Gods & Heroes Dev Diary - The Nomad
Posted March 26th, 2007 by Cody Bye
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Introducing the Nomad....the Rogue is in Hiding
March 28, 2007
Hey everyone! My name is Travis George, and I’m a Systems Designer on Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, working for Stieg Hedlund, the Design Director on the project. Lately I’ve been spending most of my time doing all the class reviews that we’ve been adding to the closed Beta test server, and I thought it might be cool if I gave you a little back story on the “Nomad”, our newest character class! First of all, I can say that we’re pretty excited about the Nomad, and we love how they’re progressing. We’ve been playing the Nomad internally for quite a while, and we’re anxious to hear how our great community reacts to our new class now that we can finally reveal it.
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The Nomad is the only other class - besides the Priest - that can heal his allies. |
A couple months ago when I was ramping up to do our class reviews, I started to feel like we were making it a little too hard on our Priest players - as they were the only healing class. I have often spent my time in various other games healing and being the support class, so I took it upon myself to be the champion for healers while also bering in mind the fact that we all love to kill things! So we had a dilemma… I was of the opinion that we needed another class capable of healing, and when I sat down with Stieg to talk about it with him, he was on board. Now the question was – who should get the healing skills? It was a tough question to answer, and I’m not going to detail all the iterations we tried, but some of it was pretty crazy (and certain classes would have been monsters!) and I didn’t want to disrupt the dynamics between all the classes that Stieg and the team had laid out. What to do…?
As you all know, the Rogue was something we all really wanted, but as I was going through and looking at all the classes, redistributing feats and really trying to find the identity of each, the Rogue was just not living up to our high standards. It was a tough decision for everyone involved, but we decided to postpone the Rogue in favor of filling the role that we seemed to be lacking. And instead of forcing this functionality into a class where it did not fit; we created a new one in its place. Thus, the Nomad was born!
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Nomads can use mail and axes, along with other weapons and armor. |
I confess – I love hybrids and the versatility that they bring to a group! Supplementing DPS (damage-per-second) one minute in melee, casting spells from a distance – or stepping in to be a backup – or even a primary healer all at a moment’s notice, is a style of gameplay that is defined by its versatility. Since we already had a primary healer in the Priest, and other classes that represent the classic archetypes, the door was open for us to create something unique in our game – a true hybrid. The Nomad of course has the ability to heal, one of its primary reasons for coming to be, but we had to make healing with a Nomad feel different than healing with a Priest – which I think we did quite well.
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Face to face with the Nomad. |
And, in the end, the Nomad turned out to be so much more than just a healer! Everything we did with the Nomad was driving towards versatility, evidenced by the fact that we supplemented their healing spells with a unique set of buffs that any class will want. On the offensive side, Nomads have an exclusive set of instant cast spells that can supplement anything the Nomad is doing with some instant damage and an added effect. Add to this the fact that Nomads have a wide range of weapons and armor (leather and mail armor, along with some two-handed weapons or small shields) skills which make the Nomad adaptable to almost any role.
I think you’ll see when you play, that the Nomad can be almost anything you want it to be. I like to use mine to supplement my healing – throw on a small shield and spec out my character through the Attunement tree (The Attunement Tree is primarily a healing / support tree), there are some really exciting and unique feats that will empower you. To get up close and personal in fights more often (as Stieg likes to do), use a two-handed axe or club and specialize through the Aggression tree to enhance your DPS and that of your Party. No matter how you customize your Nomad, it can do so much!
I hope you are as excited about the Nomad as we are. We’ll continue rolling out new features to the Nomad over the next few months. It’s really a unique class for Gods & Heroes that feels very different, but fits right in with our other classes at the same time.
- Travis George, Gods & Heroes System DesignerTen Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for Gods and Heroes news and features!
Check out our Gods and Heroes GDC 2007 content!
Genre: Fantasy
Status: In Development
Release Date: TBA
Fee: TBA
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