Tracking Skills and Magic in a Class-less System

At first I wasn't sure why a class-less system was so important, considering the fact that people will eventually fit into a certain "class" anyway. But eventually I realized the potential freedom it could provide in the game. So, go along with it... then comes the big BUT.

So two things will happen in this game: people who will completely fit into class architypes and those who will be inbetween. After seeing the "wheel of magic" that was explained on 8.22.13, I thought that maybe there could be some tracking of players particular weapon, armor, skill, and magic choices in order for newly met players to sort of "examine" eachother. See, the wheel detailed the certain types of magic provided and players have the complete freedom to use those spells and I'm expecting that no one can use every one of those spells.

So, maybe have some kind of circle, square, triangle, or whatever shape that tracks what kind of character the player is by having the different points or sides labled with weapon, armor, skill, and magic types with a dot that moves along the plane according to the player makes these choices. Something like the image below that labels Strength, Black Magic, and White Magic on each point and the position of the certain point determines what the player basically wants to be. I don't want it to be exactly like this but it's close to what I have in mind.

http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/...RPGtriangle.PNG/600px-Ultima3_RPGtriangle.PNG

So, that's my say. What do you guys think?

 

Hello Owenmcgarel,
Based on your first sentences, I assume you have not played Ultima Online. So, before I address your question/comments, I am going to go on a tangent here for a bit of a background on class-less/skill based systems (sorry if it gets long - text wall incoming..).

One of the features I enjoyed most about UO was the skill-based system (or class-less system). As you began your adventure, you could pick any skill you wished (by practicing them) but could only really master 7 skills due to the amount of points you got, which resembles to real life in the sense that you have limited amount of time to be good at learn certain skills but NOT EVERYTHING -unless you decided to be a jack of all trades and not be really great at anything but know almost everything (ex of the 7 skills I maxed: magery, evaluating intelligence, meditation, resisting spells, wrestling, anatomy, inscription). Obviously, certain skills synergized with others (as per my example) and as someone who wanted the best benefits from these, one used to make templates from these skills, which also helped with balancing issues. However, you were by no means forced into these skills, which provided a degree of TRUE freedom, and you could take any skill you wanted..

I think the idea you suggest starts moving towards definition of a "class." I personally would like to stay away from that and be as free as possible, just like in Ultima Online. Sure, the fact that you had the skills I have mentioned above would make you a kind of "mage" but there wasn't a tracking system saying, HEY! YOU ARE A MAGE! Specially when you could make different kind of mages such as one specialized in poison (different from one who took up inscription to master, or you could be a provoker mage or a tamer mage.. You see, magic was a useful tool for everyone and not necessarily tied to a "class"). Going back to the poison skill as part of a character with magery, if you casted an "In Nox" spell (poison), your poison was stronger than that of someone who didn’t have it. The ability to cast the spell was dependent on your magic but if you wanted to make your poison spell even stronger then you would take on other skills to synergize that specific spell. You could also be a warrior with high magic but what would limit you would be other skills to increase the damage of your magic and also the amount of "intellect" you wanted. This also modified your mana pool, hence, the amount of spells you could cast as well as the rate of mana regeneration, which was impacted the equipment you used (cloth allowed you to meditate and get mana faster, so long as you had meditaation to a certain level, and chain or plate armour would prevent the benefits of natural mana regeneration, which was tied to your meditation skill and likely you didn’t want it as a warrior due to reasons that would render the skill useless). Hence, not making you, the warrior, as effective with magic (but it was a naturally limitation and not one imposed by class).

The first mage example I used above is a mage who could fist stun for 2 seconds his opponent (synergy between wrestling and anatomy at GM level) and have enhanced defensive spells (obtained from inscription at Grand Master level - just like enhanced poison damage from a mage who mastered poison). The rest (magery and evaluating intelligence) would allow you cast spells without fizzeling as much and provide more damage (due to e.i.) and then meditation, which you wanted for mana regeneration. You see, each skill had a purpose, but there were synergy skills to help those main skills you wanted to focus on. Say, fighters would use healing (as a skill, not the magic healing spell; although they could master magery too - see above for limitations), and to heal you would need bandages, but you also wanted anatomy (just like the mage above but for a different reason) because it would increase the amount you healed per bandage applied.

(Ok.. time to stop talking about UO and the background of class-less systems)

Anyways, back to your main point, I believe that a system, such as the currently planned one, is extremely appealing if there are no "boundaries" shown (as you suggest) that would tell players what they are (or what they approach to be like) and rather just leave it in the air for you to figure out. The fact that it is up to you to figure out that person's kind of player, which you will recognize through hints offered in other features such as equipment (which is not necessarily the case, however, certain type of equipment would benefit your character more based on the skills you have chosen - cloth vs plate debate), just makes more sense and provides a certain level of appeal/beauty to the game that no other games have offered in recent years - mostly targeting the Everquest model (levels, classes, etc) that WoW and almost every other single MMO followed - Yeah, I am pretty tired of that model...

 

the cool thing about a classless system is they can keep adding skills later on. Imagine that they come out with a samurai skill set so you ditch the equivilant warrior skill and take that up so you can be a slightly different kind of warrior. Or maybe there will be a different kind of mage skill that you can pick up later that allows you to cast the same spells, but has a different way of handling magic that you like better.

So our characters might evolve over time as new skills come out, and there will be a greater variety of player types. With classes you could never do that because we're stuck with our class.

 

Also there will be many fewer complaints about this or that class being overpowered. If you find that your initial choice, which worked fine for half the game, is suddenly not to your liking, you can swap out some or all of the skills and play differently, without losing your accumulated wealth or progress.

 

I'm really, really, I mean REALLY, looking forward to the classless system. It's just so much more sensible, natural and provides limitless freedom to elaborate; I like the idea of it being me who is creating and living my character and not prefabricated.
I don't want banners hovering over everybody and everything in game, telling who's who and what's.