Ok so my small little opinon on the current class system is, that it is extremly old school. I think you can only conjure up such a system today if you activly averting your eyes from other successful games.

1.) Bought Skillbooks learnable at certain level
=> forces people to look for vendors who sell a skill
=> gives the possiblity to put hidden skills in the game as monster drops, quest drops etc.
=> makes it impossible to plan the layout of your hero (e.g. you dont know what this hero will get, because you dont see what books exist ingame)
=> lets you put requironments on skill aquisition beyond character stats

What i like on this idea:
The posibility to not let people know what will come. Problem is, the times have changed. This idea was good 20 years ago. Today everyone will at once look up available skills on a site like gamefaqs, where you find them, and how to get them.

So what is my suggestion here?
Simple add Skill Trees like in Diablo 2, but keep complex requirment that can be secret. Some may require you to find itmes like "hidden kagebushi no juitsu scroll" that you can unlock them, others need a trainer, other require the completion of a quest. While at the same time, the player can see what would be possible and is in the game. So he can plan out how he wants his characters to develop.

In addition you get prerequirments for certain skills. So it is easier to understand whats going on.

For example the ice skill tree looks like this:


Ice Bolt (level 1, single target) -------> Ice Ball (Level 5, area of effect)
|
|
|
\/
Ice Lance (Level 5, single target, more damage)

Maybe the skill trees also unlock hybrid skilltrees like, FrostFire, FrostWarrior, NatureSurvivalist, etc you get the idea. The Skill Trees don't need to be super huge with 20 skills on them.

For warrior there could be either fighting style and/or weapon type and/or damage type skill trees.
Weapon Based:
Axe Skill Tree (special aoe, halfcircle, circle)
Chop, Cut Down, Execute

Sword Skill (special aoe, straight line, rectangles)
Parry, Feint, Slash, Strike

Hammer Skill Tree (special aoe, cone, chance of knock downs)
Devastate, Pulverize, Smash, Thunderclap

Shield Skill Tree
Shield bash, Block, etc.

Fighting Style Based:
Berserker Skill Tree
Berserker Stance, Bloodrage, Frenzy

Defender Skill Tree
Endure, Guard, Intervene, Disable

Fighter Skill Tree
Bleeds, whatever

Damage Type Skill Trees
Slashing Skill Tree
Pick skills that fit in you get the idea hopefully what i write here.


2. Character Attributes / Item Atributes / Damage & Defense output

Change the current system to a system where damage is always based on the weapon damage including all skills and spells.

A mage should be just as dependent on a good dps weapon then a warrior. The same goes for armor for defense. Dont add weird extra attributes to weapons so that they are good for a mage like a rusty grey sword with +10 to battle magic. Thats a not good game design. Take a look at world of warcraft or diablo 3.

Last edited by Janju; 22/12/13 12:06 AM.