KaVir
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#151 Posted Jun 17, 2009, 4:30 am
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Kline said:Daggerfall? It had pre-built "class" choices, that were just pre-selected primary skills.
That's also the approach I use. Every character starts with 50 stat points, 250 skill points, 250 fighting style points, and 3 talents.
You can go into custom character creation and distribute those points as you please, and afterwards the mud will allocate you a set of starting equipment optimised for your setup. It sounded good on paper, but I've yet to see first-time player create a character that was anything more than mediocre.
To get around that, I introduced an alternative character creation system, allowing players to select from a range of predesigned concepts. Each concept has the same total starting attributes as a custom character, but I carefully optimised them (in some cases actually basing them on the setups of veteran players) and designed each around a certain theme (Samurai, Dragon Rider, Pyromancer, etc).
Runter said:I seem to remember it having no class choices and it just named you on the who-list based on your current proficiencies.
I do that as well (at least for characters that haven't yet classed), basing the titles on your talents. For example a player with Dark Lineage is listed as a 'Dhampir' (or 'Winged Dhampir' if they also have House NightWing), a player with Assassin Training is listed as an 'Assassin', etc. However I only really added it to provide some variety to the who list, as I'm not a fan of letting players set their own titles, descriptions, etc.
quixadhal said:To me, the difference between a skill system and a class system is that the choices I make in a skill system shouldn't be forced. In a class mechanic, maybe fire mages all get fireball at level 6. In a skill system, fireball is one of the choices you have, but you could skip it and take rain of fire instead -- provided the skill set doesn't funnel you in such a way that you end up being forced to take fireball eventually because it's a pre-requisite for "greater-fireball", which is your only choice at level 40.
In Diablo II, the Sorceress can pick from ice, lightning and fire spells, and there is no "one true way" of building a character; spells are chosen, not forced.
However the other classes (such as Barbarian, Necromancer, Paladin, etc) cannot learn any of the Sorceress' spells - each ability is clearly assigned to one specific class, and you cannot gain the abilities of a different class.
I would consider that a class-based system, wouldn't you?
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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quixadhal
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#152 Posted Jun 17, 2009, 6:55 am
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Assuming you're developing a brand new combat system, and not implementing an existing one in the context of a MUD, I think the first things you want to think about are:
Do you want players to gain numbers as they level, or different skills, or both?
By that, I mean you can design your system so that a level 10 player and a level 20 player do about the same physical damage, but the level 20 will swing more often, have lots of extra attacks they can throw between the auto-attack, and lots of extra mitigation skills to avoid incoming attacks. Or, you can stick to the tried-and-blue higher level players have damage that scales, so a level 10 hits for 20hp per swing, while the level 20 has stats + gear that let him hit for 200hp per swing.
How long should an average fight last?
Should a typical fight between two even-con opponents take 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 15 minutes? Should the fight be quick and decisive, or should the players have time to work on their tactics and adjust to one another?
Do you want a thief to be able to one-shot backstab people?
Do you want anyone to be able to one-shot things?
Should anyone have abilities that take control away from their opponent? IE: stun-lock, sleep, charm?
What's the ratio of hit to miss that your players will tolerate?
Do you have active mitigation skills (block, parry), or just "armour class"?
Does your armour actually absorb/deflect blows, or is it a part of the dodge calculation?
All of these will affect how your numbers play out. It's very possible to have a small numbers game that's interesting, but there have to be other rewards for players to gain. New skills, new stances or techniques to modify their existing skills, whatever.
As for rock-paper-scissors.... how bad is that? Obviously we don't like it when it's that simple, but do you want your game to allow any kind of immunity or requirements of a particular action to win? Should anyone be able to do anything solo? Do you want to make some content require a group, and should that group have different types of people in it?
Another question to ponder, because I worked out a system many years ago to try and answer it, is how do you deal with the maniac hero? That is, you have a hero who saunters into town and starts slaughtering villagers. How many villagers should he be able to fight at once? In most MUD's, he can fight however many there are, because they do 0-4hp of damage to him, and he kills them in one or two blows. That's not sensible. Yet it also doesn't make sense that a seasoned veteran in magical plate mail and with god-forged weapons shouldn't be able to kill a half dozen farmers with pitchforks without spilling his drink. How can you factor the number of foes in so that a tank can't pull dozens (or hundreds!) of foes at once, but CAN beat a small bunch easily? Do you WANT to solve this "problem", or embrace it as some games do?
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elanthis
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#153 Posted Jun 17, 2009, 12:47 pm
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flumpy said:Can we try and steer this back to the topic of the post a little?
You must be new to the Internet. :p
Quote:Ok I'll ask a couple of questions that interest me: How do you prevent numbers, big or small, from dominating your class systems?
Don't rely on them much if at all. Too many games are based on the idea that power comes from having a bigger number than the other guy. The difference between an Orc and a Giant boils down to the Giant having 10x as much HP, doing 10x as much damage, etc. There's no reason at all that you have to use numbers for this, though.
For example, instead of giving the giant bigger numbers for damage, assign a size class to weapons. The giant is swinging a Huge club, which causes more serious damage when it strikes most characters, cannot be blocked (do you think a shield would stop a Mac truck from crushing you?), etc. Now, when players get more powerful, instead of giving them bigger numbers to counter-act the giant's big numbers, give them a selection of abilities that negates the giant's advantages. Give them an ability like Block Huge Weapons that lets their shield work against the giant's club. Give them an ability like Giant Slayer that lets them do normal damage against a Huge opponent. You can split it up quite a bit, of course, and mix-and-match which abilities are needed to make each opponent manageable (a giant fire elemental may not use physical attacks, so Block Huge Weapon is not necessary to be able to fight it, but Giant Slayer might still be needed). At some point it all breaks down to numbers because we're using an abstract game system, but you can reduce and remove numbers to a surprising degree. Get rid of HP and go with a wound/critical system, and damage then just becomes a weighted randomization to determine what level of wound or critical is received. Ger rid of Mana and use a D&D-style slot/preparation system, or a cooldown system, or a component/ritual system, or a combo/pattern system (a challenging minigame that must be completed to cast a spell).
By far the best thing (IMO) about using a largely ability-based system is that it gets rid of the content-invalidation present in most every other RPG, MMO, and MUD. It closes the gaps between new and long-time players, too. The problem with a number system is that in order for the player to get big enough numbers for the giant to become a reasonable challenge that player ends up getting numbers so high that the early-content challenges like orcs become entirely unchallenging. A level 20 player has no challenge at all in a level 5 area. Using the ability based system, the player gains the power to defeat more powerful opponents without invalidating the challenge of less powerful opponents, and so the player can still have fun exploring "newbie" areas. That in turn gives far more incentive for the game designers to introduce new areas that both high and low level players can explore instead of only ever introducing new top-tier areas like WoW does. That then makes it far more reasonable for me to join a game my friend has been playing for 6 months because there is going to be content that we can both enjoy playing together while I work on gaining the levels to adventure in the high level areas.
You can of course use a hybrid approach. I don't think a game that never allows players to get stronger against the early game opponents would fly with most RPG players, and I don't blame them either. While a high level player might be able to easily handle 10 orcs while a new player could only handle 1 or 2, that's a stark difference from most games where the high-level player can wade through an army of orcs with no fear at all.
A pure ability system does require a bit more ingenuity. Far too many RPG style games differentiate between the low-level spells and high-level spells purely with damage dealt, for instance. Fire Bolt does 20 damage while Fireball does 50 and Fire Storm does 100. Going with a more ability-based system, the higher level spells don't do a lot more damage (in fact, they may do less!) but they are more versatile. Fire Bolt hits one opponent for 20 damage, Fireball hits a small group of opponents for 15 each, and Fire Storm ravages an area for 2 damage a second for 5 seconds. (Specific numbers pulled out of my ass.) Or with a wound/critical system, Fire Bolt may have a higher critical rating than Fireball or Fire Storm.
That then has the further advantage of never invalidating abilities. Those abilities you learn early on remain useful even in the end game, unlike most RPGs where your wizard ends up with a spellbook with 100 spells in which only 10 are worth holding on to.
That is, of course, still entirely unrelated to my original question about big vs small numbers, so we're still off topic. ;)
Quote:What can be done to prevent exploitation apart from hiding them?
Hiding them prevents nothing. Go look up the FAQs for most console RPGs. The players manage to figure out relatively complex formulas, inclding things like (100 - (dmg - def / 2 + luck / 5)) * (crit ^ 2 / 3). It's ridiculous how much time people put into crunching the numbers, but people do it. Basically, security through obscurity DOES NOT WORK.
To answer your question, then, it's unfortunately going to be complicated, especially for complex system that allow a lot of customization. One of the biggest "fixes" I know of is to prevent excessive stacking of bonuses and multipliers. Some games put caps on bonuses, but that is useless IMO because all it means is that the min-maxers figure out how to reach the cap and stay there 100% of the time. A better approach I think is what D&D does, which simply disallows a good deal of bonus stacking. Basically, each bonus has a type, and you can have only one bonus of each type for each stat at a time, with the highest bonus taking effect. The item and spell system is then designed to make it difficult to get all the bonuses at the same time. For example, AC has the base armor bonus, the Dex bonus, a deflection bonus, a natural armor bonus, and a couple others. Magic armor provides a deflection bonus, as do 95% of AC-boosting spells, meaning that you can't try to min-max magic armor and spells. The only item to grant a permanent natural AC bonus uses the neck item slot, which is also the only slot that can give certain other types of bonus (CON bonuses, for example), so the player has to pick between getting a permanent natural AC bonus or a permanent CON bonus. Which one he picks will depend on his class and play style, so while there may be an "optimal" equipment for particular builds, but there is no way to get a perfect build for all purposes.
Quote:What strategies can game designers use to prevent the paper scissors stone kind of games we see?
I think a question to ask first is whether you want to prevent that. In a game where characters don't have different strengths and weaknesses there is little incentive for teamwork. At best it just turns into a "we need 10 people to do this" and off you go. Specialization might mean that character A is always going to lose in 1-on-1 combat against character B, but it means that team-oriented play focuses on building effective groups and players learning tactics suited to their party role.
If your game is mostly a simple non-team PvP environment, you may want to avoid the rock-paper-scissors issue, but otherwise I think you want to encourage it.
So far as fixing it, just don't use specialization. Encourage players to get all abilities, or make different specializations' abilities most equivalent. Don't make rogues worse tanks than fighters, don't make mages better damage-dealers than clerics, don't make clerics better healers than rogues, etc. You'll probably end up with the worst case of cookie-cutter characters you can imagine, though. :)
Quote:Ooh and the most interesting question I have is how do you decide on what numbers to use in the first place? Would I have to draw bell curves and graphs and the like to make sure things are balanced?
Depends on the importance of the numbers to begin with. In general, though, you're going to need to apply a lot of math, so yes. Most of all though you need a lot of play testing, and you need to be ready to tweak both the rules and the world itself. I would highly recommend building off of an existing tested and balanced system, preferably one that's already similar to where you want to go with yours.
Last night I was continuing the discussion with some friends, and one brought up the case of Ragnorak Online. Apparently mages in that game get a choice of one of three high-end spells, breaking down an ice-based spell, a fire-based spell, and a thunder-based spell. The three were in general considered very balanced, yet almost everyone always picked the thunder-based spell. The reason for that was that almost all of the end-game monsters had a weakness to thunder magic.
So, the raw numbers don't matter, because the world itself can unbalance the numbers in surprising ways. Without doing a lot of manual documentation or building a very comprehensive set of game analysis tools, you're likely going to end up with that issue, even at levels below the end-game. For example, if the best mid-level area to gain XP or gain the bets equipment is fire themed, you can safely bet that most players will be optimizing for ice magic and ice weaponry at the mid levels. Unless you're prepared to generate content for every possible theme at every possible level, you either need to design the abilities around the world or design the world around the abilities. That means that either you just make all the mid-level abilities and items ice themed so there's no worry about screwing players who picked something else before getting to the fire dungeon, or it means avoiding excessive theme-based dungeons and making sure that any set of abilities is going to be enough to get through any dungeon.
On a similar note, one of my soon-to-be colleagues brought up a very astute observation. If your game is going to include PvP at all, design around that first, and the PvE content last. The reason for that is pretty simple and makes a world of sense. If you design for PvE and then find out that you have to tweak for PvP, then once you're done you have to go back and redesign all the PvE content around the changes you made for PvP. On the other hand, if you design for PvP first and get that balanced and squared around, you only need to design and develop the PvE content once based around the existing PvP abilities you gave characters. Almost every mixed PvE/PvP game designs around the PvE content first and hence almost every single one has been stuck with an almost endless cycle of rebalancing characters between PvP and PvE content. That advice is a bit hard for a lot of us because many of us have no interest in PvP, but we want to include it in some capacity in our games in order to appeal to the PvPers... we work on the PvE stuff first because it's more fun and add in the PvP later, and end up stuck with that endless cycle of imbalance.
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KaVir
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#154 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 5:13 am
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David Haley said:elanthis said:Put simply, a min-maxer should not be able to create a better character than someone who's just making choices based on how fun he believes the options are.
I heartily disagree with this statement. The logical conclusion of your argument is that essentially random choices should yield a character just as powerful as choices made very deliberately, which strikes me as a far more broken game design.
The above comments were made around five weeks ago, and they got me thinking. I put my ideas down on (virtual) paper, they turned into a design, and that lead to some prototype code, and last night I introduced a new class to my mud - Titans.
The concept is fairly simple. Whereas the effectiveness of most classes is based on specific combinations of powers, Titans can just add anything they like. This is because the Titan powers themselves don't add raw power - instead, they provide utility options or alternative attack types, things which are useful but which don't make the character any more powerful.
However Titans do gain a wide range of bonuses based on the total of all their power ranks. So, just like the other classes, they become more powerful as their train new powers - the only difference is that it doesn't matter which powers they train. While the other classes are trying to carefully balance each and every power rank to eke out every possible advantage, the Titans can just pick whatever they feel like without needing to worry too much about it.
I've also decided to incorporate another contraversial design decision that I normally disagree with - I'm hiding all the numbers. The help files contain only flavour text. However in this case I don't think it's such a big deal, simply because you can't really go wrong.
The class is aimed primarily at newbies and first-time players, who often have trouble building a decent character. Initial feedback has been positive, and although I think it unlikely that Titans will hold the attention of the veteran players for long (at least compared to the other classes), it does appear to be filling a niche. I wouldn't want to make this the standard approach for my classes, but as a one-off it seems to be working out quite well.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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David Haley
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#155 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 8:38 am
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KaVir said:instead, they provide utility options or alternative attack types, things which are useful but which don't make the character any more powerful.
How does this work? That is, how can something be "useful" but not increase the character's power or effectiveness?
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KaVir
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#156 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 9:13 am
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David Haley said:KaVir said:instead, they provide utility options or alternative attack types, things which are useful but which don't make the character any more powerful.
How does this work? That is, how can something be "useful" but not increase the character's power or effectiveness?
They increase the character's effectiveness, but not their raw power. For example 'Tremor Sense' allows you to sense creatures around you (both invisible and outside line-of-sight), 'Hammer Fists' strengthens your unarmed hand attacks (but only enough to put them on-par with weapons), 'Mighty Leap' provides you with a pounce attack (on-par with weapons) and allows you to leap great distances, and so on.
Obviously it's useful being able to use your fists if your weapon gets broken, or being able to sense other players nearby, or being able to leap great distances when exploring - but these abilities won't directly make you more powerful. Pit two Titans against each other in a typical toe-to-toe combat situation and their choice of powers should be fairly irrelevant.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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elanthis
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#158 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:01 am
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The general gist of what KaVir did and what I was advocating, David, is that abilities should not just be a pile of numbers, but should have some kind of effect. If you have two Fire Attack powers, one that does 10 damage and one that does 100 damage, then one is clearly more powerful and selecting the former is a waste of time, implementing the former is a waste of time, documenting the former is a waste of time, and the power either gets ignored by veterans or mistakenly chosen by inexperienced players, neither of which is in any way a useful contribution to the game experience.
If instead your two Fire Attack powers do identical damage but differentiate themselves on effect -- say, one does a straight line of damage 100' long by 5' wide while the other does a 40' radius sphere of damage -- then suddenly the selection of the two powers is far more interesting. One is more useful in some circumstances while the other is more useful in different circumstances. At that point your further game design choices may invalidate one or the other, of course, since if most of your dungeons are straight corridors then the spherical fire attack is far less useful, which is why game design is something that needs to be done top-down and not piece-by-piece in isolation.
KaVir's game is a numbers-heavy game, however. Nothing but effects would be useless to a class. So he made it so that simply gaining power makes the character more powerful (shocking, I know) instead of requiring the player of the Titan class to choose between "powerful" or "lame" (but where the options are not clearly spelled out, of course, and the player is required to spend hours reading forums and sites looking for optimal builds by people with too much time on their hands who've tried a bazillion different builds).
It's a good compromise that lets the people who just want to play without investing huge amounts of time into understanding low-level mechanics enjoy his game while simultaneously allowing the tweakers to get their rocks off playing "advanced" classes. It's really pretty similar to a class-based game that has a "build your own class" feature, which I've always been a fan of (the concept, at least -- I haven't seen a game really pull it off well yet).
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David Haley
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#159 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:04 am
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elanthis said:If you have two Fire Attack powers, one that does 10 damage and one that does 100 damage, then one is clearly more powerful and selecting the former is a waste of time, implementing the former is a waste of time, documenting the former is a waste of time, and the power either gets ignored by veterans or mistakenly chosen by inexperienced players, neither of which is in any way a useful contribution to the game experience.
I never disagreed with this. It's almost a non-statement as a truism. 
My issue is with systems where choices made at random will be just as effective as choices made deliberately. In this case the choices are meaningless and nothing more than illusions of different options, or chrome on top of all the same stuff, basically.
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KaVir
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#160 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:26 am
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David Haley said:My issue is with systems where choices made at random will be just as effective as choices made deliberately.
That's actually pretty much what I've done; you can pick any combination of powers, and overall your character will be (approximately) as effective in combat as any other Titan of the same 'level' (bold used for emphasis).
David Haley said:In this case the choices are meaningless and nothing more than illusions of different options, or chrome on top of all the same stuff, basically.
But they're not - the choices provide you with utility and variation. In some ways the Titans have even more freedom of choice than the other classes, as they're not forced to pick their abilities based on character optimisation.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
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elanthis
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#161 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:41 am
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I disagree and agree. See, there are two different issues at play. First is the actual effectiveness of any choice on its own merits. If you have ability A and B, there should be no reason that A is better than B. If it is, just remove B. The same goes for complicated combinations of choices. If some combination is hands-down worse than another, don't allow that combination to happen. Make it so selecting one set of abilities blocks another, or go with a tree system, or anything. If you absolutely must allow players to select any combination, document the consequences and put big warnings right there in the game UI used to select new abilities. That basically eliminates (or strongly discourages) random selection of abilities, which solves your complaint. :)
That said, some players will find different sets of abilities more effective for specific uses or play styles, and that you can't work around. If I randomly select abilities I may end up with a character that has strong ranged power but I always try to melee everything and get my butt owned. Same in a "simple and balanced" game if I just select the wrong class. That is just poor strategy. It's at that point no different than me saying "I like RPGs and hate FPSes" and then getting mad because I bought Wolfenstein and didn't like it. :) However, that purchase is a simple choice that the only way I could screw up is if I did just randomly grab games off the shelf: Wolfenstein is very, very clearly billed as an FPS and hence I know whether or not I am likely to enjoy the game just by looking at the box. Character development should be the same: if there are some choices to make and one is going to be better for my tastes/needs than the others, that should be abundantly clear up front without needing to scum forums to find out what the best choices are.
When it comes to combinations, it's just better to use directed development and eliminate incompatible choices rather than forcing the player to figure out which don't work together the hard way. _Especially_ if you don't allow the player to correct mistakes via restating.
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David Haley
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#162 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:52 am
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If you have a system that removes choice [1], then indeed my complaint is removed because you aren't really making full choices at random -- you can't. So I agree with that. My statement is made from the premise that choices don't remove other choices. I'm not sure I agree that all combinations should be equally viable, though, especially when you consider your style of play as another choice to be made. Your example of having ranged combat skills but insisting on running around with swords is a good one.
In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game. (That assumption doesn't always hold, incidentally.)
EDIT:
[1] that's not meant to sound bad, by the way -- I'm not necessarily placing inherent value on fully open choice, not at the moment at least.
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Last edited Jul 20, 2009, 10:52 am by David Haley
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Fizban
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#163 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 10:52 am
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I'm somewhere in between. I like stats to typically max in the 18-25 range but I like armor, damroll and hitpoints to vary enough that the difference in their values isn't negligable between two characters with very different equipment. Ideally this means 5-10k hp at max level when equipped as a tank and 2-5k as a caster-ish class.
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KaVir
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#164 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 11:15 am
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David Haley said:In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game.
Well Elanthis's original proposal was that it "...should not be possible to create a better character than someone who's just making choices based on how fun he believes the options are" (a statement you heartily disagreed with at the time), and that was the premise I designed my Titan class around.
I've certainly no interest in extending it to gameplay in general. The idea was to have a class for newbies and first-time players who don't enjoy (or aren't very good at) designing a decent character, not to have an option that removes the need for player skill entirely.
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......................... KaVir at God Wars II: godwars2.org 3000 Roomless world. Manual combat. Endless possibilities.
Last edited Jul 20, 2009, 11:16 am by KaVir
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elanthis
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#165 Posted Jul 20, 2009, 1:38 pm
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OK, sure. If you are just picking stuff on random, you're dumb. I don't think any player does that though.
The idea is that if you are creating a character using reasonable (if inexperienced) guesses as to what would work, it should work, or the game should actively attempt to help you with your inexperience. It should be easy to make reasonable guesses using whatever information is necessary to make those choices. It's reasonable to think that spreading out skills to cover a wider base of challenges is a good idea, for example. If your game punishes generalization, however, then it should reflect that in the choices it provides. Instead of saying "we'll let players spread points out and punish them when they do" just don't let players spread points out.
Or at the very least tell the player what they should be doing and why. Flat out say IN THEIR FACE that specialization is mandatory in your game to get anywhere. Warn them if they start generalizing. Don't foce them to dig into mechanics and numbers just to find out that Psychic Wave of Death is a cruel joke of a skill while Rabbit Cruncher does 80% more damage and costs half as many skill points.
Quote:In other words, I'm arguing that a coherent overall strategy of game play should always beat a strategy based on completely random choices, assuming of course that you want there to be any skill in the game.
And I continue to assert that character building is not game play. It's meta-game-play. Combat is game play. Puzzle solving is game play. Exploration is game play. Role playing is gaming play. Trap disarming is game play.
Those all require skill. Letting a player lose the encounter because he doesn't have the skill or strategy to defeat them is fine.
Assigning points to a character sheet requires zero skill, however. I'm sure there's a ton of people who think they're L33t Character Builders and are gods among mice, but they're all chumps. All they're doing is either (a) copying proven builds from someone else, or (b) randomly guessing over and over until they find the magic combination. That's it. That's not skill.
If lock picking in your game were anything like character development, here's how it would work. The player would pick a combination. It would fail, he'd get punished for it somehow. A little while later he comes back and tries a different combination. It fails, he gets punished. Comes back a little while later and tries another combination. Repeat until he finally guesses the right one. Other players just get on the forums, search for "Fier Dunjun Lokpik lol," copy the combination down, and run through the locked door with barely a pause. The "good" players would still just be randomly guessing, but they'd skip the obviously unlikely combinations (1111, 2222, 1234, etc.), but it's still not anything that requires skill or strategy.
We also come back again to the point that losing a combat because of poor strategy means maybe a few hours of lost work, while building an inadequate character over the course of 50 levels probably means days, weeks, or months of lost work. Losing is fine. Losing _everything_ pisses most people off quite a bit (which is why even my own games don't do perma-death, even though I personally am a fan of it).
You can let players reassign skills to work around a skill system that let's them build broken characters, but then you still aren't making character development strategic. It just means you let people "guess again" with a much shorter turn around time. Plus it opens all kinds of other holes, like how WoW players respec based on the dungeon they're raiding, making the character development not on non-strategic but also entirely pointless (if I can change what I am to fit whatever situation, why the hell bother wasting any time into picking what I am)?
I am totally in favor of making players use strategy. I'm totally in favor of letting the better player "win." I am against the idea of forcing players to make "strategic choices" which just boil down to "pick the magic combination of 10,000 skills that the developers threw at you even though only a handful of combinations actually work worth a crap, and if you screw up them you just piss away 200 hours of your life."
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Cutting corners to keep your line count down is just sad.
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