Ultima Online did it perfectly. 

There was a skill cap of 700, with skills ranging from 0-100%  To be an effective Warrior (pretty much require skills to be worth a crap) you had to have....

Skill 1 @100%, Skill 2@100%, Skill 3@100%, Skill 4@100%, Skill 5@100%

You got 200 skill points left to pick up 2 maxed out complemntary skillls, 1 maxed out and 2 skills at 50% (if 50% of that skills is satisfactory for you), etc.  You can go 90% on all 5 skills and pick up 2 skills @ 100% and 1 at 50%....on and on.  Same goes for the Mage class.  You can sacrafice skill bonuses for having 100% in a particular skill and take 8-9 skills.....or you can Min/Max the effectiveness of the skills to grab all the skill bonuses with 7 maxed out skills.

So its not completely  100% your choice on what skills you pick if you want to be an effective warrior/mage/treasure hunter, craftsman, etc.  BUT youhave the ability to take what ever skills you want if you should choose so.  Many people didn't Min/Max their skills by maxing them out so that they could grab up other skills that fit their play style.

ah, the good 'ol pre-NGE SWG. where 56 professions existed and could customize any way you want. if you wanted to be commando, put xp into it, if you wanted to be a meelee... put xp into it... ahhh the good old days

Well, if any of these devs were half as creative as I am, I mean really.. they'd just come up with some system that puts opposing skills on a differential, and then spread rewards out into sets which must be obtained from content which is split up into styles that "fit" the core skills.

I should be making millions I swear.

        Well like this website the games are supposed to be MMORPG's, meaning that they are role playing games.....By having classes it gives players a role to play.......If players have characters that can do everything then they dont really need other people......

Originally posted by Theocritus

        Well like this website the games are supposed to be MMORPG's, meaning that they are role playing games.....By having classes it gives players a role to play.......If players have characters that can do everything then they dont really need other people......

In all our Class vs. Classless discussion so far, nobody is assuming we do Classless the Very Bad Way™. 

The Very Bad Way™ being a classless game where you can toss maxed fireballs, heal, wear the best armor, and do crushing melee damage all at once.  That would be a terribly balanced game.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Are you referring to the superior class balance and polish in AOC, WAR, WOW or VG?  Because in reading those forums it doesn't seem like most people feel that superior class balance has ever been achieved by any of them.

Not saying skill based games are much better, (though I do like how EVE handles it)  but I do think its easier to create quest/raid PVE based content with a strong class based system. 

Skill based systems are better for more open ended virtual worlds vs the themeparks.

 

Read the highlighted part again, out loud, to yourself... and then actually look at the quality of content in 99% of most forums posts here, and certainly on official forums.

There are maybe 1% of all forum posts, especially on official forums, that actually are logical and show an imbalance in the game that isn't just a perceived imbalance but an actual numerically verified and testable imbalance.

Most imbalances are perceived imbalances. So many factors effect our perceptions... Lag/latency, Gear, Player skill, designed imbalances (rock/paper/scissor) and the likes.

When MMOs were smaller you had a much better chance of those in the forum community being intelligent and resourceful players who actually did bring real imbalances to light. Now MMOs are no longer little niche titles for uber geeks and D&D dorks they are totally mainstream and popular, which means that the vast majority of players are just plain old gamers. And they are humans, and most humans are retarded.

I've been playing MMOs since Ultima Online was in Beta. I've seen it all. I hated Everquest because it was a level grind and you were stuck in one class. I loved the freedom and choice that UO offered.

After UO my next big MMO addiction was Star Wars Galaxies, and for a while I loved it for the same reasons. But SWG did a lot of things wrong. XP grinding, mission grinding, resource grinding, crafting grinding... they took the best parts of UO and the worst parts of Everquest and they combined them into a game that was destined to fail.

I still believe SOE greatly mismanaged SWG, but the imbalances in that game were far from perceived. New flavor of the month professions would change with every patch, and you had to keep up with the changes or you were unable to progress or survive unless the only thing you did was lower level kill missions.

I do agree with you that skill based does favor open-ended or sandbox MMOs while class based does favor more guided and story driven MMOs.

When World of Warcraft came out, here was a game that had so much to do! So much to see! All these quests would guide you around and show you all these cool things to do and fun places to visit and the instanced dungeons were so much better then kill farming and waiting in lines and kill stealing! Even in the early days, WoW was so much more balanced, or at least I perceived it to be, then SWG ever was.

And it is easier to create content for class based games because you have defined roles and you can easily say "ok we need a tank, a healer, and 3 dps."

It's not laziness on the part of the developer, far from it, it's good solid design. It's designing everything with a purpose, with direction and with a logical reason why it was designed that way.

Many choose to follow that route simply because they are copy-cats of what they have seen to work this is true. Those are the lazy developers that don't try anything new just instead follow the WoW formula.

Any AAA MMO from a AAA developer and publisher will NOT take the lazy/easy way and follow the WoW formula. They are AAA because they have the talent and resources and brand name to do things how they want to do them.

And of COURSE they look at successful games of the past. They'd be stupid not too. Classes and levels weren't invented by World of Warcraft, they've been a staple of D&D based RPGs for decades.

Jumpgate, Champions Online, Spellborn, Earthrise, FFXIV, SW: ToR.... these will ALL be vastly different then WoW. Will they have similarities? Of course. Things like auction houses and mailboxes and such are now "standards" that players expect their MMOs to have.

Sorry, another long winded rant I'll stop.

             The problem with class balance is that it has to be thoroughly tested....Too many people log on their toon and the first class that beats them is overpowered and needs a nerf...... Also the biggest problem is that too many games require the devs to try to balance the classes for both PVE and PVP......Usually a change for one affects the other.......

Originally posted by RajCaj

Ultima Online did it perfectly. 

There was a skill cap of 700, with skills ranging from 0-100%  To be an effective Warrior (pretty much require skills to be worth a crap) you had to have....

Skill 1 @100%, Skill 2@100%, Skill 3@100%, Skill 4@100%, Skill 5@100%

You got 200 skill points left to pick up 2 maxed out complemntary skillls, 1 maxed out and 2 skills at 50% (if 50% of that skills is satisfactory for you), etc.  You can go 90% on all 5 skills and pick up 2 skills @ 100% and 1 at 50%....on and on.  Same goes for the Mage class.  You can sacrafice skill bonuses for having 100% in a particular skill and take 8-9 skills.....or you can Min/Max the effectiveness of the skills to grab all the skill bonuses with 7 maxed out skills.

So its not completely  100% your choice on what skills you pick if you want to be an effective warrior/mage/treasure hunter, craftsman, etc.  BUT youhave the ability to take what ever skills you want if you should choose so.  Many people didn't Min/Max their skills by maxing them out so that they could grab up other skills that fit their play style.

When you cap skills, or ad other limitations, you usually end up with something close to classes, but with a bit more room for customization.

I like that just fine. It's really not that radically different from having classes, if you cannot be the uber tank mage.

If you have people specializing to be the uber mage, becuase they can't get enough points to be the Uber mage, AND at the same time be the uber Tank, it's all good.

Then someone can be a crappy mage and at the same time a crappy tank. That's really nothing much different from class systems that offer a light tank that does more DPS as a class choice, which many games do.

Similar to the Scrapper in City of Heroes, or the dual wield fighter in DAoC, I forget the class name.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

When you cap skills, or ad other limitations, you usually end up with something close to classes, but with a bit more room for customization.

I like that just fine. It's really not that radically different from having classes, if you cannot be the uber tank mage.

If you have people specializing to be the uber mage, becuase they can't get enough points to be the Uber mage, AND at the same time be the uber Tank, it's all good.

Then someone can be a crappy mage and at the same time a crappy tank. That's really nothing much different from class systems that offer a light tank that does more DPS as a class choice, which many games do.

I agree with you completely Ihmotepp.

The real problem with modern games, and why it worked for UO (somewhat) is due to number inflation.

Modern MMOs are all about numbers. Level 10 has 1,000 health and mana but Level 20 has 2,000 health and mana. Your level 5 Fireball does 100 damage and the level 15 fireball does 500 damage.

This creates a system designed to be highly favorable to min/maxers.

In PvP and end-game PvE you need to be the absolute best, the best min/max otherwise you are really gimping yourself.

You CAN'T be the crappy mage and crappy tank, you have to be the uber mage or uber tank. You have to choose the role you play and min/max that role to be successful. In PvP the possibility for hybrid "jack of all trades" types is a little better, but still according the numbers and testing and all the math of min/maxing you'd still be better off picking a particular role and maximizing it fully.

So you can't have a numbers based game that isn't designed for specialized roles without severely gimping the player who doesn't want to specialize.

You can either do a ton of damage, heal, or tank. Sure, some damage dealers can also heal a bit or tank a bit, but their effectiveness becomes so poor that it's not a viable option for the numbers and min/max based end-game.

Originally posted by Theocritus

        Well like this website the games are supposed to be MMORPG's, meaning that they are role playing games.....By having classes it gives players a role to play.......If players have characters that can do everything then they dont really need other people......

Sorry, but that is complete nonsense.  How can anyone roleplay when you have ridiculous class restrictions limiting your gameplay?  Yep, it puts a real crimp in your roleplay opportunities.  As to characters that can do everything, there is no such thing, every classless game that has been the case.  Even Eve a high skilled player can only use a small portion of their skills in any activity.

Originally posted by heerobya

 

Sorry, another long winded rant I'll stop.

 

No, it wasn't a rant, was a well thought out reply, thanks for taking the time to put it togethe.

I agree, most of the reported player imbalance we see on forums is over blown and more based on whines than fact.

To everyone saying - "Everyone will just choose the FOTM class"

That is so heavy pile of Bullshit that i dont know what to compare it with.

Tell that to the Doctors, Dancers, Musicians, Crafters that i had in my guild in SWG. Sure, there was always people getting the best possible builds out there to compete. BUT you still needed the other "classes" to be able to do anything at all. Plus, if you have that UBAR Rifleman with a LAZOR GUN OF OWNING, it would still break and eventually disappear into nothingness.

Im not a fanatic SWG vet or anything. I have moved to other games since i played it. But i hate it when i read all this FOTM-BS. It may have been true in some games, im not arguing that. But please do not drag that shit over to every game out there because it simply is untrue.

I took SWG as an example here because thats the skillbased game i have most experience with and the FOTM-talk does not meet the description i saw during my time in the SW universe.

Thats just my cent :)

Class free MMOs are the same as class mmos. Take a look a primative skill based MMO, Runescape. There are some variations but most people stick with the main 3 classes, Melee Warrior w/ High Def armor, Robe wearing Mage, or Leather Wearing Archer, 3 classes. It's easier to balance because of the rock,paper,scisors mechanic, yet is still skill based.

As always there will be people who break the mold.

I myself was a Smuggler/Pistoleer even though at the time Smuggler was completely broken and nearly useless and pistoleer and pistols in general just sucked.

The point is that the people who didn't switch over to the FotM build were at a disadvantage to those who did because they couldn't do as much damage or whatever. etc etc.

It's like saying "Ok if you could choose this spec you can level 50% faster" if everything else is equal, you have the gear and you find the new spec and your current spec fun and interesting etc. why would you not choose the spec that is obviously better?

Originally posted by heerobya

As always there will be people who break the mold.

I myself was a Smuggler/Pistoleer even though at the time Smuggler was completely broken and nearly useless and pistoleer and pistols in general just sucked.

The point is that the people who didn't switch over to the FotM build were at a disadvantage to those who did because they couldn't do as much damage or whatever. etc etc.

It's like saying "Ok if you could choose this spec you can level 50% faster" if everything else is equal, you have the gear and you find the new spec and your current spec fun and interesting etc. why would you not choose the spec that is obviously better?

 

I hear you heerobya, but i have to somewhat disagree. Some people didn't want to be other classes. When buffs/weapons/armor started to get more expensive, people swapped to those proffessions to earn more money.

And lets face it, noone can disagree that the crafting was a game of its own. I mean, open your own shop and sell your stuff to all those bastards killing each other :)

But i agree with you that if you competed in PvP, you had to choose your build. But not always, hence my Lazor rifle post above. If you had a good weapon, you could manage fine even with smuggler/pistoleer. But ofc it would be harder with less defensive skills.

Yeah guess I'm a min/maxer at heart...

I just want a game where I can choose what I want to be and have my choice not gimp me.

I never seem to make the right choice lol... I like playing melee characters with heavy armor and shields and such.

In role based games (classes) these kinds of characters usually suck at offense.

Any developers ever see 300? Troy? Shield is a huge offensive weapon too, not just for defense...

And there is the fact that a ranged character always has the advantage because they can hit a melee character first. It's why guns eliminated most melee combat in our own history. Only way to really balance it is with counters.

Abilities to quickly close the distance, snares/roots/stuns to keep in melee range, and then the counters to those abilities like knockbacks and ranged snares/stuns/roots to prevent from getting into melee range... just becomes a huge game of counters and counter counters, which some find fun but it is nearly impossible to balance.

Anywho...

Yeah crafting and the social professions definitely were a game in themselves. I was refering to the PvP types and even my fellow PvE min/maxers who would have to keep following FotM switching to keep up.

I know what you mean. But both you and me know that such a game will probably never exist.

Ofc you should always be able to pick other skills when you want. But i would really like a new game with only one character per server. That way you always have your name no matter what skills you have. If you are a retard, the community will know. That is a good way to have a good community imo.

* With this i do not mean that you can be everything at the same time. Limited skillpoints ffs :)

SWG tried to do too much in an era before MMOs were that big and widely popular.

They didn't have the staff or the funding.

Think about it, they tried to balance like 30 something combat professions, over a dozen tradeskills, and throw in social professions, make them all work together and balance against one another.

On top of that, they tried to include vehicles, player cities and housing, full auction and banking systems, space combat, theme parks, monthly events, PvP...

That's huge. SWG's feature list was just about every feature a MMO has ever had. It was too much. Too much for that time anyway.

Now that MMOs are a lot more mainstream with huge budgets and massive design teams, would it be possible to create another SWG type game where you really could do anything?

Think about what it would have to include...

Pretty much combine everything they have in WoW with everything they had in Pre-CU SWG. That's a MASSIVE undertaking.

Also consider the fact that players now expect a very high degree of polish, so that massive amount of content and dozens of game systems all have to work and be relatively bug free and balanced.

Is it possible? Maybe...

Is it likely? No.

So developers have to pick their battles. Choose what to include and what to leave out. If the game is successful, they can add more features and expand the game to appeal to more players and draw an even larger subscriber base.

its easier to balance, its really hard to balance a game with no classes, and people well jsut end up copying each others builds anway

Originally posted by heerobya

SWG tried to do too much in an era before MMOs were that big and widely popular.

They didn't have the staff or the funding.

Think about it, they tried to balance like 30 something combat professions, over a dozen tradeskills, and throw in social professions, make them all work together and balance against one another.

On top of that, they tried to include vehicles, player cities and housing, full auction and banking systems, space combat, theme parks, monthly events, PvP...

That's huge. SWG's feature list was just about every feature a MMO has ever had. It was too much. Too much for that time anyway.

Now that MMOs are a lot more mainstream with huge budgets and massive design teams, would it be possible to create another SWG type game where you really could do anything?

Think about what it would have to include...

Pretty much combine everything they have in WoW with everything they had in Pre-CU SWG. That's a MASSIVE undertaking.

Also consider the fact that players now expect a very high degree of polish, so that massive amount of content and dozens of game systems all have to work and be relatively bug free and balanced.

Is it possible? Maybe...

Is it likely? No.

So developers have to pick their battles. Choose what to include and what to leave out. If the game is successful, they can add more features and expand the game to appeal to more players and draw an even larger subscriber base.

Actually I would say that a game with a lot of those features at least are in development: World of darkness online.

If they will get the polish good enough is anybodys guess of course but both White wolf and CCP are good on what they are doing so maybe a game like that will actually come out inthe next few years.

SOE just didn't have the cash and devs for SWG. If they had a guy like Jeff Strain (Diablo, Warcraft 3, Guildwars) or Kaplan (wow) they might have pulled it off but you really need a almost superhuman programmer to get a huge MMO off with great polish.