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Idea to Equalize Mechanics Across Archetypes
Problem
Balance. It is common for classes from different orgs but in the same archetype to have mechanically different skillsets. If this were consistent and there were to be a different skillset for each class, that's up to 30 skillsets needing to be balanced within and against each other, with all their permutations. I would argue that no one can expect that kind of wizardry from a handful of staff. This situation would create constant balance issues despite how amazing the staff and volunteers are.
Suggested solution
Have 5 to 8 thoughtful, synergistic, well balanced skillsets for 5 to 8 archetypes, and then just change the flavoring across different orgs, but give each archetype the same mechanics. This would also make combat and competitions much more fair, and make expectations from staff/volunteers more reasonable. Making the game more balanced also helps retain players.
Source
This idea is based on @Xenthos's comment from the Let's talk about Glomdoring thread: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/192404/#Comment_192404. I brought it up in Why people are leaving the game: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/192474/#Comment_192474 and it got seconded.
Balance. It is common for classes from different orgs but in the same archetype to have mechanically different skillsets. If this were consistent and there were to be a different skillset for each class, that's up to 30 skillsets needing to be balanced within and against each other, with all their permutations. I would argue that no one can expect that kind of wizardry from a handful of staff. This situation would create constant balance issues despite how amazing the staff and volunteers are.
Suggested solution
Have 5 to 8 thoughtful, synergistic, well balanced skillsets for 5 to 8 archetypes, and then just change the flavoring across different orgs, but give each archetype the same mechanics. This would also make combat and competitions much more fair, and make expectations from staff/volunteers more reasonable. Making the game more balanced also helps retain players.
Source
This idea is based on @Xenthos's comment from the Let's talk about Glomdoring thread: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/192404/#Comment_192404. I brought it up in Why people are leaving the game: https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/192474/#Comment_192474 and it got seconded.
Arix said:Tzaraziko died for your spins
1
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
I do think giving everyone the exact same archetype choices is best solution, both for actual and perceived equality between classes. As I said in response to your comment in the leaving thread, one caveat is that I would like all the abovementioned archetypes to be accessible to all orgs (so no mage/druid and wiccan/guardian split), because if the Glomdoring thread is anything to go by, people are already discussing whether communes have it easier than cities or vice versa, and the whole idea of equalized skillsets is to remove toxicity over inter-org balance as a factor from the game.
Mages/druids while they share the same core mechanic of melding they are quite different in terms of how they go for kills. Up for rework soon anyway.
Bards sort of fit this description already a bit. They focus around aurics, dsong and their terts(drama/etc) terts being mostly accessible to all bards except eco/tarot split. With their song as a supporting element. I know that's a super generalised version of bards so don't pick at it too much, of course there's differences but the core bits are roughly the same for each.
If you wanted to homogenise the game I figure the starting point would be wiccans/guardians as they are the ones with the biggest differences class to class and all have fairly different core styles and mechanics for their kills.
Would this idea basically be to sort of wipe out the six guardian/wiccan classes and essentially replace them with 1 roughly similar class?
EG look at the warrior specs and their guardian equivs. EG Shadowedge and such are in Night but not accessible to Shadowdancers only Ebonguard.
Moondancer - Moon, Wicca, Healing
Serenguard - Cavalier, Knighthood, Totems > Moonhart
Hartstone - Stag, Druidry, Shamanism
Spiritsinger - Wildearrane, Acrobatics, Dramaturgy
Shofangi - Shofangi, Harmony, Acrobatics
Wildewood - Stag, Wildewood, Ecology
This way you don't have like... four different stag druid variations you just have the one and if you have it so like "Healing" for MDs is their own skill they can make whatever changes they need without ever impacting a different class.
If it doesn't work then you'd step further towards what you've suggested and just make everything generic with themed lines, but if that's more sustainable then you could leave it there, or even reintroduce a more limited version of choices if it looks like the processes could support it.
Yes, as has been mentioned this reduces variety. My rebuttals are 1) if the game were extremely well balanced thanks to much more manageable amounts of permutations, players would enjoy lots of room to experiment and innovate. And 2) the more similar the mechanics are across archetypes and orgs, the easier it actually is to make reworks or add new features such as new archetypes or a quaternary skillset without wreaking havoc with the existing combatbalance.
@Enya I noticed you disagreed with my post on this idea in another thread. Would you mind sharing why?
I think this sort of goes back to the issue of we have too many orgs. Not to derail it but just if the work load for too many classes is an issue to balance and we don't have the player base to support 6 orgs. It sort of a different issue but it overlaps.
I think you raise the super important question of permutations with primary/secondary/tert skills. I would support tert skills being flexible across all archetypes, and secondary skills being flexible across some archetypes. But your example of 1 primary, 1 secondary, and 1 tert per archetype per org is also persuasive.
At this point in time, something this large and involved is really not on the table for consideration or implementation in the near future. It'd be a huge undertaking that would require a ton of effort.
And even with skinning, for ease of communication about issues there'd be generic names for all the skills so you'd get to the point where it's really just the lines that are different and that's it which is a pretty big loss for the game.
However, it seems to me that starting from scratch with 3 orgs is way more coding than just simplifying the current system. I also don't think the population has dropped so low consistently that this drastic move is necessary.
Even if we nuked down to 3, I would still argue for this idea to be implemented. A few super balanced skillsets are much better for dynamism and experimentation than 1500 badly balanced skillsets - I mean right now some people feel that it's gotten so bad that it doesn't even make sense to play outside of a single org. Which defeats the point of offering variety in the first place and causes players to leave.
I also kinda imagine that locking down the choices might be easier?
Cause you wouldn't be developing 8 generic classes, you'd just lock out the options that already exist with some work around lesson refunds and flexing to what would be legal if you weren't already there.
2. I figured in the long term it seems easier / more sustainable than constantly revamping classes. Mostly since designing equalized mechanics would involve picking from already existing mechanics, such as applying Glom's synergistic model equally to other classes, instead of coming up with brand new mechanics.
@Orael you are much better informed than I am. How far off were my above guesses?
I think that the simpler and more elegant fix is to just split the copied skills. Instead of Wiccans and Druids and Warriors all learning totems and sharing Moon/Stag in different ways, make Stag its own self contained skillset (containing all of totems+Stag), Moon its own skillset (Containing totems+Moon) and give warriors a choice between the two if you want, and let them balance separately. Split the druid skills between Hartstone and Blacktalon - even call them "Hartstone" and "Blacktalon".
This should be way easier on resources, and removes the problem of entanglement allowing more elegant and self-contained balancing to occur according to the needs of individual classes. The bigger problem is how that balancing itself happens, not that orgs get unique(ish) skills.
A big ol issue IMO is the Curing Overhaul itself, as I pointed out strenuously and at length during said overhaul. When you think about org synergy, it is not a coincidence that the org generally recognized to have the best synergy overall does so outside of the curing overhaul's purview. What we need is to, as a playerbase and with administration, sit down and have a big think about niches that need to be mirrored in each org, how each class in the org should "match" the ability of the other orgs to fill those niches, and change skills accordingly. A project like that was happening in the old envoys but got tabled and then dropped with the series of changes. Merp.