22 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I'm thinking about moving my project away from classes, and had a few questions. For those of you who have played or run successful classless systems, how was this kept in check? I've considered many different strategies, but my current favorite is capping the total learned percentage at some TBD number. Do you find classless systems harder to balance? Do players still settle into predefined "templates" anyway?
22 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
Having discussed this several times before, my opinion is that "class-based" and "classless" represent two undesirable extremes. Most muds fall somewhere between these two extremes - the question is really where you want to draw the line for your own game.
22 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
By "classless," I'm simply referring to a system that is devoid of any kind of exclusionary skill grouping. Using that definition, there's no room for compromise and no gray area. Either a game qualifies or it doesn't.
22 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
No skill would exclude any other?

How would you deal with something like (for example) a dragon's breath attack? You probably wouldn't want the dragon to have both "fire breath" and "frost breath", unless it had multiple heads or something.

Or say you have a bunch of holy abilities for those with faith in a divine entity of goodness and purity. Wouldn't it make sense to block those abilities from those who practice necromancy or demonology?
22 Mar, 2010, flumpy wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Class is a funny thing, by definition a, er, definition. If my definition of class is significantly different to yours, we will never agree on anything.

It seems to me like you're both talking across each other. Perhaps Deimos should expand on his definition of class with more context?
22 Mar, 2010, Tyche wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
By "classless," I'm simply referring to a system that is devoid of any kind of exclusionary skill grouping. Using that definition, there's no room for compromise and no gray area. Either a game qualifies or it doesn't.


I would suggest that balancing probably isn't a problem then in classless systems, unless one has other exclusionary benefits and hindrances based on what a player chooses at creation that are not changeable. Like race, talents, flaws, etc.
22 Mar, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
The biggest problem with "classless" systems tends to be homogeneity. MinMaxers quite quickly work out what is the "optimum" combination of skills, and then absolutely every character in the game ends up using that exact same combination, so every character ends up exactly like every other character.

deimos said:
By "classless," I'm simply referring to a system that is devoid of any kind of exclusionary skill grouping. Using that definition, there's no room for compromise and no gray area. Either a game qualifies or it doesn't.

Even "exclusionary" has degrees. One could, for example, have a system where in principle any character can learn any skill, but in practice the skills are arranged in a tree, so to learn a powerful piece of destructive magic, you have to have already learned less powerful ones. That gives you a sort of classes-by-the-back-door system, where it is advantageous to specialise to some degree, but you don't have to decide on that specialisation immediately; it develops dynamically as you go along, with some overlap between skill sets. You could also imagine a softer-edged version of that where learning certain skills makes other, related skills easier to learn; but any one skill is available immediately if you're willing to spend the time and money to acquire it.
22 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
No skill would exclude any other?

Correct.

KaVir said:
How would you deal with something like (for example) a dragon's breath attack? You probably wouldn't want the dragon to have both "fire breath" and "frost breath", unless it had multiple heads or something.

This wouldn't happen in a classless system. You're essentially turning races into classes, which would make the game class-based.

KaVir said:
Or say you have a bunch of holy abilities for those with faith in a divine entity of goodness and purity. Wouldn't it make sense to block those abilities from those who practice necromancy or demonology?

Ditto, only this time you're turning religions into classes.

flumpy said:
Class is a funny thing, by definition a, er, definition. If my definition of class is significantly different to yours, we will never agree on anything.

It seems to me like you're both talking across each other. Perhaps Deimos should expand on his definition of class with more context?

In my opinion, classes are simply "forced exclusionary groupings of skills based on predefined roles." I think this pretty much covers every scenario I've ever seen, at least.

Tyche said:
I would suggest that balancing probably isn't a problem then in classless systems, unless one has other exclusionary benefits and hindrances based on what a player chooses at creation that are not changeable. Like race, talents, flaws, etc.

I didn't mean balance in terms of one player vs. another, but rather one skillset vs. another. I'd rather not have everyone choosing the same 20 (or whatever #) skills, because that's "the best" skillset. I've never tried to work with a classless system before, but they seem extremely hard to balance in this manner at first glance.
22 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
shasarak said:
The biggest problem with "classless" systems tends to be homogeneity. MinMaxers quite quickly work out what is the "optimum" combination of skills, and then absolutely every character in the game ends up using that exact same combination, so every character ends up exactly like every other character.

This is what I was afraid of, and what I was getting at with my response to Tyche. I'd like to avoid this at all costs.

shasarak said:
Even "exclusionary" has degrees. One could, for example, have a system where in principle any character can learn any skill, but in practice the skills are arranged in a tree, so to learn a powerful piece of destructive magic, you have to have already learned less powerful ones. That gives you a sort of classes-by-the-back-door system, where it is advantageous to specialise to some degree, but you don't have to decide on that specialisation immediately; it develops dynamically as you go along, with some overlap between skill sets. You could also imagine a softer-edged version of that where learning certain skills makes other, related skills easier to learn; but any one skill is available immediately if you're willing to spend the time and money to acquire it.

Meh. Okay, you got me. :wink: Tree-based systems are definitely a gray area.
23 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
This wouldn't happen in a classless system. You're essentially turning races into classes, which would make the game class-based.

I agree with the latter point - that giving special abilities to races effectively turns them into classes (unless of course everyone belongs to the same race). But it does seem a shame to lose out on things like dragons with different breath weapons, or divine spellcasters with different deities, etc.

Personally I'm a big fan of having abilities that block other abilities, and it's an approach I've relied on heavily when balancing different options. My game hasn't suffered from the homogeneity problem shasarak described.

Deimos said:
In my opinion, classes are simply "forced exclusionary groupings of skills based on predefined roles." I think this pretty much covers every scenario I've ever seen, at least.

How would you classify Rolemaster? Dozens of classes, each can learn any skill they like, but every class has a different cost associated with each skill - so fighters are better at learning fighting skills, etc. Not so much "forced exclusionary groupings" as "strongly encouraged groupings".
23 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
I agree with the latter point - that giving special abilities to races effectively turns them into classes (unless of course everyone belongs to the same race). But it does seem a shame to lose out on things like dragons with different breath weapons, or divine spellcasters with different deities, etc.

There's also a lot to be gained from not being constrained to exclusionary groups, though. Basically, a game can't implement anything and everything that sounds fun to every person, though.

KaVir said:
Personally I'm a big fan of having abilities that block other abilities, and it's an approach I've relied on heavily when balancing different options. My game hasn't suffered from the homogeneity problem shasarak described.

I'm not convinced yet that the problem he described is a requirement of a classless system. I think it's probably a hard one to fix or prevent, but I'd be surprised to find out that it was unavoidable.

KaVir said:
How would you classify Rolemaster? Dozens of classes, each can learn any skill they like, but every class has a different cost associated with each skill - so fighters are better at learning fighting skills, etc. Not so much "forced exclusionary groupings" as "strongly encouraged groupings".

I'd still call it a class-based system, since I tend to look at games from a min-maxer's point of view. If a berserker is going to be able to learn berserking 10x easier than a monk, it's really no different than restricting berserking to the berserker class. Especially if the system has a skill cap, because then it makes usage of your "points" even that much more precious, and it would be deemed a "waste" to put them in any skill that your class isn't "good at."
23 Mar, 2010, quixadhal wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
Exclusion is good. A system where everyone can learn every skill leads to boring cookie-cutter characters. It also makes your game essentially a solo RPG, rather than a multi-player RPG. If I can learn everything myself, why bother to form stable groups? If I need help killing something, anyone can fill in for the extra firepower/healing/whatever.

Now, you might choose to have the exclusion be simply a points total, where you could learn whatever you wanted but only up to a certain number of points. However, that also leads to cookie-cutter builds, since players will quickly figure out which combinations are the most effective and make several optimal builds. You'll end up with classes anyways, they just will be via the appropriate skill sets, rather than game-enforced.

I've always preferred the idea of tiered guilds, where you start out as a generic adventurer with only a few basic skills. In wandering around the game, you find low level guilds to join which teach you basic abilities of a particular type. As you grow more powerful, you have to find more advanced guilds that are more specialized, and they start being mutually exclusive. A second tier mage guild might not teach you if you're also a fighter, since you aren't dedicated enough for them to bother. A third tier fire mage guild might not teach a frost mage, or might not teach you if you belong to a rival fire mage guild. Etc.

So, are those classes? Not in the traditional sense, but they are exclusive groupings of skills. Is it an open skill-based game? Not really, because you can't freely pick and choose from all the skills. You can choose to be a jack-of-all-trades if you want, but you'll never be really good at any of them. You can choose to be the absolute best fire mage out there, but because there are multiple competing fire guilds, who teach unique spells, you'll never know every fire spell there is.
23 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
There's also a lot to be gained from not being constrained to exclusionary groups, though.

There's a lot to be gained from a flexible skill system that allows players to customise their abilities. But removing constraints such as race and religion isn't going to improve the skill system, it's just going to reduce the number of choices you can make available to the players.

Deimos said:
Basically, a game can't implement anything and everything that sounds fun to every person, though.

Nor should it. But some abilities only make sense if they're mutually exclusive, so if you don't constrain the players you will instead need to constrain the game design.

Deimos said:
I'm not convinced yet that the problem he described is a requirement of a
classless system. I think it's probably a hard one to fix or prevent, but I'd be surprised
to find out that it was unavoidable.


I think it comes back to how you define "classless".

You've mentioned restricting characters by capping the total skills they can have. I don't know how you're considering doing this, but supposing there are 10 fighting skills, 10 magic skills and 10 stealth skills, and each player can pick any 10 skills. Someone who picks all the fighting skills might well be viewed as a 'fighter', while someone who picked all the magic skills might be considered a 'mage' and the person who picked all the stealth skills might be a referred to as a 'thief'.

Now personally I'd still view that as classless, because although each player has a specific role, that role is determined by their skills rather than the other way around. But a purist might well consider it to be class-based, particularly if the skills were arranged in a tree or web which encouraged specialisation.
23 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
A system where everyone can learn every skill leads to boring cookie-cutter characters. It also makes your game essentially a solo RPG, rather than a multi-player RPG. If I can learn everything myself, why bother to form stable groups? If I need help killing something, anyone can fill in for the extra firepower/healing/whatever.

I addressed this in my original post. Everyone will not be able to learn everything at one time, exactly for this reason.

quixadhal said:
Now, you might choose to have the exclusion be simply a points total, where you could learn whatever you wanted but only up to a certain number of points. However, that also leads to cookie-cutter builds, since players will quickly figure out which combinations are the most effective and make several optimal builds. You'll end up with classes anyways, they just will be via the appropriate skill sets, rather than game-enforced.

As I told KaVir, I'm not convinced that this has to be true. It may be true for the classless game(s) that you've played, but calling it a requisite of the system is most likely incorrect.

KaVir said:
There's a lot to be gained from a flexible skill system that allows players to customise their abilities. But removing constraints such as race and religion isn't going to improve the skill system, it's just going to reduce the number of choices you can make available to the players.

I couldn't disagree more.

KaVir said:
Nor should it. But some abilities only make sense if they're mutually exclusive, so if you don't constrain the players you will instead need to constrain the game design.

Constraining game design is a requisite for a fun game. As I said before, if a game implemented everything every player thought was fun, it would end up being not very fun at all.

KaVir said:
I think it comes back to how you define "classless".

You've mentioned restricting characters by capping the total skills they can have. I don't know how you're considering doing this, but supposing there are 10 fighting skills, 10 magic skills and 10 stealth skills, and each player can pick any 10 skills. Someone who picks all the fighting skills might well be viewed as a 'fighter', while someone who picked all the magic skills might be considered a 'mage' and the person who picked all the stealth skills might be a referred to as a 'thief'.

Now personally I'd still view that as classless, because although each player has a specific role, that role is determined by their skills rather than the other way around. But a purist might well consider it to be class-based, particularly if the skills were arranged in a tree or web which encouraged specialisation.

There's nothing about that kind of system that's remotely class-based. The groups are not exclusionary, and they aren't forced. As I told shasarak, a tree-based system is definitely a gray-area that I hadn't thought about before, but my game doesn't have a tree-based system, so it's not really relevant to my original questions.





And speaking of my original questions, would anyone like to take a stab at them yet? :tongue: I think I've adequately explained what I mean by classless and class-based already. Thanks!
23 Mar, 2010, Idealiad wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Just a quick comment about something that's been repeated a couple of times in the thread already – the conventional wisdom is that min-maxers will make a classless system class-based by default (due to creating optimal builds). However I would be surprised if every player, or even a majority, ended up with these builds. It depends on the kind of game. Has Deimos said he's making a PK game?

To be honest, even on a PK game I rarely make optimal builds, I'm more into what's interesting than what's optimal. A non-exclusionary system would make some builds possible that wouldn't be otherwise and I definitely would enjoy that kind of game.
23 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
Idealiad said:
Just a quick comment about something that's been repeated a couple of times in the thread already – the conventional wisdom is that min-maxers will make a classless system class-based by default (due to creating optimal builds).

It still wouldn't be class-based, since there's nothing stopping you from going off the beaten trail. This kind of a problem is what I was referring to as far as balance is concerned. Everyone seems to think that it's inevitable, but I'm not a fan of that opinion. I think it's probably very hard to balance the skills such that there is no "optimal build," but I think it is possible.

Idealiad said:
Has Deimos said he's making a PK game?

It's PK-encouraged, but not PK-required. However, min-maxers exist even in non-PK MUDs (though they're much less prevalent).
23 Mar, 2010, KaVir wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
KaVir said:
There's a lot to be gained from a flexible skill system that allows players to customise their abilities. But removing constraints such as race and religion isn't going to improve the skill system, it's just going to reduce the number of choices you can make available to the players.

I couldn't disagree more.

Considering that races can be added on top of whatever previously-unrestricted system you've created, how can removing races from the design add choices for the players?

Deimos said:
KaVir said:
Nor should it. But some abilities only make sense if they're mutually exclusive, so if you don't constrain the players you will instead need to constrain the game design.

Constraining game design is a requisite for a fun game.

Not if it's outside of your control. In this case the game design is being constrained by the decision to avoid mutually exclusive options. You're not choosing to discard certain options because they're "not fun", you're forced to avoid them because your design can't handle them. These could be options that would add to the gameplay, but you're not able to include them because they'd break your design.

Deimos said:
As I said before, if a game implemented everything every player thought was fun, it would end up being not very fun at all.

And if the game implemented nothing any player thought was fun, it wouldn't be any fun either. But both extremes are strawman arguments, so let's stick to the real point: many abilities only make sense when they are mutually exclusive, so if you don't want abilities that block other abilities it's going to restrict your design. No races. No religions. No 'magic tattoos'. No cybernetic implants. No chaotic mutations. No opposed magical abilities (eg fire vs water). And so on and so forth.

Deimos said:
There's nothing about that kind of system that's remotely class-based. The groups are not exclusionary, and they aren't forced.

The same is true of Rolemaster, yet you consider that class-based.

What if character creation asked you to "pick one of the six classes", and each character could then distribute their 10 skill points between the three skill categories as specified by their class:

Fighter: "fighting" must be your highest skill.
Mage: "magic" must be your highest skill.
Thief: "stealth" must be your highest skill.
Paladin: "fighting" and "magic" must be your joint highest skills.
Assassin: "fighting" and "stealth" must be your joint highest skills.
Bard: "magic" and "stealth" must be your joint highest skills.

Then if you picked an assassin you could either have 5 fighting and 5 stealth skills, or 4 fighting, 4 stealth and 2 magic skills. Would you consider that class-based?

Deimos said:
And speaking of my original questions, would anyone like to take a stab at them yet? I think I've adequately explained what I mean by classless and class-based already. Thanks!


I'll requote it and reply.

Deimos said:
I'm thinking about moving my project away from classes, and had a few questions. For those of you who have played or run successful classless systems, how was this kept in check?

I ran a classless version of my mud for nearly two years, and spent quite a lot of time working on ways to increase the variety of character builds. Even now, most newbies spend around 10-20 hours "classless" before joining a class - so to encourage diversity, I introduced special abilities called "talents". The design for the talent system is something I've been constantly refining over the last six years or so, and it balances the talents by laying them out in a skill-web, with stronger talents requiring or blocking other talents. This has proven extremely successful.

Deimos said:
I've considered many different strategies, but my current favorite is capping the total learned percentage at some TBD number.


I place a limit on the number of talents a player can have - initially just 3, with additional talent slots unlocked as you progress.

Deimos said:
Do you find classless systems harder to balance?

No, because my classes use the same system - i.e., each "class" works like its own encapsulated "classless" system, with a variety of powers laid out in a skill-web.

Deimos said:
Do players still settle into predefined "templates" anyway?

Certain talent combinations are particularly popular, but it's very unusual for two people to be exactly the same (unless they've only just started and are using one of the predefined starting builds).

These templates, or "builds", are also independent of class. You might encounter two players of different classes who have very similar characters, or two players of the same class who have completely different characters.
23 Mar, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
Going off at a slight tangent: one problem with many skill systems is that the rest of the MUD is designed in such a way as to render a minority of skills absolutely essential and the remainder largely pointless. Many MUDs, for example, are heavily based on combat; that means that combat-related skills are essential. By contrast, things like climbing and lock-picking tend to have so little application that there's little point in bothering to acquire them at all.

I mention this because I think that if the rest of the game is engineered in such a way that almost every skill is genuinely useful, and almost nothing is absolutely essential, then that might go some way towards addressing the "all characters end up the same" problem. This tends to happen not just because some skill combinations are a little more powerful than the others, but because the gap between combinations is so large that many of them are simply not viable at all.

So, for example, if the majority of mobs in the game can be circumvented by means of stealth rather than combat, and if the number of situations which cannot be resolved without stealth is similar to the number that cannot be resolved without combat, and the rewards of resolving them are also similar, that will tend to lead to less of an imbalance between thiefy types and fightery types than one tends to find on many MUDs. If you have a wide range of non-class-restricted skills, all of which are useful, but no one player character can acquire more than about 10% of them, I suspect that will lead to variety: some people will want to specialise in stealth, some in social combat, some in physical combat, and all sorts of mixtures; but you need to make the choice less about "what do I need to survive?" and more about "what would actually be interesting and fun?" Of course there will always be power-players; but I don't think every player falls into that category unless he feels he needs to in order to remain even faintly competitive.
23 Mar, 2010, shasarak wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Deimos said:
As I told shasarak, a tree-based system is definitely a gray-area that I hadn't thought about before, but my game doesn't have a tree-based system, so it's not really relevant to my original questions.

There are any number of other grey areas too, if you ask me. Consider, for example, the system in Morrowind. There you begin by choosing a class - but, even after choosing that class, you can still learn any skill you like.

Any one class defines a set of primary, secondary, and miscellaneous skills. Primary skills start at 30%, secondary ones at 15%, and miscellaneous at 0%. There are some additional bonuses to starting skill levels based on your race and astrological sign; and also any one class has an overall bias towards combat, magic or stealth, and gives you a 5% bonus to all skills of that type.

Skills improve with use; and the rate of advancement within primary skills is more rapid than for secondary ones (and, again, secondary is faster than miscellaneous); and the overall class bias to magic, combat or stealth also affects this. So if two players both have "long blades" at 50%, and they score the same number of sword-hits in a session, but one of them has "long blades" as a primary skill, and is a member of a combat-oriented class, while the other has long blades as "miscellaneous" and is in a stealth-oriented class, the former player will improve his long blades skill by a significantly larger amount.

You gain levels by increasing skills; every time you increase your primary and secondary skills by a total of 10 points, you go up a level. So if you want to progress quickly you need to focus on improving your class-related skills. But there's nothing to stop you staying at level 1 and improving your miscellaneous skills instead.

Now, this system is clearly class-based in some senses - the game has classes and you have to pick one, and which you pick has a significant impact on how you progress - but you are still not excluded from learning any skill you want to learn. And on top of that, there's an option to define your own custom class, with its own unique selection of whichever primary and secondary skills you choose, and the choice of magic/stealth/combat bias. Is that a class-based system? If not, does it become class-based if you remove the option to create a custom class?
23 Mar, 2010, Deimos wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
@KaVir:
I think the problem here is that you don't seem to understand how skills can exist without being exclusionary. Using your religion example from earlier, can you give me any logical reason why a player wouldn't be able to use necromancy -and- cleric powers? I can think of none. You can probably list a whole slew of thematic reasons for why your particular game doesn't choose to support this kind of a system, but it still makes sense either way. In fact, many popular games do just this. In Guild Wars, for example, you can have a character who raises undead minions and turns around and heals people, even though these skills come from two very different and polar opposite religions (Grenth worship and I forget the other one). Your dragon breath example is really a fringe case, because now you're talking about physiological abilities that are inherently tied to creatures of a given race. It makes no sense for a dwarf to be breathing fire in a class-based -or- a classless system.

@shasarak:
IMO, Morrowind is cut-and-dry classless, but only because it isn't multiplayer. Min-maxing is pointless, since you aren't competing against anyone, and straying outside of the predefined roles is very common. This wouldn't be the case if it were multiplayer, though, and players would be implicitly forced into the optimal roles, in the same manner as they would in that Rolemaster game KaVir brought up earlier.
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