Do we seriously need every mmo on the market to be the same old, warrior, priest, mage, ranger kinda like class ?   Why not let the player to choose what skills he wants to take and invest XP in it ?

If i want to play a sword weilding guy casting fireball so be it.   Just put your XP in the appropriate skills and voila.

If you played Asheron's Call you know what i'm talking about.   There was no class, all the skills we're available and you had the freedom to choose which one to raise.   It was about the same with Anarchy Online (yeah they had class) but you could be a Doctor with a Shotgun if you wanted too be.

I think we need more open skills mmo's like that.   I know this lead to cookie cutter templates, but hell it's better than what we have now.   I'm so tired of playing the same old class in every mmo i tried.

Players tend to like variety in the game. You have described the "tank mage" with your "so be it" statement.

PLayers will min max the skill system, and you will be able to wield a sword and shoot a fireball. And EVERYONE will figure out this is the set of skills to have, and the majority of players will be a "tank mage".

But that sort of defeats the purpose of all these skills, if everyone ends up playing the same thing.

The otehr way to go is to put caps on skills, and make like skills cost less and dislike skills cost more. If you have lots of healing skills, the next healing skill will be cheap. If you have lots of fighting skills, a healing skill wiil be expensive. And you basically end up with classes, with a little variety added. I like that option actually.

Or, you can go with the "use it to improve it method" and you get what we saw in Darkfall. Macro to raise skills, or use  a skill over and over, not because that's the right skill for the situation, but so you can skill up. Things like, arrows down't work well on Skeletons, but I'll use them anyway because I need to raise my bow skill. I COULD kill it with a blunt weapon, but that weapon is already skilled up.

Classes exist to get you to REROLL.

Increases re-playability, subscription length, etc.

If you want a MMORPG with no class I recommend playing Mabinogi.

Do you enjoy watching 100% improvisational movies?

If you said no, that's why we have classes. If you said yes, this is why we have so few games without classes.

Thanks.

Originally posted by Aguitha

Do we seriously need every mmo on the market to be the same old, warrior, priest, mage, ranger kinda like class ?   Why not let the player to choose what skills he wants to take and invest XP in it ?

If i want to play a sword weilding guy casting fireball so be it.   Just put your XP in the appropriate skills and voila.

If you played Asheron's Call you know what i'm talking about.   There was no class, all the skills we're available and you had the freedom to choose which one to raise.   It was about the same with Anarchy Online (yeah they had class) but you could be a Doctor with a Shotgun if you wanted too be.

I think we need more open skills mmo's like that.   I know this lead to cookie cutter templates, but hell it's better than what we have now.   I'm so tired of playing the same old class in every mmo i tried.

A good many people play toward an archetype. It is much easier to develop toward an archetype and balance it all.

As far as classeless systems, players will just min/max as much as they can. What you will get is "looking for dps for chamber of 1000 horrors. Must have at least 90 in swords or destruction magic and constitution of at least 85"

You will then get your clones. it will just be a different more involved clone.

I'm all for a classless system provided that hard choices need to be made.

So if one wants to be a warrior that can summon demons (a la Elric) then great. But I would want a pure warrior to be a better warrior and a pure summoner to be a better summoner.

The other thing is that it is not always apparent how a certain skill will play out once in game. I downloaded Asheron's Call and quickly removed it becuase I was choosing to invest in skills that I had no idea whether they would be good. Looking at forums players were saying you had to have "this" and investing in "that" wasn't really important, etc.

I don't want to blindly invest in skills that will turn out to be useless further down the road. So some sort of respec option would also be needed.

Imgotep is right. Ppl ould soon figure out the best build and all people would be the same.

Better solution is to put more unique classes. Shadowbane, AoC, WAR, GW all did nice step with classes.

Remember its not a card game, its (at least supposed to be) RPG. Your character, lets assume hes mage. He trained magic his whole life and maybe never picked a sword. Its now probably too late for him to learn from scratch, because hes not interested in this area or simply is too weak to swing a weapon efficiently. 

There are a number of reasons/theories behind this.

From a design perspective you have to look at the challenges of a "skill based" progression system. It is difficult to balance 12 classes. It is incredibly difficult to balance "any combination of 40 skills out of a total fo 250." Players will essentially weed out the "bad" skills and power build. Balance will be challenging. That is a head ache some developers aren't willing to take on.

You also have the issue of content progression. With classes and levels it is clear where a character should be by quest and mob con. With skills that is a bit more gray. It might be viewed as confusing to players. Then you have to consider that casual players might "gimp themselves."

Now, truthfully, I think the benefits of "skill based" far out weigh the detriments but those are some of the reasons I've been given over the years.

The more skills you have the less likely there is for everyone to be the same. Even a game like AC which only has a moderate amount of different skills has a wide variety of different playstyles and setups. I think the biggest reason is it becomes to complicated for a casual player. To maximize yourself in a skill based game you have to look at which skills go together, your overall skill points and have a plan to build your character to a successful setup. Then you have to deal with instead of class limiting items (this can only be wielded by class x) you now have a bunch of skill limiting items (your skill in x must be at least this). That increases the knowledge and complexity of the game. Skill based games tend to have people try a lot of setups to get their character exactly where they want. A modern skill based game would really need hundreds of skills, which would allow for tons of variety in players. However for every extra skill you add it becomes more complex and requires more learning, which is exactly what drives away the now a days average MMO player.

Basically people like it simple, they pick a class and they know which items that class can use, since the class is predefined (and now a days you normally can't even assign attribute points along the way) you don't have to really worry about making a setup that is useless. It's all about the majority of players wanting something that takes little time and effort to learn, a game they can pop on for an hour here and there through out the week and jump right into playing.

But hey Asheron's Call is still running and approaching it's 10th anniversary, so if you want skill style over class style, give the free trial a shot http://trial.ac.turbine.com/

We have so many class mmo because they are easier to develop and balance.  Look at WoW vs UO, WoW you need to balance 9 classes and associated weapons and armor while UO you had to balance sword, fencing, mace, archery, parry, tactics, healing, anatomy, magery, eval int, meditation, spell resist,....... and every different combonation of them along with associated weapons and armor.  And yes their has to be some sort of balance or you will end up with everyone being the tank mage of old UO.

I know that some sandbox elitist will try to say that it is because people are too stupid or like being told what to do, or that companies are just greedy but I think it comes down to quality over options.

For example you could pick the deathknight class from WoW, or you could try to make something similar via skills.  Which one do you think will be better?  Unless you are just pretentious and think that you making something makes it automatically better I would wager people would pick the developer made class as the better option.

For skill systems to work they have to be generic, you can't have anything like the rune system and runic power with all the really specific abilities that use it like the deathknight has, because everything or almost everything has to be able to be used together, so you can't have spells that use mana, some that use runes some that use rage and some energy and combo points, they have to all be interchangable.  Using skills you are more likely to get a character that just has armor and a sword with some darkness spells rather than a deathknight.

That could be said for any character type you think up, a developer could make it and make it better than it could being pieced together from skills.  Classes don't offer as much options but what they do have is higher quality, compared to skills.

And that is why I think people prefer classes and why developers make more class based games, people would rather have fewer better options rather than more generic options.

Just because classless systems in three games had some problems, doesn't mean it can't be "made right" today.. It only means there is an actually history there to learn from. UO, AC, and Darkfall...two old games and one Indie game. sounds like this is ripe to be overhauled for sure...

Also, I wanted to recommend to the OP to maybe try a multi-class game, such as DDO, RoM, or FFXI. Its not a departure by any means, but can add a new twist to how you play. Particularly when it comes to skill choices...

Most people are content with choosing a defined archetype or class because it is familiar, because they can understand it and it makes sense to them.

It's basic human psychology.

Let's take the example of buying a new computer.

Most people will take a pre-assembled complete PC or bundle/package instead of buying each part piece by piece and constructing it themselves.

Even someone who has the knowledge and skill required to build a PC piece by piece in many cases will still choose the bundle or pre-assembled PC.

Why? 

Could be anything from perceived value to simple laziness.

This also applies to MMOs and the skills versus class argument.

Are there those of us that would like to build our own character by selecting individual skills? You bet there are. But in all honesty, most people would instead choose a pre-made bundle or they would select skills that would make their character fit very well into the pre-defined role or archetype of a class anyway.

Throw in balance issues and production time/costs...

It really is a no-brainer for most developers.

I hope we get a game that is very high quality and balanced that uses skill based advancement or at the very least customizable classes to better fit your "ideal" character type... but given the track record of previous MMOs and what is popular with MOST gamers (not those that visit sites like this, we are the minority) then yeah.. classes and archetypes are here to stay.

But I do think we will start to see more variety and combination/customization systems even in class based games.

In board games and card games the concept is called variable player powers. It lets the game have more varied abilities without having to balance how they interact with every other ability available to the player. It also gives the classes better defined roles without so much overlap. Having more narrow roles encourages cooperation between the classes.

I've designed board games with classes and without. The ones without classes end up feeling more generic because all the players end up doing the same things. It makes the game a little less exciting because you pick your favorite abilities or the abilities that you know are strong and tend to ignore the rest.

You CAN make a classless system that avoids some of its shortcomings. It just hasn't been done very well yet. As an example, imagine WoW's talent trees except each tree is sort of like a class. Most players would end up specializing in one tree and then pick another tree as a secondary. In that case its more like the primary and secondary class system used in Runes of Magic except its still a classless system. Champions Online has a classless system that works sort of like that.

Originally posted by Aganazer

You CAN make a classless system that avoids some of its shortcomings. It just hasn't been done very well yet. As an example, imagine WoW's talent trees except each tree is sort of like a class. Most players would end up specializing in one tree and then pick another tree as a secondary. In that case its more like the primary and secondary class system used in Runes of Magic except its still a classless system. Champions Online has a classless system that works sort of like that.

You have apparently never played Pre-CU SWG, EVE Online or the original Ultima Online.   As the OP stated even Asheron's Call (the original) was fairly class-free as well.

Let's just put it this way:

1) It can be done

2) It has been done

3) For those who enjoy such systems class based systems don't even come CLOSE to touching it.

Originally posted by Taram

Originally posted by Aganazer

You CAN make a classless system that avoids some of its shortcomings. It just hasn't been done very well yet. As an example, imagine WoW's talent trees except each tree is sort of like a class. Most players would end up specializing in one tree and then pick another tree as a secondary. In that case its more like the primary and secondary class system used in Runes of Magic except its still a classless system. Champions Online has a classless system that works sort of like that.

 

You have apparently never played Pre-CU SWG, EVE Online or the original Ultima Online.   As the OP stated even Asheron's Call (the original) was fairly class-free as well.

Let's just put it this way:

1) It can be done

2) It has been done

3) For those who enjoy such systems class based systems don't even come CLOSE to touching it.

Yes I played UO and AC for years and years. I've also played all the Ultimas, Elder Scrolls, and Gothic games as well. While there may have been some variety in the subtle details, most people had characters that fell into a few common categories (or more often, all categories!). Everyone I knew in UO could wear plate armor, cast top rank spells, and use at least one weapon type effectively. There really weren't any roles to fill because everyone did it all by themselves.

I'm not saying a classless system hasn't been done as it obviously has. It hasn't been done in a way that creates the diversity of play styles that we see in games with classes. I have yet to see a classless game where player characters fill more narrow roles creating a need for a lot of diversity.

Originally posted by Aguitha

Do we seriously need every mmo on the market to be the same old, warrior, priest, mage, ranger kinda like class ?   Why not let the player to choose what skills he wants to take and invest XP in it ?

If i want to play a sword weilding guy casting fireball so be it.   Just put your XP in the appropriate skills and voila.

If you played Asheron's Call you know what i'm talking about.   There was no class, all the skills we're available and you had the freedom to choose which one to raise.   It was about the same with Anarchy Online (yeah they had class) but you could be a Doctor with a Shotgun if you wanted too be.

I think we need more open skills mmo's like that.   I know this lead to cookie cutter templates, but hell it's better than what we have now.   I'm so tired of playing the same old class in every mmo i tried.

Easy. A MMO costs a whole lot of cash to make, a lot more than a single player game. The companies that funds games are a lot less likely to chanse 30 million dollars or more on a unproven system.

There is also problem with balance in a class less system. And no one would make an alt, which might lower the time it takes before people gets tired of the game.

Personally I am against class less games (that Im gonna play of course, what is best for you guys you have to decide yourself). I instead want a few customizable classes.

Say that you have Fighter, Rogue and magic user. And from there you create your own sub class by choosing skills and special abilities. If your mage want to use a sword he have to buy that ability (probably for double the skillpoints cost). You will never get the special abilities of the fighter if youre a mage but you can learn to use a sword. And of course you could have a lot of finnished templates to make it easir for new players but advanced players could create their own character.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

I know that some sandbox elitist will try to say that it is because people are too stupid or like being told what to do, or that companies are just greedy but I think it comes down to quality over options.

For example you could pick the deathknight class from WoW, or you could try to make something similar via skills.  Which one do you think will be better?  Unless you are just pretentious and think that you making something makes it automatically better I would wager people would pick the developer made class as the better option.

For skill systems to work they have to be generic, you can't have anything like the rune system and runic power with all the really specific abilities that use it like the deathknight has, because everything or almost everything has to be able to be used together, so you can't have spells that use mana, some that use runes some that use rage and some energy and combo points, they have to all be interchangable.  Using skills you are more likely to get a character that just has armor and a sword with some darkness spells rather than a deathknight.

That could be said for any character type you think up, a developer could make it and make it better than it could being pieced together from skills.  Classes don't offer as much options but what they do have is higher quality, compared to skills.

And that is why I think people prefer classes and why developers make more class based games, people would rather have fewer better options rather than more generic options.

The example of the deathknight just isn't true, you pick your own skills in every single pen and paper RPG out there and it works fine. Even in D&D you buy your skills and you can pay extra skill points to get non class skills (but not all, some are exclusive).

It also worked fine in Biowares Neverwinter nights which of course only was for up to 64 players but it would have worked excellent in a MMO also.

If you don't want to pick skills you just use a template but the death knight could have had a lot of choices and still be fun to play.

All that said I am not for a classless system but I am for picking skills.

Classes also play an important role in grouping and PvP.

You can see another player and know (mostly) what their class has the potential to do and then you'll make decisions based off of those assumptions.

Classes also help foster a sense of community.

Being dependant on other people helps foster a sense of community and encourages players to work together and make friends. 

If everyone could be a tank, healer, and dps at the same time you'd never group up or seek help from other players beyond your own tight knit group of friends or guild mates. 

Classes have strengths and weaknesses which allows for a lot more cooperation between players. 

 The average MMO player these days spends a lot of time playing solo. Quests, farming, grinding, etc. They only seek groups or play with friends / guildmates when they need them for their own purposes.

In a skill based, class free MMO most players would try and be as self sufficient and self reliant as possible, which would lead to even less grouping.

Oh and the person who said everyone in UO was a Tank Mage was correct.
Just like in SWG everyone was a bounty hunter, creature handler, combat medic, commando, teras kasi master... whatever the flavor of the month unbalanced profession combination was

I think most companies don't do the classless setup because they are just too lazy to deal with it or don't want to "rock the boat" and are looking to pick up on the WoW crowd. A lot of players need to be led on rails as far as character development and this is what class based systems. And of course there is always the whole thing of wanting people to reroll alts, keep playing and this only really works well with class based systems.

A big drawback to the classless systems, as mentioned earlier, is that folks just max out in most of the skills especially the combat scjhools of magic, melee and ranged.  A good skills based character development system should limit people so that they cannot effectively learn all combat types to a high degree and thus need to pick one to specialize in.

Say you have a system where skills where the skills only "level" up as you use them, nothing new this has been done before and hopefully will be done more in games. Now essentially one is only limited to learning and lvling these skills as far as how much one can grind them, so someone with a lot of free time devoted to gaming could grind out magic, melee and ranged skills to equal degrees of uberness. Well this is something that would be extremely rare in real life and ingame it is seem more often as games don't put quite the restrictions on this, which they should. It could be worked out so that the more "combat" skills you are trying to level the slower they skill up, especially magic. Many skill based games treat magic as mundane as melee and ranged combat, which it really shouldn't be. Hell some games (Darkfall for example) allow for the possibility of people casting magic in full plate and heavier armor, which is pretty damn silly. Magic itself is mystical, flexible and quite powerful and should be treated as such. Melee and ranged combat often seem somewhat limited when compared to magic, there sho8ld be more distinction between the three as far as varitey of gameplay mechanics and options.

Are games with classless/skill based setups more fun and rewarding than class based games? I say yes, but the mechaincs of the skill-based system need to be intricately worked out to make it successful on a rewarding and interesting level. I harken back to Asheron's Call which I think had a rather unique (even by today's standards) skill and level based system of character development. In AC skills were the base of character development, you could learn whatever skills you wanted based on having enough skillpoints to train the skill and the proper attribute(s) to be able to learn it. Characters in AC had levels, but lvls only determined what equipment you could use, how many skill points you had and how many attribute points you had to use...yes AC let you customize your freakin attriubutes based on attribute points granted each lvl, not many if any games let you tailor your attributes anymore. Levels were almost an arbitrary thing in AC. Skills in AC could be lvled up through use aned by dumping xp point into them, not a perfect system but it worked pretty well, the best case scenario would be that use only dictates how strong your skills are.

In the end I don't think we see enough of the classless systems because of WoW, most MMO's will try to capture any of that playerbase that they can and a good deal of casual gamers aren't  looking for the complexity of a skill based system and the confusion that it can cause them. I mean, with a classless/skill based system you actually have to think out your character progression and really put some work into how you are going to develop your character over time; with the class based systems your hand is pretty much held the whole way with minor things like traits (LotRO) or spec trees (WoW) to provide a teeny bit of variety in the development.

Let's face it, games are getting lazy nowadays when you can't even tweak your attributes how you want from level to level. I would love to see a resurgence of non-class based game systems, but it just doesn't seem likely that they are going to be many GOOD games like that anytime soon. Because personally I am still looking for a good, interesting and enjoyable MMO game that doesn't lead you on rails as far as character development...Darkfall didn't do it for me so here's hoping that Mortal Online is everything it looks to be.

Most everyday people would rather pick a class that looks and sounds cool to them. They don't  want have to play around with  different skill templates. Not to say class-less games are wrong, it just doesn't appeal to common gamer. Look at how many people are hyped over Star Wars; The Old Republic for example. They heard they game be a Jedi (Yoda or Mace WIndu.), Trooper( Commander Cody or Captain Rex), Bounty Hunter (Jango Fett and Boba Fett), Smuggler (Han Solo or Chewbacca).  Its sparks a fantasy in their mind of something, they can never be. Just like in say any fanaasy game your can be warrior, archer, rogue, wizard, or whatever else. People associate them with there favorite characters from fantasy books and movies. Same can be said for sci-fi as well.  That's why class based games will always be around, for the person who just want to jump in knowing they can feel like there iconic archetype or character.

Blah blah blah casual players are dumb and can't figure out a skill system.

Shortened up your post for you Ryuken.

Again I'll say casual and hardcore are not types of players or types of games or game systems/mechanics they are play styles. Any game can be played casually or more hardcore, from online chess to World of Warcraft and anything in between.

What players really want is balance first and foremost, bad class/skill balance can ruin any game by making people feel as if they HAVE to play a certain class or choose a certain skill set. It's much easier to balance let's say 9 classes with 3 talent trees each then it is to balance 50 skills that can be mixed and matched at will.

Is it possible to balance a skill based system? Sure, but I haven't really seen it yet. 

You let players pick each individual skill they are going to pick up all the good ones and none of the bad ones depending on the role they want to play. So you end up with "the tank" and "the melee dps" and "the ranged dps" and "the healer" so oops you just made classes anyway. 

Or the players who don't spend time on forums and researching these combination, those thay may play more casually will end up gimping themselves and will likely be chased out of the game by a$$hole min/maxers.

Archetypes and classes allow players to choose a role and know that their character will be able to perform that role adequetly.

Now, I do agree and think that developers should give more options and advanced class system that allow for a lot more specialization and even straight up switching on the same toon.

But look at some games coming out in the near future or that are becoming popular now.

Champions Online - pick archetype, customize to liking (pick your powers and such)
FF XIV - not much info yet but they have said it'll take the job/subjob system to a whole new level
Heroes of Telara - not much yet but sub-class cards and full class switching
Rune of Magic - subclass system
SW: ToR - Potentially system like Mass Effect, pick class and customize

It's coming... the devs know they can't lock players into a single role on a toon anymore and just rely on alts, the momentum is shifting towards one character, many options

Originally posted by purewitz

Most everyday people would rather pick a class that looks and sounds cool to them. They don't  want have to play around with  different skill templates. Not to say class-less games are wrong, it just doesn't appeal to common gamer. Look at how many people are hyped over Star Wars; The Old Republic for example. They heard they game be a Jedi (Yoda or Mace WIndu.), Trooper( Commander Cody or Captain Rex), Bounty Hunter (Jango Fett and Boba Fett), Smuggler (Han Solo or Chewbacca).  Its sparks a fantasy in their mind of something, they can never be. Just like in say any fanaasy game your can be warrior, archer, rogue, wizard, or whatever else. People associate them with there favorite characters from fantasy books and movies. Same can be said for sci-fi as well.  That's why class based games will always be around, for the person who just want to jump in knowing they can feel like there iconic archetype or character.

A template is just like a class, if you use one you just pick it like you pick a class. No difference at all except that people can make thier own class also, the balancing is from a point system.

If you pick the ranger class or the ranger template, does that really matter to you?

But the impotant thing about a classless system is that you must balance it by making things costs point and you cant allow people to get all the best skills at the same character. You can't allow people to have all the best spells, the ability to use heavy armor while casting them and the best melee skills. It just don't work.

Originally posted by Ryukan

Say you have a system where skills where the skills only "level" up as you use them, nothing new this has been done before and hopefully will be done more in games.

Worst system to use, IMO.

We don't put lots of realism in games, because realism is boring. IN real life, you go to the bathroom a lot. We leave that out of games, even though it's realistic.

In real life, to get good at something you practice. To get good at Karate, you go to Karate class and practice. To get good at shooting a gun, you go to a shooting range, and shoot paper targets. That's realistic, but not something I want to do in a game.

Which is why in DArkfall, people made macros for this.

Also, this encourages unrealistic behavior. In real life, if I have a gun and I also know Karate, and a bad guy is coming after me, I'll shoot him. IN a game with "use it to increase it" mechanics, I'll do what needs skilling up.

I COULD shoot him, and I SHOULD shoot him, since the gun is the better option and makes sense. But I won't. Why? I need to skill up my Karate, in case I need to use it later. NOt very realistic.

Originally posted by heerobya

But look at some games coming out in the near future or that are becoming popular now.

Champions Online - pick archetype, customize to liking (pick your powers and such)
FF XIV - not much info yet but they have said it'll take the job/subjob system to a whole new level
Heroes of Telara - not much yet but sub-class cards and full class switching
Rune of Magic - subclass system
SW: ToR - Potentially system like Mass Effect, pick class and customize

It's coming... the devs know they can't lock players into a single role on a toon anymore and just rely on alts, the momentum is shifting towards one character, many options

Actually you forget "world of darkness online". While you have to choice things like Vampire (and the vampires clan) you still will be able to customize it a lot there, probably something similar to Eves system.

Runes of magic should not be on your list however, nothing better there except that you can have a second class like in Guildwars.