… Complicated

Well what isn’t, right?   This post was inspired by Bel’s post “A Tank is…”  My “thing” is pet classes, so naturally that’s what my “<x> is” post is going to be about.

We pet class nuts tend to be very loyal to the archetype.  Here’s a list of many of my main characters throughout the last 16 years of MMO playing: UO Tamer; AO Meta-Physicist and Engineer; EQ1 Necromancer, Magician, and Beastlord; SWG Creature Handler; EQ2 Necro and Conjuror; LOTRO Lore-master; WoW Hunter and Warlock; AoC Necromancer; WAR Squig Herder; the list goes on.  See where I’m going?  All pet classes!

I’ll talk about the history of pet classes in MMOs, issues that have been raised surrounding them, and things that pet class devotees look for in a game.

In The Beginning…

… there was Ultima Online.  UO was the first commercially noticed MMO, and so that’s where I begin my pet class history lesson.

UO isn’t a class-based game – your character advances by increasing skills up to a certain limit.  One skill in UO is “Animal Taming.”  This skill allows you to tame and thus control certain creatures in the world – from lowly chickens all the way to powerful dragons.   As you adventure with your pet, it gains skills just like you do.  In the past, if your pet died during your adventures, it was lost forever.  Now, however, powerful Tamers can resurrect fallen pets.

This sort of set an early standard for pet classes for me – the ability to choose your pet, by taming it yourself.  This standard, unfortunately didn’t get carried on, except for in one game.

That game was Star Wars Galaxies.  Before the “NGE” (aka game ruining fiasco), there was a class called “Creature Handler.”  This was very close to a UO Tamer – but better.  Creatures in the world had extremely varying stats, and the best CH’s had very powerful pets.  Additionally, another class called Bio-Engineer could custom-make pets using DNA obtained in the world.  A really accomplished CH had many powerful custom Bio-Engineered pets.  It was awesome!

Since then, options for pet customization have been limited.  In most games, your pet type is determined by your class.  Necromancers summon and control undead things, Hunters control animals and so on.

We’ve Got Issues

Of course, many issues have been raised surrounding pet classes.  Most of them boil down to the belief that pet classes are overpowered.  This is because a pet class character has two “objects” in the world doing damage at once – the character itself, and the pet(s).

There have been many ways employed to ensure this overpowered state isn’t true.  Most of them center around the idea of either making the pet the main damage source, or making the character the main damage source.  WoW for example essentially made you choose between having powerful pets or being powerful yourself.

One way EQ1 ensured pet class balance was that pets were not as useful in large group content (raids).  This wasn’t intentional of course, but it did work.  Pet pathing was flaky at best, so having a pet during a raid could easily cause wipes if you weren’t extremely vigilant.  And pets “pushed” mobs too, sometimes causing them to get out of a good position.

Other balancing methods include making pets very weak in terms of hit points, or making pets only exist for a short period of time, requiring constant re-summoning.

What do we want?

I’ve been a part of quite a few pet class specific communities over the years, and that combined with my own pet class fervor has made me aware of the basic things pet class people want out of a game.

In general, we are damage players (DPS).  We use our pets and our spells or weapons to help kill monsters.  EQ1 has a single pet class that can fulfill either the DPS or the Tank role (in some content) – that class is the Beastlord (and it’s awesome when played with skill).  But in general, pet class people want to fill the DPS role.

We want to be useful.  If we can’t function well without our pets, make sure that group content is pet-friendly.  This is a basic need; if we can’t use the most fundamental part of our class in all content, sadness ensues.

We want to be able to choose pets, either via class choice, or via a “taming” mechanism.  Sure, a Necromancer is always going to have undead things as pets.  A “Hunter” type is going to have tamed animals as pets.  That’s cool.  But make sure there’s a choice!  Some people hate the idea of a Necromancer, and would always choose instead to have Elementals as pets, or animals, or similar.  Some people mainly only like Necromancer types.   The absolute best-case is having “set” pet classes like Necromancer, Magician, etc, and having a “Tamer” type for those that want to choose their pets.

My wife and I had a discussion once about my pet class fervor and her rogue-type fervor.  We decided it boils down to a personality thing.  Would you always prefer to “do things yourself?”  You’re probably not a pet class type. If you’d usually rather hire someone to do something, or have a servant do it… you’d probably like pet classes.  (But sometimes we like to do it ourselves too, so the character does need some power of its own.)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, partly because I haven’t had much that I can write about. Bel started the ball rolling with A Tank Is, and I thought I’d follow up with my own. I almost started with A Healer Is, or A Rogue Is, because people who know me would likely expect to see one of those (and probably be very surprised about the other), but I realized what was going on behind the scenes, as it were, and I thought I’d share here.

Indecision?

I’ve played a lot of classes through a lot of games. My friends, if they weren’t so nice, would probably call me indecisive or schizophrenic in the things I choose to play. I’ve been a thief (UO), an enchanter (EQ), a druid (EQ, WoW), a rogue (WoW, EQ2, Rift), a tank (WoW, Rift, SWTOR), a healer, a support, everything. It doesn’t always look like there’s a method to the madness, but I’ve realized, for me, what drives me to each thing I play.

A Class is Identity

Black Mages, http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Mage_(Job)

When I pick a class, I’m picking an identity. I’m declaring to the world (or, well, the game) what kind of person I am, and how I interact with the people, places, and things around me. The industry term for this is “player fantasy”, and it drives a shockingly huge amount of inspiration, dedication, and attachment. It’s more than just the class that determines this, but a player’s class is a big part of it.

I look at the Black Mage above, and I see someone focused, someone intelligent and a bit mysterious, who needs no physical might to make his or her mark on the world. I like that. I want to be that. By comparison:

This is the rogue to me. The Prince of Persia isn’t incredibly strong, and doesn’t wear heavy armor, but he’s fast, smart, and tricky. He’ll win the fight with this big brute because he’s quicker and cleverer. I like it, for the same reasons I like the Black Mage—he wins with his brain.

Classes and Roles

I look at the two examples above, both near and dear to my heart, and something stands out. I like them both, for the same exact reasons, but they both do very different things. They both fulfill my player fantasy, but it’s divorced from my role. Bel will attest that I will cheerfully tank things, when there is a rogue-tank option. I quite enjoy it, but the important thing is that my player fantasy is fulfilled. I’m not a big, muscley meatshieldy plate-wearing type. I’m the quick, clever, faster-than-my-enemies type. If I need some additional protection, that’s going to come from my speed or my magic, not armor or straight burliness.

What I do isn’t necessarily tied to my player fantasy—I just want to be faster and smarter than my enemies, and sometimes trickier and sneaker too, if I can manage it. If that means I’m a sneaky, killy Assassin or a tanky, maneuverable Riftstalker or a clever, resourceful Enchanter, I’m accomplishing that goal; I’m getting to play out my fantasy.

A Class is a Function

When I’m dropped into a new world and asked to represent myself, to make my character, I need to make informed decisions. Whether that’s a class, or a starting ability package, or a weapon of choice, or a vehicle, my initial choices tell me what I’m good at and what I’m able to do. It tells me what make me different from the people around me, and what I can do well.

In a lot of ways, it helps me know whether I will enjoy a game. If I pick a class that isn’t good at the things I like to do, and I try to play the way I’m used to playing, I’m probably going to be disappointed. I’ve played games where I’ve switched classes partway through and rediscovered a game I thought I didn’t like—I played a Magician in Everquest for months before I tried the Enchanter on a whim and realized that, while the Magician was okay, the Enchanter was far more fun and fulfilling to me.

Classes and the Trinity

Whenever the argument about “The Trinity” or other role-based systems in games comes up, the first thing I see is “there are never enough healers or tanks” and “no one likes to wait around”, or, the worst, “people don’t want to be forced to play something they don’t like”. There’s usually a call to “abolish the trinity”, and to let people do what they like.

I don’t have a fundamental problem with this viewpoint, but the most common solution I’ve seen – abolish roles entirely – isn’t the right one. The Trinity is the foundation of group-based play. Whether that’s the MMO-standard Tank/Healer/DPS, or the team positions in soccer, or football, or League of Legends, the roles provide a means with which the individual participants in the group can become, together, more than the sum of their parts. Role-based play, regardless of what those roles are, is at the forefront of nearly every deep team game, and even quite a few non-team games. Chesspieces play a variety of roles, dictated solely by movement, and the game of chess is built around both the strengths and the limitations of each piece; it forms a deeper game than if every piece were a Queen.

Making it Better

You can’t just rip out the foundation without building something in its place. It’s something we’ve seen tried in various places, and the resulting gameplay is frequently-to-always unsatisfying for the players who enjoy team-based play.

That being said, the aforementioned arguments aren’t invalid. Frequently there are too few tanks or healers, or supports, or clerics. I submit that “not enough tanks or healers” is a symptom, not the root of the problem. How many games allow only burly platewearers to tank? How many allow wizardly mages to tank?

In League of Legends, a common complaint is that no one ever wants to play support. Let’s analyze this: There are 115 champions in League. Of those, nine are listed as “Support” within the game, and 12 are listed by one of the top players of the game (here: http://blog.ibuypower.com/2013/08/chausters-conventional-support-rundown/). Somewhere less than 10% of the available champions are Support, and of them, half are spellcasting women. Tropes aside, if “spellcasting lady” isn’t your player fantasy, you’re SOL.

If you make a game where you satisfy a wide enough variety of player fantasies for all of your roles, I suspect you’ll see a good distribution of your roles. What this means, more than anything, is options. Don’t abolish the foundation, give many, many ways of fulfilling it. If I can be creative with how I fit into a team, it will be much more satisfying than playing something I don’t like just to fit into the team, or worse, not having the team at all.

It’s on the Designers

Hundreds of years of team-based games tells me this: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. A team should become more than the sum of its parts, and whatever paradigm you come up with to accomplish this, that is the core.

Designers are in the position of fulfilling player fantasies, and making sure that the player fantasies they create satisfy the roles they make for their game, and are distributed enough to make sure enough options exist for every role. Let me play a mage tank, and a rogue healer, and a platewearing stealther. It’s what design is for—creativity.