Letting players select their own skills vs. having multiple classes / characters?

Why is it game designers often go with having multiple classes or characters (Diablo / League of Legends) vs. letting the player choose ANY skill they want (no classes)?

 

I think a lot of the design decision leads back to D&D. More than that though (and probably the reas D&D did it that way) is by creating different classes with certain skills available unique to that class they can refine that class. A barbarian seems powerful, a wizard seems frail yet godly at times. And so forth. The skills match their class (or profession). Also from a dev point of view it makes things simpler. If they had to create the animations for every player having every skill that is a lot of extra work. From the player's perspective the it simply may be too much. It would probably appeal only to the diehard gamers. Imagine each character now has access to all skills... it would be overwhelming to many people.

That all being said... I prefer a system where the player customizes their character by putting points into what is important for them with no other limits. I have played one or two games that my character had great sword skills and also good magic.

 

Well, not all designers do. Oblivion uses a skill-based system, for example.

As for why would you use a class-based system, I think it's a little easier for the designer, and possibly it's easier for players to understand and talk about, too. Instead of saying "I'm a reasonably decent fighter with an especially high skill in bow, though I'm good with a sword too, and I know some healing skills, and just a little bit of basic magic," you can say, "I'm a 9th-level Ranger."

 

Habit?

For a singleplayer game it's not going to cause many issues, but balancing them for multiplayer might be a problem. Fully freeform games could easily end up making useless builds too easy. Games aren't supposed to be like real life, where you gimp yourself with an arts degree that gets you no work

Having a few good skill trees/bushes tends to work well though. Titan Quest had a nice system where you picked trees and got a class name based on them. ArcheAge sort of copies that, but goes way overboard by having 120 combinations, over half of them somewhat to seriously useless.

Then there are whacky games that went with non-combat skillsets

 

There's many reasons someone would do this. Off the top of my head I can think of two: theming, and game balance.

Theming is a thing, because you can create a 'logical' character (e.g. a Ranger is a fighter who wears leather armor, uses a bow, but may use some subset of all possible melee weapons in the game) that plays on defined tropes and expectations. In other words, this character conforms to certain conventions for the genre in question (think of how disconcerting it would be for a Star Wars stormtrooper to be using Force Healing!)

Balance is another part of the equation. Of all of the valid combinations of skills in a game, as the game evolves, players will find a 'right' answer. To make a compelling game, players can't have a 'right' answer! We need to encourage players to make decisions based on clear problems, with clear knowledge of what they can do, and clear knowledge of the consequences, particularly if said decision is a snap decision, because those are fun. The player is overcoming a challenge.

If players can access every skill in the game, either everything has to be made slightly less useful than it can be (which, leads to a bad game because every tool sucks), synergies have to be nerfed (again, same problem, part of the fun of learning a character is figuring out cool combinations), and as a result all those cool snap decisions get taken out of the game, because every skill turns into a bald-faced variant of 'deal damage/mitigate damage/heal health'...as opposed to a slyly-disguised 'deal damage/mitigate damage/heal health.'

Now, can players have theoretical access to every ability, and still have a compelling game? I think so, but it needs to A) be carefully designed, and B) have a limiting factor built in. The Elder Scrolls: Online has Skill Points, of which a finite amount are obtainable in a playthrough. Every activated ability and ultimate ability has two more powerful/useful morphs, but those skills, passives, and their morphs require the player to invest a Skill Point. Thus, it's not remotely possible to get everything; you have to think carefully about what your build is going to be.

Further, there's a limiting factor in the control interface itself; you can only actually use five activated abilities and an Ultimate at a given time (though, you can swap to a second command bar starting at Lv.15.) So, it doesn't matter if you pick up every skill for your chosen character class and favored weapon; you can't really use them all at the same time. This causes the player to choose which abilities they're going to take into combat.

 

The short answer is that classes make play more interesting, because typically classes have pro's and con's. On the other hand, more free form systems tend toward just adding more pro's to the character.

The biggest benefit to classes is that it is much easier to understand a class's strengths and weaknesses. You develop much more concrete strategies because you are given a solid understanding of what the character can and cannot do.

Free form systems' only real benefit is that they make jack of all trades characters easily, which may or may not actually be good. The catch here is that in a party situation jack of all trades aren't that useful. It's usually much more beneficial to have characters who are specialized, so you will basically be creating your own classes regardless. At some point you going to pray to the unholy alter of tank, dps, healer, regardless.

 

Because:

Atk: |
Eva: |
Dex: |
Def: ||||||||||||||||||
Int: ||||||||||||||||||

Heavy Armor Specialization Rank 5
Fireball Rank 12

 

Do you think this could be fixed by slightly nerfing def / int as well as the skills learned?
I remember how in hardcore mode in D2 everyone just pumped points into vit and dex. I think this could have been fixed by buffing int and str.

 

Magic casting is supposed to be powerful. It's the idea of an old wizard, as @GarBenjamin said "frail yet godly". Nerfing anything is powering up everything else, also. So once you make int useless, you may as well remove wizards and make everyone warriors. Once you nerf defense, you're telling everyone to be a thief, etc.

What I'm saying is there's an inherent imbalance in having classes, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. This is a good thing.

I think this is a good joke, I made it up but some may disagree:

What do you call a character with high HP, high attack power, high defense and high magic power?

Spoiler: Give up?

Stage Boss.

 

@supremegrandruler - You are onto something, but I'd like for you to take that thought all the way to its logical conclusion. Start with this: why do stats exist? Well, they're variables in various formulae enshrined in the game rules. That means, things are using these stats.

Diablo, Torchlight, and the hack-n-slash RPG genre as a whole are dependent on abilities. Sure, specific special moves count, but for grins and giggles, go ahead and take the default weapon attack into account as an ability too, it has calculations just like those specials.

There's a few reasons Strength/Agility might be the most valuable stats of all. Either A) most abilites prioritize them (ESO actually has the opposite problem, where Magicka builds are prioritized by the game's overall design, due to an overwhelming majority of moves being magicka-based) Another problem may be how the formulae factor strength or agility into the final effect calculation - maybe strength and agility have a unilaterally stronger effect than intelligence or the other stats?

While we're moving away from the original topic in one sense, we're moving closer in another. A lot of games have a class with a 'key stat' - in WoW, the Rogue was based on Agility, in SWTOR, the Trooper is based on Aim (in fact, every class in SWTOR has a key stat.) Is this desirable? At what point do we want our stats to be homogeneous across classes - e.g. Int has the same effect for a Warrior that it does for a Mage - and at what point do we want stats to be different - e.g. Int has no combat use for a warrior, but instead helps them learn other abilities more quickly?

The answer isn't one I believe should be determined after the fact. These are up-front questions that if you're not asking in your RPG's design, are going to be your doom later.

 

Skyrim took this one step further. If you use the actions, you gain skill.

I'm reminded of the Paradox of Choice (see Barry Schwartz)? Which is the problem that: a) players want choice, and yet b) decisions are hard. Anything past 3-4 options causes us to postpone the decision, grossly over simply the choices, and have regret. It's why multiple choice tests have 4 options and why League of Legends has 4 primary abilities. Less is more.

Gigi

 

That's interesting.

One game had this system, where the stats were laid out like this. 6 clear choices, yet you could only max two even at the level cap.

I always wished I could have picked different stats (you choose them when you level), which caused me to create new characters many times. Even the same class, just different stats builds.

One idea I had was a Knight/Warrior with high intelligence. My skill points regenerate very fast with that character, so I was able to spam stronger skills and beat big monsters quickly.

Another game you could learn all abilities, but class determined stat growth. So you could be a melee character with machine guns, and use equipment to boost your mental power to use magic.

I see both sides.

 

Skyrim is a great example here. Your skills level up as you use them, and every level up you can choose to increase your health, stamina, or magic points. The best compliment I can give it is that it just works and feels fun, even more so than Oblivion.

 

It's already almost overwhelming in Diablo to choose from the large number of active skills for just a single class (and there are plenty of other choices you make on gear, paragon point allocation, passive skills, legendary gems, etc). If you had to pour through fives times as many skills, I think that would just be too much. Plus, the skills are tightly tied to the theme of a particular class.

Games like Skyrim don't have as many skills and other character-specific choices; the simpler approach is better for the "do whatever I want" style, which also kind of matches up with the overall open world / free form mentality. It's worth noting that if you max out the right skills in Skyrim, it allows you to do things that can essentially "break" the game, making it incredibly easy. It's cool that that's possible, but it also can drain the fun out of it once your are all-powerful.

Diablo is the opposite extreme, with Blizzard constantly balancing everything.

There are pros and cons to each approach I'd say.

 

I've always wondered why there's a level cap in games.

I feel like if I want to spend three years of my life leveling so I can get everything, max everything...why can't I?

 

Some games let you do exactly that and then they get boring. Which isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I suppose the deeper question is: "Is it a good idea to design a single player game so that it can become boring?"

With more open world type of games, that's almost inevitable anyway (regardless of capping). If you just keep going after you've burned through the hand-crafted content, you're eventually going to get bored. If you're over-powered and can take any enemy down so easily that it's like "god mode", that gets old fast.

 

I was think you look more like a PvP game where you could be a warrior who can do just as good with healing as a priest because he's like 50 levels higher
Make the level curves are ridiculous toward the end that to get from level 98 to level 99 takes just as long as getting from level 1 to 98 and maybe that would explain more what I'm thinking of... You wouldn't get that high level unless you were just playing anyway because you love the game

 

The down side is that for certain types of OCD players, then it gets very "grindy." Some people unfortunately play out of a sense of compulsion rather than a pure love of the game. I almost got sucked into that with Diablo (of all things). I realized I was doing rifts to try to get "that one last item" and had to throttle myself way back. You see people with 750+ paragon levels, which means they were doing some serious grindage.

 

Nothing wrong with grinding... if a game can make you grind, they did something right.

 

Yeah... gonna have to disagree with you there.

 

There are games that are entirely based on grinding, and many people buy them to pass time, so it all depends to what you are personally OK with.

As for the skills question, it mostly comes down to balancing.
Balancing set classes is already a pretty complex task, as you have to make sure that everything is useful, without being too powerful, taking into account a whole range of things (range, movement speed, projectile speed, health/resistance of the targets...).

In single player, it's not as hard, because you know all the potential enemies and how they act, and it's not too bad if some things are a bit too powerful or useful, because it will only end up affecting the player.
In multiplayer (especially PvP situations), you need to account for the other player's reactions and builds, and it starts to become a nightmare, because every time you change the smallest thing, it can flip the situations.


Having access to a whole range of options is not that bad on paper, but it often means that you will end up with some paths being vastly more used than others (easy to use, useful on more occasions, more powerful), while some will stay in niches (harder to use but capable of devastating effects, or crafting of niche items...), and others mostly unused, because flat out worse than other possibilities.


Earlier in the thread, the Elder Scrolls games were mentioned, as an example of letting you use what you want, but it's also a good example of whole branches of skills being worse than others.
For example, in Morrowind, the Bows were not really damaging enough, and combining it with stealth didn't net any useful results.
Stealth could be mostly obsolete if you got your hands on spells/equipments that give you full invisibility, because even if your attack modifier wasn't as high, you could just chain them for as long as you wanted, and with the heavier weapons.
Even in magic, you would end up using only a few, because most of them were very specific, or didn't end up doing as much damage.

In a MMO situation, or something similar, you wouldn't want to challenge yourself by specifically choosing the least useful branches like you could in single player, because you would need a lot more time to be as powerful as the ones choosing a more 'useful' route.



That being said, I personally also like the aspect of choice, as well as the potential to max out everything if you invest enough time into it, but there are very few games that allow for this and can still be fun for a larger audience (to make enough money to pay for the development).

 

Lol. Gotta disagree with all the games out there that involve extensive leveling, then?

 

Games that have survived despite bad game mechanics do not make the mechanic "right".

 

How exactly can a game mechanic be "wrong"?

 

True enough, but different people like different things, and some of those mechanisms that were put together due to material constraints at the time (like the final fantasy battle style) are things that some enjoy.

Just like it doesn't make it "right", it doesn't necessarily make it "wrong" either.

A lot of those mechanisms that were inherited from the old days of the SNES and before are still viewed as good ways to simplify the informations given to the players.
Levels and classes are good examples of that, and the games that changed the systems completely tends confuse players that are used to them, usually making them leave.

Personally, I like to learn about new ways to play and do things, but most people prefer to stay in their comfort zone, by playing mostly things that ressemble what they are used to.

 

I value my limited free time very much, and I'll put down a game that's wasting it without hesitation. I still like to grind in multi-character RPGs though. It lets me spend time with my party outside of cutscenes, and I get lots of practice with the battle system, which is usually the funnest part for me.

 

I've seen the dark side of grinding is all. It's not necessarily the game design's "fault" - some people will just continue to hit the feeder bar endlessly if the game lets them do that. Though of course some games seem to be specifically designed to be grindy. Taken to the extreme, it's the equivalent of the old people that sit in casinos all day and hit the button on the slot machine over and over.

I ran into the term Black Hat game design once. It refers to the nature of certain types of games that prey on human weaknesses. The majority of people aren't susceptible to their temptations, but some are. The Whales. I wouldn't go as far as saying that Diablo is in that category necessarily, since there are no micro-transactions, though time is also a precious commodity. It's more obviously Black Hat when it involves continuous payments naturally.

Your statement "nothing wrong with grinding" just doesn't always work out. I know that, because it almost happened to me. There are some seriously extreme cases of Diablo grinding where players get on there 8-12 hours a day, just farming the same areas over and over. At some point, it's far more about compulsion that any sense of "fun." At some point, it can be destructive and at the very least, it can distract you from the millions of other things you could be doing, even if those things are just other games.

 

I think we should talk about compulsion I think you should start topic dude I agree with you it sounds interesting

 

This is something interesting, that is worthy of its own topic, particularly given the poor misinformed people who honestly believe that games can addict you (addiction is a chemical process, compulsion is a psychological one. Since there are no syringes built into our controllers - thank God - destructive mental states caused by games can only go in one category. I'll give the audience three guesses on which category that could possibly be.)

But, good though that point is, I've digressed from the topic significantly. Actually, the discussion is pretty far off-course, come to think about it.

 

Yeah, that seems to happen. I say we just roll with it.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

So no, it's *not* just drugs. Anything that induces a chemical high (including sex and gambling, officially) can lead to addiction.

 

Drugs can trigger mechanisms already built into the brain to release chemicals that you can become dependent on.
Games can trigger mechanisms already built into the brain to release chemicals that you can become dependent on.

That's the problem with quoting Extra Credits, James' statements aren't subject to any scrutiny. It's just "here's what I think, presented as fact!"

 

I tend to avoid using the term addiction in the video game context, since a lot of people associate the term with alcohol and drug addition and really damaging activities on a whole different level. But yeah, the term probably would apply in some cases even to gaming. The first definition at dictionary.com is:

"the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma"

My concern is about things less intense than that, but still potentially negative. I think if you're grinding and the end reward is more important to you than the journey, you may want to do some self-examination. I can speak for myself and say that my fixation on getting the last item for my target build for a wizard character in Diablo started to distract me from other things, and that wasn't so cool. I'm not judging players who do want to farm areas or endlessly grind all day long. If you're truly having fun and it's not negatively impacting your life, then it's all good. But that might not be the case.

I think we're still sort of on topic. The idea of giving a player a large number of skills to level up does mean you likely have opportunities for grinding, which players can potentially fixate on. If you were designing an RPG where you could have every skill (like Skyrim) and allow everything to be max'ed out, I think you could build in some things to make the journey more fun.

I seem to remember that to max out your destruction magic skills (or specific spells or whatever is was), you had to go on a special multi-part quest. To me, that adds a layer of fun to it by giving you some hand-crafted content when you reach a high level. On the flip side, the sneak skill was something that you almost *had* to grind to get anywhere with it. I do think it's valuable to consider ways to make the "journey" more rewarding.

 

(apologies for the rather long post, I can't seem to keep it short)

I think there is also something else to consider, when giving a large array of skills, and that is to make each one of them useful, and somewhat fun.

You see many RPG games say that they include "crafting", and a wide array of other non-combat things, but more often than not, everything ends up being tied into the combat part, making it merely a side activity to use up your loot.

If you plan on giving a wide array of things to do, it is also important that you don't make your whole game focus on a smaller number of them primarily, and put the others mostly as check marks because games "have to" have them.

There are very few games I know off that actually did it right.

In fact, I can only remember two, and one of them changed completely, deleting that part from itself in the recent years.



The game that allows you to viably take any path you want has to be Eve online.
I mean, you can focus your entire time into resource collection, crafting, trading, PVE, PVP, or do them all.
All of them have their pros and cons, are "fun" in their own rights, and can potentially make you rich as you learn both ingame skills and how to properly make the best uses of them.

The other example, now completely changed is a slightly more traditional MMO RPG, called Voyage Century Online in its american version, where you could harvest resources, process them into all kind of finished goods, fight on land, fight with boats, trade...
Without paying, you could only max out a few skills (still enough to be good in what you chose).
The main problem is that the experience rate was quite slow, and new players would complain that they can't possibly catch up, as the limits were pushed up with each update.
They ended up adding character experience and levels (previously, only skill levels and skill perks), and the whole game turned away from resource collection and crafting, as mobs would drop all the gear you would need to fight.

I guess you could technically say that some single player games allow for similar experience, with Mount and Blades (especially modded), or the X series, but it still have a bias toward the fighting part.


Those are two example of games that (at least for a time) successfully made it possible to choose a career, giving you access to all the skills of the game, if you wanted to spend that much time on it; and made multiple routes viable, rather than the all too common focus on combat with a few side things to do.

To me, a game that gives you access to all the skills should take inspiration of that, because it makes for a much more interesting world, where different skill sets can come together, helping each other.


As it was pointed above, there is also the "grinding" part to take into account, you would want to diversify the activities for each branch, having at least a few more interesting quests on the way, making you go out to discover things, having some interesting rewards, maybe encouraging to test out other skills every now and then, even some minigames can be added in once in a while...
There are a lot of possibilities, and it's mostly the imagination and time that limits things, because hand crafting all of this for every single path is quite a lot of work, making the overall cost of the development go up significantly as a result.

 

The only MMO I ever played was the original version of Star Wars Galaxies. It had a huge number of professions (classes basically), each with their own skill tree. You could be a full-time chef, dancer, trader, etc. and never engage in combat if you didn't want to. In many ways that game was a good example of what not to do though. It's not that the ideas were bad, it's just that even a big budget game has limits. The uniqueness and fun of each profession was stretched pretty thin and the individual skills were mostly just boring X% increases to things. Like there was a smuggler profession, but you couldn't actually smuggle anything!

So I totally agree, some degree of focus is a really good thing.

Oblivion and Skyrim have a limited number of skills (Skyrm has 18?), but I think that's actually a good thing, given that each one is pretty distinct and fun.

 

I will have to disagree on multiple points.

I never played Star Wars Galaxies (I just don't enjoy the franchise).
For me, it's not a matter of budget per say, one of the game I cited is a pretty small budget corean free to play, the other is a niche MMO, even if it is doing pretty well.

The problem with a star wars game that is not focused on combat with laser guns, laser sabers, force and space ships should be pretty obvious, and using a mainstream license for a concept that is very much niche is a dangerous thing to try, even more so in an MMO.

Skyrim was full on combat game, and the rare skills not directly combat related were boring interfaces (potion making, enchanting, forging...).

I'd go as far as saying that any game that relies on skills with just +X% to damage are not even trying to be good games, as it makes the progression pretty boring.

Giving the possibility to choose what to do without making it bland is certainly not as easy as just adding a few skills and calling it a day, and even when it is done right, it might not be what your players want, like for starcraft (well, not the "done right").

It's really the same as when designing the skills and quest for your fighting skills, if they are just X% increase on damage, it's not exciting at all. You want flashy sword moves, flashy spells, and equally flashy enemies (or at least bosses) to use them on, to give a feel of an awesome fight.

For your traders, it's not a flashy explosion that they want, but maybe different trade routes, each with their challenge, ways to communicate with other merchants for learning the trends of each major city, ways to set up their own unique shops that's not just sitting in the middle of a crowed street, with ways to advertise without relying on spamming the chat...
An example of trade routes could be one that is somewhat long, but fairly protected, so you are unlikely to be assaulted by anything too dangerous, and with guards patrolling.
A second route could go through a more wild area of the map, filled with beasts that require a certain experience in combat to be able to survive, but if you hire a few skilled fighters, you should be fine, saving time at the cost of the money or items you have to pay the other players.
A third route might take you through a magical place with a portal close to your target location, but that is also home of a full on PVP war between alliances for its control. In this case, if you are not part of any of the winning alliances of the area, you might get mercilessly killed by a full team of players completely oriented in combat.
The whole risk/reward thing is not linked to a skill itself, but it is core to the experience of a merchant.
Similarly, smart merchant would try to get their hands on products that might sell soon in an other place (like getting potions to guild's hall that is supposed to be at war in a week time, or lumber to a city that is going to need rebuilding).
Wealthy merchants could open proper shops in cities, and have advertising campaigns in the game, by buying signs at specific locations to advertise that they will soon open a place that not only sells high grade armour from players skilled in armour making, but also buy a large quantity of standard loot, or commodities that other profesions might want to get rid off, or when they don't want to bother with the selling part.

A weapon maker wants to be able to make stuff that is potentially better than what the NPC and mobs drop, maybe even somewhat design their own stuff and use it as a trademark.

A farmer will want ways and means to acquire and grow crops, and to take care of their animals without it being either a waiting period or a mini-game , but as a proper way to spend time doing things and to acquire resources that can then be used by other professions, mounts for the warriors...
If the activities and goods are diverse enough, it might very well satisfy some players, with the potential evolution involving getting products that only grow in special areas, being able to buy or rent pieces of the land, the ability to pay other players for basic tasks like the harvesting (which could be a source of income for newer players or warriors that can't quite pay for their equipment).

A fighter might also want to take on a few skills relevant to taking resources off the dead body of a monster, because pure fighting usually doesn't net much profit, unless you were hired by a lumberjack to clear the area around the trees he wanted to cut.

If every profession is made from the start as actual interesting professions for a part of the player base, and if everything meshes together, a fighter could associate himself with a merchant, with a smaller price against cheaper prices on the loot he can't use, this merchant could then call various other players (or try to do everything himself) to acquire what the warrior want to be able to continue to focus on his fighting skills.




I know that most of those professions can sound dull to a player that wants to focus on the fighting part, but when players can choose to only go fight every now and then, and focus on an other part, with or without the help of other players, it usually makes for a game that has much more player interactions (as well as a few people wanting to do everything).
It does mean that you need to sacrifice a few standard RPG tropes, like the monster dropping gold and useful equipment, and it requires that people don't just think about themselves alone, because going solo in a world that tries to diversify is usually a good way to have a pretty poor experience.

An other common trope that needs to be erased in this case is the levelled zones and equipment.
Well, not completely get rid of them, because it's too present in the player's habits that a royal guard's armour can't be equipped by a starting character.
Technically, it could be done by giving you negative effects if you are trying to use a weapon too powerful for your skills, or an armour too heavy, but it might be too much changes for your everyday player, and you don't want to go too niche.
But what you definitely want is a way for non fighter to pay fighters for escort and safety in harder zones, as well as available equipment for all the professions, not linked to a "character level", not matter if it's based on just fighting or if everything contributes to it (even though the later is the least bad of the two).


As you can probably tell, I am pretty biased into favouring the idea of an open gameplay when it fits, but it's not just based on a blind wish after not finding games I really enjoy.
What I mean is that nowadays, there are a lot of pretty popular types of games that are completely outside of the common "kill enemies" way of doing things, like farming simulators, games where you play a merchant, games with in-depth crafting system that rewards the time spent on learning it.
There is even a series of console games that is a spin off of a farming/dating game, where they added RPG elements and dungeons, to vary the things available without going too far out of their base game either.

TL;DR: It all comes down to how it's done, uninspired ways makes even standard game types a lot more boring.

 

Actually, I think we're saying basically the same thing. Skills in an RPG should be unique and fun. That's not too controversial.

Yes and no. It was a risky move, but I was surprised at the number of casual players who just wanted to hang out in the cantinas and chat all day. I suppose there weren't ultimately enough of those types to make it work. Even disregarding the Star Wars license, I do think there are some valuable lessons there. With 32 professions or whatever it was, each with a different skill tree, there's a limit to what you can do. I think later they revamped the whole game with far fewer professions that were more in line with expectations.

In fairness, even with version 1.0 of that game, some players absolutely loved the non-combat options. You actually could be a full time trader or crafts person, etc. and there was a lot to it.

As someone who max'ed out all of that stuff, I actually appreciated how straightforward that stuff was. I'm curious how you would have changed those interfaces.

In the case of Star Wars Galaxies, I think in a weird way they were actually trying too hard to make a good game, but the scope of the thing just got away from them.

 

I was a SWG player for several years, starting during beta and continuing until everyone started Jedi grinding and others left the game.

By far, SWG is my favorite MMO, mostly because of the option to play as a non-combat character. Very few games truly give you that choice. I tried all the skills, found most of them terribly boring and full of grinding. I settled on the dancer and later added musician. Both of these skills were created to support the combat professions. Without the combat folks, there would be no need for dancers or musicians. This should not always be true. Professions should exist for to fill the needs of the community, not just the few that choose to fight, but that was how it worked back then.

I loved the Cantinas and the socializing. I met a lot of nice people, a few jerks, and had a great time. It was FUN!! I didn't have to go out and kill stuff, which I find boring. But, even dancing and musician required grinding. It was more fun because I could socialize and role play while grinding but it did get old, especially after beta wipes when I had to start over again.

I love Slay's post above. It embraces everything I love about gaming, interesting professions that allow players to play in different ways, the ways they find FUN! Eventually, I topped out the dancer/musician professions and had to find new ways to have fun. I started a band with some other players and we actually became famous on our server. We traveled to dangerous places to get bigger tips, hiring fighters to escort us, we played for player-created parties, and one of the guys and I even put on an opera in one of the theaters. To get extra money, I put out a few harvesters and found a couple of steady regular buyers and sold resources. My character was wealthy, famous and I had a blast, probably the most fun I have ever had in an MMO.

Okay, I didn't tell you this to tell my game story, but to describe how a game that allowed for a variety of skill choices, along with lots of things to do outside of skill acquisition could be fun for a player who didn't fit the WoW mold of MMO's. I had friends who became politicians, ran cities, put together campaigns and elections, and others who started their own hospitals or their own cities. SWG allowed us to do these things....although, it failed at making the actual skill grinding interesting in most cases, dancers and musicians possibly the exception. What we did was hurry up and grind the skills to the top and THEN start playing the game. Of course, that doesn't work for achievement oriented players unless they see the achievement as more about building a business or finding a niche in the community. My success came from our band and my little resource gathering business, not because I made credits, but because I felt important, and of course, successful. Getting to level 50 after killing hundreds of beasts did nothing for me and in fact, I don't know if I ever felt successful in that sort of game.

Slay's ideas about how to make things like trade and merchants interesting professions are very inspiring. It makes my imagination soar as a designer. How can I take the joy I had from SWG and translate it into a game that will be FUN for people who enjoy other professions, those like crafting that always seem to come with a long boring grind? I am going to put some thought into it and might even modify my design...Yikes!

I would never go back to levels or the boring repetitive grind in a game or in a game design. The challenge is to make achievement interesting, measurable, and rewarding for the player as well as productive to the community.

Did I get off topic? Slayer, I post long posts too and no longer ask for forgiveness. lol

 

For me it boils down to this:

It's probably best for balance in a game that has PVP to let players select powers from the same pools. This way, if another player has an advantage in a fight, it is because of the clever way they built their character, not because of them taking advantage of seemingly arbitrary game restrictions (like: magic-users can't wear armor). If you have competition in your game, it's best to provide a level playing field.

For a game that emphasizes role playing, many designers choose to go with classes, because then players can try out different play experiences much like trying out different clothes. They can try a "ranger," and then a "paladin," or whatever, and that's part of the appeal of the game: experiencing something different.

As for grinding, which is often linked to monetization ... I don't think it's any secret that many designers try to take advantage of psychology to make their game more appealing for continuing play. From this perspective, it's generally the reward per minute aspect of design that makes a game more or less successful. If your design allows the player to win a steady stream of rewards, yet always have some new reward on the horizon, that will be enough to hook many.

 

This is how most games are successful and hook the player. But what about all those potential customers out their who want more than a steady stream of rewards while doing repetitive stuff? Yeah, the monster might be different, but it is essentially all the same. I think games like this really miss out. We need a topic on how to hook players so we can discuss other means, if there are any.

 

I'm not fond of game design that has a stream of obvious rewards, with the "level up!" banners streaming across the screen, coin jingling sounds, and so forth. I'm not all that competitive, either. I like being able to meet a variety of challenges, being able to choose my own course, build my own stuff, to express myself, and preferably to socialize while doing it.

 

Every game is of course different, and I can't quite speak fully on games I never played, because it would just be based on other people's opinions, and it's fun to see how Teila and you, having both played the same game, have very different views on its strengths and weaknesses.


As for the Skyrim part, it's precisely because they were just strait forward, interface-based menus that I found them boring.
Why can't a hero actually decide to get into other activities when he gets tired after hunting dragons, vampires and other bandits for a few months?
But that's not the focus of the game, you are supposed to incarnate a bad-ass hero that takes on the entire imperial army all by himself, just like the previous ones were a single hero defeating some of the most powerful beings of that universe, alone against armies, raiding strongholds with a puny sword and a few spells.

Anyway, my point is that when games try to push the idea that they include other activities than mass murder (which I definitely take part in in many games), they often don't take the time to make it into a proper system, and resort to a few scattered collection points across the battlefields, as well as very uninteresting menus to create more tools for murdering more.

What's funny is that every now and then, a few games manage to invent a crafting system that's more involved and more interesting.
For an example, I'd say to look at Legend of Mana (PS1 game), where you could use a whole range of items, including fruits and vegetables, to improve your items.
In itself, it is not something that fun, but the sheer complexity of this system made a lot of people try a lot of combinations, on different items, to get those "perfect" ones.
If you compare this to a "2 iron bars and 3 leather strips for a long sword", it does make that "crafting" look a it weak.

I guess all of it is also because I have been playing games for quite a while now, and have been trying out a bit of everything, so I ended up being highly critical, and with expectations that are too high for my own enjoyment.


I really think that we will see more and more MMO or similar games that don't focus on only 1 type of players, when they figure out that building more content and mechanisms in an existing game is easier and costs less than making different games for different crowds.

 

It is fun. Not too surprising though. There are as many different types of gamers as there is anything else I suppose.

I think we already are seeing that and it is not always a good thing. Some types of players just don't mix well. Niche games will always have their place and while it might cost more to make two games, it certainly would be more of a headache trying to keep one group from butchering/driving crazy another group. The best compromise might be different servers that appeal to different groups but then the developers have to make sure the rules for each type are respected and that could be difficult.

 

@slay_mithos
@Teila

Instead of hijacking this thread, why not post on a topic on MMORPG's?

 

I think the topics being discussed are actually pretty relevant to the original question. You can call them skills, abilities, professions, or whatever, but it's all about how distinct do you want your character types to be. Like what are the advantages and disadvantages of having separate distinct character types with their own unique choices?

It would seem that distinct character classes with their own abilities/skills have these advantages:

* Strong theming. A barbarian in Diablo looks like a barbarian. His/her abilities tie strongly to that theme. Those abilities may even tie to the lore of a particular IP (like Jedi having force powers). Strong theming could make the game easier to understand and play. It could also allow for more specific storytelling.
* Reduction of potentially overwhelming player choices. A particular class may only have class-specific skills, reducing the number of options for the player at any given time. That may not necessarily be an advantage if you're going for a more detailed, hard core design. It's only advantage if there are quite a lot of total skills available.
* Replay-ability. Depending on the player's preferences, they may feel like they are getting a more unique experience when playing the game again if there are very distinct skill sets.
* With fewer skills to level up (for games that work that way), the game could feel less "grindy" than having a larger set of less focused skills. It's less of an issue if there aren't that many total skills in the game. This one's very subjective.
* Balance. Allowing limitless combinations of skills could make it tougher to balance the game, so limiting the choices per class could be an advantage, if balance is a goal.

Cons of distinct classes:

* Could lead to a feeling of being constrained to a particular set of skills (Liam Neeson style), which could feel artificially limiting. It could make the player feel less powerful, since they can't do *everything*.
* Players who don't want to start new characters could miss out on significant game content.
* Lack of customization. Many players like feeling that their character is unique in some way.
* Scope. Games with distinct classes should generally have a good number of distinct skills, which increases the scope of the game. That isn't necessarily bad if you have a large budget.
* Too balanced. If you can choose any skills, it could be tougher keep the game balanced, but maybe that's OK! I'm listing this as a pro and a con, since the option of making the game imbalanced may actually be a plus to some players, especially in a single player game.

 

I would add an other "cons", that doesn't apply in every game, but still:
* It forces specific teams on spefic dungeons/areas, by making some classes/builds irrelevants against certain monster or bosses.

While it might seem OK to have a fire immune mob, for example, it still means that a fire oriented build will be so sub par against it that they will be excluded from the "perfect" roster.
When it's only a few mobs here and there, it's not as bad, but when a whole dungeon, or even a boss is like that, it means to actively exclude a part of the players.

It can be alleviated by giving the player the possibility to respec at any time, but that also means loosing on the impact of the choice you make when choosing your skills.


Also, linked to your "too balanced", there is a thing in many class based games where there are only a few "valid" builds, making the whole process harder on the player, because they know that choosing anything outside of those will result in a worse character. Those tend to change with the updates and balancing, but it makes for games where a whole lot of the skills are unused, because sub par.
Again, it's less of a problem when you can freely respec at any time, but it can lead part of the players to feel like they were not given any actual choice.


Overall though, I agree with your pros/cons, even if most games using that system end up not going all the way into using those pros to make a better game, especially the theming and story telling.

 

I actually became obsessed with this for a while, and I traced back all classes to three distinct types.

1) Fighter - Melee character, very strong offense and defense.
2) Ranger - Uses distant attacks, weaker damage than fighter.
3) Spell Caster - Has the benefits of power and range but must delay his attacks.

Every class is some amalgamation of these core three. Curiously, many standby RPG classes, like the "Thief" is just a sneaky fighter. A priest is a spiritual spell caster, and so on.

I also find it intriguing that people associate the classes more with their respective themes than the underlying combat principles that spawned them.

For example. A Paladin is always overpowered. Why? He's two classes combined. A spell caster and a fighter. Give him ranged shots of holy mojo and voila, he's unstoppable.

Classes work because they're rock, paper, scissors. The holy triad.

You let people do whatever and you'll discover why classes were created.

 

I would argue that it's actually Fighter / Rogue / Magic User. Fighters can use both ranged & melee weapons, so the Rogue's exclusive area of expertise is in stealth and security (find/disarm trap, pick lock, etc.). Rangers are just a Fighter / Rogue hybrid.

In D&D, the Paladin's real weakness is their inability to waver from their moral code. Doesn't translate to non-PnP games very well.

 

That's a weird take on it... I still think mine is better... but could you elaborate on how you arrived at this? I'm curious.

 

Not sure I agree at all with that breakdown. Combat-wise tank, dps, and healer/support makes much more sense. The tank is meant to buffer the party from the enemies, dps is the one that kills all the things, and the support is there to take care of the party itself. Even D&D has this with it's fighter/cleric/mage/rogue classification with the rogue not really meant for combat at all, although the line between tank and dps is pretty blurred.