What I want and what I think most people want even though they may say it differently are unique classes that uniquely fill their role however it is implemented. It could be talents, AAs, or specialization. It doesn't really matter.
What I mean by this is that no character should be able to do everything and no character should be able to do two things as well as a more specialized class does one thing. A tank should ALWAYS tank better than a tank/healer in terms of raw damage absorption. A healer should always heal better than a healer/dps in terms of raw healing power. A dps should always do more damage than a dps/tank in terms of raw damage output in a set period of time. I do not feel that it should ever be balanced in such a way that a character with a more varied toolset should be on par with a specialized character in their area of specialization.
If you try for a system like present day WoW where there are no disadvantages to any character that can fit any role you will more likely than not end up with a system that starts to feel watered down and homogenized. What I mean by this is making it so that a tank/healer can be made to tank as well as a pure tank or a pure healer (even if not both at once). A tank who can heal himself is by simple common sense more powerful than a tank who can tank in terms of pure solo ability. In WoW they felt paladins should tank as well as warriors so they gave warriors self heals and other goofy mitigation mechanics to make up the difference. Now you have 5 tank classes, 3 of which can heal, all of which feel pretty much identical (i.e. boring).
Call me nostalgic but I feel Vanilla through Velious EQ got this system more right than anyone else has to date even if probably by accident. "Pure" classes - Warrior, Cleric, Enchanter, Rogue, Monk, Wizard, Mage excelled in their primary role to a degree unmatched by those with a more varied toolset. "Broader" classes - Necromancer, Paladin, Shadowknight, Ranger, Druid, Bard, Shaman could fill roles when a "Pure" alternative was missing and yet still brought something "unique" to their part in the group. No cleric? Sure a shaman couldn't heal for nearly as much but throw in a slow, haste, buffs, etc and suddenly less heals are needed. In a group easily handling their pulls a shaman would even be superior to the cleric as they increase the groups overall DPS. Missing a DPS, AND an Enchanter? Throw in a necro for pet DPS, crowd control with screaming terror and roots, some extra healing, and feeding a bit of mana here and their to the cleric and you may find the group is even more efficient than it was beforehand.
The point is a rogue can significantly outdps a necro yet even though a necro's primary role would be considered DPS this does not make the necro completely useless. When it comes to general utility or soloing ability the necro outclasses the rogue easily. Both classes can fill a role and fill that role in a unique fashion. The rogue may be more desirable when comes to needing someone to fill a pure DPS role but that doesn't mean the rogue should be granted equal utility to the necro to justify bumping the necro's DPS to match the rogue. That's just boring.
To take this back to the original topic. I feel like there is nothing wrong with the ability to specialize your character or even alter their role completely. It just needs to stay in line with what was outlined above and it needs to require some commitment to that role. Being able to switch roles at will starts to chip away at characters having a unique niche all of their own. That said, I know making a mistake in how you choose your role early on within your class could be very disheartening. So I am not against some ability to "respec" but it needs to be something like a quest or task that requires a good bit more effort than handing some guy 25 gold.
I have seen lots of different types of specialization over the years in various games. There are games like Shadowbane or Diablo 2 where you can directly specialize in certain abilities you like. So say as a cleric you could put points into your fast casting heal to make it more efficient or in a stun to make it less likely to resist or increasing it's duration while a different cleric might specialize in their slow casting heal to allow it to cast faster and their undead nuke increasing its damage. Both clerics would still have all of the same abilities but the first would have an edge when it comes to burst damage and the second would be able to kill undead faster.
Another one that worked well was DAoC's ability system where you basically had a limited number of points to fit into a variety of paths. Each path gave a number of baseline skills based solely on your level. As you put points in a path you became better at those baseline abilities and gained a few improved versions. As a healer you could put all of your points into mending and gain access to a few bigger heals and your baseline heals would be stronger or you could put points into pacification for better crowd control. Both healers would have healing and crowd control but the former would be better at the former and the latter would be better at the latter.
As far as EQ AAs and Vanilla WoW Talents... They are pretty much exactly the same thing. The only difference is that with Vanilla WoW talents you were limited in the number of points you had to play with whereas with AA you could collect them all like pokemon with sufficient grinding. I am okay with either of these systems so long as they don't go too far into homogenizing the characters and allowing too many characters to have access to other abilities that were once the sole domain of other classes. Tanks getting points to make them better tanks or to do more dps is fine. Tanks getting heals, crowd control, aggro dump abilities, etc is not.
As a last mention. The current WoW talent system is not exciting in the sense of customization but I think the spirit of it is not so bad in that you offer up flavor abilities or abilities that fit very specific circumstances. Giving warriors a "talent" that let's them swim faster is mostly harmless but for someone who loves doing underwater areas probably quite a fun ability to pick up. The idea would be stuff that doesn't really have a major effect on balance or gameplay but which can really give the character something the player would like. *shrug*
Great post Jezebel. I can echo you statements about the class system in EQ and changing out various classes if you didnt have that cleric or chanter and what not. I did like the vanilla wow talents as well to an extent. It still added a level of customization although it didnt have same engagement as the AA system in my opinion. It will be interesting to see what things we have to play with in Pantheon.
I really liked this post. I agree with everything you talked about. I don't really have much to add other than EQOA kinda did everything you mentioned. Each class had a very unique role, was better than other in some ways and worse than others in some ways. I mentioned this before in another post, but each class had a path they could go down. Some had more paths than others, but most just had two. The example I used there was that Druids could go a resist buff path or they could go a heal path. Magicians could go a certain elemental path. Rogues could go down a more damage path or a bigger pickpocket path, etc. I really liked how EQOA did this, and I completely agree with you that no other game has really done this again besides EQ. I don't like how you can play every role in one character. You're 100% right; it IS boring. I want my character to feel special and unique. I want to play something that groups NEED. :)
I wouldn't mind seeing no talents/specializations until 50. This can essentially be a new "AA System" that EQ1 had --- While also adding in the old AA system later to further developed characters. If we have such a large spell range that EQ1 had, we're going to have a large variety of spells plus specialization points to play with.
Silvanoshi said:
I wouldn't mind seeing no talents/specializations until 50. This can essentially be a new "AA System" that EQ1 had --- While also adding in the old AA system later to further developed characters. If we have such a large spell range that EQ1 had, we're going to have a large variety of spells plus specialization points to play with.
I think waiting till max level is a good thing. It allows us to learn and understand all of the abilities we have. From listening to the round table podcasts it seems there will be a couple ways to specialize on the journey then perhaps more customization at the end. I think my biggest hang up with talents is the static amount and the ability to respec. We have the choice to buy what we want in the order we want with an AA system. If we want something else later one we have to earn that not just simply respec and spend the points elsewhere. I guess in my mind it adds longevity as well as extra thought put into what you buy with your points. Knowing that if you cant just respect if forces you to put extra thought into it. Time will tell it should be a fun adventure anyway!
Just bumping this thread again since I have a question on the subject.
I have been following Pantheon for the past three years now and might have missed them mention anything on this subject but can anyone confirm if they are going the more traditional route where you can switch your skills out for what you want to do or are they going down the specialization/talent tree route where you pick tank/dps/healer/utility option and forced to respec/do a quest if you want to switch?
I hate the modern mmo specialization/talent tree route with a passion. It's annoying when you play a tank class for example and have downtime out of raids and need to farm materials or want to grind up some faction and I need to use a super low dps tank spec to do it because i'm kind of forced to. I know Pantheon is a group focused game but there will be times when you can farm alone/nobody online to do not so much important things and doing these things in a healer/tank spec is painful from past experience.
I would much prefer if I could just level up my skills/abilities and be able to switch from tank skills/abilities to my dps ones and do some faction rep grinding to kill some time inbetween waiting for groups. Even if it takes me months to level them up to a decent standard then I would much prefer that than being forced to pay stupid amounts of platinum or to do a long chain quest in order to switch all the time.
Yeah I honestly hope it is classic to EQ in that you don't have talents and specs differentiating each class. A wizard is a wizard is a wizard, having them go down different paths and specialize in x or y ends up complicating groups down the line and certain specs edge out as the best for any given role.
Iksar said:Yeah I honestly hope it is classic to EQ in that you don't have talents and specs differentiating each class. A wizard is a wizard is a wizard, having them go down different paths and specialize in x or y ends up complicating groups down the line and certain specs edge out as the best for any given role.
I personally enjoyed how EQOA implemented their AA system. A druid is a druid is a druid. Sure, there could be 3 forms of druid, but each form is still only obtainable by druids. Having a druid that can focus more on group heals and resists vs a druid that focuses on single target heals and an AC buff. This allows a "variety" of druid types to be viable in different end-game settings.
Specializing in variables does make it more complicated down the line and I see that as a good thing. By only allowing one "spec" or "path" you're still enforcing a "cookie cutter" mentality, particularly with raid composition. This can leave certain classes on the sidelines ... I remember raiding for years in EQ2 where our sole monk sat on the sidelines yet 4 different enchanters were a regular part of our raid rotation.
Let's say Pantheon only has 12 classes when the game is launched, and the "raid size" is capped at 24. This means that on any given raid, you would be able to use 2 of each class. The key to making this work is by developing multiple AA branches or "paths" that are each valuable in their own right. Maybe one warrior could be specialized in the sense that they would have better aggro mechanics vs AE encounters while the other is better at soaking up single target damage.
I like the idea of having multiple ways to play my character while still keeping each path in line with my archetype or role. This allows the development team to create a bigger variety of group/raid mechanics for us to try and overcome. I also like the idea of allowing characters the opportunity to spec down multiple paths, and I'll provide an example.
Let's say there are 2 paths for warrior, 1 focused on single target tanking, and the other focused on multi-target aggro. Let's say I go down the single target tanking tree. Upon finishing that tree, I can then start the multi-aggro tree, but would no longer receive the benefits of the single target tanking tree. Upon maxing this 2'nd tree, I can now interchange between both specializations. This means that while there may be a specific tree that is better for a specific encounter, a well advanced character has the option of "flexing" or playing whatever is most beneficial at that given time. In order to "flex" into that 2'nd tree though, they will had to have put just as much work in unlocking those AA's as they did in the first tree. It's not just a matter of "reassigning" points. You would have needed to fully "learn" that tree from scratch and have done it without any of the benefts of the first tree that you already unlocked. It's just another form of progression and it also allows a little bit of diversity within each class and opens up more variables for the development team to utilize when designing the encounters.
The EQ AA system is still the best in my book, mostly for the reasons Raiden described above. Any advancement system that forces a particular skill path and restricts access to class abilities based on a limited allotment of skill points leads to obsessing over how to spend those points. The ability to just grind out another 12AA or whatever to make up for choosing a silly AA (innate metabolism anyone?) lets me enjoy a character much more and lets me not worry so much about perfect class balance. Instead of going to a forum to complain about how my spec is underpowered, I'll jump into a dungeon and get a little stronger in gear, items, crafting, or plat.
If they haven't scrapped the specialization plan that was discussed in the Roundtable from 2/2015 (not sure, but thinking they may have), then you'd have a system where warriors (and every other class) could unlock specialization paths at different points in their progression. The warrior would then choose which specialization to work on -first-, but would not be locked in. Each of the specializations would use a different color of mana and the warrior would need to collect gear that facilitates the use of the mana needed for whichever specialization he chooses.
So, let's say one path is for extra tanking abilities and the other is for extra damage abilities. We'll randomly select blue for the mana color of the tanking path and red for the mana color of the damage path (the Roundtable actually has warriors using red mana for base abilities, but that appears to have been scrapped based on the rogue melee we have seen in streams). The warrior would complete a quest to unlock the paths and then could begin collecting bits of gear that allow him to generate red and/or blue mana. The warrior would also begin collecting the abilities for each path. After collecting the gear and the abilities, the warrior could then wear gear that generates red mana and memorize damage abilities or wear gear that generates blue mana and memorize tanking abilities. The warrior could also wear some of each type of gear and memorize some of each type of ability.
I hope this type of system hasn't been scrapped because I think it's pretty sweet, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: Changed a word for clarity.
Shucklighter said:If they haven't scrapped the specialization plan that was discussed in the Roundtable from 2/2015 (not sure, but thinking they may have), then you'd have a system where warriors (and every other class) could unlock specialization paths at different points in their progression. The warrior would then choose which specialization to work on -first-, but would not be locked in. Each of the specializations would use a different color of mana and the warrior would need to collect gear that facilitates the use of the mana needed for whichever specialization he chooses.
So, let's say one path is for extra tanking abilities and the other is for extra damage abilities. We'll randomly select blue for the mana color of the tanking path and red for the mana color of the damage path (the Roundtable actually has warriors using red mana for base abilities, but that appears to have been scrapped based on the rogue melee we have seen in streams). The warrior would complete a quest to unlock the paths and then could begin collecting bits of gear that allow him to generate red and/or blue mana. The warrior would also begin collecting the abilities for each path. After collecting the gear and the abilities, the warrior could then wear gear that generates red mana and memorize damage abilities or wear gear that generates blue mana and memorize tanking abilities. The warrior could also wear some of each type of gear and memorize some of each type of ability.
I hope this type of system hasn't been scrapped because I think it's pretty sweet, but I'm not holding my breath.
EDIT: Changed a word for clarity.
This sounds awesome and already has me pretty hyped about the colored-mana system.
Great writeup Jezebel.
I do feel like one wizard should be different from another wizard is some ways, but nothing that drastically changes the class from being a wizard. An example would be one wizard's fire spells do more damage, but his ice does less. While another wizard could be the opposite. It will help people feel special and unique to a point. Sure in the long run, there will be "cookie cutter" builds, but an example would Diablo 3. Diablo 3 has multiple specs and builds, while each of the is close to other in terms of survivability and playstyle.
I for one would love some sort of system that allowed this.
Amsai said: @Shucklighter I asked about it not too far back and it was said that there are several ideas(including class paths) that although are on the table, still need to be hashed out in alpha and beta.
Ah, okay. Just one of a few things they don't really want to discuss that much until they can test them. Good to know it's still a possibility. Thanks for the information, Amsai.
Edit: Never mind. Already discussed.
I haven't been a big fan of talents since World of Warcraft. Originally you could take talents from each tree which allowed you to be a jack of all trades in some cases. Recently they changed it so you have to pick a specific role and talent tree (no doubt for boring balance reasons).
Another game I've been trying out is Neverwinter. Often you see an increase in something like .025 or your CC is increase by 2 seconds, but only .5 seconds vs. players (get excited!). Most of them seem such a small increase as to not really be specializing at all. The quest to make things balanced along with making things very linear has really killed this genre for me so far.
Personally I would rather they don't have specs. Let players play how they want to with the class. A good example would be a Ranger. If they like to melee then let them. If they like to use Archery let them. There isn't really a reason to prevent players from accessing all the available abilities of a class IMO. A wizard who likes frost spells could use them most of the time, but in an area where they aren't effective they can still switch to lighting or fire and be effective.
I like a system like in WoW Vanilla/BC. You had specialized classes and you had hybrids. Specialized classes had made more damage and had more utility in case of their roles. Hybrids hat a ~30% tax and they were not very flexible in one of their roles. But they could switch them. A druid could be a tank, a healer or an roughe like damage dealer or a wizard like damage dealer. But they had always disadvantages in comparison to the "pure" classes. I know in Pantheon you will not have such flexibility. But to be able adjusting some aspects of a class would be very interesting. I do not like when everybody is a clone.
Greetings
Jasper said:Great writeup Jezebel.
I do feel like one wizard should be different from another wizard is some ways, but nothing that drastically changes the class from being a wizard. An example would be one wizard's fire spells do more damage, but his ice does less. While another wizard could be the opposite. It will help people feel special and unique to a point. Sure in the long run, there will be "cookie cutter" builds, but an example would Diablo 3. Diablo 3 has multiple specs and builds, while each of the is close to other in terms of survivability and playstyle.
I for one would love some sort of system that allowed this.
I agree and I think to some degree that should be determined by the race. Perhaps Elvish Wizards traditionally spend more time studying fire spells, while Dark Myr Wizards spend more time studying ice spells. The differences in their culture and environment have a noticeable effect on the abilities they have. And then, yes, even the wizards within those cultures would have even more diversity.
Larirawiel said:I like a system like in WoW Vanilla/BC. You had specialized classes and you had hybrids. Specialized classes had made more damage and had more utility in case of their roles. Hybrids hat a ~30% tax and they were not very flexible in one of their roles. But they could switch them. A druid could be a tank, a healer or an roughe like damage dealer or a wizard like damage dealer. But they had always disadvantages in comparison to the "pure" classes. I know in Pantheon you will not have such flexibility. But to be able adjusting some aspects of a class would be very interesting. I do not like when everybody is a clone.
Greetings
That's true, but some classes will have more versatility without talents. You mentioned the Druid in World of Warcraft which is a good place to start. In Everquest a Druid could heal, buff, and DPS. It had some abilities that would allow potential for melee combat, but it didn't really work out as they never had any melee abilities to use. None the less they could switch between healer or DPS depending on what the group needed. A wizard would be another good comparison. In World of Warcraft you had to specialize in fire, frost, or something else that is escaping me. In EQ you could happily switch between any of those types of damage without ever worrying about being penalized for it. Personally I think this is nice. I don't really like having to use only abilities from one tree. That can get bland rather quickly.
It is a slippery slope , there are problems with both systems .
Lets be real here in a spec based game , the specs will be broken down inside of a months time. This leads to one or two viable builds for each class to be high end viable .
If you are not playing one of those specs ... good luck being in a truely competitive guild.
AA systems, there are problems with this system as well.
We have all seen the recruiting for xxx guild required 500 + aa required max mana regen , max movement .
The issues I have with this system boils down to long term viability , the new person walking into the game has 0.
The game will continue to progress but still needs to be in some way accessible to a new player that is dedicated to be able to compete.
Xxar said:It is a slippery slope , there are problems with both systems .
Lets be real here in a spec based game , the specs will be broken down inside of a months time. This leads to one or two viable builds for each class to be high end viable .
If you are not playing one of those specs ... good luck being in a truely competitive guild.
AA systems, there are problems with this system as well.
We have all seen the recruiting for xxx guild required 500 + aa required max mana regen , max movement .
The issues I have with this system boils down to long term viability , the new person walking into the game has 0.
The game will continue to progress but still needs to be in some way accessible to a new player that is dedicated to be able to compete.
I made a recommendation that would allow the long-time players ample progression opportunity without creating too much of a barrier between themself and a newer player trying to compete. Basically, you allow a character to master multiple paths, but only allow them to use one at any given time. Each path must be leveled separately, no reassigning points. Once multiple paths are learned, they can be interchanged freely when out of combat. One path might be considered the "cookie cutter" path, but the other paths would also have a time to shine. A new player would most likely decide to level the "cookie cutter" path first since it's "best" for let's say 60-70% of the content.
The more seasoned warrior would be able to master all of the separate paths and therefore have the "best" paths for 100% of content. This allows the long-time veterans to keep progressing, and also gives the new guy a chance to be impactful. He might not have the "best" path for 100% of the content like the veteran, but he'd be able to play at max efficiency for roughly 60-70% of the content. For the remaining content, he'll have to settle using his cookie cutter build that just doesen't hold up to some of the advanced expertise options available to the seasoned veteran. Still able to contribute, but can be situationally out-played by the more dynamic class master.