Looking For... (MMO)
I've been looking at some other MMOs lately -- not to actually play them, but to see what they're like for character design and such. And frankly, I think Guild Wars has spoiled me for any other MMO out there. I was looking at DCUO, and was annoyed at the breakdown into types, such as 'blaster, tank, controller'. I looked at Perfect World, and saw much the same thing. As far as I can tell, Champions Online and City of Heroes also has this kind of thing. And as I look around, and I see these themes, it starts to annoy me.
"Fit into this nice little niche so we know what you are."
In Guild Wars 1, there's very little of that. The only big demand in GW1 is "We need a Dedicated Healer." As long as a group has a healer, there's really no demand for much else. You might get annoyed if there's too many warriors / rangers in the group, but if you have a nice mix of professions -- regardless of what they are -- things will generally be okay. See, the reason for this, is that most characters can switch through a variety of roles, and players can tweak their characters towards a wide range of allowances. There's some niching, but the niches are so broad as to be mostly pointless.
For example, my ranger. I've done a number of things with ranger builds -- from spiker (huge bursts of damage for short periods of time), to mage blockers (interrupt / daze), to trap builders (goad enemies into area, cripple and damage)... but the one build I enjoy is something a little... strange. I have the skill Barrage, which allows me to hit clusters of enemies for reasonable damage. It slowly whittles away at the enemies, but strangely, that isn't the point of the build. The reason I have this skill is to build up Adrenaline (a charging pool) to fuel one specific skill. This skill makes my allies reasonably damage-resistant for a period of time. And the more people I hit, the faster this charges, and the more often I can drop it off.
So, my character -- using a fighting profession -- is a buffer.
My sister had a Mesmer -- a class designed to screw with enemies by hitting them in their energy / mana bar and interrupting their skills. She decided to completely ignore that, and focus on two specific things Mesmers have going for them. 1) Fast Cast -- Mesmers drop spells faster than anyone else. 2) Energy management -- she wanted to recover expended energy faster than normal. The reason she did this was because she had spells which she could enchant allies with -- giving them regeneration and rapid energy recovery -- at the cost of reducing her energy recovery. So, she'd buff her allies, cripple her own energy, then use signets (skills with 0 energy cost) to recover her energy. Her 'key skill' was a nuke. A long-casting-time spell which drops a huge amount of damage on a single area, burning anyone who stands there. Because she's a mesmer, she could drop that spell off in a fraction of the normal casting time, and she had weapon props to speed up the recharge from time to time.
This made her -- a weak 'controller' class, into a buffer and a nuker.
Guild Wars 2 is doing more of this sort of thing, allowing you to mess around with preconceptions, and I would love to see this in other MMOs. There's three super hero MMOs I'm aware of, and none of them give quite that much flexibility. Too many MMOs have far too much 'fit into this role!', and I find myself bristling at this now.
I hope the trend that GW1 started and GW2 continues will catch on.
"Fit into this nice little niche so we know what you are."
In Guild Wars 1, there's very little of that. The only big demand in GW1 is "We need a Dedicated Healer." As long as a group has a healer, there's really no demand for much else. You might get annoyed if there's too many warriors / rangers in the group, but if you have a nice mix of professions -- regardless of what they are -- things will generally be okay. See, the reason for this, is that most characters can switch through a variety of roles, and players can tweak their characters towards a wide range of allowances. There's some niching, but the niches are so broad as to be mostly pointless.
For example, my ranger. I've done a number of things with ranger builds -- from spiker (huge bursts of damage for short periods of time), to mage blockers (interrupt / daze), to trap builders (goad enemies into area, cripple and damage)... but the one build I enjoy is something a little... strange. I have the skill Barrage, which allows me to hit clusters of enemies for reasonable damage. It slowly whittles away at the enemies, but strangely, that isn't the point of the build. The reason I have this skill is to build up Adrenaline (a charging pool) to fuel one specific skill. This skill makes my allies reasonably damage-resistant for a period of time. And the more people I hit, the faster this charges, and the more often I can drop it off.
So, my character -- using a fighting profession -- is a buffer.
My sister had a Mesmer -- a class designed to screw with enemies by hitting them in their energy / mana bar and interrupting their skills. She decided to completely ignore that, and focus on two specific things Mesmers have going for them. 1) Fast Cast -- Mesmers drop spells faster than anyone else. 2) Energy management -- she wanted to recover expended energy faster than normal. The reason she did this was because she had spells which she could enchant allies with -- giving them regeneration and rapid energy recovery -- at the cost of reducing her energy recovery. So, she'd buff her allies, cripple her own energy, then use signets (skills with 0 energy cost) to recover her energy. Her 'key skill' was a nuke. A long-casting-time spell which drops a huge amount of damage on a single area, burning anyone who stands there. Because she's a mesmer, she could drop that spell off in a fraction of the normal casting time, and she had weapon props to speed up the recharge from time to time.
This made her -- a weak 'controller' class, into a buffer and a nuker.
Guild Wars 2 is doing more of this sort of thing, allowing you to mess around with preconceptions, and I would love to see this in other MMOs. There's three super hero MMOs I'm aware of, and none of them give quite that much flexibility. Too many MMOs have far too much 'fit into this role!', and I find myself bristling at this now.
I hope the trend that GW1 started and GW2 continues will catch on.