Is Class Choice too much? How do you balance it?

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Class systems are fun for the player but it's so hard to balance it, the more options you add the more complicated the game testing and balancing becomes. Ideally if you do class changing, then every possible combination of classes for the party should be able to finish the game. But in practice, doing so is basically an impossibility. More often than not, this results to developers creating a "preferred class set-up" (intentionally or not) which then basically defeats the purpose of having the class changing system at all.

For example:

The "Thief Class"

Mostly, the selling point of the thief class is their ability to steal items and money, but with most JRPGs that I played, I realized I can just continue battling enemies and end up earning items and money faster than if I spend time to use the steal abilities of the thief class. So now the thief class is basically useless.

The "All Warrior Party"

You have choices of warriors, offensive mages, healers, debuffers etc in the game but the players realize that a team of all warriors can finish the game super quick without the need for strategies.

 

[fireflyege]

As @Engr. Adiktuzmiko stated you can basically do a team with 4 mages which against the encounters of an area that is weaker to one specific element. Think 4 lightning mages on an underwater cave, and think how easy it would be. You would kill everything on a single turn espicially if your team has higher agility than your enemies. All characters must be diverse one way or another.

A solution would be adding unique abilities to each character, and then class choosing while taking skills from the class itself. Say, each class has 10 skills, with 2 classes a player can have 20. You can make a character have 6 active abilities while giving classes 7 each or something like that. That would basically force player into options like your tank should stay tank if he wants to be at his fullest. But, class diversity solves it. For example ''Jack has taunt ability, must I make him physical tank Knight or magical tank Paladin or offensive counterattacker Monk?'' so class diversity helps you make limitations enjoyable. If you cannot give us the ability to fly, then make walking enjoyable.

 

[Basileus]

I'm surprised that everyone here seems to have forgotten to ask the most important question for any Job System:

How does the player change jobs/classes?

This is the true cornerstone of your player experience since it is the method by which the player interacts with the Job System in the first place. There are actually several different approaches you can take with this and each of them builds a completely different experience. I'll go with 2 of the better known examples and one of my own personal favorites:

• Final Fantasy - The "Job System" as most of us know it was pretty much created by Final Fantasy III. Your 4 orphans were blank slates that learned sets of jobs and could swap between them virtually any time from the menu outside of combat. There were a bunch of classes but pretty much all of them boiled down to the same classes from Final Fantasy I (as Final Fantasy II ditched classes altogether) except a few of them were blatantly more powerful versions or had a gimmick...and said gimmick either made them overpowered or useless. Your end game party was going to be Ninjas and Sages because those were the best. Final Fantasy V brought the Job System back and added the nifty feature of being able to Master the jobs and used Mastered skills on other jobs. This let the player mix and match to find tons and tons of broken combinations, many of them involving the starter Mercenary class' ability to equip multiple skills since it had no skills of its own...in addition to Mercenary receiving a permanent stat boost for each job Mastered. Balanced? Not even remotely. Fun? Hell yes. But eventually the Job System got more or less phased out in favor of more open-ended systems like the Relic/Esper system in Final Fantasy VI and especially the Materia System of Final Fantasy VII.
• Fire Emblem - The class system in this series has remained fundamentally the same. Each of your units has a class which determines what weapons they can wield. At Level 20 the unit can be promoted to a new, upgraded class (often needing an item to do so). The upgraded classes often add a weapon type and in later games a new passive skill. Typically this has been a linear process of just upgrading each unit along the same "class line". In Fire Emblem Awakening, a new item was added that allowed changing a unit to a new base class. Each unit now had 2 side classes in addition to their base class and could switch between all 3 at the cost of reverting back to Level 1. Each base class also had 2 possible upgrade paths with each one specializing in one of the things the base class did. This allowed a lot of customization to put different class skills onto units that normally wouldn't have them due to skills carrying over between class change...and obviously tons and tons of broken combinations. But each unit (besides the player avatar) only had 3 classes so each individual unit was still limited in which skills they could learn and combine, and which classes were available was actually used very cleverly to highlight aspects of the units' character. For example, Kellam starts out as a Knight and his most notable trait is his complete lack of presence despite wearing heavy, clanky armor everywhere (people even sit on him thinking his chair is empty). One of his side classes? Thief.
• Dragon Quest III - Releasing only a month or so after Final Fantasy I, this title was the first JRPG to allow class swapping the party members. In fact, it also let the player swap out entire party members. Since only the Hero was important to the story, the other 3 party members were generic units created at the tavern and the player could create a new party member of whichever class whenever they wanted. Obviously this is not efficient so most players created a party and stuck with it. For the first act of the game the player cannot change classes, only party members. It is only when the player reaches Dharma Temple that class change becomes available...and even then a character must be Level 20 or higher to change classes and the change reverts the character to Level 1. So why bother, right? Well the catch is that the now Level 1 party member carries over half of their former stats and ALL of their spells. This means that the player can create their own "cross-classes" instead of using pre-made classes. By turning a Priest into a Soldier, the Soldier (which gets 0 starting MP and no MP per level because they cannot learn magic) will have all of the spells the character learned as a Priest as well as half of their former MP (but will still gain none per level) basically turning them into a Paladin without the need to make a Paladin class option. While exploits are totally possible, it takes lots and lots of grinding to do it since the class change cannot be done just any time the player wants. It also means that the characters can still be unique and reflect their previous experience despite the class change - instead of completely altering their stats every 3 fights because they changed between Warrior and White Mage everything carried over more naturally. A Level 20 Soldier that was previously a Priest will have MP, healing spells, and a decent INT stat while a Level 20 Soldier that was formerly a Fighter will have much higher AGI than a slow Soldier should have in addition to a lot more STR than a Level 20 Soldier than hadn't been any other class before.

Ultimately, you do need to prioritize fun the most. But you still need to ask yourself what kind of experience you want to create. And a huge part of that is going to come down to how restrict or unrestricted you want to make class changes. You need to decide if class changing is a frequent thing or if it is a special moment - whether you can go back and forth or if it is only one way. Just figure out the player experience you want to go for and slap on some lore explanation or other after the fact if needed.

 

[BloodletterQ]

@Basileus Who are you talking about?

Jokes aside, I do enjoy me a good class system (I do love changing my characters outfits oddly enough) but I feel that it needs to be the main part of character development gameplay-wise. It becomes unnecessary (unless you really hate a character) if a party of eight can become any class.

I'd rather in the end have a few classes since you can get gimmicky which will negate the use of certain classes. Ideally, the less classes there are, the more diverse their roles should be in order to have that balance. I feel that you don't use a class system well if the optimal party consists entirely of paladins who can fight and heal as well as both the fighter and the cleric. Speaking of which, hybrids should be used in moderation. Basically think of the paladin in my example as essentially being a Red Mage that tanks and lacks black magic.

 

[Basileus]

When it comes to hybrids, it really depends on the overall system. If the hybrid classes are more like "Prestige" classes then they really are straight upgrades of the base classes and should be better...and also should be earned through some cool quest or something to make it even more special.

But if classes are intended to be swapped back and forth, then you really don't want one set of classes always being better. That leads to bad feelings like "Every class I unlock is worse than the ones I already have" or "Why bother letting me go back to outdated classes I'll never use again?". It kind of defeats the point of even having a class change system. Really you'd be better off going the Final Fantasy IV route of having an important class change tied to a story event and make it a one way deal.

Although...on the subject of changing outfits...how do you feel about the Dressphere system from Final Fantasy X-2? I haven't played X-2 yet, but I have played some of Lightning Returns and that's supposed to have a similar system. Instead of an inherent "Class" the characters gain abilities from their armor and weapons. At least in Lightning Returns, the commands you have in battle come from your equipment and you can swap between equipment sets mid-battle. So a set of caster robes might grant the ability to cast Fire and Ice while warrior armor might have extra Defense and a physical skill. Obviously this is meant for a faster-paced combat where the player might need to change up their style to adjust to different enemies, but you are supposed to take your combat system into account when designing systems like this so it's fine. I would even argue that it might be more interesting than having access to everything all of the time.

 

[fireflyege]

Another thing is you must basically kill the concept of ''class flexibilty'' if you are gonna follow that route. For example why should I pick a mage when a cleric can also deal magic damage and also heal the party when needed? Or why pick a knight when a warrior can tank and also deal damage just as easily?

I agree with Basileus here, if you are gonna make the player able to change classes I think they should be upgraded instead and make it a one way deal. Also you can do very interesting things like trials for the upgraded classes and such.

 

[M.I.A.]

@Basileus
...Ideally, the less classes there are, the more diverse their roles should be in order to have that balance...

Also, the example of Paladins.. if I am working on a project that has very few Job Classes and I hybrid their functions, I always, always turn the Warrior type into a Paladin type. Best ATK and best Healing.. so their selected actions in battle need to be a little more strategic. Choose between Healing or Attacking!

-MIA

 

[kirbwarrior]

how do you feel about the Dressphere system from Final Fantasy X-2?

I love FFX-2 and this is a large part of it. I thought the Dressphere system was brilliant.

Another thing is you must basically kill the concept of ''class flexibilty'' if you are gonna follow that route.

Four Heroes of Light did this with extremely basic and narrow classes that focused directly on one thing; black mages made black spells cheaper (significantly if you understand how the game works), another class focused on 'psyching up' the party, another focused on defending, etc. Since classes were extremely narrow, you needed to diversify the party and you wanted to try out every class to see what your options were.