Goblin Squad Member
|
As I understand character advancement, a character's power, "class" and usefulness will to a large extent be decided by feats. A player can choose to "equip" feats from a list of trained feats. Specializing your training in one area will be possible and have some benefits but it should be rather easy for new players to "catch up" in power, but not versatility, to older players.
So, my question: Will it (after say two years of playing) be possible for me to be a competent barbarian but also a competent wizard, i.e. having two very different "specs" I can switch between (perhaps with a few minutes of cooldown between switches)?
I suspect the answer here is "yes", if I have trained feats from both of those skill trees and I own good gear to swap between suited for each class. But I think that such switching does not really belong in this game.
What do you think, will "class switching" on the fly be possible and should it be possible?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
They've said it will take around two and a half years to max out a role. So it'd probably take more than two years to be fully competent (not maxed) in two of them. That said, there's no reason why, further down the line, you couldn't have two or three roles in which you have significant development. As you note, they would require a different loadout of feats and gear, but yes, you should be able to swap between them. I don't know how I feel about switching "on the fly". I'd rather not have somebody see me coming at them, and then macroswap from their anti-physical spec to their anti-magic spec because they think I'm a mage. It would be somewhat balanced out by the fact that you'd have to carry all that gear, and would only be able to thread what you had equipped, so you'd be risking more. I think I'd rather see feat swapping happening either over a long period of time (a minute or more in the wilderness) or be done at a settlement structure, such as a training hall or the like, with a mild leaning toward the latter.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
As I understand character advancement, a character's power, "class" and usefulness will to a large extent be decided by feats. A player can choose to "equip" feats from a list of trained feats. Specializing your training in one area will be possible and have some benefits but it should be rather easy for new players to "catch up" in power, but not versatility, to older players.
So, my question: Will it (after say two years of playing) be possible for me to be a competent barbarian but also a competent wizard, i.e. having two very different "specs" I can switch between (perhaps with a few minutes of cooldown between switches)?
I suspect the answer here is "yes", if I have trained feats from both of those skill trees and I own good gear to swap between suited for each class. But I think that such switching does not really belong in this game.
What do you think, will "class switching" on the fly be possible and should it be possible?
I'd say that depends upon your definition of competent really. A dedicated player having his/her character train one "class" skill tree will be better at that "class than a dabbler. However, if you split your training between two or more "class" skill trees, you will be more well rounded.
Also, at this time it is expected that a dedicated single "class" PC will have to train for two-and-a-half years to max out that "classes" skills, so if you want a fully maxed out Barbarian Wizard, as you use in your example, that would take five years (double the number of years to gain full mastery). PfO is designed to be played over a long time, and many of the PFRPG steeps have to be changed slightly to better fit an MMO as well as a game not party to the OGL Paizo has with WotC.
If you mean, however, can you have a Barbarian who can also cast fireball, yes that is doable, but characters are limited to how many skills they may have active at one time. So competency is a matter of degrees. I hope that helps, though it is a bit esoteric :)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I think the power curve is intended so that it takes maybe *plucking a few reasonable numbers out of thin air* about 3-4-5 months of levelling particular direction and then the slope becomes more flat and that is possibly more optimum place to then start training in another area if you want to "multi-train"? Switching sounds very possible different roles but at the balance of maximising and having the best kit available??
That's at least how I'm seeing it atm. What I'm not sure about is what skills I want to train up to perform certain roles, which I guess is about fitting into a social group apart from anything else?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Yes it is known that maxing out an entire role will take about 2.5 years and training two very different roles will take a long time since they depend on different stats. However, it has been stated that new players will be able to catch up, to a certain degree, to older players rather quickly (months?), I take this to mean that linear progression to "max level" within a certain aspect of a role is pretty quick but horizontal progression (providing more versatility and flexibility) will be slow.
What I was thinking of was the possibility of having a character that can go from being one thing to something completely different that would not make sense from a roleplaying perspective. I expect a lot of people will resist this temptation because it wouldn't make sense IC but from a gameplay perspective it might be very useful to switch between being say a cleric if the group needs one for a dungeon, an AoE sorcerer for settlement defense (depending on how the AoE system they have talked about in the blogs turns out) and your adventuring role as thief who is a famous bandit.
Also, since you will gain experience on one character per subscription (unless you have destiny's twin or whatever it's called) it might be very tempting to start training the same character in disparate roles rather than starting alts for your experiments.
The kind of role switching I have described could potentially detract from the way this game seems to promote RP and staying IC. I'm not saying it would be devastating if roleswitching was possible, just that it is not a given that being able to do so would be a positive thing.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The length of time required should respond to how different the archetypes are: it should take less time for a wizard to convert to a monk than to a heavily armored fighter, as an example.
As a whole, I would disagree with this assumption. This is essentially assuming wizards and monks having the lack of gear dependency that they do in P&P, as well as the thoughts of more slots etc... In a large extent this is also assuming noteworthy stacking etc... To get a monks AC bonus, a wizard should have to give up defensive skill slots, just as a fighter should have to give up fighter skill slots etc... If we are not factoring in gear differentials etc... (as a monk, and wizard DO need comparable gear dependencies to fighter, otherwise wizards and monks, will be very valuable suicide gankers, as they need to thread far less).
In addition, based on the attribute system prescribed by GW... actually would favor the fighter mixing vs the wizard, assuming similar attribute dependencies. Training skills will boost your attributes. Monk abilities will likely have prereqs for similar attributes to their attributes in P&P, Meaning most likely str, wis, and dex. Fighter abilities, most likely will have leanings towards, str, dex and con. Wizard abilities, will most likely lean towards int, and possibly dex.
We do know that having unlocked higher attributes, one may be able to reach the higher tier skills faster, via not needing to train the less necessary ones, as a result, I personally think that a fighter, will quite likely be able to more easily mix and match portions with monk archtype skills, vs wizard.
The gear dependency side, I can't say for any certainty which one will have more items that do not mix well. Though I personally disagree off the bat that wizards or monks will have less gear requirements than fighter. Both should have to make some sacrifices.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
You can also pay to have alts gain the same XP granted per 24 hours, so you can train more than one character even w/o Destiny's Twin. However, if you lack the funds, or the in-game gold to buy a game time card from a player who can afford to pay for more time for additional characters, yes, you can train in many "classes" at once.
However, no, such a character will have a hard time "catching up" to PC's of players who have been playing longer and have dedicated their PC to one "class" or a main class with a little dabbling in another, so your concerns about role-switching are very unlikely to manifest. I can understand how such concerns could occur, but GW appears to have thought about it. While the power curve is not a steep one, it will nonetheless be there, preventing newer players from being able to become as "powerful" as longer established PC's. That isn't to say, however, they will be so far behind either that a PvP incident will always favor an "older" player. Given the rather slight curve to the power curve even new PC's can compete with PC's with greater experience in the game.
Ryan and the Devs have noted they don't wish for older players to far out-strip newer ones, and likewise they don't want newer ones to be able to catch up too quickly to more established ones. They will be monitoring it, from what they have said, and will make any adjustments needed. Nihimon is the best bet for asking for specific posts and blog entries on this as he keeps a running tab of such things and is our resident player sage :)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Dario I have played TSW and roleswitching was/is a very nice feature in that game. It makes sense there, but not really in a DnD-based system.
@Gloreindl I actually recall reading about that now that you mention it. It may indeed lead to people setting up different characters for different roles rather than having one that switches between doing different things. Especially since you can pay to level several characters at the same time, then it makes perfect sense to stick to one development path on your main so that you don't "gimp" yourself. Didn't think about that when starting this thread. Thank you for the reminder.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Multi-classing has been part of tabletop fantasy gaming for a very long time. Back in the 1980s (AD&D) it was restricted to non-humans, but it was there. I don't see it as inherently anti-RP at all.
Edit: Even humans could switch classes, and use abilities from both classes once the new class had caught up to the earlier class(es).
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
As Dario says, your character won't be truly maxed out until you've mastered every role. Which, from my understanding, should take over a decade of real time (it's supposed to take like 2-3 years to master one role). If a player drops out after that amount of time, I don't think anyone will mind.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Multi-classing has been part of tabletop fantasy gaming for a very long time. Back in the 1980s (AD&D) it was restricted to non-humans, but it was there. I don't see it as inherently anti-RP at all.
Edit: Even humans could switch classes, and use abilities from both classes once the new class had caught up to the earlier class(es).
Yes but there is a difference between being a dualclass wizard/fighter which is a little bit of both and being a fulltime fighter one moment and a pure mage the next. In DnD your attributes limit whether you can be both a good magician, fighter, thief and cleric.
From what I can tell, in this game the only limit is how much experience your character has accumulated. Alignment also somewhat limits you because you can't just switch back and forth between paladin and barbarian for example. If attributes were to be required not only to train feats but also to use them and you could reassign your attributes over time through feat usage then you could limit switching back and forth between very different roles but perhaps this won't be necessary due to
a)this won't happen a lot anyway
or
b)it's fine if it happens
In my opinion, the ideal situation would be one where you could easily switch out your feat loadout and mix from different classes but only to those that "make sense" because they are related/belong to similar archetypes. One way of doing this could be through a system where attributes affect the feat effectiveness. If attributes could be reassigned over time you could switch to being a completely different character but it would take time and back-and-forth swapping from one role to another would not be possible, while still allowing people to make useful alterations on the fly that makes sense from an attribute point of view.
Now the gear dependability of the feats prevents one person from simultaneously being awesome at a lot of things and the attribute dependancy in training will encourage people to train similar feats but sometime down the road people will be able to switch from "pure mage" to "pure fighter" to "pure thief" without penalty as long as they own the appropriate gear and have spent enough time training feats for each role.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Let me ask you this: Why is it bad for a character to be able to swap? Put a different way, if my TT character has spent six levels on wizard and six levels on paladin, then he has the ability to be, at any given moment, just as good at either of those as anyone else who put six levels into them. If my PFO character puts two years into mastering wizardry, and two years into mastering paladinhood, why should he not be able to be as good in either of those as someone who only spent two years on one?
|
My personal hope is that there won't be a need to "swap classes" unless you're looking to change up your action bar. People who train as multiclass fighter/mages should be able to operate as multiclass fighter/mages, and not have to lock themselves in to one or the other. It is, after all, a time-honoured archetype (though I accept that without swapping gear you wouldn't be at full effectiveness)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
My personal hope is that there won't be a need to "swap classes" unless you're looking to change up your action bar. People who train as multiclass fighter/mages should be able to operate as multiclass fighter/mages, and not have to lock themselves in to one or the other. It is, after all, a time-honoured archetype (though I accept that without swapping gear you wouldn't be at full effectiveness)
Don't worry, you'll be able to slot abilities from multiple roles, this is a classless system. But the issue of swapping is still present. You may want to swap from fighter/mage to mage/rogue or cleric/mage depending on the particular group you're running around with at the time.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I agree with Kalmyel, I'd much rather be able to blend classes then have to swap them. This will result in the same balance that multi-classing has in table top.
A mutliclassed fighter/wizard at level 6 might be more versatile then a pure level 6 fighter or wizard, able to melee and cast some spells. Yet the pure fighter will have more feats and deal more damage and take more hits, and the pure wizard will cast more spells, more powerfully, as well as have access to higher level spells.
It's all a matter of generalization vs. specialization, quantity vs. quality. An issue you will encounter in real life as well. Which one is better? Well, that's often up for debate; but generally jacks of all trades will fair well on their own, while a specialist will need to depend on others to cover their weaknesses. A team of specialists will generally out perform a team of generalists in typical situations, but generalists will better adapt to changing or unfamiliar situations.
Anyhow, yeah, as someone who often solos in MMOs I definitely want to be able to mix and match classes up the wazoo.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Dario: Obviously this is getting into semantics, but I would like to say there is a big difference between swapping out entire classes and switching around a few abilities. I think you're aware of the difference, your wording just getting kind of vague on which you're talking about.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Dario It is not necessarily a bad thing. In TSW, as you mentioned, it is a great feature because it makes sense in that game universe. I personally don't think it makes a lot of sense in this game (which of course I haven't played so this is all conjecture) for a person to completely change roles back and forth in a matter of minutes (or hours).
I can definitely understand that some(most?) people would not mind if that was possible and some(most?) would find it very welcome if they could do just that. I just think it might be harmful to immersion and RP if you were Dario the Paladin one moment and Dario the Archmage the next, then back to Paladin again the third time I meet you in the game.
Sure, someone could train as paladin and then drop out of paladin training to start a new career as a wizard but in the DnD system their success would be limited by their attributes, they could not have the attribute scores needed to be both great paladins and wizards. In this game I think it would make sense and work well mechanically to gain and lose attributes over time so you could indeed go from being a paladin to being a wizard, just not back and forth at will.
My intentions when starting this thread was not to bring you to my way of seeing things or to "win" the argument but to put forth my views and getting some feedback, I have gotten plenty of good feedback which is a testament to the greatness of this community.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Wurner: I'm not sure I'm remembering this clearly, but I think your skill progression drives your attribute progression. Therefor the more time you spend working on one class/roll the more your attributes will improve to support that roll. I don't think your attributes will change as soon as you swap in some abilities and skills from another role.
Thus, if you concentrate on fighter stuff for a while and then suddenly switch to wizard you will be a pretty cruddy wizard, at least until you've trained up that role as much as you have the fighter role. Then you will be the same level of effectiveness in either role, but not as effective as someone who focused the same amount of time purely on one role.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Oh and Vancent and Kalmyel, multiclassing or mixing feats from different "roles" is not what I am concerned about, as I think you both realize. Just want to make sure there is no unnecessary confusion:
Multiclassing is fine with me and finding out what feats work well with others and defining your own playstyle through combination will likely be a very fun part of this game.
Completely switching back and forth between very different feat sets to full effectiveness is what I think could be out of place and immersion breaking in this game. I'm talking the kind of switching that would be impossible if you used the original DnD rules.
As I said before, I am quite sure a lot of people won't agree with me on this.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Vancent: I believe attributes increase with training feats as you say, but they won't affect effectiveness with feats, just decide which ones you can train and possibly at what speed you can train them.
When you start out as a wizard, even if you are a high level fighter, I expect you will not be much better off than a new player starting wizard training. Eventually though, you can be near max effectiveness as both wizard and fighter and if you can switch back and forth between those roles without penalty at that point, that is what I would have an issue with. As I said before, multiclasses such as fighter/wizard are fine by me.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I never understood the idea that a single character shouldn't be proficient at more than one "class". I don't see the problem with it, and the open-ended character development offered by PFO is actually one of the things that first got me really interested in it.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
When you start out as a wizard, even if you are a high level fighter, I expect you will not be much better off than a new player starting wizard training. Eventually though, you can be near max effectiveness as both wizard and fighter and if you can switch back and forth between those roles without penalty at that point, that is what I would have an issue with. As I said before, multiclasses such as fighter/wizard are fine by me.
So to be sure:
Fighter lvl 9
Wizard lvl 2
Over time:
Fighter lvl 9
Wizard lvl 7
So in both cases the player if using say a sword and a wand equipped and I think not using heavy armour (?) then they can have 3 weapon sets to mess with so could change sword and wand depending and therefore use their wizard of fighter skills as decided on.
The rub is that certain slots and equipment won't be fully synergised at the sacrifice of flexibility. Over time more combinations becomes available. Think this is right. ;)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I think gear dependencies would still prevent a four year veteran from swapping between master-level wizard and master-level fighter in the field, unless the player had spent those years getting rich enough that they don't care about losing half their gear if they die and don't make a corpse run before their corpse is looted.
A bisexual half elven master summoner is pretty versatile. ;-)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
My personal viewpoint is, with limited slots etc... I have nothing against mixtures/blends of classes etc... Now what I would have a problem with (something GW has more or less confirmed will not be the case), is the idea of say, a level 10/10 wiz/fighter on the field being equally effective at wizardry as the straight 10 wizard, and as good at fighting as the straight 10 fighter, After 5ish years into the game when people having both of those become more common, it creates a rather devistating point in which the power level of the 20/20's can completely dwarf and prevent any newer characters from having any shot at being competitive until 5+ years down the road (at which point they will still remain inferior to the now 20/20/20/20's that still crush them.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Yes but there is a difference between being a dualclass wizard/fighter which is a little bit of both and being a fulltime fighter one moment and a pure mage the next. In DnD your attributes limit whether you can be both a good magician, fighter, thief and cleric.From what I can tell, in this game the only limit is how much experience your character has accumulated. Alignment also somewhat limits you because you can't just switch back and forth between paladin and barbarian for example. If attributes were to be required not only to train feats but also to use them and you could reassign your attributes over time through feat usage then you could limit switching back and forth between very different roles but perhaps this won't be necessary due to
a)this won't happen a lot anyway
or
b)it's fine if it happensNow the gear dependability of the feats prevents one person from simultaneously being awesome at a lot of things and the attribute dependancy in training will encourage people to train similar feats but...
I think the main deterrence will be gear. You can't thread gear for every role simultaneously so death gets very expensive. Radical role swapping is very easy to train for but it doesn't seem too practical, at least not practical enough for most to allow themselves to "fall behind" on the daunting grind to max.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
My personal viewpoint is, with limited slots etc... I have nothing against mixtures/blends of classes etc... Now what I would have a problem with (something GW has more or less confirmed will not be the case), is the idea of say, a level 10/10 wiz/fighter on the field being equally effective at wizardry as the straight 10 wizard, and as good at fighting as the straight 10 fighter, After 5ish years into the game when people having both of those become more common, it creates a rather devistating point in which the power level of the 20/20's can completely dwarf and prevent any newer characters from having any shot at being competitive until 5+ years down the road (at which point they will still remain inferior to the now 20/20/20/20's that still crush them.
My fear is actually that the "class purity" advantage will be too much for the mulit classes to exist.
I personally don't plan on much versatility, just because I'm not good enough at games to come close to mastering even one skillset, let alone three to four. Once I hit 20, I may just be done training that character. XD
|
My plan is to try and level whatever Divine Religious Healer Archetype they come up with, mixed heavily with whatever skillsets are required for heavy resource collection, farming/cultivation, and Handle Animal for breeding purposes. So ideally in the 3 year run I think I'd look like.
10 Cleric/Druid
10 Farmer/Tamer
0-5 Channel Energy Specialization
So versatility will play a major role in my character theme, it will be more like I have 2 fairly separate roles I fill, at different distinct times.
In all likelihood I assume my leveling and focusing on the production, process, and distribution themes of the game will impede my "professional adventuring" skillsets. Sure I might have a useful companions, and can provide supplies for 4 weeks in the wild, horses etc, but that might not mean much when the party is staring down a Basilisk. For that reason I plan on playing maximum to the support style so as to provide healing (typically underestimated, especially in PVP style games), a less "attractive" role than many others, particularly bandits, expert fighters, wizards etc.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I've never played a game where healing is underestimated. Usually it's the opposite- everybody thinks a failure is the healer's fault.
If the Tank dies, it's the Healer's fault. If the Healer dies, it's the Tank's fault. If the DPS dies, it's their own damned fault.
On a more serious note, I will be extremely grateful if healers in PFO aren't expected to heal the "tank" for his entire health every other round.
And yes, I remember this thread.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
If the Tank dies, it's the Healer's fault. If the Healer dies, it's the Tank's fault. If the DPS dies, it's their own damned fault.
That's why you make a point of developing a reputation of having high dps. The healers pay attention to your health and you live longer than the other dps :p
With regards to having to heal someone for their whole health bar every few rounds, bear in mind that a healer will have ~6 healing spells at most (or 12 if it works somewhat similar to wizards). The mechanics for how clerics choose their spells will likely be different than wizards, but the number of spells should be comparable, especially given how the slotting of abilities on the keyboard is supposed to work. The blogs also mention having holy symbols coming pre-built with certain abilities including channel energy.
Assuming you can use those ~12 spells for healing plus the holy symbol in the same combat - likely by swapping between the holy symbol and whatever the cleric equivalent of a spell list ends up being - that's not a lot compared to many other MMOs. That's maybe a little over a minute or so of heavy healing depending on how many times you can use the channel energy ... and that's devoting your entire setup to pure healing.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The thing I miss most about City of Heroes is my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes scrapper. I had maxed out defense, 30% Smashing/Lethal Resistance on top of Super Reflexes scaling resists and my second highest DPA attack was a self heal that healed 25% of my health and it could be used every six seconds.
I was DPS that could engage an entire spawn while the rest of the team was working on another and live with no babysitting from healers or tanks.
There is something incredibly satisfying about pulling a Leroy Jenkins and living.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
|
The thing I miss most about City of Heroes is my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes scrapper. I had maxed out defense, 30% Smashing/Lethal Resistance on top of Super Reflexes scaling resists and my second highest DPA attack was a self heal that healed 25% of my health and it could be used every six seconds.
I was DPS that could engage an entire spawn while the rest of the team was working on another and live with no babysitting from healers or tanks.
There is something incredibly satisfying about pulling a Leroy Jenkins and living.
That's reminiscent of my dwarven paladin from vanilla WoW. With a mix of retribution and protection talents, and shield spikes, I could stand and let a whole gand of monsters beat themselves to death on me while I gained health every time I connected. With occasional top-up self healing it felt like playing a perpetual motion machine of death.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I could stand and let a whole gand of monsters beat themselves to death on me while I gained health every time I connected.
First, what's a "gand"?
Second, this is very reminiscent of a Dread Knight ability in Vanguard that does AoE damage that also heals the DK. It felt very over-powered, but kinda fun :)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
First, what's a "gand"?
An inscetoid alien race from Star Wars.
But I think in this case Will meant a gang. ;)