Mercifully map generation was wrapped up on Monday. Rest of the week has been spent on the many small tasks that need to be done. Bug fixes, implementing new gimmick areas, polish, etc. The most time consuming piece has been designing new PVP classes. In the process I realized that the main reason that class design is so time consuming right now is because so many parts of the battle system are still hazy. It ranges from small things like the fact that there aren’t any standardized status effects, which makes systems for removing them vague or the fact that there aren’t any limits to buffs so having too many different unchecked big buff status effects could end in players killing the final boss in one swing, to big things like the fact that the equipment system has long been scheduled for massive change ups. Now isn’t the time to go over that stuff with a comb, though. Need to find out how the new map system stacks up first.

It’s easy to get dismayed that all the design work is pointless when so much is in flux, but ultimately most of this is just details. The only system expansion I see happening from here on is perhaps having more defense/attack types than 3, and increasing the damage bonus for hitting a weak type. Even in this weird flux state you can learn a lot about how this stuff plays.

The key theme for this batch of classes was to emphasize interaction with other players, much like how the co-op classes emphasized playing a role in a team. I lumped classes into two broad alignments, “Good” and “Evil”. Good classes are capable of helping other nearby players. Evil classes profit off of hurting other nearby players. In both cases sometimes these things are triggered by the player, but are often just automated systems. The idea being that evil characters want to follow their opponents, while good characters want to avoid being followed by opponents. Additionally, evil characters are a pain to group with while good characters provide a boon to their group. I have hesitant feelings towards the division (ie, evil arguably has bigger benefits when following a good character), but I’m guessing the problems will manifest themselves quite quickly during testing. I do want to leverage the core theme of building every class around player interaction though. Previous versions never fully tapped into it, and a multiplayer game really needs to build itself around those interactions.