Hey guys,

I've played the major Superhero MMOs out there, and honestly, I'm offended. I still see Tanks, and Healers and stuff, and while that's all well and good for the fantasy genre, and many traditional MMOers are beholden to that class structure, I think it is utterly out of place in the world of superheroes. I've drawn up some basic superhero classes, and tried to diversity and balance them, please tell me what you think. I'm still a long way from getting the game made, but any input would be appreciated.

The Bruiser

Specialties: 1 vs 1 Damage, Defense, Using Environment
Weaknesses: None

Bruisers are the Hulks, Things, Cyclopses and Supermen of the world. They hit things very hard, they either take a lot of hits or have powerful, if simple, ranged abilities, and are able to gain additional weaponry and utility depending on the environment such as throwing cars, pounding the ground or swinging trees around. They are often confused with tanks since they often draw the most attention because they take down single units quickest and are the hardest to take down. Best class for a beginning player and most like an action game.

The Elemental

Specialties: 1 vs Many Damage, Environment Manipulation, Self Manipulation
Weaknesses: Most moves take 'energy.'

Elementals are the Icemen, Human Torches, Green Lanterns and Storms of the world. They have a wide variety of moves and area effects at their disposal which cost energy. Fortunately, they gain energy over time, and if they are in a favored environment, such as Iceman in the rain, they recover energy more quickly. They have the ability to fight like bruisers, though this requires a higher energy output from them, and they cannot do it for very long. A good begnning class and most reminicent of a typical MMO.

The Skilled Fighter

Specialties: Status Effects, Combos, Utility
Weaknesses: Capped Damage and Defense

Skilled Figthers are the Daredevils, Hawkeyes, Soldiers and Batmen of the world. They have a number of moves that create status effects like stunned, disarmed, confused, blinded and enraged. These are typically used through items that the Skilled Fighters have equipped, such as Batman using a Batarang to disarm an opponent. Their increased item inventory allows Skilled Fighters to have more utility than other classes, and their combo bonuses allow them to inflict statuses and damage simultaneously quickly.

The Inventor

Specialties: Crafting
Weaknesses: Item Upkeep

Inventors are the Iron Men, Mr. Fantastics, Atoms and Mohinder Sureshes of the world. They are able to take resources and items and create devices of various types, such as tools, boosters, platforms, power sources, sensors and AI. They can even combine those devices to make even more incredible items such as Suits, Vehicles and Weapons. This gives the Inventor potentially infinite capability and versatility, at the cost of having to upkeep their items, keeping them tuned. It also gives them a sort of unorthodox buff, allowing them to give their items to others for one time or short term use before upkeep prevents the item from working reliably.

The Transporter

Specialties: Recon, Retrieval, Rescue
Weaknesses: None

Transporters are the Nightcrawlers, Nathan Petrellis, Flashes and Quicksilver's of the world. Empowered with an incredible transportation ability, they can get where they're going quickest, allowing them to clear the fog of war quickly, and pull out valuable imperilled civillians. They also have the unique abiilty to be able to make store runs for their team, functioning as a portable trading post for teammates.

So... what do you guys think? Would you take one of those?

Here's a classing system that I found a long time ago, granted it's written for story writing instead of video games.

Maybe the Gurps Heros book.

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I personally don't think  that "superhero" power will fall into a class system really well because it's based on using a limited skill set for a wide array of abilities, rather than a wide skillset for a limited number of effects(IE RPG combat).

Another really funny thing to consider is that someone with perfect control of telekinesses of 5 pounds of force is scarier than someone who controls  5 tons for mass effects.   It's just a simple matter of blocking a select artery or two.

I think that superheroes can easily be put into classifications based on what they do... but nobody ever catagorizes them by how they act. Lemme give a few examples of the typical superhero personas out there that rollover into other ones, even if the powers don't;

1. The Innocent God-Child; Silver Surfer, Superman, Blue guy from the Watchmen

These guys have supreme power and tend to be so attached (or disattached) to their humanity that they never use them to theire full extent.

2. The Hidden Sophisticate; Batman... maybe a few more.

This is anyone who keeps an identity in plain sight, they live dual lives, and unlike Superman (who does the same), their everyday persona is in the limelight for it's own reasons.

3. The Sociopath Loner; Punisher, Rorshasch

Guys who live by a personal code of ethics and tend to do business alone, both on and off the job, though the Batman persona touches on this while doing the above as well.

I don't think that is the best way to go on with how to assign classes to superheros that doesn't dictate much, and I think CoH did well to catagorize players by the origins of their powers, I think personality types could be a great way to handle it - if done right... and the one thing that dictates a personality is a person's "drives", the things that make them who they are.

Revenge, Money, Power, Justice, Fear, even simple Compulsion to do so.

All are factors themselves, a prime drive that makes them act the way they do - and can in turn affect many other things about them, such as their powers. A Revenge driven guy would be a quick-hit, guerrilla warfare guy that sets traps, that alone is open to tons of suggestion as to what the character actually does. A Money guy uses resources to fund his deal, and that could be tech or superpowers through experimentation - and it doesn't dictate whether the character is evil or not either, but sets up a good template. Power is also a two-way street, someone who wants it to never be a victim again (and tends to abuse it), or another who needs it to keep those around him from being the victims.

Tons of fruit right there, and can even lead off into some kind of quest-driven origin story questlines unique to each player based on his intricate choices in character drives (his class) and backstory (the template). That is something never done before, having spec be determined by character history; but to do that right would take more thinking than I am willing to throw at this, don't wanna get too invested on an idea that is not my own, but I will givean example.

Drive: Revenge

History: Now this is where your spec comes in, each "perk" as it were has subcatagories and what it means

1. Tragic Deaths - Your _____ was killed by _____ with _____ and you want payback.

Now the blanks are to be filled in by the player, they create subtle shifts in the origin story and provide a spec. If the first one is "wife" you tend to have a weakness for charm-moves by female NPCs/Players (as it's typical for this guy to fall for the bad chick), if it's "son/daughter" (and can be a mixed bag of all three if desired) then you have an affinity for children of the same sex as your lost child and your origin questline story will most likely feature a child abduction that gets you all emotional.

In the "killed by" set affects your hatred towards an NPC faction that had hands in the death, giving you boosts against them as well as certain weaknesses from risk of rage/frenzy in battle. What they were "killed with" affects your primary weapon, as most vengeance driven people are in need to inflict equal pain in return (and usually the same instrument).

 2. Alchoholic - You cope with a bit of the sauce.

Something more simple that affects your setup and is uniform to every single driven person out there, but to different effects. A revenge driven person would use alcohol to deal with physical pain and rage-out or something, while another kind of person would use it to calm down during battle so they can concentrate or avoid the mal-effects of mind attacks.

I think you get the idea, and if you got a knack for story then you will have an easy time breaking it all down further and further, then turn each "possible scenario" into how it can meaningfully affect the player's setup through spec and development.

I like that idea, and I think "coding story" would really be a great development for the MMO.  Letting players pick an origin (motivation-wise, not chemical-x-wise) and then attach it to specific individuals as they see fit is a new kind of control over their gameplay, that I think many players could embrace.

Nice call.

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The links provided don't seem to deliver clear cut or instantly recognizable classes. Perhaps I can derive something from them anway though, thanks.

The only issue to keep in mind is that character creation requires it's own kind of pacing. you can't have it take an hour to make your char, and need ways to streamline the important stuff that is permanent and allow the rest to be changed in-game at some point. For instance; what if you had to make the model look the way you want, choose costume from tons of options, then have to assign an elaborate backstory that you really need to pay attention too since this is a major part to the char's development.

That's way too much to hand out in the first minutes of the game.

The best thing to do is allow the creation of a model first, and the main point is to tell the player that "this part is not as important as the next", and then allow future changes to be done in-game by plastic surgeon NPCs or something. Need to make the model creation part quick and easy, with limited choices in street clothes, since I think the best thing to do with costumes is attach it to the collection aspect of the game itself.

Take CoH for example, the one major beef was the lack of drops from enemies beyond those ability powerup things and currency. If you made the personal costume aspect divided up into purely cosmetic loot drops across the game world, then you add a long-term initiative for players to hunt/play. Picture killing a gang member NPc and getting some visible element from his person, a red scarf maybe. That item may not do a certain person any good, but to another, it may be something they didn't even realise they wanted for thier persona yet. Loot drops have that effect on people, the 'surprise' of something you don't see in char creation as a freebie will entice people to adopt things they would not have under other circumstances.

Now for the meat of char creation, the history of the character, that is something that only requires your intangible understanding of human nature, and about a million scenarios as to what can happern to a person - and how they would react - then charting it out as mechanical features. You can really go any way about it, but having an interface that spells it all out for you, and allows the player to quickly scroll the wide range of options for his main "character drives" is better than anything. People sometiumes like to spend hours on char creation (I did in CoH/V), but to have anyway to speed up the process would help immensely - and that means there will not likely be custom histories that are hand written, but could be an option if you had to set up the full history template and then write over it in a custom story.... but players may lie about it or cover parts up in order to hide the strengths/weaknesses they chose - and is why the generic approach is best. Or maybe an underlying generic title system that points out spec to the player and others; like a Revenge guy driven by death of wife by shotgun is a "Death by Boomstick" or something. Not a great example, but figure each word in the built phrase identifies something; "death by" should correlate to the main drive, then "Boomstick" spells oyut the device. That alone is a decent idea of spec that can have literally hundreds of alliterations making everyone semi-unique.

~Also keep in mind there would be a way to mix the drives, but they will have to be in overriding fashions. Like a Revenge > Power > Money guy is one who takes parts of each, but in an order of things according to setup. He would have all the functions of a Revenge guy, and it's histories, and this is considered the [active] reasoning of the char and most origin-quest stuff draws story from this, but may play out in different places depending on the other ones. Since Power is a middleground, it would mean that certain choices in the quest-plot, as well as some related side-abilities, would arise - and that quest to infiict your vengeance then may have a moral choice in whether to assume power, but you then have to go against your typical ethics (but will not change setup). Having money last means the char is not one to have money himself (if it was 1st), or an associate that is funding him (if it was 2nd), so most likely the money he gets would be from robbing his enemies (3rd) and it would open a whole different path of getting geared up. Having money in the setup may change the location and points of all this too, but it may be overridden by the Revenge slot being first. If you chose a gang as prime enemy through "tragic death", it's not likely they were the true culprits if 'money' is involved - they may have been hired by some facless corporation whose big-money HQ you will storm in your own personal endgame.

All this is going to require a lot of timelining and pathing from each story arc to another and how they fit, but if you consider yourself a serious prospect for the industry someday, then it should be no problem - just time-consuming.

I like your idea a great deal, but it seems to throw player expectation and perception out the window, which isn't quite a good idea.  I love the idea of designing your costume as you play, though I would 'front load' all that collection stuff to avoid the triteness of a loot-driven game for a genre of people who are essentially self-sacrificial. That said, players want to design their characters first, and origin isn't all that clear.

I'd be more likely to downplay the origin length, but make it clear that this is important, probably with visual clues such as the change in background, even going so far as to bring it up twice, once as a tab in character design, and again as a last step when you have a chance to type up the origin.

Crafting such a system is kind of like a Mad Lib with nodes.  For every character you have a 'psyche map' or 'psyche string' of some sort which reads something to the tune of "Character X is motivated by their Y for Z after A, B, C happened. Event A causes them to fear Q, Event B causes them to love R, Event C causes them to hate S." And, as you suggest, these values generate missions and mission modules (dialogue, characters), to boosts and buffs depending on the location and NPCs involved.

Example:
Spider-Man is motivated by their Responsibility for The Greater Good after Being an Orhpan, Their Uncle's Death, Being Bullied in School.  Being an Orphan causes them to fear losing the people around them. Uncle Ben's Death causes them to love helping people. Being bullied in School causes them to hate bullies.

Adding a sort of per-person mutual faction standing with useful NPCs gives an additional psyche layout, and having flavors of relationships (rivals, crushes, colleagues, lovers, buddies, etc), allows for them to plug in differently to the psyche.  Spider-Man may not get a boost for saving Rick Jones, who is not close enough to him. If Rick Jones is bullying people, part of that bonus in an imperiled Rick Jones' presence may be diminished.

Furthermore, this is something that very much can be altered during gameplay, and in fact, the idea of playing out a character's origin in 3D as a tutorial is very compelling to me right now.  Perhaps delaying player desires is worth it, I'm not sure, but something that might be amazing is to slide players into the game before they know it to present the character creator almost as though you are getting ready for your day in the mirror, and go from there. Perhaps that's not suitably epic for a superhero mmo, but it's something to ponder.