Kriptini wrote: ↑
October 10th, 2025, 02:04
Xenich wrote: ↑
October 9th, 2025, 20:44
Kriptini wrote: ↑
October 9th, 2025, 20:05
Class identity is definitely important to the team, but they're also sensitive to the idea that each class's identity should feel powerful in situations where they're supposed to excel. Currently, Druid and Shaman feel powerful in pretty much all situations whereas Cleric doesn't really feel powerful even in the situations where they're supposed to excel.
As long as they balance to content and not "class to class", it shouldn't be an issue. Nothing will screw up a game faster than chasing the whole class wars crap. Class envy and greener syndrome is such a cancer to these types of games.
Maybe, but part of having asymmetrical class design is that every class needs to bring something significant to the table or they'll be passed over. See: Rangers in EQ.
I don't agree with that philosophy. It is the Trinity concept and it creates issues. Why have all these classes if you are going to assign "roles"? You can easily make one class to fit each role concept and be done.
What happens though is all the attention gets put to that limited concept, but no attention is paid to the utility aspects of each class which then ends up with hybrids always becoming the dominate roles (much like they did in EQ and eventually every other modern MMO).
Original EQ didn't start out with the "Holy Trinity", that was socially pushed and later developer adopted. Release EQ class descriptions described class tools, abilities, skills, etc... and those were applied to content in various ways. It is why EQ allowed for a very flexible means of play that went past developer intent (FD pulling, kiting, fear kiting, avoidance/hot tanking, etc....) which kept confusing the developers when they tried to force "roles" because players kept finding new ways too apply the tools to defeat content which ended up with constant screams for nerfs/buffs because social opinion was that "this class is the best and only this class should be able to do this".
The whole "passed over" thing is a bad attention to design because a lot of it is based on factors that has less to do about the class being ineffective and more about the perception/ability of the player as to how that class should perform in the roles they specifically want it to. It is an often emotional and highly irrational argument point I have seen in games because people want to be seen as "special" for the class they choose.
As I said, the biggest thing is making sure the class is balanced to content, that it is useful to the content in various ways. Rather than designing around "best in role", design around tool focus.
There is no reason that some classes can not overlap into other so called "roles" if the right tools are provided.
Consider some aspects of EQ and healing/tanking in early EQ.
Take monks in EQ at release for instance. They had normal leather mitigation, but... had high avoidance and other abilities that stacked into that (block, riposte, etc...). So their strength was not taking the damage, but a Cleric, who had very long timed heals (but powerful) was a poor healing choice for a monk, though perfect for a Warrior who had extremely high mitigation, yet add a Druid healer, with a utility class that had small, but fast heals and you could have a monk tank a lot of the group content. The druids had short, fast heals and heals over time, regens, etc... which worked well for an avoidance approach to some mobs.
That was the point too, it depended on the content. Some mobs had certain attacks, or maybe defenses (dmg shields) which did not work well with a monk because they hit too fast, or the damage taken didn't work well with that setup. Then, you would need other tools which some classes provided (slows/stuns and dispels).
Notice how the focus is not on "role" specifically (there are always classes that are better fit with tools for different tasks), but for content where various classes provide solutions in different combinations based on their party and the content. Heck, we even had casters tanking at times because the type of content worked well for it.
The point is, it wasn't about the "roles", but the content and the classes became tool boxes that could apply various solutions depending on what they had and what they encountered.
Balancing around specific defined roles through "best at" concepts ends in creating constant conflicts of class envy which results in constant nerfs/buffs and eventual content/class simplification (ie modern MMO class/content design) IMO.
