Has an MMO ever had class based progression?  That is to say: has an MMO ever taken what talents and skills you use in your class and applied it to the storyline you are following in the game?

We've all played race specific progression for the first 1-10 levels of most fantasy games, but what about class?!

For example, the mage archetype will start off very generic, with a generic story, and slowly move into this or that play-style and talent tree, which also has it's own story.  (ie fire and earth mages having their own story arch, compared with mages who choose to be healers and support).  Or the mage could travel the world fighting avatars to learn new summons.  The warrior archetype would have the same thing, with eastern sword forms taking the warrior to the far east, and axe forms taking him to the woods with the savages, etc. etc. 

The characters, constantly traversing the world on their own stories, criss crossing the continent, will be a great chance for grouping and levelling (this implies few instances). 

Each MMO has a few class-specific quests.  FFXI even had whole story arcs for each class at level 50-60.  But what about a class based story as the entire game!? 

What do you all think of this?

EDIT to differentiate: SWTOR had class based story, but it was too generic, all the talent trees of an operative had the same story, and even shared them with the sniper.  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story! Each talent point it's own quest! Each talent block its own quest to unlock!

Further developments:

To answer Badspock and Maplestone and others: A system would have to be developed where there is a maximum number of active skill/talent points active at a time, but you can combine and crisscross into any tree as long as you've unlocked those skills/talents.

For example: 100 points max at any one time, each "tree" has only only 50-60 points you could spend before you get the mega-ability. The questline would then have a few more climactic quests and story-arcs for you to use the mega-ability (would also require groups to down the boss) and reward you with something...Then you could (and should) start questing for another tree to max out.

In order for this to work, each character would need to be able to play and unlock every talent tree in the game. This way, you can truly mix and match things. Allowing for assassins with huge + damage from the warrior tree, allowing every mage class to use healing spells, etc. etc. The community (as always) will sort out the most optimal builds. Character X could be a skillevel 60 fire mage, skillevel 24 support, skillevel 45 sword warrior. "Builds" can be saved a large amount of times to promote experimenting and diversity and people playing as more than one class.

The nature of the end-tree talent quests would promote group play through difficulty as well as necessity. (ie. we should all help the holy cleric get his final ability!) Content itself getting hard quickly would also promote group play.

Also, overworld story arcs would also be in game. So if each talent tree had 60+5 quests, and there are 25 talent trees + a couple hundred overworld story arc quests... should be a good amount of stuff to do (keeping kill x number of things/gather y number of things to a minimum, or atleeast disguise them well enough... ) 

Star Wars: The Old Republic did this.

OP amazing.  You took the idea that some games have of class based quests/story and did something special.  Rather than just part of your leveling experience you changed it up to all of the leveling experience.  It's almost like you invented pi.  You should be running blizzard.

Originally posted by lizardbones

Star Wars: The Old Republic did this.

No, it merely had a scripted story based on your class, and there were essentially only 8 plots in the whole game. 

A concealment operative, a medicine operative, and lethality operative all had the same story + shared it with the snipers.  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story!  Each talent point it's own quest!  Each talent block its own quest to unlock! 

Originally posted by Edeus  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story!  Each talent point it's own quest!  Each talent block its own quest to unlock! 

WOW Druids did this at a minor level - as druid got new abilities (cure poison) and new animal forms

but it was later changed to just give the abilities to the player

Guild Wars 1 (yes i know, not a mmo) also did alot of this in Prophecies, with class questing to unlock skills

OP, why must you follow a "story"?  Why cannot your character just be a free-will inhabitant of a game world?

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

OP, why must you follow a "story"?  Why cannot your character just be a free-will inhabitant of a game world?

Don't you make your own "story" in open game worlds?  Wouldn't building your class from nothing, unlocking each skill and talent yourself, be a free-will game? 

What I'm describing isn't necessarily a theme park, or even a themepark/open world discussion :P 

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by Edeus  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story!  Each talent point it's own quest!  Each talent block its own quest to unlock! 

WOW Druids did this at a minor level - as druid got new abilities (cure poison) and new animal forms

but it was later changed to just give the abilities to the player

 

Guild Wars 1 (yes i know, not a mmo) also did alot of this in Prophecies, with class questing to unlock skills

Yeah, that was great 4-5 years ago!  but we've seen nothing to evolve it since then, except for the hollow SWTOR...

Originally posted by Edeus

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

OP, why must you follow a "story"?  Why cannot your character just be a free-will inhabitant of a game world?

Don't you make your own "story" in open game worlds?  Wouldn't building your class from nothing, unlocking each skill and talent yourself, be a free-will game? 

What I'm describing isn't necessarily a theme park, or even a themepark/open world discussion :P 

Pre-written storyline events, even unlockable by attaining class skills, have always felt canned and forced to me.  For example, if unlocking some high level paladin skill propels you into a cutscene where you get a quest, that just feels fake to me.  I'd rather the interactive drama be non-instanced, visible to all, and real.

Originally posted by Edeus

Originally posted by lizardbones

Star Wars: The Old Republic did this.

No, it merely had a scripted story based on your class, and there were essentially only 8 plots in the whole game. 

A concealment operative, a medicine operative, and lethality operative all had the same story + shared it with the snipers.  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story!  Each talent point it's own quest!  Each talent block its own quest to unlock! 

 

WOW did a little of this for the shaman class. You have to go quest for your totems.

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

OP, why must you follow a "story"?  Why cannot your character just be a free-will inhabitant of a game world?

To add some spice to the gameplay?

Stories in RPGs are not exactly new, you know.

Originally posted by Edeus

For example, the mage archetype will start off very generic, with a generic story, and slowly move into this or that play-style and talent tree, which also has it's own story. 

I wanted to focus on this sentence because it's where the idea runs into trouble.  Every time you make a faction/race/class/specialization-specific split in the story arc, you are spreading developer time more thinly.   If you have 4 mage specializations, that means each of them gets only 1/4 of the developer time alotted to the stories of mages - which in turn is only a fraction of the time alotted to all the class-specific stories.  Yes, it adds distinctiveness, but your stories very quickly become butter spread across too much bread.

Now, if you had some way of automating story creation - so that developers weren't hand-crafting each quest but rather focused their effort on creating a story algorithm that would spit out quests on demand that were *influenced* by your faction/race/class/specialization, then I think you would have something.

Tying each point of advancement in a talent tree of some sort to a unique, individual quest to that specific point that was thematically correct would be a cool idea.

I mean, typical themepark MMO has 1000 quests, between all your character classes, 1000 points in a talent tree set up... would sure give a good amount of replayability.

It'd be complex and probably have to use a lot of phasing/instancing, but it'd be cool for replayability and really connecting your character to the world and YOUR characters story.

As long as it's not "I killed 10 rats using fire spells, turned in the quest, and got a talent point for +1 fire spell damage."

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Edeus

For example, the mage archetype will start off very generic, with a generic story, and slowly move into this or that play-style and talent tree, which also has it's own story. 

I wanted to focus on this sentence because it's where the idea runs into trouble.  Every time you make a faction/race/class/specialization-specific split in the story arc, you are spreading developer time more thinly.   If you have 4 mage specializations, that means each of them gets only 1/4 of the developer time alotted to the stories of mages - which in turn is only a fraction of the time alotted to all the class-specific stories.  Yes, it adds distinctiveness, but your stories very quickly become butter spread across too much bread.

One solution would be to go way back to the MUD days and allow people to reincarnate as a new class after reaching max level. In this way, you only need as much content overall (across all classes and specializations) as you would for a regular MMO, because each player has the potential to eventually play through all of that content.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by ReallyNow10

OP, why must you follow a "story"?  Why cannot your character just be a free-will inhabitant of a game world?

To add some spice to the gameplay?

Stories in RPGs are not exactly new, you know.

To some players, players like myself, forced storylines feel limiting and canned.  There is much more spice in gameplay when player actions have some direct or indirect impact upon other players.  Not talking PVP, but say someone aggroed a monster to the newbie zone (hopefully not intentionally) or a player built trade town emerges in the middle of some vast plains zone, or just interactions (good and bad) that lead to cooperation or rivalry.  The RP in these games is us.  The Massively in these games is us.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Tying each point of advancement in a talent tree of some sort to a unique, individual quest to that specific point that was thematically correct would be a cool idea.

I mean, typical themepark MMO has 1000 quests, between all your character classes, 1000 points in a talent tree set up... would sure give a good amount of replayability.

It'd be complex and probably have to use a lot of phasing/instancing, but it'd be cool for replayability and really connecting your character to the world and YOUR characters story.

As long as it's not "I killed 10 rats using fire spells, turned in the quest, and got a talent point for +1 fire spell damage."

 

Yes! someone who gets it!

Originally posted by maplestone

Originally posted by Edeus

For example, the mage archetype will start off very generic, with a generic story, and slowly move into this or that play-style and talent tree, which also has it's own story. 

I wanted to focus on this sentence because it's where the idea runs into trouble.  Every time you make a faction/race/class/specialization-specific split in the story arc, you are spreading developer time more thinly.   If you have 4 mage specializations, that means each of them gets only 1/4 of the developer time alotted to the stories of mages - which in turn is only a fraction of the time alotted to all the class-specific stories.  Yes, it adds distinctiveness, but your stories very quickly become butter spread across too much bread.

Now, if you had some way of automating story creation - so that developers weren't hand-crafting each quest but rather focused their effort on creating a story algorithm that would spit out quests on demand that were *influenced* by your faction/race/class/specialization, then I think you would have something.

I'm not so sure about the technicalities of it.  It would be insteresting if it ever happened, regardless of how the development team managed to pull it off.

Originally posted by Disdena

One solution would be to go way back to the MUD days and allow people to reincarnate as a new class after reaching max level. In this way, you only need as much content overall (across all classes and specializations) as you would for a regular MMO, because each player has the potential to eventually play through all of that content.

This is certainly possible - it's essentially equivilent to replacing vertical progression (like levels) with horizontal progression (like reputations) where progress through one story arc is not directly giving you an advantage progressing through another parallel story arc.

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Originally posted by Edeus

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Originally posted by lizardbones Star Wars: The Old Republic did this.

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No, it merely had a scripted story based on your class, and there were essentially only 8 plots in the whole game. 

A concealment operative, a medicine operative, and lethality operative all had the same story + shared it with the snipers.  I'm talking about each talent tree having a story!  Each talent point it's own quest!  Each talent block its own quest to unlock! 

 

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