An Evolving Exploration based Class system

[Jam Rascal]

Greetings Seraph

Glad to see that you made it through the ordeal and have been able to access your old memories. These have been packaged in Memory Cores as we found during testing that the process of sending you through will result in near total memory loss.

These Memory Cores are [hiss-fuzz] and completely stable. You won’t be able to recall all your memories at once and these portable devices only contain enough power to contain a small selection of past experiences. As your mind can only cope with [fizz] or rapid insanity.

There should be other caches of memories that we’ve sent [hiss] and vaults. We’ve planned [kshh-hick-fuzz] that should make this easy for you. Plant [fuzz] Build [fizz] Grow [hiss] Thrive.

We’ll be waiting for you.
Jonas

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Hi VS Team,

My suggestion is that the class system and the associated abilities are reworked into a customisable and modular Skill system that supports the game's lore. A Memory Core will allow a Seraph to learn (remember) Skills allowing the player to tailor their seraph abilities relevant to their play style. Gained on first spawn and by searching through ruins and dungeons, Memory Cores are treasures that will hopefully encourage more early-mid game cave exploration by providing interesting rewards that will hopefully result in meaningful decisions.

I am imagining that the abilities available to choose are large/chunky modifiers (eg. learn new recipe set, +15% to skill) rather than pitiful incremental ticks (eg. +2% pickaxe speed, rope recipe now costs 1 less vine) As this means they can be a bit rarer and so makes the excitement of finding greater and using one more impactful.

Memory Cores:
Each memory core contains three positive bonus Skills and three negative drawback Skills (balanced similar to the current system). A player must choose one bonus and one drawback from the list.
Some cores simply contain a random selection of bonuses/drawbacks Skills, others are profession specific and contain a concentrated Skill set linked to the abilities of the profession.

Memory Extractor Cores:
A small percentage of Memory Cores are empty Extractor Cores, these can be used to remove a Skill (positive or negative) from the Seraph that uses it storing it in the Core. If an Extractor Core with a Skill in it is used, it will give that Skill to the Seraph then break. 
In single-player games this allows the player to remove negative Skills that they don’t enjoy playing with. In multiplayer this is of course still possible, but also allows players to trade positive Skills to a friend.

Starting classes: 
Players would still choose a starting class but this would manifest by them starting with 2 (semi randomised) memory cores in their inventory for their chosen class. This should provide players with more variety in their starting skill set, which allows players in  multiplayer games where others have chosen the same class to feel more unique, whilst still fitting within the general gameplay style they want to start in.

Balancing easy acquisition with fun work:
Finding a dungeon or ruin containing Memory Cores could use the existing trader system. Perhaps instead of it being a specific item swap for map dialogue line. It could be linked to a Seraph trading a certain volume of goods with the trader before being given a map.
Cores may be locked inside a special safe that requires the Seraph to sacrifice an object or complete a task to open the safe.
Players that enjoy combat: Temporal gears
Players that enjoy food prep: food items equal to a quantity of satiation
Players who build lots: taken and smashed on an anvil with a helve hammer
Players who like exploring lots of ruins: Cores could also be found in regular broken chests. 

Modding Support:
If Skills can be defined by using scripts, with Seraph attributes (eg. ore/crop/lumber output, animal detection range, hunger rate, recipes known) being able to be modified. 
Then Skill Sets for profession Memory Cores can be defined as lists of Skills based upon specific id names or words.
This would allow modders to create new Skills and add them to new sets or maybe even add new Skills to existing professions.

Lore:
Along with a new set of skills you could also provide the player with a snippet of lore in the form of a first person description of life before/during the rust, maybe even a picture.
Memory cores could be found in a location with environmental storytelling (eg. a broken down door with skeletons near the safe, crates of rot and a selection of preserved food surrounding a half buried safe)

I love what you're doing with the game and have really enjoyed my time with it so far, I look forward to every new update.

Rascal

[Facethief]

I was going to make some critiques, but re-reading, I think I like this idea all around.

The only thing that’s still a bit of an issue would be how to break up the class traits to make them balanced/interesting (eg. some hunters get crude bow craft, some get compound)

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

It's an interesting idea, and would make a fun mod for sure, but I wouldn't want to see this in the base game. 

5 hours ago, Jam Rascal said:

Players would still choose a starting class but this would manifest by them starting with 2 (semi randomised) memory cores in their inventory for their chosen class. This should provide players with more variety in their starting skill set, which allows players in  multiplayer games where others have chosen the same class to feel more unique, whilst still fitting within the general gameplay style they want to start in.

Chiefly for this reason. The player character isn't exactly a blank slate for the player to do with as they will. Rather, the player character is a specific individual, with a specific history and set of skills/reputation to go with that history. Malefactors are sneaky, Blackguards are good at fighting, Hunters are good at hunting, etc. 

With what's been proposed, picking a class at the start preserves some of the flavor, but ultimately leads to the class choice meaning very little in terms of identity. If you see a Malefactor, you're going to be expecting them to be a sneaky type good at foraging and salvaging, not the type to actively seek out the fiercest melee combat(that's what the Blackguard is for). Likewise, picking Blackguard doesn't really mean much if you're going to build it like a Hunter or Malefactor.

I will note that this kind of gameplay is already handled pretty well by the XSkills mod, for those that wish to play this way. It's a fun mod, but one that I've stopped using so much over time simply because it eventually leads to characters feeling very much the same over time.

[MKMoose]

6 hours ago, Jam Rascal said:

My suggestion is that the class system and the associated abilities are reworked into a customisable and modular Skill system that supports the game's lore.

The main potential problem that I see with this is that it completely shifts the design function of classes, from an initial horizontal choice that serves as the basis for the character's identity as well as the player's social identity in a multiplayer context, to a vertical progression system comparable with RPG skill trees that focuses on a sense of progression and character ownership as well as enables optimization. Not unlike described by @LadyWYT above, this new system could easily lead to existing classes losing a lot of their identity, and the initial choice being much less meaningful - while it's not necessarily a wholly bad thing and it can be in some ways mitigated, it's still more difficult to justify doing so than it is to justify changes that purely build off of what's there.

Personally, I would argue for largely the opposite - that the initial choice should have greater impact on the game by altering the available and optimal playstyles more heavily than just through minor buffs and debuffs. Because as it stands, class selection still largely boils down to just making some things a tiny bit easier or more difficult, a tiny bit more convenient or time-consuming, but without significantly affecting the way that the player makes decisions or progresses through the ages - especially in singleplayer where the player has to do everything themselves either way.

 

6 hours ago, Jam Rascal said:

A Memory Core will allow a Seraph to learn (remember) Skills allowing the player to tailor their seraph abilities relevant to their play style.

Why tie skills to high-tech or magical items? Since you're already suggesting memories, why not tie new skills to temporal events, lore discoveries (including those made as part of the main story), and allow unlocking recipes from written formulas and schematics?

6 hours ago, Jam Rascal said:

Each memory core contains three positive bonus Skills and three negative drawback Skills (balanced similar to the current system). A player must choose one bonus and one drawback from the list.

Why give players penalties for progressing? The primary purpose of negative traits, beyond establishing character identity, is balancing against the traitless commoner, which just isn't necessary in a vertical system. Debuffs may make progression much less satisfying or even discourage the player from seeking out new skills.

Allowing to specifically select drawbacks would also risk enabling greatly excessive optimization. If anything, I would expect to be able to choose thematically matching pairs of positive and negative effects rather than select them separately.

6 hours ago, Jam Rascal said:

Players would still choose a starting class but this would manifest by them starting with 2 (semi randomised) memory cores in their inventory for their chosen class.

Spawning in with items in hand sounds to me like a great way to break immersion and place the player's focus in the wrong place, at least as long as the game is supposed to be a wilderness survival and not an RPG or adventure game. If the items are random, then it could also inadvertently encourage rerolling until the player gets good starting skills. Finding them in ruins or elsewhere is generally fine, but if you want starting skills then retaining the existing traits pretty much as they are now would be quite fine.

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

With what's been proposed, picking a class at the start preserves some of the flavor, but ultimately leads to the class choice meaning very little in terms of identity. If you see a Malefactor, you're going to be expecting them to be a sneaky type good at foraging and salvaging, not the type to actively seek out the fiercest melee combat(that's what the Blackguard is for). Likewise, picking Blackguard doesn't really mean much if you're going to build it like a Hunter or Malefactor.

The primary way to address this issue, albeit certainly not the lightest in terms of development time, is to give each class their own specific skill tree of sorts. Don't Starve Together has been doing pretty much just that - started in 2023, and they still have 6 of 18 characters to update, which they have been doing interspersed with other content releases.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I will note that this kind of gameplay is already handled pretty well by the XSkills mod, for those that wish to play this way. It's a fun mod, but one that I've stopped using so much over time simply because it eventually leads to characters feeling very much the same over time.

This is a problem that so many class or skill systems fall into, and I genuinely don't know if there's any reason for it besides bandwagoning onto what's popular without actually understanding how to make it good. They're supposed to increase player expression and allow meaningful choice, but actually end up leaning into hyperoptimization and reducing variety as a result. The current class system is simple to the point of arguably being simplistic, but it's quite serviceable and from what I've seen, contrary to some opinions, no class seems to be dominant or significantly underpicked on multiplayer servers. See a recent TOPS class poll for an example.

Edited 21 hours ago by MKMoose