General Class Development Discussion

[kablizzy]

Currently, the following is our (very) tentative list of basic classes, separated into three trees - Where we can discuss general concepts about classes, class development, and direction. Further discussion can be found here.

POJ	MOJ	HOJ
Squire	Chemist  / Alchemist	Monk
Knight	Black Mage	Geomancer
Archer	White Mage	Mediator
Thief / Bandit	Time Mage	Bard
Lancer	Summoner	Dancer
Samurai	Calculator / Scholar	Red Mage
Ninja	Oracle	Mime

Additional Class Concepts - 
2.7 Dark Knight
2.8 Paladin
2.10 Viking
2.11 Berserker*
2.12 Mystic Knight
2.13 Onion Knight
2.14 Machinist
2.15 Freelancer
2.16 Gunner

3.3 Devout
3.7 Green Mage
3.8 Sage

4.2 Blue Mage*
4.5 Beastmaster
4.7 Gambler
4.9 Puppet Master*
4.10 Memorist

5.3 Necromancer*
5.4 Pictomancer
5.5 Holy Knight
5.6 Divine Knight
5.7 Shrine Knight
5.8 Assassin
5.9 Warlock
5.10 Bishop
5.11 Ark Knight
5.12 Heirophant
5.13 Astrologist
5.14 Corsair
5.15 Sentinel / Defender / Stalwart
5.16 Illusionist*
5.17 Shaman*
5.18 Corsair (Thief Master Class)
5.20 Temple Knight
5.21 Zealot
5.22 Outrider
5.23 Missionary
5.24 Thaumaturgist
5.25 Emir

6.1 Hero
6.2 Lord
6.3 Dragoon
6.4 Assassin*
6.5 Templar
6.6 Hatamoto
6.7 Sniper* / Sharpshooter
6.8 Vagabond (Becoming Corsair)
6.9 Druid
6.10 Diplomat
6.11 Master
6.12 Slayer
6.13 Conqueror
6.14 Rogue (Again, becoming Corsair)
6.15 Alchemist
6.16 Lyrist
6.17 Performer
6.18 Chronomancer
6.19 Black Wizard
6.20 White Wizard
6.21 Red Wizard
6.22 Blue Wizard
6.23 Enchante
6.24 Genius
6.25 Witch Doctor
6.26 Prophet
6.27 Green Wizard
6.28 Caller

Of these, there are only three that really bug me - those are Squire, Chemist, and Mime.

Mime is a strange one to have up here amongst your basic classes, mostly because they do one thing. If we can make them more interesting, I fear we're taking away the simplicity and concept of the class to begin with.

Squire and Chemist are rough for two reasons each - Squire because he's weaker than the remainder of his tree and Chemist because you have to buy the ability to use potions. Both because we have no progression from Squire or Chemist - you don't have to (and in fact, can't) start out as Squire / Chemist and work your way up. So, discussion on that would be nice.

[Schwerpunkt]

I think my stance on the Squire is well-documented.

With regards to the Chemist, that class is extremely problematic. If you need to be a Chemist to use an item, everyone that lacks a heal is going to be seriously vulnerable during props. Vulnerable to the point where healers are outright required. This isn't something I want to do; it inherently places huge value on the handful of classes that can actually heal. Rather, I'd much prefer everyone had the ability to use potions. Because, seriously, how hard can that be?

If Chemists aren't necessary to learn how to use items, there's nothing else about them that is even vaguely meaningful. They can use guns, but so can Mediators. They have Equip Change and Maintenance, both of which are useful under certain tactical situations. They have Move-Find Item. But... that's it. There's nothing else about them. Like the Squire, I'd rather just cannibalize their abilities and move them to other stuff.

Now, an Alchemist would be a very interesting prestige class to talk about later. Especially if it's a class less about combining items in your inventory and more about basically manipulating things like gunpowder, flash powder, and so forth.

And Mimes are extremely bland. We cut Onion Knights for having nothing going for them; we might as well cut Mimes too.

[kablizzy]

I'd like to give the classes a chance, and see if we can come up with something viable to Squire and Chemist. I'm not a fan of either, and cutting Squire, Chemist, and Mime gives us 18 Base classes, AND keeps the trees balanced - which is well short of HoI's 24 (And that makes me happy in the pants). So, whichever way we go - keeping or cutting - we'll be okay.

Squire, back in the day, had the same discussion going for it. We came up with a couple crappy ideas before deciding to just jazz it up a bit. But I don't think that's good enough. So, I asked myself, "What the Hell is a Squire, anyway?" and they're basically meant to follow allies around in battle and carry weaponry. So, I thought, "Hey, why not make them a non-magical support role?"

We could give them First Aid, Equip Change and Maintenance, we could give them some cool Equip Abilities, some Expanded Backpack abilities, and make them a supporting physical class that can still swing a bit. Definitely not the best class, but I'm intrigued.

Now, I LOVE the concepts for Alchemist you were talking about in IRC. Basically, a dude who can mix up cool stuff, either on the fly or in PTs (I'd like to toy with each class getting something to do in a PT, or PT bonuses, or what-have-you also), give them a few support abilities (Bonuses to item-usage, Move-Find Item, maybe even give Equip Change and Maintenance to both Squire and Chemist, and then port one or two sensical abilities from Squire to Chemist as well), and then figure something else to do with the Mime slot.

[kablizzy]

Also, I'll be working on basic drafts for each basic class all week, in the same style as the ones we have up now.

[Ilium]

If we are forced to cut classes, I would recommend Squire, Chemist and Mime and add none in their place. However like I have stated we should explore these classes before deciding to axe them. I have an interesting idea on what to do with Mime, however I will reserve that thought until we are ready to debate that class.

Right now I would like to gauge everyone's opinion on JP caps for abilities, reactions, supports and movements. These would be put into place so that each class has around the same amount of JP requirements for each skill slot, giving the player the comfort of knowing there is not more that can be done with some classes over others. This would not have to apply to Master/Specialist classes, only to the base classes in order to improve balance.

• Active Skill: 5000 - 6500
  
• Reaction: 1000
  
• Support: 1000
• Movement: 1250

I would also add in the stipulation that Reaction, Support and Movement abilities need at least 2000 JP distributed between the three skill slots. Active skills must total at least 5000, and cannot exceed 6500. These would all be stipulations put in place only to increase parity of ability distribution across all jobs.

[Ilium]

Also, what does everyone think about reducing Physical Evade and Magical Evade down to just one Evade stat? It would simplify that part of the mechanics greatly, along with making my programming job easier.

[Schwerpunkt]

That scale gives us 8250-9750 JP for each class, which is well in excess of the estimated 6000 JP we were looking at. If the base class is 8250 JP, the master classes need to be at least 10000 JP. But I don't think our guys are going to get anywhere near level 260, so we're going to see a huge number of characters that don't come anywhere near mastering anything at all. That's not at all what we want.

We should be looking at around 6000 across the board, plus upwards of 750 in Support abilities that the primary class won't use (like the Equip ______ stuff). Then we can actually have characters complete the entire skill list to master a class, not just hit some arbitrary number that in reality has nothing to do with the class at all (which was another problem HoI had).

We should be able to balance most classes around ~5000 in active skills.

P-Ev and M-Ev should not be the same thing, even if that does simplify formulae. I'd rather not have ninja basically be super-impossible to kill because they have high Evade.

[Ilium]

That's all fair, so we would have to reduce the cost of abilities instead. Looking at my skillset that I posted for Knight, with the JP costs left relatively unaltered from Kablizzy's post, there would be 9 Battle Skill abilities at 5000 JP cost 2 reaction at 900, 2 support at 750, and 2 movement at 1250 for a grand total of 7900 JP. We would have to shave of 1900 JP points from some places to get into the 6000 range. The Knight as it is also fits into my restrictions of 5000 for the Active skill, and 2000 for Reaction/Movement/Support.

Would you have an alternative to mine? Perhaps 4000 minimum for active skills and 1500 minimum for Support/Movement/Reaction?

Edit: Evade isn't a big squabble of mine either. It was just a quick thought.

[Schwerpunkt]

I'm pretty much in favor of relatively low-cost active abilities for most classes anyway. I had a bunch of MHs on HoI where I was basically stuck with Honor Strike and Intimidating Slash. Those were exceedingly boring and my character basically ran around spamming Intimidating Slash for 90% of his actions. So, yeah, I'd prefer if most of the Knight's skill set cost was reduced. I was figuring on reviewing JP costs after we figured out what he was doing anyway.

Basically, I want PCs to have decent variety and choice before they make it to the prestige classes.

[kablizzy]

I have stuff to say, will post in a couple hours.

[Ilium]

Alright, I will go through the current skill set and see where we can shave some points off from.

By the way, one of the main reasons why I bring this up now is that it helps me to picture what abilities a class could possibly have, and how much JP they should potentially afford according to their effect. From my end, it reflects nothing concrete, only a figurative representation when trying to keep track of a baker's dozen worth of abilities. After we have actually discussed potential JP costs, we will find where they should truly be at during the beta anyways.

[kablizzy]

Single-Ev may be cool, but I think I'm with you guys, it'd be a bit of a hassle to remove it, too. I always liked the separation, but I'm not convinced it's necessary. Make stuff cleaner, anyway. Although this does remove a dimension of combat, and some spellcasting classes may have weird evasion+ abilities that don't make as much sense. Also, we've got to watch out for stacking evasion, if it's a single stat.

I'm still not 100% on the JP costs as we've seen it thusfar. There will undoubtedly be classes that want to do more with a ton of smaller abilities. Also, when we're going through balancing, we need to keep in mind Primary / Secondary / Tertiary functionality for each class.

It's just that some starting classes are going to be worth 8500 JP. I'd like to see total costs around the 5000 JP range for two big reasons - One, to keep them from being too hard to master (I'm of the camp that wants to Master classes a bit earlier, especially considering Secondary / Tertiary / Prestige classes as well), and two to keep the abilities from going apeshit on us. For a basic primary, the abilities should reflect a rough concept, give the class a reason to be primary, and have some extras to round it out. Anything above and beyond this should look to go into the master class (Which I'd be all about setting at 5000-10000 JP for each Master Class). I prefer the roughshod judging of JP, but if we're going this route, then I'd like to see the JP cost for classes roughly reflect 4000-7000 total. This, I think, gives us a good range for the lower-cost classes (Knight, Squire, Chemist), and for the crazy spellcasting classes (Black Mage, Time Mage, Summoner in particular).

I also kinda agree with Schwer that I'd rather have the basic classes be *more* accessible, in terms of some cheaper abilities, and then have a few higher-end, heavy-hitting abilities to round it out before they go into their Prestige classes.

Also, what have we decided (If anything thusfar) to do with Primary / Secondary / Tertiary skillsets?

With HoI, we built every last ability in the game around "Will this be a primary ability, secondary, or tertiary? Who should have access to this?" and so on. There are some potentially abusable combinations that we wanted to prevent, but retain the original ability 'cause of coolness.

Also, will players be able to choose from any tree for secondary / tertiary?

[Schwerpunkt]

As I see it, the problems with balancing costs come primarily from not knowing what to cut. Yes, if we have three tiers of every spell, Wizards are going to be unbelievably expensive. In WotL, that's part of the point -- you need to grind that entire tree, which probably costs upwards of 8,500 JP, to get Dark Knight. The grind is its own reward in that respect.

But we don't have that here. There's no incentive to make super-expensive classes. We simply do not need three tiers of spells. In FFT, the Wizard needs top-level spells to be able to effectively nuke late-game mobs (not so much Altima, but more like level 99 chocobos). We don't have that problem here. The Wizard is a mere stepping stone to more wtfgood classes (I'm thinking 'Evoker' as a super-caster, but that's prestige class talk). For our purposes, we can really get away with two tiers and simply scale them properly.

Besides -- and let's be honest here -- how many people actually used the tier 3 Wizard nukes outside of a Calculator? I know I didn't. I used Holy as a Priest once. To get a screenshot of me nuking Algus with it at Zeakden. A screenshot I can no longer find.

Balancing classes for 6000 JP is perfectly doable. The difficult part is going to come from knowing what to cut and what to keep.

Oh, and I had figured that we'd get secondaries at 15 (hence the fixation on 6000 JP, because that's how much you get at a 4:1 ratio) and prestige around 20-25. Awarded may come earlier, may not. Same for masters.

I'd prefer to let people take secondaries from whatever. We have three trees, not two, and I'd rather not bar a Knight-Spellsword hybrid just 'cuz.

[kablizzy]

Aye, we're also not a single-player game, but I also don't want just a single Fire spell, when there are generally as many as four, that actually do different things, with different ranges, damages, and areas of effect. Mostly since making just Fire and Fira gives us two options for elemental spells - one weak, small-radius, and one strong, large-radius. I could potentially make a case that a single-target element, an A:1 element, A stronger, A:1 element, an A:2 element, a stronger A:2 element... And so on. That's potentially ten abilities right there that we could have an (admittedly weak) case for.

We'll have to do a lot of discussion on abilities to cut, keep, and cost. 6000 isn't too bad. A little high for classes like Knight, I think, but even if we throw in two or three extra abilities, I think we'll be okay.

I like the secondary @ 15, Prestige around 25. That's good enough. I also hadn't really considered that we're rolling three trees deep now. It'll be a bit more work to make sure certain combinations aren't nuts together, but I think we can do that well.

[sunspawn]

For Wizard spells, you could just make level 1 spells and then have a single upgrade like "Black Magic Lv 2" or something that allows you to cast stronger versions of the standard elemental spells.

Just my two cents.