EQ part X) is caused by the implementation of class based leveling mechanics.

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In other words? The leading criticism IS NOT the reason all MMORPG?s today are EQ light? But the class based mechanics that, as a result of being used, force developers to emulate EQ. Leading most people to say the trouble is that most MMORPG?s are EQ part X?

Put simply, people complain about the WRONG THING.

Changing class in town, is no different than logging onto an alt in that same town. Not having to double up on faction grinds, having your characters reputations remain valid across all alts, even to those you do not know very well. The motivation to be capable of toggling you/your guilds friends and characters to meet what"s online for leveling, or small group content is really nice.

I realize probably no one arguing against the idea of the class change has played FFXI. Being max level isn"t the only important aspect to PvE based progression. Gear still doesn"t grown on trees, and "Alt" job/class is still worthless at level cap without the supporting gear. There are a lot of nice things that swapping allows, but trivializing the game or creating a game of a billion warlocks is not one of them. In a game that requires more "forced" grouping than WoW, and has a longer level curve. The class swap is invaluable.

Draegan said:

Why do people keep saying mana mechanics, class mechanics, group mechanics are all broken? They seem to be working fine in an ever increasing MMO market. Just because you"re tired of it doesn"t mean it"s broken.

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Personally, I do not think that class based mechanics are broken. However, they are holding back the evolution of the MMORPG industry. Much like the automobile industries love affair with gasoline is holding up the evolution of personal transportation.

My attempt at drawing such a parallel is also an attempt to capture the frustration people like myself experience when trying to make our points. Much like the REAL PROBLEM with cars today is the internal combustion engine, which forces the manufacturer to make the car around the engine, class based mechanics are the REAL PROBLEM with MMORPG?s today, forcing the developers to make their content around it.

Both are old, inefficient, and obsolete. But not broken.

Think of if this way. You have tank oriented skills that you can use to tank for a group. This leaves over some other skills that you can use while still filling the tank role for versatility (such as some healing/buffing spells to make a kind of paladin). Now, this other guy who has tanking skills uses some DD skills instead (making him into a warrior essentially). Both tank perfectly fine in small group settings as you go, but in the raid game, the guy who uses the warrior type skills pulls ahead, leaving the paladin behind.

Now, the paladin still wants to tank in the raid game. In WoW for example, he would have to reroll a warrior and level it up and regear it out, but in an open skill system, he"d just have to train up the remaining skills to allow him to switch over into a more warrior oriented role, keeping the gear that fits the tank role, etc. and making him happy and able to continue playing without having to restart his whole character career.

How is this a problem? I"m seriously trying to figure it out, I want an honest, straight up answer to it.

You"re just a grumpy old EQ player. They are not old, they are not inefficient and are not obsolete. They are what defines a Fantasy MMO (or any other fantasy based RPG).

Both tank perfectly fine in small group settings as you go, but in the raid game, the guy who uses the warrior type skills pulls ahead, leaving the paladin behind.

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The problem in that scenario isn"t that the paladin can"t be a warrior, it"s that the game favors the warrior over the paladin. Why wouldn"t you adjust the paladin or the content to make the paladin viable as a raid tank instead of just saying "okay, you be all the classes"?

I don"t see any WoW prot paladins griping that they aren"t warriors. They don"t want to be warriors.. they want to be viable as paladins to do the things that warriors do.. such as tank raid mobs.

I"d love to ask that same question of the class designers over at Blizzard, but I doubt they"d answer.

Vatoreus said:

Think of if this way. You have tank oriented skills that you can use to tank for a group. This leaves over some other skills that you can use while still filling the tank role for versatility (such as some healing/buffing spells to make a kind of paladin). Now, this other guy who has tanking skills uses some DD skills instead (making him into a warrior essentially). Both tank perfectly fine in small group settings as you go, but in the raid game, the guy who uses the warrior type skills pulls ahead, leaving the paladin behind.

Now, the paladin still wants to tank in the raid game. In WoW for example, he would have to reroll a warrior and level it up and regear it out, but in an open skill system, he"d just have to train up the remaining skills to allow him to switch over into a more warrior oriented role, keeping the gear that fits the tank role, etc. and making him happy and able to continue playing without having to restart his whole character career.

How is this a problem? I"m seriously trying to figure it out, I want an honest, straight up answer to it.

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Thats a skill based system, which is not a bad system at all. Just different. You start running into how you handle stat allocation as you level up however since a typical Paladin archtype requires more than Str and Stam etc.

One system I played in at one point in my MUD days was pretty interesting that I never saw repeated. The only thing you picked before rerolling stats was your race. Now your race determined how many spell slots and how many skill slots you had. You could learn any skill/spell as long as you had the correct prereqs and enough slots. Worked out pretty well imo.

Draegan said:

You"re just a grumpy old EQ player. They are not old, they are not inefficient and are not obsolete. They are what defines a Fantasy MMO (or any other fantasy based RPG).

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The horse/oxen and plow defined agriculture for hundreds of years too...

grimsark said:

The horse/oxen and plow defined agriculture for hundreds of years too...

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And they still do. Some people may use a motorized ox (tractor) but the basic principles of field plowing are the same.

Twobit Whore said:

And they still do. Some people may use a motorized ox (tractor) but the basic principles of field plowing are the same.

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Then think of skill based mechanics as the tractor of the MMORPG.

Thank you for helping make my point btw.

No, skill based systems would be like using dynamite and lasers to plow fields. Tractors would just be a more refined and advanced class system. You fail at analogies, so let this one die. It isn"t going to work.

what? Twobit, I normally respect your opinion on stuff, but this is just silly. Skill based systems CREATE a more advanced, in-depth class system...

Hasn"t the main criticism of skill based systems been that after a while, certain skill setups emerge as clearly dominant choices, everyone respecs to the same one or two templates, and in the end all you have is what is effectively a "class" system with only a couple classes and no real ability to balance effectively because people will just flock to whatever is currently fotm.

Azrayne said:

Hasn"t the main criticism of skill based systems been that after a while, certain skill setups emerge as clearly dominant choices, everyone respecs to the same one or two templates, and in the end all you have is what is effectively a "class" system with only a couple classes and no real ability to balance effectively because people will just flock to whatever is currently fotm.

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Yup. In the skill based systems I"ve played in (MUDs basically, I never bothered with UO) all you had were the same builds. You still had Healers, Nukers, Meleers, backstabbers etc. Everyone ended up with the same skills, and were essentially the same class except in name.

Everyone has a preference on how they want to play Fantasy MMOs. Some people want to play the archer or the shifty rogue or the up in your face warrior etc. What will happen is people will craft their skills that way. When they come to someone else that plays just like they do but only 10x better then they will ask what skills do you have, and change theirs to match the better person until everyone has the same build.

Same shit happens in a class system environment. If you don"t put restrictions, etc. on a skill based system, you can get into territory where FOTM builds become rampant, but look at EVE for a great example of a skill system, in the way that it is built and the restrictions of skill usage to fill a role. Now, maybe make it a bit more interactive than sitting in the docking bay and switching b/w skills while offline, but it still is a near perfect example of a skill system done right. (I"m not saying it doesn"t have it"s faults fyi)

Azrayne said:

Hasn"t the main criticism of skill based systems been that after a while, certain skill setups emerge as clearly dominant choices, everyone respecs to the same one or two templates, and in the end all you have is what is effectively a "class" system with only a couple classes and no real ability to balance effectively because people will just flock to whatever is currently fotm.

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This is the difference in theory and practice. In theory everyone could train whatever skills they wanted and be whatever they want. In practice everyone settles on a FOTM build and becomes a class.

Skill-based systems invariably drift towards class-based systems by nature, so why wouldn"t you just go ahead and start with a class based system and remove all the headaches associated with it?

Vatoreus said:

Same shit happens in a class system environment. If you don"t put restrictions, etc. on a skill based system, you can get into territory where FOTM builds become rampant, but look at EVE for a great example of a skill system, in the way that it is built and the restrictions of skill usage to fill a role. Now, maybe make it a bit more interactive than sitting in the docking bay and switching b/w skills while offline, but it still is a near perfect example of a skill system done right. (I"m not saying it doesn"t have it"s faults fyi)

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The reason why EVE skill system works in their game is because you can"t actively change your skills or make yourself better. You just have to wait. There are no other options. Which is why most people find EVE boring.