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?
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