People vote with their feet (so to speak)

bonfire01

A lot of poeple have been posting here and in general that both types are fighter (GF and GWF) are weak compared to other classes and unwelcome in high end content. Other people have posted that they are actually fine/good, they work great in high end content and it's probably something with the person complaining and they need to learn to play etc.

I tend to find that in MMOs the easiest way to see the relative strengths of classes is with population. Some people play classes because they like the idea of them or want to RP that class but a lot of ppl will go for whichever class is strongest/easiest and most useful at high level (since no-one likes waiting ages for groups on a weak class).

Since levelling is so quick and painless in this game I figured people would gravitate toward strong classes and away from weak ones pretty quickly so for the last week i've been doing /who 60 a few times a day and counting the number of each class. /who's are unsorted (so they aren't say alphabetical so i'm not getting the same 100 ppl pop up every time) so, over a decent period you should get an idea of relative numbers of ppl in each class at 60.

Results to nearest % are....

Control Wizard 28%
Trickster Rogue 26%
Divine Cleric 25%
Guardian Fighter 11%
Great Weapon Fighter 10%

It's not a perfect way to look at population but it's good enough to say that fighters are bloody unpopular and IMO it's because almost everyone sees them as weaker or less useful than the other classes.

josierevisited

bonfire01 wrote: »

A lot of poeple have been posting here and in general that both types are fighter (GF and GWF) are weak compared to other classes and unwelcome in high end content. Other people have posted that they are actually fine/good, they work great in high end content and it's probably something with the person complaining and they need to learn to play etc.

I tend to find that in MMOs the easiest way to see the relative strengths of classes is with population. Some people play classes because they like the idea of them or want to RP that class but a lot of ppl will go for whichever class is strongest/easiest and most useful at high level (since no-one likes waiting ages for groups on a weak class).

Since levelling is so quick and painless in this game I figured people would gravitate toward strong classes and away from weak ones pretty quickly so for the last week i've been doing /who 60 a few times a day and counting the number of each class. /who's are unsorted (so they aren't say alphabetical so i'm not getting the same 100 ppl pop up every time) so, over a decent period you should get an idea of relative numbers of ppl in each class at 60.

Results to nearest % are....

Control Wizard 28%
Trickster Rogue 26%
Divine Cleric 25%
Guardian Fighter 11%
Great Weapon Fighter 10%

It's not a perfect way to look at population but it's good enough to say that fighters are bloody unpopular and IMO it's because almost everyone sees them as weaker or less useful than the other classes.

Maybe, but the numbers for guardian fighter could also be because there's always fewer tanks as compared to healers and especially DPS. Those numbers don't seem all that off to me. Even in huge population games the number of tanks is always lower even when there are several classes that can fill the role.

I'm not saying that GF is perfect because frankly, I think it's about the worst tank class I've ever played (if it can even be called a tank), but the numbers aren't telling the whole story.

bonfire01

There aren't several classes that can fill that role though (technically zero tanking classes I guess but that's another issue). In most games Tank numbers are fairly similar to healer numbers, often slightly less because of the way raids are put together but not the best part of 2.5:1. Also you have 5 classes and a grouping system of 5 players at the moment. There should be much closer balance.

If the game was put together properly then the optimal group would be a tank, a healer and 3DPS. If you're not making that the best mix then you certainly NEED to have it so any mix of classes works well, not that 2 classes are generally excluded because life is easier without them.

The fact CWs are nearly 3 times as popular as GWFs is also seriously telling. GWFs aren't tanks, they are meant to be DPS which does a bit less dmg but requires less healing I guess but they do a metric ton less damage, need a bit less healing and have bugger all utility compared to a CW.

Since GF and GWF don't fill the same role as each other (at least in theory) their numbers combined shouldn't be less than the next least popular class...

arskaaa

I wanted play GWM but its so slow and damage is HAMSTER.
rolled to rogue and holy ****! dps is amazing!

Hope GWM get buffed soon.

noroblad

Or you could look at it this way... fighters make up 1/4 of the population in a world with (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage). This may or may not be a valid point but surely the fact that fighters are split into 2 classes (rather than 2 builds for one class) has an effect.

while your sample is too small to generalize, it debunks the "TR is OP and most played" theory.

perfectindigo

Interesting; thanks for sharing. The results are a bit skewed because it includes people who solo and never group. So, whichever class is most popular for solo is going to be overrepresented in /who if you're trying to investigate group composition.

Healers and tanks are usually underrepresented in MMOs. However, GWFs are tied in popularity with GFs. This suggests GWFs are the most broken class, followed by GFs.

DCs seem overrepresented for healers, so either Neverwinter figured out how to make healers fun in a way that no other MMO has, or DCs are OP. Or it's the preferred solo class.

I'm not sure about CWs relative numbers. Maybe they're fine. DPS like TRs are always popular.

etherealj

noroblad wrote: »

Or you could look at it this way... fighters make up 1/4 of the population in a world with (fighter, cleric, rogue, mage). This may or may not be a valid point but surely the fact that fighters are split into 2 classes (rather than 2 builds for one class) has an effect.

while your sample is too small to generalize, it debunks the "TR is OP and most played" theory.

I would accept that if group size was four players not five. If the classes were equally valued and popular, the game mechanics could support equal populations. Something is making CW, TR, and DC more popular or the fighters less so.

If the sample size is too small, it doesn't really debunk anything.

snowballo

Kinda offtopic, but CW > Rogue, it's just that more people realize it.
And running 2 CW or even 3 makes any dungeon pretty trivial.

In fact I think once the cleric is managing to live with boss aggro+un-ccable adds on him, 1DC + 4CW is the optimal group.
So yes, you will be seeing a 30% and up CW ratio soon enough unless things change around.

jancetastic

10 +11% is 21% thats roughly 1/5 not 1/4 and having 2/5 of the playable classes make up 1/5 of the population is a little odd if you ask me

bonfire01

As far as sample size goes I did a /who 60 4 times a day (spread out) over 7 days. So I guess it's a sample of 2800 lvl 60 characters since it's limited to 100 characters shown. There wasn't a huge variation in percentages of each class across those 28 cuts. For example highest GF was 15, highest GWF also 15. It was the proportion of TR or CW that showed the biggest variation with DC pretty consistantly around a quarter.

I agree that you can't be sure how many of those ppl are grouping as opposed to soloing BUT, if you bear in mind there is basically no solo lvl 60 content outside the foundry the only real question is whether they are primarily PVPing or PVEing. As it stands GF and GWF are not number 1 choice for either, but probably more effective in PVP than PVE, so if we're looking at dungeon usage the numbers might in fact be lower.

I agree both GF and GWF are nominally fighters but it's irrelevant. We aren't talking about 1 class with multiple specs filling 21%, we're talking about 2 completely seperate classes with totally different mechanics who just happen to have the word fighter in the title. For all intents and purposes they could have changed the looks and called GWFs barbarians with identical mechanics and we'd still be in the same position.

Finally... totally agree with you Snow. Easiest dungeon runs I have ever been on with my DC were with 3CWs. Not quite as quick to drop bosses compared to having a TR but could faceroll entire dungeons. Having said that... if ray of enfeeblement stacks between users you could probably drop bosses just as fast from the extra CW adding that into the mix .

noroblad

Yea they are totally different but they are both heavy armor melee. Some folks prefer cloth & magic. Some prefer stealth. But the players that want fighter style melee are split into 2 classes, even though the role is different, there is a connection between them beyond just the word fighter.

I think the sample size is big enough to say that rogues are not dominating the population as has been speculated. I think its big enough to be *valid* for what you did, and that you did a good job using what you had with a reasonable method. The possibility of some nutty thing (for example, say the hours when you go to sleep some country comes on to play where 85% of their players really like the fighter classes?!) exists but is extremely unlikely, or that another server has totally different values (very unlikely).

You are right its 1/5 I did not even add them lol, saw the others that were "about" 25% and just called it 1/4 at a glance.

I will say this though: every other game I have played the healers and tanks were much lower than the dps. The values here actually look more balanced than many mmos. If you accept the idea that tanks (and healers) are less popular in general in most MMOs and that our healer is an anomaly (due to somewhat different from normal design) then the best conclusion I can get from it after that is that gwf is unduly unpopular and may need work. Which a lot of folks have said before.

chudovishye

arskaaa wrote: »

I wanted play GWM but its so slow and damage is HAMSTER.
rolled to rogue and holy ****! dps is amazing!

Hope GWM get buffed soon.

Take my GWF in level 60 PvP and we'll talk about that dps you're amazed about. You'll get close, as most do, and then suffer and die as you should for taking the easier path.