General Discussion

Everytime someone criticizes skillbased games for being unsuccessful some others always cry out "Amagad! Look at EvE FFS!!"

However I don't think it's fair to compare EvE and their skillsystem with a classbased system in a game where you create a character and explore the world with him/her/it from a third-person view. Even if both types counts as MMOs the settings are completely different.

Maybe the space-setting in EvE and the structure of the game as a whole makes a skillbased system suitable for it. Or can it be implemented in other games as well? Games where you stay on the ground with your character that is.

I'll suggest

http://www.play-earthrise.com/

its a completely skill-based MMO, set in the future. Its ground only though, no space-fairing in it. It's view is also set as third-person, though there might be some first-person thrown in possibly.

Sadly the game still is in development, and beta isnt expected to be out for some time, but its a game to look foreward to.

There's not really any difference between putting armor on your ship and putting armor on your avatar in WoW, just that in Eve you can only do it in the station.

When stuff like the Gnome Death ray has an ability tied into it (and pvp trinkets) the code is already there in WoW.  Now just eliminate all trained spells and instead make other items provide them, like your staff has a heal spell or fire spell, or a ring gives you a spell, or a dagger gives you backstab or a 2H mace gives you overpower.   Now you got yourself a classless system fantasy avatar game that works very similar to EVE.

space ships and armor are no different, the system is VERY possible in a more mainstream avatar based game.  some people just don't understand that deep down they are all MMOs and all work the same way.

For it to work in an avatar based game you need some system that ensures players can only fulfill 1 combat 'role' at a time regardless of how many skills they have trained . ie in EVE you need to change ships/weps etc at a station and cannot do it on the fly, and only certain weps/modules fit on certain ships. This ensures that any one player can only do 1 'thing' in a fight.

For an avatar based system you need a way of ensuring an archer can't suddenly turn into a tank when his target gets into melee range.

You could just say you couldn't change armor unless you were at an inn.  Or you could say changing armor takes 30 seconds per piece of armor... unless you're at an inn, which is kind of already built into wow with the 30 second cooldown on abilities of items with abilities, so you can go from archer to a tank but you can't do anything for 30 seconds.  Or you could take advantage of being able to change armor anywhere and assign weights to your stuff in inventory and have weight be a speed penalty that way part of your tactics could be the ability to change armor if needed but at the expense of speed.  Also maybe your gear could make you an industrial ship and your armor would just be lots of backpacks and pocket space and other armor that increases your speed so you could haul a lot but have paper thin armor, maybe that would be another welcome "class" on raids to haul loot and other peoples change of armor so they wouldn't be bogged down by the weight.

If WoW wasn't such a success maybe the new MMO's would be willing to try this type of stuff.

Eve's skill system really isn't like the skill systems that people generally talk about anyway.  Eve's skill system has NOTHING to do with what you actually do with your character, and only how often you log on to train a new skill...Most skill based systems have you actually performing some sort of act related to the skill in order to level up in it.

Just felt like that was worth pointing out.

Originally posted by Draenor

Eve's skill system really isn't like the skill systems that people generally talk about anyway.  Eve's skill system has NOTHING to do with what you actually do with your character, and only how often you log on to train a new skill...Most skill based systems have you actually performing some sort of act related to the skill in order to level up in it.

 

Just felt like that was worth pointing out.

Perhaps EVE's skill system is not what people truly wants but it's funny how EVE always is used as an example of a successful MMO to counter the haters. This makes me even more uncertain that it is possible to make a successful avatar skill based game. Plus the fact that the system probably must be limited in some way to prevent un-balanced gameplay as FischerBlack pointed out.

I will keep my eyes on Earthrise that's for sure.

"can it be implemented in other games as well? Games where you stay on the ground with your character that is."

Have you people totally forgotten UO? Choose any skill you want to character, but your total can't go over 700. So basicly you have one role but lots of possible variations. That's how it should be done IMO.