Remix on Conventional Classes System

[Guest]

Obvious Statement: Classes are common in MMORPGs, heck their common in RPGs!

Observation: I loved making custom classes in Morrowind. I could have a Rouge-Mage and a Smooth Talking Warrior. I loved it!

Observation: I hate the same classes over and over again. Cleric, priest, mage, fighter, etc… It's not a bad system, but Gary Gagax kicked the bucket we should be moving on.

Conclusion: The system of specializing has been done to death. But so has football games. Each year EA pull out another one. It's simply how it's presented that changes it. So I had a idea, instead of choosing bonuses and boosts. The player chooses faults and disabilities.

Possible Implementation: Welcome to the APOCALYPSE, a new MMORPG set in the Post-Apocalyptic future. Here you don't choose classes, you make them! But you don't choose what you can do, you choose what you **can't** do.

Design: Players select disabilities and faults. Such as a missing arm or eye. (Lower strength and lower dodge rate respectively.) Maybe you can't hear very well. (Decreased availability for chat.)

Suggestions?

[Antidote]

Classes are the root of games.  Although there are "smart" games that raise your skills in individual levels (like Morrowind) to create a custom title, classes are pretty much here to stay.  Players like to play games to get away from reality for a bit.  For example, in real life, you can't swing an axe that's twice as big as your head to crush a jumping mushroom.  It's fun, it passes the time, and players don't really care that much about "realism."

Also, due to your player disabilities and faults, players don't want to have to pick a "fault" for their character.  They want the ideal character that can do everything and then some.  Instead of limiting characters by their disabilities, common RPGs limit their characters through classes. 

Limiting through classes blocks the character without him/her necessarily realizing it.  It's just the logic of games.  A mage can't wear heavy armor, for example.  It's a limitation, but most players don't think twice about it.  Not being able to chat half the time, though, is extremely annoying and actually inhibits the characters ability to play the game.

On another note from what you were saying, basically you're just giving another name to what the classes already do.  Mages can't use Strength effectively, and being a Mage would be the equivalent to missing an arm, that the player loses strength. 

Not only is this not exactly a logical way to the "class" problem, but it would be incredibly difficult to implement into the game.  Spriting characters without arms or with "blind" eyes, scripting the inability for a player to know what's going into the chat box half the time, etc.  It's not very plausible.

[Drummerpete]

The problem with the "classes" scenario is that everybody tried to make the same kind of game, it's usually medieval fantasy; this means you get the same classes (warrior, mage, archer etc..)

Basically, for truly different classes, you'd need a different genre and style of game all together.

I'd like to use my game for an example, it's a modern zombie shooter.
Classes are: Civilian, Medic, Military and scavenger.
They all have a purpose, fit into the theme of the game and give the game a purpose.

The only way to really get round the classes problem is different genres of games.

[Mr. Bob Firefarter]

KO's classes are COMPLETELY unique, having classes as cat breeds.

[Drummerpete]

@ᴆᴎᴧ:

> KO's classes are COMPLETELY unique, having classes as cat breeds.

That's a good example too.
A completely unique game avoids cliches.

[Mr. Bob Firefarter]

I believe Kittens Online is the only game of it's genre.

[Antidote]

Yup.  What you can also do is to possibly re-name the classes.  It doesn't change it around that much, but it might be more exciting to be a "Shadower" than a "Thief."

Also what you can do in addition to the choice before is change around what the classes have access to.  For example, let a Thief not only be able to use throwing stars and claws, but add poison to the mix and create skills for it.  Or even add a whole new feature to the game that will allow only warriors to mine (because they have the strength for it).

This doesn't get rid of the class problem, but it's better than your traditional 4 classes with the same keys as every other MMORPG out there.

As you can probably tell, I've thought through this a LOT to try and keep from being too bland in my game.  It's not 100% original like KO, but it's basic enough that experienced RPGers know what you're talking about without adding a whole new level of complexity to it.

[Admiral Refuge]

Interestingly enough, even if you look at Retarded Online, there are 4 classes: Pwnt (weapons/malee class), Star(spell-caster/magician), Line(ranged-weapons/archer), and Friz(skill-class/plant).

@ᴆᴎᴧ:

> I believe Kittens Online is the only game of it's genre.

[Not quite ;)](http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,47344.0.html)

[Drummerpete]

@Admiral:

> Interestingly enough, even if you look at Retarded Online, there are 4 classes: Pwnt (weapons/malee class), Star(spell-caster/magician), Line(ranged-weapons/archer), and Friz(skill-class/plant).

Using the four conventional classes, even with different names, makes it even more retarded though. =p

[Guest]

Hmm…

Well thanks for the criticism, it really helps.  :azn: I guess I didn't make it clear. That game would be a **hard** game. Your character would actually begin the game with a fault.

And actually I guess I forgot to say this was hypothetical. If I ever make this game in Eclipse, it's going to be years from now.

It's really just a reversal advancement system. You get worse and worse situated as you go along. It's possible that items like medical supplies could be available to generalize and heal your character. And since it is the apocalypse you could have things like mutations.

But the overall point of the idea was to get rid of common classes and make the game a bit harder. You could even add perma-death to the mix, cause players really freak out over things like losing 2 months of ~~work~~ play. It adds depth to the game, it gives the players a sense of meaning. Even though really you just killed a virtual glop of goo, and it somehow dropped money.

[Mr. Bob Firefarter]

If you want a revolutional class system, then you need to go for evolution, by slowing gaining and bettering abilities that makes tasks you do on a daily basis easier, and also evolution based upon where you spend most of your time in the game.

[Antidote]

Well put, and also perma-death is something that players only look for in short-term or smaller games.  If a player loses his/her 2 months of work/play, it's going to make the character want to stop playing, not start again from scratch.  Maybe in a zombie-type game where advancements aren't that profuse, it's more of a survival thing.

[Mr. Bob Firefarter]

Thing, is, You're gonna need a POWERFUL system(or AI), to accomplish the evolution system…

[Guest]

I've barely programmed (A little in AS2 and a interface over C++) but:

```
if ( this->class = 0 && exp = 100 ) // Where 0 is the base class.
{
    class = 1; // Where 1 is a possible advancement.
    exp = 0;
}

For each class blah blah blah...

if ( this->class = 1 && this->action = 13 ) // 1-15 actions are only usable by class 0.
{
    print ( "Failure" );
    action = 0; // Action 0 is nothing.
}

```
Is how I would approach it. Wait…

Did you just say to do the RuneScape thing. Well, because in that game if I spend my time mining I get points in mining. At X points I can mine something new.

Anyway, at Antidote: Hmm... I don't like the idea of making my players think that their actions are just virtual and have no impact. Look at EVE; it's one world, you lose things when you die, (Possibly months but you need to be really stupid or unlucky) and you can change things. Like the economy, or other players. Have you ever heard of the Guiding Hand Social Club? Now that's a good example of EVE right there.

So what if you just lose things procedurally, like if I die I would have lost so and so items. It's not the greatest method but I think it would get players to _care_ more for their characters. Instead of them not really getting into the game. It bothers me to when players are **really** meta-gaming. It breaks the immersion so much.

[Antidote]

I understand losing things when you die, like in Runescape, but having a perma-death and needing to start from scratch is (in my opinion) crossing the line.

The problem with your EVE example is that EVE is frickin' insane, not only in gameplay and graphics, but also in design.  The game literally feeds on itself, so the fact that you lose things doesn't compare to perma-death in any way.  When you lose things in EVE, there's someone to blame for it and revenge to get.  If you die because a monster attacked you that spawns at that same spot all the time, there isn't much revenge to get, it's just frustrating.

Really, to get this to work, you'd need lots of time to work everything out, coding knowledge (you showed a bit) to make it all work, and a lot of players to keep things balanced and to keep it from being insanely difficult to get back a few months of work.  The game should grow with you so starting from scratch isn't necessarily ground zero, if that makes any sense.

I'm not saying I don't like the idea: I love the idea, but I'm just saying that with even a small team and an expensive engine, this would still be a massive undertaking.  If you're new to game design, I suggest starting with a few more basic projects before you go for the big one.

[Guest]

I'm trying to get the point across that this is hypothetical. If I make this, it will be years from now. When I'm out of middle school. I don't want to make a MMORPG or ORPG (That's always really bugged me with formatting) during those years. When I'm approaching college level (A nice looking one is DigiPen, another plus is I like in that area) and I know how to recompile my Linux installation so it's more whatever for me will I look at the idea of taking on such a project.

The game I'm working on right now, Aik (Eye - Ihh - Kay), is only new in sense of long-term story. Which is just storing everything server-side till the client says "Okay, the player did X = 3, Y = 2 and Z = 1\. So that means that this and this will be different."

EVE isn't all that hard to replicate. Set up clans, set up maps as "solar systems", let any solar system 0.0 < be capturable, etc. You could have a very realistic economy with some elbow grease. Of course I'm not doing that because it would be a endless time sink that I don't need.

Right now I'm trying to make Aik look good on paper and learn Java for SE.

EVE is the closest I've come to a perma-death MMORPG, without playing Shiaya. That game I stopped playing as soon it said in NPC dialog "Do you want to share some human. I hear it's a aphrodisiac."

[Antidote]

Alright, I get what you're saying.  So to my last paragraph from my last post, this is a pretty good idea, and you're definitely taking the right road to it.  Good luck with AIK!

[Hawkins]

I love messing with classes. Its what I do for fun, I have like 5 class evo sheets.  I have some great ones like Beserker, Brute, Streetfighter, Acolyte, Spearman, Jester and stuff like that. I even created a class called Typical that has no strengths or weaknessses. Anyway, the idea is good, but I agree that it would be a massive undertaking. Here's a counter proposal though. How about someone creating a game called The Game of A Zillion Classes. It would have every class that anyone could concievably think up and code. Like you would start out in a city where you would just have the basics and then as you explored the world you could take weird classes like
Gangster, Sneak, Ninja, and Cameldriver.

[Antidote]

It'd be incredibly difficult to balance.  A handful of classes would easily be stronger than the others and it would take endless tweaking to make them equal.  That's why most games only have 3-5 classes, is because it's easier to make them fit together.

[Hawkins]

No, you see, there would be tiers of classes. Like all the beginning classes would be equal and then once you reached level 3 or whatever, then you could get more powerful classes and so forth.

[Hawkins]

But I agree about the balance issue. One of the things that annoys me about D&D is that they have so many classes that some of the classes are too complex for most people to play them, like Druid and Monk.

[Guest]

Ughh, I had a friend who went to this one store that sells old videogames, trading card games, and D&D stuff. He played like a couple of turns of D&D and it was apperantly so hard he just choose a random move, 'cause he didn't know what he was doing.

EDIT: How's your game coming Hawkins? I actually know Westin in RL.

[Alster]

I believe an evolution system is better - like (dare I say) Runescape. You start as normal person. And from that you raise skills to become whatever class you want.

Plus that sort of system wouldn't be that hard to script. Just create an INI in the players character folder and when they level up the skill level in the INI goes up.

[Hawkins]

The game is going fine, clamsd, we have a new story and are getting ready to put in some actual work. Oddly, our game is going to be like what Crimson just mentioned, with no classes, just stats.

[Mr. Bob Firefarter]

@Crimson:

> I believe an evolution system is better - like (dare I say) Runescape. You start as normal person. And from that you raise skills to become whatever class you want.
>
> Plus that sort of system wouldn't be that hard to script. Just create an INI in the players character folder and when they level up the skill level in the INI goes up.

The type of evolution system I was talking about is MUCH more complicated than that, and I do believe it requires a neural based AI playing as the leveling up system.