I've banged on this drum elsewhere, but I think it fits better here in the class forum itself. I want to get fellow Paladin's opinions on this. Is it ok that we only have two racial options - one of them being the jack of all trades, master of none race? We are unique that we only have two options. Thoughts?
I dont think it is Okay I feel being such a hybird type of class we should be allowed to play more then two races. I much rather be part of Drizzt type of player. A race so evil they are feared throughout the Multiverse. But once ina great while a member of this evil race and forsakes the hertiage and becomes a force for good.
Even if that doesnt work No reason neatural races cant be a paladin
While I think elves should have had Paladin as an option, the rest I agree with. The class just doesn't fit the lore of the other races. I am ok with their options. I plan on maining a Ranger and while I think there are several other races that would be really cool as a Ranger, the lore isn't really right. The only sad thing is I believe we will see less Paladins because of the restrictions.
Verdic said:I'm really hoping we hear some development insight on why Paladin's are being addressed in this way and the balance they feel needs to be involved on limiting them so.
They already told us why they are limited, and it has nothing to do with class balance.
They said it was a decision based on the lore and nothing more.
Lore is a terrible reason to reduce a class to two options. It destroys game balance, class population, and creates gear rot at the upper tiers of the game. Story is not a good reason to destroy overall gameplay and balance for the sake of an arbitrary reason.
Verdic said:Lore is a terrible reason to reduce a class to two options. It destroys game balance, class population, and creates gear rot at the upper tiers of the game. Story is not a good reason to destroy overall gameplay and balance for the sake of an arbitrary reason.
You have not even been in pre-alpha yet. You cannot claim that game balance, class population, and overall game play are destroyed.
Lore is not an arbitrary reason.
Simply put, save your doom and gloom until classes are actually tested. Until then, you have no facts to base destruction on. You have no idea how many Paladins will be created and played regardless of race. Your claims are simply unsupported fear mongering.
Certainly not saying anything about destruction. And personally insulting me is not how things are done around here. If you disagree, that is completely fine. However, I can draw some pretty obvious conclusions based on sampled statistics about whether or not there will be a correlation between the number of racial starting options and starting areas of one class vs. classes with more choices that will result in a disproportionate amount of Paladin's created compared to the other classes. Am I drawing this conclusion based on the only math being the current chart layout and how many options one has compared to others? Yes. Is that wrong of me to do? No, infact its my right to an opinion that allows me to do so.
Is it premature? Certainly. Is it invalid because you don't like it? Not even in the slightest.
Beefcake said:Verdic said:Lore is a terrible reason to reduce a class to two options. It destroys game balance, class population, and creates gear rot at the upper tiers of the game. Story is not a good reason to destroy overall gameplay and balance for the sake of an arbitrary reason.
You have not even been in pre-alpha yet. You cannot claim that game balance, class population, and overall game play are destroyed.
Lore is not an arbitrary reason.
Simply put, save your doom and gloom until classes are actually tested. Until then, you have no facts to base destruction on. You have no idea how many Paladins will be created and played regardless of race. Your claims are simply unsupported fear mongering.
Verdic said:Lore is a terrible reason to reduce a class to two options.
Strongly disagree. Coherent and consistent world-building is essential to the genre; it's no less important than sound systems design. As Beefcake says, "Lore is not an arbitrary reason." Limiting class/race combinations doesn't "destroy overall gameplay and balance."
I am encouraged by their willingness to base important design decisions solely on lore.
Verdic said:Certainly not saying anything about destruction. And personally insulting me is not how things are done around here. If you disagree, that is completely fine. However, I can draw some pretty obvious conclusions based on sampled statistics about whether or not there will be a correlation between the number of racial starting options and starting areas of one class vs. classes with more choices that will result in a disproportionate amount of Paladin's created compared to the other classes. Am I drawing this conclusion based on the only math being the current chart layout and how many options one has compared to others? Yes. Is that wrong of me to do? No, infact its my right to an opinion that allows me to do so.
Is it premature? Certainly. Is it invalid because you don't like it? Not even in the slightest.
I didn't see any personal attack there. But there isn't any basis for the conclusion there will be less paladins because they only have two racial options. Again, in other games with limited race options for a class didn't have any effect on population so long as the class was interesting/well designed. On top of which a majority of people have no problems playing humans. There will be those who really wanted to play a different race but if the class is to their liking they will play it anyway.
Verdic said:Certainly not saying anything about destruction. And personally insulting me is not how things are done around here. If you disagree, that is completely fine. However, I can draw some pretty obvious conclusions based on sampled statistics about whether or not there will be a correlation between the number of racial starting options and starting areas of one class vs. classes with more choices that will result in a disproportionate amount of Paladin's created compared to the other classes. Am I drawing this conclusion based on the only math being the current chart layout and how many options one has compared to others? Yes. Is that wrong of me to do? No, infact its my right to an opinion that allows me to do so.
Is it premature? Certainly. Is it invalid because you don't like it? Not even in the slightest.
Beefcake said:Verdic said:Lore is a terrible reason to reduce a class to two options. It destroys game balance, class population, and creates gear rot at the upper tiers of the game. Story is not a good reason to destroy overall gameplay and balance for the sake of an arbitrary reason.
You have not even been in pre-alpha yet. You cannot claim that game balance, class population, and overall game play are destroyed.
Lore is not an arbitrary reason.
Simply put, save your doom and gloom until classes are actually tested. Until then, you have no facts to base destruction on. You have no idea how many Paladins will be created and played regardless of race. Your claims are simply unsupported fear mongering.
Uh, your quote twice mentions destruction. Your words.
Verdic said: Calling me a fear mongerer is a personal attack and not pertinent to the conversation . What is pertininent is the wait and see approach. The problem is no one but potential Paladins will actually care about the end result, and even then it will be difficult to gauge outside of casual observation and guild head counts.
Exactly, no one but potential Paladins will care about the end result.
If someone was not going to play a Paladin, they would not care what races could be Paladins.
They only way to tell how the decision effects the game is to see how many Paladins are created, comparedo to other tank classes and other roles as a whole.
They have repeatedly stated that all three tank classes can handle the content. So, if more people choose warrior or Dire Lord, but there are plenty of tanks around, does it mattereally?
If someone is passionate about Paladins, they can still be humans or dwarves. Paladins will still back around and aplenty.
I know I will still create one, of course after my Dire Lord.
Also keep in mind that it is rather common that paladins tend to be one of the least played classes as the archetype doesn't tend to appeal to either tank players or maybe people in general compared to Warriors/Shadowknights/etc. I can only assume it is because the righteous/lawful good isn't as exciting, but also because they are a hybrid of warrior/cleric and people tend to like offense options over healing utility since you have a healer in the group anyway, and healers are far less appealing to most compared to DPS roles/skills.
Excellent points - but as a game designer why would you want to see a class under utilized, or worse, not utilized at all in the upper tiers? What would be the point in creating the class at all? Just to appease a small niche? I find that hard to believe. It takes a ton of work in every aspect of development to develop a class. Itemization, modeling, scripting, encounter mechanics, spell and ability balance... just for a single class to fit in. Why would you want to see it fail to be adopted by the player base????
Iksar said:Also keep in mind that it is rather common that paladins tend to be one of the least played classes as the archetype doesn't tend to appeal to either tank players or maybe people in general compared to Warriors/Shadowknights/etc. I can only assume it is because the righteous/lawful good isn't as exciting, but also because they are a hybrid of warrior/cleric and people tend to like offense options over healing utility since you have a healer in the group anyway, and healers are far less appealing to most compared to DPS roles/skills.
Iksar said:Also keep in mind that it is rather common that paladins tend to be one of the least played classes as the archetype doesn't tend to appeal to either tank players or maybe people in general compared to Warriors/Shadowknights/etc. I can only assume it is because the righteous/lawful good isn't as exciting, but also because they are a hybrid of warrior/cleric and people tend to like offense options over healing utility since you have a healer in the group anyway, and healers are far less appealing to most compared to DPS roles/skills.
I prefer the dark side in games. In all the other aspects of my life, work, family, etc, I have to be the good guy. Gaming is the one place I can go to get my evil on.
Which is fine - i'm not sure why you'd have an investment in this thread in that case. But I would like to think that a healthy spread of different classes keeps things from looking a bit stale after awhile. Especially if you see a drastic drop off of any single class being played. That's when the rush to balance things out starts to happen and in the past has gotten out of control in other titles.
Verdic said:Excellent points - but as a game designer why would you want to see a class under utilized, or worse, not utilized at all in the upper tiers? What would be the point in creating the class at all? Just to appease a small niche? I find that hard to believe. It takes a ton of work in every aspect of development to develop a class. Itemization, modeling, scripting, encounter mechanics, spell and ability balance... just for a single class to fit in. Why would you want to see it fail to be adopted by the player base????
Again, I don't see it as indicative that they want the class to be under utilized/marginalized in any sense. Even if they are a minority class there will still be a great amount of players playing them, maybe even more than other games as lots of people like playing the more rare race/class combinations and with all the commotion over them only having two race options it might draw in those players. Or perhaps when they reveal the class it will be a lot different than many people expect for Paladin, with less cleric overlapping spells and more focused on smites and damage + shield abilities and few heals/lay on hands. They WERE called Crusaders intially after all. Some classes will always be less played, but that doesn't make them less good.
Maybe I am the jaded one but I firmly believe that a majority of players pick class first then the race they most like that can be said class. I think that only those coming at this from the past, who had all the races and classes out but no known limits are the ones who might be let down, as they may have already built a character in their head like a Dark Myr or Archai Paladin.
Beefcake said:I prefer the dark side in games. In all the other aspects of my life, work, family, etc, I have to be the good guy. Gaming is the one place I can go to get my evil on.
This is exactly why I think Paladin doesn't tend to appeal to the masses in a general sense.
Verdic said:No game was ever good by focusing on story alone.
Agreed. World-building and systems design are equally important. Fun happens when you have both.
Absolutely 100% correct. We do agree on that. And again, I will continue to play a Paladin and fight for it to be treated as equally as the others in the eyes of development. Maybe you're right! Maybe this is going to be the greatest rendition of Paladin's since 2nd Ed. D&D - but until I have some hard info I will remain apprehensive. The track record of many of the team members in VR is that the Paladin has had both great and poor designs depending on which title we're discussing - (EQ (poor) vs. Vanguard(great)) . I'll celebrate when I see more evidence that i'm worrying too much.
Beefcake said:Shai said:Verdic said:No game was ever good by focusing on story alone.
Agreed. World-building and systems design are equally important. Fun happens when you have both.
You can still havery good story, world, and systems without Elven Paladins or what-not.
Verdic said:Absolutely 100% correct. We do agree on that. And again, I will continue to play a Paladin and fight for it to be treated as equally as the others in the eyes of development. Maybe you're right! Maybe this is going to be the greatest rendition of Paladin's since 2nd Ed. D&D - but until I have some hard info I will remain apprehensive. The track record of many of the team members in VR is that the Paladin has had both great and poor designs depending on which title we're discussing - (EQ (poor) vs. Vanguard(great)) . I'll celebrate when I see more evidence that i'm worrying too much.
I think that is very encouraging then. They learned from EQ and did better in Vanguard, so I imagine they learned even more and are ready to really knock it out of the park.
I thought so - but then I found out we only had two racial choices. A Human and a Dwarf. =/ The original kickstarter goal did have the Paladin as an Elf - i'm really curious why that changed. So now the prospect for a heavy Wisdom based Paladin is gone. Does this mean that the class mechanics now involve more melee combat? You're right - we need to know more. I really hoipe it's better - but seeing the way things are laid out race wise i'm just not warm on it right now.
Iksar said:Verdic said:Absolutely 100% correct. We do agree on that. And again, I will continue to play a Paladin and fight for it to be treated as equally as the others in the eyes of development. Maybe you're right! Maybe this is going to be the greatest rendition of Paladin's since 2nd Ed. D&D - but until I have some hard info I will remain apprehensive. The track record of many of the team members in VR is that the Paladin has had both great and poor designs depending on which title we're discussing - (EQ (poor) vs. Vanguard(great)) . I'll celebrate when I see more evidence that i'm worrying too much.
I think that is very encouraging then. They learned from EQ and did better in Vanguard, so I imagine they learned even more and are ready to really knock it out of the park.