Weird question of the day
If you could make and play a completely non-combat (and non-healing) class in your favorite MMO, what would it be?
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Time Lord
Alchemist. Alchemist sounds like it would be amazing.
Politician,
lying and decieving your enemies, and betraying your team mates
Ruler of the world
I really don’t know, since all the gameplay and story seems oriented toward those two basic roles. At some point you have to defend yourself. Tho I could see someone concetrating on a meta-game like buying and selling at the auction house.
Pimp – Where my bitches at?
Tactician. Like playing one huge game of Fire Emblem or Advanced Wars, except my units are other players.
Quite likely a crafter (provided the game had a viable player economy and meaningful crafting).
Some sort of wise man/scholar class might be interesting in a strictly RP sense, but would be very hard to implement game wise. Would you study text and specimen other players brought you by right clicking?
A merchant/trader could be fun, or innkeeper… though what a bore to have to be confined to your one inn serving virtual beer to virtual patrons day in and day out.
How about fisherman? Finding good places to put your nets both in seas and rivers could probably be done in a mildy entertaining way, and then you’d get to haggle about prices and hook the odd magic ring.
Essentially any non-combat class would require well designed mini games with plenty of variation.
Hmmm… I think I would go with scholar/wise man under the following premises:
The game needs to have publicly displayable player housing, preferably in world a not zoned. You need to be able to, with a reasonably easy to use interface, place items and furniture in your room. (XYZ-axis plus tilt and skew). As this type of character you should be able to generate quests for other players, such as spawning a cave or ruin by successfully researching old books and maps that players bring you. Also some quests should require that you’re brought along and protected.
(Also I want magic unicorns to heal me everytime I have a cold or feel a bit sore, I want to loose weight without having to exercise or eat less and I want to earn a million dollars a month doing nothing, but that’s all beside the point
Party Planner. Role is simply to enhance RP events and happenings with their special skills to create a party scene whenever for any occasion.
A thief like in DDO. Oh wait, they don’t call it ‘thief’ anymore LOL
Pick Locks, Disarm Traps FTW!!
Architect/Designer
A combination of player housing, building permits (*cough*extortion*cough*)minecraft and legos. You could pre-build furniture and rooms and whatnot. I did it in UO and sold the plans online for about 6 months, back in the first few years. I also sold services for decorating castles and guild halls. I always liked building stuff.
Already am… I have a Domestics Trader (aka, a Chef/Tailor/Merchant) in SWG, alongside an Engineer and several Entertainers, all non-combat. And pretty much everyone in UO has a pure crafter (usually some mix of smithing, carpentry, mining, tailoring, that sort of thing). From what I’ve read people do the same thing in Fallen Earth. Yay sandboxes!
But I’ve never seen any MMO allow for a pure diplomat character. I’d go for that.
Cartographer for my Explorer itch, Xanatos Chessmaster for those megalomania periods.
Club owner/information broker: I want to run Rick’s Cafe from Casablanca – host events, forge papers, collect secrets, run a spy ring…
I’d go with thief. Long ago, I tried to play WoW under the guise of “Sneaking Sixty” where I planned to play a rogue but never fight anything. Delivery/non-combat quests and exploration were going to be how I leveled. Then Blizzard nerfed exploration exp by putting a cap on it. No longer could a low level character bravely seek out high level areas and be rewarded with big exp for surviving it… instead, you just uncovered the map and got zero exp, thus making it so you could never earn that exploration reward.
Shame. I was having a blast.
I’d go with James and Jason. A D&D thief with all the climbing/searching/lockpicking/trapspringing and the like would be fine.
Oddly enough, I had a lot of fun with the entertainer type skill trees from SWG, so something like that would rank high on my list. Another idea is a “thief” type character I designed for 3rd ed. D&D based around getting skill points over combat effectiveness. I thought it might be neat building a character geared more toward treasure hunting than combat. Hell, ditto Scorpique’s “Time Lord” snark, which I’d see as a sort of wandering adventurer who solves problems through cleverness and diplomacy more than combat. That would take a change in the design paradigm for most MMOs, but I think it would be fun to play.
Of course, there’s always the basic non-combat standby, crafting. Someone else taking on the level of depth that SWG had with crafting would be nice.
I’d be a merchant. I’d like to craft the finest wares and set up shop. I’d like it if people came from miles around for my specialty items. I have always liked carving out a niche and filling it well.
I’d be an Engineer in WoW but with the crafting system from EQ2 or Vanguard.
Depends on the game and genre really?
For fantasy/medieval I’d think the following would be fun or interesting:
- Scholar/inventor: a combination of alchemist and engineering professions in game such as WoW, however they’d be able to make devices and create items with unique attributes (a bit like the recently introduced reforging in WoW). Perhaps they could take low quality items (armour, weapons) and “research” ways to improve them into “epic” quality. Call it the Galileo archetype. However rather than having simply sitting in one capital city, they need to travel the world and “learn” new skills from masters at “Universities” in cities around the world. Each university could be like a “faction”, needing rep to be gained and quests given out. Instead of killing mobs, it could be about levelling your character by acquiring “knowledge”. Why do we have to kill things? Perhaps the Scholar could visit ancient cities and dig up artefacts, visit old ruined libraries and the like. They could write “books” with their discoveries and sell them on the AH or to other scholars. They could accept commissions from players to create epic armour/weapons.
- Pilot/Captain class with their own craft: I’d love to be the captain of a galley, or the master of a dirigible that could transport players, goods etc. A bit like in EVE but in a fantasy setting. Your craft could have vendors on it. Imagine taking it to popular quest hubs and competing with others. You could also take other players skilled in professions with you. AION allowed you to set up “shop” anywhere, a feature I thought novel. WoW has those 18k gold Tundra Travelling Mounts that with vendors on them. Got me thinking I’d love to pilot a goblin dirigible across Kalimdor, setting down in places and trading/selling with players. You could start with basic types of craft and work up to more sophisticated/larger types. They’d be huge investments, and take time to build however they could also be modified and upgraded.
- Auction Hose Master: imagine if you could run your own auction house on the server, like in the real world exchanges compete for companies to list on them. Instead, you compete against against other AH on the volume of trade, your margins and how well you could specialise in a particular product. Imagine running an AH that specialised in rare ores? Or herbs for alchemists? Find a capital city and set up shop…compete with other players and their exchanges.
- Mount trainer: imagine being able to train any sort of beast (horse, bear, wolf, dragon) out in the world then sell those trained mounts to other players? Your class specialised in finding rare and notable breeds of animals for the most discerning riders. You could offer basic mounts for new players, and your level/skill advances with the type and level of creature you tame. You could accept “commissions” from wealthy players to track down mounts that rarely spawn… dragons and the like. You could offer your services in capital cities, accept jobs from other players to track down special mounts out in the world etc.
I think there is so much more potential with MMOs than the usual kill ten rats. Sure, maybe these classes could have some basic attack/defense abilities to deal with mobs in the world, but their DPS/healing abilities would not compare to “pure” DPS/healing/tanking classes.
It’s about creating a more dynamic, realistic world: I’m sure the more casual players would enjoy it and may existing players world love alts that did really different things in the world. For more its about enriching the world, and making it less about “kill ten rats” and more about exploration, discovery, building a truly player driven economy.
I don’t think you will replace combat/raiding/PvP as the attraction of MMOs, however these classes could deepen the game play experience and enrich the virtual world created by the developers.
*typo “Auction hose master” = “Auction house master” lol!
Architect and Interior Designer. ;P
dentist
I’d go for a Belly Dancer any day of the week
Gardener.
A historian/archaeologist. Ideally the game would have a deep, hidden, Tolkien-esk history and lore that the character could travel to research and explore.