If each class is to have a very clearly dfined role that presents a challenge in terms of giving all classes the ability to solo and an even greater challenge when it comes to balancing classes for pvp. Having henchmen ala Guild Wars is a good solution to the soloing problem. I still can't see how to make a purely tanking warrior useful in PVP though. Perhaps we could borrow another concept from Guild Wars and do away with taunting abilities. Guild wars has collision detection but no taunt ability so if you want a heavily armoured character to tank they have to physically stand between the mob and the squishy characters behind shielding them with your body. Works just as well in PVP as in PVE.
 

I think there are advantages to both systems. My personal preference is for all classes being hybrids of some sort.

However, LotRO did get the feel of a few classes right. Even a simple name change from "health" to "morale" makes combat feel different, and it fits the Tolkien world very well (lots of talk in the books and films about hope, not giving up, etc).

The Minstrel isn't the best designed or well-balanced healing class I've played, but it is the most fun. It doesn't really feel like a whack-a-mole healer, even if you do that occationally. To me, it seems to be at a sweet spot between a traditional healer class and something more like CoH's Defenders.

The Guardian is also a great tank class. The emphasis, even at early levels, on shield skills, getting a taunt pretty soon, etc. It really feels like I'm playing a TANK, even solo.

But while LotRO does not allow you to gimp your character as easily, this comes at the cost of customization. Neither WoW nor LotRO are good at making character individual (note the limited character creation options and, at least at release, the limited gear meshes). But in WoW, at least you can customize your character a bit (and gimp it, too) with talents and choosing gear for a particular role. In LotRO, there really isn't much difference between one level 25 Burgler and another. They have roughly the same stats. Gear and traits don't make a huge, huge difference. Maybe there will be more differences at high level, though. I've only played 4 toons to 15, after all.

A possible solution to finding a good healer, as opposed to Member of Class X would be titles that you earn from doing lots of healing. Or for passing some kind of healing-based quest. The same could be done for other classes. You get a title for keeping a bunch of NPCs healed in a scripted battle, for keeping aggro on a big group of mobs in another scripted battle, for keeping 2-3 mobs CCed at once for some time, for beating some DPS-tuned encounters, etc. That way you would at least know that someone you invite is capable of performing a particular group role. But these titles may end up being "mandatory" or the players might percieve them as such, and the calls for nerfs would begin...

This might also work in a classless game. You can't say "LF1M Priest" in a classless game, but you might could say "LF healer with Lifebringer title." It's still less efficient, though, and people will find ways to cheat at the titles, just as they did with WoW's Epic Hunter Quest.
 

The big problem wow has now is healers and tanks. The only class that wants to spec for healing is a paladin...only because holy is the best all around tree for a paladin...it brings both damage and healer. That leaves Priests, Druids, Shaman who mostly all spec for damage because their damage tree is just SO much better at damage then their healing trees. This also applied to tank...the only tanks who want to spec for tanking a druids.. because feral spec gives them both damage and tanking skills. Warriors...they go arms or fury because those trees provide that much more damage then protection.

I think a rework of class talents is all blizzard really needs to do to fix this problem. Give priest and druids better damage talents in their healing trees. I'd go as far as to say reduce the damage shadow and feral can do...this would lead to tons of crying. However if my holy priest could come close to the dps output I had with shadow, I'd probably switch and take up a lot more versitility.....same goes with tanks, buff protection damage, nerf arms and fury.......they don't have to be equal but make them close to the same dps output....


This is why I'd never go ret on my paladin...the slight increase in DPS isn't worth the trade off of healing and versitility.
 

End of the day, the person who pays money to Blizzard should get to choose what they want to do. If they wanted to be a healing priest, they would have specc'd for it. Shadow Priest, Ret Pally, Arms Warrior: thats what the people want to play.

The only time their spec should ever be an issue is if you are looking for a protection warrior and an arms warrior throws on a shield and says he's protection. But, as long as the person is honest, they aren't the wrong spec, you're just looking for a different spec.

When looking for someone, if you are spamming the /who of a city, write down a couple of names, and check the wow armory to get their spec.
 

I think the real issue with Blizzard's class design is that many talent trees don't really provide options -- they enhance one aspect while reducing or negating another.

Shadow priests are a fine example. A sensible design would have allowed a priest to spec holy and improve healing with damage remaining baseline, or spec shadow to improve damage while healing remains baseline. Instead, if you focus on the shadow tree you gain a playstyle that requires you give up all healing altogether, unless you negate the vast majority of damage improvements you get by not using shadowform.

Feral and resto druids are in the same boat. A feral druid can heal just fine in 'caster' form, but doing so negates all the benefits of their talent spec. A resto druid using treeform not only can't cast offensive spells, they even lose some of their healing spells *boggle*

A warrior who specs high in the Arms tree can use defensive stance to tank, but then loses the ability to Mortal Strike. The list goes on.

Providing 'options' for character development should involve developing synergy, not mutual exclusivity. Its not truly an enhancement if you lose something at the same time you gain.
 

@mbp: You bring up a good point about certain classes in PvP. As I said in my mail to Tobold "Mind you, having access to abilities that allow you to DPS isn't a bad thing (in fact, I think to a degree it's necessary otherwise you end up with classes that can't solo in order to make money, and they are left floundering)..." Just can't have them in the same quantities as would be in a primarily DPS class.

Here's my views on all classes doing damage, assuming all of the given classes are in approximately equal quality gear:

As a base number, the lowest armor melee DPS class of a game should be the benchmark by which all other classes compare to in their damage output. Using WoW as an example, Rogues would be king supreme of DPS. This is b/c they are at point blank range, and putting themselves at the most risk, with their (compared to other melee classes) very weak armor. Whatever this class is it rates a 100%, by which all other classes would compare. Other melee non-tanking classes should have decreased damage in exchange for increased armor, with the highest armor class DDers (DPS warriors) being no lower than 95%.

Now for ranged DPS such as Hunters and Mages. While I’m sure this will get many dirty looks, they should sit in the 90-95% range, with a combination armor and whether a class requires ammo deciding where they sit in the range I listed. Many casters believe since they chose a class with low armor, they should be able to the most damage (often quoting the term “Glass cannon”) but the problem lies in that other classes who are melee oriented are putting themselves at much more risk. Someone who’s 30 yards away will have a few moments to either stop attacking, or use some sort of anti-threat ability to save their hides. Melee classes don’t have that time. If they make a mistake, or get a series of crits at a bad time, and pull aggro, they are toast, esp. low armor classes. As a ranged DPSer, I feel the price someone (including myself, as my main is a mage) should pay for having that little bit of a safety margin is doing a little less damage.

Next up are tanks. Tanks should fall into the 80-90% range. The reason I suggest a seemingly high number is that I believe that, to a degree, a tank should hold some of it’s aggro through the use of damage. Obviously some of its abilities will also be towards keeping the mob away from other members of its group as well. Also, by keeping it’s damage high (but not too high) in situations like PvP, tanks actually represent a serious threat, as opposed to them now, which is a tank is ignored longer than others since his damage output is fairly minor, but his damage absorption is pretty large. And while technically they do the same damage in the end since the tank isn’t getting killed, if the tank was getting some attention, then others would live longer to actually get ahead. Instead, they are just ignored most of the time.

After this is the healers. As I think we all know, healers have, if any, one glaring flaw: In most games, a lack of a reliable way to farm. They usually have little to no damage output, and what abilities they do have are usually very costly. If they want to farm, they either have to go against much lower level mobs than others comparably, fight equal level mobs much slower, or they are required to team up with allies, thus lowering their profits. But, you could place decent enough damaging abilities to solo and still heal without upsetting game balance. I would imagine the damage range somewhere from 70-75%. Certainly not close enough to be even considered for a DDer slot, but enough to not gimp them when they are on their own.

Finally we have the Buffing, Debuffing, and/or Crowd Control classes. In my opinion they should fall into the range of 65-70%. Many people would question why they would be so high, since they bring other valuables things to the table. Again, they would suffer from a similar problem as pure healers of a lack of a way to farm. On the other hand their damage can't be strong enough that they can come close to being considered as replacement for pure DPS classes. One way of somewhat mitigating their damage output, so to speak, is by either giving them a smaller mana pool (or whatever it is), or making their abilities in general cost more. Personally I'm favor of the latter, since it will make their soloing easier b/c they can choose to forgo a few of the buffs, debuffs or crowd control, instead focusing on their DD abilities. Also having not bad melee abilities might fit classes like this.

One final addition to this portion of my post: Classes with pets. Mind you, in my mind it's a bad idea to have Pet Classes. In most cases when I have seen classes that are focused around their pets, they have been either ridiculously unbalanced. But classes that can do things on their own without a pet have a benefit, and pay a price at the same time. My feeling is that the class, on it's own, should lose some of it's power... say 20 to 30%. The trade off is that they gain an additional 40% in the form of the pet. This does mean that a class who has a pet could go over the 100% mark. Again, the catch is that if something happens to that pet (CCed or dies or something) then suddenly the benefit gained from that pet is negated, thus it's a gamble.

Secondly, you mentioned collision mapping as a good idea to give a pure tanking class value in PvP. Well the folks over at EA/Mythic who are involved with making Warhammer Online are in the same mindset as you. One of the more recent announcements to come out (posted on the second page of this article: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/warhammeronline/news.html?sid=6164998 ) is that enemy units in PvP at least, if not also PvE will have collision mapping. When I originally read this, my mind was blown. I never played much of GW, so I was unaware that they had that as a game feature, but the concept of tanks who control their enemies not through abilities such as taunt, but instead force the enemy to fight them by quoting Gandalf saying “You cannot pass!” Anyway, my mind was abuzz with new possibilities from this. Just think, given some knockback, stun, and/or snare abilities, a tank like this could do amazing things to his PvP opponents. And of course it's worth mentioning that this would allow for “intelligent” mobs to be programmed, since you would have a way to control them, without needing to do something relatively unrealistic such as aggro.
 

You can't assign the same percentages to each game, and generally there should be a larger difference between melee, ranged, and non-DPS roles. In most of the RPGs I've worked on, the starting point for the DPS of various classes or weapons was usually determined by a long formula including movement speed, distance from max range to melee, the expected length of combat (damage vs. health), attack speed (or button-pushing speed, global cooldown, whatever), etc.

Interestingly, no game I've worked on "feels" right with the initial formula. Maybe I've just never worked with someone who was good at making combat formulas. I don't know. Things generally end up feeling better to players quite a ways off from the original numbers, even if the rough relationships (melee DPS > ranged, low survival DPS > high survival, etc) remain the same.

The idea of tanks being more of a CC class isn't new, and is used in a limited sense in Guild Wars and City of Heroes (which has collision, although it's not as useful as you might think at first, and it has side-effects... Trying to control a pet is even more annoying than usual).

I like the idea of CC tanks, personally, but I think most MMOs will stick with a traditional "threat" mechanic under the "if it's not broke..." rule.
 

The different talent trees should just be different sub-classes. A person can choose one talent tree and they get all the abilities and a corresponding title. This would cut down on all the confusion.

The only problem is there are some classes that have good one point talents in the 10 and 20 spots.
 

...and a corresponding title.

Honestly, just a minor addition like this, I think, would be a huge step forward. I had thought of it, but forgot to post it in my post above. And honestly it wouldn't need such a massive change for something to work. My most major complaint really is no good way to tell what someone is. Is he a DPS warrior, or a tanking warrior? etc. But we do already have a magic number. That number is 31. At level 70 you have 61 points. So if someone goes 31 points into one talent tree, they are setting a majority of their points in one talent tree, even if they put all their remaining points in another tree, they still have more points in the first tree. And if someone gets to 70 and chooses to do a talent build something like 30/20/11 then they retain their original class title since they are essentially hybrids of the trees and not putting a huge emphasis in any one place.

Another option is putting the name maker point at 25 points into a single tree, and if someone does something like 31/30/0 in whatever their given trees are they get a hybrid name... for example a mage with the talent tree above I listed would be a PyroArcanist.
 

A non-broken LFG tool that:
(a) Doesn't select people for a party "automatically" -- because it couldn't possibly know (e.g.) who is able/willing to heal -- and no, talent specs are not answer to that either, equipment sets are often much more important;
(b) Let's people advertise what they are looking for / what they are -- e.g. free-form comments plus possibly checkboxes for roles such as tank/off-tank/heal/dps/cc/support;

would go a long way to removing the problem altogether, imo.
 

It appears to me that WOW is heading towards homogenizing both classes (Horde Paladins!) and talents.