Guild Wars 2

It’s often stated that classes serve three purposes in MMOs.

1. Allows you to feel unique, because you can do things other players can’t.
2. Makes balancing the game easier.
3. Gives making alts a purpose.

But does it really serve any of those purposes?

1. In games where the class systems ate very relaxed or non-existent, build-crafting can become so diverse and deep that people effectively create their own classes. That to me lets you feel a lot more unique than having classes.

2. I wanna give an example for this. I think when devs talk about balance is pretty much alwats about PvP. The Secret World has a pretty tiny dev team compared to GW2 after Funcom laid off half their staff, and certainly doesn’t have a balancing team (the last balance patch was like a year ago).

Yet PvP in TSW is a lot more balanced and diverse than GW2. How? Because TSW has an extremely open build crafting system with no class restrictions at all, so the complexity of it means that there’s a lot more options open for many different play styles so you don’t end up having a few metabuilds that’s better than everything else. You can have a lot of skills in every class, but each class will still have a pretty much pre-defined play style and attributes, so you end up with a small pool of builds which synergises with that best.

3. I tend to think alts are a solution to a problem instead of a benefit. Other than to just play the game from the start or RPing (which you will still do without classes) you create alts do you can experience the play style of other classes, if there were no classes, then you won’t need to create alts to experience other plays toes because it’s all accessible from a single toon.

What do you guys think?

I’m down for anything that would provide an abundance of new content. Living Story was only so satisfying, I’d like to see a GW2 2.0 soon. If that means adding some classes/races/skills/maps…whatever it takes to add some meaty content, I’d be down.

Xae Isareth.1364:

It’s often stated that classes serve three purposes in MMOs.

1. Allows you to feel unique, because you can do things other players can’t.
2. Makes balancing the game easier.
3. Gives making alts a purpose.

But does it really serve any of those purposes?

1. In games where the class systems ate very relaxed or non-existent, build-crafting can become so diverse and deep that people effectively create their own classes. That to me lets you feel a lot more unique than having classes.

2. I wanna give an example for this. I think when devs talk about balance is pretty much alwats about PvP. The Secret World has a pretty tiny dev team compared to GW2 after Funcom laid off half their staff, and certainly doesn’t have a balancing team (the last balance patch was like a year ago).

Yet PvP in TSW is a lot more balanced and diverse than GW2. How? Because TSW has an extremely open build crafting system with no class restrictions at all, so the complexity of it means that there’s a lot more options open for many different play styles so you don’t end up having a few metabuilds that’s better than everything else. You can have a lot of skills in every class, but each class will still have a pretty much pre-defined play style and attributes, so you end up with a small pool of builds which synergises with that best.

3. I tend to think alts are a solution to a problem instead of a benefit. Other than to just play the game from the start or RPing (which you will still do without classes) you create alts do you can experience the play style of other classes, if there were no classes, then you won’t need to create alts to experience other plays toes because it’s all accessible from a single toon.

What do you guys think?

I think it’s a very complex, expensive and time-consuming “fix” to a “problem” that for most isn’t a problem.

I think letting anyone learn any skill is called free classing. It seems kind of strange to me that anet dumped the trinity but didn’t adopt free classing at the same time.

MotherKitten.6795:

I think letting anyone learn any skill is called free classing. It seems kind of strange to me that anet dumped the trinity but didn’t adopt free classing at the same time.

It’s hard to have free classing and not need a trinity of some kind, unless you want everyone to have the same basic build. There needs to be a good reason for people to look for builds that can do what they can’t.

We only have one class in PvE atm it’s called DPS. the DPS class may wear different looking armor but it’s still the only class we have

MotherKitten.6795:

I think letting anyone learn any skill is called free classing. It seems kind of strange to me that anet dumped the trinity but didn’t adopt free classing at the same time.

Because the trinity is based off the class system, not the other way around. I still have a feeling of unique play style from the classes we have. I don’t pve too much, but when I’m playing wvw/spvp I always feel like I’m filling a role on each class.

As much as I love free classing (had great fun playing with builds in Champions Online, I wound up with 36 characters in that game, each with different builds and roles), I’m afraid that’s way too much of an overhaul for GW2 to ever happen; not only does it involve redoing the entire class system, but it will also require armors to be redone into a single weight class (unless they make armor training a skill), which won’t happen either due to technical limitations.

Xae Isareth.1364:

2. I wanna give an example for this. I think when devs talk about balance is pretty much alwats about PvP. The Secret World has a pretty tiny dev team compared to GW2 after Funcom laid off half their staff, and certainly doesn’t have a balancing team (the last balance patch was like a year ago).

Yet PvP in TSW is a lot more balanced and diverse than GW2. How? Because TSW has an extremely open build crafting system with no class restrictions at all, so the complexity of it means that there’s a lot more options open for many different play styles so you don’t end up having a few metabuilds that’s better than everything else. You can have a lot of skills in every class, but each class will still have a pretty much pre-defined play style and attributes, so you end up with a small pool of builds which synergises with that best.

two words: glance tank.

Don´t get me wrong, I really have a soft spot for that game, but pvp balance… gimme a break.

Algreg.3629:

Xae Isareth.1364:

2. I wanna give an example for this. I think when devs talk about balance is pretty much alwats about PvP. The Secret World has a pretty tiny dev team compared to GW2 after Funcom laid off half their staff, and certainly doesn’t have a balancing team (the last balance patch was like a year ago).

Yet PvP in TSW is a lot more balanced and diverse than GW2. How? Because TSW has an extremely open build crafting system with no class restrictions at all, so the complexity of it means that there’s a lot more options open for many different play styles so you don’t end up having a few metabuilds that’s better than everything else. You can have a lot of skills in every class, but each class will still have a pretty much pre-defined play style and attributes, so you end up with a small pool of builds which synergises with that best.

two words: glance tank.

Don´t get me wrong, I really have a soft spot for that game, but pvp balance… gimme a break.

You mean evade tanks? (that was the most complained about ‘meta build’, which was not actually that good when you broke it down).

The standard evade tank builds around Backlash dealing sizeable damage back to the attacker when they evade.

You have a lot of counters to that. There’s augments for your skills to lower their already low evade chance, a lot of skills are unevadable.

The build itself even has a lot of weaknesses. It doesn’t work well against single hit attacks, it’s really only very strong when using a skill that has a very long cool down to force evades (I just pop my own cool downs and laugh when they do it), evade itself has terrible returns compared to other defensive stats: for example, a block tank would have nearly 100% uptime on 25% mitigation, whilst you’ll still be open to spikes, and you need a lot of evade to make it work, meaning lower a lot of other important stats compared to other builds.

Palador.2170:

MotherKitten.6795:

I think letting anyone learn any skill is called free classing. It seems kind of strange to me that anet dumped the trinity but didn’t adopt free classing at the same time.

It’s hard to have free classing and not need a trinity of some kind, unless you want everyone to have the same basic build. There needs to be a good reason for people to look for builds that can do what they can’t.

That’s only if you designed your game badly, like, very badly, because even if everyone just piled DPS, different weapons would still offer different benefits.