Class System Review, Fridays update!

[Master.Ink]

it feels like everything shrunk. its not typically a bad thing for me but when i saw more classes than usuall i was overjoyed but then they reduced it, but theres still plenty of classes . Being a Ranger... hmm Crossbow or Bow...

[Tehfuzz]

Originally Posted by Melkorus

Well what I hate more than anything in MMOs is being forced to take SKILL A before you can get SKILL B, or SKILL A and B to get C - that I hate, and since everybody knows WoW and it uses such system, it was obvious comparison.

"Some" of such requirements I could understand, but when things just keep piling up to letter Z in latter-style(get A to get B, B to get C, C to get D etc etc etc), it is no longer fun.

I'm not saying AoC will or will not go this route, I just pray that they don't.

Ahh i couldnt agree more with that. :P

One good thing though, that i think "Might" come out of this, is that it will make the players more diverse from the rest even among people of the same class. Thats assuming that you can freely pick and choose which skills you want. And that each skill is as usefull as the next. What should stand out is how it appeals to you, not whether its better than the others.

And again, i will bring up WoW. The warrior class, Almost all two-handed warriors were arms spec. And the arms spec always consisted of going 31 talents into arms and 20 into fury. 31 so that you could get mortal strike, and then 20 into fury so that you could get enrage.
They did recently change teh talents though, which i think is for the better. But all it really did was, make it worth it to put almost all your points into one tree.

But you see what im saying. Everyone generally had the same spec because it was the best spec. And not because the spec appealed to their taste.

So i think it would be a really nice change, If you could choose which ever skills you wanted, but they were all more or less equal. ^_^

[Melkorus]

Athelan was kind enough to answer my question(s).

My question:

Now, my first and most important question is: Are we going to see World Of Warcraft type of skill tree? Will you be required to get "Slash" before you can acquire "Bloody Stab"?

In other words, if you want to be effective at all you must concentrate on one path (set of skills) and keep at it, which in turn nullifies merging of the classes (also see question #2). Basically you would have more than one class under one skin, but you can only be effective as one class or the other. Think WoW's priests, Holy or Shadow speced.

Or, are we going to be given option to chose from a pool of feats/skills where one skill doesn't depend on the other, as far as acquiring them goes. There could perhaps be level requirement so you don't get the ubberest skill right away. But at each level when we are given option to get a new skill/feat, we can pick from any of them w/out having to worry about what's going to happen later (and if it's true that there are 14K feats in the game, that would roughly give 1K feats to each class -- there would be tons of feats to chose from each time...would be nice ). "Oh crap, I didn't take Slash, now I can't get Bloody Stab" vs "I'll just take Block now, I can always get Bloody Stab later". This could in turn turn out to be really DIVERSIFYING as intended, and it would not have system-made templates such as in WoW skill tree.


Question #2: How many feat/skill points do we get now that classes are merged?

For the sake of better understanding, let's pretend that in old system (old classes system), players would be allowed 100 feat points. (Keep in mind that they said that you had CHOICES to make even in old class system). Now, in new system, I think we should get more than 100 points. If you give us only 100 points again, than what exactly is the purpose of merging? We had some slack of choosing in old system too. To be effective, you can only spec out to be good old Zealot or good old Dark Templar. Of course, you can be half of both (or any other ratio), but that I wouldn't think of being very "effective" (no I'm not min-maxer). If entire purpose of merging classes was to allow players to create gimped hybrids of the two, then nothing will be accomplished.

So here I am hoping that with merged classes, we would be alloted let's say 130-150 feat points (if previous system allowed 100). So you can still be full Zealot and half of Dark Templar for the extra edge - or 75% of each - which I think would be effective enough.

Also, unrelated to class merging, we will have a chance (or 5) to respec our characters right?

Answer:

I am not going to fully explain the feat system. Things will have pre-requisites but there are many different lines, you couldnt jump from being deep into two handed weapons to dual wield your next level and have access to the same levels of combos, but you will have enough points to not get everything but get a lot so it should not be an issue.

Conclusion: wait and see.

[Tehfuzz]

wow.. that was more confusing then that time travel video....

[Craftblade]

Originally Posted by Melkorus

Conclusion: wait and see.

Good thing Im already part of the watnsea tribe. Seems rather difficult to find a question that they will answer fully.

[dradoc]

Class merging looks goo to me. At least the way they explained their reason for it sounded valid.

[Requiem]

Originally Posted by Melkorus

Well what I hate more than anything in MMOs is being forced to take SKILL A before you can get SKILL B, or SKILL A and B to get C - that I hate, and since everybody knows WoW and it uses such system, it was obvious comparison.

"Some" of such requirements I could understand, but when things just keep piling up to letter Z in latter-style(get A to get B, B to get C, C to get D etc etc etc), it is no longer fun.

I'm not saying AoC will or will not go this route, I just pray that they don't.

I didn't mind the system for WoW, it was similar to that of Diablo. It allowed for 2 people of the same class to be somewhat different from each other, therefore adding even more class options as a whole to the game. Also, if you wanted something deep in a specific tree that would be deemed as an extremely good ability, you couldn't sink enough points in another section to get another extremely good ability that combined would make you an unstoppable killing machine, per say. You would have to pick and choose what you wanted to focus on. Also, what was nice about WoW's system.. is say you maxed out your character and played the character for a long period of time.. You get bored with it a bit.. and think, oh wait I can just spend a couple gold to totally redo the class tree and get another take on my character and feel 'reborn' so to speak lol. Sure it costs more the more you change your character around in that fashion, but I thought it was pretty creative and let you alter the way your character was a bit.

[Torr]

Well I'm usually so sure in my opinions but... I don't know how I feel about this. Did we lose alot? Can we build the same types of characters? Did we gain? I really have no feel for what has been done here. I understand what they're trying to do, I just don't know any more about the classes than I did before.

Perhaps that's it, that we still really don't know much more about the classes other than the base descriptions we've been seeing since the classes were announced. I still don't really know how things will work.

One positive is that they've convinced me to stick with my original class choice, the Dark Templar. Like others, it doesn't feel to me like a hybrid Zealot/Dark Templar class, but rather like the Dark Templar class with the priestly Zealot abilities tacked on. Anyway, I still like the class. On the other hand, they merged the Reaver with the Barbarian, and I promised myself I would never play a Barbarian. Mainly just because I figure all the people who know nothing about Conan other than the movies will pick that class. Too popular for me. So I'm down to one sig again!

[Gortanubus]

Atleast they are making progress. Wait till the beta is released, then there will be more changes to come.

[Heme]

Originally Posted by Gortanubus

Atleast they are making progress. Wait till the beta is released, then there will be more changes to come.

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