Class survey

[Silent Shadow]

2 hours ago, junawood said:

It is a game. You want to play. Playing means doing things and reaching goals and feeling good about it. That's why you craft your tools and gather stuff even if you could just type "/gamemode 2" and get everything from the creative inventory. That's why you start in stone age with nothing (well, with clothes and it might even be a nice option to start without clothes) and then make progress. And that's also why some people struggle to find things to do after they have all the tools and tried everything from pit kilns to steel making, because this game gives you a finite amount of goals, and you have to start creating your own goals, like gathering enough materials to build a castle with a dragon on a tower or a huge farm with nothing but amaranth or whatever, and some people simply are not good at creating their own goals or don't enjoy it that much. So taking things away and saying that "there is still a lot of the game left for them to do" would not really make things better.

You're talking like I am recommending the players start with a fully furnished base and a set of all the steel tools, weapons, and armors and more or less skip the entire game's progression. Except for the commoner (which is just a suggestion that could be changed), everyone is still going to need to pan for, or explore for, their initial copper bits or find traders that will sell them a pickaxe & hammer and buy clay. They are still going to want to make stone knives so they can harvest reeds for skeps and hand baskets to expand their inventory (cause a single backpack or two sacks ain't gonna cut it) as well as harvest animals for meat and hides, they still need to make a stone ax for firewood to smelt the metal, cook meals, and fire the crucible & casting molds (or use peat you cut with a stone shovel you made), and once they get an pick and hammer they are pretty much at the place you would normally be in playing the game as it is now. Everyone will still go through the stone age early game, they just a have one to a few fancy tools/items until they reach the metal age, at which point, it ceases to be the specific advantage they had over other classes in the early game.

At no point will any of the classes miss out on making a farm, a cellar, a forge/workshop, a cementation furnace, bloomeries, a kitchen/bedroom, etc. They will still have to explore to find resources, they will still need to mine for ores/minerals, some classes will even still have to make stone weapons because they don't start with one or when their starting weapon breaks or is lost before reaching the metal age. You wouldn't get new items upon respawning so they cannot be farmed.

I would also argue that starting items makes each class feel more unique right off the bat and encourage a little diversity in the early game which is more or less the same every time you play it right now. There would also be more tension in the early game as you risk losing decent/good items you cannot easily replace at that time. Those starting items will not last forever or even very long, material wise or advantage wise.

You say that you enjoy the feeling of earning an item for the first time or getting one as a rare drop, but it is not like you would be getting the items for free; you are making a choice to embrace an opportunity cost for each class (some benefits of which are unavailable to be changed by the game settings, which most players seem not to do anyway). The starting items are also just one or two weapons/tools or some intermediate items that you will be making very many of throughout the play through so you should have a feeling of accomplishment for acquiring the capability to make it.

2 hours ago, junawood said:

And even after all the time I have spend playing this game, it still feels great to start a fresh new world with nothing and find the first flint and gather the first sticks and craft the first knives. So I don't even want to start with free sticks and stones in my inventory (starter kits on multiplayer servers can be a different thing sometimes). And if you are so lucky (and maybe also experienced enough to know where to look for it) to then find metal tools or a linen sack or something like that in one of your first vessels/chests, it feels absolutely awesome and you're really happy! Just starting with the same thing in your inventory on the other hand feels...meh.

You could still do that, there is nothing preventing you from picking any class and dumping the items if you want. I personally think that most of the early activities are just chores to get out of the way so I can enjoy the parts of the game that are more interesting to me, such as finding a place I want to settle in, exploring the surface and underground, building a nice home, figuring out how I want to layout my farm/base to maximize productivity and minimize time spent working, figuring out what crops to plant first, etc. Knapping and clay forming in the game were interesting the first couple times, but they are not nearly complicated enough industries to garner much interest as there isn't any decision to be made with them beyond 'I need this so I will make it.' If I were "gathering enough materials to build a castle with a dragon on a tower or a huge farm with nothing but amaranth or whatever" I would probably want to focus my efforts on gathering the materials or building rather than sitting down knapping 5 flint sets of tools a day or panning enough copper so I can start my goal proper.

Don't get me wrong, I find parts of the stone age early game interesting, but it is not a challenge for me anymore and I would bet that many experienced players would feel the same. With some starting items the early game could be shaken up a bit and reduce some of the more tedious parts I have heard complaints about, such as knapping 5+ sets of tools a day or searching/panning for enough copper nuggets to start metalworking, without scrapping the stone age phase.

2 hours ago, junawood said:

If you want a certain experience of how to deal with a nomadic lifestyle. If you want another experience of living as a nomad, you might choose another class or change the settings in completely different ways.

Different classes should lead to different playstyles or else there is no reason to have multiple classes, and not all settings can be tweaked by the world creation settings.

Edited September 4, 2021 by Silent Shadow
Clarification

[Erik]

I think the classes in the game should take a radically different approach. Rather than being balanced to roughly the same "usefulness" as the commoner, they should act more like additional challenges, radically changing the when chosen and always being generally inferior and harder to play than the commoner.

Therefore the malus should not just be a small collection of some small percentage reductions, but a rather drastic disadvantages like:

• Not being able to eat meat (or another food category)
• Not being able to cut down trees
• Hunger damage when in sunlight
• Freezing at temperatures below 5°C
• Frightening animals in a large radius
• Double tool durability damage rate
• Inability to sleep
• etc.

There would also need to appropriate advantages, to provide some reward for taking on the unique challenges, like:

• Night vision
• 100% faster mining/tree chopping/digging
• 25% slower hunger rate
• Ability to eat dry grass
• etc.

Such classes are obviously much harder to design, since they should be uniquely challenging while not tedious, but they provide much more replayability, especially in a singleplayer environment, since the main draw for classes is not the advantage, but the unique challenge they offer. In multiplayer, their unique advantages still provide the ability for players to specialize, especially when their disadvantages can be covered by other players.

[Omega Haxors]

#1: Commoner. Can do literally everything and is the most balanced class of them all. No upsides, no downsides. Just the game as it was intended to be played.

#2: Hunter. It sucks you lose the ability to melee effectively but in exchange you get a bow, faster move speed and can harvest animals/drifters faster. It's not the strongest but the downsides are more or less made up by its upsides if you're willing to play a somewhat less optimal playstyle. Getting less ore is a pretty considerable downside, however. It's not that big of a problem if you can get someone else to mine for you, but if you're on your own you're constantly going to be out of metal from all those arrows you're loosing (and losing) all the time.
PROPOSAL: No changes needed, though I would like to see more exclusive content for the Archer going forward.

#3 Clockmaker. Who designed this class? The first thing you see is "Deals more damage to mechanicals" which gives you the impression that it's a combat class, but then you look down at the downsides and see huge nerfs to combat. Alright? So one of its upsides is completely useless. How many mechanicals do you even run into in your average playthrough?? Yeah it's slightly better at repairing translocators, but it's not like they're hard to power in the first place. The only standout feature is that this class runs 10% faster with minimal downsides. I guess that's good? Maybe it's a better idea to just pick Archer instead, that way you aren't neutering your ability to fend off drifters. Or just go Commoner.
PROPOSAL: Buff the speed in exchange for getting rid of the (frankly useless) mechanical damage buff. Give it exclusive crafting items from Temporal Gears you can sell to traders. Or better yet: Give them the ability to craft and/or move translocators. That would be insanely helpful to have, even on a single player game.

#4: Malefactor. This one has severe downsides. Less health, worse archery, and lower melee damage. Ouch. You'll gain some pretty considerable upsides in the process too, like how you won't be harassed by animals as much in the early game, get more drops from the ground, and can pick up cracked vessels to sell to the Commodities trader. Play this class if you want a considerably more enjoyable early game and don't mind being a little suckier in combat. You would think this would make the later game combat less rewarding, but the lower damage will be made up for by your stronger weapons, while the improved drop chances will remain through the entire playthrough. Still not a great class, but it has its moments.
PROPOSAL: Buff the chance of getting cracked vessels by a lot. 5% is only half a gear per vessel, which is not great. It just needs something to make it stand out.

#5: Tailor. The class *looks* useless, but look closer. While everyone else is freezing to death during winter, the hardest part of the game, you'll be nice and cozy in your 10% extra durability armor and winter clothing. Forget plate armor, you'll be happy and safe in your leather body. Alright, that's the upsides out of the way... hoo boy. Out of all of the classes, this one has the worst downsides of the bunch. The worse forging isn't too big of a deal, but the real dealbreaker is at the lower animal loot and harvesting speed. Less health and mining speed. This class has a really rough early game, and the slower mining speed also handicaps it late into the game as well. You're going to need a team to rely on, because you won't make it on your own.
PROPOSAL: You should be able to make clothing to sell to traders. It's maddening that the clothes you make can't be sold when so many merchants buy the stuff.

#6: Blackguard. On the other end is a class that looks really good on the surface, but is severely underperforms. There's no ignoring it: this is a hard class to play. 30% extra hunger drain. You thought holding a torch in your off hand was bad? That's only a 10% drain. Now you're constantly holding 3, just for existing. Sure you hit harder with melee, significantly so and you even get extra life to help you out. You're going to need it, because this class can't range. You're going to be spending a lot of time underground, which is good because your mining speed is actually faster. What tilts the class from "Hard but rewarding" to "bad" is the heavy handed downside. Cracked vessels are normally very profitable to open, but not on this class. You'll get less forging which means finding food will be even harder. Crops too. It does have some high highs but the constant hunger drain is going to suck your soul right out of your body. Play it if you like a challenge, as the downsides won't really hurt you too much in the endgame. Well as long as you don't mind not being able to raid structures effectively.
PROPOSAL: Just get rid of heavy handed. You can axe the mining speed bonus as it's not really fitting for a melee class.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[PhotriusPyrelus]

7 hours ago, Omega Haxors said:

You thought holding a torch in your off hand was bad? That's only a 10% drain. Now you're constantly holding 3, just for existing.

Small correction for you: it's 20% now.  I equip a torch on my commoner, and my hunger rate goes from 100% to 120%.

[Omega Haxors]

6 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Small correction for you: it's 20% now.  I equip a torch on my commoner, and my hunger rate goes from 100% to 120%.

Oh ouch.

[Ender Riens]

Be very careful with this kind of user research. Questions like "what is the best," "what is the worst," are too vague and can lead to misleading assumptions or have drama-fueled answers.

45% of people prefer Commoner, but why? Do they not like the debuffs of other classes? Do other classes simply not feel unique enough? Or are the class buffs not strong enough to warrant preference? Maybe your problem is that most classes are defined by stat changes, and not actual tangible differences (like class-specific recipes), resulting in classes not feeling very visibly different, so players aren't pushed towards class differences (and settle on a neutral-ground class)?

There are hundreds of reasons that people may think a certain class is good or bad, and these reasons vary from person to person. These survey questions are not specific enough and do not provide much valuable player input in terms of making balance changes (outside of obvious outliers like Clockmaker). Even just changing the questions to a "what classes do you think are good/bad" allows you to collect info specific to each class instead of specific to the singular "best"/"worst" class (a very controversial and muddy question). It turns the question from mutually inclusive (all options affect a choice) to mutually exclusive (other options do not affect any singular choice), which is much more valuable and clear information from a user research perspective and which leads to better design changes.

Be careful about using potentially charged/unclear/invaluable questions to make design decisions. They may be good for figuring out what you should target, but you need to ask more specific things to figure out what you should change. E.g. you know players largely believe Clockmaker is bad, but you don't necessarily know why. Make another poll and ask specific questions about the class and its modifiers to understand the particular why before making any changes, otherwise you're just shooting in the dark and making assumptions. This current data set leads to nothing but assumptions, as it is prone to bias (being mutually inclusive) and there isn't any specific information about the whys. 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Ender Riens

[PhotriusPyrelus]

9 hours ago, Ender Riens said:

They may be good for figuring out what you should target, but you need to ask more specific things to figure out what you should change.

While I don't disagree with everything you said...   Maybe that's exactly what they want to find out?  After all, the average forum denizen isn't a game designer, the developers - presumably - are.  Seems to me they'd be better-equipped to figure out what should change.  Also the opinions on what to change would probably be as unique to a poster as his fingerprints.  That doesn't make for very useful feedback: 100 people saying 100 different things.  And how much of that feedback would like completely outside their vision of the game?

Polls aren't good at finding solutions.  Polls are good at finding problems.

Almost two-thirds of people favour Hunter or Commoner.
75% of people think the Hunter or Commoner is mechanically the best.

That alone, actually does say a lot about what should change, but again, it's not really finding a solution, it's finding a problem: most of the classes have too many penalties.

I've been thinking about it a bit lately, and I'm not sure penalties even need to exist.  If the bonuses are strong or unique enough, the 'penalty' for choosing Class A is *not* having the bonus of Class B.  That's what economists would call "opportunity cost".  But what do I know?  Maybe penalties are very important to the devs.  So that "feedback" might be rather useless.

Feedback is a tricky issue.  It's a fine line to walk, because games designed by committee suck, but so do games whose developers don't listen to their players.  :shrug:

[Silent Shadow]

If I had to guess, I would say they did not go far enough with the bonus/malus magnitudes, especially with the bonuses, most have barely more effect than a commoner.

Take the hunter: His ranged bonus basically amounts to marginal improvement over the commoner, especially against the most common drifters:

The hunter's melee debuff basically amounts to needing one or two extra hits than a commoner does. With a sword this is barely noticeable and with a spear you can throw to deal final damage or use the reach of the thrust to whittle them down to that point. The real downside to -15% is that you will have to make more melee weapons as the hunter can kill much fewer drifters than a commoner can with the same sword, and while that hurts more with the less ore malus it is quite surmountable and is offset by his ranged focus or using the right metal (black bronze sword or tin bronze spear) for common drifters.

Keep in mind that spears also benefit from the ranged bonus but only lose 1 point of durability, so there is still plenty of metal efficiency for the hunter to have. You also don't need good armor as a ranged build so you can skip making a metal suit and instead wear leather armor (which is faster for you to get thanks to your greater drops) or linen armor. Ore is quite plentiful so you just have to mine a bit more (~17.6% more, or mining ~7 times for a commoner's 6 times) and you'll be fine on metal (thank goodness it isn't 15% of smelted metal is lost).

The hunter's extra walk speed is negligible in my experience especially if it does not affect sprinting (you save ~5 secs for each minute everyone else spends to walk the same distance). You might get some use out of it if all you do is wander around, but the things I spend the most time on (mining, farming, crafting, sorting chests, harvesting, etc.), I am typically limited by how fast I can click and move my mouse, not by how fast I can move. In combat, there is nothing that can outrun you (except in survival mode) so extra speed doesn't really help.

 

So why do people like the Hunter most after the commoner? Because he is basically a commoner already who gets the crude bow and arrows. When it comes to ranged weapons, the bow and arrows (crude or regular) are only better than spears when slots are the deciding factor and in the early game you have precious few slots. A crude bow and arrows only need two slots, require no hard to replace resources (just flint and sticks), do decent damage (~2.5 hp per shot after hunter bonuses so about 5 to kill a wolf and 7-8 to kill an adult sheep), and its a ranged weapon meaning you can run and gun with little care to ammo and you get more some more meat/hides and flax from your kills. The tailor is not as well liked because the clothes are made from resources harder to produce than sticks, fiber, and flint; clothes are not as useful early game, and the problem they fix (the cold) can be negated in a few easy ways already (work in enclosed rooms, be by a fire, buy clothes from a trader, work underground, move closer to equator) and also because his penalties are worse than the hunter's.

Why do people like the commoner? Because in a game where you have to do a variety of tasks to progress, most classes have multiple downsides that are always on in exchange for an advantage in one part of the game and commoner playing people do not view that as a worthy trade. The blackguard is a good example; he has pretty good bonuses and is the best at stretching metal, but his bonuses are mostly only applicable to fighting while his negatives are active throughout more parts of the game (even if they can be fairly easy to negate, food is the most plentiful resource in the game).

Classes are not really going to be worthwhile until the player specializes for a narrow part of the game (so multiplayer division of labor, or single player experience like nomad lifestyle or cave explorer), the bonuses rise to become worth the penalties active for most of the game, or you get a unique benefit to push the bonus/malus balance close to commoner (like the crude bow/arrows for hunter, tailor's clothes are nice but not worth the bad bonus/malus trade).

[l33tmaan]

8 hours ago, Silent Shadow said:

If I had to guess, I would say they did not go far enough with the bonus/malus magnitudes, especially with the bonuses, most have barely more effect than a commoner.

This is the primary reason I use Collaborative Classes, even in singleplayer worlds. I want my choice of class to actually matter.

[Ender Riens]

13 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

While I don't disagree with everything you said...   Maybe that's exactly what they want to find out?  After all, the average forum denizen isn't a game designer, the developers - presumably - are.  Seems to me they'd be better-equipped to figure out what should change.  Also the opinions on what to change would probably be as unique to a poster as his fingerprints.  That doesn't make for very useful feedback: 100 people saying 100 different things.  And how much of that feedback would like completely outside their vision of the game?

Polls aren't good at finding solutions.  Polls are good at finding problems.

Almost two-thirds of people favour Hunter or Commoner.
75% of people think the Hunter or Commoner is mechanically the best.

That alone, actually does say a lot about what should change, but again, it's not really finding a solution, it's finding a problem: most of the classes have too many penalties.

I've been thinking about it a bit lately, and I'm not sure penalties even need to exist.  If the bonuses are strong or unique enough, the 'penalty' for choosing Class A is *not* having the bonus of Class B.  That's what economists would call "opportunity cost".  But what do I know?  Maybe penalties are very important to the devs.  So that "feedback" might be rather useless.

Feedback is a tricky issue.  It's a fine line to walk, because games designed by committee suck, but so do games whose developers don't listen to their players.  :shrug:

It's expected that they figure out what to fix before they get to any actual fixing, and I'm not suggesting to collect a bunch of short-answer opinions to figure out what to balance. That kind of method is extraordinarily inefficient to sift through and draw meaningful conclusions from.

What I am suggesting is that this not be the only poll they do. While this poll means to (and can) figure out where problems lie, it has a hard time pointing out what the particular problems actually are (it only suggests them at best). You mention the issue is likely penalties, but it could be more than that, and guessing it's penalties is only an assumption backed up by design speculation. Class issues are more than likely a number of different things--potentially any combination of penalties being too harsh, penalties existing in the first place, bonuses not being influential enough, bonuses not being unique enough, class differences having little variety outside of passive stat changes, or a bunch more things outside of those potential issues.

What the results of this poll gives is where the problem lies, but the solutions are nothing but conjecture (unless one genuinely is reading all of the feedback posted in this thread). A good designer can hazard a confident guess in what the issues actually are, and in most cases be correct--but the potential for missed problems or a half-working solution is large. We know what classes players do/don't feel like playing, but we don't know why they do/don't feel like playing them, which is information to be discovered via another poll, and information which will target more specifically what they should be changing. We know what classes might need changes, but we don't yet know for sure what changes should be made--the problem could be any of the aforementioned issues I listed, or more beyond that which I haven't thought of. Hell, if one of the issues even is something like penalties, it could lead to the entire class system being changed and improved if you figure out via polling that players find penalties in particular an issue. 

That being said, this poll is better than nothing. Any player feedback (even loose feedback like this) leading to design changes is, in most cases, a good thing.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Ender Riens

[Alcyonaria]

On 8/30/2021 at 12:14 AM, ThreeHeadedDingo said:

Ehh. Blackguard already gets a damage boost and it's against everything, in addition to all the other combat related boosts. The tiny 5% additional boost to only mechanical enemies really makes the Clockmaker feel completely pointless, especially since it gets minus damage to everything else. All the other positives the Clockmaker has are kinda just fluff.

Clockmaker needs more theme-appropriate positives, maybe some unique recipes, etc.

The reason clockmaker was so great, is because you got the movement benefit of hunter, with no negatives outside of direct melee combat. Which isn't a threat because you're either tanking nightmares with steel plate, or not getting hit at all.

However, since the combat nerf got changed from melee damage to ALL damage, rendering spears nerfed too. Clockmaker has no reason to exist as of now. Blackguard is unfortunately the only class worth picking outside of tailor for fashion.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Alcyonaria

[Omega Haxors]

20 hours ago, Alcyonaria said:

However, since the combat nerf got changed from melee damage to ALL damage, rendering spears nerfed too. Clockmaker has no reason to exist as of now. Blackguard is unfortunately the only class worth picking outside of tailor for fashion.

Malefactor is a great pick if you want an easy early game and to make it rain later on.
Probably one of the most money-oriented classes out there if you don't mind taking an extra hit or two to kill a drifter.

Clockmaker used to be my 'trader' class of choice due to the movespeed, but malefactor is just way better at fundraising.
He's also got the benefit of more starter clothing, which makes traversing trade routes less punishing in the winter.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Hells Razer]

On 9/6/2021 at 8:10 AM, PhotriusPyrelus said:

most of the classes have too many penalties

In regards to this, here is a short story of game design history.

Back when World of Warcraft launched (or during the beta, I don't remember anymore it has been 17 years) it used to have a tired xp penalty that was applied after you earned a certain amount of xp without logging out. This caused a lot of complains and negative feedback about how it was penalising players etc and so forth. In short a lot of people disliked it. So Blizzard dropped it and after a while introduced ... rested xp bonus... that, and get this, gave extra xp after having been offline for some time. The response? People liked it! They said it made it feel good to get more xp when coming back etc and so forth. Such a better game system than the old xp penalty, yes?

For those who did not get it (hey we all have our off days ) let me make it explicit: the two systems were identical. There was nothing changed except for the wording.

The reason for this is that people dislike feeling like they are losing things a whole lot more than not gaining things, even if the end result is exactly identical.

It has to do with being monkeys+.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

1 hour ago, Hells Razer said:

In regards to this, here is a short story of game design history.

Back when World of Warcraft launched (or during the beta, I don't remember anymore it has been 17 years) it used to have a tired xp penalty that was applied after you earned a certain amount of xp without logging out. This caused a lot of complains and negative feedback about how it was penalising players etc and so forth. In short a lot of people disliked it. So Blizzard dropped it and after a while introduced ... rested xp bonus... that, and get this, gave extra xp after having been offline for some time. The response? People liked it! They said it made it feel good to get more xp when coming back etc and so forth. Such a better game system than the old xp penalty, yes?

For those who did not get it (hey we all have our off days ) let me make it explicit: the two systems were identical. There was nothing changed except for the wording.

The reason for this is that people dislike feeling like they are losing things a whole lot more than not gaining things, even if the end result is exactly identical.

It has to do with being monkeys+.

Yup.  Well aware of that story.  I had typed up an explanation of how to turn the health penalties into bonuses for other classes, but I ended up deleting it because it seemed too much.

EDIT:  I also realized that would require giving a bonus to the commoner (or reducing his health to be equal to the lowest HP class), and the developers might really, really want to keep him without bonuses, but also not reduce his HP so much.  :shrug:

Edited September 24, 2021 by PhotriusPyrelus

[l33tmaan]

The Commoner has no place in a class system. Tweak the other classes, ditch Commoner, and add the ability to disable classes altogether.

"What if I join a server that has classes enabled and I don't want to play one?" Go to another server.

[Omega Haxors]

3 hours ago, l33tmaan said:

The Commoner has no place in a class system. Tweak the other classes, ditch Commoner, and add the ability to disable classes altogether.

"What if I join a server that has classes enabled and I don't want to play one?" Go to another server.

People will just mod in a "classless" class. Pull don't push. Forcing people to pick a class is just going to piss them off. It's been made abundantly clear by both how people vote and how they play that people simply aren't interested in playing the game any other way than the way it was intended to be played from the beginning. The takeaway here isn't commoner is too good but that the allure of the other classes just isn't enough to make up for the shortcomings.

Edited September 24, 2021 by Omega Haxors

[Maelstrom]

So change the class system to impact what players can do.  Have a base "jack of all trades" class (i.e. commoner) but then other classes can do a specialized advanced skill that the jack of all trades can't.  for example: Commoner can craft basic clothing but the tailor can make advanced clothing that could reduce freezing penalty.  No modification to stats, just specialized ability to do something the base class can't.  It seems that there should be a farmer, miner, explorer, warrior and engineer/blacksmith class in addition to the tailor as those are all some kind of aspect of the game.  Each of these classes should have some kind of unique trait that the others don't and maybe even unable to do something that the commoner can.

I think muddling around with providing bonuses and penalties is a poor direction to take regarding classes in VS.

[Arcitc Cuddlefish]

I'm inclined to agree with LazyRoll. Innumerable times I've been playing single player, or even multiplayer, and I just REALLY want to make a recurve bow, or a set of boots or something, or I wished I had a chance to pick up a cracked jar without smashing my fist through the side in an inexplicable Hyrulean fit of rage. Usually my considerations lead me to the same couple of thoughts.

1. It'd be nice if I could change my class, maybe on the new year annually or every other year. Or instead of changing, maybe I could drop the stat changes of the old, get the stats of the new, and keep recipes from both, as if this year/2-years I'll be focusing on learning a new skill. It's not like I don't have time. Perhaps it could take a large number of temporal gears (10, except for a clockmaker?) into an altar at one of the megalith presumably-religious ruins and that'll let me remake myself.

2. If I can't change my class or specialty, it'd be nice if I could find a manual or blueprints, instructions of some kind, to learn the art forms and techniques lost in that great culling of our species. Maybe I can only find them in ruins rarely, like vintage beef/logs, or maybe they're 60 gears from a treasure hunter and a 0.1% chance to appear or something. they could be exclusive to rare crumbling libraries and even then only a 25% chance to spawn. It doesn't have to be easy, but it should be possible to figure out how to pick up a jar, or even to learn better butchery techniques so my gentle-spirited tailor can make quicker work of getting supper.

[Stealthkibbler]

I like Blackguard, the exciting life of slaughtering everything that moves and then coming home after an expedition with sacks full of ore and temporal gears, i start my return home by eating half an entire cellars worth of food. Blackguard life is honest and hard work, you burn calories harder than any other class easily going over 200% hunger rate especially at night with the torch debuff.

After a quick stop at my temporal gear vault i then proceed to laboriously process all my newly acquired ore, if i feel like it perhaps i will smith a new set of plate mail or scale-mail just to set upon another armor stand in my home, for decoration purposes of course.

Jokes aside Blackguard changes your playstyle a lot more than people give credit for, it is the defacto 'kill first ask questions later' class but there is a lot of food logistics involved in playing it, most of my experience is with Multiplayer and even with friends helping with food my adventures could empty entire food stores. The stacking food debuff is a real problem you have to juggle and while you dont necessarily need to delve deep to find good ore veins or translocators, sometimes you find really big ore at 20~ tile high above bedrock but have to fend off nightmare drifters, likewise trans-locators are more important because of the cut in travel distance means less food so you are willing to secure even the deeper ones and look for them.

I exclusively played Blackguard after the update for hundreds of hours and after awhile scalemail became like a second skin for me, I think its hard to really grasp what impact a few stat maluses and boosts here and there have an effect on your playstyle until you give a class a good try; a lot of your changes in behaviour in progression aren't something you notice until other point it out too, because for awhile consuming vast quantities of food, traveling in heavy armor and being at the lowest temporal stability kind of became habit for me, it wasnt until a friend pointed out how much of an anomaly i was to the other classes that I truly recognized how much it affected how differently i played now.

I would still prefer a skill/perk based RPG system though, something to give our class real growth and something to cling onto and invest in, because if i go play Blackguard again i know I'm going to just end up doing the same stuff again since theres no variation or diverging paths i could explore in its progression. Like someone else said, you end up doing everything in the game regardless of what class anyway.
 

[House Dad]

I do really like the aspect of different classes just having different exclusive crafting recipes. Like the bowyer knowing how to make the best bow, and the tailors knowing how to make clothes just makes sense and it great when you play with a group and you're all able to contribute their specialties but that's only online. In solo, I hate specializing even if classes have a miniscule negative. 

I think the clockmaker needs an exclusive craft. Shoot, give them an actual clock (or something pretty useful to be able to make : P). 

[Maelstrom]

12 hours ago, House Dad said:

I think the clockmaker needs an exclusive craft. Shoot, give them an actual clock (or something pretty useful to be able to make : P). 

Like... perhaps...  Say the metal parts needed to fix translocators?  maybe?  

[Buggi]

I would axe the concept of classes altogether. As a free-form sandbox game I would opt more for skill XP in the major areas of the game; building, crafting, cooking, combat,  mining, and farming/foraging. Then as XP increases in those skills you can unlock buffs in specific skill tiers. 

Building a lot? Unlock jump buffs, speed buffs, and reach buffs.
Crafting? Unlock clothing craft, mechanical crafts, deco crafts, etc.
Cooking? Unlock better foods, faster cooking, higher satiety, etc
Combat? Unlock weapon upgrades and recipes, as XP goes up, so does your damage, etc
Mining? Mine faster with XP, unlock better % drop rate, etc
Farming? Gradually get more drops the more you harvest, unlock crafting of seeds, etc

This way a single player game has the ability to slowly progress and have access to the entire game rather than be locked out of options. If I don't choose Tailor, I can't ever craft cloths? What? 

You could just generalize XP and it would be up to the player to unlock the tech they want to focus on as they play. I don't see how knowing how to craft cloths causes you to, say, do less damage or whatever debuffs that class has. Start the character debuffed, and only through experience do they get better stats.

[Ryan Thomas]

3 hours ago, Buggi said:

I would axe the concept of classes altogether. As a free-form sandbox game I would opt more for skill XP in the major areas of the game; building, crafting, cooking, combat,  mining, and farming/foraging. Then as XP increases in those skills you can unlock buffs in specific skill tiers. 

Building a lot? Unlock jump buffs, speed buffs, and reach buffs.
Crafting? Unlock clothing craft, mechanical crafts, deco crafts, etc.
Cooking? Unlock better foods, faster cooking, higher satiety, etc
Combat? Unlock weapon upgrades and recipes, as XP goes up, so does your damage, etc
Mining? Mine faster with XP, unlock better % drop rate, etc
Farming? Gradually get more drops the more you harvest, unlock crafting of seeds, etc

This way a single player game has the ability to slowly progress and have access to the entire game rather than be locked out of options. If I don't choose Tailor, I can't ever craft cloths? What? 

You could just generalize XP and it would be up to the player to unlock the tech they want to focus on as they play. I don't see how knowing how to craft cloths causes you to, say, do less damage or whatever debuffs that class has. Start the character debuffed, and only through experience do they get better stats.

+1

[daretmavi]

I see class system great to start with, you are born to do some staff better.

But you should be  able to learn everything else as you progress. Maybe from books you find, or buy from tader, or some else elements...

There is "Some sort of character progression system"  on the roadmap, so I hope, they will add some nice RPG elements.
Please don't add perks like in 7d2d game. It is simple, but ...<bad words>... system (like I get xp from mining and learn how to make space shuttle).

Edited October 24, 2021 by daretmavi

[Philtre]

On 10/22/2021 at 5:15 PM, Buggi said:

This way a single player game has the ability to slowly progress and have access to the entire game rather than be locked out of options. If I don't choose Tailor, I can't ever craft cloths? What?

Everybody can craft certain clothes, but the tailor can craft a wider variety of clothing. Mostly the difference is cosmetic, since the warmest clothing (furs) are already available to everyone, and only a handful of the tailor-specific items have better stats than the default for their slot.