Easy New Classes: Class remodelling (Full Version)

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The berserker killer -> Easy New Classes: Class remodelling (1/8/2016 16:53:18)

Class names
-Matrix Mercenary
-Matrix Tactical Mercenary
-Matrix Bounty Hunter
-Matrix Cyber Hunter
-Matrix Blood Mage
-Matrix Techmage

What makes it special? Well it's basically a "Design your own class". Hear me out before saying it's OP.

Every class is set up in a particular way, with 4 rows 3 columns.

Now each class has 12 moves however what will make this class unique is the fact that you get to interchange the skills from all classes. The class you pick mainly specifies what kind of armors you will be able to equip, your weapon requirement, base stats, your basic skills along with what skill tree set-up you will be using.

I'll give you an example:

If I choose Matrix Mercenary I will receive a Mercenary skill tree (The format). However for each buff/burst damage/ultimate/energy moving skill, even attack, I can choose another one as long as the weapon requirement matches my class and/or it has no weapon requirement. Instead of static smash I can have static grenade, instead of maul I can have Stun Grenade, instead of Bunker Buster I can have Plasma Cannon and instead of Hybrid I can have Reflex Boost... Or can I? Pay close attention.

Now there will be restrictions such as:
- you cant have Both Blood Commander and Mark of Blood (which will be pretty difficult to do once you keep reading).
-Your skills must fall in line or follow your classes Skill tree in terms of the type of skills that your class originally has, and the tiered skill that it is (Shields do not have to be tiered). See below for further explanation.
- Nerfs have to be limited to tier. Buffs do not.
- Naturally, only skills without weapon requirements can be transferred
If need be, all devs have to do is change tiers around a bit. Tiers should be a relatively easy thing to change actually, meaning skills that you don't want a certain class to have can just be re-tiered and the trees designed in a way that that class can't access it.

Static Charge, Battery, are what I mean by Energy Gaining moves. They are free and minimally affect the enemy without taking his or her energy. Parasite, Emp, static grenade, assimilation, static smash, etc classify as energy stealing moves

Frenzy, due to its uniqueness as a burst damage skill, will classify as a burst damage skill instead of an energy gaining skill.

So to simplify it even more, every class has its own layout that it CANNOT abandon for a certain skill or combination of skills

For mercenaries their layout goes like this:

Fm Bd S
Bf St Bd
Mi Nf Bd
Ult Bf Es

Legend:

Bd- Burst Damage
Fm- Field Medic
Bf- Buff
Nf- Nerf
S- Shield
Dot- Damage Over Time
Mi- Multi
Ult- Ultimate
Eg- Energy Gain
Es- Energy Steal
St- Stun

That means that for mercs, reading left to right, I get to choose:

Field medic, 1st tiered burst damage skill, Shield
Buff, Stun, 2nd tiered burst damage skill
3rd tiered multi, nerf, 3rd tiered Burst damage
4th tiered Ultimate, buff, Energy Steal

So according to what I have previously stated, I would be able to create a Matrix Mercenary with skills like this:

Field Medic, Double Strike, Energy Shield
Technician, Maul, Plasma Cannon
Plasma Rain, Malfunction, Zerk
Surgical Strike, Field Commander, Parasite


Notice how I can have Plasma Cannon because it is a burst damage skill who is in the same tier as Bunker Buster, But I can not have Battery because the merc skill tree doesn't allow free skills such as Battery Backup or Static Charge. Nor can I have stun grenade in place of Maul, because stun grenade is a tier 3 skill and Overload has a staff requirement.





Listen I like this idea because it's simple and seems like the quickest, most effective, and most balanced way to bring about change to EpicDuel as opposed to making 10 new classes with 100 new animations then going through 2 years+ of balancing 100+ skills. Doesn't make sense to me to spend all of that time.

This feature will be applied to all 6 of the current classes, hence making it free for all players to enjoy without being inferior to the matrix versions. The class change costs will be, respectively, remaining the same.

What is the overall goal?

- Increase overall diversity without introducing large amounts of new content
- Increase the number of skills for each class
- Increase the number of builds for each class
- Reduce noticeable imbalance between classes

No one will be OP, no one will have an advantage, the possibilities are endless, and it's a simple and easy change that wouldnt take more than a day yet it will have an insane positive effect




Xendran -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 18:03:19)

POST EDIT: What you are going to read below is the kind of spontaneous essay that occurs mind of a game developer from a seemingly simple post. Yeah, it's intense stuff, huh? You can see why being barraged and overloaded with ideas is difficult, because in order to truly understand if they're good or not, you often need to put this level of thought into it before you can make a decision.
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I honestly think they should say screw balance initially and just do it for the sake of it. It has incredible potential to bring a lot of life back into the character building of ED.
A lot of people will look a this suggestion and dismiss it as radical, and not well thought out.
While the first is true, and the second could be argued to an extent (but I wouldn't say not well thought out, its simply not refined because it's just a draft of an idea. A draft of an idea is never refined, so we shouldn't expect it to be.), the thought process behind the overall goal of this is a solid one.

What is the overall goal? 

- Increase overall diversity without introducing large amounts of new content
- Increase the number of skills for each class
- Increase the number of builds for each class
- Reduce noticeable imbalance between classes



We can accomplish all of these things if we take this idea and refine it.

It would be hilariously great to see all the broken combinations that come out first, and then they can use hard data from player battles to balance it after. It's a win win, we get to break the game for a while, and you guys get to use our ridiculous game breaking theorycraft hype train to balance the game with a whole bunch of data.
First of all, this should not be 3 new classes. Instead, each of the existing 6 classes should get this. Each of the 6 classes has a different layout, with more than only one option for each slot on the tree.
Some of the slots can offer 2 different options for a type of skill (for example Ultimate / Debuff for a potential double debuff build).
This would bring a good chunk of variety out of the skills we already have, and new skills no longer need to be made per class, but just per category and added into the pool of skills to pick from.
They are just assigned a tier and type, and can be slotted into any class that supports it in an appropriate slot.

The trees can be designed in such a way that very theme breaking skills are avoided. Just takes some time and effort.
This feels much more like skill tree building in the end to me, much more freedom to build your character around a class type, rather than a set tree of a limited number of skills.
When you have a skill tree, it feels really off when there are so few that it's possible to get every skill on the tree, yknow? Sure you can't max them all, but it still just feels really limiting. And it is really limiting.

I honestly think, and strongly encourage, the developers to turn a refined version of this system into the default class skill system. The amount of life it could breathe into epicduel is incredible, and it honestly is not like we haven't seen change like this before.
Cores are exactly this, but to a much smaller scale. They effectively replaced boosters which were a limited system with a much more robust and customizable system that also interacts directly with skills.
This is the next step. You were on the right track with cores, expand it to the classes and you bring a lot more depth and variety but without adding a lot of new skills to need to understand and learn, or a lot of entirely new mechanics for players to have to grasp.

Honestly guys, i think you should give it a serious shot, and put serious development work into it. It could take a while, and it could need a beta test for it, but it would be an amazing change.
Also I would like to reemphasize this point to the developers: It truly will make implementing new class skills much more accessible to you, and allow you to shift up the meta in new and interesting ways. You can gradually build the skill base over time instead of revamping classes and removing skills.

I honestly am interested in planning up some preliminary trees for this, more refined and with some serious game design theory behind it. I might do a class tomorrow.
I really think that if you are willing to redo some animations, and have some skills use more universal animations, this has the potential to be just as effective as Passive Skill Trees for adding diversity and variety, with much less required design work.

Assuming every class as a fair balance of access to a large variety of skills, balance also no longer is actually anywhere near as large of an issue between classes.
Think about it, if every class has access to a majority of skill types, any broken or overpowered build you could make with one class will definitely be able to be either emulated or countered by the other classes. This is what large skill pools does, a lot of the balance work takes care of itself in terms of meta shifting. What we have now is a stagnant meta, because every class stays far too much the same until the developer intervenes. When the classes are fluid, the meta becomes fluid, and changes at the whim of the players. The introduction of new skills then sends waves in the meta, rather than being forced to manually and intentionally shift the meta with a heavy handed approach in a specific way

What we have instead to worry about then is just overall balance between build types, rather than having to also focus on specific classes as much. It very effectively hides imbalance and the increased variety also gives players like they have more options to try and defeat a powerful build that they come across. It leads to more experimentation which causes players to play longer as well. You should really consider it.



The berserker killer -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 18:23:18)

Thanks Xendran it really means alot and thats the point I am trying to make. The combinations, the skill trees, the opportunities are all endless which means nothing is OverPowered. Nothing is underpowered. Something can easily counter something else and it is up to the players to practically create something that fits them without being limited.

I've suggested more skill points (opitonal skill points) in the past but alot of simple minded players, no offence to anyone at all, just can not see the benefit of it in nearly every class because their minds and capabilities are so limited to builds that have constantly been fed to them rather than thinking out of the norm.

And the best thing about this, the absolute best thing, is that it doesnt require alot of work. The designs are already there, the art work is already there, the countless time spent balancing the skills is already there. Every possible aspect that we need is practically already there. It's just a matter of piecing it together. And the tier limitations might actually favor the coding.



Xendran -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 18:27:39)

Tiers should be a relatively easy thing to change actually, meaning skills that you don't want a certain class to have can just be re-tiered and the trees designed in a way that that class can't access it.
This still keeps themes to the classes, while still giving them access to the majority of skills. Instead of a locked tree, each class instead has a small to moderate pool of class-exclusive skills that only they can put onto their tree.

And in the end, we all know, developers included, that balance has always been a huge struggle. With skill stagnation, we've never really managed to find that sweet spot that we had in beta when the things we were experimenting with were fresh and new. Cores try to achieve this, and come close, but they require new assets and development time for a single core that is liikely to be used by only a fraction of the player base. This makes them, while a great idea to have them on gear, very ineffective at solving the issue of stagnation.
In the end, balance be damned if you can make your game more enjoyable by being looser about the rules that are in place around character building.
We know that at this rate, we aren't ever going to reach that magical point of class balance, so it makes much more sense to take that effort and instead put it into making the system be more enjoyable despite the existence of the inevitable imbalances.

Speaking bluntly and realistically, everybody knows that a large scale change is needed to kick some life back into the game. I'm not trying to make your usual "GAME IS DEAD" doomsaying that you see on the forum of every online game in existence, I'm simply acknowledging the truth which is the playerbase is slowly but surely eroding away, and player retention is not getting any better. Flash is becoming a thing of the past, and player confidence is dwindling. We need realistic change, and it would be more beneficial for you to do it in the form of something like this which is low-demand on asset creation. This allows you to still do what you have for the most part been doing: Cranking out new art.

At this point, we need to be clear and honestly understand that you will be able to delay all content updates that require large programming effort in order to prioritize whatever change you decide to implement.
I know that it hurts to delay or put a hold on content that you have either been planning or promising to players, and you feel like you are not meeting expectations, but we need to be real and accept that this has happened to many planned updates in the past, and will continue to happen in the future. You need to take advantage of your ability to do this in order to do something about this game, or at least the idea behind this game, before it fizzles out.

I understand that BioBeasts comes first, and that is actually one of the things that gives me a bit of hope that you might consider drastic but realistic change.
You understand the implications of the death of flash, you understand that you need a new skillset and fresh minds to think about the challenges ahead, and you were willing to prioritize something new and untested over continuing the EpicDuel grind.

I honestly think this is your best bet, Devs. Take it seriously. At the very least, you need to consider having a serious brainstorming session about it, and truly look at the benefits it has.



racing.lo.mas -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 20:14:52)

I really like this idea, it will make the game more funny and interesting.
But we need to have some thing in mind:
-This class will be op in front of normal classes:
A matrix mercenary will be able to change a weaker skill with a better one, he will be able to get the best skills for a build. A normal mercenary wont be able to do that, and if he has to fight vs a matrix mercenary, it wont have any chance of win.
Solution: Maybe a buff to skills from normal classes. Example: if berzeker deals 50% at max (I dont remember the %), for normal mercenaries, it deals 55%.
-No varium players will get frustrated or boring, and prob this will make them left the game: As I said before, this new classes will be strong and players without varium wont have the chance of swtching to them. Fight vs those players will be hard, and might make them so mad.
Solution: Since omega, all no varium player have the same chance of everything as varium player. So I guess it will be fair if there is a credits price to turn into one of thise classes. It must be something expensive, so there's at least an advantage for varium players, it might be 150k credits, or even more (since free players might have a lot of credits for the gift event, and if it has a high cost, there would be another thing where players can waste the high amount of credits that they get from gifts).
-How you can choose your skills: I think they shouldnt be able to get everyskill they want if they got one in their three that are almost the same,there should be determined skills that a class can get and some they cant. Example: TM. It now has plasma bolt and super charge, what if they change overload with plasma grenade and also they change assmilation with static smash/parasite. It would have 3 skills that improve with energy and 2 skills that allows them to get a lot of energy. All stats on tech, 700 energy and 1300 health and it will be reaaally op, 3 skills dealing an insane amount of damage, and they wont have a problem with getting energy.
Or another solution would be make imposible to a class to put some skills if they have other. Example tm cant put plasma grenade if they already have plasma bolt or if they have static smash.
-Ultimate should be locked, this skill its what give to a class their esence. Obiusly a matrix cyber hunter wont be able to put supercharge for its requeriment, but they can get surgical strike.
In the other statmen I said TM would be op with plasma bolt, plasma grenade and super charge, it will be even stronger with surgical instead of supercharge.
Well as I said, I like this idea, but first we have to see the problems with it and the solutions. If we find most of them, and find how to fix them, the suggestion will be more likely to get implemented.



The berserker killer -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 20:31:39)

Oh im sorry racing, I forgot to mention that I intended to change it to 1500 varium and the whatever it is equivalent in credits to class change. This class will be available to everyone, just at a very high price.

As for the example you have given, along with the ultimates, Plasma Grenade is a 3rd tier skill, overload is a 2nd tier skill. Meaning that tms can not, because of the rules stated above, have plasma grenade. The only class that will be able to interchange it is bounty hunters. It automatically balances itself.

As for ultimates, it's pretty futile to mention this because every class has a wep requirement for their ultimate instead of mercs. I thought it would be a cool feature but I do like the idea of ultimates being locked. That would make classes maintain their integrity.

So the problems you have stated practically fix themselves. A skill has to be of the same tier in order to use it.



racing.lo.mas -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 21:46:53)

Now change class cost 50k credits or 900 varium, so 1500 var would be 83.333 credits.
Oh I see, right.
I was thinking that all classes would have the chance of running in the same build. If a tm can change overload for stun grenade, a bh can get overload instead of stun grenade. A tm can go dex with stun and multy while a bh can turn in a supp build like tm. But then I realize that in the case of bh, it cant have malf for example. They wont have the same skills, they can equip different skills.
Hm what about cheap shot for example, you cant replace it, the only skill of primary damage you can put is double strike, but it now requieres a club. So this skill wont be able to be switched.
And in the case of assimilation, TM might change it for another stronger, like parasite or static smash (both are last tier).



The berserker killer -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/8/2016 21:54:39)

The suggestion pretty much balances itself in this situation too. BHs cant have overload because overload has a weapon requirement:Staff. You cant interchange skills with weapon requirements or if theyre not in the same tier.

For cheap shot, exactly. In this case, Hunters are locked with cheap shot just as mercs are locked with double strike. It all depends on the class you want to take.

As for TMs being able to change assimilation, they can do that. Of course, it all depends on what the player prefers. I would love to, as a merc, have assimilation instead of static smash while some players would prefer to have static smash instead of assimilation



Xendran -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/9/2016 3:14:08)

Realistically you have to go through with applying this to every class that exists, because these classes versatility make them inherently far superior to existing classes, as well as them effectively having the ability to change so much of the class without changing actual classes.



theholyfighter -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/9/2016 3:48:56)

Strongly recommend you to edit that "1500 varium" part, since people would think you intended this to be a varium-only feature without reading the comments.



The berserker killer -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/9/2016 4:15:27)

Thanks, ill change that now!



Pablo Swagg -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/19/2016 19:38:23)

I think it's a really good idea and can make the game more interesting and strategical.



Cyber Dream -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/19/2016 23:05:01)

Waittttt for itttttttttt, I already know it's coming :) (Who knows what im referring to?)

But overall I like this idea. Brings a lot of diversity, but will the class names still be relevant considering the fact that you can pretty much make any class/setup that you want? Why not just make this idea a base class on it's own and open up room for new complex classes with their own look. So if this were to happen, all the classes/armors/weps would be merged and limited to only this base class forcing devs to add in new looks/weapon types if any other class was to be released.
quote:

Now there will be restrictions such as:
- you cant have Both Blood Commander and Mark of Blood (which will be pretty difficult to do once you keep reading).
-Your skills must fall in line or follow your classes Skill tree in terms of the type of skills that your class originally has, and the tiered skill that it is (Shields do not have to be tiered). See below for further explanation.
- Nerfs have to be limited to tier. Buffs do not.
- Naturally, only skills without weapon requirements can be transferred


If my addition to this suggestion was to be considered, then the underlined restrictions would need to be removed or revised.

(I didn't really read through all the posts, just saw the idea and assumed since we all think alike :)



The berserker killer -> RE: Easy New Classes: The Final Three (1/20/2016 0:03:21)

The thing is that its not only the class names that make each class unique. By choosing a specific class you will automatically be assigned to that class' skill tree, armors, and class weapons. This is crucial to restricting classes from having OP combinations that the majority of the player base will flock too.

The restrictions are basically encouraging diversity



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