Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

While there are exceptions to every rule, casual players don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to figure out their place in a new world and like it or not, every game company on the planet is desperately trying to crack that casual market. World of Warcraft certainly has its fair share of hardcore raiders, but the game is a raving success because it successfully appealed to the casual gamer. One of the main reasons this happened is because it's so easy to comprehend. The class system lends itself to this style of intuitive gameplay and will not be going away any time in the near future.

Don't let the pretty face fool you.

You Got Your Chocolate In My Peanut Butter

At the risk of incurring the wrath of fanatic gamers around the globe, I'm going to refrain from declaring a winner in this battle and offer up my own vision of the perfect character system. I don't understand why a recent company hasn't made a major push to combine the two. Giving players the best of both worlds seems like a complete no-brainer from the outside. There may be forces at work on the inside that prevent this from happening, but for the life of me, I can't see it.

Like it or not, the majority of players need some sense of direction, especially when dealing with a brand new world. The vast majority of those same players also want the freedom to play as they choose and become as involved as they want in their newfound home. By having a skill-based system, with the direction and overview provided by classes, a developer could create a game heralded as a masterpiece by other developers and players alike. Before you say I'm crazy, hear me out.

Imagine a world where a character could learn, quite literally, every skill in the game... eventually. By having players choose a class for their character in the very beginning, you give them a base set of skills that climb at the "standard" rate. Other skills then fall into two categories: Sub-class skills and Foreign skills. Sub-class skills would be those that while not part of the class’s skill set, are still closely related. These skills would increase at 50% of the standard rate. Foreign skills are just what they sound like. They are completely foreign to a character's base set, so would increase at only 25% of the standard rate.

So a rogue may not have "Longsword" under his base set of skills, but since "Dagger" is, he has a general understanding of the tactics used with an edged weapon. As such, he could learn the "Longsword" skill at a 50% rate. Learning something like "Divination" though would be something completely out of his realm of basic understanding, so he would learn that at only a 25% rate.

For those of you that have played the Elder Scroll games, this concept isn't obtuse at all. This type of class/skill combinations are definitely at work in Morrowind and Oblivion, and if anyone needs to see a reasonable way to attempt this sort of gameplay, all you need to do is look at those two games.

This concept certainly looks good on paper, but could it work in the real world of gaming? If it ever does, happy cries will be heard around the world!

Or will they? If you disagree with my thinking, just head on over to the Ten Ton Hammer forums and let me know!