I love writing game docs, and design ideas. While I realize that i will never be able to create or use every single idea I come up with, at least I can share them with everyone. Promoting the free trade of ideas and encouragement of innovation.
I'm sure were all well aware that in the old fashion RPG's there are a few classes to choose from; Fighter, Mage, Cleric each with their own strengths and weaknesses and as time went on more and more classes were created. This idea works great in a story, but multiplayer can be frustrating. This idea came to be after playing way too much Dota 2, too often people would not play their class correctly. DPS would try to become tanks, supports would steal kills, tanks would play as supports because no one else was. Sure its a game, and not everyone knows how to play, but that can ruin things for others, which is incredibly frustrating when your stuck in a slowly losing game for nearly an hour. So instead of locking people into classes they may not know how to play, why not have a fluid leveling system where people can become the classes that the team needs?
This concept is for a fairly narrow genre of games, basically Lane Defense or Horde mode. Something where the character can start from level 1 each time, level up in game and then start over all again from the beginning. Or maybe start with a dozen or so attribute points and discuss with the team what each person will become.
So for this example lets use some of those classic archetypes; Fighter, Archer, Mage and Cleric. First imagine a circle, with a Fighter 'tree' growing out of the North, Archer to the East, Mage to the South and Cleric to the West. Everyone starts out with 1 level worth of points, lets say 3. Each point you put into a tree grows it taller, increase 2 stats that are useful to the class. The higher you grow each tree the more powerful active and passive abilities for that class that can be unlocked and improved. Of course here's where the interesting things come into play, as each tree grows the branches intersect and give you the potential to unlock new abilities that would benefit both classes. High levels in Fighter and Archer, they intersect how about Ranger abilities? Mage and Archer, how about Rouge like attributes? Fighter and Cleric, that sounds a awful lot like a paladin to be.
Its intentionally designed like this to give the player so many more options. To make each match more unexpected and to let you change your own build if the person who is supposed to fill a roll, simply cant. They can max out one class, have one dominate class and supportive classes, two equally important classes, or a jack of all trades and master of none. Sure there will be favored builds that players like, the important thing is that you can change it on the fly. Each tree is growing away from each other, so while a Fighter / Mage may be powerful it wouldn't have any conjoined branches and their abilities may not mesh as well. Since ideally the conjoined abilities are more powerful then the independent class abilities, an unconfined build may suffer more in the late game.
It may look like we have just offered unlimited creative freedom for our players, but we've actually still helped craft them based on their own wants of dps, tank, healer, escapist, glass cannon, hunter, support. Whatever we want them to be.
On top of this leveling system, we should have items, weapons, trinkets anything that allows the player to further customize their character.
I hope some of these ideas are helpful and that maybe they inspire you, I appreciate all feedback.
