Mechanics and classes

whoa, it's like a circle.

Or is it?

it's a continuation of a circle!

Welp, in light of the new status effects this was literally the first thing that popped into my head

Now that it's known that effort will be put into designing status effects, it'd be really cool to have a character build based around bestowing said status effects. Some kind of ability tree based around using spells like Stun and Root would be really fun to play in both PvP and PvE! I'd imagine this as a more team-based class like a healer would be, but instead of healing or buffing it would be weakening the enemy so others could take it down. Discuss?

Yea, more support could be good and help see more classes than just the warriors and archers everywhere.

I remember something being mentioned about each player having several characters, so wouldn't we all end up with the same builds anyway? Unless there's some advantage to having two warriors.

Priest class and buffer (warlock) class, perhaps? Paladin?

How about instead of having the classes be completely separate from each other, it ends up that after you've maxed out the level in two classes, you can combine them to form one class with its own skills, to start over.

So in a condensed example, suppose there are 4 classes and you can only hold 3 skills at once. So you play through and raise your Warrior and Thief skills to the max level of 100. Now you can fuse them together to create a Rogue class with its own unique skills to allow you to start training a new skill. However, once you've fused them together you can't use them to fuse with other things.

In my example, let's say the skills are Warrior, Thief, Magician, and Merchant. You hold Warrior, Thief, and Magician on your skill bar but can't raise Merchant. Now you level all 3 of these up to level 100. You could combine Warrior and Thief to make Rogue, Warrior and Magician to make a Battle mage, or Thief and Magician to make a Ninja. You decide to combine Warrior and Thief to make a Rogue skill, so now you have Rogue, Magician, and now you can add Merchant. But Rogue combines with no other classes, so you can't do this trick again. Rogue has its own unique abilities that no other skill has, so in this sense you're allowed to max out all skills, but there's no way in which you can ever have all skills simultaneously because they're mutually exclusive.

Just an idea to throw out there, I'm not entirely sure if I like it. If such a thing is put in, it should be allowed to defuse a combined skill back into its parts again for a price of putting them back to level 1 again or whatever.

I'd rather see a sort of "No matter what you pick for skills or abilities, you won't be weaker than another player" going on here. I don't want to level to 100 over and over and over again just to "see" what types of skills I like. I'd rather pick one and know "Hey, this is good for me no matter what", rather than having to go again and again.

Sorry to burst your bubble but this is simply impossible. Balance is an art, not a science. You will notice how the team attempts to balance the classes, however, it will be impossible to completely even the playing field. Once all the combinations appear balanced, somebody, somehow, will always find a way to reduce the balance to rubble. Any updates they make to classes will be hated by users who do not play with that skill because its "overpowered"

If you want a perfectly balanced game, MMORPG's are not for you. Just endure it with the rest of us. Find what works best for you and embrace it. Also, you will be seeing a lot of shifts. When one skill becomes overpowered, everybody will start to pick that skill up. It's just how we are.

I was more along the lines of saying that I don't want to have to selectively pick and choose all my abilities to create the "perfect class". I want it so I can be like "Hey, this looks like a cool ability", choose it, and not worrying about leveling up a bunch and later saying "Crap, should have chosen that other ability or skill." because it doesn't get fixed or goes unnoticed. Then having to re-level all over again just because I need to change one ability. It'll be like a rebirth, except, a lot more times because you "Try this but it doesn't work, so gotta do it all over again'. I'd rather have like a skill tree you can just say "reset" and distribute points over again.

Sorry if my post was unclear. Unfortunately balancing is a nettle in the haystack to accomplish, indeed. Try to find it and more hay just fluffs on in!

I agree with you Archangel, it would suck to re-train skills constantly because you find out something just doesn't go well together and you pretty much start back at level 1 for a new skill. That seems tedious and a feeling of "Oh I failed my own skills, wow I'm a failure."

Although I know some players will be stronger than others, we don't want some builds to feel like they just simply fail.

While you do lose the points you invested in the skill level, the skill will likely be leveled up relative to what mobs you attack. So while it might take a while to level a skill if you are only attacking level 1 monsters. If you were attacking level 100 monsters, a skill might level up quickly and be at a decent level after like an hour or two of grinding. It might take a few days to level back to 100, but the amount of kills needed to get up to level 60 or 70 (roughly; when attacking higher level mobs) might not be too long and you could still do some decent damage at that level. Our attempt is to have a penalty for switching, but not to have it be a major burden that puts people off from the game or trying new things. That is also why I was suggesting to our team that over time (levels) new slots are added. You get the opportunity to try a new skill and change it a few times until you find something you like while still having your good ol' trusty skills waiting.

Also, I believe someone else suggested a memory potion for premium purchase. A way to "forget" a skill temporarily and not lose your level. It would just be one (and only one at a time) temporary slot that lasts for a short time (day/few days/week, maybe there are multiple and more expensive ones can remember longer). You can't use the skill while it is in that temp slot but it would free up one slot for you to try something new. If you didn't swap back the skill after the time passed, you would then forget permanently. And when you do swap back in the skill, you would lose that temp slot and need a new memory potion to remember another skill.