Lol sorry, Political Ideologys aside

Well, lets bring it back up, again!

The Classless System, it is the Dream

I had a talk with Ianonmmorpg, on my other thread, and I felt I needed to talk abit about it.

I can see from a roleplaying perspective how it would be so elegant and magnificant that we could make a Char/Hero just the way we want, taking a big pool of abillitys and adding those you feel using.

But i submit, that it will lead ppl to obious choices, the wide range of possibillitys will become a limitation, because in the many imaginative situations there would be a wide range of abillitys that, i would not be able to live without. The old saying, why take the hard way when the easy way is much better.

Then in the End, we will all end up having the similar abillitys and we will not have reached the goal of freedom, but Iron chain us.

In instances, i see problems without the system, but i do also see problems with the system. I suggest a compromise? Something thats halfway there, and halfway away from it?

Actually that system does work for the general population.

Using classic SWG as an example, from the humble beginnings of that game a character could be whatever mix of skills they wanted. Many of us just picked what we liked. Our characters were unique and we created an actual social society with its own economy and everything. Its the closest thing to a "virtual world" I have played. Only the L337 PWN wannabes all mad the same uber combat templates for PVP and such. The rest of us just enjoyed the freedom of individuality.

It was then that Sony decided to cater to the minority and started adding invincibility buffs and such so everyone could be uber soloer types. Then the alpha class jedi compounded the problem and in the end nobody was playing the game as it was originally intended.

My point exactly, I want to outlive my potential in my Char, so the problem I face is that, some abillitys will be better and require ME to be that way, and that way i wont be in freedom.

I think there is a happy medium between a closed class system and a completely open skill system, where you create more viable options, viable being the operative word..

For one I think there has to be a hard cap for how many things you can learn, if you had no cap at all and could learn and master everything then people will do just that , or rather learn all the best skills.

Of course you know I use an ability cap, and limit players by how many ability pools they draw from.

But I think there should also be limitations on what can be used together.  For instance since in my concept abilities rely on pocessing the coresponding item to use the ability, and your character can only carry weapons and items on their person, not their inventory, it limits what you can use together.

Machinegun, medicine and espionage sounds like an invincible combination, high armor and health, massive spray of bullets, ability to heal, and sneak and take out key targets, but your medical supplies take up your back weapon slot as does your machinegun so medicine is hampered when using machinegun, and sneaking is hampered by carrying big weapons.

It is different for a fantasy game, since magic does not require items, unless it does, but the same principle could be applied.  I do not like blanket restrictions like magic is hampered when using armor, because I can think of a variety of magic schools that work fine with armor, like healing and smiting spells for paladin.

Then there is auto-balance, picking a damage heavy pool with a support pool makes your character do less damage and support a little weaker by default, meaning to be really good at something like damage dealing you have to focus in damage dealing abilities.

Little touches the developer can use to curve uber builds and create more options.  Because if something sounds overpowered it probably is.

A skill based system does not imply that you aren't forcing a classbased system during actuall combat:

To start with you're going to be pretty much limiting the skills players can use at anytime from the get go. 

  We're talking about gear requirements, in this case you're not going to let the person use axe skills with a sword likewise you aren't going to let someone use magic without the proper focus equiped.  

Next thing players are going to realize is that they can't just keep using some skills over and over without tiring themselves out(IE: big fireball), you'll only see that happen once or twice in a battle or even less.   

Players will also realize that it's generally not a good idea to bring gear for changing their abilities in the actual field, first you'll be filling your inventory with stag items that you aren't using at the time which could be put to better use carring loot or consumables, second if you have the chance of dropping items you'll be risking more high value items.    Third even a skill like lock picking and trap disarmment is going to take up an inventory slot or three, forcing people to think twice about bringing it even if they do have it.

You can also develop your combat system so that battles don't necessarily last long enough for you to use every skill in the book.

Some skills(like religion/pet/similar) require you to actually upkeep the skills to actually be able to use them(please god(lowercase)/feed pet/ritual/weekly quest/high cost/other investment), that's set up so most players will only use one type of those skills.

Other skills could be environmental for instance a hydromancer skills will not be able to call about much water in the desert, likewise a druid skills in the city will only be able to call on a few weeds and rats.

Then you're also capable of adding hard limits to the skill system as well.   For instance you can only bring 7 skills.  Ohters like youour person can only apply one weakness ability on something.   

Finally players are pretty much so adapted to tank-heal-DPS-CC that they're likely to fall into that situation no matter what you do.   That situation is also the optimal way to share responibilities in a system where you're forced to specialize which all the above rules does do quite nicely.   The above rules also forces players to "choose" a class even when going out into the field by themselves.   This system also makes grouping a bit more difficult in the aspect that you need to ask what people are doing, but easier at the same time because you don't need to find one specific class IF someone is in the group and willing to switch out some skills for the ones you need.

Actually to be honest I'm not againt class based systems at all, there's a place for them if you do it right.   I'd have to say that you're better off taking an OK class system than taking an OK skill system.   A great class(guildwars) system will be just as fun as a great skill system(depends).

Niether are easier nor harder if you make them properly.   You're going to be spending a lot of time trying to get a balance in them no matter what.   

Yeah, I guess balancing is what we need.... but it is prolly the hardest job there is?

oh no, but limitations are limiting... funny enough.... and we might have some roleplayers, not be able to have thier beloved char. Thats what roleplayers what, they want their char. .... I mean there is no end to thier creativity.... they cant all have thier char can they ?

Going on what Paul said, I would take a well made class system like GW or CoX over a poor skill system, Ryzom, any day.

Runes of Magic , a game in open beta, has a primary and secondary class system, with training points so you can pick which abilities to increase and create pretty unique builds, I think it is really fun so far.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Going on what Paul said, I would take a well made class system like GW or CoX over a poor skill system, Ryzom, any day.

Runes of Magic , a game in open beta, has a primary and secondary class system, with training points so you can pick which abilities to increase and create pretty unique builds, I think it is really fun so far.

Hey, i was wondering, is it normal that a task for making a game to look impossible in the thinking stage, but might turn out well anyway ?

Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto? The classless society was based on a society pre-industrial age. Where everybody could be a farmer, hunter, etc. This kind of useless subjectivist thinking does not apply to real life situations, but to say, "classless MMO" and tie it into Karl Marx? You make me utterly sick.

 Have you ever heard the theory, "Each according to his need, each according to his ability"? That was also a theory of Communism. When everybody has "equal" ability to do everything, everybody sucks at doing it.

Capitalism allows you to choose your own profession and if you don't like it, you can change skills - like pre-CU SWG. The only difference between this and different MMOs are the restrictions - most MMOs have levels and do not allow you to change classes.  Pre-CU SWG did not have levels or classes (nor does any real life system hold any restriction, because it is simply stupid to do so).

You have an idea that is so broad that it itself is an insult. I, on the other had, at least pin-pointed three areas of life you could pin-point down that relate to all MMOs to some extent. Please do not bother posting a general concept because we've heard it all before, and if you were a programmer you'd understand why many of our ideas aren't being used.

Yes, anything is possible within a virtual world, but is everything practical? I think not.

Originally posted by Mackerni

Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto? The classless society was based on a society pre-industrial age. Where everybody could be a farmer, hunter, etc. This kind of useless subjectivist thinking does not apply to real life situations, but to say, "classless MMO" and tie it into Karl Marx? You make me utterly sick.

...

Calm down.... its only a public thought process, and one I might add you dont need to monitor if it upsets you.
 

Hi folks, well I imagine you know my 'lefty' views on this... free the people from the oppression of the class system. But equally true... people are idiots (you know what I mean ;) and as you've highlighted... unless done really well its going to be far worse than even an average class system.

I dont mind if people develop a set of 'uber-builds' and the wiki informs everyone that they must have this build or be a noob, lets face it, its going to happen. But I'd like to mitigate it as far as possible...

Huge tech tree. In order to develop the next tech you must have its parents. However a character needs only learn the skills they want, not the entire history of this tech... you may know how to drive a car but you dont need to understand the development process of automobiles and petroleum. The large tech tree means we will have a lot more skills, and these should cover a wider range of game play then simple combat, or even complex combat. I want to see a complete crafting system (for every item-its a little difficult to permit new models to enter the game, but anything already modelled can be crafted and have its profile modded (including new textures etc)), social skills- imagine actually having to use social skills to solve certain problems (its like RPG :).

By having so many skills you will almost certainly have very few people bother to develop most, but if these skills actually do something in the game world then they will be employed at least by NPC in the manner they are expected, and perhaps the odd PC experimenting. These skills can only help increase the players options, and if ignored by players then they are ignored... not every skill in real life gets global application. We should not be afraid of building features into a game that seem pointless or seldom used, as long as it fits within the game and doesn't result in lag or overly delayed development, we should squeeze them in.

Then we must limit how the players advance their skills, 'use' is an obvious method, and XP can also be employed, but I was think more of what happens after you've advanced them... All skills should be evaporating constantly, the higher the skill rating the faster it decays and the more expensive to advance, hence you will reach a skill ceiling. This will force players to either develop 'jacks-of-all-trades' but with so many skills this will be a challenge; or masters of a few skills that they can afford to maintain due to constant use or careful XP expenditure. Those with more successful careers may have more XP and use more skills, so be it, if you're on the game constantly or playing your heart out to gain XP then you should see some rewards. The trick now is the balancing act between advancement and decay, too much decay and regardless of how long you play your character will never be a super hero, too little decay and everyone will be a god. It should be slow enough that only 'retired' characters ever actually see their stats drop significantly, everone else just finds it increasingly difficult to maintain a skill without using them.

With enough overlapping skills and slightly more complex combat, plus the far larger scope for game play, we should find that we'll have TANKish or DPSish characters, but their 'secondary' skills will be just as important, and these can be pretty much anything. Also with a more complex combat system we should have more methods of achieving the same role, hence you might have a highly manoeuvrable character 'absorbing' enemy attacks by simply avoiding them while keeping their attention, or you may have a super-heavy highly armoured warrior absorbing punishment more directly; both Tanks but different skills. And as not all your opponents have the same skills you will find that one tank type works better than another in certain encounters.

I want it to become the best team work or smartest solo that suceeds rather than the correct equipment (which will always help) and talents, when it becomes this simple you're little better than a bot waiting for your cooldowns to mash those buttons.

Originally posted by ianonmmorpg

Then we must limit how the players advance their skills, 'use' is an obvious method, and XP can also be employed, but I was think more of what happens after you've advanced them... All skills should be evaporating constantly, the higher the skill rating the faster it decays and the more expensive to advance, hence you will reach a skill ceiling. This will force players to either develop 'jacks-of-all-trades' but with so many skills this will be a challenge; or masters of a few skills that they can afford to maintain due to constant use or careful XP expenditure. Those with more successful careers may have more XP and use more skills, so be it, if you're on the game constantly or playing your heart out to gain XP then you should see some rewards. The trick now is the balancing act between advancement and decay, too much decay and regardless of how long you play your character will never be a super hero, too little decay and everyone will be a god. It should be slow enough that only 'retired' characters ever actually see their stats drop significantly, everone else just finds it increasingly difficult to maintain a skill without using them.

This is in WurmOnline it's among the top worst mechanics.   If someone high level decides to take a break for a while it could take weeks to get it back.   If someone only plays during the weekend that leaves 5 days where their skills are happily decaying and litterly undoing all their advancement.   If someone leaves the game you kill any incentive for them wanting to come back due to their charactacter becoming crippled if they do decide to come back and try.

All in all it litterally hasn't touched the people that it's meant to(hardcore JOATs) and instead just hurts your specialized players and your casual players.

To the Dear guys whom i made sick...

Dear Guy, to tie classless system to Karl Marx, then link that to Communisem and that to Soviet Union is a big joke from the extreme liberals in America, In school we talked alot about such ideologys and thier criticisem of each other, you will also notice the (smiley) in the titles, indicating atleast something. But sums all up, i was joking, but classless system struck me on that subject, so i figured starting with some silly me, would help to deliever the message, so relax m8

Nor back to talking games...

Ianonmmorpg, i guess there have to be a point system on where and how they can do thier skills?

I'd agree with most of whats been said.

Uber builds should only be a problem with combat heavy games.  If theres a true, player driven economy and all the jobs that come with it, you'd have to expect that players will build their characters to fill these jobs.  When it comes to combat, a certain amount of the players are always going to gravitate towards the FOTM builds, even if it's a class system.

Balance the system with natural penalties.  Sure, you can wear that plate armor and cast spells, but there will be a penalty to your casting ability.  Another important balance would be attributes, which I think MMOs have always over looked.  If attributes are important, then it will be hard to make a tank mage type of character because they need certain high attributes to be a good fighter (strength, dexterity, constitution) and other high attributes to be a good caster (intelligence, wisdom, etc.). 

Please CAP the skill system.  Theres no point in even having a progression system if everyone can max out every skill.  Yea, yea, it might take forever, but the veterans will always have infinately more skills than the newer players.

And yes, I'd go for a GOOD class system, but their getting even harder to find.  To be a good class system, you still need options for customization (specs, skills, multi-classing, etc).  What we're seeing now is getting more and more generic and thoughtless.

Originally posted by paulscott

This is in WurmOnline it's among the top worst mechanics.   If someone high level decides to take a break for a while it could take weeks to get it back.   If someone only plays during the weekend that leaves 5 days where their skills are happily decaying and litterly undoing all their advancement.   If someone leaves the game you kill any incentive for them wanting to come back due to their charactacter becoming crippled if they do decide to come back and try.

All in all it litterally hasn't touched the people that it's meant to(hardcore JOATs) and instead just hurts your specialized players and your casual players.

Good point, however in my persistant universe your characters are maintaining themselves, that may well prompt further explaination... but lets just say that you logging off for a while will not impact your char. Also it wont be decaying your stats so quickly that within 5days you'd of lost significant ratings even if you didn't use the skills, also a point I didn't make... reversing the decay is realitivly easy, as you advance 'normally' you earn rebate on the decay. In effect as long as your using your skills enough to prompt an advance (hence a lot if they are very high rating skills) you wont notice any decay.

All it does is force you to decide if you will spend your XP on maintaining skills you're not using or advance skills you are... therefore your character is good at what they do. Play long enough (keep your char alive that long) and you may well manage to develop a char with reasonable ratings in every skill, but 'expert' skill ratings will only be maintained if you grind every skill (a real challenge given the number of skills) or you spend a LOT of XP in maintaining them all (more than reasonable to earn).

So yes, I agree it does prompt JOAT characters initially, however when a few expert warriors start displaying their considerable advantages in single combat, others will soon begin to dedicate their time and effort to the advancement of a more specialised selection of skills... not necessarily the same set, but combat skills all the same. Your play style will dictate the set(s) you advance, resulting in brittle chars with massive ratings in a very select set of skills, or more general warriors capable of reacting to a wider range of encounters.

Its worked in my previous pen n paper games, maybe not as complex as this to be fair, but the basis was proved to be sound, I'll just keep play testing...

Originally posted by Tatum

I'd agree with most of whats been said.

Uber builds should only be a problem with combat heavy games.  If theres a true, player driven economy and all the jobs that come with it, you'd have to expect that players will build their characters to fill these jobs.  When it comes to combat, a certain amount of the players are always going to gravitate towards the FOTM builds, even if it's a class system.

Balance the system with natural penalties.  Sure, you can wear that plate armor and cast spells, but there will be a penalty to your casting ability.  Another important balance would be attributes, which I think MMOs have always over looked.  If attributes are important, then it will be hard to make a tank mage type of character because they need certain high attributes to be a good fighter (strength, dexterity, constitution) and other high attributes to be a good caster (intelligence, wisdom, etc.). 

Please CAP the skill system.  Theres no point in even having a progression system if everyone can max out every skill.  Yea, yea, it might take forever, but the veterans will always have infinately more skills than the newer players.

And yes, I'd go for a GOOD class system, but their getting even harder to find.  To be a good class system, you still need options for customization (specs, skills, multi-classing, etc).  What we're seeing now is getting more and more generic and thoughtless.

Natural penalties are a must, you can employ a large number of skills, but each is affected by your equipment, environment and even other active skills. This will dictate sensible 'builds'; you can learn any skills you want, but you cant do much sneaking while wearing that full plate.

I'm hoping if I can balance it right then my decay system will force players to cap their own skill sets.

The most important point was the call to open up the game to be more than just combat...

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Originally posted by ianonmmorpg   Natural penalties are a must, you can employ a large number of skills, but each is affected by your equipment, environment and even other active skills. This will dictate sensible 'builds'; you can learn any skills you want, but you cant do much sneaking while wearing that full plate. I'm hoping if I can balance it right then my decay system will force players to cap their own skill sets. The most important point was the call to open up the game to be more than just combat...

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Originally posted by ghstwolf  Natural penalties are good, something as simple as skills dependent on gear could do wonders.  Add a weight based inventory system and the number of skills you have trained would be almost meaningless.
As for decay, even if it only applied to time logged in and included a "high water mark" that you could train back to at an accelerated rate, I think it would greatly hurt the game.  I picture many situational skills, ones that a PC might be lucky to use monthly.  Instead, what if skills had a stat cost to initiate or to extend the cap on them? 

Yeah, I see some opposition to the skill decay system (paulscott and yourself), I'm a fan simply as I've used it over the years in my paper based system and it permitted me to build immortals that had sensible skill sets, rather than taking every skill they could access to the sky, the decay system kicked in and forced a ceiling upon them limited by the XP they could generate over any given period. I should highlight that only experts need concern themselves as the decay has always been relatively low for anything less than this rating, and if your an expert I imagine its a skill you use often, if not then obviously its a skill you once used a great deal but are now out of practice, fine, you will need to practive it again, but dont worry its like riding a bike, you never really forget. The skill itself wont decay much below a professional level regardless of time (unless you really are immortal) and can be restored a lot faster. Its just a way of imposing a max level based upon the amount of XP you can generate in any given time period and the number of skills your trying to maintain at such a high level. You see I intend to port across my 'immortal' characters (for players) and so need a system that can be used to deduce skill sets in characters with thousands of years of experience. One point to note is that my skills are limitless, you can just keep advancing them and gaining advantages relative to others in a 'versus test', hence immortals really do need a ceiling upon their 'abilities' as some should be gods others should just be very handy.

But I'm happy to revisit my numbers, or at least hide the decay from players :)

Actually gaining less experaince based on the number of skills you have(and could train) isn't a bad idea.  if you allow people to untrain(get 50% of the experiance from it back), necessary so people can play on one character and "fix" it as they change, the game changes(nerf+expansions), and as the playerbase changes..  

For a bit more polish you could even add a nifty implementation that gives you a learning bonus if you retrain the skill, Granted everytime people do level you're to have to decrease the learning bonus so people don't come out mathimatically a head by untraining a bunch of skills training new ones then retraining the old ones.

A lot of hardcore-skill-based-only people would call this a horriable mix of traditional leveling and skill leveling (who cares the hardcore will always find something to hate and complain about so no worries).  But it's probably not a good idea to pull off the what can be argued as the worse aspect of EvE-Online when it's sitting right there to learn from and there are so many different implementations you can come up with to get around it.

___________________________

Granted this doesn't get rid of the permement bonus persay to older players, it just drastically decreases it.  I would use it in conjunction with a remort mechanic.

Originally posted by Mackerni

 

 Have you ever heard the theory, "Each according to his need, each according to his ability"? That was also a theory of Communism. When everybody has "equal" ability to do everything, everybody sucks at doing it.

I thought Ithat statement was about taking as little from society as one needs and contributing as much as you can. Truthfully we havent seen a "real" communist nation.

just my $0.02

 I want to be able to do anything and everything the game has to offer on one character.  Class based games are a real Turn off.  I specifically look for mmos with no class systems. I have tolerated the class based games and it is usually always the one thing that makes me lose interest quickly. Class based games are lame. Just my opinion, your entiteld to your opinion of course. They are like saying just because you are good at one thing you have to be bad at another. People are already good and bad at things on their own and do not need to have what they are good and bad at dictated to them by someone else or a system. Let the people decide what they want to do with their character.

Originally posted by colutr

Originally posted by Mackerni

 

 Have you ever heard the theory, "Each according to his need, each according to his ability"? That was also a theory of Communism. When everybody has "equal" ability to do everything, everybody sucks at doing it.

I thought Ithat statement was about taking as little from society as one needs and contributing as much as you can. Truthfully we havent seen a "real" communist nation.

just my $0.02

True enough, the problem was Stalin, lets face it if Stalin was in charge it didn't matter what political system you wanted... all you'd end up with guns in the face and lots of threats... not a good climate for any government. A nice representative government wasn't on the cards :). And that was simply copied around the world and the communist world turned inwards as the west prepared for war. Maybe in a few decades someone will reintroduce it as 'New Socialism'. Lets just make sure we're ready to prevent the next Stalin.

Originally posted by deviliscious

 I want to be able to do anything and everything the game has to offer ... 

I agree. But its a case of ensuring that its still fun to play. I think the problem is that the most sucessful MMORPG is an overly simple affair, yet that was most folks introduction to MMOs, as such many people have decided what makes a game fun. Odd I remember playing a lot of games (in my youth :) that today would be regarded as utter sh#t, yet I remember having loads of fun, and have even recaptured some of that fun when I play them again (emulated). It seems obvious to me that we cant always tell what will be fun until we're playing it, and just because we've found one thing thats fun doesn't mean we'll not find anything as good or even better. Lets hope we get to see a game we think we'll like, and for others to give it a chance.