Alternate Advancement: Good or Bad?

[Reiker]

Originally Posted by guineapig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Specialization is a great feature in any game.

I posted about this in another AA thread, but I'll reiterate how specialization is a really bad idea in any MMO. Unless you offer like 3-4 classes at creation, any sort of "specialization" should end at character creation once you choose a class. Take a look at EverQuest, 15 classes when AAs were introduced. How could AAs possibly have offered specialization at this point in the game?

Warrior - Specializations would basically be for tanking or dps. Why would anyone choose the dps specialization over the tanking? Those people would have clicked something like Rogue or Monk at character creation.

Cleric - Who would spec in anything other than healing? What else could you spec in, uh, nuking? Anyone who wanted to spec in nuking were already "specced" when they clicked Wizard.

And so on.

The ONLY MMO that really did this correctly was DAOC, and was designed with class specializations from the ground up. This still had issues since one-dimensional classes such as Skald, Paladin, etc basically used the same cookie-cutter spec since there wasn't a lot of wiggle room. To make this successful Mythic basically made a list of abilities and randomly distributed them to classes. For example the main healers all had a heal and a buff line among all three realms. But Druids could spec in a pet, Clerics could spec in Smite (nuking), and Healers could spec in Pacification (CC). There were very specific circumstances that actually made this work, one being the PvP focus of the game and the three realm and large amount of classes between all three. And it still had issues (people creating buff bots since no one wanted to actually main a char specced in buffs for example).

WoW's talent system is so fucked. You have classes like Rogues that can spec in DPS, DPS, or DPS and then a class like Druid that can spec in Melee DPS/Tanking, Healing, and Nuking. Their entire class system is fucked pretty much beyond repair because of the spec trees.

AAs are pretty awesome in execution. The large amount of time required to max AAs really reinforced EQ's hardcore spend more time to become more powerful philosophy. And technically there's a specialization element depending on which AAs you prioritize over others, but you never actually are forced to permanently change the functionality of your class, which is essential.

Hopefully this is legible I'm pretty hung over and can't really concentrate anymore.