Following multiple paths in RPGs

Last year at GDC I was talking to the Wild Shadow
Studios guys about traditional classes in
fantasy RPGs (ranger, wizard, barbarian, cleric, etc.). Some of our
complaints about classes in many multiplayer RPGs:

1. Classes come with roles such as “tank”, “healer”, “ranged”,
   “melee”, “crowd control”, etc. If you want to join a group that
   needs a tank, but your class is about melee damage, you can't join
   the group.
   

   
   
   




2. The beginning of the game is a bad time to choose a class, which
   impacts you for the entire game. It's too early in the game to know
   what style of play you might like or what kind of roles are
   needed/useful. By the time you can make this decision it's too late;
   you've already invested lots of time into the game. Either you throw
   all that away or you keep playing the class that's not best for you.
   

   
   
   




3. Every class's play style can be considered “content”, and by
   choosing just one the player is missing out on other styles of
   play. As a game developer, if you have 5 classes, and players only
   play one of these on average, you're spending a lot of money on
   “content” that most players won't see, especially if armor/weapons
   are written for just a few classes in mind.
   

   
   
   

In Diablo 2, you picked a class but you could also customize that
class by choosing skills as you level up. For example, Barbarians
could choose skills such as Taunt or Double Swing. The skills had
level requirements and prerequisites; for example, Double Swing was
only available if you already had Bash. The trees were divided into
three specialties per class; each of these effectively acts as a
sub-class, so you had 15 styles of play instead of just 5 classes. The
skills available to you were fairly limited at the beginning of the
game, so you're not overwhelmed, and you don't have to make your
choices at the beginning. This partially addresses complaint #2.

In Guild Wars and Titan Quest, you get to pick two
classes. Multiclassing has been around since the D&D days, but these
two games makes two classes the default and one class an
option. Multiple classes can help with complaint #1, since everyone
has two roles. It also helps with complaint #3, by adding lots of
variety without having to create new content around it.

In Silverfall, World of Warcraft, and Titan Quest, I can change my
skills later in the game, but not my class. WoW also has hybrid
classes such as druid and shaman that can perform multiple roles. This
also helps slightly with complaint #1, but it's quite a
hassle. (Recently, WoW introduced “dual specs”, which help quite a bit
by letting you set up two sets of skills that can be swapped with one
button.) Being able to change my skills later greatly increased my
desire to experiment. In Diablo 2, I would pick skills based on the
recommendations of others. Decisions you can't change are more likely
to be conservative. But in WoW, I am much more willing to try out new
things, because I can undo them.

In Dungeon Siege II, there are skill trees but no classes. You
essentially define your class by choosing skills along the way, but
you don't have to decide anything at the beginning of the game. Titan
Quest also delays the decision-making of your first and second
classes. Either approach addresses complaint #2.

Another way to address all three complaints is to have more than one
character, each one trying out a different class and play style. But
when playing these characters, you start over from scratch.

What I'd like is (a) delaying decisions about classes/skills, and (b)
allowing trying out other choices after I'm “finished” with my current
class. So here's the idea: as you progress in the game, you are given
choices of specialties. If you later master multiple specialties, you
can become a generalist. Here's a diagram:

After you've played for a short time, you get to choose weaponry or
magic. I choose weaponry. After playing more and leveling up with
weaponry skills, I am able to specialize again, and I learn
melee. After learning all the melee skills, I specialize in
swords. After a few more levels, I am now fully specialized by mastering
swords, and there's no more for me to learn. This is the
equivalent of “level 80” in WoW.

At this point, it's time to try the branches I hadn't tried. This
could either be by starting over with a new character at the novice
level; or it could be by restoring a previous savegame where I was
still at weaponry (playing a “clone” in a scifi setting), and choosing
the ranged path instead; or it could be by using my current character
to go back and learn ranged attacks. I don't know which of those
approaches would be best for a game. In any case, I'm now trying out
other play styles, just as with current RPGs.

Where this design differs is that there's something gained in-game by learning
multiple specialties. This is the lower half of the diagram. If I
master both the sword and axe, that unlocks the halberd. If I master
both ice and death magic, it unlocks wizardry skills. By playing and
mastering all types of characters, I become a Master.

An open question is how you handle the huge number of skills once
you've pursued multiple paths. Titan Quest and Guild Wars limit your
classes to two, so that it's not too bad. WoW lets you have two sets
of skills, and you can swap back and forth at any time. Guild Wars
further gives you a fixed number of skills at any time, and you can
swap these out when you're in a major city. In a scifi setting, such
as a robot or spaceship based game, you could assign the skills to the
robot/vehicle you're in, and then jump into a different robot/vehicle
to swap skills (Wild Shadow Studios is working on a tank-based
MMO

that does this). Choosing sets of skills before you go into combat
seems like a reasonable way to limit the complexity, and also
encourage planning ahead.

This skill graph addresses complaint #2: you don't have to make
permanent choices at all, and the choices you make come after you've
been playing the game for a bit. It also addresses #3: there's a path
for the player to experience all the “content” the developers
create. It partially addresses #1, by allowing you to play different
roles at different times. Novice players can follow a recommended path
to specialize in just one “class”, whereas experienced players can
experiment more and try out new combinations. I think it could be fun
to play with such a system, but I'm not planning to write an RPG any
time soon.