Developers Corner

When I first started playing WAR I expected there to be massive balance issues, I mean there are 20 classes, balancing those is going to be a feat.

But as I played both sides I noticed something Mythic had done that is really quite genius, there are really only 10 classes, each side has a class that correspondes with another class, all Mythic did was give the class an aethestic overhaul.  For example Dwarven Engineer is statistically the same class as Chaos Magus, except one uses guns, wrenches, gernades and turrets and the other chaos magic and daemons.  There have probably been other games that did this I just didn't notice.

In a skill system you could do the same thing, multiple skills could be statistically equal but have different appearences, it would allow the developer to add more variety, lots of variety, while narrowing the mechanics needing to be balanced.  You could extend this to armor as well, different races or sides could have different armor and weapon designs, even different types of weapons available, but they are statistically equivalent, it would be more work but well worth it I think seeing as with exclusive skills and armor selection of race or side it makes the choice more meaningful and the game world becomes more believable as orcs dress like orcs and have abilities like orcs.

Even without set sides this could be employed, just to add more choice.  It is a simple concept, just one I hadn't thought of.

The only downside I can think of would be people complaining about the statistical deception of the skills when they decifer the game mechanics, but those people would be in the minority I would think, as most probably won't care.  Also the issue of nerfs, if you nerf one skill you have to nerf all the ones that share the same mechanics. 

But I think this concept has a lot of promise.  Are there any orher games in which something like this was used?

Depending on the initial design such a system would be more expensive* art side than IT side.

For the 2D racing game that I'm working on the enemy vehicles are literally the same code as the one the player controls just slaved to an AI controller class instead of the keyboard.   For collision stuff for an effect like a reapair/boost pad when compared to a wall I'm literally on changing 2 lines of code(Java is actually perfect for the last part assuming it works... which can be anywhere from nearly all the time to under 60% depending on versioning and usage.  C# is a good bet for that kind of stuff to less so for the ever holy C++).

*was expansive

I would prefer actual variety instead of an illusion. If one is able to see the workings of the illusion is the magic lost?  Your speculation on the downside says yes. IMO, the illusion of variety can be applied at the lowest levels by introducing more variables.

Balance could be a tough act especially in a Combat-centric game. So I would propose adding variety through more non-combat game mechanics that take in consideration stats/skills. The trick is to figure out the other non-combat game mechanics.

Definatly add non combat skills,  but purely from a combat perspective, I think you could use this to give the game more visual variety.  For instance side y can use fire magic, side x uses shadow, this could lead to some serious balance issues, but if we made both shadow magic and fire magic have the same abilities and do the same damage, excluding damage type, then we can avoid the balance issues, and better personify the two sides/races.

It is not about limiting variety really but giving an illusion of having even more than you actually do, so you could take all the combat skills in say UO and give each one 2 or 3 different aesthetic versions so that the player has more option of not only what skills they want but also have some option of how they look, while still having a wide variety of skills.

For example from UO, you have animal training, but you could also have demonology, engineering to make automatons, leadership to have henchmen, the down side to actually making 3 other new skill sets is that as far as pet skills go one would become better that the others which defeats the purpose of having more than one or they could be the same statistically as animal training but they are visually different avoiding imbalance.