304 réponses à ce sujet

[N7Infernox]

It would be interesting to see custom classes as a possibility in ME3, but only after you beat the game with all classes on Insanity.

[The Spamming Troll]

nah homey. i dont want to earn the privilege to play the game like id want to. id rather get it that way from the start.



thats just a bad idea. i wouldnt want to play a full season of madden in order to unlock micheal vick.

[atheelogos]

Custom class ftw! lol

[turian councilor Knockout]

N7Infernox wrote...

It would be interesting to see custom classes as a possibility in ME3, but only after you beat the game with all classes on Insanity.

Like what ?

Spectre Agent, No i like the classes as they are but i would welcome some new powers like biotics that works against or ignore shields ( the rest is already great).

Modifié par turian councilor Knockout, 24 octobre 2010 - 07:33 .

[JaegerBane]

Angel-Shinkiro wrote...

The Spamming Troll makes a good point and JaegerBane is a genius.

Cheers, but I am no genius. I just played a lot of computer games over the years

[Angel-Shinkiro]

Custom classes FTW BBQ

[The Spamming Troll]

after rereading this topic over again, i think its safe to say almost anything would be better then the "classes" we have in ME2.

[Angel-Shinkiro]

The Spamming Troll wrote...

after rereading this topic over again, i think its safe to say almost anything would be better then the "classes" we have in ME2.

Quite True my good sir.

[Dave666]

My take on this? I kinda agree with the OP, Specialist classes like the Engineer and Adept SHOULD have access to all of their respective powers, Adepts should have had Stasis and Warp Ammo etc from the start. A Biotic Specialist that can't use half of the abilities that other biotic characters can use? I mean, really? Abilities like Slam, and Reave being bonus powers that ANY class can use, just makes no sense at all! Did they fit the Soldier Shep with a Bio Amp after he *cough* died?

Modifié par Dave666, 15 mars 2011 - 12:39 .

[BlackFriar]

The Spamming Troll wrote...

balanced as in keeping exactly what "balanced?"

Balanced in that BioWare (of whom I used to be a major fanboi) character, level and NPC design has been getting worse and worse over the years.  So they make everything hopelessly muddy because they can't make six great classes...

I had the same problem, btw, with Jade Empire, KOTOR and DA.  

Of the three, KOTOR irritated me the most.  There was no reason for three classes.   And I hated the blatant 3.0 DnD rip-off to the crappy limited-feat builds we could make.  I'd have rather had an open build with all feats accessible to the player and allow us to make the build we wanted instead of the renamed 'DnD with Jedi' Fighter/Rogue/Cleric choices we had. 

And it's not like there aren't models for the concept.  We have the 'get better by doing' like The Elder Scrolls model.  We have the 'points make you better' like Fallout.   We have skill trees like Diablo.   We even have games with skill trees that let you train-up each skill in the tree to the level you want, like MMOs Eve On-Line and Perfect World.

Of course, since their combat system was just a rip-off of the feat-based 3.0 Dungeons and Dragons engine in NWN...    I guess in their rush to make money, they couldn't be bothered to extend themselves a bit...  Kind of like what I'm hearing about the new DA...

Modifié par BlackFriar, 15 mars 2011 - 02:15 .

[RedCaesar97]

Dave666 wrote...

My take on this? I kinda agree with the OP, Specialist classes like the Engineer and Adept SHOULD have access to all of their respective powers, Adepts should have had Stasis and Warp Ammo etc from the start. A Biotic Specialist that can't use half of the abilities that other biotic characters can use? I mean, really? Abilities like Slam, and Reave being bonus powers that ANY class can use, just makes no sense at all! Did they fit the Soldier Shep with a Bio Amp after he *cough* died?

I agree up to a point. In ME1, the Adept had access to all Biotic talents and the Engineer had access to all Tech talents. Note that in ME1 any class (after the first playthrough) could be given an additional bonus talent, so a Soldier could use any unlockled Tech/Biotic talent such as Singularity or Overload.

In ME2, this was changed so that Adepts and Engineers had access to the four basic biotic talents (Warp, Throw, Pull, and Shockwave) and the Engineer had access to the four basic Tech talents (Overload, Incinerate, Cryo Blast, and AI Hacking). Each class was given a unique power. In ME2, bonus talents were unlocked by gaining a squadmate's loyalty--unlike in ME1 where bonus talents were unlocked by using a power a certain number of times.

So yes, all classes will gain access to Reave, but not Throw or Combat Drone. (And could you imagine a Sentinel with Tech Armor and Charge? Talk about overpowered.) And yes, the Adept or Engineer does not start with all available biotic talents. Although I will point out that there is some overlap between Reave and Warp, and Slam and Pull.

Would it be better if the Engineer and Adept had access to all tech or biotic talents from the start? Maybe, probably. I suppose it depends on your point of view.

As for custom classes, I suspect most builds go something like: Reave, Energy Drain, filler, filler, filler. And I should also point out that Warp Ammo is consifered an Ammo power, not a biotic power.

[Ahglock]

RedCaesar97 wrote...

Dave666 wrote...

My take on this? I kinda agree with the OP, Specialist classes like the Engineer and Adept SHOULD have access to all of their respective powers, Adepts should have had Stasis and Warp Ammo etc from the start. A Biotic Specialist that can't use half of the abilities that other biotic characters can use? I mean, really? Abilities like Slam, and Reave being bonus powers that ANY class can use, just makes no sense at all! Did they fit the Soldier Shep with a Bio Amp after he *cough* died?

I agree up to a point. In ME1, the Adept had access to all Biotic talents and the Engineer had access to all Tech talents. Note that in ME1 any class (after the first playthrough) could be given an additional bonus talent, so a Soldier could use any unlockled Tech/Biotic talent such as Singularity or Overload.

On a setting/rp level ME1 pulled off the bonus talent better IMO.  You only got it at the character creation part of the game.  So even if it was a 2nd playthough starting at level 40 you were a "new" shepard.  So yeah you were a soldier with some biotic powers, or a Adept with a bit of combat training etc.  In ME2, it is a pwang you now have biotic powers event.  Whcih does not fit the setting/lore since you are born with biotics and train since you are 12 at them, and you don;t really pick up combat/tech skills overnight..  Me2 with its respecing etc. might provide better gameplay though. 

[Bozorgmehr]

Dave666 wrote...

My take on this? I kinda agree with the OP, Specialist classes like the Engineer and Adept SHOULD have access to all of their respective powers, Adepts should have had Stasis and Warp Ammo etc from the start. A Biotic Specialist that can't use half of the abilities that other biotic characters can use? I mean, really? Abilities like Slam, and Reave being bonus powers that ANY class can use, just makes no sense at all! Did they fit the Soldier Shep with a Bio Amp after he *cough* died?

I agree with the non-biotic/tech specialist can use those kind of bonus powers. Adepts/Engineers should be able to use all biotic/tech powers, hybrids (Vanguards, Sentinels and Infiltrators) only the (relatively) weak powers. I disagree with adding more powers, it doesn't improve or change the way you can play at all. The global CD system only allows the use of one power at a time hence the option to use Warp and Reave, for example, doesn't add anything.

A slot system which let players decide what powers they want to add to their class specific powers is preferable. Adepts should have Singularity and Stasis by default and 3-4 powerslots they can fill with (biotic) powers of their liking.

BlackFriar wrote...

Balanced in that BioWare (of whom I used to be a major fanboi) character, level and NPC design has been getting worse and worse over the years. So they make everything hopelessly muddy because they can't make six great classes...

All 6 ME2 classes are reasonably well designed although a couple rely on (or can only use) one power. But all classes have an unique feel and their specific powers require different ways to play the game. Instead of the ME1 Adept = Vanguard without a shotgun and Vanguard = Adept without Singultarity we've got a headbanging berserker and a CC specialist. We can dispute the ME2 combat system in general, but the clear difference between former lookalikes is undeniable.

And it's not like there aren't models for the concept. We have the 'get better by doing' like The Elder Scrolls model. We have the 'points make you better' like Fallout. We have skill trees like Diablo. We even have games with skill trees that let you train-up each skill in the tree to the level you want, like MMOs Eve On-Line and Perfect World.

Of course, since their combat system was just a rip-off of the feat-based 3.0 Dungeons and Dragons engine in NWN... I guess in their rush to make money, they couldn't be bothered to extend themselves a bit... Kind of like what I'm hearing about the new DA...

TES and Fall Out have a totally broken leveling system. In Oblivion and Fall Out 3 you can master every skill quite easily. This destroys replayability (at least for me). RPG/leveling your character should be about choice, are you going the stealth route or is diplomacy your thing etc. In these games your character could use all weapons, magic, stealth, persuasion etc etc. Or to put it differently, in Oblivion and FO3 there is no choice at all - which is very bad in terms of gameplay and it's a huge design failure.

[kstarler]

Personally, I like both the Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 system and the Mass Effect 2 system. I don't want all of my RPG's to have the same system. It's likely one of the reasons that I'm enjoying DA2, despite some notable faults with the PC version (most notably, I can't run it at Very High even with my $400 video card because of driver issues). I like diversity in my games, and so I like both the TES skill system and the ME2 class system. I don't want Mass Effect to mirror The Elder Scrolls, or vice versa. I like ME2 the way it is, and I'm sure I'll like ME3 the way it is.

[Dave666]

[quote]Bozorgmehr wrote...

[quote]Dave666 wrote...

My take on this? I kinda agree with the OP, Specialist classes like the Engineer and Adept SHOULD have access to all of their respective powers, Adepts should have had Stasis and Warp Ammo etc from the start. A Biotic Specialist that can't use half of the abilities that other biotic characters can use? I mean, really? Abilities like Slam, and Reave being bonus powers that ANY class can use, just makes no sense at all! Did they fit the Soldier Shep with a Bio Amp after he *cough* died?[/quote]

I agree with the non-biotic/tech specialist can use those kind of bonus powers. Adepts/Engineers should be able to use all biotic/tech powers, hybrids (Vanguards, Sentinels and Infiltrators) only the (relatively) weak powers. I disagree with adding more powers, it doesn't improve or change the way you can play at all. The global CD system only allows the use of one power at a time hence the option to use Warp and Reave, for example, doesn't add anything.

A slot system which let players decide what powers they want to add to their class specific powers is preferable. Adepts should have Singularity and Stasis by default and 3-4 powerslots they can fill with (biotic) powers of their liking.

I can certainly see where you're coming from on this, and yes, because of the Global Cooldown its true, you can only use one power at a time, however, lets imagine a scenario or two.

Your an Adept and you've got an enemy down to say half health, but you can see a hoard of enemies coming and they'll be here in seconds, now might be a good time for your adept to quickly unleash a Slam while running for cover.

Or imagine the poo has hit the fan and you're down to half health and cover is nearby, but you won't make it as it stands. Might be a good time to use Reave to give you the health to make it to that cover.

As it stands now, you couldn't do both in the same mission. I'm not saying give the Adept Godlike powers, I'm saying give the Adept a better range of abilities to choose from in any given situation. They're supposed to be Biotic Masters and yet they only get 2 more biotic abilities than a Vanguard? (Not counting singularity in this case because its balanced by the Vanguards Charge Ability).

Just want to be clear that I'm certainly not attacking you or your ideas here, Life is hard enough without people adding to it.

Modifié par Dave666, 15 mars 2011 - 10:10 .

[Alamar2078]

I wouldn't mind opening up the "classes some" but as already pointed out the more you open the classes up you stand a chance that powers / classes / etc. lose some of their distinctiveness.

With the limited number of skills / limited skill points / etc. I think you'd need a system closer to ME1 than ME2 if you wanted to open the classes up to a higher level of customization.

With only 5 skills you can max anyway if you have skills like "class Signature Powers", "Loyalty Powers", and "Passives" there isn't a whole lot else left to choose.

[Dave666]

@Alomar I understand what you're saying, in a way I'm in favour of a hybrid between ME:1 and ME:2 for ME:3, more abilities to play with, but an idea I've seen suggested a few times on this forum is to have 2 Cooldowns. A Global Cooldown of say 2 seconds, and an individual cooldown. It works sort of like this. You see an enemy with a barrier and cast Warp, both cooldowns kick in, you can't use any abilities while the Global Cooldown is running (2 seconds), once the Global Cooldown is up, you're free to use any other ability, however Warp is on its own seperate cooldown and can't be used for say 6 seconds. All it would take for this to work would be a small icon at the bottom of the screen maybe have it as an icon that fills so you have a visual cue for when its ready to cast again. This way, you can reward players who use combo's while discouraging people from simply spamming warp over and over again. It would actively teach players how to get the best out of their abilities.

I used the Adept as an example, but it could work for pretty much any class.

[XCPTNL]

Interestingly enough the fairly limited options of the classes still allow for a nice variety of different builds/playstyles in my opinion. So I'm fine with the classes as they are although I wouldn't mind more individualism if it#s done properly. But my biggest concerns with the current system are:

1) Being forced into spending points in a skill you don't want/need only to open the possibility to invest in a different skill thus missing points (like why would I need to waste 3 points in Shockwave only to have access to Pull with the Vanguard). More often than I thought this was a problem for me and it's annoying. If there were skilltrees with like 3 different paths (e.g. biotic, tech, combat) I could understand that you can't just switch from a tech orientied build into the biotic tree and demand access to the strongest biotic abilities (and I don't like mixing those two anyways). But with the current system I really don't see the point and it just bothers me.

2) The way you have to spend points. Like 1,2,3,4. I had many ideas that were limited due to problem 1) and in combination with problem 2) because I didn't have enough points left or had too many left but couldn't spend them. I'd really appreciate it if you could spend 1 point at a time and thus being able to spend any number between 1 and 10 into a skill with each level meaning more power, duration, cooldown reduction or whatever and maybe 2 "milestones" along the way - meaning you still can choose between versions with 10 points spent - but if you only invested 9 points you'd still have a more powerful version than you'd have with only 6 points invested.

Also... with more powers the problem of a global cooldown is annoying. Individual cooldowns are better. Or like Dave666 suggested: 2 cooldowns. A short global cooldown and and individual.

[Alamar2078]

Dave666 wrote...

@Alomar I understand what you're saying, in a way I'm in favour of a hybrid between ME:1 and ME:2 for ME:3, more abilities to play with, but an idea I've seen suggested a few times on this forum is to have 2 Cooldowns. A Global Cooldown of say 2 seconds, and an individual cooldown. It works sort of like this. You see an enemy with a barrier and cast Warp, both cooldowns kick in, you can't use any abilities while the Global Cooldown is running (2 seconds), once the Global Cooldown is up, you're free to use any other ability, however Warp is on its own seperate cooldown and can't be used for say 6 seconds. All it would take for this to work would be a small icon at the bottom of the screen maybe have it as an icon that fills so you have a visual cue for when its ready to cast again. This way, you can reward players who use combo's while discouraging people from simply spamming warp over and over again. It would actively teach players how to get the best out of their abilities.

I used the Adept as an example, but it could work for pretty much any class.

***************************************************************

If I were designing something from scratch I'd probably divide powers into Combat, Biotic, and Tech categories.  I would then have separate cooldows for each category.  I would have a general cooldown that would vary depending on the "animation length" of powers involved.   I.E. I'd want to make sure I don't have any animation cancellation "tricks" that could be used.

As far as displaying what powers can be used and what's on cooldown you could divide the bar into colored sections.  If the tech section is glowing then you can't use another tech power.  Same would apply to Biotics or Combat.  You could color-code each section to make it more apparrent what's on cooldown.

An interesting thing is that the cooldown period for certain categories of powers could vary depending on class.   "Soldiers" would have much quicker cooldowns on Combat powers than anyone else.   Same thing would apply for Adepts & Engineers and their areas of extreme focus.  Then again an Adept using a combat power [ammo power for example] would likely have a large cooldown penalty for this.

[Tasker]

I love classless RPGs as they allow for tailoring your character to how you want it.

Divinity 2 by Larian studios is my current all time favourite RPG ( Just edging out Mass Effect 1 ) and that uses a classless system.

You can pick and choose whatever weapons and armour you wish to use as long as you are the right level to use them.
 
There are no reasons to not mix and match the skills from the various skill trees as picking from one does not conflict with picking from others.

The only limits you have with the skills are the levels at which you can put points into them and the number of points you have to stick in them.

It's not like other games where mages can't use armour or archers can't use magic. As long as you have the mana to do it you can cast any spells and use any skills that you have, when you want, how you want.

The only problem you might have is deciding which of them to assign to your action keys as you only have 8 of them.  But you can pause and swap them out on the fly so that's not too much of a problem.

My character ended up being a Demon summoning archer, that cast fireballs while firing explosive arrows, dressed in full plate armour.

I wish all games used this type of system as it allows for so much freedom.  Though I imagine it could be a **** to balance properly.

[Alamar2078]

Orkboy wrote...

I love classless RPGs as they allow for tailoring your character to how you want it.

Divinity 2 by Larian studios is my current all time favourite RPG ( Just edging out Mass Effect 1 ) and that uses a classless system.

You can pick and choose whatever weapons and armour you wish to use as long as you are the right level to use them.
 
There are no reasons to not mix and match the skills from the various skill trees as picking from one does not conflict with picking from others.

The only limits you have with the skills are the levels at which you can put points into them and the number of points you have to stick in them.

It's not like other games where mages can't use armour or archers can't use magic. As long as you have the mana to do it you can cast any spells and use any skills that you have, when you want, how you want.

The only problem you might have is deciding which of them to assign to your action keys as you only have 8 of them.  But you can pause and swap them out on the fly so that's not too much of a problem.

My character ended up being a Demon summoning archer, that cast fireballs while firing explosive arrows, dressed in full plate armour.

I wish all games used this type of system as it allows for so much freedom.  Though I imagine it could be a **** to balance properly.

At least in ME balance isn't an overriding concern as long as you don't throw the skills so out of whack that a certain build is "vastly better" than other builds.  If you do that then the open system will hurt diversity as most folks will be drawn to the power class/build.

For PCs I tend to like classless systems a little more but for consoles [I don't have a logical reason!!] I actual like a little more structure.

[Alistair_Dunscon]

BlackFriar wrote...
Of the three, KOTOR irritated me the most.  There was no reason for three classes.   And I hated the blatant 3.0 DnD rip-off to the crappy limited-feat builds we could make.

uh, kotor was based on the p&p Star Wars game of the time. It would have been completely different if WEG had the Star Wars license at the time, but they didn't, WotC did.

[The Spamming Troll]

heyo! were back to this? im suprised it wasnt locked down for no reason because its an older topic.

anyways, i agree with the OP!

[Dave666]

I've always thought that was silly to be honest. People complain when you create a new topic and its been discussed before (even if you might have new insight into a subject) and often say 'use the search function' (as crappy as it is).

Yet when you use an older already created thread, you get complaints of 'Necroing' a thread.

Sometimes you just can't win. Personally, I see 'Necroing' to be far better than duplicating threads, saves on space and clutter for the forum.

[Ahglock]

Alistair_Dunscon wrote...

BlackFriar wrote...
Of
the three, KOTOR irritated me the most.  There was no reason for three
classes.   And I hated the blatant 3.0 DnD rip-off to the crappy
limited-feat builds we could make.

uh, kotor was based on
the p&p Star Wars game of the time. It would have been completely
different if WEG had the Star Wars license at the time, but they didn't,
WotC did.

The far superior WEG d6 system you mean?   

The Spamming Troll wrote...

heyo! were back to this? im suprised it wasnt locked down for no reason because its an older topic.

anyways, i agree with the OP!

I never would of guessed that you'd agree with THAT guy, yeesh.