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Posted January 8th, 2009 by Ethec

#990 - What makes a class special? How many is too many?

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The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

Dungeons & Dragons Online (UP 9 to no. 7)
EVE Online (UP 7 to no. 10)
EverQuest 2 (UP 6 to no. 8)

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Loading... hasn't rick-rolled you yet... until this edition.

During a recent bout of Team Fortress 2 over the holidays, I was convinced of three things. One, I cannot under any circumstances install this game on my work PC; the temptation for a fifteen minutes of highly cathartic carnage in the 24/7 2Fort server is too great.

Two, an online community can, in fact, be established with pick-up groups and voice - though getting Astified with a stuck mic is only funny the first 150 times. The dialogue is as testosterone-fueled as you'd expect and would occasionally make a Maxim writer blush, but aside from plans for a get-together in Vegas being interrupted by a something like "SPY MAIN ENTRANCE!," it's there and it's persistent from game session to game session within the active servers I've played on.

The third realization I came to is that if anything is going to get people to work together, it's class weaknesses, not strengths. This is one of those paradoxes of design where everyone wants to be über and not need anyone's help, yet the real, perhaps hidden satisfaction of an online game is in working together to achieve a goal everyone wants.

That's not to say that strengths aren't important, but that an understanding of weaknesses leads to greater skill at using your strengths. A low hitpoint scout had better use his fast attack speed and direction-changing jumps or it's a quick trip to the respawn screen. An engineer is highly vulnerable while building transporters and sentry guns, which aside from a last resort slow-firing shotgun, is his only offense. Each of the nine TF2 classes has a very clearly defined role best performed with the help or distraction of others playing their roles well. The only true lone wolves are the highest skill class, the spy, who has to use stealth, disguise, and hit and run mechanics to infiltrate enemy ranks.

TF2 has its problems, too. The achievements system and the unlockable items many achievements brings has the potential to hurt gameplay by encouraging friendly players to team up on opposite sides and work together to grind achievements rather than team goals. TF2 also allows players to switch between classes when respawning, which isn't really possible or desirable in an RPG. But it does lead to a well-rounded understanding of other classes.

WoW, like TF2, built its fame and riches on nine classes too, so have we discovered (or arrived at) a golden mean? In any case, I'm happy that we seem to have moved on from a "more classes necessarily leads to more variety" approach in MMOs. Class redundancies only confuses players (like me) who still prefer to think in roles rather than classes. Better a little of everything and a lot of something rather than a hybridized mishmash of skills with slight advantages in one category.

Disagree? Still want lots of classes and cosmetic variation? Your opinon is welcome in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you like.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

Permadeath Discussion: the scariest MMOG feature

I can't imagine a worse mechanic for MMOGs than permadeath. No one wants to put months of hard work into a character only to have one ADD moment destroy it all. Owyn, who started the latest permadeath discussion on our forums, thinks the genre is almost ready for a sandbox game with permadeath hardwired into it. He comes up with some pretty compelling arguments.

Can you imagine a way that MMOGs could implement permadeath so that it would be challenging but not excruciatingly painful? Or is permadeath an impossible MMOG mechanic?

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Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"With permadeath, individual heroism becomes possible. Trying to hold the bridge to buy the rest of your team time to flee into the castle is a real sacrifice, not an empty gesture because you will respawn in a minute anyway. Jumping in to save someone against a beastie that's about to kill them becomes heroic, because you risk permanent death of your character."

- Owyn
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Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let us know!

5 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 27 in January! 27 in 2009!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

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