Callings, souls, why you think they will work, and other opinions

[Faeward]

I just had a conversation with a friend on MSN.

Firstly I linked them a video of the RIFT developer diary. They were sold, and wanted to know more! They specifically said that the 'absorbing souls' part sounded great, so I linked them to the ascended class video and just like that they became uninterested again. I was baffled (am I being trolled I thought at this point)

So when I asked why, I was told that the system was too rigid, too fixed.

I explained that the system is flexible in that for your calling, you can choose up to 3 souls. I explained that the calling defines what type of armour you wear and generically defines what type of role you will be playing in a group and therefore some abilities and traits to be expected of the souls within that calling. Though still my friend said that the system was not flexible enough for them, and that this is not an evolution of the class/role aspect of MMO's, just a few new features and a lick of paint.

My friend then started saying how in GW, he could be a Warrior Elementalist, so essentially a fighter with some mage capabilities. Now maybe in GW where you can solo most content and hire bots, and perhaps where group formation is not the most important thing in the world, this is fine. You swap out abilities and whatnot as you need etc.

However my friend told me that even that was not enough now. They want it generic such that they can invest points in abilities as they see fit. Is my friend just being silly now? I'm trying to figure out how damaging this would be to a game.

If people could invest points wherever they wanted, then of course they would spec themselves to be able to take loads of damage without dying, deal loads of damage as fast as possible, heal themselves and never run out of power. What would that do to grouping? What role would they play in a group? How damaging would that be on the social aspect of the game?

My opinion is that the system in RIFT is great. Enough flexibility to make every player unique, the choice to not invest points in a completely linear fashion but to move sideways as well. The fact that from what we have seen so far that each soul has enough unique abilities to make choosing a second and third soul a game-changing experience, but at the same time appear as though it will still provide enough challenge to the game and not allow you to become completely overpowered (Void Knight/Purifier/Warlock lol) ... is all great!

I'm kind of happy that so far, from what I've seen from the callings and souls system, we will find some really interesting groups and there will be some challenge to this game. Maybe half a fight will be finding the right spec to defeat a particularly difficult mob for example.

So I guess I believe that restricting a hero to one calling is awesome. If Trion were to extend the choice to another calling, or allow you to invest points in any soul regardless of calling, it would break the game because people would become overpowered.

What are your opinions on this?

[Selene]

I like the system as it is, or at least the idea of the system since no one's really tested it out yet. I don't really know why your friend thought the class system was so rigid. You could try telling him that each calling has a soul (or souls) that can do things outside their calling. For example, there's a healing mage, a rogue tank, etc.

Maybe your friend is looking for a skill-based game, rather than one based on levels and classes? I'm not really sure what to tell you that'll help, lol. I know a lot of people think the system is just like WoW and all, but if you play around with the role builder you start seeing just how different it really is.

[Nekomimimode]

Your friend probably wants to play Darkfall or a similar skill-based game. But at the same time i bet he dont play any of that games because they are quite hardcore lol.

As for Rift i think the system is quite nice as is. Though maby some kind of a unique out-of-calling-system soul, compatible with any archetype, that would be obtainable only after defeating the top-boss of the game or holding a pvp fort for a week - would be a nice addition to the system.

[Banditman]

Dungeon Siege, while not an MMO, worked something like that. You could do whatever you wanted, at the cost of time. If you wanted to level up a Mage / Warrior / Rogue . . . there was nothing standing in your way . . . except time. Basically you leveled up by using the skills available, so for instance, the more you used "Nature Magic", the better you got at it, and the more powerful forms of it you would be able to use. Likewise for different types of weapons.

I can see the attraction, I guess, but it just seems . . . boring. If you can do everything, why do you need an MMO? Just make it a RPG and save yourself the subscription fee.

[fangGWJ]

With everyone being able to do everything there is a great loss of focus.

If you are responsible for your own dps, healing and tanking, when you group who do you call upon if you need help with ahy of those roles? The whole idea of grouping is to adapt to situations and fill in for your groupmates.

[Elmed]

I don't really know why your friend thought the class system was so rigid. You could try telling him that each calling has a soul (or souls) that can do things outside their calling. For example, there's a healing mage, a rogue tank, etc.

Exactly, that is a point that Faeward needs to express to his friend. Explain to him that there is far more flexibility within each calling then he is giving credit for. While the skill trees for these souls aren't available yet, it has been said that the Riftblade is most likely going to be the rogue tank. The currently-named Chloromancer has the healing abilities within the mage tree, although the other ones not fully revealed yet could have some healing abilities too.

Have him check out http://www.riftrolebuilder.com/ to analyze the known skill trees to try to get a better understanding of him. You could even point out that he could go full Bard and not be very effective at soloing - but he will be a helluva singer.

[Dexterm]

@OP, I think your friend hasn't seen enough information to be able to say something is rigid or not. I think we (as in the community) haven't seen enough information to make that decision either really. We don't know if Trion makes some last minute changes and things end up more rigid than we think the system will be. I do believe that with all the information available we have enough to have an opinion of how we think it will be and that's great, and we share our thoughts and opinions all day. Your friend would have to see most of the information out there, and on the forums to really make a decision.

As for the comparison to GW, well, I think he's comparing apples and oranges. Personally, I played GW for a while, and I didn't care for it. Then I had a bunch of friends get into it, that tried to pull me back in, and again I didn't get into it much, it just wasn't for me (Not putting the game down). The comparison of the systems isn't the same. The content isn't the same either. I was playing eq2 when they had me try GW for the 2nd time and I always felt like GW fell short of a lot of things I was already use to from other games.

As for combining other callings, I agree, if we were able to combine them I'd see rogue mages, healers mixed with every other class. Look at gw2 now, they are talking about everyone having some kind of healing. I hope that Trion never tries to go that route. I like the fact that bards will get some light healing over time, or regen, and that mages will have something like that but I can't see the point of mixing callings.

[Muhd]

I just had a conversation with a friend on MSN.

If people could invest points wherever they wanted, then of course they would spec themselves to be able to take loads of damage without dying, deal loads of damage as fast as possible, heal themselves and never run out of power.

Except you have a limitted number of points to spread out amongst your souls. So you woud never be able to be super good at all those things at the same time. Instead it would be more like, take a mediocre amount of damage, deal a mediocre amount of damage, heal a mediocre amount of life and then likely run out of power.

As opposed to someone who chose to stick solely to DPS souls and can nuke the crap out of a small country, etc.

[Ceret]

I never played a class type game where you could just add more skills forever where you don't hit a cap. Some games do let you pick from any archtype though.

I play Darkfall now and it's skill based and you level by using skills but really I just macro while I do things like respond to this thread.

I would like to see AA's, advanced abilites you can level up after you hit cap to make the character a little more unique and never be stuck at level cap.

This game seems to offer a good amount of diffrent combinations to keep me intrested a lot longer at max level though. Before I have to reroll.