In a debate of merits comparing class based and class free systems, it’s inevitably hard for me to defend classes. This is because, at heart, I’m an old school UO guy.
However, from the perspective of a person running a business, it becomes hard to defend classless systems. Everything you do ends up being a workaround or a compromise. How do I reward players without experience, how do I introduce meaningful PvE content without items. So on and so forth.
Aside from that, you lose the hook of levels and classes. Players introduced to your world for the first time, whether that’s on your webpage or elsewhere, gravitate initially to the “What I can do” section. For most, this means “What class can I be”. A huge, mundane list of skills like “Carpentry” and “Swordsmanship” or “Pottery” isn’t as clear, concise, and immediately rewarding to the imagination of most players.
Most people want to see big graphics, big screenshots of big, bright spell animations, and the words “POWERMAGE” written over top. They don’t want to dream about carpentry, and opening up a quiet shop on a little road outside town. Skills like that are for crafting items to use, and they’re secondary to their character’s main purpose. And that main purpose, by the way, isn’t “Swordsmanship”. Or, not if you want to sell a game anyway.
Classes are a built in solution to nearly every problem that not having classes brings up. This will be a problem until we start over with full virtual reality MMOs.
And then classes will be added.
Even PvP benefits from the implementation of classes. Heresy, I realize. But it’s true.
Think of it this way:
In Ultima Online, everyone has the same skills and the same abilities - for the most part. There’s a template or two, and you roll with that. You win and you lose based on whether you outplay the other guy (ideally — we’ll put aside various methods of cheating for now).
Now what you’ve created is a scenario that the upper echelon and the uber competitive love. My skill determines that I own 90% of people on contact, they have no options to change that. Aside from ganking me with superior numbers. But that doesn’t matter. I’m not angry at myself for not being able to compete in this circumstances. If I lose, it’s okay. If I win, it’s extra great.
Because it gives me an excuse.
Let’s look at excuses.
Any time I have an excuse as to why I lost, the loss stings much less. I can justify the loss. The better and more widely accepted the excuse, the more quickly the loss rolls off my shoulders.
In a setting like oldschool UO or an FPS, losses are more rarely easily excusable than in an MMO with classes and levels. This means that in a game with classes, while PvP can exist, as long as there are no serious game related consequences to losing (such as full loot, xp penalties, etc), my psyche can handle the loss much easier.
Why.
Well, classes breed rock/paper/scissors gameplay. Everyone has unique abilities, and they’re usually specifically built to counter the abilities of a select group of other classes. For the masses, this helps bring home the easy win bacon. Even if you’re awful, there isn’t a lot to learn to be able to beat those classes. It’s not only easy, but it’s accessible to those it’s not easy for.
Now, when you lose, easy excuses come into play.
If rock loses to paper, not that big of a deal. Rock always loses to paper. The game is designed that way, it’s not really your fault. But when your rock beats someone’s paper, it’ll induce a nice feeling of superiority.
As such, losing, instead of being entirely discouraging, drives adaptive behaviour which requires more playing and fuels more dedication to the game. This is rewarded quickly and easily by learning the three buttons you need to press, and when to press them, for a nearly assured victory.
Add in an ever inflating power level of gear, and the ease of winning goes up by simply investing more time. Conversely, the hope of adapting and competing revolves around investing more time getting gear as well.
Put everyone on an equal playing field, and losses are much more discouraging. Catching up with hope of starting to win is much more difficult. That’s why a few people loved PvP in UO, and smart business dictates that you make games like WoW and EQ.
PvE is an even longer discussion, and much more simple to fathom. Everything you do needs to be a (hopefully not) halfassed workaround because you have no classes and no levels. Because nobody has really figured out how to not halfass this, PvE in games like that generally sucks. Now you’ve compounded your problems because you’ve attracted a crowd that is either PvP elite, or wanting to be. Those wanting to be have little or no excuse for their mounting loss tallies, and will be driven off. No players will stream in to replace the sheep because your PvE game is halfassed at best, and now you have an ever worsening cycle of negative account churn.
That means you lose. And there’s no excuse.
Losses like that hurt the most.