An MMO Free of Levels and Classes?
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Assuming I'm not misunderstanding the initial introduction video, I am thoroughly surprised, and quite intrigued, to find an MMO of this style. The idea of being able to freely explore this unique world in any way I may choose has definitely captured my attention.
That's sparks the question of how diverse the builds the players can come up with will be, an exciting prospect.
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@drekkennought Still, your build will be limited by the level of intelligence, as the more this indicator, the more cells under the skills you have
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uo was initially free of classes, just skill growing and you where able to make your own set-up
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Personally I love that MMOs such as fractured, and a few others, are moving towards this approach. So absolutely sick of the class approach. I mean innovating ain't that hard.
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@esoba Completely agree friend.
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Funny enough your builds are not going to be as diverse as you think because of stats and synergies in a classless system. I have played quite a few of them on muds and other games and you notice something pretty quickly. You still end up with generic classes. What it means is you end up with a magic focused, fast squishy hit and run and stealthy physical melee, physical ranged, and high armor tanky melee for the most part. You still have a lot of freedom in those aspects though. Even then you still tend to focus in a single area because of synergies, you don't usually end up a general mage, you typically get some of all kinds of spells, but because of the nature of classless systems and how they level you typically focus in a single area. The same goes for melee or ranged character, you focus on a specific weapon and armor type because leveling them all is just not feasible.
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@maethor Not necessarily, since you don't actually "level" your abilities, it's more like unlocking them through achievements from what I understand. And since you can switch them out anytime at a campfire, that could lead to the players accidentally unlocking a bunch of abilities during regular gameplay without meaning to, then combining them to make very situational builds, as opposed to the all-purpose trinity of warrior-thief-mage. They'd of course have a core set of abilities that they'd actively try to unlock, but those would be just a starting point when deciding on a build, not a generic class.
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Considering how situational everything is supposed to be, I got the feeling we're going to see very localized metagames. For example, due to all the interactions with the environment, we'll probably see different metagames in different zones. A guild that has its city in a forest might use very different builds compared to a guild that has its city in a desert. The forest guild might use fire builds to set things on fire while the desert guild uses wind builds to cause sandstorms (if sandstorms are a thing that is).
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@nelchael all abilities will have 3 tiers to them, so you do 'level' them in a sense.
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@maethor said in An MMO Free of Levels and Classes?:
Funny enough your builds are not going to be as diverse as you think because of stats and synergies in a classless system. I have played quite a few of them on muds and other games and you notice something pretty quickly. You still end up with generic classes. What it means is you end up with a magic focused, fast squishy hit and run and stealthy physical melee, physical ranged, and high armor tanky melee for the most part. You still have a lot of freedom in those aspects though. Even then you still tend to focus in a single area because of synergies, you don't usually end up a general mage, you typically get some of all kinds of spells, but because of the nature of classless systems and how they level you typically focus in a single area. The same goes for melee or ranged character, you focus on a specific weapon and armor type because leveling them all is just not feasible.
This. MMOs have recurring design tropes that force the playerbase to adhere to a few player-defined classes for the sake of optimization / competency.
A major problem is the division between physical and magical damage, and their relationship with STR and INT respectively. In terms of damage output, going one or the other is always better than going both.
e.g. if you only do physical damage, but you have 1000 physical DPS, then you do 1000 DPS. Same with magic and magic DPS. But if you have 600 physical DPS and 600 magical DPS, you can only do one or the other at a time, thus you have 600 DPS.
I hope Fractured can address this damage split to make hybrid characters viable.
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In a sense, but again, you level them by completing different tasks, so you might end up "leveling" abilities without meaning to during regular gameplay. Also, the second and third tier apparently won't make a very big difference, since:
Similarly to what we said about talents, you don’t have to worry about ability leveling creating a too wide power gap between new players and veterans. Sure, leveling up an ability increases its power – be it a stronger effect, increased duration, reduced cooldown, and more. However, they’re always minor differences, mostly interesting on a competitive level. Level 1-2 abilities are more than enough to create effective builds for casual PvE and PvP.
So it sounds like making a build that combines your main abilities, which would likely be level 2-3 since those are the ones you'd focus on, and a few level 1-2 abilities that you gained randomly, would be possible, if not optimal since it lets you be more creative and make builds that are targeted towards specific situations, party make-ups, regions, and so on.
The philosophy of Fractured is that, in a contest between a generic warrior-type with level 3 abilities, and someone with level 1 abilities who tweaked his build to be optimal for the situation, the latter should win, assuming equal player skill. As it should be in a truly classless system.
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I like how they have set up the skills personally
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Restricted unrestricted. You can build however you’d like but specializing will always be meta it seems. More int for a mage build ect
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Without leveling or reaching maximum stats. What is there going to be that shows my effort and progress in the game. Will there never be a point in the game where a brand new player could still manage to kill me? I feel if I have XXX hours in the game and experience that should protect me from a brand new play even.
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@buffybean the skill. if you are not skilled you will suck in this game like in a moba/fps. the plan is to have something like an open world moba.
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@buffybean said in An MMO Free of Levels and Classes?:
I feel if I have XXX hours in the game and experience that should protect me from a brand new play even.
It won't.
There will be a difference between new and old players, they will have a lot more abilities, slightly better gear, etc. The survival aspect of the game will be a lot easier for an experienced player. Older players will be a lot more flexible, and so they'll be able to prepare for different situations better. But in simple 1v1 combat, there won't be a big difference at all, and a brand-new player could easily kill you if he's better at playing the game than you.
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@nelchael gear will not make the difference. that has been told
SO will be only up on build and personal skill. A pro player with 0 hours on fractured could own a low player with 10k hours. that's nice to me.
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That it has. It's also been said that there will be a difference between weapons created by novice and master crafters, so I'm assuming the difference will be in something like durability or weight. Something that doesn't affect combat, but still makes a difference in overall gameplay.
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@nelchael Dunno what will be the difference. Durability may be one but could be also the skin/cosmetic. a master craftsman could crat a weapon with better look.
