The Importance of Skill Cap Variation in Class Design

[trh382]

This is an important meta point about class design / balance that I think should be considered during the various class reworks coming up.

https://ibb.co/MRN9LdF

A good game should appeal to a range of player skill levels and a range of interests in mechanical complexity. In the graph showing the imaginary impact of player skill on the characters warband impact, you can see that a high skill class is quite low impact when played by a low skill player, but is the highest impact class when played by a high skill player. Conversely, the low skill class is still solidly impactful when played by a low skill player. The medium skill class is somewhere in between.

There have previously been proposals made to alter KoBs/Chosen auras and RP/Zealot rituals to make the classes more interactive in WBs.

The simple graphs above help show why I think that my be a serious mistake.

RoR is a small pop game with an older and more casual population. In order to have a healthy pvp scene, there have to be opportunities for casual/competitive and high skill / low skill players to all participate. By maintaining low skill / low mechanical requirement classes along with high skill classes, the game keeps opportunities for lower skill players to keep up.

In a higher pop game, players would be filtered into skill brackets by elo. Unfortunately, RoR is not high population enough to maintain robust ELO brackets and the lakes are necessarily non filtered.

One way to accomplish this is by making some classes mechanically easier to play than others. Currently Kobs/chosen and RP/Zeal are able to contribute a lot of their total possible impact by maintaining aura/guard and casting challenge or by keeping their circle down and spamming 1 or 2 heal buttons. Ideal play on either class involves a lot more, but just performing the very basics is a substantial benefit to the WB.

Leaving low skill cap mechanics that are a bit "boring" has the substantial upside of enabling more casual and less mechanically skilled players to contribute when playing with higher skill players while maintaining some of the returns to mechanical skill in high skill cap classes greater peak potential.