Chemist Development Thread

[kablizzy]

I've got tons of stuff for Calculator, so I'd like to operate with these 15 unless we really can't figure out what to do with Squire / Calculator / Red Mage. Or if you have an alternative for Red Mage - there's a ton of class suggestions in the first post of General Class Discussion.

[Mordred]

Oh, k. I assume the Calculator stuff will get posted at some point.

Mediator is already basically a slightly-redesigned Blue Mage (which is actually something I might suggest, if I come up with anything decent for it)... Do we need exactly 15 classes? Red Mage is just so...

[kablizzy]

I'm not going to explain to players 70 times a day why there are only 4 HOJ classes and 5 of each other, and why Red Mage isn't an option. We're already going to take a ton of flack for not having Shaman and Illusionist and Chemist and Bard and Dancer as individual classes. Red Mage is there so you don't have to take two classes to get the same effect, there's benefit there. Plus, we don't have to adhere to the "Red Mage is a worse everything than everything!" thought, this is our game, we can do whatever we want.

[Mordred]

Are the HOJ/MOJ categories going to be visible to players? I thought they were just a construct to help us think about classes. 0_o

The benefit that a Red Mage offers is directly at the expense of every class whose abilities it usurps. Having the Red Mage option is only a benefit to minmaxers, and if we're going to come up with a new kind of mage that isn't just a transplant of other classes' skills, we may as well call it something completely different.

I mean, should we have a... I don't know, a "Geoninja" class that takes half of the Geomancer and Ninja skill sets and glues them together with a little extra flair? It would have the same property of "you don't have to take two classes to get the same effect."

[kablizzy]

Naw, Red Mage has more benefit than that, and we'll keep it in for now. And I don't care about the trees, but I figured It'd help give a bit of classification for what people want to do with their character.

[Schwerpunkt]

Red Mage is basically a Spellsword. That's the theme I've been running with thus far; something like Beowulf taken down to a much more believable and less ridiculous level. But HOJs are way the hell down the road. We'll talk about it more when we get there.

And I'm with Mord on the point of POJ/HOJ/MOJ. It's there to help us balance classes in the macro sense (ie, how many classes there are that emphasize physical, magical, or hybrid roles). It really shouldn't be used in the final product except informally as the classification system itself is inherently problematic.

[kablizzy]

Problematic? Elaborate?

[Schwerpunkt]

Well, it ties our hands. Even if we come up with a really good reason why a POJ should have a magic ability (like the Lancer's Fire Breath), it's out of step with the classifications. Similarly, we wouldn't be able to have the Geomancer be firmly developed towards physical attacks because he's supposed to be roughly half and half.

It's a good tool for balancing during development, but there's no reason we need to use it later. We should strive to have all the branches be equal, but if HOJ winds up with one or two fewer classes, we're not really any worse off for it.

[kablizzy]

I suppose that's true, although I do like the concept of classifying the classes in some fashion for player use, whether that ends up being trees or some other way to let them know what they're getting for each class' concept.

[Ilium]

Wait, Bard and Dancer are axed? When did we sign off on this?

[Schwerpunkt]

Bard and Dancer are getting meshed together into the Performer. There's just no sensible way to make Bard/Dancer any good in a game like this unless you completely overhaul everything they have -- and you can only effectively do that if you just combine the two classes.

[kablizzy]

I'm sure there are sensible ways to do 'em - I've got a ton for Dancer, it's just that I don't have much for Bard. We can put up both threads and see if we can hash 'em out, but I have a feeling that we'd end up smashing 'em together in the end.

[Schwerpunkt]

The problem is the classes are built around the same theme but in different directions. We could design two, but we'd really only be creating two separate variants of the same core concept. It works for FFT (primarily as a reward for breaking the gender mold), but it's really not worth doing here. One Performer class that combines both is vastly preferable for both design and balance purposes.

[Blizz_Mcdonalds]

I mean, seeing as how were basically building each class from the ground up, the fft versions of these classes don't really matter anyway, since were not likely to keep any of those concepts in.

[Ilium]

Let's make a development thread for both Dancer and Bard, and see what we can come up with for both of them. As Kablizzy has said he has a lot of stuff for Dancer, and I've been kicking around ideas for Bard, so perhaps there will be a balance.