SBURBDEV Forum

[Interloper]

Each player gets a class and domain as part of their title, so logically, these should all play differently.
Now we don't know exactly what most of the elements or classes can do so I've guessed at a lot, you may have better ideas though.
I figure most of these powers are dormant or weak until later levels, maybe even uncontrolled, then at god tier you get ultimate versions of them.
The ideas so far are basically a random mishmash of what I think would be appropriate, some tie into a team setting, some not so much, but they're a starting point.
Classes
Heir - a heir might not be in control of his own skill tree, instead being awarded powers or upgrades at random. In return they might activate more often in battle.
Seer - A seer should be able to spot weak points, or secrets in a level, as well as find more Lore and unique items than other players.
Witch - You'd probably get a lot of activated abilities as this class, perhaps even no uncontrolled ones - you cast them all at will.
Knight - Seems like a straightforward combat class, but perhaps they get bonuses based on the number of allies they have with them.
Thief - Rather than getting a lot of bonuses, might be able to steal items or attributes from foes.
Page - A page is a support class so maybe when cooperatively adventuring every player nearby gets a stat bonus and the page gets double XP for assist kills.
Maid - A maid should get bonus rewards from quests, but perhaps not as much from combat (unless killing something was a quest).
Prince - Local consorts who recognize the Prince may heap tribute upon him, and the class could find more loot than others.
Rogue - Rogue basically = sneak attack, so they might do 2X damage from behind, or if they approach an enemy from the back they won't be alerted.
Bard - how about an attack bonus in time with a musical motif? Like in Mother 3
Slyph - A Slyph is like an elemental fairy thing, so they might have an elemental form with various bonuses
Mage - This would be a lot like a witch, perhaps the abilities would be more offensive than defensive?
Domains
Time - Time players get the stasis effect where enemies can be frozen in time, additionally, they could recruit a future self to aid them in battle
Space - I think consensus on this is space powers means teleportation, as well as altering things' scale. This could include weapons or enemies.
Breath - This would be the most agile classes- perhaps featuring a double jump or glide maneuver. Also might be able to throw enemies around. Think TF2's Scout.
Light - Being concerned with Fortune I'd expect light to give bonuses regarding critical attacks, or with finding rare items.
Blood - My guess is blood translates to "camraderie" or something so a blood player could recruit followers. Alternatively: health regeneration.
Life - A life player sounds like a healer class - this could extend to resurrection and necromancy.
Hope - A hope player would be the opposite of a Rage player - they get more powerful if they're doing worse - so the lower your health, the more powerful you are.
Heart - I'm going to interpret this as a diplomacy class based around emotional manipulation - be able to inspire allies and terrify enemies etc.
Mind - A Mind player would probably have illusive powers - say, invisibility, summoning a phantom duplicate or blinding foes - think the Spy from TF2
Void - This class could be based on phasing powers - being able to pass through solid objects.
Rage - I figure this is a berserker element - the more damage you deal, the more powerful you get, so it'd focus on long combos or something.
Doom - Doom is probably a direct damage class - A doom player's attacks then should be unblockable (maybe not uncounterable though)

Anyways, these are just basic concepts for how each title might play, some of them I'm less sure of than others.
I think the most difficult thing would be that a lot of combinations - mainly thief classes would require specific effects written for them. Would a thief of time rewind their enemies? a thief of breath suffocate them? How does a thief of void even work?
In addition, things like maid don't seem to lend themselves to playstyles all that well.
Actually a thief of time could rewind enemies until before they were prototyped or something, drastically weakening them...

Just to group a few together:
Mage and Witch are based around activated powers, a Mage's being more aggressive, a witches being defensive.
Knight and Page would be based around interactions with others, knight getting bonuses for allies, page giving them. Maid/Prince might transfer their quest reward abilities onto others too.
Rogue, Bard, Slyph and Thief are classes based around being able to do a specific action. Seer has their vision Xfold, so that might also count.
Seer, Prince and Maid have passive out of combat abilities affecting the world around them.
Heir is kind of the odd one out here with his abilities affecting level progression more than anything

Blood, Life, Heart and Mind are all powers centered on other characters being present
Doom, Light, Rage and Hope are high direct damage powers (light counts due to crit stacking)
Void, Breath and Space are all powers that are good for evasion

This is all rather complex stuff, so I'll leave this initial proposal here.

[perplexingTheorist]

I just read through you concept, and it seems pretty structurally sound. But I think class is more personality based, as show in the comic. What I mean is that the class specifications should follow some sort of system, such as a survey or test of the users personality, to figure out the class. Basically I am suggesting something similar to Fallout 3's Goat test which gives you your starting focus abilities.

Note: I'll come back and elaborate more later. I'm right now typing this before class and don't have much time to develop my thoughts.

Edit; 12:41 4/13/11

Okay, now that I have some time, let me explain my ideas further.

I feel there should be at least 3 systems for character class/domain generation. Each would allow increased amounts of customization and would affect gameplay mechanics for the player(s) differently. They are listed as follows;

1) Complete Random/Quick Play. This style of gameplay would develop everything about your character randomly, including appearance and what ever else you had in mind. This would enable the player to jump directly into the game and start playing, but would also limit their personal input into the game.

2) Moderate Customization/Normal Play. This gameplay mode would implement either an introductory level or test of some sort to develop their character's attributes and what not. The test would have them choose between several options, and would basically have some sort of system that would interpret the options into attributes. For example;
Say the play has a test given to them at the introductory level, with say 3 questions and 5 answers (a-e) each. Each matching pair of question-answers for the test would correspond with a domain and/or class. So if the player picks A-A-A, he would get the first option, which for the sake of the explanation is Knight, and A-A-B would be, lets say, bard, and so on and so forth.
As well this mode would let character appearance customization.

3) Heavy Customization/ Roleplay mode. It is just as it sounds, the most customization with out giving the player god-mode abilities. There are several ways to go about doing this for the class/domain. I'm most in favor of some sort of text evaluation system which allows the player to type up a back story and have it be digitally analyzed for the character's personality, and in turn their class/domain (how ever it is chosen to run it). I figured that words,letters, and phrases could be given positive and negative numerical values based on their meanings, spellings, etc., whom's sum would determine the characters personality. There could be a range of numbers for each class/domain which would determine what class is assigned to what back story. My basis for the numerical values would based on the seriousness or whimsicalness or a word, phrase, misspelling, etc., but that can be changed if needed. This would, as well, have appearance customization

4) God mode. Total customization, and would allow for the player to literally make their world if they wished to. Just adding this in here as a sort of "Spore" gameplay idea.

As well, there could be some sort system system to make sure no to people have the same class or domain.

Just an additional input; I'd just like to throw this out there, but I think that domain should be random and variating with the land you start in. Most of my concept above was for determining class. As well, I think your actions in game should also determine what class you get some how either though shifting your numerical values for the tests one way or the other or in another way.


Also, here is a list of additional Classes we can use; (I'll add to this later too)

knight
mage
sage
thief
bard
monk
pirate
long arm
dancer
mayor
rock star
athlete
champion
viking
ninja
warlord
courier
mailman
judge
detective
lawyer
Scientist
Master
Slave
Alchemist
Mixmaster
Hipster
Goth
Vocalist
Artist
Blademaster
Tank
Scourge

[Legendary]

Many of those class names are... hmm. Look, you notice how Knight, Seer, Witch, and Heir all fit a vaguely medieval RPG? Hipster, Lawyer, etc., really do not. The class names should all sound like they belong together.

Likewise, as fun as lots of options would be, I really think that when it comes to making the 1.0 of this thing we should focus on just releasing a playable Sburb, and thus focus on probably the second method you proposed, plus the conflict checker. Plus... parts of idea #3 are frankly beyond complicated. A text evaluator? We would spend ridiculous amounts of time just accounting for regular words, let alone misspellings. There's a lot of those.


EDIT: Something else to consider with domains. The three we have the most details on (Breath, Time, and Space) each have a mini-game of sorts. The Space Frog Hunt is required, the Time Stock Exchange and the Breath Mail Delivery may not be, but still provide an interesting challenge to each player and creates considerations not just for design but worldgen. It's very likely that the other nine domains we know of have a key mini-game as well.

[perplexingTheorist]

Many of those class names are... hmm. Look, you notice how Knight, Seer, Witch, and Heir all fit a vaguely medieval RPG? Hipster, Lawyer, etc., really do not. The class names should all sound like they belong together.

Likewise, as fun as lots of options would be, I really think that when it comes to making the 1.0 of this thing we should focus on just releasing a playable Sburb, and thus focus on probably the second method you proposed, plus the conflict checker. Plus... parts of idea #3 are frankly beyond complicated. A text evaluator? We would spend ridiculous amounts of time just accounting for regular words, let alone misspellings. There's a lot of those.


EDIT: Something else to consider with domains. The three we have the most details on (Breath, Time, and Space) each have a mini-game of sorts. The Space Frog Hunt is required, the Time Stock Exchange and the Breath Mail Delivery may not be, but still provide an interesting challenge to each player and creates considerations not just for design but worldgen. It's very likely that the other nine domains we know of have a key mini-game as well.

Yea the classes were all just suggestions so there'd be a large selection of classes to choose from so it wouldn't be the same grind with the same 12 classes. I never said that all of them should be included, they were just suggestions.

As for my idea 3, it would be difficult but imagine the amazing implications of a program like that. And to slim down what we have to do, we can make certain words have a value of 0 so they do not matter. Maybe we could stick to key terms like adjectives and verbs explaining feelings or state of mind. Idk, it was a suggestion.

[Interloper]

I assume each player would have to pick their character's interests, but that wouldn't really be suited for picking a class, additionally it means players answering the quiz are going to insist on gaming the system, rather than answering honestly. Still, I think the nature of the game would mean it would simply work better to be randomly assigned things and then discover how to play them, rather than just doing whatever players are comfortable with, because again, Sburb has an underlying theme of growing into one's role.

Looking at the class domain generation, I agree that a quick play would be a good thing, and that a normal mode should allow basic customization, but the problem with the test idea as you describe is if each one corresponds to a class, you have A^Q possible classes to be assigned, where A is the number of answers and Q is the number of questions, and that would be simply too much to program. in fact it would be easier to just let the player choose their class from a list, which could be included in the heavy customization mode, which I'm also in favour of. Now I don't think it would be something we'd work on initially, but I think it would be a fun option where players who'd already gone through the game could mix up their roles and try something new.

The text evaluator idea is mathematically and conceptually unsound - a person writing a short biography with high value words could get the same result as someone with a long biography of low value words, there's just no correspondance between numbers and attitudes that would actually make sense, and that's not even getting into the difficulty programming one that made sense. Now, I see what you're trying to do, with trying to incorporate story into character creation, but I think there are simpler ways to do it - for example you could have a bunch of gifts lying around your house's lounge, you shake them, and get a list of what you think might be inside. You pick an option and that sets an interest of yours. You go up to your room and a bunch of posters or something signifying your interests are on the walls, that way you've had a tutorial about inventory, using items, and set your interests in one scene, plus you now have a bunch of stuff to prototype with, and it's fairly easy to program, as well as being actual gameplay so the player doesn't get too bored, AND it kicks off the story at the 13th Birthday. Still, it wouldn't determine your class because those really don't have any correlation with your actions in Homestuck - look at Jade and Rose who were basically performing each other's roles the whole time. It would also pigeonhole certain playstyles into certain roles, and run the risk of multiple players being assigned the same title.

Total customization would probably involve writing a lot of unnecessary systems, so it probably wouldn't happen.

OK, the thing about classes is more =/= better. I honestly don't think we should add too much more than we have, because I was struggling to come up with functions for even those. Domains, fine - let's feel free to have everything that would be cool, but let's keep classes to a minimum, I mean, what does "long arm" even mean and how would it play? What differentiates a "rock star" from a "bard"? who would want to be a "slave"?

[demosthenes2k8]

The thing is, there wouldn't be just 12 classes. Classes and domains both affect how your character plays, so there will basically be 12^2 == 144 different play styles possible. I personally like the "present" style of introduction, since it acts as a tutorial as well as chooses your class and domain. One small problem, one that can be easily fixed, would be making sure that you don't end up with a title or class that is the same as someone else's in the session. Unfortunately, it puts a cap of 12 characters on the session, so we might want to add four new classes and domains to bring the total up to 256 and allow for 16 players. I'll work on finding ideas that match later today.

[Legendary]

More domains isn't necessarily better either! If it turns out that the twelve we have provide a complete playing experience and a thirteenth either cannot be balanced or worse doesn't turn out to be fun/necessary, then we SHOULD just limit ourselves to twelve fun roles rather than a fictional sixteen player session in which four players aren't going to have any fun. (In fact, a sixteen player session might not even be feasible.)

As for Heir roles, I imagine that they actually get leadership bonuses in dealing with consorts. Where other consorts will be silly and distracted, a practiced Heir can get them to focus on him and follow him into battle. An Heir of Heart would be the most aligned domain for Heirs, and probably absolutely terrifying when fully powered.

[perplexingTheorist]

The text evaluator idea is mathematically and conceptually unsound - a person writing a short biography with high value words could get the same result as someone with a long biography of low value words, there's just no correspondance between numbers and attitudes that would actually make sense, and that's not even getting into the difficulty programming one that made sense. Now, I see what you're trying to do, with trying to incorporate story into character creation, but I think there are simpler ways to do it - for example you could have a bunch of gifts lying around your house's lounge, you shake them, and get a list of what you think might be inside. You pick an option and that sets an interest of yours. You go up to your room and a bunch of posters or something signifying your interests are on the walls, that way you've had a tutorial about inventory, using items, and set your interests in one scene, plus you now have a bunch of stuff to prototype with, and it's fairly easy to program, as well as being actual gameplay so the player doesn't get too bored, AND it kicks off the story at the 13th Birthday. Still, it wouldn't determine your class because those really don't have any correlation with your actions in Homestuck - look at Jade and Rose who were basically performing each other's roles the whole time. It would also pigeonhole certain playstyles into certain roles, and run the risk of multiple players being assigned the same title.

Yeah, that sounded a lot better off in my head. I guess it gave us a good start though, we can use the idea of creating a background for your character through the objects he/she picks in his/her intro level. I still think that we should leave a large amount of possibilities for the heavy customization mode, to allow for the most "roleplay" like gamestyle, maybe pull from dungeons and dragons a little. I don't know, I'm just throwing ideas out there. Any ways, you present/poster idea sounds great, and a whole lot better/less complicated than my text idea. I'd be cool if we could pull that off though.

OK, the thing about classes is more =/= better. I honestly don't think we should add too much more than we have, because I was struggling to come up with functions for even those. Domains, fine - let's feel free to have everything that would be cool, but let's keep classes to a minimum, I mean, what does "long arm" even mean and how would it play? What differentiates a "rock star" from a "bard"? who would want to be a "slave"?

Sorry for the long list of random classes. I just wanted to brainstorm some possible additional classes for a 12+ session to work with out repeating classes. If we had a repetition of classes, it'd make people feel expendable and players would more often than not go off and do their own thing. I'm trying to make the game have more of a "dungeon group" kind of feel where every one is needed to beat the game. It would make inter character interactions a lot more necessary because you can't just say "well we have two knights, and player 'b' is being a prick, so let's just leave him to fend for himself". Still, this is if we make a max player count that is above 12.

[demosthenes2k8]

I dunno, I kinda think that a Prince should have those powers. It makes more sense, given the title. Heirs would make more sense as receiving bonuses upon level up, like originally posted.

I was unable to come up with any complete domains, but I like the "Monk" title, thought of "Artist" and "Guard", and got "Host" from the random generator. This makes 16 that all fit relatively well together with the same theme.
I suppose Artist would be a class that can manipulate the world around them - maybe create platforms, holes, by "drawing" them.
Guard would probably work as a class that is based on low MANGRIT or similar stat (attack) but can take hits for a ridiculously long time, and can probably use their domain powers to create barriers.
Host might play as the male version of Sylph (like how Princess/Prince)

Yes, I know that a 16p session isn't really likely, but I have a Sollux-esque fascination with powers of two. So do computers, though, so it works nicely.

[Legendary]

Not a fan of "Artist" or "Host" personally (plus if Host is the male Sylph then we're at fifteen effective classes, not sixteen). I do like Guard and Monk though. How about Knave and Scout? Knaves would lay traps and have the ability to fake out opponents (since they're so duplicitous) and Scouts would have most enemies treat them as neutral unless attacked and be able to move around and gather treasure unmolested, though they would obviously be missing out on the experience in doing so.

Now, domains... "Tears" might work well, a class based around lowering enemy stats. "Keys" might be interesting as well. They could "lock" access to one of the prototypings of an enemy, forcing it to be weaker. This would be incredibly helpful as it is quite likely that a 3x prototyped King fighting four players wouldn't be quite as large of a challenge. Obviously this should be a TEMPORARY thing, and have an even longer recharge time. Any other ideas?

Finally, it should be noted that in choosing domains for players, Space and Time are canonically essential! A two-player session would force the players into these because of the necessities involved in each (making a new universe; keeping the timeline going- however we implement that).