Georg Zoeller
Senior Technical Designer
Joined: 27 May 2003
From: Austin, TX
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 Posted: Thursday, 22 July 2004 04:16AM
Quote: Posted 07/22/04 04:00:56 (GMT) by Althaz
Fusion, GURPS, Circe, The Window, Prism.
Now, name one class-based system where it was possible for everybody to accurately represent their characters to the gameworld.
I think a valid question would be "Is that what we want to do?". How much freedom do we want to give the player?
On the first glance the answer is "as much as possible", but I believe this is not it, I believe the answer is "much, but only to the point where it stays predictable enough for writing and balancing". If we were to make a game with a design premise like Morrowind, the answer would be different, but BioWare games are traditionally more story centric and DA is the spiritual successor to some of our previous games, so it is safe to assume this has not changed.
I'm not a writer, I can only guess on how hard it is to come up with decent plots and stuff for everything when working under pressure and tight schedule, but my guess is that the less you can assume about the character, the more unknown variables there are, the less personal the story will get.
I am don't think skillbased systems can't work or that you can not create a AAA game using a skillbased system - I'm saying that it is, by my understanding (as technical designer, not writer), harder to create a balanced skillbased game than it is with the tool of classes at hand ...
And I think, because our technical and commercial experience with previous games, it is the right choise to make DA class based (if you have a working recipe, I think you should only change so many ingredience from it at a time to avoid upsetting the gourmets or confusing the other cooks).
Still, keep in mind that DA classes might very well be very different from what you are used to in D&D.
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georg zoeller
senior rules and systems monkey
[da | me]
My custom NWN content
ceterum censeo ambulatiuncula esse delen
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