ArenaNet talk:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/Classless System

Please, leave the professions as they are. It is very good to have different professions on the same character. Istead on focusing on one atribute you can chose from 8 which makes characters of the same professions to be different. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.208.178.52 (talk • contribs) at 15:53, 2 December 2008 (UTC).

moved talk

Concerning the argument that such a system would lead to all characters ending up with the same abilities, it would be realistic to limit the abilities a character can possess by a means other than a class system. You could, for example, designate elite skills much like those in Guild Wars, and make those only be available to characters that have made the in-game decision to pursue a certain skill path, and then limit the number of such professions a character can "master". After all, to be truly realistic, having professions to which a character has devoted their self to and gains more rewards in as a result is more realistic than an entirely professionless world. This would still allow a character to learn at least the basic skills in each profession.

To simplify stat handling after this point without exceeding the limit of sandboxing that is practical in an MMORPG, characters would likely choose a profession by a certain level much as they choose their second profession now, and beyond that point their chosen profession would apply a modifier to their stats per level. This new profession quest arch would be handled similarly to the secondary profession quests in Guild Wars.--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:206.51.177.28 (talk).

You misunderstand the suggestion. It's to do away with professions, not to rename them. (mastery or anytrhing else). Backsword 22:56, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea, but there are a few grievances I have.

• Firstly, this would be extremely grind-rewarding, which was one of the things that GW avoided, and was great for.
• Secondly, it makes it extremely difficult to have a good character after any mistakes are made. For example, if you started off badly, you would have no way to rectify your mistakes without more grind.

I suggest keeping the attribute system as it is, but with limits and bonuses based on level and experience.
Because level is constant, let's make that the base: "Your base attribute cap is 1 for every 2 levels you have obtained."

• A level 20 character would be able to reach r10 in an attribute, even if they had never used it before. This does a couple of things: it makes certain spells viable without having to re-grind to achieve usable levels (a Dervish-character could use Conjure Flame at a reasonable spec at lvl 20 in one of their builds without having to grind Fire Magic points) and it allows a character wanting to practice an attribute (in order to increase experience) to engage foes of their level (were the base cap a hard 1, that same Dervish-character wanting to practice Fire Magic would have to start off fighting low-leveled things all over again).

To reward use of an attribute, there would have to be a modification to that attribute cap: "For each point of Mastery you have in an attribute, that attribute's base is raised by 1 and its cap is raised by 2".

• These points in Mastery should be harder to obtain: to keep things as they are now, an attribute cap of 16 would mean gaining only 3 ranks of Mastery over 20 levels. That would give the character an inherent +3 in that attribute, and a cap 6 higher than the typical 10.

While this would be perfectly balanced at level 20, consider a character at level 40: this character would have a default cap of 20 in every attribute, and assuming that they gained mastery points at the same rate, they would have +6 in one attribute with a cap of 32, effectively making them twice as potentially strong as a level 20 character.
Up until this point, I haven't addressed how attribute points would come into play. I suggest a functionality much the same as it is now, but with attribute points/level a constant, as opposed to a variable. That would also prevent level 100 characters from having level 50 attributes, because the attribute point/rank scale is logarithmic (or is it exponential?). In fact, the attribute points/level scale could also be logarithmic, so long as the logarithm isn't as steep as the attribute point/rank scale. Raine - talk 12:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)