Schwerpunkt
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Posts: 422
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 20, 2013 23:51:57 GMT -6
Breaks weren't really CC (unless you consider spamming low success rate Speed Break a CC). Two of them (Head, Chest) were permanent HP damage. Two (Accessory, Shield) were permanent Ev reductions (or a cancelling out of whatever buff the accessory was). Only one could be considered a CC, and only then when referring to units that absolutely needed it.
CC is stuff like Stop, Toad, Don't Act, and Silence (for casters). Arguably Slow. Generally speaking, CC is something that temporarily takes an enemy out of combat (or at least severely degrades his performance). Taunt doesn't qualify; all that's doing is directing their damage.
As for the matter of simplifying base classes, I disagree. Think about it; people are going to be 'stuck' with a basic class for awhile. If we open up a second class at 15, and the awarded/master at 25, that's a lot of time to spend with "basic" classes. Even assume you gain 1 level per PT (which is pretty reasonable), you've got 14 PTs until you get a second class. Assuming one week per PT (which should be feasible if we get almost everything automated), you're talking about just over 3 months as a "basic" class that is boring. And then, in all likelihood, a comparable period of time until you get to the classes with all the really interesting ideas.
Simply put, people aren't going to want to slog through six months of PTs just to get to the interesting stuff. I've heard a lot about how open FF13 gets, but I've never gotten that far because it's like 20 solid hours of running down a pretty corridor. The problem would be similar here, if less in-your-face about it.
I think I speak for Kablizzy too when I say that we don't want all of our interesting ideas to be with the base classes. We don't want the prestige classes to just feel like more of the same, only this time it hurts more. But we don't want our base classes to feel like the really one-note jobs they were in FFT (which could get away with it, since you could simply change jobs).
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 21, 2013 2:20:10 GMT -6
Okay, from last post backwards.
Definitely don't want all of our cool ideas loaded into just the Base classes. But also don't want our Prestige Classes to be the only ones with cool abilities - I just want the cool-er ones there, as a kind of reward for the player. Have some nifty stuff to play around with in your Base class, grab a few abilities from your Secondary / Tertiary classes, and then further identify your character from there with your Prestige Class.
But before we go further, I want to define the classes, top-to-bottom. I want to know three things from you guys:
1. What would you like to do about class trees? I'd like to explore the POJ, MOJ, and HOJ tree setup to see if it's viable. From my count, if we do 7 each, we're at 21 base classes, and if we do 8 each, that makes for 24. Not too shabby.
2. After that, I'd like for us to figure out what classes we're launching with, compile that list, and then go forward with a completed list.
3. I think we have to define what we want from each class before we start getting into abilities. This really won't work otherwise. I would weigh in on Knight, but I have no idea what we're doing with it yet - We haven't agreed on a direction. So, that's vital, in my eyes.
After we figure out what we're doing with class trees, and hopefully explore the three-tree setup, then we can get into what classes we're launching with, and then let's get into abilities, perhaps?
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Post by Ilium on Apr 21, 2013 10:35:26 GMT -6
Breaks weren't really CC (unless you consider spamming low success rate Speed Break a CC). Two of them (Head, Chest) were permanent HP damage. Two (Accessory, Shield) were permanent Ev reductions (or a cancelling out of whatever buff the accessory was). Only one could be considered a CC, and only then when referring to units that absolutely needed it. CC is stuff like Stop, Toad, Don't Act, and Silence (for casters). Arguably Slow. Generally speaking, CC is something that temporarily takes an enemy out of combat (or at least severely degrades his performance). Taunt doesn't qualify; all that's doing is directing their damage. I understand and agree with how you describe CC works in the Final Fantasy game environment. However if you disarm a Lancer's spear, you are effectively taking him out of combat. If you Provoke the enemies' Dancer into attacking you, you are effectively taking that unit out of combat. However at this point we are arguing semantics. This is a misunderstanding of what I meant about base classes, and perhaps I didn't explain myself clearly. What I meant about base classes is that they shouldn't be themed in any certain way. They should act as a canvas upon which the player paints their own art. The abilities will not be a 'simplified' skillset, far from it; rather, they are varied list of actions providing the PC with multiple avenues to pursue combat scenarios. What I meant about not being themed, is that we should provide abilities that are unique in their description and their effects, but do not go into detail with a broad description of how that skill works. If we build an entire skill set in this method, we create a job that is very rigid in what is expected out of it in combat. Instead, we provide an ability and description like this one used at Heroes of Ivalice: Intimidating Slash: The Knight uses a display of motion that is good for intimidating effects....And we allow Player A to come up with how is Knight-turned-pirate character swings his Coral Sword around flippantly when using this ability, or Player B's Shrine Knight-in-training unsheathes his Ancient Sword and stabs it into the ground, blessing the field of battle. Continuing to use this method to build a skillset for a job, we create a class with a multitude of possible actions to use other than the standard 'Attack' command, while giving the player themselves the control in how their particular instance of 'Knight Class' acts and behaves. Instead of it being a three month slog through a boring class, we give every player the opportunity to role play their character how they want, while exploring multiple ways of approaching combat. Also, I didn't mean that we keep all of the 'interesting' skills saved away for the Master and Specialist classes. What I meant is that creative direction of making a themed class is better served for us when contemplating Specialist classes. Consider as an example your Outrider class: This is an example of where a themed skillset could be put to good use. In the event that we have players that are put in a position where they can achieve this class, they will have already demonstrated their particular instance of 'Archer Class' or whatever, as Ordalian riders with a penchant for longbows and speed. So we have the chance to create a Specialist class that exemplifies these skills accordingly. However we shouldn't even concern ourselves with this right now. One more point, on the topic of game turn speed: While one week per turn will certainly be feasible in the future with automation, I feel this might be too quick. Two weeks per turn will still be a massive improvement over HoI and other sims for that matter, while giving our player base the opportunity roleplay their actions and conversations that take place that turn. We shouldn't create an environment where a roleplay situation that might take a month or more to flesh out, after time has to deal with the fact that 4+ game turns have passed and the situation each character was in at the start of the RP might have changed drastically. Okay, from last post backwards. Definitely don't want all of our cool ideas loaded into just the Base classes. But also don't want our Prestige Classes to be the only ones with cool abilities - I just want the cool-er ones there, as a kind of reward for the player. Have some nifty stuff to play around with in your Base class, grab a few abilities from your Secondary / Tertiary classes, and then further identify your character from there with your Prestige Class. This is basically the way in which I am approaching primary classes, and is really the only way that makes sense. However it is not enough to explain it in a few sentences when concerning mechanics balancing, so it needs to be fleshed out. This is the way I personally am approaching classes: I understand and agree with the idea of giving classes certain perks that would make them more interesting secondary or tertiary classes. However I think we can expand on all of this by creating a base list of what we need each class to accomplish: - One or more 'standard' combat ability/ies, making the class viable as a primary choice for all aspects of the game.
- Like above, however this skill would be passive, or perhaps non-combative. A lot of movement skills from the original game do this well already, and I feel we would only need to make minor tweaks here, or whatever people would see as an improvement.
- Expanding on the first two bullets, let's make sure each class has one 'basic' ability available across the board, Primary/Secondary/Tertiary. Likewise, each class gets one 'advanced' ability available to Primary/Secondary, and one 'elite' ability available to Primaries only. Once we are able to find one skill for each tier, we can add more to this list depending on balance issues and variance. This shouldn't be too difficult to do, and hopefully I'm not making it sound like it is.
- Along with ability choice, stat buffs according to secondary/tertiary choices needs to be balanced well, again something that shouldn't be too difficult.
| POJ | MOJ
| HOJ
| | Squire | Chemist
| Monk
| Knight
| Black Mage
| Geomancer
| Archer
| White Mage
| Mediator
| Thief
| Time Mage
| Bard
| Lancer
| Summoner
| Dancer
| Samurai
| Calculator
| Red Mage
| Ninja
| Oracle
| Mime
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Some of the Hybrid job spots could come up for grabs, and depending on what we decide to do with Squire and Chemist, I think this is a good representation of a three tier job tree. This is not entirely feasible. In the instance of the Squire let's say, where Schwerpunkt would like to see it removed, both you and I have expressed our desire to see what we can come up with from this class and see if we can bring it up to our standards. So then we will naturally enter into discussion about the Squire's stat growth and abilities, before we have even decided if we can use it for a job choice. Naturally we can expect some classes to make the final cut, so inserting this restriction would not be a wise management of time. This again I disagree with. What we want from each class, and that class's abilities work in tandem. The two variables go hand in hand, so it would be counterproductive to try and come up with a figurative 'direction' for a class, then come back to it later and try implement a skillset around this barrier. I feel it is a much more constructive use of our time if we discuss every aspect of a class at once, pour all of our concentration into it, then continue from there. You said as much in your first post in this thread: However if it is necessary to have some sort of definition of what we want from our class, I feel Schwerpunkt's write up on this subject is sufficient for us to all feel comfortable and move forward from: So, using this formula, I provided my ideas for the Knight to serve as a tank class, Schwerpunkt brought up his criticisms and provided his own example skillset, I concurred with alot of his concerns and provided a compromised skillset, and somewhere in between here and there we have suffered a communication breakdown. |
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 21, 2013 11:37:43 GMT -6
I mean tentative list, of course. For instance, with Schwer's list, he wanted germanic-seeming naming. Had we had a unified direction for Knight, we'd be a step farther, is all. Definitely nothing rigid, and certainly something capable of changing. Also, your tentative three-tree list fulfills my requirement for "What classes we're launching with", so good to go! So, for my Knight -
I'd rather err on the side of FFT naming conventions and I like the canvas concept. My Knight build would probably look like this:
So, new stuff from my ideas - Critical Block, Critical Haste (Merge with Survivalism), Full Defense as a Support (Versetzen), Braveheart (Eisenport), Shieldbearer, Monkey Grip, Equip Shields, Equip Swords, First Aid, Power Break (or Disarms), Magic Break, Cover, and Climhazzard. This list can be shaved down, of course, and merged with what we have, if we find anything intriguing.
I feel strongly about Climhazzard and Cover, less so about First Aid, and even less so about the Disarms / Rends. Those appear in Knight roles all over the place. The rest is up for discussion, I suppose. Didn't do much with JP, since we can balance that a bit later, except for stuff that I felt more strongly with.
To combine the list a bit - (JP costs are up in the air)
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Schwerpunkt
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Who would ever want to be king?
Posts: 422
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 21, 2013 12:49:18 GMT -6
Again, if we're not going to adhere to the naming theme I proposed, I'd rather we do not use any of the dueling terms. If we don't use the names there, I can simply use them on the Berserker and voila, the class is 50% done (the rest of the work is just figuring out what they do).
As I see it, the Knight exists to control the area immediately around him. HoI's Zone of Control system was pretty clunky (especially when dealing with high-move targets), so giving the knight a taunt is (probably) more effective.
If we could make ZoC work, I'd be in favor of that. But I don't see it.
While I get where you're coming from, you're talking about pursuing full-blown dev on a class that just isn't unique. This will take hours of time from everyone involved. All told, we may waste an entire day (or more, since we never seem to be on at the same time) experimenting with the Squire and trying to bring it up to par.
How about we cut it now, and revisit it after we've gone over the other classes? That way we can more effectively see whether or not the Squire fits in the context of the game as a whole without spending precious (and limited) dev hours on it.
Yeah. I construed your "canvas" system (which, for the record, I like) to be something along the lines of "let's make the base classes boring because people won't be playing them for very long." That idea I don't like, but it's not the position you're advocating, so eh.
Now, on to Knight stuff.
1. 'Weapon Guard' is a shoddy translation of 'Parry' ('Versetzen' being the fancy HEMA term for it). And since parrying is pretty much at the core of every single fencing and dueling school, it really should be in the game.
2. I don't like Climhazzard because it immediately calls Cloud to mind.
3. Knights shouldn't be able to heal themselves with an ability. That's why they carry potions. Also, what is "outside of combat" here? In Props?
4. Disarm and Rend serve the same purpose, mechanically, of (temporarily, because permanently is horribly unfair) depriving a target of a given item. Disarm makes more sense for weapons and shields, but I'd reserve 'Rend' for helmets and armor.
5. Monkey Grip may be hugely problematic if we see a knight with a claymore tacking on a shield. Or, if that Knight picks up Ninja later, dual wielding claymores and positively wrecking everyone's face. In order for it to not be horribly overpowered, claymores would need really shitty P-Ev. An interesting option may be to give them higher M-Ev. That'd let the Knight sort of tank magic better.
6. Shield Bash would be neater if it just canceled any 'Charging' action... although that may make Knights horrifically overpowered in duels. "Oh, you want to heal? Eat shield rim, Priest!" But I think it works better with Magic Break. I like the idea of Shield Bash having a knockback.
7. I'm fine with Braveheart.
8. Even if we're not keeping the theme, allowing the knight to Cleave the guys immediately in front of him (up to three on hex grids) would be very useful for mass tanking and such. And who doesn't love spamming Cleave?
9. I'd replace 'Cover' with 'Intervene,' which would allow a Knight to basically sprint at an enemy and do a flying Shield Bash. The Knight takes the enemy's tile, the enemy is knocked back one (or two). Also, flying Shield Bash is such an awesome concept that it needs to be here. This may be hard to balance, though.
10. Shieldbearer is kind of silly. Makes me think of dual wielding shields. That's an example of min-maxing getting out of control.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 21, 2013 13:33:15 GMT -6
Again, if we're not going to adhere to the naming theme I proposed, I'd rather we do not use any of the dueling terms. If we don't use the names there, I can simply use them on the Berserker and voila, the class is 50% done (the rest of the work is just figuring out what they do). Now, on to Knight stuff. 1. 'Weapon Guard' is a shoddy translation of 'Parry' ('Versetzen' being the fancy HEMA term for it). And since parrying is pretty much at the core of every single fencing and dueling school, it really should be in the game. 2. I don't like Climhazzard because it immediately calls Cloud to mind. 3. Knights shouldn't be able to heal themselves with an ability. That's why they carry potions. Also, what is "outside of combat" here? In Props? 4. Disarm and Rend serve the same purpose, mechanically, of (temporarily, because permanently is horribly unfair) depriving a target of a given item. Disarm makes more sense for weapons and shields, but I'd reserve 'Rend' for helmets and armor. 5. Monkey Grip may be hugely problematic if we see a knight with a claymore tacking on a shield. Or, if that Knight picks up Ninja later, dual wielding claymores and positively wrecking everyone's face. In order for it to not be horribly overpowered, claymores would need really shitty P-Ev. An interesting option may be to give them higher M-Ev. That'd let the Knight sort of tank magic better. 6. Shield Bash would be neater if it just canceled any 'Charging' action... although that may make Knights horrifically overpowered in duels. "Oh, you want to heal? Eat shield rim, Priest!" But I think it works better with Magic Break. I like the idea of Shield Bash having a knockback. 7. I'm fine with Braveheart. 8. Even if we're not keeping the theme, allowing the knight to Cleave the guys immediately in front of him (up to three on hex grids) would be very useful for mass tanking and such. And who doesn't love spamming Cleave? 9. I'd replace 'Cover' with 'Intervene,' which would allow a Knight to basically sprint at an enemy and do a flying Shield Bash. The Knight takes the enemy's tile, the enemy is knocked back one (or two). Also, flying Shield Bash is such an awesome concept that it needs to be here. This may be hard to balance, though. 10. Shieldbearer is kind of silly. Makes me think of dual wielding shields. That's an example of min-maxing getting out of control. Yep, we can use the dueling terms elsewhere. We have names from Canon for Knight that can act similarly anyway. 1. Parry works. 2. Climhazzard was on five or six Knight classes besides Cloud, but you're right, Cloud had the most use out of it. I liked it because it's a higher-end attack skill that makes Knight a bit more viable as a Primary. 3. I was thinking in PTs (For Temporary injuries and such). Also, First Aid is rampant on Knights, and it'd be a weaker ability. Kind of akin to Paladin and such. Beyond that, it can be strictly others, which makes sense. 4. I think Disarm makes more sense too. 5. Interesting. This was one of the abilities I was iffy on, perhaps move Monkey Grip to a prestige class? 6. I liked combining all three of the ideas (Yours, Ilium's and mine) into one thing, but knockback would be awesome for Knight to have. 7. Aye. 8. This may be a replacement for a more primary skill like Climhazzard. Something that lets the Knight hit two or three in front of him would be cool. 9. I can see some balancing issues with that, but Cover totally needs to be in the game in some form. It's in every Knight concept build since time began. Flying shield bash could also be combined in with regular shield bash. 10. Shieldbearer is dumb, I agree. Just included it for posterity. |
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Post by pendejochy on Apr 22, 2013 3:31:48 GMT -6
What if we tried what HoI did and have lower level people level up faster, and then go to normal pace once they get enough levels to get a secondary job?
It'd take a little pressure off the idea of trying to make your vanilla dazzling, since people wouldn't take too long before they could spice up their basic stuff.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 22, 2013 3:41:51 GMT -6
I'm not entirely of the camp that Basic classes need to be boring - in fact, they should be unique and fun and in some ways, character-defining. But by the same token, I want some tricks saved for Prestige Classes, but I definitely wouldn't mind looking into that at all.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 22, 2013 4:21:33 GMT -6
Part of what bored me about HoI was that, in addition to the crazy-long turns, the initial classes just lacked flavor. It was a game that very much awarded you for toughing it out for a prolonged period (a time measured in years). But if you weren't possessed of the kind of super-human dedication and/or patience that most of the really long-term players exhibited, you simply didn't get any really interesting class builds.
I think that's hugely problematic. Even if we manage to have much faster turn changes (and, between Ilium and Ten, I think we should have most of the calculations automated in some way), we're still looking at a fairly long period of time between players get to the "fun" stuff. And while I'm all for awarding players for toughing it out (there have been a number of prestige classes we've talked over in IRC that just sound like crazy amounts of fun -- the Alchemist, for instance), I don't want the initial phase to feel like a grind.
So the objective is to make our base classes interesting, and viable, without relying upon those prestige classes. By the time Bob gets to qualify as a Dark Knight, he should have been able to do some fun and cool stuff as a plain old vanilla Lancer.
But yeah, we'll probably try to implement some sort of level curve, where we try to keep most of our players in the same general level range. That'll probably be accomplished with 'Chapters' of somesort. This works well with the very story-driven game we're going to have.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 22, 2013 4:27:28 GMT -6
I do agree - we're in this for the players, after all. I want them to have fun and I want there to be a ton of fan-service, some of which being front-loaded into our classes.
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Mordred
Role Player
Don't believe the Church and State.
Posts: 195
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Post by Mordred on Apr 29, 2013 22:01:59 GMT -6
Frankly, with Ninjas in the game, do Thieves even have a unique identity? Cutting Thief or Ninja would give Knight a clear mandate to take over the disarms, and would leave us with only one class whose claim to fame is "speedy attacker who dodges to avoid hits." I would miss their dapper hats, though... And fluffwise, where are Ninjas and Samurai even supposed to be from?  Also: Samurai are totally stepping on the toes of any kind of Spellsword class. Cutty cutty? |
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 29, 2013 23:07:51 GMT -6
Everything we've 'decided' up until now is tentative at best, and I'm wanting to stay very fluid and open to any changes that may come down the road.
Also, in the preliminary Samurai development, I think we're leaning more towards... Well, I don't know what I'd call it, really. But definitely not as much spellsword as swordsman. But we can go a number of ways with Samurai, not so much with Spellsword. Also, Spellsword has thusfar been on the back burner, more in favor of keeping the original FFT classes at least present in some form. Of course, this can change.
Insofar as Ninja and Thief, the only differences I'm seeing are strictly conceptual. Of course, as was said, we're keeping the base classes present for now to act as a baseline for where to go. I mean, Thieves take things and are all sneaky and stuff. Ninja kill things and are all sneaky and stuff.
This is kinda where things break down for me. I can't honestly make perfect sense of where the Hell Samurai and Ninja are from. They're very Earth-specific things.
Spellswords are cool, but would need a much better niche than Rune Knight had.
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Schwerpunkt
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Post by Schwerpunkt on Apr 30, 2013 7:29:27 GMT -6
Spellswords would have a proper niche if we can figure out how to make Draw-Cut less silly. Other than that, they're definitely not the "imbue weapon, smack enemy" class. That's lazy.
As for Thief/Ninja, the Thief is more about utility (and free loot from NPCs) while the Ninja is more about being a glass cannon melee character. The Ninja and Samurai are both oriented firmly towards fighting casters, while the other POJs are oriented more towards slugging it out with other POJs.
If putting Samurai-Ninja on the map is such a big deal, Diethe can always add an archipelago south of Vaseria and we can add a few neutral points.
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Post by Diethe on Apr 30, 2013 7:41:54 GMT -6
Me and Schwer were talking about making a different map of East Ordallia (Thus my map was named Western Ordallia). That or just making an outline of it. It concerns the lore-friendly 'Orient' location and we're planning it to be a few rival warlord states that can't unite and is threatened from a large Rozarrian host. We could probably add merely a few points there and the map expands as propositions and quests spring up, like a video game add-on. But right now, wanna focus on Western Ordallia first.
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Post by kablizzy on Apr 30, 2013 13:39:16 GMT -6
I'd be 170% okay with that. Keep in mind that Eastern Ordallia turns into this eventually:  |
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