It’s not bad at all, thanks to your resurfacing, i read this and now I have a question for @Tom or @Ponder, in those skill trees, the skill tree instead of divide in more classes at the top, it fuses into another class.
And my question is: Does the higher class (like the Pysician) substitute the Alchemist and the Brewmaster??
If the Physician it’s the higher level class, is it worth to still have an Alchemist or a brewmaster??
it’s just a class tree to unlock the classes, but every class has it’s own role??
as in, does the Physician class retain all the “abilities” of the classes from which it is derived, or is having an Alchemist still necessary once you have a Physician… correct?
Right!! totally correct!! the problem it’s that the brewmaster also unlocks the Physician… so… i don’t understand very well how that can work. If the Physician it’s the upgrade of the Alchemist good, but… how can the Physician be also the upgrade for the Brewmaster?? How does the system fit in the game??
I think I’d like to see some of both options. If it is just a leveling up of the same profession (brewer -> brewmaster), then I think the higher class should retain the old skills, but if it is a radically different class (alchemist + brewmaster -> physician), I think the new skills should mostly supplant the old.
Has there been any word on how permanent a class is? I think I remember something about not wanting classes to be “Oh, this guy has high farming stats so we have to make hime a farmer” but I think they also didn’t want you to be switching classes whenever so that there was some cost involved in switching. I’d like to see option for multi-class characters, though.
It would be interesting to see how these skills are implemented across the professions a character focusses on - perhaps it’s directly influenced by Final Fantasy Tactics and you could perhaps equip one skill/ability from a previous profession.
Definitely going to be one of those things we learn about in the future!
Hello Everyone. Having just got on summer vacation, I just realized i have been neglecting the forums. So I’m back now.
In regards to classes retaining previous abilities. I would say no. That way, even distribution of classes is necessary to maintain infrastructure. The classes shouldn’t be able to do each other’s jobs. For example, take the beast master. When I think of him I imagine him mounting a powerful monster and using its abilities. He won’t be stalking prey like a hunter, or managing large herds like a rancher. But neither of them can control a monstrosity of a beast.
i am leaning more towards this design approach… that each level has a predecessor, but is unique unto itself…
that obviously makes it necessary to have a unit who serves (using the original example) as a Brewmaster to perform tasks A, B and C… while the unit i promoted to a Physician can specialize in performing tasks X, Y and Z…
I would agree that classes that are very different should have different abilities, but how do you feel about classes like brewer and brewmaster? I think they should have similar abilities with the brewmaster abilities being upgrades of the brewer’s.
indeed, i think so as well… the Brewer is able to craft A, B and C, and when he evolves into a Brewmaster, he can still perform those same tasks (perhaps more efficiently, or with a higher number of “goods” being crafted, etc.), but in addition, can now craft items D and E… which are in turn used to help another profession…
which furthers the concept of inter-related classes… the Brewmaster is necessary in order to provide the good or goods for a (insert class here)…
A key thing with the changing classes is that any change that restricts a unit shouldn’t be automatic, so you can’t have a brewmaster suddenly lose the ability to brew mid-brewing because they hit a certain amount of experience. Opt in or out evolutions both are fine.
As for the idea of distinct and non-distinct classes just split it into branches, so like you’d have the brewer branch which would contain the brewer and brewmaster classes and all classes in that branch are very similar with a set of core skills and possibly a couple of closely related skills.
On this note. I don’t think that there should be classes that are essentially a better version of the tier below it (e.g. hunter->big-game-hunter / brewer->brew-master) since it seems that they do identical tasks. I think that we concluded earlier in the thread that a units level would not only determine their proficiency at a job, but would also give them new abilities as they leveled. Therefor I fail to see the purpose of adding a brew-master class to the game when you can have a master brewer. Same goes with the hunters. Both tiers hunt, it just seems they hunt different things. I see no reason, however, that a master hunter can’t take on big game animals like it seems the big-game-hunter will do.
I would have to disagree about the hunter -> big game hunter being essentially redundant, although I would agree that it would seem rather silly to have all tiers of a class tree with the same abilities.
They’ve already stated how final fantasy tactics has influenced the profession system, and as such it would seem to me that the big game hunter would have a different skillset that the unit learns to the hunter? Drawing from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for example, the archer could upgrade to the sniper, allowing access to different weapons and possessing a different skillset.
So perhaps they can also equip different armour/ weaponry with their class?
I think having that progression opens up a lot of potential for different units, how that translates across brewer -> brewmaster I’m not sure, although the guys have probably worked that one out. Perhaps the brewmaster has access to a wider range of concoctions than a ‘master’ brewer, perhaps he can use different equipment rather than the standard stuff a brewer has access to?
Don’t think of brewer and brewmaster as different classes then, combine them into one add some skills from level up and implement a cosmetic title system so that the leveled up form is called a brewmaster due to higher level while still technically being a brewer.
I guess the question is how should the Brewer be different from the Brewmaster? The Hunter and Big Game Hunter make sense as there is little game and there is big game. They talked about it in a livestream. The Big Game Hunter would handle epic beast like dragons, manticores, etc. while the hunter would deal will everyday things like deer and boar.
Any ideas on how this could translate to the Brewer and Brewmaster?
On the flip side of the class question, shouldn’t some classes actually be improved versions of their predecessors down the tree? I’m thinking military classes in particular (your average foot soldier class is just not as good as the knight, for example) but I could see room for similar relations in the non-military classes. Anyway, I can think of three basic ways a class is an ‘upgrade’ off hand:
Class -> Class + . The upgraded Class is just a better version of the old one. For some types of professions this just makes sense, but on the other hand it removes some decisions making from the class upgrades (ie, you should always upgrade given the chance).
Class -> New Class. The upgraded Class has a totally different, but thematically related, set of skills. This makes the upgrade choices more interesting, since you don’t WANT to upgrade all of your lower class workers if they are still providing useful skills.
Class -> Meta/Overseer Class. This is sort of a hybrid model, where the upgraded class has some overlap with the preceding class but the upgraded class provides some sort of wider bonus that provides synergy with other workers in the proceeding class. So if a brewer makes booze, the brewmaster grants all brewers the ability to make stronger stuff, or use more ingredients, or what have you. In this case you’d want to upgrade to at least one brewmaster, but leave the rest of your guys as normal brewers.
There’s probably even more models than that, and the class tree might be big enough that each of these types of upgrades could exist at the same time for different branches.
I look at it as the following… you can’t have the next in the chain without having at-least one of the ones below it to support it. Example: you can’t have a physician with out the knowledge that is required from the alchemist and/or the brewmaster (mixologist). In other words what is a doctor without their medication…
I can think of at least one reason for having upgraded classes that are an extension of some base class: immediate recognition. Say a Carpenter can create mundane items like bed and tables, while a Master Woodcarver can create epic items like carved pillars and heroic statues. There is going to be demand for a bed more frequently than for a carved pillar so you will likely want more Carpenters than Master Woodcarvers, but when you want to make a carved pillar you don’t want to be saying, “Which of my 4 or 5 carpenters was it that I leveled up to make carved pillars?” Thus the reason for the Master Woodcarver class+ upgrade. Now your high class Carpenter gets a sprite change and becomes instantly recognizable as the one that can make carved pillars.
As for making him unable to use skills he had before, this doesn’t make sense to me logically. I didn’t forget how to add and subtract when I learned algebra or calculus. Nor do I think it would make sense from a gameplay perspective because I will only need carved pillars once in a while so my Master Woodcarver would spend most of his time idle.
Why wouldn’t I just make all my Carpenters into Master Woodcarvers if latter has all the skills of the former? If you can multi-class, which I like, I may want a Carpenter who has some levels as a farmer since I won’t always need 5 Carpenters. So rather than dumping 10 levels into the Carpenter class to turn her into a Master Woodcarver, I put 5 levels in Carpenter and 5 levels in the Farmer class. Now I have a civ who is decent at both carpentry and farming and can switch between the two when I need more of one and less of the other.
[quote=“SteveAdamo, post:49, topic:607”]the Brewer is able to craft A, B and C, and when he evolves into a Brewmaster, he can still perform those same tasks (perhaps more efficiently, or with a higher number of “goods” being crafted, etc.), but in addition, can now craft items D and E… which are in turn used to help another profession…
[/quote]
I’d rather see classes more differentiated… and more connected.
Staying with the Brewer / Brewmaster example…
Brewer can craft Budweiser. One barrel per job.
…
Brewmaster can craft Köstritzer Schwarzbier but refuses to brew any Budweiser. (You want me to do what???)
Brewmaster increases the output of every brewer in the same brewery to 200%.
Every brewer will then craft 2 barrels of Budweiser per job.
Brewmaster enables Brewers to craft Heineken as well.
The Brewmaster would not replace the Brewers. He works with them.
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