The Daily Grind: Are classes played out?

You talk as if it was always like that (class systems)
Some people out there still remember Ultima Online, the best MMO ever created.
No classes, a lot of customization, interaction with the environment (something every mmo lacks since they went 3D), and no taking you by hand. Back in the day you started out with 100 gold, a dagger, a book and a candle. There were no quests, you could play as you trully wished, no guidelines to follow.
Trully the best MMO ever.

tankmage

I think it is time to move into class freedom again. However, some people out there do prefer the class system and some people would not know what to do with a classless system. For that reason I don't think "classes" will go away. If all games were to become classless there would be people looking back on the days when there were classes just as many of us look back to UO for the "freedom" and others look at pre-NGE SWG for its comparative freedom.

I thought Planetside had a fairly good system for this with the certification point system. You could basically build and customize your character on the fly by picking out certifications (some of which had prerequisites for others).

This had multiple benefits. One, if you were tired of being a field engineer, you could simply recertify to do something else, like be a pilot or a medic or a hacker, whatever. But also, as the higher level players had more cert points to spare, they could expand themselves across the skill trees laterally, meaning they could be both heavy assault players, medics and engineers all rolled into one if they preferred.

This was an especially effective system for a game where skill wasn't determined by level, only versatility was. Higher level players were simply rewarded by having a greater swath of things to do, while the lowbies focused on building their game-playing skills with more focused loadouts.

You forgot to mention the upcoming mmo Darkfall http://www.darkfallonline.com/ which is going to have a classless system as well. Anyway, I think that classes are good for theme park style mmo’s like WOW, where all the content is designed to unfold is a specific way that requires precise class balancing.

For the sandbox style games a classless system works better. It’s lets a player to truly make their character their own, allowing for a superior level of customization. SO I think that both systems have their merits, but as MMO’s evolve and move away from the EQ clone formula expect to see more innovation and classless systems.

As a pen-and-paper RPGer since the early eighties, the class system certainly had it's place in computer RPGs arguably through the late nineties. As the capabilities of technology slowly begin to catch up with developer's imaginations, it's time to throw the old blueprints out the window.

If "reality" is what creators of virtual worlds are going for, they have to ignore the templates of what has come before and stop working off the dusty blueprints of rigid class structures and clunky, time consuming raid mechanics.

I love D&D--don't get me wrong--but tomorrow's game designers who don't have their heads so wrapped up in 20-sided dice and crap EQ game mechanics (as too many of us old farts do) will probably be the ones who push MMORPGs away from statistic number crunching and predefined class roles into something less stifling and mathematic.

Theres nothing I hate more than a pure skill based system. Its too easy to completely gimp your character if you pick useless skills.

Plus, in two or three weeks, all of the strongest templates will be listed on the web with titles like "warrior" and "paladin" anyway so why bother forcing people to create their own classes. Going further, 90% of the strongest/most popular templates are designed for solo play, completely circumventing group dynamics.

People like to have a defined role, and its satisfying to know that your group is successful because you are fulfilling your role adequately. The ambiguity that comes about in a classless system leaves me wandering around with no sense of purpose.

A skill based system does not mean your character has to be "gimped".

There are a LOT of things a developer can do to prevent that. One is to not load the game with useless skills. There are skill based games out there where you can level just from crafting skills and never see combat at all. That is a good system.

Also, if combat is necessary, then the developer can put checks in to see if the player has enough fighting skills and if not, each time the player opens their window to skill up, a message pops up warning them they should invest in combat.

Of course, the way UO worked, and it worked well, was that when you use a skill you got better at it. So if you fight, you become a better fighter. If you smith, you become a better blacksmith. That simple way of increasing your skill actually lets you create the perfect skill set for your playstyle.

For example, in UO I had a Grandmaster Blacksmith, GM Miner and GM Mage. I used magic to transport myself around the world to find the ore I wanted (early on the world resource pool made it hard to gather). I didn't get into fights and I also never got into Pk battles as GM smiths were rare enough that instead of killing me on the road, the PKs invited me to thier houses so they could get repairs. It was a fun game - and it had a lot of natural role-playing going on, something that is missing from every modern MMO.

How, in a class-less MMO, would you prevent 'character bloat'. Not the gimped characters who have their few skill points so far spread out that they are all but useless in the skills they have, but the characters who have so much time in the game that they have maxed every available skill?

In a pencil and paper world, you manage this by only running games now and then. By controlling the encounters the characters have, and occasionally landing a dragon on the over powered character just to threaten the others and make the one re-roll. These aren't possible in an online game.

Then consider balance. You no longer have, like in EQ, a warrior shield equation and a knight shield equation. There is just one set of math and you have to make it work straight across all possible values when combined with every other possible skill permutation. While it might look simple to balance out shield and dodge, it is a lot more testing to make sure that there would never be a number where a character was totally immune to combat damage.

What I would like to see is a broad class based system or a modified skill system. For the first, why should a elf ranger be the same as a dwarf ranger? Make game choices mean something substantial, have there be a real difference between race/class/alignment choices. WoW comes close, with the trees, but IMO makes it too easy to switch between them. To the second option, in a purely skill based system how does a character that has spent the last 30 levels (or points if levels are gone too) studying magic spontaneously switch and spend the next 30 studying heavy armor and weapons and end up as powerful with those weapons as any other level 30 heavy armor character? My opinion only, but I would expect the points system to do something of the following: Character has spent Z levels studying skillA, which contrasts with skillB, so skillB now costs 2x, 3x, 10x or even Zx the amount of points. Lots of complex stuff could still be possible, by putting points into contrasting skills at the same time and having the math only count the difference in the skills.

Once players hit the wall of diminishing returns in a pure skill based system, it does make more sense for the characters to take other skills instead of progressing further in the ones they used up till that point. Either the game systems have to account for that, or they have to expect that people with enough free time will master all of the skills. Then the game has to design encounters around those players, which leaves out the people who have focused on their primary skill set alone. It adds a whole new level of 'uber guilds' to the game.

The class system will end when developers decide that the class system can never be balanced.

Pen and paper RPGs did not have PvP and thus balance never mattered. MMORPGs contain PvP (at least some percentage do) and therefore balance is required. It goes with the evolution of the genre to evolve out of negative traits. The class system is a negative trait, at least with PvP in mind.

If you want a special role in your group, then go train and do it. No arbitrary limitations are necessary.

Speaking of Ultima Online, check out Angel Island!

http://www.game-master.net