Quote:
Originally Posted by t0lkien
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Last post, but this is a really interesting point. I would say that on the contrary, designing into those roles is good design. If those roles occur anyway, which they do, it makes sense to provide players with tools to carry them out. Not to do so means giving players a bunch of stuff they never use anyway, and you end up with a weirdly unsatisfying, vague gameplay experience.
On this point, roles feed into archetypes (and visa versa). It's not just the mechanics you are dealing with, but the fantasy of embodying a certain archetype. The Ranger class exists because of the fantasy created by Tolkien in LoTR. The Fighter/Warrior is as old as mythology itself and in RPGs is heavily influenced by the Conan stories. Good class design embodies strong archetypes which create strong and satisfying gameplay mechanics, and coincidentally meaningful gameplay roles. It's all interconnected.
Games that don't create or embody compelling archetypes loose a great deal. These are RPGs after all.
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My greatest concern is that by removing classes from the game you would also lose a lot of character from the toon, especially when you can respec on the fly into something totally different.
From an RP point of view, respec'ing on the fly makes no sense to me. You lose all identification with who you are in the world if you can just become something different in an instant. Getting to know other players will be very difficult imo.
I guess if the game play is rich enough you will get to know someone for
how they play instead of
what they play, but I'm skeptical.