Balancing classes

[rynald]

Most players prefer casters nowadays, which means the classes aren't balanced anymore. Casters seem to do more damage and heal faster than melee. What should be done about this: nerf casters, boost melee, or make melee more interesting in a different way?

PK can be improved too and since changes to PK can influence the balance of classes and vice versa, you can voice your thoughts about this here as well.

[Jubei]

I've  thought about this alot playing both types frequently and striving to min-max both to their maximum potential, under conditions casters are much more overpowered but i think the problem lies moreso in melees deficits rather than how overpowered casters can be in certain conditions.

For me the most enjoyable PVE experience i have is playing as a priest, you can heal yourself for about 900 a round do a good consistant 3-5k area spell to most mobs and can kill most mobs in the game solo with abit of skill and the right setups. With esper you can kill any boss in the game easier than a group of 3 players could, mage is pretty lackluster but it's still a caster with decent area spells just not as strong as esper or priest. PVP priests are overpowered in some respect however they are killable if you know how to fight them and get some lucky lagspikes.

Sure it's fun playing a slightly broken class but this is the thing some mobs in this game just require that level of brokeness to be defeated so when i say it is my most enjoyable class it's only because it's the most viable solution because you don't need to carry around 100 opas just to kill a hard boss solo.

Now we get to melee my most enjoyable PVP type Melee vs Melee in pvp feels right and i really wouldn't change too much. Melee in pve plainly sucks unlike caster they have no area spells/skills so leveling and lifedraining mobs is gimped to a 1v1 slow form of attack vs clearing a whole room in a matter of seconds. They get a high tier skill of thier class @ tier 4 which is great after having to bore through kickspamming the previous tiers which unlike casters who get alot more different spells along the way that they can use in an aggresive form of higher damage as they are leveling up.

You know something is wrong when wearing dumpster char gear and an ironwood staff casting earthquake as a gm being a melee is more damage than having a geared melee in melee gear using skills his class intended being much more effective in damaging rooms of mobs and leveling.

How would i propose to fix said problems? I couldn't possibly know where to start to be honest it's a massive job and i know how you'd feel. You wanna make things more balanced by in a system like this it's very hard to tweak one thing and it will collapse another thing.

Things I find you could change without fucking up full balance that is make a t2 skill on one of the melee classes an area skill that does about 2kish aoe on a semi geared melee maybe that scales to about 4-5kish on a well geared melee at a high tier at least that way melee are on the same grounds as casters in terms of leveling.
And maybe some more diverse skills that bring uniqueness to the other melee classes, For example a gypsy can magic bubble, woodsing and tinker but can't dodge. A thief can peek invents use dodge, shield block and phase and circle which makes them tanky as hell but still lethal, a ranger can dodge, phase and block but doesn't have anything else why you'd choose that over a thief or gypsy who knows you'd be effectively gimping yourself, so in that respect i'd make a new skill that puts them in the right spot of uniqueness and gives them a reason for people to play them.

Hunter/Warrior can brace so they are effectively awesome but still they only have parry, brace and shieldblock hunter being a slight better due to having hyperactivity and blade dance giving them abit more speed which are the "Tank" classes biggest problems i'd definately pump their speed abit more. i think i was at about 500 speed max @t4 while mounted with nothing in my inventory as a warrior i'd like to see that at least to be 600-700 but also maybe something abit more unique in terms of skills. For instance just of the top of my head if warrior had an bloodlust skill that effectively works like aggro set after you cast it you go into a frenzy get a decent dr bonus become unable to flee and your forced to kill everything in the room and it subsides when you die or everything in the room is dead. Hunter also needs something to make it viable brace is great but how many full time warriors/hunters do you see 0 thats right they need a gimmick skill.

TLDR: Casters are op in the wrong hands, Melee needs area skills and individual new handy spells/skills

Anyway thats just afew of my cents I could harp on even more but Ill save it for another time.

[Bane]

This is something I've put a lot of thought into and something I've really wanted to target over the past year. I had planned on doing some testing with gladiators to see how my idea below would pan out. I haven't quite finished the initial design I have in mind to put forward in real testing. But basically what I have in mind is below and the reason for wanting to do so.


Our whole spell/skill system is a very dull system. Most are based off the same idea of the weapon damage and giving modifiers for certain conditions. Which is fine for some, but what system lacks is any additional affects added behind the skills/spells, and getting away from having to use a same skill/spell constantly over and over. Not all skills/spells shouldn't be spammable but I think making the system more dynamic will give the better ability to properly balance classes plus make all classes more enjoyable and not feel very generic.

Give classes the ability to have powerful opening attacks and/or finishers, mixed in with the ability to stun + damage, do negative affects + damage, combine with having a few good spells/skills that are spamable to fill in the gaps of spells that you are currently waiting for to come off of cool down.

A lot of Mmorpgs that have a  rotation or combo of skills/spells they use in game while fighting, They use one spell/skill it goes on cool down they move onto another and the process rinse and repeats, until they are forced to go off combo to remove debuffs or heal etc. And while their best skills/spells are on cool down they use lower damage repeatable spells/skills to fill in those gaps. These spells/skills that are on cool down usually have high end damage, or give a player a positive affect or give the player/mob being attacked a debuff.

So if we make the spell/skill system more dynamic I have better feelings that we can make more classes enjoyable, along with balancing them.

Right now people target Gypsy and Priest the most due to mainly these spells/skills that I feel are currently overpowered.

Mana Shield

Thorn Shield

Heal

Midas Touch

Magic Bubble

You take away these and then Gypsy and Priest would basically be just like the rest of the classes. There is really no big difference from one caster class to the next and same for melee. Not saying they need to be taken away, but they need changed, some need the whole idea changed behind them. Ive been working on a something that over the next week I will be posting something that will break down each class into how they should be represented in the mud and what can we do to represent that idea in the mud. And if we moved forward with a better dynamic spell/skll system, we can get away from classes being so generic, get away from pvm being a mindless task of spamming a skill/spell.

Now PvP does closely relate to this, but there are other aspects of PVP that need to be taken into account. Looting/ Damage/ Tier Difference/ Fleeing from fights, just a few off the top of my list I have in word pad.

Mobs should also be taken into account here as well. Mobs are very generic here as well. A mobs hardness shouldn't just mostly be defined by its speed from its tier and its dice. You bring in a better dynamic spell/skill system you can bring in more classes of mobs that can use these spells/skills without the use of having it to be scripted, which then you could get away from mobs having retarded attacks per tick, and make the combat better and less predictable. The mob side of this i believe shouldnt be a primary focus until the rest is done.

We shouldn't just start adding in generic skills/spells to buff up other classes, it should be done correctly, with  a lot of initial design then testing. Get away from the generic feeling. Then on top of adding in a dynamic spell/skill system you give the player different ways to build the class.

It would be much more fun to see a priest have multiple ways to block or reduce damage while beaing able to chip away at its opponent, or be able to go another route where they could do a lot of damage with dark magic, but have a lot fewer healing spells or ways to block reduce damage.

Thieves could have powerful openers and finisher spells as an assassin or they could go another route where they rely on their quickness and dexterity in fights.

I would give classes at least two different paths they could take to build their class. If you like the idea, I don't believe implanting a better spell/skill system would be a huge issue as far as coding. It doesn't require the removal of our current combat system. I feel like this alone could greatly improve our combat system, without having to tear it down and start from scratch.

If you want to see what I have for breaking down the classes Roland send me an email and Ill send it to you first, Id like to see your thoughts in it before posting it. I don't think its the easiest route to go, but I think its one of the better routes to go. I think we could do a lot with just spells/skills to change combat that wouldn't require a complete rewrite from the ground up. I could be wrong and it might not be that easy. Any way you look at it, if you want to get rid of the generic feeling then I think this is the best place to start. It may turn out to be more complex then our current combat code could handle, But I think we could work with what we have and prevail.

This system would even be able to favor multi-classing.

To basically sum it up, Make each class its own class, get away from generic skills/spells. Bring in a rotation type skill/spell system. Let classes be able to branch different ways. Focus more on a affect/debuff skills/spells.

It would require real testing, and would be good to have a group of players join a peer group for the testing.