Not to go into the details of what advancement systems we will have or not have inside the game but... this doesn't always work out this rosily, without great designer care. I worked on Meridian 59, which was a wholly skill-based game, and learned a lot about the strengths and pitfalls of systems like it. One of my great pet peeves of pure skill-based systems is that they claim that they are more realistic, but they in fact can create extremely unrealistic situations inside the world.
In the original Everquest, it was not uncommon to see a player throwing himself off a cliff over and over again to improve his safe falling skill, or to see a person macroing some random text gibberish in order to improve his languages. In Meridian 59, players used to park themselves in front of low level monsters and leave the keyboard - they were unlikely to die, and could accumulate defense points in a slow, steady and totally risk-free manor. In Oblivion, the best way to build an assassin character is to hop through fields picking flowers. Jumping improves your Acrobatics (I believe), and the player needs enough flowers to grind up his Poisoning skill.
Sure, each of these could be destupidified with enough designer/programmer time and focus, but then you're coding, QAing and exploit-proofing a different advancement mechanism for every skill in the game. And you'll probably still end up with some silliness somewhere.
somehow get better at something completely unrelated. - I know I was too, young in my career when I designed M59. But one of the most important thing for advancement systems is that you get the behavior you incentivize. In a classic XP/Level based system, you are incentivizing your XP-granting behaviors (which in SWTOR is tilted strongly towards questing). In skill-based systems, it is trivially easy to accidentally incentivize really stupid and boring behaviors.
More from BioWare's Randy Begel, Charles Boyd, and Brian Arndt after the jump.
BioWare writer Randy Begel posted a poll to see what the motivations are behind people's Star Wars: The Old Republic class choices:
There are a lot of class polls on the forums. Most touch on what people's favorite (or least favorite) classes are, but I'd like to take the question a step further and ask why. For instance, is it a desire to stand defiantly against tyranny (story) that draws you to being a Jedi Knight, is it the appeal of flashy lightsaber combat and force acrobatics (gameplay), or perhaps just the aesthetics of being the space knight in shining armor (appearance/vanity)?
Obviously, the number of motivations aside from these basic three are legion, but I think these cover the most likely reasons certain classes appeal to certain people (and I can't have more that 25 options in my already convoluted poll, so blame it on technical limitations if you must!)
So let's hear it, which class will you play and why?
Brian Arndt cleared up some controversy regarding a distant figure in a screenshot:
Originally Posted by Altyrell
in this picture? http://www.thegalacticstruggle.com/w.../may2010/1.jpg
It's hard to tell, as the person is too far in the background to tell
It's actually a human player character that wandered into my screenshot :)
And Charles Boyd consoled those who mourn the lack of a Sith Trooper class:
Never underestimate the opposition, soldier!
The Sith Empire has an extensive military with all of the divisions and operational groups that one would expect. You might not hear much about them currently since there isn't a Player class representing them, but they're out there. ;)
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Posted 5/18/2010 6:58:28 AMInstead of 4 classes per side you get 8 and that's it. So one bases its early-on-choice, of which class to pick, upon scrappy information gathered here and there. This is the case in any other MMO that launches. If you realize midway "uh darn the Juggernaut is not my play style" then it would be no different from realizing that playing a Templar in Aion or a Chosen in WAR is not one's favourite. Just reroll another class. What's the big deal? Eventually everyone will end up with having played multiple classes and find their favourite for group/raid content.
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Posted 5/18/2010 12:12:41 AMIm pretty sure Bioware has a plan for this if you think about it they have thought everything threw, just look at this post. There even thinking of how worthless some skills are and there trying to get rid of that. They said they want to get rid of the trinity, so I am thinking that all the classes are going to be hybrids. Some classes can heal/dps some can tank/dps and so on. This is just speculation on my part, but by what they said in past interviews I cant really think of any other way to do this.
By the way anyone else going to a midnight release to get Red Dead Redemption lol?
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Posted 5/17/2010 10:28:20 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 7:53:56 PMAs I have never been a person so much for quests and tend to LvL up more through just grinding mobs that running around for NPC's. The only reason really to lvl was to get to end game. Sure there was a small sense of progression IE talent pts and new skills but I never got the sense of why I was supposed to be questing. Only that I was trying to get to cap.
I think the story based building scheme that TOR has is really (hopefully) going to take away from that feeling of not really caring about the "How" and giving us the "Why". Making people feel more in touch and also in control of their character and their progression.
As far as a skill based system. I don't know, I personally think it's garbage. Specially if we are talking about using the same skill over and over to make it better. Systems like this allow for far to much manipulation. Where people don't even have to play the game to advance themselves.
Although, in games like GW. That system can be a bit more dynamic because there are so many skill and abilities to choose from. Essentially and infinite amount of ways to build you character you can really tailor make you toon to completely play the way you want. Leaving the possibilities endless. Although I can really appreciate this kind of system. I think the MMO community as a whole needs to have some boundaries and guild-lines for everyone to follow.
I believe it adds the flow of a game that we all need
Sinphonic -GM- Infensus Obscurum
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Posted 5/17/2010 5:27:46 PMThe first generation of MMO games hit a market that was hungry. There were only a handful of games competing in the MMO space, and so a designer could get away with demanding that the player suffer through tedium and boredom in order to achieve in-game goals. That's not today's game marketplace. The moment a game becomes boring, now, there are dozens of alternatives offering respite and stimulation. If SWTOR isn't fun, then I'll take another character up through 85 in WoW, or get the expansion for AoC, which I heard was much improved, or join my comic book enthusiast friends in Champions Online again. Those are just the options on the table today - by this time next year, I will also be able to choose StarCraft II or one of the other amazing games that are certain to come out in the future.
A system that awards XP for level based advancement doesn't just promote quest completion by rewarding it with progression, it promotes progression by linking it to stuff that the player actually wants to do.
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Posted 5/17/2010 5:20:08 PMAs for Brian Arndt's comment, I always hate when silly humans walk into my pictures !
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Posted 5/17/2010 5:05:27 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 3:00:45 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 2:49:56 PMhttp://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2938608#post2938608
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Posted 5/17/2010 2:55:44 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 1:40:11 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 8:15:27 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/17/2010 1:24:22 PMPeople like that spend HUGE amounts of time keeping skills caught up in systems like that. IMHO, this sort of thing is not desirable. Would rather spend my time experiencing the story.
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Posted 5/18/2010 4:10:59 PMIn LotRO, I thoroughly enjoyed the questing lines (base, epic quests and the few class quests) and the leveling came naturally - no grinding.
My two un-enjoyable elements to the game were the crafting-related leveling (collect mats, make useless stuff, sell it, level up, rinse & repeat) and the trait-related leveling (kill 100 mobs for a title, kill another 240 for the trait that you can respec).
The normal skill advancement came linearly as you leveled. You knew that at level 58, you would get X skill. Some were passive (crit chance, block/parry improvements) and some were active skills (attacks, heals, etc). "Legendary Skills" were a pool of 5 skills that you could slot 3. Small flexibility, but flexible none-the-less.
I see TOR's approach for what it's intended. If I roll a toon for its class, I should have most of the enjoyment factor in place. Allow me to tweak my skills as I progress (to match my gameplay style or intended use of the toon) and you've given me that extra flexibility to get it "just right". If I use my gut feeling to choose these skills to match my personality, I shouldn't get too far off the path. A respec would be appreciated and I'll say let's wait and see on that one.
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Posted 5/17/2010 2:50:08 PM