MMORPG class design

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Stahlseele
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Post by Stahlseele »

Oh yes RO did REALLY WELL with the Classes.
Not just design, but also the sheer variety was a neverbefore seen thing back then.
You went from
5 or 6 base classes to 12/15 (not entirely sure anymore) and then those classes later on got another split for even more impressive specialization.
Paladins used to be very broken in some aspects, as you could, properly specced, get them to have 6 digit health. And they had a skill that dealt x% of their max health to an enemy, while taking that health from the paladin as well. A very well specced paladin had little to no problem beating MVEs(Boss-Monsters) in single combat. They nerfed that pretty quickly if i remember correctly.
And yes, Knights were a scary thing to face if unprepared. They took little to no damage, healed back and just kept coming at you like the god damn terminator and then they would sword or lance you to death.

Dodge and ASPD Assassins were hillariously broken fun for quite some time too, as they basically could get up to several dozend attacks per minute and improve their to hit chance by something like 400% while also dropping the chance to be hit to something like 0,01% or so.
Before that got fixed/nerfed you could see assassins calmly standing in the boss mob rooms and not getting hit by anything and if they went on the attack, it was just a steady stream of DMG they output.

I never got into any of the other classes, only ever started as thief or swordsman for these exact reasons back then ^^
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

FFXIV has recently revamped their jobs with new UI, adding in Redmage and Samurai.

They've made universal role abilities so all tanks can stun, all melee strikers can second wind heal themselves, and so on.

Redmage uses ranged spells (black and white) to build up a red meter (have to fill black and white magic bars to raise it) which seems to be used for melee magic moves.

Samurai is pretty straightforwardly a "kill you" class that have opening moves to unlock finishing moves.

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

Stahlseele wrote:Oh yes RO did REALLY WELL with the Classes.
Not just design, but also the sheer variety was a neverbefore seen thing back then.
You went from
5 or 6 base classes to 12/15 (not entirely sure anymore) and then those classes later on got another split for even more impressive specialization.
Paladins used to be very broken in some aspects, as you could, properly specced, get them to have 6 digit health. And they had a skill that dealt x% of their max health to an enemy, while taking that health from the paladin as well. A very well specced paladin had little to no problem beating MVEs(Boss-Monsters) in single combat. They nerfed that pretty quickly if i remember correctly.
And yes, Knights were a scary thing to face if unprepared. They took little to no damage, healed back and just kept coming at you like the god damn terminator and then they would sword or lance you to death.

Dodge and ASPD Assassins were hillariously broken fun for quite some time too, as they basically could get up to several dozend attacks per minute and improve their to hit chance by something like 400% while also dropping the chance to be hit to something like 0,01% or so.
Before that got fixed/nerfed you could see assassins calmly standing in the boss mob rooms and not getting hit by anything and if they went on the attack, it was just a steady stream of DMG they output.

I never got into any of the other classes, only ever started as thief or swordsman for these exact reasons back then ^^
Did different classes have different resource mechanics, was party role ever a big thing for dungeons n' bosses?

I was reading up in warcraft and intrigued by the Deathknight rune system... then I found out they threw it out to turn runes into another kind of energy or mana bar.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

OgreBattle wrote:Going over how disappointing FFXIV's summoners are, what are the ways different MMO's handle pet classes and giving them commands?
This is why I kind of miss City of Heroes/Villains/Rogues. The Mastermind class had a lot of crazy shit with its pets. For one, you could summon 3 basic tier, 2 advanced tier, and 1 expert tier for a total of 6 pets at any one time - and depending on your power set, they either autoattacked at things (all), did debuffs on their attacks (most), or just owned (Robotics). You could also Upgrade one of your minions to give them additional abilities, which could be a new debuff, a new highly damaging attack, or something similar. There was a lot of ridiculous synergy you could pull off with certain combos - Necromancy/Dark Miasma, for instance, meant you and your minions could never die unless you fucked up or went up against something 6+ levels above you or was meant for a raid (though I'm pretty sure I took down one of the open world raid bosses solo at one point with Nec/DM - though it's been forever and maybe I just spent an hour screwing around with chip damage). Robotics/Force Field and Robotics/Traps operated similarly to each other in that the secondary power set provided a bunch of controlling options with damage as a sideline, while your ungodly powerful (seriously, it was ridiculous) robots kicked some serious ass.

Also, there were like 12 commands you could give to your companions, which led to a lot of us MMs changing the text file for settings to bind most of them to the numpad. You could select groups of pets from the 0-3 buttons (0 all, 1 grunts, 2 advanced, 3 elite), set their stance (aggressive, defensive, passive) on 4-6, issue commands on 7-9 (attack, follow, go here), and then had your various interactions with Upgrades on the ancillary keys.

What made it interesting was, besides the super fine control you had over your various tiers of pets, was also the fact that you had to actively be working WITH the pets, utilizing your power set and your inherent power - Supremacy, which required you to stay within 60ft of your pets to give them a damage boost and to-hit boost. However, City of X had an extremely weird aggro system and your pets couldn't ALWAYS protect you (debuffs had a LOT of threat tied to them, as did buffs and healing), which had them introduce the Bodyguard power which allowed you to share damage with your pets.

Overall, Mastermind in CoX was all about control, even moreso than the aptly named Controllers and Dominators. You had to control the battlefield, issue commands to your pets quickly by tier, and stay at the optimum range for Supremacy, while also keeping yourself, your pets, and sometimes your entire party alive, and also managing your aggro so you don't get pasted by the Elite(s) in the group. Granted, Robotics had a leg up on that (seriously, Robots fucking owned everything) but the other archetypes required a lot of control to play.

...Or you could just get Necro/DM + Soul Mastery and debuff everything until it can't possibly touch you, or Robotics/Force Field + Mace Mastery for Power Boost and turn all your knockbacks and lockdowns into completely unresistable control powers. Either way, it was a much more nuanced playstyle of a "pet" class and still one of the most fun ones I've ever played with.

...And had they ever given Masterminds access to the Radiation powerset as a secondary, they would have been as unto gods, as Radiation's debuffs and buffs were ungodly powerful with enough To-Hit slotted in them to make sure they always landed, and utilizing Fallout regularly on dead pets would have been hilariously brutal.
Last edited by RelentlessImp on Thu Aug 02, 2018 7:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

That sounds like a lot of fun, and what Warcraft III was suppose to be when announced.
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