Im interested on your guys thoughts on the idea of taking away traditional classes and implementing a new system of building your class from the ground up from ability pools from all classes?
Ex: You get 50 points. You drop all 50 points into the pally tree, boom, you play just like the normal pally class. Or, you drop 20 points into holy from pally and priest, 20 into hunter, and 10 into druid. You would be able to mix and match abilities from all of those aspects.
You could be a hybrid Warrior-Mage, running and teleporting around, pyro blasting and mortal striking everything into oblivion. But everything has a cost. You put too much into offense, and you will have no defense to survive the counter play. It would be up to you configure your class to how you want to play.
Would it be balanced? No. Is the current game balanced? No.
Would it create intense replayability? Yes.
Would it breath life into the now stale game? Yes.
Would everyone like it? No.
What are your guys thoughts on this subject?
5 Likes
Every gaming system that has ever done this ends up with functional classes.
Even tabletop rpgs with point buy systems like Champions or GURPS ends up with people independently creating similar build characters with just a little bit of flavor between them.
The issue is that roles exist for a reason. This is why your job has the same jobs as other people’s jobs in the real world.
6 Likes
It would be impossible to revamp the game that much. What does dumping 20 points into hunter even mean? They already struggle balancing 1 class. How are they gonna balance a game with a near infinite amount of combinations of classes?
1 Like
Within days, people would figure out the optimal build and it would dominate.
7 Likes
Careful with the terrible ideas
2 Likes
Systems like this still end up in a meta do or die build for the role you play. So I would say no.
2 Likes
For sure, roles would still exist. Guild wars 2 initially tried to have a classless system in their pve content, and it made the dungeons a terrible experience of mobs running all over, stupid damage being done to you and over all chaos. Roles are the best thing for this type of game. But being able to build your own home brew custom tank is more of what im talking about.
When the classes develop along a static path it enables blizzard to tweak them to get them closer in line. I also take some issue with the idea the game isn’t “balanced” since that’s a very subjective measure. There’s been plenty of times where class balance (In PVE anyway) has actually been quite close.
With a classless setup you have no hope of balancing anything since nerfing individual abilities would affect every single player differently.
I would counter by saying that having access to everything often hurts replayability. It’s one of the bigger example of “skyrim” syndrome. When every player has access to everything the question becomes why play through again? Oblivion’s class system is often one of the biggest things people point to as Skyrim’s missing feature.
No I’m quite happy with my druid playing a like a druid, mage like a mage, etc.
Completely subjective and again, I don’t see how creating an even worse unbalanced mess is “breathing life” into anything. By all means if they wanted to develop a classless MMO to try this then via con dios my friend. Of course we should point out that there’s been classless MMO’s in the past (Albion online the most prominent) that have never come close to WOW’s popularity.
Getting people to put down toons that they’ve invested decades into now for new stuff is hard enough as it is, a classless version of a game they already play even more so.
1 Like
For sure and that does happen. Guild wars 2 has the same problem with its limited class freedom. But what ends up happening is the meta shifts every few months. Build A becomes super dominate? Well build B counters that and starts becoming popular. And etc etc.
Skyrim is one of the best selling games of all time. To say it is not fun and un-replayable is just statistically wrong based on how many times the game has been sold throughout the generations of consoles.
People will still make new characters because, well, they like having new characters. Wether it be a in head backstory, to level with a friend, or to have a max level of every race, people will still do it.
LOL @ your clearly plate armor pauldrons being classified as “cloth”.
They have a server like this (forget the name). I am not a fan. You CAN make many more, unique builds, but it always comes down to 1-3 builds for each role.
Skyrim is insanely popular thanks to a modding community that has kept the game alive through the many times Todd Howard has run his classless wonder out for more money. The point is on one playthrough of skyrim I can be a maxed out warrior/mage/thief without ever having to make a choice. Picking and choosing the best stuff for an uber class do not a need for replayability make.
It’s like making a new game… with new mechanics. It wont happen in WoW.
1 Like
My thought is it will never happen in WoW - the changes are so sweeping and dramatic they’re not worth considering.
I used to make seriously broken and overpowered characters in Champions all the while following the rules and systems.
I think this is the end of the line for retail and Blizzard will move on with Classic as they don’t have to spend money on it. Just recycle the old content. But make people pay for it again lmfao. What a joke.
Nobody is paying for classic, it’s included in your subscription to retail, derp.
Well it wouldn’t work at his stage, or let’s say most likley alienate many players from the game because they are used to it.
I find the concept very interesting though and it could provide for cool RPG choices and game play possibilities.
I would like to see a game in the Warcraft universe with such an approach.
Even if it would end in something like Mordhau (not what I was thinking off, but it works too. One with a pvp mechanic similar to it would be nice though.).