General Discussion

Originally posted by markoraos

Originally posted by Silverthorn8

When they say the first take on the careers was too complex, was it anything close to the fantasy roleplay system? Which typically started as something like a simple woodcutter or academic, then they would branch out into more sophistacted roles such as brigand, captain, judicial champion or pit fighter and of course if you are a dwarf the slayer careers.

There was also non-combat careers like demagogue, charlatan all revolving around manipulating innoncent folks (being non-combat it is easy to see why these wouldnt fit the current career formats).

The point is they all relied on prerequisite skills to be learned before one could progress from a base career to the more 'high brow' stuff. Typically it would take half a decade just to get to wizard rank 1 in the pnp game (unless the dm was kind with exp). I can see why the system will never make it into an mmo type format, although maybe a platform like the 4th edition d&d it would work.

Anyway looking forward to the next part of the interview :)

 

Yeah, I totally loved that system as well...

However since the MMORPG is squarely based on TT portion of the IP rather than RPG one (I believe it's even been given over to a separate company while GW concentrates on the TT), the existing career system is OK.

A WHFRPG career system would be awesome but then it wouldn't be all about WAR since a lot of those classes aren't purely combat ones. It would be better suited for a more classical MMO rather than a RvR one. Oh well...

Its a shame that no-one has decided to make a proper online ROLEPLAYING game (shock! horror! a game that isnt a great big war of mobile calculators!) based on warhammer actually although I can totally understand why it has gone in the direction of WAR. It has been very closely modeled off of WoW because they know that it will succeed and make money that way. Its also what the masses know and are familiar with so unfortunately the games companies have to appeal to the "orcish hordes" (Where's my PvP, phat loot farming, raiding, DoTs, epic gear blah blah blah) to access their wallets. The hairless apes that comprise the human race just cant adapt to new things very well unfortunately.

Dont get me wrong though cos I'm certainly looking forward to playing WAR when it comes out. I'm sure I will have a lot of fun with it. Its just a shame that they arent making a more intelligent game where I can really create an interesting character that is more unique. Instead we are restricting to a paltry 4 classes within each race. There will no doubt be more classes that get added to each race with further expansions but even still......I dunno.....it still seems rather simplified and limited to me. OK so in the article they talk about how each race has its own unique class. Is that such a big deal? Didnt we already know all of this from the beginning. Why has an article been published about it now as though its something new that they've just added to the game?

I'm wondering......isnt it going to be rather odd seeing large numbers of Bright Wizards running around? OK I know they can specialise in different branches of....umm.....burning things but they're still all Bright Wizards. I'm not all that clued up on Warhammer law but I'm sure there were loads of other schools of magic such as Jade Wizards, Celestial Wizards, Gold Wizards, Grey Wizards, Light Wizards and some others I think. Why can we only be one class of mage? The same goes for the priests and knights. Only one order of priests (Sigmar) and one order of knights (Blazing Sun). What about the rest? The thing is they dont even need to be totally different classes. Just let us pick our Wizard, Priest or Knight and then let us pick a secondary "Order" that we belong to. The "Order" that we choose to belong to could dictate what paths we could specialise in.

But yeah of course I totally understand the whole class-balancing thing and how much harder it gets the more choice the player has. Its just a shame it has to be dumbed down so much thats all. I also guess its because I really like the Warhammer setting and I'm a greedy git who wants it all.....even though I know I cant have it. Oh well WoW 2 it is then. Now where's me axe?!

Here we go again.  Mythic only stupid devs don't learn from their mistakes.  You did the exact same thing with DAoC and guess what, 7-8 years later the classes are still not balanced to any degree.

Blizzard was smart, only introducing a few classes, NOT 24. 

Who knows, Mythic might shock the heck out of us and deliever half way decent class balance, but I have my doubts, as they could not do it in DAoC.

They should immediately drop at least 8 of the classes, even 16 is a stretch at release.

Remember Wow was primarily pve so the pvp was not a significant factor, WAR is pvp first and no balance means fotm classes that everyone herds to.

I just hope we see a miracle from Mythic, otherwise everyone will be disappointed again in another MMO company.

Remember, Mythic's response to fotm classes is to nuke them into oblivion.  Once Mythic decides to nerf they almost always make the class unplayable.

you shouldn't try to justify things with warhammer lore when you don't know the lore.  there arn't many diffrent orders of knights for the empire.  hell, the brits only had 4 orders of knights, and they are the... knights faction.  (I take that back, they arn't diffrent orders of knights, just levels on their quest to the grail or ownership of land)

We can't base it too much on Warhammer because that was a game of armies! mass forces against each other.  players don't want to be archer #19 or skink #46.  and very few armies in warhammer contain more than a handfull of wizards, large armies.  small ones are very limited in in their choice of lords and heroes and such and they'd be lucky to have even 1.

In a real Warhammer army for the empire? i'd only expect to see knights of the blazing sun.  they were great strong troops, but never the focus.  I don't see how you could get the focus of the empire army in an MMO unless you wanted to let people play as... cannons.

The lore is deep, the units diverse.  But its not based on people playing a single unit, so a lot of things have to change.

and no, empire doesn't have access to all those schools of magic.  each type of wizard tends to have a very limited choice of magic.  with slaan toad lords having the largest pool to pull from if I can remember correctly.   but my Woodelf army can't touch high magic, so why should these silly empire wizards be able to?

Sounds like someone over at Mythic played AC2.  It's funny to me that one of the big reasons people didn't like AC2 later in life was because of the number of classes.  For those that don't know, each of the 3 races (eventually 4 and a drudge) had unique classes.  Each race had 2 melee classes, 2 ranged, 2 caster.  There were overlaps between classes but each and every class was unique.  It was the best system out there and would be today if it hadn't been screwed over by MS.  Oh well... another topic.

I'm glad another company thought that was a good idea, gives me some hope for WAR.

Originally posted by Bane82

I don't get it to be honest. Don't other games have a relatively similar job system? for example, in WoW only certain classes can be certain professions, not all races can be everything. I noticed this in EQ2 and I believe even DAoC, heck I believe LOTRO and DDO has this too. The only difference is that the other MMO's decided to expand more professions to other races, but again, this isn't to say that it isn't all THAT different from what WAR is trying to do... or am I missing something here?

 

I'm also not very sure to get it. Besides what you already wrote, what about i.e. AoC? Only Stygian race for example can be necromancer or demonologist. However many are shared by other races. In LOTRO also only humans can be all possible classes, but it is true, that many are shared among races.

Originally posted by Majinash

you shouldn't try to justify things with warhammer lore when you don't know the lore.  there arn't many diffrent orders of knights for the empire.  hell, the brits only had 4 orders of knights, and they are the... knights faction.  (I take that back, they arn't diffrent orders of knights, just levels on their quest to the grail or ownership of land)

 

We can't base it too much on Warhammer because that was a game of armies! mass forces against each other.  players don't want to be archer #19 or skink #46.  and very few armies in warhammer contain more than a handfull of wizards, large armies.  small ones are very limited in in their choice of lords and heroes and such and they'd be lucky to have even 1.

 

In a real Warhammer army for the empire? i'd only expect to see knights of the blazing sun.  they were great strong troops, but never the focus.  I don't see how you could get the focus of the empire army in an MMO unless you wanted to let people play as... cannons.

 

The lore is deep, the units diverse.  But its not based on people playing a single unit, so a lot of things have to change.

 

and no, empire doesn't have access to all those schools of magic.  each type of wizard tends to have a very limited choice of magic.  with slaan toad lords having the largest pool to pull from if I can remember correctly.   but my Woodelf army can't touch high magic, so why should these silly empire wizards be able to?

Well I did point out that I dont know the warhammer lore all that well didnt I. That doesnt mean I cant voice some thoughts I am having about the topic though does it.

But thanks for the information though as it cleared a few things up for me. For example I didnt know that the empire only had access to fire magic......I was sure that they had more schools of magic than that but I must be wrong. Same goes for the knightly orders and priests too. My gripes have been pushed aside :-)

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Here we go again.  Mythic only stupid devs don't learn from their mistakes.  You did the exact same thing with DAoC and guess what, 7-8 years later the classes are still not balanced to any degree.

Blizzard was smart, only introducing a few classes, NOT 24. 

Who knows, Mythic might shock the heck out of us and deliever half way decent class balance, but I have my doubts, as they could not do it in DAoC.

They should immediately drop at least 8 of the classes, even 16 is a stretch at release.

Remember Wow was primarily pve so the pvp was not a significant factor, WAR is pvp first and no balance means fotm classes that everyone herds to.

I just hope we see a miracle from Mythic, otherwise everyone will be disappointed again in another MMO company.

Remember, Mythic's response to fotm classes is to nuke them into oblivion.  Once Mythic decides to nerf they almost always make the class unplayable.

They've really streamlined what they did with DAoC in WAR.  While they have 24 classes, they have 4 archetypes, and there are pairs of classes that mimic eachother, yet are still unique.
 

i.e. Bright Wizard and Sorceress are both RDPS classes that have a guage that builds up with the more magic you cast that can damage your character if you use too many powerful spells.

Or the fact that there are 6 healing classes, but two are mimiced for melee, and two are mimiced for range, and the other two... well they're mimiced but in what seems like a different way.  Warrior Priest and Disciple for melee, the shaman and archmage for ranged, and the zealot and runepriest for what seems like buffs/debuffs.

Having mimics, and also having very straight forward archetypes will go a loooooong way in helping class balance be achieved easier.  With DAoC you have a ton of unique classes that don't mirror and aren't in any specific archetype.  (At least not to my knowledge)

It makes testing easier and balance easier also because when you play the class you can ask yourself "Does it fit the correct role?"

EDIT: To neonwire.  The Empire has access to all 8 winds of magic, but they can only be proficient in one per person. 

There are 8 colleges of magic in the Empire.  some examples being Bright Wizards, Amethyst Wizards, Jade Wizards, etc. etc.  you can find it all on the games workshop website under the empire section. 

The point he was trying to make is Bright Wizards ONLY use Fire magic, while other colleges ONLY use their college of magic.  They're not able to do what the elves do which is that one person can theoretically use all 8 winds of magic.

There's already been concept art of wizards from the other colleges (obviously as NPCs), they just chose to use Bright Wizards because of their unique look and feel.  I mean just look at them.  They bleed of badassery.

Also there are other priests and other knightly orders.  I can't think of all their names as well, but the Knights of the Blazing sun who worship the goddess myrmidia (i think that's how you spell it) are very tactical and exact in everything they do throughout their life, so they are the closest to what people expect from a tank/knight character.

There are also other priesthoods.  I can't think of those either off the top of my head. (not a lore buff) but I know they exist. 

Again just browse games workshops site and you can find miniatures of most of the classes that are in the game, or find some info online about the fantasy role playing game they have, because some of the lore is pulled from that as well.  Then while you're at it you can read some novels, because they're pulling lore from there too. :p  Basically they're drawing from the entire IP and not just one aspect of it.

Question: Why have set classes at all? This, I think, is part of what discourages me from playing most mainstream games. From the time I create my character I'm stuck in my ways, not being able to distribute attributes AT ALL and not really choosing the majority of my abilities.

WoW has a trait system that allows a bit of character customization, but you realize that it's more of the illusion of customization because depending