I thought I had found the perfect game with DDO with their multi-classing and limited respec’ing. But the problem there was other players. They saw my Barbarian as a Tank, even though I played him as more of a rogue with a big sword. I was at a loss with groups because I couldn’t play the way THEY wanted me to.

My real problem with class systems is ~shudders~ realism. I know that is a touchy subject, but expertise is not determined by classes or levels in my experience. Different people are good at, or become good at different things and it’s hard to generalize those areas into classes.

My experience: ~sighs~ I am a soldier and have been one for some time, so I have a familiarity with combat-based skills. I have a friend that can make head shots at 100m with a pistol while I have trouble making a consistent groups at 25m with a rifle. Yet my qualification scores are always ‘Expert’ (38 out of 40) and he barely qualifies (26 out of 40). He’s big and tough. I am lightly built and have medical training. In a class system, he would be a tank and I would be a healer. Other members of my team are trained in demolitions, transportation and logistics, oh, and commo. But I am team leader, and used to be a platoon sergeant, and am on point and first in the stack. So what class or level am I? I have scouting skills, leadership skills. I know how to call for artillery and air strikes. Some of my favorite memories are directing the fire of machine gun crews from a support position. My mediocre marksmanship has been accurate when it counted.

Some discussion of tactical techniques may be needed here but there’s not enough space. Ther are times when I don 60 pounds of armor and go toe to toe. There are times when I wear the same weight in ammo, spare barrel and a tripod. There are times when we are only equipped with pistols and pepperspray (and stylin’ shirts!).

I see a distinct parallel between these teams and groups of adventurers. The comparison holds true on too many levels, but in a class based system there is no room for the flexibility one needs in the real world. I can scout, tank (though none of us taunt), heal, lead and nuke, depending on the mission. Heck, some missions require all at once!

Part of the problem is that we have players have developed certain expectations and game designers have catered to them. It would require something innovative, and therefore risky, to break this pattern. And even then, as in DDO, players may just enforce the old rules.

As I am getting long winded here, I will briefly describe what I’d like to see: skillsets. These would be based on classes, or more realistically, guilds. There would thieve’s guilds, warrior guilds, paladin guilds, priestly orders, academies of mages… My character would work on status with these different ‘class’ organizations to learn the skills they teach. The more status I have with them, the more access I have to their ‘Higher-level’ skills. I could have status with several of them, but as my status with the thieves increases, at a certain point, my status with the priests would decrease. Some classes wouldn’t let me have much status with others; some would be more tolerant. There might even be competing guilds of the same ‘class’. Some of the skills would be commonly taught and others would be quite rare and require epic quests. Do I need to point out that this would work for crafters as well?

Maybe this system already exists somewhere, in a game I haven’t seen yet.

Anyway, I could go on and on about it but you actually care you can read up on it via our official site http://www.unleashthefury.com, one of our fan sites http://www.fury-sanctuary.com, or my blog http://www.working-as-designed.blogspot.com. Share and enjoy.

Note that’s “fury” with one “r”.

[...] Now, I’m new enough to the debate to not know whether something has been discussed to death so badly that it isn’t even mentioned anymore. I had alot of reading to do… Luckily, Ryan Shwayder over in Nerfbat provided a good starting point earlier last week. [...]

[...] Last week, grouchy gnome over at nerfbat had a lot of great things to say about the ?class vs skill? debate in game (particularly RPG) design. While I can (and have) ranted VOLUMES on the topic (often exceeding the capacity of comment fields), I found myself sidetracked by one of his more offhand comments. [...]

It would require some very fine-tuned balancing, to be sure, but if done right could simultaneously provide a new alternative to class systems while eliminating a lot of the tedium and ancillary issues associated with grinding for uber lewt.

[...] Posts I agree with: Nerfbat, Moorgard, Nerbat (again), Sierra Kilo, World IV. [...]

[...] How did I miss this? There’s been a flare up of the Class vs. Skill debate recently. You can track it across multiple blogs: Nerfbat, Zen of Design, Broken Toys, Moorgard, Nerfbat, Probably Not, Sierra Kilo, Raph Koster, World IV. [...]

a.) This one’s tough.
b.) Multiclassing, of course ^_^

IMHO, my favorite setup for characters is (and probably will continue to be for a long time if not indefinitely) Neverwinter Nights-style. Not quite D&D, as they made a few logical changes for computer gaming. However, it opens a few problems:

1.) Heavy min/max-ing is possible. It’s possible to build some pretty strong characters if you know the rules left, right, upside down, and all around. If you avoid PvP or use EQ2′s system of seperate effects on players than on NPCs, balancing is a lot easier… to make a balanced MMO of it though, you’d probably have to do a few potentially annoying things like: restricting certain abilities from being able to be used in combination, forcing X levels of each class with multiclassing (so you don’t have that one level in some class just for an ability or to unload skill points), force use of all skill points at the point of level-up, etc.

2.) Newbies make craptacular characters, often end up with totally gimped characters, and it can take a while before they can build a good character. Therefore, there should be the option of pre-built characters, but going further than NWN’s packages and actually doing the entire character setup (sans things like appearance) and, if desired, controlling level-ups. This not only gives options for people who don’t want to end up with horrible characters (without having to resort to taking other players’ setups from forums and such), but also allows players to just pick a class and jump into the game, giving the option of flexibility to those who want it.

3.) Too many options, in some cases. You could easily end up with an absolutely daunting amount of classes, races, etc, which could really screw up new players. This, however, would also be mostly fixed by giving pre-created character setups.

4.) Potential for FOTM setups. However, with a lot of options out there, you probably won’t run into this as much… but it depends on a lot of factors (including how willing people are to reveal their builds).

5.) Non-player balancing. You’ll have to have all kinds of varying degrees of difficulty allowing for all kinds of character setups; perhaps a way of keeping track of how players do in general that would scale the difficulty of things? That’d be a though thing to do, though.

6.) Strength of items. This applies to all MMOs, but has a lot of effect in a D&D-style game world. In a world where items cause big effects on your character, your actual character choices have less meaning. However, with items that do almost nothing extra, your choices might mean a bit TOO much, and you won’t be able to fix drawbacks nearly as easily, which could be frustrating finding out at lv40 that you should’ve shifted your stats by 4 points or something that would’ve made a huge difference. Ideally you’d have low to moderate levels of magical enhancements; then again, I just *hate* itemcentricity.

Obviously there’s a lot more to it, but it’s a topic loaded with possibilities and whatnot.

Overall tho, I am pretty much committed to the thought that class based systems are a lot better for MMO?s in general. It leaves a diversity that is distinct, and very evenly spread. You don?t see 90% of the population being the same exact class, where as in a skill system if you had given a certain path of skills and traits that you choose a ?class? name, you?d have almost everyone being the same exact class, or having something that derives or is based off that same exact class.

I play EQ2 now, there is 24 classes and that leaves it pretty open to do anything that u would want to do, the only thing is that once you have made your choice, you aren?t going to be changing much. The neat thing that sets it apart from other MMO?s that use the class system tho, is there are lots of ways to set yourself apart from others, even of the same class. The best example is comparing AA lines or Master2 choices. My Paladin has his M2 heal, and his AA heals maxed out, while another may have M2 AE Taunt, and Hate % AAs, or another might have his HPs maxed or defense, or even the far stray DPSing Paladin. It leaves it pretty open, and with the addition of Augments in the near future, I see things becoming even more diverse.