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Are class based systems in MMOs a necessary evil?
sigmaseven0
Posts: 714 Arc User
While lurking the forums, i noticed mention from a few players the dislike of class based systems in MMOs. (see first two quotes)
When i initially heard that CO was going to be a classless game, i was excited, but now after playing the game. I'm not so convinced that the increased freedom was worth it, or good for the game as a whole. I have a few reasons for saying this.
1. There seems to be a significant portion of the FF population that just ended up confused or intimidated by the FF system and end up gimping them selves, or being overwhelmed by the choices and walking away.
2. The free form system and its decreased emphasis on roles leads to a weaker team experience. Especially with players that aren't familiar with each other, the strategy seems to be shoot and pray.
3. We still get just as many (if not more) cookie cutter builds.
4. Balance in MMOs has always been an issue, but with FFs ( especially having FFs and ATs in the same game) balance has become even more difficult, to the point where the devs seem to have given up on balance.
5. See above. With such a wide power gap between the strongest and weakest players, its impossible for the devs to make content with any kind of uniform difficulty or make content that caters to players that want a tougher challenge.
6. Classes reinforce teaming. Teaming leads to making more friends and personal attachments in game. This leads to a tighter and more robust player community and this leads to higher player retention. As smoochan pointed out, the more socially bound you are to a MMO the more likely you are to stick around.
7. CO is a classless game but COX, (a class based game) is still looked at by the general public as being the better super hero game. As chalupaoffury points out, even Cryptic regrets making CO classless.
Now im no expert on MMOs so i could be wrong about this, but in a broader context, i can't think of a single team based sport that would be made better if you eliminated roles. Roles/classes just seem to give team activity structure that cant be obtained any other way.
Are there any good Classless MMOs that have achieved any kind of success? If nothing else, class based systems may just appeal to a broader demographic.
Is it really possible for people to come together and spontaneously organize towards a common goal without some kind of roles restricting who does what?
Are class based systems in MMOs not a necessary evil?
chalupaoffury wrote: »No. I've put thousands into this game. If they made a new one, I wouldn't play it, especially since you know it'd be class based (we've already found out that they regret freeform) and lack all of the character that makes this game good.
cybersoldier1981 wrote: »Mistake #3: Restricting me to a class.
I've never understood this at all, ever. Sure, there's some sense in a specialization tree... but if this were pro wrestling- 1/3 of all of them would do the exact same moves in the exact same way in the exact same pattern. Why can't I have a 'berserker' theme, and use light armor and dual-wield axes? Why can't I be like Gandalf the Grey, and use magic and a longsword? Why shouldn't I be able to be a priest that uses a heavy axe and can use holy magic? Hell- why am I not using a crossbow with ninja magic with some dagger attacks?
You'd think a hero would have developed his own set of skills. Sure, a lot of them should be within a relative spectrum of reasonable logic- but there's no reason you shouldn't be able to have a hero that chose his own path.
There are better games than wow. The problem is, if you want to play those games, you have to say goodbye to all your friends on wow, and go start out at level 1, get to max level, get your gear in order, train up crafting skills, and rebuild your reputation with your new peers.
For someone that has a long friends list and is a member of a successful raiding guild where they get respect for being a good tank/dps/healer, it's hard to just drop that, even if the other game is better in a lot of ways.
When i initially heard that CO was going to be a classless game, i was excited, but now after playing the game. I'm not so convinced that the increased freedom was worth it, or good for the game as a whole. I have a few reasons for saying this.
1. There seems to be a significant portion of the FF population that just ended up confused or intimidated by the FF system and end up gimping them selves, or being overwhelmed by the choices and walking away.
2. The free form system and its decreased emphasis on roles leads to a weaker team experience. Especially with players that aren't familiar with each other, the strategy seems to be shoot and pray.
3. We still get just as many (if not more) cookie cutter builds.
4. Balance in MMOs has always been an issue, but with FFs ( especially having FFs and ATs in the same game) balance has become even more difficult, to the point where the devs seem to have given up on balance.
5. See above. With such a wide power gap between the strongest and weakest players, its impossible for the devs to make content with any kind of uniform difficulty or make content that caters to players that want a tougher challenge.
6. Classes reinforce teaming. Teaming leads to making more friends and personal attachments in game. This leads to a tighter and more robust player community and this leads to higher player retention. As smoochan pointed out, the more socially bound you are to a MMO the more likely you are to stick around.
7. CO is a classless game but COX, (a class based game) is still looked at by the general public as being the better super hero game. As chalupaoffury points out, even Cryptic regrets making CO classless.
Now im no expert on MMOs so i could be wrong about this, but in a broader context, i can't think of a single team based sport that would be made better if you eliminated roles. Roles/classes just seem to give team activity structure that cant be obtained any other way.
Are there any good Classless MMOs that have achieved any kind of success? If nothing else, class based systems may just appeal to a broader demographic.
Is it really possible for people to come together and spontaneously organize towards a common goal without some kind of roles restricting who does what?
Are class based systems in MMOs not a necessary evil?
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Post edited by sigmaseven0 on
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I don't know about all this. Sure, for some it can be overwhelming. But learning this system effectively is part of the game.
Not to be a jerk, but let's be honest- unless you know someone in CO, the 'team experience' tends to be someone with a Radiant Archetype trying to DPS.
I'm not playing this game to judge the originality of others. I could care less if there were entire droves of the game rocking the same build. It's 'Be the hero you want to be', not 'be the hero that is totally different from everything else to appeal to me'.
Not so much. But hey, that's the problem of the devs... not a valid reason to take away or deny a feature of the game.
Let me ask you this: Play a DPS toon on a Class-Based MMORPG. Go try to find a raid. Let me know in a month how well that worked out for you. The problem with it is that certain types are a 'dime a dozen'. No Healer? Screwed. DPS? Got one already. Tank? Something hit me, because you suck at tank.
It was because there was more content, more developer attention, better story, so on and so forth.
But I don't wish for my entire game experience to rely on 'team'. I want to solo content. Yes, I want to be social- but I do not want to have to spam zone chat for someone to help me.
The problem isn't the lack of 'classes', it's the absence or 'roles'. I'm fine with a 'role', but being forced to use X sword guy that uses Y attacks and has Z stats is idiotic. I find being forced to have a class is downright boring. Why can't I be a ranged DPS that uses lasers, while by buddy uses machine guns? Why can't I have a tank that uses martial arts, while yours uses a sword?
Classes also suck mainly because, well... for me it's two reasons:
I dislike the confinement of cookie-cutter character abilities. I want to play a role, not be handed a game token. Classes give me a game token.
And they are ALWAYS. THE. SAME.
What would be better? Instead of complete freeform, why not have restrictions to pull abilities from within your own 'skill box'? Say you have to use powers within Tech, Magic, Martial Arts, Etc. THAT would be a bit more interesting, and you play a ROLE.
Because I'm sorry, CO's Archetypes are kind of boring and also are quite imbalanced.
Our dev team is a shadow of a hallow shell of its former team and now lacks the innovation, love and attention of those who initially developed the system.
Its like what happened to D&D from 3.5 to 4th. Its no longer the same game.
I certainly hope CO never turns into that. Its the only reason I continue to play this game. Choose what powers I want and how I look at all times.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
There should be choices that a player can make but they should adhere to a more templated format. For instance, every build should be required to have a energy builder, block enhancer, toggle form, and passive form.
Then regulate the way self buffs work (bubbles, self heals, active buffs, dodge buffs,damage buffs etc). One recommendation I offered was allowing only up to two Active powers per build.
Role: Healer, Support, Ranged DPS, Tank, etc.
So, you could say, be a 'Munitions' character and play either a 'Tank' role or a 'DPS' role. It's about HOW you're playing with a role, not so much WHAT it is.
I would say that the portion of the population that became confused or intimidated probably ended up asking for help, which they were quickly and eagerly provided. You literally can't name a power in this game without ten people showing up to explain to you how it works and what other powers work well with it.
The number of people who actually gave up and walked away would probably be very small... if it existed at all.
2. I would disagree. I wouldn't say that it leads to a weaker team experience at all. On the one hand, it has the benefit of making the team experience optional; when your character can fulfill all the needs of all roles, then you have the option of soloing, something I detested being unable to do in other games.
Furthermore, the team experience provided by trinity games has one big massive flaw: you NEED all the roles. Have you ever spent hours trying to find a healer for your group...and you never ended up finding one so the group just disbanded and you basically wasted all that time? Here, that doesn't happen.
The other downside to trinity is the snobbery that comes along with playing the less-played classes. In other games I've grouped with so many healers that thought they were basically in charge of everyone around them simply because they had decided to play a healer and were a rare commodity. If you happened to be a stellar tank in one of those games and had a friends list full of healers who were falling all over themselves to group with you, it wasn't a big problem. However, for everyone else you basically had to put up with them, give in to their demands, and have a less enjoyable experience because of it.
Trinity creates teamwork in the same way that inflated numbers create challenge; it does so artificially. Champions Online provides a more dynamic system where you are not forced into a particular role, and teamwork means something different for each team.
3. It's hard to say that we have more cookie cutter builds here than a trinity game would... considering that in a trinity game, every last player is essentially a cookie cutter class.
4&5. The only reason balance became more difficult here, and the only reason there was such a wide power gap to create those balance problems, is because a class-based system was added to the game. In this case, the class based system is directly responsible for the problem, and removing it would go a long way to solve those problems. Converting the game to use only the class based system would remove a lot of the things that people like about this game, and violently shove it toward just being another boring clone of that other game. Further, a class-based system simply doesn't fit the genre.
6. Like I stated in 2, classes only reinforce teaming artificially; people don't want to team, they have to. This actually restricts the types of players that can enjoy your game by essentially saying that anyone who doesn't want to have to depend on other people cannot make progress. Here, teaming is not required, but people continue to do it anyway. Rather than teaming forcing players to build a community, it happens the other way around; players form a community, and then they team up with that community.
This has one important benefit: you're not forced to tolerate a group full of people you dislike. Having spent several years as a big bad raider kid, I can tell you that one of the most irritating aspects of the class system is that it forces you to deal with people who irritate the hell out of you. Further, they know you have to deal with them, meaning they have no reason to be polite.
One thing I defenitely enjoy about CO is that I can come and go as I please. If a SG I'm in turns out to have a bunch of people who irritate me, then I can leave and it's no big deal. If I did that in that other game, it's a big deal, a lot of people are going to give me crap over it, and I need to find my way into another group and deal with their crap if I want to get back to the level of progress I was at. Boo.
7. When you say something like "the general public" I'm forced to dismiss the statement outright. Certain individuals at cryptic may or may not regret freeform (remember, cryptic is not a person, but a company), but that doesn't change the fact that it defines this game and causes a lot of the good things that many people enjoy about playing here.
So no, class based systems are not a necessary evil. They are not required for a balanced game, and arguments could be made that they actually cause balance problems of their own. All they are is familiar territory; that unexplored territory has many gold mines just waiting to be discovered, and only the brave explorers are the ones that will be able to cash in.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Ok, then i would amend my statement to say that "roles" are necessary, not "classes".
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
The primary motivation for going to class-based seems to be ease of balance and, to be honest, World of ********; everyone wants to duplicate that success. I doubt we'll ever see a big-budget, classless MMO again; like most games these days, the real innovation is going to have to come from indie developers. Though I don't know how one would create an indie MMO...
The way i see it. How roles are implemented exist on a spectrum. Even CO technically has roles. CO is on one end of the spectrum, something like WOW is on the other end.
I don't think having roles (if implemented with finesse) mean you have to team. Hell even COX was solo-able and had more structured roles.
I also disagree that if you have a role based system then you need ALL the roles. Again, i point to COX as an example.
I understand the importance of soloing in a MMO, but the importance of teaming also cannot be denied. I don't want to force any one into teaming, but better defined roles make teaming more structured and rewarding. I believe there is a middle ground where roles are defined enough to give teaming structure while flexible enough to allow mixed teams and soloing.
Also you statement about coming and going as you please, has pros and cons. one of the cons. In addition to your words that i quoted in the OP, I would like to point out that more people are going than coming. Again CO is on the far end of the spectrum. the teaming in this game is weak. Alerts also discourage social interaction, player retention is in the gutter. I personally would rather be stuck with a game and have it thrive than have the "come n go" convenience and be trying to get a kick starter just to get game updates.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
I cant really argue with this. Do people even still buy ATs? I wouldn't be surprised if they fractured the player base more than they generated income.
I personally wouldn't have a problem with giving silvers FF but i suspect that some LTSers would get but hurt about it.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Ultima Online was already mentioned, and oh those were the days - it actually felt like a significant portion of people played just to have fun, when they had time for fun. I can't help feel that had something to do with the lack of pressure to have the best build for one's class, which seems to be all that matters to most people in class-based MMOs.
Also, considering that most people I know who used to play and love UO and wouldn't touch any current MMO with a stick are female, I'd say class-based is the greatest evil there is, because it seems to cater specifically to a male geek audience (you know, like that guy who always sets his alarm clock so he won't miss his raid in World of Egowank - we all know them, and they're always actually guys).
The only thing that makes classes "necessary" is the fact that video game companies are still years away from figuring out how to really target the other half of humanity, methinks.
Its not that class-less can't be balanced but rather that its harder/more time consuming to do so.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I think adding ATs to Freeform is a far more manageable transition than adding "freeform" builds to a strict trinity game. I speak from experience, having abandoned my Blood-spec DPS Death Knight after too many trinity kiddies saw my plate armor and two-hander and cried in a loud voice "Y U NO TANK?!?!"* Never mind that we were the best Katana/Regen scrappers Paragon City never met, and we were having a blast. Blizzard saw us as tall nails that needed to be hammered down, so in a pre-Cata patch, Blood became the designated DK Tank tree, and it sucked to be us for stocking up on Strength gear instead of Stamina. Death Knights were created to add a more flexible Hero Class, and they got shouted down to Warriors with runes instead of a rage bar and a skull fetish.
*: Sanitized for your protection. Out-DPS an Arms Warrior with a Blood DK in a raid, and you'd hear things that would stun Quentin Tarantino.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
This is an unfair blame placing. Classless isn't harder to balance. But it is harder for the average person (note I did not say average gamer) to understand. It is much harder for the average player to optimize. And it leads to exactly what happened in CO, a massive glut of "tankmages" that are completely self-sufficient, and can damage, tank, and heal/debuff all at once. Developers have been doing it for decades and doing it rather well. in the pen and paper world, look at GURPS or hell even D&D toyed with it back in the Skills and Powers version of second edition.
From a very high level, one way of looking at it is that there are two sides to game design: Game-ist and Simulation-ist. Very often there is a difference between what players ask for and what they will enjoy. Most players ask for simulation-ist games, but actually prefer the experience of game-ist implementations.
A case in point is the way many games (not just Cryptic games, even WoW does this with most of their indoor maps, and it goes way back into the early '80s in single player games) make indoor maps into a windy-twisty cavern instead of a realistic lived in, worked in space. If all indoor maps in CO were realistic, they'd be tiny, cramped, have lots of stairs and doors, and we'd spend a huge amount of time backtracking and running in circles. Plus the boss fight would happen out of sequence 80-90% of the time. such as before you rescue all the prisoners or whatever. As much as it's silly, it's far more convenient to walk in a line, accomplishing certain tasks along the way, then fighting the boss at the end. It fits the narrative, and works from a game perspective, but is a terrible simulation of an office or warehouse.
The same is true of character design. Yes in the real world there's nothing stopping someone from using both swords and guns and martial arts. In a game, it really helps to focus. Some people like the simulation, some like the artificial limits of a game. Many simulation-styles will try to place limits, like you can learn both guns and swords but never be as good with either as someone who focused. Rune Scape actually lets you max out everything, literally EVERYTHING. When I was playing there were three characters who had done so, had all magic maxxed, all crafting maxxed, and all melee combat maxxed. And some people like that because there's not just a "jack of all trades master of none" there's also such a thing as a "renaissance man" who is a master of all trades.
But going game-ist makes it more casual friendly. Again, as a case in point, STO. Because of how some changes to ship and power builds were implemented, currently you can "tankmage" almost anything. Since, just like champions, damage is the most important factor, there's been a massive drift to everyone playing high-damage characters with a slew of self heals.
whether or not this is good is a matter of opinion. But the more freedom you give, the more the experienced player base will drift into "solo god mode". Then they start screaming for harder and harder challenges. Meanwhile the new playerbase does get lost and thinks the game is too hard because they're "doing it wrong" by playing a pure tank or pure damage or pure support.
Tools to support teaming solve the new player problem. Rarely do games actually challenge the experienced players because then there's a counter backlash of "this is too hard". All of which opens up the reward vs time vs risk arguments which are a whole other messy can of worms. Heh.
Long-story short (too late): It's not just the dev's fault. Players are complicated, communities have different wants and needs. And there are strengths and weaknesses to both options which most development teams do think about before implementing.
Until another game comes along that lets me be a 30-foot tall naked battle-bunny with a giant sword that makes things explode in green flame... I will have to say that Freeform can be found on games going back over 20 years, but a character generator with the power of Champions I've only seen three times:
1. City of Heroes
2. Champions Online
3. All Points Bulletin
That said, killing freeform would be a really bad idea. Incentivising Archetypes on the other hand, is not at all a bad idea. It just needs to be done carefully. So absolutely, give it the TLC.
To be clear, i would never advocate for removing the FF system. Its too much of COs identity, and i dont think the community could withstand that kind of change. I just think the freedom of this system may have come at too high a price.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
As for classes, and the Trinity - there's one other drawback to that. Once a number of players get used to having their Trinity groups, it becomes difficult to start learning. The incident that finally and forever drove the last nail into the coffin of any interest I had in WoW came when my Hunter was sent on a mission into an old castle to gather the materials to make a new weapon. He was 14th lvl; the item was appropropriate for that level; the mission was designated for that level. But the castle was filled with higher-level undead creatures. Apparently, this was done to "encourage" (read: make mandatory) teaming. I managed to get into a team - and the minute, I mean the same moment, that one of the players learned I wasn't already highly experienced at playing that class in a group, I was booted. Unceremoniously and with neither pity nor apology, I found myself off the team and outside the instance.
I have no wish whatsoever to see that experience repeat itself here. If I team with other characters, I want my toon to do what it does best, and I don't want other people to throw me out because I didn't do it the "right" way. And if one day that is implemented here, that's when I throw in the towel on this whole "online gaming" thing and settle in with my XBox and an old copy of Fable II.
Note that this does not preclude roles per se; Blackwing and 404 will stand off and attack the enemy with bouncing boomerangs for as long as practical, while more tanklike teammates charge in and get in the enemy's face, for instance. When I've played an Inventor, my bots spent much of their time healing the other players while I shot the bad guy from a distance with one of my ray guns. (I've given Inventors up until I hear that the pet-AI issues have been resolved - it's annoying to watch an Attack Toy charge up to a bad guy, then stand there staring quizzically, as if puzzled about what it was supposed to do next.) And of course when I'm playing Colonel Eagle, I'm right up there in the baddies' grills, giving them a taste of good old-fashioned American justice.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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SWG pretty much ruined me for most MMOs and when it burned with the NGE I simply gave up on MMOs for a long time. Sampling a few, but never being happy with any of them.
CO really changed that. Freefrom was everything I missed from SWG. I could play what I wanted, how I wanted, without silly restrictions. To me, this level of freedom is the heart and soul of a game. But I prefer sand box games to theme parks. Id much rather do what I want then be lead down a path.
To me, an MMO should be simply a world we get to play, explore, and adventure in. The world should support creativity not restrict it. If an MMO was like a salad bar. Then having ridged classes would be like a salad bar, that only offers premixed bowls. Rather then simply an open selection of ingredients.
It's also easier to make characters that are critically flawed in a classless game. 'Oh, hey, I put 0 points into defense which turns out to be critical. I'll be in back until you guys powerlevel me some points to stop being gimpboy.)
That said, I always thought Cryptic dropped the ball by not making the system more Champions -- I think defining some specific templates for how powers work (burst, single target ranged attack) with cool extras (effect: stun, radiation dot, sickness, weakness) would have permitted a very open model for adding new 'types' and powersets, and been (IMO) easier to balance.
By having peculiar and specific powers all over the place it seems to me that they got the worst of both worlds.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
But it's way easier.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Not going to touch on what was covered already, so I'll just add that the one link in the trinity that needs to break for a classless system to work is the healer. If it doesn't break, the game risks degenerating into an attrition battle of incoming heals vs. incoming damage.
Without heals, it becomes a lot easier to design party content in a classless system - just create situations where it is impossible for one character to kite, stunlock or burst down everything by themselves. Then teamwork will naturally come in, and there can be a variety of ways for any kind of build to contribute in this situation.
Maybe give some form of limited healing like healing items or giving every character a healing power slot with a long cooldown and no way to Nanoswarm/Int stack out of it, and fast passive regen to full when out of combat if there is a need to increase the time it takes to run team content, i.e. make players die slower.
But otherwise, in a high customization game, if heals are not kept in check, this kind of problem will show up.
My own personal favorite option is to remove all in-combat healing from the game completely. Let the devs find a way to challenge us that doesn't involve making a boss with billions of hit points that one-shots tank-style characters if they don't have a fountain of instant health pouring in every second.
I'm thinking say STO's Mine Trap ground event. That mission would be SO MUCH BETTER for champions that it is for STO. Your goal is to save 120 people from an army of vampires by acting as a team.
Only a tiny number of the vampires involved actually have bosslike stats because it's not about the player staying alive, its about the players SAVING HELPLESS PEOPLE. You know, acting like heroes.
Seriously, read the guide to the mission Any group of ATs could rock this thing in Champions and it's a challenge not because a nasty horrid boss will kill you, but because a slew of minions will kill the farmer or the merchant if you're not fast enough or didn't strap enough reinforcements over the door to his house.
Sure it's easier to have healing, but I've done it in a pug with 5 tactical officers (no healing at all for any of us, tactical officers are basically munitions ranged damage types) and we managed to save 22 out of a potential 31 for our team.
Edited your post for my correction.. this is an important distinction.
Healing self does.
It may seem overwhelming at first but that's where the learning process begins. You don't get to understand power mechanics and the concept of synergies between powers on the spot. Things are learned step by step. Even with a new player's first toon hitting level 40, they get a free retcon token for them to redo things using a clean slate when they've realized that they could improve the build in some ways. Even at low to mid levels, they're given every opportunity to learn and undo individual power choices.
The powerhouse is also there to let the player experiment with and fine tune their power choices, using all the time in the world. There's every opportunity for the player to better themself and improve. Other games would have you forced to reroll a character if you screwed up your power / ability choices. The very idea of starting from scratch after spending the time and effort in getting a character to max level itself can be even more overwhelming.
What you see as decreased emphasis on roles, I see as flexibility. The player can opt to be multi-functional instead of being strictly limited to classic trinity roles. Players can be self-sufficient instead of always relying on others to carry them in certain areas.
I don't see how a freeform system makes players rely on "shoot and pray" strategies. Anyone who's ever played the game extensively will know that "shoot and pray" doesn't always work. If anything, I see AT players resorting to more "shoot and pray" tactics because they're more limited at what they can do compared to FF players.
Set classes could be considered cookie-cutter anyway when players have distinguised the good power / ability choices from the bad, so I don't see why this is an issue.
Which is why the devs made different difficulty levels to cater for different player builds and proficiency, only that they've implemented it poorly.
Balance is definitely much bigger issue in this game that perhaps other games using the traditional trinity, but at this point I've accepted that achieving some sort of golden balance for this game is near to impossible, since there are too many variables that would make an "overpowered" build, and the easiest thing to do is to nerf a single power that's part of that build. That's obviously the wrong way to go about it.
If we're going to enjoy all the benefits that the FF system gives, then we're going to have to accept that there's never going to be any true balance.
I don't see this as a strong argument. There are definitely various factors that give incentive to teaming. That problem with CO isn't because of people using freeform, but because teaming is pointless for most of the current content and there's no reward for teaming, other than the social factor.
If the argument is that classes reinforce teaming because a trinity system forces players of different classes to be dependent on each other, many times have I played such games where players come together in a team for the sole benefit of everyone getting a certain quest or mission done, to get the reward they want. It's just business as usual. The social-bonding aspect of it is purely voluntary.
That's really opinion. There are things in CO that I felt have been done better than in CoX. I think you'll find enough people having come to CO because of the concept of not being restricted to fixed classes and because they're sick of that rigidness.
I don't see CoX having classes being the hallmark feature of a better game. There are many factors involved that contribute to the opinion that it's a better game, not just one.
If the devs had created this sort of web from the get-go, they could balance and adjust things as needed.
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Then might as well stop calling it freeform and get rid of "be the hero you want to be".
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Did we just agree on something?
Well, to a degree it did. It's still a level of freedom and customization that's not commonly found in MMOs. There have been more than enough character concepts I have been able to put from idea into actual implementation using the system with minimal amount of compromise.
Regarding structure and limitation, aren't the tier system, the restriction to one passive only and limited number of power selections there for a reason?
It happens more than you might think.
And I can generally create the hero I want to be in class based games. I agree completely that CO's freeform system makes it easier than most, but my point is that there was never any intention for CO's system to truly encompass what is really a marketing phrase.
1) A character can have more than one passive.
2) The tier system merely means that, in many (if not most) cases, you have lower tier powers that don't see much use because they exist solely to qualify the build for a higher tier power that does most if not all of the character's work.
3) The basic mechanics of the game and its encounters are such that the number of power selections is not really a limiting factor in the sense that I was referring to. When it only takes 4-6 powers to be a powerhouse build, being limited to 14 means little.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
This was one thing I really think the new telepathy did right, tiering wise. It had the Tier 0 power (mind break) be available immediately, and the other powers of the set had their own effects to buff Mind Break. At Tier 1 you could use Shadow of doubt to add a debuff to enemy damage; at Tier 2 you could use Mental Leech to get an PBAoE Heal; and at Tier 3 you could debuff the enemies defenses. Each Tier more valuable than the last.
This would be like having Shatter first on an Ice build.. but you have to pick powers that will create (ice) structures for the shatter to be of MOST use to you. Or having Force Eruption at Tier 0 and picking powers that generate bubbles. Or having Dragon's Wrath at tier zero and having the other cuts somehow make it work better. The cast and consume model makes power choices more expensive (taking 4 powers to get the maximum effect instead of one), but not mandatory.
If more of the tiering system worked in this way (Something Gentleman Crush showed a lot of interest in) the tiers would be worked to encourage synergy without diminishing choices.
"Truly encompass" how? By designing and programming a system that allow players to tailor-make their powers into godly ones, create costumes and appearances that are so realistic that they can be life-like representions of players, by using a customization system so state-of-the-art that it'd probably too expensive for any MMO developer or publisher to bother with?
The marketing phrase delivered, to a degree, and also with a certain valid context.
At any one time. I should have been more specific.
I'm not sure I agree with this. Up to this day all of my toons have a use for the lower tier powers even at end game, the potency of those powers made better with the help of higer tier buffs. If I opted to use a higher power exclusively then I'd expect my overall performance to drop. In fact, I have a toon using a tier 0 blast as her primary attack and overall the build has been very successful.
The point of the tier system disallows players to cherry-pick from the full selection for each powerset from the get-go. That's the kind of limitation and structure I was refering to.
That really depends on how one views "powerhouse" builds.
If you were this role, you had to have this class, this stats, this specs etc. NO
The there was the queues, "looking for tank, looking for healer. "
Then one of the Dps people starts complaining that the tank isn't any good because they aggroed a group while the Tank was busy.
The Healer isn't any good because they didn't heal the person who charges whole groups NOWHERE near the rest of the party.
I prefer this system, there is no "you must do this" you have to learn how to handle being in groups with different role combinations. Besides, most of the game is made to be soloable. Its only ON Alerts that made a lot of teamups. I'm still levelling with missions by myself. I Don't need other people unless it is a specific 5 person mission.
Then the fun teamups;
like 2 minute drill with 5 ranged dps. Everyone runs up and waits for the tank... there is none. So one person attacks , becomes the tank and people try to stop mobs from killing them.
or worse with 3 tanks, 1 healer and 1 dps. stuff all damage from 4 people. boy was that a close one.
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I am not a huge fan of tier systems (with the exception of perhaps an "ultimate" power). I really do prefer the idea of each power being inherently desirable in its own right while a broad selection of synergistic interactions between powers exist within the system. I don't dislike tier based selection, just prefer other options. Even so I do feel that what you have described above is superior to much (most ?) of what we currently have in game.
My three favorite superhero power concepts center around Archery, Telepathy, and Ice. All of them would be well served by a system such as you describe.
It is not possible for me to build a pure Archery toon that has the ability to deliver as much DPS as is possible with other options for example. My main would need access to at least eighteen powers to encompass his concept (anything beyond the first few would be very redundant but still necessary to fully represent the concept). One cannot build around the ability to wield dual blades and throw them causing fire damage. I'll not go further because, quite simply, the phrase is more accurately, "you might be able to build the hero you desire," or, "be the hero you want to be as long as your concept falls within the following limits..."
Again, I think that CO goes much further than most, nearly all really, other games for build customization. All I am saying is that using the, "be the hero you want to be," marketing phrase to support a position, one way or the other, is a bit odd when the phrase itself is hyperbole (no more so than any other advertisingl ine really, but still). If the unspoken portion of the phrase is, "within the following limits," then reorganizing those limits is not a violation of the phrase (for what its worth I feel that reorganizing the limitations to make choices a bit more meaningful is a better way to go than to try shoehorning the game into a hard class based system).
This is not criticism of the system, or Cryptic. I am merely pointing out that, "be the hero you want to be," has never been completely accurate nor intended to be all encompassing.
Understood, but using the system as designed, one passive at a time, pretty much covers the bases anyway. Either the opposition is insufficiently tough to stand up to your DPS with an offensive passive, or it isnt (a quick button press to switch to your defensive passive build when facing something that stands up to your offensive passive DPS set up for more than a second or two is all it takes to get the benefits of both passives). Not having the ability to run two passives at once is not much of a limitation if such just isnt necessary (or even particularly useful).
Factor in the defensive benefits of some of the offensive (or support) passives and the, "limitation," to one passive is again shown to be just not much of a limitation.
My apologies if I didn't make it clear that I did not mean that NO lower tier attacks are useful. Some few very much are. Many, arguably most, are not.
I get that a tier based power selection system is supposed to prevent cherry picking the most powerful options and such, but when you have many more selections than are needed for a pretty high performance build (note that my main, mentioned as needing eighteen powers above has never been a high performance build) the purpose of a tier based system is fairly well circumvented.
Yeah I guess it does. Being able to survive encounters above your level/intended for a team, while quickly dispatching opponents is my definition. Others may have higher standards for performance than I so they might set the bar even higher (soloing cosmics, etc).
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I assume you didnt read the whole thread. I already addressed this sentiment in post #11. There is no need to think in such polerized terms.
" I believe there is a middle ground where roles are defined enough to give teaming structure while flexible enough to allow mixed teams and soloing."
No offense but it often seems like MMO players have an unpleasant experience with this or that and then scream "NEVER AGAIN" (paraphrase) without considering that the flaw may be in the dev implementation and not in the system it self.
WOW is a very old game and isnt a good example of today's advances in game design. Again. I played COX for years and its role system and i rarely experienced the problems you describe. Hell, i played the most hated/arguably unteam-friendly AT in the game as my main (stalker) and i still ran STFs and such without SG backing. Keep in mind COX is an old game too.
Roles in MMOs don't universally cause the problems you describe, they just can cause them depending on implementation. Too much of anything can cause problems. The key here is moderation.
2. Ive seen this happen recently.... in CO doing comic series missions so the point is moot. In ANY MMO, if some one is running around like Leroy Jenkins its going to cause serious problems, arguments, team breakups.
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I?ll toss this in as a little exercise for you guys. Did you know that the original CoH/V was intended to be classless? If you can find it, watch the original release video from Cryptic. Along with a lot of villain groups that never saw the light of day in Paragon City, you will see a brief section on character creation. In that section they scroll through the powers you can pick. It looks to me like you can pick any combination of powers that you want to play.
The meaning is that it looks like Cryptic (Jack E. specifically) wanted to build a classless game way back then. And when they got the chance to do this one they dusted that off and tried to do it again.
Also be aware that this was originally supposed to be the Marvel MMO. But Marvel pulled out (I?ll leave speculation up to you) and Cryptic had to scramble to get a known license to fill in (relatively) late in development. So all you folks that say you get no love from Cryptic should understand that this game was pushed out and not really close to what they originally wanted. So I?m not surprised that they treat it so shabbily and focus on ?big? names like Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons.
I have tanked with ranged dps(no, that wasn't kiting them around, just standing and attacking and healing and healing etc) and support because no one else could hold aggro and survive(I'm surprised the support survived). That was their build as well the what they were made for.
I have healed with a ranged dps- amazing what you can do with high ego and lifedrain.
NO, roles are not required. Learning to deal with varying things is required.
Roles means you learn one thing then expect others to do things for you. I don't, they will be doing what they want to do, which is why I thank Tanks(or whoever is doing it) for keeping bosses facing away from the party or whoever is healing poeple, regardless of what they are for doing so.
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I mean for god sakes, at least make us to switch builds or you know... have a defensive passive to tank.
Hell ive done similar things, not long ago i was on my night warrior build tanking Al Qipoth and after i was done someone sent me a tell and friend invite like "id have you tank for my team any day" O_o.
I'm fine with some builds being flexible, but you should at least have to make some considerations in your build for it. If you want to DPS and Tank on the same toon, fine, you shouldn't be able to do them both at the same time.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Actually, many offensive passives are designed pokemon-style, I.e. Some attacks are Not Very Effective on them and some are Super Effective! Imo it's silly for an MMO, but it does mean the best tank for a specific boss could very well be an offensive passive user with a damage type advantage that's built like a tank
Prime example: Shadow Strike
In PvE, Sneak makes you invisible to most regular mobs and Shadow Strike can one-hit early bosses and severly weaken even later ones.
In alerts though, the mobs can see through Stealth and the bosses are merely tickled by a Shadow Strike. Same goes for "endgame" lairs.
In PvP, Shadow Strike can one-hit your opponent. However, Stealth is easily countered with a PBAoE power.
It does matter due to the perception of inequity. Look at the Diablo 3 forums. People compllllain about balance even though the game is primarily PvE. If a class or build has a distinct advantage when farming, players of other classes feel disadvantaged because they cannot advance at the same rate due to systemic failures beyond their control.
In an MMO setting, it can be worse because of elitism. E.g. I am looking for a DPS character. I see a character with AoED, Gas Pellets and dinosaurs, and an Archery character. Who do I pick to maximize DPS? Who will feel cheated for wasting time on a character that gets outpersomed in their intended role?
What do you think would happen if the halo devs "said "**** it, let the shot gun 1 shot every thing in the single player campaign"?
Devil May Cry, Deus EX, Mass Effect, Sim City and more would be ruined if the devs used your philosophy.
Its not even about comparing e-peen in MMOs, balance is an important part of all video game design.
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1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
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If you feel that you're outperforming everything, simply quit making freeform toons, and restrict yourself to using ATs. Delete all of the freeform toons you have.
If you want to start pushing for CO to strictly have a class-based system for the sake of "balance", put it into practice yourself first.
Leave the rest of us, whom because of the flexibility that the freeform system see it as the reason to play the game in the first place, enjoy it for what it is.
If you enjoy the FF system on some level and continue speaking against it while continuing to push for a class-based ONLY system, that's just double-standards.
Please show me a build with which a player is able to one-shot everything in this game.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.