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."

Comments

Comparison

[neonprimetime]

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.