Support the channel on Patreon!: https://www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Follow me on twitter!: https://twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Check out Maggie Mae Fish!: https://www.youtube.com/c/MaggieMaeFish
Dungeons and Dragons has been around for years, and in its many years of influence, D&D has inspired a countless number of videogames. Experience points, a bunch of classic monsters, dungeons, and yes, even dragons as videogame staples can ultimately be traced back to the venerable king of roleplaying games – but there’s one idea D&D popularized that doesn’t get anywhere near enough credit. And that, is classes.
Yep, everything from warlocks to warriors ultimately draw influence from a couple of very clever ideas the creators of D&D had way back in the 1970s – but why are classes so influential? In an attempt to find out why, The Architect has donned a sword, staff, bow and a whole host of other cliche articles of classy clothing in an effort to find out once and for all why both developers and players love classes as a mechanic so damn much.
You Saw:
Baldur’s Gate 3 – EARLY ACCESS
Stranger Things – 2016
Wizardry 1 SNES – 1980
XCOM 2 – 2016
Final Fantasy 3 – 1990
Darkest Dungeon – 2016
Overwatch – 2016 (yes I am refusing to note overwatch 2 as a seperate game out of spite thank you for asking)
Among Us – 2018
Paper Mario 2 The Thousand Year Door – 2004
Super Paper Mario – 2007
Moonbreaker – 2022
Warcraft 3 – 2002
World of Warcraft – 2004
Guild Wars 2 – 2012
Lost Ark – 2019
New World – 2021
Final Fantasy 14 – 2010
Runescape – 2001
Perfect Heist 2 – 2021
Final Fantasy 7 Remake – 2020
Xenoblade 3 – 2022
Dark Souls – 2012
Elden Ring – 2022
Skyrim – 2011
Path of Exile – 2013
Fire Emblem: Three Houses – 2019
Dota 2 – 2013
Dome Keeper – 2022
Gears Tactics – 2020
Space Engineers – 2013
Deep Rock Galactic – 2020
Invisible Inc – 2015
Into The Breach – 2018
Foxhole – 2022
Battle Brothers – 2015
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga – 2022
XCOM: Enemy Unknown – 2012
The Binding of Isaac – 2014
Risk of Rain 2 – 2019
Gunfire Reborn – 2020
Grim Dawn – 2016
Titan Quest – 2006
Dragon Age Origins – 2009
Before Your Eyes – 2021
Fallout New Vegas – 2010
Terraria – 2011
Magic The Gathering Arena – 2018
Sid Meir’s Civilization 6 – 2016
Cybperpunk 2077 – 2021
Prodeus – 2022
source
Why am I playing a warlock in the baldur's gate 3 footage? Because much like them, I too am beholden to the fel whims of my patr(e)on: https://www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Demons ain't got nothing on twitter dot com, flee fools before you take psychic damage you can't come back from!: https://twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Classes also help COMMUNICATE to players what to expect from each other, from NPCs, enemies, etc.
"He's a barbarian" or "She's a sorcerer" gives 80% of the relevant info to understand the strategic impact on a team or in an opponent.
Really enjoyed the topic!
But really didn't need the Aerith boob joke. It felt out of nowhere and unpleasant for me as a viewer. It was also surprising given the awesome shout-outs to less popular and often fem YouTubers you've been doing, including at the end of this video.
Chess was the og multi-class top down MOBA
I don't think it's fair to lump all the Elder Scrolls together like that.
In Morrowind and Oblivion, your class matters in that you can only gain levels when you increase your class skills, encouraging players to focus their efforts.
Then there's Skyrim, where your character choices don't really matter because you can always change your mind later.
Yawn….
He finally did it. He talked about Risky Rain.
damn, i love curiosity master share!
You know a a game is weird when it advertises not having classes, as a feature I'm talking about "Albion online"
I kinda… Detest classes.
At least in RPGs (the paper ones)
Creating a character you want often is either impossible (because the developers did not include the option), expensive (because the idea you want to go for requires half of the max level due to thematic abilities being scattered between multiple classes) or almost crippling for the character (because you cobble things together without them really synergizing (which is mostly a combination of the previous two))
Or at least in d&d5e, they still don't have a gish class.
No I do not consider Arcane Tricksters, Eldritch Knights, Bladesingers nor Artificers proper gishes)
D&d3.5 at least had the sheer number of classes to cover most concepts (and several of those classes were at least a bit modular) together with the modularity afforded by feats…
Things not present in the fifth edition.
Classes was the best thing to come out of chaturanga, around three thousand years before christ
I was competely ready to go to the comments and explain to you that with how broadly you define classes, they easily predate D&D. And then you revealed that was your exact point. Well played, sir!
Adam really just said:
'ate huntress
luv rex
simple as
I love Final Fantasy 14’s job system so much. That’s all I want to say, it’s just my perfect MMO
5:38 wasn't the cleric's weapon one of the best early game?
Good video, but sadly very one-sided. Every point you made has an equivalent counter-point against the use of class systems.
A proposal that the "Trees" in Skyrim take the place of classes. Each cater to a specific ability that serves a unique role in the game.
On the flip side, the LACK of "classes" in Yugioh is part of the many design choices that is hurting the game. In Magic, abilities and themes are each mapped to a specific colour. Black kills, blue gathers, green generates ect.
In Yugioh, attributes and types are often selected randomly. While there are archetypes, so many of the 100+ archetypes share the same abilities causing them to feel functionally the same. This leads to people just picking the best cards and a very samey metagame.
Slight error when you were going over D&D's class balance. You got the magic-user and [FIGHTING MAN] right, but cleric's weakness isn't low potency due to lack of focus, it's overall very powerful with few tangible flaws, it just costs you your actual soul :^)
Oi dont think it was unnoticed that you snuck in 40k smurfs in ur vid
I wasn’t even gonna be mad about that segway, it was so beautiful. Real shame it wasn’t real 😂
One thing about games with "classless" design where you can generally mix and match anything like Skyrim, is that it's very important that the games actually give you a good reason to specialize and start providing downsides to not specializing early on. The problem with Skyrim is that it's pretty trivial to just try out everything and there's many things that you can just do if you know what you're doing even if you never put points into it. For example you can literally pick every lock in the game without ever investing in lockpicking it just makes the minigame harder. So if you get good at the minigame then you never need to invest points in that skill. And I think the lack of reason to specialize is what results in the game feeling so generic with everyone eventually doing similar strategies because it's the most effective. Almost everyone ends up joining all of the "class" guilds with the warrior guild, thieves guild, assassins guild, and mages guild, because it's so trivial to meet the minimum requirements of completing those questlines. Like I think with the Mages guild you can literally complete by casting only 2 or 3 low level spells.
Meanwhile to use a hyperspecific example, in the Tabletop RPG Wrath and Glory, they don't really have classes outside of roleplay reasons, since everyone can learn to do about anything. However as you get higher up in tiers, it gets more and more expensive to invest into better stats and skills and talents for your specialty. And the system is extremely lethal, so if you don't invest in your core attribute enough, you'll fall behind the curve fairly quickly. So you're heavily encouraged to pick only a handful of things to be good at and specialize in them, even if you can still be kinda decent at more things on the side. But even then, every point you invest in rounding out your character is a point not going towards making you better at your main thing. Though it also helps that Tabletop RPGs are team games so your specializing in one thing makes room for someone else to specialize in another to complement each other.
Another good example of how classless design works well is Divinity Original Sin 2. Again there's lots of things to invest in and technically anyone can learn anything. However they limit your options by your stats. If you invest a ton into Intelligence, then you're going to get a lot more out of learning to cast spells than you will if you try to invest in Melee combat. And similarly if you try to invest in a ton of different spell schools, you have the benefit of increased diversity of abilities, but the higher tier spells require more investment in that school regardless of your stats, so you're still encouraged to pick a school to specialize in.
The way you describe classes also echoes characters in a fighting game. Who you main almost becomes a persona and most people play whoever they find fun, not who is best.
2:12 grr ! Mages's (called magic user back then) stong suit in d&d was and still is battlefield control, not damage ! Mages being ranged attackers is an idea coming born of video games like Wow and lead to many new players in d&d making poor choices in character creation.
It's actually martial types like paladins who do damage. Especially archers
Druid in d&d are essencially clerics with less buffs and more summoning and battlefield control.
Tanking…Mostly isn't a thing. Well you can physically put yourself in the bad guys's way or catch ennemies attempting to go past you with attack of opportunities but it's more of a soft battlefield control there is no taunt or aggro mechanic.
LOTR hand classes, they simply lifted it from there.
I think one of the most important parts of games which don't feature classes or make them fairly flexible is making distinctive and interesting advantages and opportunity costs to specializing or branching out, on top of making abilities feel interesting alone and in combination. One of my favorite examples is how action ratings work in Blades in the Dark. Because of the roll system which makes rolling with bad dice pools dangerous and unproductive, there's a strong pull towards maxing out a few action ratings and never sticking your head outside that comfort zone. However, your first dot in each new action rating grants you a better dice pool to resist consequences, so there's a baked-in advantage to branching out as well. And the thing is, both can be fun to play in their own ways. Specializing can make your character feel like a brittle perfectionist and gives you chances to feel incredibly powerful, but when consequences come you'll have to either accept them or risk more stress than an all-rounder, and when something outside your toolkit comes up you'll have to get creative to remain relevant. By contrast, an all-rounder can handle setbacks and out of context problems much more gracefully, and if they incur consequences they can resist much more freely, but they'll have to spend stress pushing for dice to be as sure of success on high-stakes rolls
8:31 Haha, it's funny because she has breasts! Please, do spend more time in your videos pointing out body parts – especially women's body parts. We don't see that enough in our culture.
Classes are about team dynamics, my guy. It's not as fun if every character can do everything.
9:38 I appreciate that you omitted the Sorcerer for basically being "Wizard but bad and inbred". (It really should have just been a Wizard sub)
I never understood the stealth archer problem in Skyrim because I'd never experienced it, but now at least 8 understand it to some extent. The only skills I always gravitate towards are enchanting, smithing, and alchemy, because I can find a use for them in any class, and I can imagine literally any kind of character at least dabbling in them.
Oh I love Maggie Mae Fish! Great suggestion!
You make such good videos. It makes me want to try all the games you refer too. But then at times I know too much, and the thrill of discovery dies in itself. Obviously, a critiquing channel will need context and that's the price to pay. I just hope you can hopefully try to adjust the content.
Regardless, your work is great. Thank you for it.
What's the game at 10:10? Looks interesting
Had friends make me get Rimworld to play Multiplayer with them and choosing a few tasks to dedicate myself on focusing on makes it easier to take bite-sized chunks of the game to learn.
Also make me feel useful when I accomplish said tasks.
It's interesting that vanilla Skyrim has the issue with converging builds, when what I find to be the most important mods revamps the perks system to make your build much more unique. I wonder if Skyrim's issue with a classless system is really because of the classlessness or whether was just not tuned properly.
Personally I like classes in games that focus on gameplay. This applies mainly to videogames, stuff like XCOM where the tactical/team building is very important to the overall experience.
Outside of videogames I came to heavily dislike them as rigid design constraints. They may be easy to understand, they are without a doubt a good starting point for new players or people new to a system but in the long run I know exactly 4 people that were not bored of DnD classes after half a year of playing. We have around 20 people in our roleplaying circle and everyone else prefers playing "classless" systems.
Most of us do have years of rp experience within these systems – I also started with playing one – so we may be biased. Still the setiment is the same:
Classes are needlessly restrictive for almost no benefit. Well, at least for the way we play.
When I try to sell them a class based system it often goes like this "The game mechanics, fluff and setting sound nice, I have this cool character concept in mind – how can I do that? Ah I see… I could do it, but I would need to compromise on the most important aspects because the system does not allow it like I have imagined it to be. Well I rather play something else then… Oh this nice idea has the same problems? I'm out then, have fun."
This is less a problem with people new to rp (which is why I very much like to try new systems with new players) but with people that have played a lot of rp already this becomes quite a frequent (and frustrating) experience for me as a GM. Though as a player I often find myself doing exactly that to my GMs. I don't care about one shots so I'm more open to doing stuff like the system wants me to do it, but in longer campaigns I put a lot more work in the character so I'm comfortable with playing it the whole way. And this often leads to "having fun despite the system instead of having fun with the system".
For us a system needs to have enough choices for the players to not have to compromise on core character concepts as long as their character ideas fit the theme and powerlevel of the game as suggested by world/setting and intended playstyle of the campaign.
Having watched a lot of Star Wars galaxies recently I honestly prefer it's old professions. No classes. Instead you can mix whatever profession that suited you.
A class restricted spell that doubles all offensive damage isn't necessarily balanced and you could balance a spell that doubles the offensive damage of certain spells and simply let everyone use it or give the spell other limitations to balance it. Just like stealth archery is easy in Skyrim, there is usually always a class that is easy in games with classes, whether you are making a continuing commitment every encounter to level up your magic early game until your magic becomes superior to stealth archery or you're forced to use magic because you have chosen the trash class at the start of the game really isn't much of a difference. MtG has multi-colour decks and even within each colour you have a lot of options whether to go aggro, tempo, combo or control. The idea that characters are classes is also just super silly, this really needed another couple of days in the brain tank.
0:49 Preist
12:37 really? Battle brothers being difficult to figure out how to make an optimal team? When I played battle brothers for the first time, I knew exactly what I'm looking for after 20 mins of screwing around.
You want ranged and melee damagers ratio to be around 2:1 and tank to support to damager ratio to be around 2:2,5:1
Tanks obviously will need shields and a weapons to inflict stun or other status effects.
Support will have spears for spear wall or 2 tile melee weapons along with support tools like bombs.
Melee damagers with either axes or glaves for maximum tile coverage.
IMO the mechanics are too simple and they should add more.
Classes: the Four Humors and Zodiac for the New Age
Absolutely love this channel ❤️ 💪🔥
15:54 silly little class specific quests? I see you've never played through the Dark Knight questline
MMFs latest video is absolutely fantastic. Been following her for about a year, this series on Joseph Campbell is my 2nd favorite. The favorite being on Zack Synder
🙂
"Why classes are good for video games" is not the same thing as "Why classes are D&D's best idea"
Frankly, D&D suffers greatly from classes, and classless ttrpgs solve most of the problems that D&D has.