[...] So your class won’t preclude you to take an offensive, or defensive, or support role (see Raph’s analogies). You would be able to switch between those depending on the group’s needs, while also requiring them to be “leveled” separatedly (which broadens the character progression without the negative effects of the “stacking”). You could ideally switch from “battle” to “mage”, but without the overpowered “battlemage” option. [...]

[...] Count Dooku: It’s silly. Wat Tambor: It’s very silly. Darth Vader: It’s impossible! Obi-Wan: Is not! Han Solo: Fight Fight! (P.S. Is not!) Darth Vader: Uh huh! Is too! Princess Leia: Look, this is how you do it. Jek Porkins: But what about … [explosion] [...]

[...] http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/09/02/classes-and-balance/ Good read [...]

Any activity that a bot can be set up for should be botted by design. If it can’t be, fix your design by either allowing botting or redesigning the activity.

http://raccaldin36.livejournal.com/850058.html

doctors, entertainers, etc. had a job best left to automated bots.

Exactly my point. Any class that players think they need more of so badly that they set up an automated bot to do it is unbalanced.

People love to kill things and there is a reason pure healing classes become “heal bitches” (when a player actually plays them) or a “bot” (when you automate the process). I never thought that trying to make healing vs damage a 50/50 split would work. If there is combat in your MMORPG it is going to draw the biggest % of players which is invariably going to be greater than 50%. At least all of this is in my experience.

SWG tried to prove that wrong by offering the ability to do anything you want in the Star Wars universe, but the classes were still tilted to the combat side of things. Raph has stated many times that SWG never developed the content that was needed for the non-combat classes. Sure crafters had a pretty good game, but doctors, entertainers, etc. had a job best left to automated bots.

Coming full circle the entire game needs to be on a balanced scale. Content needs to match classes/skills. If you have a Miner class there needs to be an equal number of content available for that Miner compared to the Figher who usually has 95% of the world dedicated to his profesion.

This is where skill based games shine IMHO. Instead of setting a player within the confines of his class you can offer them a variety of things to do as long as you provide the content for the skill. You can have 80% of your game dedicated to combat as long as that last 20% provides enough for the non-combat gameplay.

[...] skill-based stuff is harder to balance tho? i’m glad i’m not the only one who’s been scratching his head at the notion of “why on earth is it any harder to balance skill-based games vs. class-based games?” [...]

Chui-

Have you been able to see Tufte at one of his seminars? If not try to sometime, pretty amazing stuff and you get all his books for free! Tufte is to data, presentation and design people, what game gods are to gamers….

Tess-

Midgard Healer = death by a thousand cuts! (I played a cave shaman!

A real class system might say “sorry, healers don’t really do damage at all.”

DAOC had this class. The Midgard Healer class could do nothing but healing, buffing, and crowd control. That’s it. They could carry a hammer around, but they couldn’t gain any skill in it, so it was largely a decoration. They soloed like a bug against a windshield. But oh man, if you could level one up, you struck fear into the hearts of all enemies, out in the frontiers.