Classes

Forgot to log in again...

Anyway, I suppose I'll continue on and make a couple of suggestions:

First off, I'm not particularly enamored with the name "Medic." This is a First Person Shooter, and everyone is a combatant. Medics aren't a complete support class, but I think a lot of people get the idea Medics are only supposed to be able to heal people -- That's a pretty strict concept compared to what's implied by the other class names: "Master of weapons" or "Master of adrenaline [Whatever that means]."

The Medic Weapon is a reasonable idea. It lets a Medic heal people at level 1, and prevents them from ever running out of ammo. But I've already outlined the problems with it. Alternatives:

Medics, at least in Druids200, cannot drop health packs. This feature has been requested over and over again, and I think it's a pretty decent starting point. It needs some kind of built-in limitation, a timer or resource usage of some sort, but seems like it'd work well.

Then there's things like the Healing Sphere. I imagine the Slow Volume Deployable could easily be utilized to create a healing volume. You could probably also look at altering the Spider Mine Trap to create healing mines that seek out teammates.

An alternative approach based on the "Shoot things to heal them" model would be to give a Medic an ability to automatically make all of his weapons heal X% of their damage when they hit a friendly player. Start off low, something like 5% and grow with each level.
With enough alternative ways to heal, and a resupply ability, it wouldn't be strictly necessary for Medics to have an infinite weapon. If, however, you wanted to address the potential issue of Medics running out of ammo when healing allies, you could award the Medic ammo for their weapon each time they heal a friendly player.

I'd LOVE classes.

But I agree with continuum, make it work first with the basic general abilities available to all and only later on introduce classes.

Although part of me would like to put Classes off, if we are ever going to implement Classes, it would probably be best to do it from the start. Even if we just have one class that can purchase everything.

And speaking of which:
I suggest we make sure it is easy to extend the RPG by adding extra classes. It then needs to be easy for people to say which skills can be purchased by what classes. It would be really nice if this could be done in an ini file, so server admins rather than programmers can do it.
This would have the knock-on effect that if the server admin wants, they can just let every class purchase everything.

So basically the server admin decides

What Classes are available, and can define new ones

Which of the pre-defined abilities/artifacts/weapon types are required on this server. Note that these abilities etc may come from many different sources, and not all part of the one package

Which Classes can buy which abilities.

Perhaps allow server admins to define skill pre-requisites and exclusions. So you can buy energy leech if damage bonus >= 50 provided you haven't got vampire.

We also need to allow server admins to tweak skills. e.g. energy leech 3 levels @10 points per level, 3% leech bonus. This will give server admins greater control over balancing their own server

So one server might want Weapons Masters, Adrenaline Master, and Medics. Another server might want Earth, Fire, Wind, and Stone classes. Another might want Humans, Elves, Orcs and Hobbits. Another might want Fighters, Paladins, Wizards and Clerics. Another server might want Newbs, Beginners, Fraggers and Gods restricted by player level.
Another server may want to change them week by week, giving players their points back to spend each time. Why not?

And the skill selection screen should only show those skills available to the selected class. It should still show skills that you cannot yet purchase due to some other pre-requisite e.g. level.

Szlat wrote:

I suggest we make sure it is easy to extend the RPG by adding extra classes.

Agreed, give the huge differences on this matter it should be highly configurable. One of the options has to be no classes at all (e.g. the current Titan and ONSRPG crowds are used to that).

Szlat wrote:

It then needs to be easy for people to say which skills can be purchased by what classes. It would be really nice if this could be done in an ini file, so server admins rather than programmers can do it.

Agreed, although this will make configuring everything more complicated.

Szlat wrote:

We also need to allow server admins to tweak skills. e.g. energy leech 3 levels @10 points per level, 3% leech bonus. This will give server admins greater control over balancing their own server

I have been thinking about a method of making abilities into mutators (or a special kind of mutators) which can have private INI files and make the RPG Core manage all this. Not sure yet if that will be possible with UT3. In my ideal world you should be able to pick a random mutator and transform it into a ability (or magic or artifact), but probably this will be hard to achieve.

Szlat wrote:

And the skill selection screen should only show those skills available to the selected class. It should still show skills that you cannot yet purchase due to some other pre-requisite e.g. level.

I am not sure yet the new UI Scenes in UT3 will make all this possible. It will probably be a tough (sub)project to achieve.

I'm more in support of an incentive system rather than a class system. Make a maximum level (and therefore a point cap), and have people build their own characters as they wish.
This would, of course, require changes to many abilities; Experienced Healing would need to be coupled with a secondary effect, Iron Legs would need a big cost reduction, Advanced Damage bonus and Advanced Damage reduction would need to be removed, Loaded Medic would need a cost increase, etc. Basically, all abilities would need to be rebalanced so that their cost is proportionate to their utility.
But if/once that is accomplished, I honestly don't think we would need classes. People would just build their character around a theme rather than an inbuilt class. If I want to be a huge damage dealer on the front lines, I might buy lots of weapon speed and DB, loaded weapons, energy leech, and loaded artifacts. If I want a rounded character, I might buy Shield Regen, Loaded healing, health, weapon speed and Resupply. If I want a mixed caster/healer, I might buy adrenaline drip, loaded healing, loaded artifacts, adrenaline bonus and experienced healing. The only exception to the rule of let everyone buy everything would be if two skills combined created an exploit, where both skills together are many times stronger than they are alone. That said, I personally cannot think of a combo like this.

If classes are used, I am still in support of a level cap to prevent people from maxing out.

2 cents
Code:

 interface RpgActor {
     //functions common to all classes
 }
 
 abstract class RpgClass implements RpgActor {
   //common properties (extend whatever base class from the game actor irrc?)
 
 }
 
 class ConfigurableRpgClass extends RpgClass {
  //properties of this class (abilities etc are set in an ini file)
 }
 
 class WeaponsMaster extends RpgClass {
    //could possibly extend the ConfigurableRpgClass depending on how
    //things go, but any abilities specific to the WeaponsMaster could be
    //inner classes within this class (same for Medics, LA, or other classes)
 }

This may sound weird but I don't think RPG classes should also be UnrealScript classes. I think only abilities, artifacts and weapon magic types should be classes.

How everything is cooked up (e.g. which abilities require you to have certain other abilities, which RPG classes are there and which RPG class is needed for which abilities) should be 100% dynamic. In other words you should have a INI in which you can define all those things and the RPG Core should handle all that. This would allow server owners to decide how the RPG classes should work, and if they even want RPG classes at all.

As to classes for e.g. abilities I think there should be only 2 layers, not more. A base class in the RPG Core from which the ability class is derived. There should be as much plumbing as possible in the RPG Core to make creating and modifying abilities (etc.) as easy as possible. Preferably the ability class should have it's own private INI (or share those with a bunch of them in a package) for ability specific settings, generic settings (e.g. how many levels has the ability, what do those cost) should be handled by generic settings in the RPG Core. If certain abilities exclude each other for technical reasons (not for gameplay reasons those can be handled by the INI files of the RPG Core) perhaps there should be a system like Epic made for mutators to have them exclude each other although this is a tough one and handling it in the RPG Core INI might turn out to be the most practical solution.

BattleMode wrote:

This may sound weird but I don't think RPG classes should also be UnrealScript classes. I think only abilities, artifacts and weapon magic types should be classes.

How everything is cooked up (e.g. which abilities require you to have certain other abilities, which RPG classes are there and which RPG class is needed for which abilities) should be 100% dynamic. In other words you should have a INI in which you can define all those things and the RPG Core should handle all that. This would allow server owners to decide how the RPG classes should work, and if they even want RPG classes at all.

As to classes for e.g. abilities I think there should be only 2 layers, not more. A base class in the RPG Core from which the ability class is derived. There should be as much plumbing as possible in the RPG Core to make creating and modifying abilities (etc.) as easy as possible. Preferably the ability class should have it's own private INI (or share those with a bunch of them in a package) for ability specific settings, generic settings (e.g. how many levels has the ability, what do those cost) should be handled by generic settings in the RPG Core. If certain abilities exclude each other for technical reasons (not for gameplay reasons those can be handled by the INI files of the RPG Core) perhaps there should be a system like Epic made for mutators to have them exclude each other although this is a tough one and handling it in the RPG Core INI might turn out to be the most practical solution.

I don't know enough about RPG Core to offer any suggestions on the approach, but if the goal is to make a system that's extensible enough to suit everyone's desires then I think it's probably best to handle classes as you describe. I might even take it a step further and suggest that abilities and artifacts be named as generically as possible, and, if possible, have a configurable display name via ini.

BattleMode wrote:

This may sound weird but I don't think RPG classes should also be UnrealScript classes. I think only abilities, artifacts and weapon magic types should be classes.

I think so too. That is what I was thinking of when I was talking about server admins being able to define them, but I forgot to say it. Duh. We may still need one base RPGClass class that we can use for storing functions etc. At run time, read the ini in and for each class create an instance, and set the name, available abilities etc.

BattleMode wrote:

... Preferably the ability class should have it's own private INI (or share those with a bunch of them in a package) for ability specific settings, generic settings (e.g. how many levels has the ability, what do those cost) should be handled by generic settings in the RPG Core....

I think one ini per ability will be overkill. One ini detailing all the abilities should be fine. We may want this ini separate from the one storing the PlayerData.

BattleMode wrote:

If certain abilities exclude each other for technical reasons (not for gameplay reasons those can be handled by the INI files of the RPG Core) perhaps there should be a system like Epic made for mutators to have them exclude each other although this is a tough one and handling it in the RPG Core INI might turn out to be the most practical solution.

I think keep it simple, and just define exclusions in the ini file.

Anonymous wrote:

....I might even take it a step further and suggest that abilities and artifacts be named as generically as possible, and, if possible, have a configurable display name via ini.

Agreed

Szlat wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

....I might even take it a step further and suggest that abilities and artifacts be named as generically as possible, and, if possible, have a configurable display name via ini.
Agreed

Perhaps the new language file stuff should be used for this (didn't really study it yet though).

Szlat wrote:

BattleMode wrote:

... Preferably the ability class should have it's own private INI (or share those with a bunch of them in a package) for ability specific settings, generic settings (e.g. how many levels has the ability, what do those cost) should be handled by generic settings in the RPG Core....
I think one ini per ability will be overkill. One ini detailing all the abilities should be fine. We may want this ini separate from the one storing the PlayerData.

I should have been more precise and said one INI file per ability collection. It should somehow be possible to mix abilities from different authors on one server without INI mixups.

BattleMode wrote:

Szlat wrote:

BattleMode wrote:

... Preferably the ability class should have it's own private INI (or share those with a bunch of them in a package) for ability specific settings, generic settings (e.g. how many levels has the ability, what do those cost) should be handled by generic settings in the RPG Core....
I think one ini per ability will be overkill. One ini detailing all the abilities should be fine. We may want this ini separate from the one storing the PlayerData.
I should have been more precise and said one INI file per ability collection. It should somehow be possible to mix abilities from different authors on one server without INI mixups.

Personally I think it would be less confusing if each ability had it's own .ini doing it this way would not make anything dependent on a *main* ini since from what it sounds like there will be quite a few settings for some abilities if the pre-reqs are going to be defined per ability in an .ini

I think I'm going to try and make a external configuration/management app that should simplify that sort of thing.

I think we are loosing sight of what RPG stands for (Roll Playing Game). The concept going back to the old D&D days, is you choose a 'class' of charactor to emulate in play. You choose your abilities according to what is available to your class. This forces you to create and adjust your game play with who you are, what you have, and who your playing with (or against). So, yes, I think classes keeps this feel of gameplay true to it's beginnings. I have always played a warrior class in my old RPG days, loving the ability to just pound on thing face to face.

I like classes.

I like the concept.

I like pre-defined roles so that others have an idea of how they can or cannot count on me or others.

I like the way that multiple classes interact in meaningful ways to create teamwork.

Without the diversity of classes, I see some of the above as moot.