Well, at that point, the question becomes "Will there be classes in the game released that DON'T have utility?"
Otherwise, it is kind of weird to mention it. It's something like if we mentioned that every playable class has "two arms". Unless there's an armless, one armed, or three armed class at some point, it's kind of the default state that EVERYONE has, making it somewhat weird to mention it in a list of things. They don't mention every class is a Jumper (even though every class can jump) or that every class has autoattack (even though every class has autoattack[?]), nor that every class is good in a group, even though by the argument that they're trying to emphasize how Pantheon is different than other MMOs, saying that the classes are great in groups/work well together in groups would seemingly be something they would say, too.
So I get the critique. It's like someone said that Dread Lord would seem kind of "empty" if it was just listed as "Tank" and nothing else. Though like I said earlier, this wouldn't be an issue if every class had a definite secondary (and some classes tertiary) roles. It's kind of weird they don't list those, though, since reading them, it does seem like a lot of the classes clearly do. Hell, Paladin has two secondary roles! It clearly has off healing with what looks like enough potency for clutch healing if nothing else, and no less than, what, 4-5 crowd control abilities? There are two that contend/grapple with an enemy (sounds like a root/mez combo), stun, daze, and knockback. In most MMO's, that's a pretty nice CC toolkit right there! They may be at least partially limited by the Reckoning/resource stacks and stuff, but this is for a TANK primary role, which usually "CC" by taunting alone.
...of course, you might argue the contend with abilities are more like tank cooldowns, but...they clearly are designed to distract/hold off enemies, which is the very heart of what Control does.
Cool to hear!
I guess some of it will probably also depend on how the ability selections work, and what/if any limits there are there. Like if a Paladin selected just all of their healing abilities (and none of the tanking ones), would they be an effective healer? Or if they picked all of the Control abilities and put those on their bar, etc. (Granted, this also gets into the questions of abilities being upgraded, what the player chooses to upgrade/improve and not, gear choices, etc.) And there's also that weirdness of we're able to read basically the ability tooltips, but don't yet know all of the systems.
So at least some is just the nature of speculation from incomplete information, a fair thing to consider, after all. I'm just hoping for a lot of neat combinations and taking a wrecking ball to any notions of homogenization or "rigid" class roles/structure (e.g. "The Frost Mage is dps and nothing else, the Protection Warrior is tank and nothing else, etc")
Renathras said:Like if a Paladin selected just all of their healing abilities (and none of the tanking ones), would they be an effective healer? Or if they picked all of the Control abilities and put those on their bar, etc. (Granted, this also gets into the questions of abilities being upgraded, what the player chooses to upgrade/improve and not, gear choices, etc.) And there's also that weirdness of we're able to read basically the ability tooltips, but don't yet know all of the systems.
So at least some is just the nature of speculation from incomplete information, a fair thing to consider, after all. I'm just hoping for a lot of neat combinations and taking a wrecking ball to any notions of homogenization or "rigid" class roles/structure (e.g. "The Frost Mage is dps and nothing else, the Protection Warrior is tank and nothing else, etc")
Not unless they do a dramatic shift in class design philosophy and decide to just become like most current gen MMOs where any class can fulfill multiple roles completely.
Iksar said:Not unless they do a dramatic shift in class design philosophy and decide to just become like most current gen MMOs where any class can fulfill multiple roles completely.
How do you get that from my post? I was specifically talking about a class that seems to have abilities for multiple roles, and the fact that you select a limited stock of abilities to have on your action bar at a time. It should also be noted that MOST current gen MMOs do NOT have a system where any class can filfill multiple roles completely. In FFXIV, each class is rigidly stuck in one role. While your character can level every class if you choose to, a Warrior is a Tank, not a healer or dps. You can level your White Mage if you want to heal or your Dragoon if you want to dps, but you can't do them as Warrior. Likewise, the casual WoW has exactly ONE class that can tank, heal, melee, or ranged dps: Druids. And they can largely only do one at a time. The only other classes that can swap between roles are Paladin (tank/heal/melee) or Monk (tank/heal/melee). Eve Online doesn't exactly have classes, but it does have ships, which have specific bonuses and can only really be fit for one main role and one secondary role (with some effictiveness) at a time, and generally foregoes the secondary role and focuses entirely on one role to maximize their effectiveness. (The only pracitcal secondary role most any ship can do is close range tackle - think root/snare, but for spaceships, but this is also limited due to taking mid-slots, meaning some damage boosting, any shield boosting, and most speed/agility boosting mods cannot be fit at the same time.)
In fact, the ONLY current gen MMO I think that any class can fulfill multiple roles completely is probably Rift. Most are either like FFXIV (pigeonholed), WoW (most classes having a limit of one or possibly two roles), with Eve's skill based and loadout system being somewhat the unique exception to the rule.
If Pantheon was somewhat more like Eve in this respect, I don't think that would be a negative to most people seeking hardcore gameplay, as Eve is probably one of the more steap learning curve/hardcore MMOs out there (F1 monkey's aside).
Renathras said:How do you get that from my post? I was specifically talking about a class that seems to have abilities for multiple roles, and the fact that you select a limited stock of abilities to have on your action bar at a time. It should also be noted that MOST current gen MMOs do NOT have a system where any class can filfill multiple roles completely. In FFXIV, each class is rigidly stuck in one role. While your character can level every class if you choose to, a Warrior is a Tank, not a healer or dps. You can level your White Mage if you want to heal or your Dragoon if you want to dps, but you can't do them as Warrior. Likewise, the casual WoW has exactly ONE class that can tank, heal, melee, or ranged dps: Druids. And they can largely only do one at a time. The only other classes that can swap between roles are Paladin (tank/heal/melee) or Monk (tank/heal/melee).
In fact, the ONLY current gen MMO I think that any class can fulfill multiple roles completely is probably Rift. Most are either like FFXIV (pigeonholed), WoW (most classes having a limit of one or possibly two roles), with Eve's skill based and loadout system being somewhat the unique exception to the rule.
If Pantheon was somewhat more like Eve in this respect, I don't think that would be a negative to most people seeking hardcore gameplay, as Eve is probably one of the more steap learning curve/hardcore MMOs out there (F1 monkey's aside).
I never said do it all at the same time, just that they can fulfill multiple roles. FFXIV if you level the appropriate jobs (which is incredibly easy after the first) you can swap at will (outside of combat/instances) to fulfill whatever role you need and WoW you can do the same with most classes only instead of swapping full classes you swap specializations to be able to fulfill other roles. Wildstar is much the same in that each class can fulfill one of two roles when spec'd for it. I never got into Rift so I can't say but sounds like it fits my point and Eve I likewise never played.
As far as I understand it (who knows maybe I am way off), the intention for classes in Pantheon is only to temporarily fill in for different roles or otherwise produce similar results to those roles. I imagine for the most part it will come about in limited small bursts as opposed to how it works in the above games where you can prepare ahead and completely fulfill a different role with the same character/class.
For exampe a Dire Lord might have the highest DPS potential of all the tanks but even still they pale when compared to DPS classes over the course of a fight. So they might have very high burst damage potential (satisfying those tanks who want to see big numbers/damage every now and again) but it won't be sustainable and over the course of a fight they will still end up doing half the damage of a DPS class.
Same idea with a Paladin where they can heal a little bit and have the potential to burst heal to save lives in a pinch from time to time but overall they wouldn't be able to come close to the total healing of a healer over the course of a fight, certainly not enough to keep everyone alive even if they slot every healing related ability on their bar.
Monk off-tanking could very well be something like a 10-20 second window where they can fill in with certain abilities/cooldowns but beyond that they fall apart quickly.
Then just apply similar ideology to healers doing DPS etc: windows of high potential but overall lacking compared to primary classes of the role.
No specializations or loadouts that would suddenly elevate a class to filling an entirely different primary role for as long as they desire.