Friday, March 23, 2012

Cookie Cutter Classes and Power Freedom

I blocked out some initial design work for SBRPG 2.0 today, and kept going back and forth on several improvements to the game. I want to keep power design in the game, and not use fixed upgrade lists for powers. The goal of SBRPG is to let players design their powers, and not force everyone to play the same type of character, with similar complexity of play.

That was a great strength of the original game, your class complexity was determined by you, and not the game. I've played many MMOs, and I am weary of being forced to mold my ideas into the MMO designer's idea of a particular class. Some MMO character classes are just so complex to play, while I enjoy that once and a while, being forced to master a complex class when my idea of how it should play is a simple one breaks my expectations, and leads to disappointment.

A good example of this is a typical MMO rogue class. They can be fairly complex to play in a game, with stealth, DoTs, special moves, powers, stun locks, condition adds, and all sorts of other tricks you need to master to play them to their full potential. If my idea of a rogue is a swashbuckling pirate who swings a sword, uses some fancy footwork, and parries with clever repartee - I am all of a sudden not playing the MMO rogue to its full extent. As a result, my rogue's DPS suffers, I am not playing my class, and unhappiness results.

The same thing happens in pen-and-paper games that too tightly define a class role, and expect you to take the per-described builds, powers, and upgrade paths. My idea of what a rogue is will probably be different than the game's, and I am back to my MMO-disappointment again.

A balanced power design system that lets you take whatever powers you can afford was SBRPG's answer to 'playing what you want to play' - and it will remain so.

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