Balance doesn’t really exist without classes. Imbalance is a result of categorized archetypes being unequal in the tasks they are believed to be equally capable of performing; remove the archetypes, you remove the need for balance. It becomes… economic.

If you take a look at a hybrid game, both class- and skill-based. Issues of balance never come up with regards to particular skills (except class-restricted skills), because skills are inherently balanced, since they are undifferentiated between players.

Differentiate, and you have classes. And balance issues.

Precisely. Except… if one skill is much stronger than another yet easier or just as difficult to train, then balancing is needed. That was my point.

I made the case in “A Touch of Class” that a properly implemented skill-based system is in fact simpler to balance than current class-based ones.

Raph and David, thanks for the comments. I think they help highlight Raph’s point that once you start grouping skills, the groups eventually start looking like classes.

To clarify my test design, I didn’t actually go straight from 50+ skills to 16 careers. Instead, while roughing out an initial set of 70-80 skills, I took the four broad playstyles (combat, commerce, exploration, socializing) that I wanted to support and broke each one down into four sub-modes, two oriented (more or less) toward solo play and two group-oriented. Then I tweaked the skills down to 60 that fit the resulting sixteen careers.

Another lesson learned: Two of the more important game design tools are Word and Excel.

The skills I’m currently considering are broadly organized into the four main play modes, but there’s no differentiation or hierarchy beyond that. So it’s still a very free-form system. The character creation section would offer plenty of hints and suggestions on choosing skills that fit particular careers for players who prefer the top-down approach, while still offering freedom to players who enjoy experimenting.

Within the game itself, I’m defining gameplay-specific player actions (i.e., gameplay content) in terms of “action descriptors.” Among other things, these let me define multiple skills that might apply in performing that action. For example, a character’s success in performing the Mining action might be affected primarily by her Mining skill, secondarily by her Efficiency and Demolitions skills, and tertiarily by her Sensors, Prospecting, Chemistry and Cargo Ops skills. This is pretty simple for defining solo career actions; role balancing is harder for actions in group careers but I’m still working on that.

By developing many such actions for each career, and by defining each action to be affected by a broad range of skills, I believe I get the best of both worlds. I can organize game activity into careers that work like classes while still allowing players to choose different skills to apply to those activities. That’s probably not a novel approach, and it’s got practical difficulties of its own, but I think it skirts both the Scylla of excessively constrained gameplay (“why is this all I can do?”) and the Charybdis of overly freeform play (“what am I supposed to do?”).

That’s the theory, anyway.

I guess the overall point here is that I’m another one who believes that a hybrid class/skill approach is feasible. There’s a question as to whether significant commercial success requires picking one of the two ends of the spectrum (probably classes), but could a logically-designed hybrid system still wind up being fun for a lot of people?

I think so, but maybe as I keep working on my design doc I’ll change my mind on that, too….

The problem with Alpha classes in MMOs is that everyone has to have the potential to become that class. And then most everyone does.

The problem is that people refuse to accept their ‘turn’ as the alpha class being just that. Once they get alpha they want to stay there and Devs who have incorporated the only logical way of getting rid of alphas (perma-death) get bitched at for spoiling their fun.

If you want to run an alpha class system then you have to put prohibitions in place to prevent over creation of the alpha clas and to remove as many as are created once the balance of power is correct.

Boo for reading eight different blog posts
and their associated comments. I miss MUD-Dev.

why is it so hard, apparently, for devs to provide a prepackaged psuedo-class type system for noobs that provides easy entry, that can be overridden should the player wish? i.e. the daggerfall/morrowind/oblivion model. is it a conceptual block within the development environment to force the class/skill system dichotomy, where no such dichotomy really needs to exist? you even say in your article that the best class based systems are just skill based systems with constraints applied. why do devs/designers feel they must force those constraints? and another thing. why do game designers and game developers have such a severe “hardon” for “balance”.

let me explain. back 20+ years ago, i used to play car wars religiously. point allocation system. we used to play with groups of 6 where one individual would have 50k points and the rest of us would have 10k-15k a piece. it was fun. i would kill for an mmo that would allow that kind of dynamic, where the focus was not on forcing everyone to be -equal- on every level (i.e. boring). swg used to have it with jedi – i hunted jedi with my (armorless) wookiee mbh the first month they were unlocked with 3 or 4 other mbh’s, and it was cool – even with 4 of the theoretically most powerful non-jedi, we rarely won. having to come up with strategies and work together to take out a single player was awesome, and i would love a game with raidish content with human intelligence behind it. the whole “alpha classes aren’t fair” complaint could have been dealt with by very high level npcs (i.e. boba fett) that even the alpha class char could not handle, spawning after some random playing time. with my jedi, on the other hand, i loved the roleplaying avenue along with the implied “wow” factor of having a character that was so difficult to acquire and, at the time, rare.

In the game I have been developing over the past 2 years, Genesis (the world’s first truely dynamic MMORPG!!! ) (www.playgenesis.com (shameless self promotion, I know)), I chose to go with a class systems versus free-form choose your own skillsets, although the classes are a little bit maleable. While it is more “realistic” to go with a skill-based system, we have to realize that realism doesn’t necessarily equate to fun. Going with a class system makes your game more of a game (a challenge with a finite set of choices that can result in two or more rated outcomes). Also, I think the class based system is very important for the following reason: role-playing. In every movie, book, and other type of medium, characters play distinct roles. Usually the protagonist has certain weaknesses, which he depends on side kicks / party members to compensate for. Usually these are in the classic forms of the big strong guy, the smart guy, the sneaky/nimble guy, etc. We have come to accept these archtypes as the keystones of good story-telling. If you just have a bunch of not-very-well-defined characters running around filling wierd, pieced-together roles, your storyline suffers.

I think that even in free form worlds, it is important to maintain character archetypes…you have to do this by MINIMIZING the number of classes, versus creating more classes to match the various permutations…so, for example, if you want to have a Lumberjack class and a Wrestler class, you group them into a general “Strong Guy” class, which can then be made somewhat tailored to the players role by the paths they choose. So, a “Strong Guy” could become more specifically a Wrestler, a Lumberjack, or both, or some other combination of Strength-based classes. Does this make sense?

Well, send that on the the appropriate persons responsible. I guess I saw your next career move and concluded you must have been the one to lay the ground work for the destruction of UO (perhaps it was your absence instead?). Apologies.

Anyway, I stand by the rest of my comments, especially those about thread count.

Ever played a druid in WoW. its class based. but not. it doesnt stuck you to one role. but within a class based world it only causes anger.

i wish i never played one, or i wish there’d be no classes at all.

Hey Raph, don’t you hate getting blame for the acts of your “spawn”?

Guess this is an example of “the sin of child is the sin of the father” or something like that. Can’t quite figure the phrase.

Frank

Ah, Came back to add an example (since you don’t have edit buttons): Think about a mage studying corpses in the game world. This would “unlock” skill(s), but at the same time, playing around with corpses is much despised by the npc crowd, so that it pushes the player into certain directions (consequences like cannot visit churches anymore, is hunted by certain factions of players and/or mobs when “witnessed” , negative karma, changes his appearance etc). But also unlocks new things, like teaming up with the vampire faction, become something like a necromancer. But studying corpses might also lead to a surgeon in combination with other choices the player made.

Well, I dream of a game where all these things are connected an no longer just superimposed. Like, you may become a “knight” at the local court (and even climb to the highest level) for those who want to be strong as soon as possible (even near the starting location), but you may also travel far, do certain quests, meet the blood knight order in an forsaken temple and go on from there to become a blood knight (whatever that is). Effects of the skills may be the same, but would have different flavor (add in a few different ones). Ever heard of the green knight? maybe you need to start your knight career and later meet that weird druid faction and you can combine both (plus a third thing you did unknowingly). Ok, got the idea.

@SWG, yes. It still suffered from the grey matter and the skill system was not innocent (well, still the main problem in SWG).

When you draw a maze on a sheet of paper with only few corridors it will become quite boring, because you understand the pattern early. But when you erase walls from the maze, at one point you end up with a white sheet of paper. It offers all freedoms and nothing at the same time. Things start to dissolve into each other into grey matter of nothing.

Thats why I believe games will, earlier or later level off into systems that are somewhere in between the grey matter (former SWG) and class based systems (EQ). Maybe “path” is an approriate term, skill trees that are also tightly loomed into the story of the game world (into places, factions, mobs, events etc) with branches with hooks which carry consequences for the avatar (loosing faction, making enemies or allies, un/lock places etc).

I’ve been playing MMOs since way back in the day… in my mind MMOs come down to one thing… Player Choice.

You lower player choice and you get a nice easy MMO to work with from the Dev side but one that ultimately players get tired of and it becomes harder and harder to keep players happy. See WoW as a prime example as poorly designed MMO from a player choice perspective.

UO (before the EA buyout at least ) was the top of the line in player choice.

Skills vs. Class = more player choice vs. less.
Instanced Raids vs. Open Ended Dungeons = less vs. more

The more player choice you give, the harder it gets to develop but the easier it is to keep players interested as players with enough choice will find their own ways to stay involved.

This is what games like WoW, EQ and many of the new ones lack. The ability for players to really impact the world they play in. Which comes down to player choice. How much can they affect the environment in a lasting way? What actions can they do to seperate themselves from others?

Look at some things done well in some MMOs and not well in others:

Avatar Customization:
Good – CoH/CoV (massive customizations available, color, size, etc)
Ok – DAoC, UO (most armor and avatars looked identical but you were able to customize colors to a pretty good degree)
Bad – WoW (all armor is the same, every druid in Tier 2 looks pretty much like every other druid in tier 2)

Skills vs. Classes:
UO – Skills, not like something; drop it and pick up something else.
DAoC – Pick a starter and then an advanced class
WoW – Pick a class some customization available through “talent” trees

Trying to strike a balance between Player Choice and Development is the hard choice to make.

As a player, I’m going to stick a MMO for a lot longer based directly on how much choice I have.

My guild formed in DAoC which had a fair amount of player choice. We moved to WoW because we lost player choice from expansions forcing decisions on us. Thus less choice.

We’re leaving WoW as soon as we find a new game because post 60, you’re forced into doing one of two things, PvP Battlegrounds or Raid (or both)… thus no (very little) player choice.

Time spent in DAoC : More then 3 years
Time spent in WoW: Less then 2

Why? Player choice.

That’s what skills vs. classes come down.

Which do you prefer? Choices or easy development.

@David
Probably… although “proving it” might or might not be required to advance in the master level skills per se. You’d need to have obtained that level of prowess, but going thru the tests could potentially be optional. It’d depend on the specifics of the implementation, I suppose.

In my “dream design”, for example (everybody has a dream design, right?) I have 4 concepts under the Knowledge/Prowess branch of the advancement model…

+ Lessons are collected/traded and “contemplated” to master Concepts.
+ Specific combinations of Concepts grant access to various Techniques.
+ Each Technique is an action tied to a base Skill, the Skill score determining the base chance of success when using the technique.
+ Skills encompass a sizable number of techniques, and advance thru multiple avenues, including “off-line” training/practice, lesson contemplation, and direct experience.

Under that model, Lessons would be the primary quest reward, perhaps offered only to individuals who had achieved specific titles. The player might still advance the related Skill(s), but not be able to access specific Techniques under those skills until the title was gained (or until another player spent the time to pass those Lessons on, perhaps at risk of being outcast from that organization?).

A model with less of a “collect them all” bent might instead use the title in combination with “faction” as a gating mechanism. There are probably limitless options for implementation.

@Matt
I agree (obviously). As I see it, the big issue with skills-driving-classes is the one several people have already hinted at… it requires a great deal of extra design work (specifically the type of concepts you might find in, say, an Instructional Design course for teachers) to help players get a solid grasp of what their options and limitations are.

A system where the player chooses an archetypal “Class” saves you a LOT of design work… especially when working on the “initial player experience”, in my (very limited, hobbyist-level) experience, at least.

[Confession time: One of the reasons I never got very far in SWG, as a matter of fact, despite being very interested in the design details, was exactly that type of "left adrift" feeling.]

Developing skills first should be the process through which to obtain a certain class within a virtual world.

This works, but there’s a bad side to it. Presented with this sort of a system, players will tend to believe that the game doesn’t truly begin until they are finished advancing.

It’s a perception problem rather than a design problem, but something that designers should be cognizant on. One of the main reasons that class-based systems have been relatively successful compared to skill-based systems, in my opinion, is that they pitch advancement as an ongoing part of the game, rather than something you do at the beginning to get to your desired title.

Skill systems tend to be broad whereas class systems tend to be deep, and maybe the solution to the above problem is insuring that your skill system is sufficiently deep so that players aren’t necessarily looking at mastering a tree as their immediate goal, but rather a long-term goal (like they do with getting to max level in class-based games).

And of course, in any system like that, to learn the skills of the masters one must first prove that they know the skills of the apprentices and the journeymen, right?

Ok, now I can type some more.

As a player I prefer skill systems because they give me more control over my character, and allow me to make that character more unique. That being said, I was a noob once upon a time, and a flat tree skill system where I start the game off with potentially dozens of skills to pick from would have been daunting to say the least. There needs to be some sort of guide to help ease players into the system.

A lot of this is presentation more than anything else. If you’re going to go skill-based with a game, you need to put some time into the interface that players use to select those skills. If a skill provides a modifier, that modifier needs to have explanation text, so that players know that “Ranged Defense adds to your Agility score when you are attacked with a ranged weapon and increases the chances of you dodging the attack.” If a skill provides a special ability of some sort, that needs to have explanation text as well. You can sometimes skimp on the interface in a class system because most things are set in stone anyway, but in a skill system you absolutely have to make sure people can make informed choices. No one likes to pick a skill and later find out that it’s useless for what they really wanted to do. And while some people will change their minds, at least if they have more information available up front, they won’t be able to rightfully complain about not being told.

Another thing that’s important if you want a truly successful skill system is to not allow it to easily turn into templates, or mini-classes. This means making sure that every skill is equally viable within the game, and setting caps and limits so that someone can’t stack up bonuses from three or four skill trees and suddenly become incredibly powerful. This was where SWG’s original system fell down in my opinion, the flavor-of-the-month templates turned a lot of people off on the skill system altogether. Not that the current class system is any better in that regard, because it still suffers from the same problem – that is, certain professions are just generally more effective than others because they are more in tune with 90% of the game’s content

Which brings me to my third point. It does no good to include skills without also including content that leverages those skills. What good is a set of stealth abilities when you still have to fight the enemies in order to complete your objective? What good is the ability to sing and dance if there’s no mechanism for you to put on a concert for the (NPC) citizens of the city and make some money or get a reward of some sort? If you’re going to give people the ability to take skills that allow them to manage trade caravans, repair terminals, coordinate troop movements, or whatever in your game, you need to make sure that there is rewarding PvE gameplay that leverages those skills. Otherwise players won’t see a need for these skills and will pile into the other skills, which lowers diversity. It all comes down to insuring that every choice has meaning.

And yet and yet and yet….

People take on “class” roles even when they’re not a part of the game. Played America’s Army? Seen the snipers, the infantrymen, the grenadiers? I have.

Clearly distinguished through their own choices and aptitudes and the eternal peer-pressure. Perhaps that last is the only thing that fixed classes offer – otherwise the tiny female gnome tank wouldn’t get many party invites.

Lot’s of PnP RPGs have a hybrid system that uses the following common sense perspective:

1. Build a class system over a skill system
2. Classes are essentially template of common grouping of skills under certain roles (goalie, tanker, healer, etc.)
3. The advantages of using a standard class template is that it is a more efficient distribution/use of skill points
4. Players have the choice to “create” their own skill templates. The cost of this flexibility is less efficient distribution/use of skill points.

In a MMO environment, another perspective could be added.
5. Give players the opportunity to determine what are the emergent efficient set of skill templates for particular roles and allow players the ability to set that as the new “classes” in-game via in-game institutions such as training schools such as school of mage, school of fighting, etc. Once the schools are in place and upon expansion updates, players can create characters with the new emergent classes at the efficient/cheaper skill rate. Essentially, you have a new skill tree in the game: Class-maker.

Perspective #5 mitigate nerfing of classes as players have the ability to adjust to required tweeking of game balance. Let them determine was is the mix/max set of skills that best fit particular emergent roles and allow them the feedback-loop to set those skill templates as new classes.

Frank

@ CmdrSlack

Nah, I don’t view people or players that way, i was just boiling it down really to a generalized statement.

Nah, I don’t view people or players that way, i was just boiling it down really to a generalized statement.

But, lol.

There are some people that do like to just be entertained, that’s not a fault, we all play games, and watch movies to achieve this.

And you will find there is basically two camps (with exceptions) those that enjoy a more open ended and free range, i guess, more Hands on “creative”, types, those that like to build things from the ground up. everything.. Like the folks over at Ryzom are going to support. (the book writers was used only as a way to imply “creative” game play)

There are the people that just want a directed adventure, they want to be lead along the way and be involved in the narrative of that adventure, they care not for building their armor, or that plant over there. (these are the movies watchers, they don’t wish to have so much of a hand in the world, in fact they don’t really care at all, they just wish to have an adventure and have fun).

Of course there are exceptions to everything, but i think i have a good net there for each camp. I find myself thoies days looking and designing for the middle ground, and im starting to think you just cant. Not and have a fully successful , and expected, experience from what each camp is looking for.

And the Skill VS Class will always be about how much of an investment you want to put in the game in order to find that “fun” you looking for.

Maybe a better one would be Painter and Art Collectors. Same Field, different “fun”.

Neither classes nor skill based systems ‘suck’ in and of themselves. It depends on what the player is expecting to be able to do within the game structure and how well the game design allows them to do that that results in a perception of suckiness.

For instance, I roll a combat toon in a class based system and find that I can’t, for example, heal others. Does the class system suck, or does the problem lie in my choice of build?

In a skill based system, I chose to invest on, say, defensive skills and heals to the stage where I can only do a little damage in combat but am effectively unkillable. Again, does the system suck or my choice of build? Obviously somebody who dislikes def stackers will have one PoV, the def stacker will have another.

A skill based system that allows a player to build a good low level (in terms of effectiveness, not necessarily combat level) toon with a borad but shallow range of abilities allows the player to experience more of the options that the game allows before choosing to specialise on one particular field.

Obviously the best example I can give of this is SWG where it was possible to take all the novice professions (thinly masked classes) and be a huntin’, shootin’ dancin’ medic who could do a little crafting with the resources he harvested. As your character developed you could then choose to drop the skills you didn’t need, or even have to sacrifice some that you’d have liked to have kept ie, at Master Ranger / Master Rifles it was not possible to have a large self heal as you couldn’t keep any of your medic skills.

You could of course drop the master box of one of the profs and invest in medic but then your effectiveness as a hunter would be impacted. (Which of course takes me onto my other favourite hobbyhorse, choices and consequences. I’ll save that for another day )

A well structured class system will allow the player to have, for example in the EQ ranger subclass, effective specialist combat skills and sufficient self buffs and heals which are consistent/coherent with the professions descriptors and player expectations. You will, of course, have to depend on other players for the skills and abilities that fall outside your chosen class.

As I said, Idon’t think either system necessarily sucks, depending on it’s implementation. I do agree that a class system is generally easier to introduce to a player as you can point them at a defined archetype and say “that’s a paladin, that’s a pirate” and they’ll understand what can and can’t be done by that class within the game context. On the other hand, a free ranging skill based system allows for the sort of dynamic mix that you do find in real life where people have a multitude of skills that they can apply in different situations and which vary in value depending on their appropriateness for that situation.

OK, I’ll stop there before this becomes a dissertation on Acquired and Ascribed Roles, Expectations and social token exchange…

@Trucegore:

Plenty of people feel that they are creating something when playing a class-based game, I’d wager. You can still think of your character as being part of some kind of epic adventure. If there is a strong loot focus to character development, there’s always upgrading loot and making up the stories for its acquisition. Maybe it’s not as open-ended in possibilities as a skill-based system, but, as Raph notes, skill-based systems can be just as restrictive as class-based systems.

Maybe it’s just your choice of words, but it certainly makes it seem like you find those who enjoy class-based systems to be followers or perhaps just lazy, and those who enjoy skill-based systems are more creative and proactive in their fun seeking. I think it’s a pretty big assumption to make, and while I only have anecdotal evidence to argue my point, I stand by the idea that there are many exceptions to your statement that it is hardly a rule or a properly probative set of questions to ask.

I think I see where you’re going, I just think it’s the wrong route, I guess.

Nice read.

I don’t know, classes still feel like handcuffs to me. You are right that as game mechanics go skill systems are similar to classes, but that is a restriction of game design currently. I live in a skills based world, I learn and lose skills constantly, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I don’t have a class. Games today only let you have a very small skill base, hopefully as they progress that will change.

“It’s no accident, to my mind, that the MMORPGs have progressed more and more towards feeling like sports games, with raids and so on. It’s the thrill of being part of a well-oiled machine, where each has a role to play and knows how to play it well.”

I don’t know, that is part of the reason so many end games don’t appeal to me at all. There is nothing overly heroic about being one of 40 who kill a dragon. I would love a game where I can group for some events, but I also had my own epic journey to make, hopefully not the exact same one everyone else was making due to game limitations. In the end slaying the dragon or defeating the necromancer alone to cap the career would be glorious.