Many years ago I played a pen-and-paper game called 'DragonQuest'. It was a fantasy game along the lines of D&D, but instead of classes chosen at creation, it relied on you picking skills as you levelled up. You could, in theory, pick skills from many areas and disciplines .... but there was a cost to this. Many of the skills relied on different stats, had armour or other requirements, and the overall cost would ensure you were always going to be trailing behind any character with a 'single/pure' focus. Unlike AD&D with its dual-classes, you were not assured of having a 'viable, well rounded, equal powered' character if you chose to go down an 'alternative' path.
While I enjoy this kind of character building immensely, it had certain restrictions:
1. XP for spending per level was fixed
2. You had to spend limited points on stats/level
3. There were alignment/gear/min-stat restrictions on many skills
4. There was NO roll-back. Once spent, it was spent.
This made for freedom of choice ... at your own risk! If you gimped yourself by wasting points on incompatible or overlapping skills, you could easily find yourself 'weak' for your level. I would be happy to play such a game as an MMO were it released. I fervently believe that taking full responsibility for all your choices, no matter what, is great! In a modern MMO it would, of course, spawn a whole horde of people complaining about how they were level 40 and found they have gimped themselves and want to 'reset' all their skills/stats. Bit, I would still play this game!
Pantheon, however, uses another form of personal choice:
It allows you to pick your unique Race/Class combination and master it!
It allows you to have a unique role based on your skills and how you use them!
In Pantheon you must seek to be Master of One Class....
.... and not Jack of all.
Evoras, wonders is anyone else played DragonQuest...
That sounds awesome Evoras, never played it myself. I can easily picture it as a really interesting take on character development in an MMO, esp when such a game would be new. No doubt the spreadsheets would catch up with it tho and everyone would feel punished for not starting later when it has all been figured out (boring! :D). Isn't that the bane of mmo's nowadays tho, that it seems to be mostly about 'winning'?
But anyway, personally I feel choosing a class isn't just a practical choice of an occupation within a game, but also a defining trait of who the character is. Their values, their beliefs, their preferences, what makes them tick... it immediately gives a sense of identity. Not just to others but even more to myself. In that sense I greatly prefer alts with their own identities over swapping jobs on one character.
Kilsin said:We have made it pretty clear via our FAQ and Pantheon Difference statements that we will be a traditional one class/one role kind of game with deep class interdependence, you will not be able to do it all on one character in Pantheon, you will need help or to create alts. :)
I used to say back in EQ that I didn't know where I began and where my character, Wandidar Aroundidar, Wood Elf Ranger of Kelethin, ended. I am not a role player... but the longer I played my ranger, the more "ranger" I became when I played him. I took on the lore of being a ranger... and I also took on the good natured lore invented by the player community about rangers (they die a lot!). It was part of my character, part of ME when I played EQ.
In the end, it was one of the things that made it nearly impossible for me to WANT to play another class / role. I WAS Wandidar when I played EQ.
For me, personally, I long for a game that absolutely makes me feel tied to one character again - that makes me that character again during the moments of the day I am playing,
Edit: Wandidar was game generated... Aroundidar came from a "name that ranger" contest I had in my guild... the person who came up with it said... Wandidar Aroundidar... WANDER AROUND! (was perfect for the ranger I was)
>For me, personally, I long for a game that absolutely makes me feel tied to one character again<
I hear you.
To me this applies to factions as well. Thinking about why, in recent years, every time I tried Rift again it didn't last long it strikes me that the excessive ease of getting to maximum level was not the only reason. Essentially eliminating the importance of factions may have been even more important.
I could happily sink myself into the mindset of a defiant who might (or might not) hate the guardians for betraying the world and allowing Regulos the destroyer in to kill everyone. Hard to forgive something like that! Or a guardian hating the defiants for screwing up bigtime and letting Regulos in to destroy the world. It was all a matter of perspective.
Now fast forward a few years. The factions can group with eachother, share guilds, have shared banks, send mail to eachother. PvP is no longer faction-based - we kill for practice or the fun of it not dedication to a cause. Regulos wasn't really the enemy just a ...minor annoyance ....relegated to near irrelevance by several expansions. Aaargghhhhh Wandidar is exactly right - using Rift as a model rather than EQ since I don't really know EQ it went from something I could immerse myself in to just ...a GAME!
Much the same is true for EQ2 which perhaps I should have used as my example since more of us have played it.
Grimix said:Hey guys, I've search for this topic and didn't see anything related tonthis question. I was wondering if class switching would be in this game, and if not would that be something you may consider adding? I'm the type of person who likes to do everything on one character, and I don't have much love for creating alts but I do enjoy leveling multiple classes. I feel like this would be a nice feature to add without sacrificing any ideals of the game. Any feedback, pro's and cons?
Hmmm... I 've played my share of games and I admit I wouldn't mind seeing features from some other games in Pantheon however, I know that I would not want them in Pantheon as those features won't be a good fit in Pantheon.
In Galaxies I liked being able to go to an NPC that would allow me to convert my Jedi into a Bounty Hunter of the same LvL and switch back as I wanted. As a Bounty Hunter I could make a lot of money by reviewing at the Bounty Hunter's Guild the various contracts players would put out on other players, find them, kill them and then collect the rewards...especially since some of those Bounties posted by players ran into the millions of credits. Still for Pantheon, as it's own game, this would be..... well if we think about it I think we can see how this would not be helpful for the longevity....the long term playabilty of Pantheon.
In Guild Wars I liked being able to hire NPC's to run with my character. Lets see... If I recall correctly Guild Wars had groups of up to 8 or 10 and players could hire NPC's to create their own groups. The AI was advanced enough to were all the NPC classes that a player hired would perform their roles very well. However those NPC classes would also take a share of the loot as payment. That was to prevent players from becomming ultimate looters. Also bear in mind that Guild Wars was entirely instanced for your group. The only time you interacted with other players enmass was in cities. Still Guild Wars is a different game having it's own playstyle so, having this in Pantheon would be very inappropriate since Pantheon is 1st and foremost a group oriented game. That is group oriented with other players.... not with ourselves via NPC's.
My point is this.... would allowing players to play every class, on a single character, available to their character's race add to Pantheon in a possitive way? My humble opinion is when we think of the goal, the premise of Pantheon, the answer is "no".
Riahuf22 said:I just don't see this becoming a thing in Pantheon, it just seems to artifical to me, if you can be a warrior a next with no spells and than bam be a cleric and be an ultimate healing maching and than bam be a wizard nuking like crazy and going awesome dps, i mean it sounds good in all on some games i guess but i just don't see it having a place in Pantheon becuase it seems like a very lazy way of making alts.
I dont see it happening either ... theyd be dumb to go in and start messing with things like that this late in development. Artificial? Eh, thats subjective. Is it any more "artificial" than your character spontaneously ceasing to exist while another of a different race/class takes his place? If done right, its not really a game breaking or even necessarily a lore breaking issue. The general "group-centered" philosophy for the game? How? Assuming you start at each class at level 1, cant wear gear bound on another class, and have to level just the same ... what would be the difference between going to town to change your class (for example) and relogging on another human with the same model named Sàm instead of Sam? For a game like this it can be done in a way where it practically is an alt in every sense except the same character slot and not having to repeat quests.