Dala, I agree about people always playing with the dominant class and that sucks. I will give an example about why choices are important and players must devote themselves to their class.
I was designing a PvP server, but I was at first like a normal player whose ideas about change have been heard. The private server was on some other game, which people used to getting oneshotted so much that it killed the fun in the game. I solved those issues with tweaking most of the things, yes half of the playerbase (high gear people) hated me but the other half (low gear people) loved me, at the end PvP was balanced again, and pet classes have been made viable. The game has a pet system, but pets would die to random AoE's all the time and were useless. I fixed them all so they had their own niche. Everyone loved it, the pet classes were viable because of my work and I was considered the only people the game masters actually cared when making changes to the game to the point that players were asking me for the future changes and completely ignoring the gm's apart from events they make as I was the developer.
Enough chat, there was a class named Magus which was broken due to passives. Think a class with %60 Vigor and %180 Stamina boost in allods and Magus was that class apart from the fact it had the best stuns in the game and even absorb the stat of its pets and further enhancing theirs with the percentage based passives alone. I fell in love with that class just because it could do everything. It had a tank, physical damage, magic damage and healer build if you have the gears for it and they are actually strong and viable. Apart from that, it could heal, damage and defend itself, with being an important buffing character but I was always into the Ritualist which controls the battlefield and does anything needed with a wave of his hands, wand or staff. But I faced it, that classes NEEDED to be nerfed for the game health and nothing would prevent me doing that.
We had a long conversation with the GM's, we would really nerf the class but we needed that class to be strong and viable and actually has its own characteristics, which is stunning people and giving life or doing damage when needed. So we gave it compensation buffs and decreased its oneshotting DoT skills to managable levels. Half of the playerbase that picked Magus chosen other classes, but people who liked Magus did not care, like me. When we buffed the pets, players who liked using their pets picked the summoner classes which thrived with using the pets, one particular class was a little too strong but sadly before I fix that I left the game for good because I had to make my own set of balance in a game if I would design something.
I disappointed most of the gamers with quitting the game but the authority was getting ignorant to important balancing things that needed to be done. I do not stand that. I had most of the people seek me and I achieved that with only 1 thing, respecting the classess and designing interesting things that is fun to play as or against. That is why I hated the class reworks here, they lost their personality.
I followed Allods' wiev of resources, which some abilities generating resource and some consuming it. For example there was a Slayer class which used invisibility but it had 2 minute cooldown so it wasnt essential and the whole theme of slayer was ''stealthy fighter'' and I hated it, what I did was removing the cooldown of stealth but reducing its duration to 8 or so seconds, but giving it a massive mana cost with your skills generating it, so forcing you to interact with your opponent. Also when you cast the stealth even if you are in one, people can see its animation. I did not change that because that worked well for the theme of ''lurking death'' and everyone loved it. After the change was announced, I was like finally this class feel like assassinating its targets the way it is supposed to feel. Yes it still does damage with some sort, but its stealth is its utility that other classes do not have, that is why the class have its skills primarily designed on stealth so much that all of its skills restore its mana. That also gave a counterplay. Assassins are quick and bursty but I could not just let the class be bursty with that stealth advantage and I could not stop doing the changes because the class was judged on its damage only so the class is either too weak to be viable or godly and needs to be nerfed and I could not let any of the things so I gave some cast time to its abilities like a caster because it has the unique advantage of appearing right before anyone it pleases, so it needed to pay. So others would counteract with putting DoT's to the Slayer since damage interrupts stealth or simply stun or immobilize him before he finishes the combo, but still the combo is pretty damaging to balance that. The classes are like that, they take their power from one utility and center their playstyle around that.
Long things short, respect the class's theme and personality or we will see people with 10 reincarnations with them playing a different reincarnation based on the favored class with no difference of how the class feels because here feels like when you are playing a Summoner you do damage and when you are playing Warrior you deal damage with no regards of how the class would make you feel like. I personally do not feel like Warden is a natural balance keeper or Psionicist is a puppeteer of minds you just press buttons and they deal damage with no distinctness and that is why people do not miss their old classes when changing to a new one, be it your progenitor using core morpher or its incarnation.
I had quite a lot of off topic chat, didn't I? Sorry about that. What I think is though, reincarnation system is the epitome of failure in this game. Reincarnations sharing the same quest progress, Hero's Path quest ruby, Battleground rubies and basically everything that requires Mystery Seal Shards would be a good start. I get it CS items are good but sometimes they have to go in the name of game healthiness.
This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "Specialist" (Feb 19th 2017, 6:15pm)