ZOS if you want a nice example of class identity maybe take a peek at GW2?

danno8 · September 2019

I do like GW2, and I agree the classes feel very different from one another. Still, they have balancing problems as well. Has GWEN* ever really been resolved?

(*GWEN is the acronym for Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist and Necromancer. These four classes have since the beginning of the game dominated all group play, leaving little to no room for the five other classes)

Araneae6537 · September 2019

danno8 wrote: »

I do like GW2, and I agree the classes feel very different from one another. Still, they have balancing problems as well. Has GWEN* ever really been resolved?

(*GWEN is the acronym for Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist and Necromancer. These four classes have since the beginning of the game dominated all group play, leaving little to no room for the five other classes)

Elementalist was nerfed into the grave a loooong time ago, although perhaps recent changes to the class have helped revive it. Warriors have always had a place. Ranger Druid and Mesmer Chronomancer were meta for endgame PvE, especially raids, such that there was the term “chrono-jail” referencing that if you could play boon chrono well, people would always want you to bring that and you’d never play anything else! Unfortunately, I really dislike the changes made to both specs this past year. Maybe they are still in the meta but I no longer find them fun to play. As for Guardian, I think they were out of the meta for several years but were brought back in with the Firebrand spec, which pairs especially well with Revenant Renegade.

TL;DR Definitely still balancing problems and while I’m very glad they added more options to some classes and specs, I very much disagree with ruining the play style of previously meta specs. Adjusting numbers, etc., okay, but it should still play fundamentally the same IMHO.

Joy_Division · September 2019

Or they could just look to their own game circa 2014-2015.

Red_Feather · September 2019

bluebird wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

My favorite class/skill system was actually the one in Guild Wars (not GW2). Key elements included:
Almost all skills were unique to a class.

Each class had a few different skill lines, and you had points to invest to scale skill lines. IIRC, you could max out 2 skill lines pretty easily, but that was about it.

Your skill bar could have skills from your class plus ONE other one. You could NOT invest points to scale any skill lines outside your class.

Yeah, GW1 was great! It also helped that classes had unique mechanics.

Assassins could chain attacks together with the finishers being quite powerful so the game rewarded the times you managed to deliver a skill sequence without interrupting it with other skills or actions inbetween.

Dervish could access enchantments like other classes, but they also had unique skills that worked together with those enchantments - enchantment stripping to trigger these unique effects was a very interesting aspect of playing Dervish.

Guild Wars 1 was very clever. Assassins felt different to anything because of that combo system they had. And Dervish getting special effects from both gaining and losing enchantments was a really interesting mechanic. Lots of ideas to 'borrow' to from that game since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

Wing · September 2019

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Jeremy · September 2019

Wing wrote: »

im sure there are other games too, but GW2 is very similar to ESO in the first place.

for instance in reference to how a class plays, the rogue in GW2 has a pretty neat "stacks" system of building stacks passively, or with skills, and uses them as the primary source of skill use rather then magicka. some skills cost a lot of stacks, some few, etc.

warrior is very passive tanky based while guardian is far more spikey defense with low cooldown auto block procs (like auto block the next attack ever x seconds, honestly somewhere between these two classes is DK, for real)

etc. etc. like I said im sure there are other games and other examples of how to do it, but GW2 was designed in a very similar core class direction and gameplay style as ESO (5 skills mainly, any class can pretty much solo, yada yada.

maybe things like NB shadow shot or DK dots should be incorporated into passives for the classes. such as DK light attacks applying a dot, or NB building shadow shot stacks leading up to a big hit as class passives.

ugh.. no thanks.

Guild Wars 2 had some of the most boring game play ever. It's guild Wars 2 that should be taking notes from ESO.

Wing · September 2019

Jeremy wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

im sure there are other games too, but GW2 is very similar to ESO in the first place.

for instance in reference to how a class plays, the rogue in GW2 has a pretty neat "stacks" system of building stacks passively, or with skills, and uses them as the primary source of skill use rather then magicka. some skills cost a lot of stacks, some few, etc.

warrior is very passive tanky based while guardian is far more spikey defense with low cooldown auto block procs (like auto block the next attack ever x seconds, honestly somewhere between these two classes is DK, for real)

etc. etc. like I said im sure there are other games and other examples of how to do it, but GW2 was designed in a very similar core class direction and gameplay style as ESO (5 skills mainly, any class can pretty much solo, yada yada.

maybe things like NB shadow shot or DK dots should be incorporated into passives for the classes. such as DK light attacks applying a dot, or NB building shadow shot stacks leading up to a big hit as class passives.

ugh.. no thanks.

Guild Wars 2 had some of the most boring game play ever. It's guild Wars 2 that should be taking notes from ESO.

were talking out class identity, not the gameplay, different things. for instance, destiny has decent gameplay and crap class identity, etc.

Red_Feather · September 2019

Another cool thing done is summoning objects that when you pick it up it changes your hotbar to abilities that are tied to the object. Let's the elementalist share some of it's skills with other classes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPftNbraj6o

Ragnarock41 · September 2019

I have a warrior, rogue and a revenant in GW2, each feel different to play and can be specialized even more to fill different niches. That game gets weapon and class diversity right, however balance is not all that great there either.

max_only · September 2019

Iccotak wrote: »

In ESO class identity pertains to the fact that each class plays a role differently than the other.

A Warden Healer and Templar Healer don't play the same
A DK Tank and Nightblade tank don't play the same
playing a DPS character with any of the classes is going to be a different experience

And they all use Soul Splitting trap this patch.

MLGProPlayer · September 2019

Wing wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Arenanet didn't abandon the game. NCSoft did.

StormeReigns · September 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Arenanet didn't abandon the game. NCSoft did.

Which is wierd why ArenaNet sticking with NCSoft after GW2 when they already proved to have access, funding and ability to run their own game with out. you know the Devil's influence.

GW2 will probably be immediately 1000x better once ArenaNet gets the clue and goes solo from NCSoft. Their fan base alone could help the company survive damn near anything, probably a kickstarter for their own indie office to run the game - far far FAR awat from nazicontrol software.

Ragnarock41 · September 2019

Jeremy wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

im sure there are other games too, but GW2 is very similar to ESO in the first place.

for instance in reference to how a class plays, the rogue in GW2 has a pretty neat "stacks" system of building stacks passively, or with skills, and uses them as the primary source of skill use rather then magicka. some skills cost a lot of stacks, some few, etc.

warrior is very passive tanky based while guardian is far more spikey defense with low cooldown auto block procs (like auto block the next attack ever x seconds, honestly somewhere between these two classes is DK, for real)

etc. etc. like I said im sure there are other games and other examples of how to do it, but GW2 was designed in a very similar core class direction and gameplay style as ESO (5 skills mainly, any class can pretty much solo, yada yada.

maybe things like NB shadow shot or DK dots should be incorporated into passives for the classes. such as DK light attacks applying a dot, or NB building shadow shot stacks leading up to a big hit as class passives.

ugh.. no thanks.

Guild Wars 2 had some of the most boring game play ever. It's guild Wars 2 that should be taking notes from ESO.

unlike ESO I can't go butt naked and punch my way through the open world in GW2, and jumping puzzles are great fun. The only reason I still play ESO over GW2 is the open world PvP.

Wing · September 2019

Joy_Division wrote: »

Or they could just look to their own game circa 2014-2015.

its sad but true right.

Rukia541 · September 2019

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

My favorite class/skill system was actually the one in Guild Wars (not GW2). Key elements included:
Almost all skills were unique to a class.

Each class had a few different skill lines, and you had points to invest to scale skill lines. IIRC, you could max out 2 skill lines pretty easily, but that was about it.

Your skill bar could have skills from your class plus ONE other one. You could NOT invest points to scale any skill lines outside your class.

Thus, your skills that scaled (damage, healing) were basically confined to a couple of skill lines, but your utility skills could be chosen much more broadly. The whole thing worked very well.

I also liked the "Elite" skill system.
Unlike ESO's ultimates, Elite skills had the same mechanics as other skills, in terms of resources and cooldowns.

Some Elite skills were big-bang types with long cooldowns, but others were spammables or whatever. So there was a lot of diversity in what your best skill did for you.

You unlocked Elite skills by killing bosses.

You most definitely could invest points to scale skill lines outside of your class, what you couldn't do was invest in the main mechanic of said class abilities. For example, you could max out healing on your assassin if your secondary was monk however you would not get the extra benefit from the divine line which was a monk specific mechanic (basically just added healing).
Another example would be if you went vise versa and equipped your monk with daggers then went with assassin as a secondary class you most certainly could function as a psuedo assassin with dagger line fully maxed out, however you couldn't get access to the critical strikes line which was assassin specific mechanic and added more damage from crits.

The game let you do literally anything you want, but it wasn't OPTIMAL however it was viable in 'overland' content as ESO players call it, as long as people were having fun it didn't really matter. Of course there were metas and you couldn't do the hard content with this playstyle, to even expect that being a possibility is simply not a reality in an MMO. Swapping builds on the fly took 2 seconds if you had the skills captured so changing from not so serious play to serious play was quite easy. Which reminds me, you needed a signet of capturing that replaced one of your skill slots after killing a boss to actually learn his elite skill

I loved farming elites.

Some very popular builds I ran that I remember in pvp were bunny thumper (a ranger with hammer) and the backbreaker sin (assassin with hammer). I also ran a lot of the deadly arts assassin which is literally nightblade from ESO. The similarities between the 2 games is what really drew me here. Its so funny ESO is more of a spiritual successor to GW1 than GW2 is.

On topic though.. @Wing please explain to me what the class fantasy of thief using a rifle is lol. What you're talking about is initiative as thiefs resource. I don't want GW2's extremely passive spammy cancer gameplay in ESO man if you want that crap feel free to play that game instead. Despite the QQ, much of which may be warranted, believe me when I tell you ESO is still the top contender for most viable crazy builds that let you enjoy playing however you want.

Despite 1 outlier being thief in GW2, its all extremely cooldown based with passive procs that are far too rewarding and not a design we should head towards.

MLGProPlayer · September 2019

SkerKro wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Arenanet didn't abandon the game. NCSoft did.

Which is wierd why ArenaNet sticking with NCSoft after GW2 when they already proved to have access, funding and ability to run their own game with out. you know the Devil's influence.

GW2 will probably be immediately 1000x better once ArenaNet gets the clue and goes solo from NCSoft. Their fan base alone could help the company survive damn near anything, probably a kickstarter for their own indie office to run the game - far far FAR awat from nazicontrol software.

They've already laid off most of their staff as part of NCSoft's latest cost cutting measures. Anet is finished as a AAA MMO developer.

StormeReigns · September 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

SkerKro wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Arenanet didn't abandon the game. NCSoft did.

Which is wierd why ArenaNet sticking with NCSoft after GW2 when they already proved to have access, funding and ability to run their own game with out. you know the Devil's influence.

GW2 will probably be immediately 1000x better once ArenaNet gets the clue and goes solo from NCSoft. Their fan base alone could help the company survive damn near anything, probably a kickstarter for their own indie office to run the game - far far FAR awat from nazicontrol software.

They've already laid off most of their staff as part of NCSoft's latest cost cutting measures. Anet is finished as a AAA MMO developer.

Another good company that NCSoft has thrown into the giant pit. Sigh. At least, the good side of it, those gone will eventually will get picked up. Hopefully ZoS/Beth will reach out their hands to those given the boot. Would be an absolute dream come true seeing ZoS/Beth pick up ANet crew return back to their known quality and wiping NCSoft off the face of the gaming world. (*fingerscrossed* make it happen!)

Ragnarock41 · September 2019

SkerKro wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

SkerKro wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

since arenanet abandoned it they won't mind!

yeah when I read that I just slowly took off my hat and shook my head, always a sad day when you see that happen.

Arenanet didn't abandon the game. NCSoft did.

Which is wierd why ArenaNet sticking with NCSoft after GW2 when they already proved to have access, funding and ability to run their own game with out. you know the Devil's influence.

GW2 will probably be immediately 1000x better once ArenaNet gets the clue and goes solo from NCSoft. Their fan base alone could help the company survive damn near anything, probably a kickstarter for their own indie office to run the game - far far FAR awat from nazicontrol software.

They've already laid off most of their staff as part of NCSoft's latest cost cutting measures. Anet is finished as a AAA MMO developer.

Another good company that NCSoft has thrown into the giant pit. Sigh. At least, the good side of it, those gone will eventually will get picked up. Hopefully ZoS/Beth will reach out their hands to those given the boot. Would be an absolute dream come true seeing ZoS/Beth pick up ANet crew return back to their known quality and wiping NCSoft off the face of the gaming world. (*fingerscrossed* make it happen!)

Idk, lately bethesda/zenimax doesn't seem much better than the likes of NCsoft/EA. I don't really care what fanboys want to believe, but whenever they start touching how developers create games, problems begin to show. A lot of the bethesda fans praise boring, soulless games like skyrim or fallout 4, while I'm enjoying games like PREY or DOOM a lot more than their widely known AAA titles.

Wing · September 2019

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

Idk, lately bethesda/zenimax doesn't seem much better than the likes of NCsoft/EA. I don't really care what fanboys want to believe, but whenever they start touching how developers create games, problems begin to show. A lot of the bethesda fans praise boring, soulless games like skyrim or fallout 4, while I'm enjoying games like PREY or DOOM a lot more than their widely known AAA titles.

I was playing legacy of kain: soul reaver recently (still listen to the soundtrack) and as I was playing through it (and a couple older games I revisit from time to time) I think one of the biggest things missing from modern games is actually confusion in the layout / puzzle to progress.

a lot of older games I guess you could say pad out game time by creating interesting levels. I mean cmon in a lot of older games you have all of like 1 attack and jump, and yet somehow we look back on them as super deep. (though the story was good)

I noticed as a I was playing a lot of time you had to stop and really look around at where you were supposed to go and faff out how you were supposed to get there. though I suppose a lot of that is ruined by modern playthroughs and looking things up online, didn't really have access to it back in the day, oh well.

one thing I had thought about when summerset came out and people were complaining about overland difficulty was actually having a progressively harder wilderness, summerset being an example as it had effectively a core area of the map and long divergent sections of map off that, have the wilderness get tougher (while providing better rewards) as you get further out, an example of rewards (sticking with summerset) would be things like greater chance for alchemy mats on mobs, motif pages from the chapter, actual resource node mats, etc. but give the extremity mobs the difficulty and density of vet dungeon mobs.

also you mentioned prey and doom, old or new? and have you play dishonored 2? I personally LOVE the level creation of arcane studios, they go into such depth and detail to give you so many ways to navigate or move around, the asylum in dishonored 2 is a fully built architectural marvel, same with the clockwork mansion, loved that game.

Ragnarock41 · September 2019

Wing wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

Idk, lately bethesda/zenimax doesn't seem much better than the likes of NCsoft/EA. I don't really care what fanboys want to believe, but whenever they start touching how developers create games, problems begin to show. A lot of the bethesda fans praise boring, soulless games like skyrim or fallout 4, while I'm enjoying games like PREY or DOOM a lot more than their widely known AAA titles.

I was playing legacy of kain: soul reaver recently (still listen to the soundtrack) and as I was playing through it (and a couple older games I revisit from time to time) I think one of the biggest things missing from modern games is actually confusion in the layout / puzzle to progress.

a lot of older games I guess you could say pad out game time by creating interesting levels. I mean cmon in a lot of older games you have all of like 1 attack and jump, and yet somehow we look back on them as super deep. (though the story was good)

I noticed as a I was playing a lot of time you had to stop and really look around at where you were supposed to go and faff out how you were supposed to get there. though I suppose a lot of that is ruined by modern playthroughs and looking things up online, didn't really have access to it back in the day, oh well.

one thing I had thought about when summerset came out and people were complaining about overland difficulty was actually having a progressively harder wilderness, summerset being an example as it had effectively a core area of the map and long divergent sections of map off that, have the wilderness get tougher (while providing better rewards) as you get further out, an example of rewards (sticking with summerset) would be things like greater chance for alchemy mats on mobs, motif pages from the chapter, actual resource node mats, etc. but give the extremity mobs the difficulty and density of vet dungeon mobs.

also you mentioned prey and doom, old or new? and have you play dishonored 2? I personally LOVE the level creation of arcane studios, they go into such depth and detail to give you so many ways to navigate or move around, the asylum in dishonored 2 is a fully built architectural marvel, same with the clockwork mansion, loved that game.

I think one of the biggest reasons I can't enjoy ESO casually anymore is the fact that overland has become so easy, and the quests , while their lore is great, are all nothing out of ordinary. (Actually this is probably the only mmorpg EVER, where I actually give a damn about what the lore is all about.) Still, I don't know how to describe open world PvE in ESO.

Its like... playing warframe , its the same feeling. Its power creep. Don't get me wrong one tamriel was a GREAT update. the CP system was nice and all at first, but adding more CP each patch, adding stronger and stronger sets each patch , while also nerfing overland, world bosses and dungeons made the game less and less enjoyable over time. I miss the times when you could brag about finishing vICP or vMA or even vDSA.

As for the prey and doom I meant the new remakes rather than the classic versions. While the new prey has nothing to do with the original, I'm glad they made it, considering system shock 2 doesn't run properly on modern systems now, Prey fills the niche. I did play dishonored the first, haven't got time to play the second yet, though I plan to do so.

Canned_Apples · September 2019

GW2 is terrible.

They can literally look at just about ANY mmorpg for class identity.
Lotro, Warhammer Online, Vanguard:SoH.. etc.
Every class has their own unique mechanic and game play style.
The problem with this game is mainly the Weapon and Guild skill lines. Every stamina build uses the same skills- the same rotation- and the same gear. "Classes" here add a little flavor, but they all end up playing the same.

Right now, Rift has more of "play the way you want" feel to it. It's just a shame the game looks so bad and that you can 2-button macro the combat. Also sucks that it is now very p2w and the developers butchered some of the souls.