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Classes vs. Skills in MMOGs
An anonymous reader writes "The buzz in the MMO blogosphere is yet another resurrection of the Class system vs. Skill system debate. A number of prominent online gaming bloggers have chimed in with their opinions on the subject, including: Scott Jennings, Raph Koster, Ryan Shwayder, Steve Danuser, Damion Schubert, and a host of others you can find linked on those blogs. The conclusion? Most of the devs favor class systems because of their simplicity and ease of communicating character roles, while a few devs and many players favor skill-based systems because of the freedom they provide for user customization."
FTFA
Class
- Simpler
- Easier to balance
- Heavily Contrained
- Easy to communicate
Skill
- Users aren't locked into one behavior
- skill based games are expandable
- There's no assumption that every role is equal
- There can be multiple reasons to play
Summary
Of course, the game design secret here is that class systems and skill systems are the same thing; they simply have different parameters.
If you take every combination of skill distribution and call that a 'class', you now have a class-based system. Of course unless you've only 3 skills, you'll quickly get way too many classes, which is what happens in the class based systems, and it becomes a balancing nightmare. Since MMORPG is competitive, you have to have some semblance of balance because while it might be fine for a single player game or a small multiplayer game (say, 4-8) to have some utterly overpowered or useless equivalent classes, this is not okay in a MMORPG. The number of equivalent classes to balance, in a skill-based system, is simply intractable. Heck, people have a hard time balancing 5 or 10 classes and yet people expect to have any sembalance equality when you deal with an effectively hundreds, if not more classes?
I miss the 32 profession 250 point open skills system SWG once had. You had complete freedom.
Now it's just like any other EQ/WoW clone, you are locked into single professions without any multi classing. Only 2 even have talent trees.
Back when I started SWG (pre-CU, before all this revamp the game to death nonsense started) it didn't even HAVE levels. Now the AI is so braindead that damage/defense is basically higher CL - lower CL. Pre-CU it wasn't.
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And yet 5 years ago things spun back around in the Pen and Paper world, with Wizards of the Coast 3rd edition D&D putting class-based systems back on top (with a dollop of "skill points" as a sop to those who favor skill-based games).
Class-based systems are easier to balance overall - skills based systems are easier to break. In the pen-and-paper world this isn't a problem because the ultimate arbiter of balance is the Game Master, who (if he's remotely good at all) can spot people breaking the skill based system and tell them no. Class-based systems have fewer problems with this because the abilities are already cooked together and glaringly broken combinations of effects happen more rarely (though WotC, with their proliferation of classes and easy multiclassing for characters, makes things a bit harder for the poor GM in this regard).
In an online setting, its pretty easy to see why the devs would want to work from a class-based system for most things. Its just too hard to figure out all possible combinations of things to see where a player might break the system. I applaud the guys who can do it, but man it must be tough. Even with the class-based systems it seems like the devs have problems keeping classes balanced - doing that with a point-based system would be even more of a mess.
The simple problem is the more choices a player has, the more times a different level character can come out.
When playing D&D there's either the core classes or multiple prestige, which works well except that there's always players who find the one way to get a character who at level 10 is so significantly more powerful than everyone else in the power that it's boring to play because the game becomes "hide behind loserboy".
Classes allow a simple way to balance a game, certain classes have certain skills and roles. A rogue might be able to solo in WoW but with a healer he's a lot more effective. A paladin can do well healing or fighting but he's not a master at either.
Imagine if you could have a stealth enabled caster who could equip heavy armor and knows the strongest magic in the game? It'd be unstopable but some open skill systems basically allow that. The secret is to give the players the option of any skill but to require specialization at the very least. Of course most games would even balk at that because that's going back towards Classes again.
Honestly The question is more what works best in your game? In a single player game do you want there to always be a solution to the problem so you can beat the game? Then you'll want classes. Do you want the character to possibly placed in a situation where they can't complete the game? Then skills will be you're option.
Or instead you can constantly play the game and change the rules over and over but by the third rule change many of your fans will start walking away because if there's one thing the fan's want is stability, especially stability with their own characters.
if an MMO is trying to get smaller groups, then perhaps this is fine, but if you'd like a more traditional group of Fighter/Cleric/Wizard/Thief each with their own defined roles, then classes are the way to go.
Your group must have been gaming in a cave if White Wolf's Storyteller (1991) system with its lack of classes was so surprising. Skill based, classless systems had exists for over a decade at that point, including well known systems Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing System in Call of Cthulhu (1981), Hero Game's Hero System in Champions (1981), and Iron Crowne's Rolemaster (~1980). By the time Storyteller showed up, classless gameplay continued in games like Steve Jackson's GURPS (1986) and Mayfair's Mayfair Exponential Game System in DC Heroes (1985).
Furthermore, it's not a clear case of "classless with skills is better than classes." D&D remains the most popular RPG in the United States; these aren't millions of players who are simply ignorant of classless systems. Classless systems have existed for almost 25 years and are widely available. For many younger player, classless games have existed since they were born. Yet they play D&D.
Class based systems provide some advantages, in particular it provides guidance. Builting a character from absolutely nothing can be daunting; while many enjoy it, it can be hard to craft a character that fits well into the expectations of the game. In first edition D&D you would be hard pressed to design a character ill-suited for the D&D-style play, while in Vampire it's pretty easy to do so, possibly by accident.
Of course, guidance don't need to come from strict classes. In particular, many games now provide "archetypes", archtypical characters which players can use as a basis. For example, Shadowrun's Street Samurai, Mages, and Deckers; or Cyberpunk's Glitterboys and Reporters, or Big Eyes, Small Mouth's Gun Bunny's, Magical Girls, and Mecha. I find it telling that in many games with lots of character freedom, they still tend to neatly fit within the archetypes because they fit the game well.
It's also interesting that many games eliminated "classes" that represented training or profession, but kept some sort of rigid grouping that limits characters, especially new characters. This is true of most of White Wolf's products in which characters are sorted into Clans, Tribes, Kiths, and Traditions, all of which impact a player's choices at start up.
Also, you're completely missing why MMORPG's have classes: balance issues. MMORPGs are up against very different problems than tabletop games. In a tabletop game, if you make poor choices early in the game that limit your character later in the game, be it role-playing or mechanics, things can be tweaked. In a MMORPG, a poor selection of skills early in the game may lock you out of further advancement, meaning many more hours retraining or building up a new character. They is less of a problem for players interested in gaming that part of the system, or players willing to do lots of online research up front, but it's bad for casual players. Classes also make design easier. Given the complexity of MMORPG design, "easier" may mean "feasible." Many games designs want to create interesting mixes of player characters with different focuses. In a pure skill based system you are more likely to end up with a bland mix optimized in a small number of ways. This is tied into the poor skill choice issue: you might optimize in a way that seems cool ("I want to be the best fire mage possible") only to discover that no one wants you in their group because it turns out that the fire-mage/healer hybrid is far more efficient. While classes force you to sacrifice flexibility, it means you can better ensure that the remaining selections are more evenly attractive and playable.
Ultimately the line between class-based and class-less is a continuum, one of many. Few games exist perfectly at either end. There is no single answer for all games, tabletop or online. Game designers should reconsider the issue with each new game.
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I've seen this behavior in both (the original flavour) SWG and UO.
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I'm not sure that's a good comparison. White Wolf does use a class system, or more accurately, a race system. If you want to play a game with vampires and a demon, you need to buy the Vampire and Demon games. That's like having to buy a book in addition tot he basic books just to play a dwarf. Compare that to D&D, where all the classes and races are in one game (not counting optional add-on/ variant classes in supplements like the swashbuckler). Really, a pure skill system reminds me far more of GURPS. In GURPS everyone had access to the same skills and advantages; there were no classes at all. Problem is, GURPS did achieve a repsectable measure of popularity, but compare that to (A)D&D.
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It seems to me that there are two things that make a game "addictive". Clearly the "leveling" concept feeds an addiction in the same way that gamblers are fed by "payoffs". This very obviously has driven why this has become the norm. However, I would suggest that this eventually gets boring to the player in the absense of any real game content - and for that you need a truely immersive world. I haven't seen that since UO.
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While very complete, I believe you forgot The Fantasy Trip, which according to wiki, came out in 1980.
IIRC, TFT featured classes and skills, with skills available to all classes but more expensive if you purchased a skill outside of your class core competency. Useful for mages to have a hold out weapon, or for warriors (or thieves) to have a one-trick spell. Also notable for it's influence on GURPS, and does much to prevent accusations of SJGames having ripped off the Hero System (it's more likely Hero borrowed ideas from TFT if anything.)
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Be honest. How much are you really depending on playing, say, a Wizard with that personality trait?
This is a discussion that gets brought up repeatedly in the pen/paper RPG discussions I've been party to. In lots of RPGs (the MMO kind included), the "roleplaying" takes a backseat to the dungeon crawling / killing the Trogdors in the Highlands without getting burninated, et cetera stuff. Except that it seems worse in the MMOs - the roleplaying is all of the "let's pretend my guy is beating this troll with a +7 Morning Star of Ouchiness." Click click click. "Ha! He's dead. Loot! pwned! BRB, gotta pee."
The only games I've played where people are actually interested in stuff like that are the pen & paper games, where occasionally (not always) people are willing to stop min/maxing enough to play things like, "One of the local wood sprites has decided to start waging a practical joke war on your character."
I'm rambling at this point, but here's what I'm getting at: once you decide that you actually want to play something like "My wizard has an aversion to fire," it helps to have the attitude that maybe killing the monsters isn't such a big deal. Maybe it's more fun to, you know, actually play a role, as opposed to getting irritated because you can't get that "generic smiting enemy spell #43" in blue instead of red.
Indeed. and over on the MMO side of the house classless systems were 'present at the beginning' - I.E Ultima Online. Interestingly enough - the large majority of players choses to straightjacket themselves into classes (templates) despite the freedom the game allows. (Mostly, I suspect, because over time it's been discovered which templates are most powerful/effective - and most MMO players are after power and effectiveness instead of unique characters.)
Most of my experience has been with GURPS and AD&D, less with online games (the only one I play is Kingdom of Loathing, and I only play that for the clan chat). In the past few years and especially when the 4th edition came out, GURPS has also gone to a sort of hybrid. The thing is, GURPS doesn't call them classes, but templates.
I think the template method actually holds the most promise from a programming point of view. A possible implementation in a computer RPG would be for the player to choose the template (say, a woodland scout), and the character generator then sets the minimum stats, the beginning skills and the list of recommended options. If the players clicks "advanced", he can access the larger list. This may sound like a lot of work for the programming team in the beginning, but it pays off later.
You see, once the skills are chosen, the program doesn't have to treat each class differently. The chance to hit or not comes straight from the weapons skills, not from the class list. It's all stored in the character. It seems to me that the skill method means less info to look up, less databases that have to be added to the game. It also makes the game engine more universal, easier to adapt to different genres or even to allow transporting characters between game worlds (one of the things the makers of GURPS like to claim about their system).
It's also easier for the players to change professions, as class systems are biased to "once a [CLASS], always a [CLASS]" manner of thinking. This prevents the classic backstory of so many tales, like the priest who once was a bloodthirsty warrior until he found remorse and devoted himself to his god, or the thief who was an apprentice wizard. With the earlier versions of AD&D, this was clumsily handled, with (for example) a warrior-turned-wizard being demoted to 1st level again, and unable to use his old to-hits in combat (if he did, then he didn't get any XP).
A class-based system allows the designers to easily control how long it takes player to finish the PvE content. Unfortunatly, many recent games only offer large group team-based combat against scripted opponents for PvE content after a certain point. In a class based system like EQ or WoW the designers can control which of these battles the players can win by controlling the quality and rate of equipment drops for single class.
In a skill based system the players can develop skills that compensate for a lack of equipment or make the quality of their equipment much less important. This makes it likely that hard-core players will find a way to beat the top level content in the game before the designer can get new content ready for them.