So, I've always loved diversity. Firmly been in the camp of people that believe it's okay for opposing factions to have different stuff and not a duplicate of the other side. It works for WoW I suppose, but I much more enjoyed something like Dark Age of Camelot which had 3 realms and while classes had similarity (heavy tanks, assassins, archers, support, light tanks etcetc on all 3 sides) the classes were vastly different and had real flavor.
So my question is what do you all feel about how the admin are mirroring classes? I haven't played Aetolia in absolutely forever and have barely begun reading the forums again, but I'd like to know what you all think, if you don't mind.
0
Comments
Aetolia has always been structured as a 1v1 sided game; there's internal complexities and tensions (duiran and eno don't perfectly get along, nor do Spines and BL), but overall, with its small population, that's about as deep as the well can be for conflict axes until we triple our playerbase. The way it was set up before was kinda like trying to play Overwatch where one side can only play as the Overwatch characters and the other only as Talon. Mirrors allow the folk upstairs a way to hand everyone all the available tools without disrupting the entire structure of the game's premise and lore. I love it.
On top of it, it also will nearly double the available options people have to explore their character design and roleplay, and the mirrors are, frankly, objectively cooler than the classes they're mirroring. In short, it's an "easy" way to release a flood of "new" classes into the game without making it feel stale. Mirror classes are one of the best ideas this game has ever had, frankly.
Thanks for sharing.
While yes, the mirror version of an ability just needs to perform the exact same mechanics, it also needs to be conceptually similar.
For a very common example, a skill that is described as using voice originally is going to probably need to use voice in its mirror too. There exists a number of afflictions that impede speech for example. It also ensures we leave ourselves room for future changes that introduce new mechanics along a similar vein of thought. As another example, an ability that is described as being magical in nature won't have its mirror counterpart be described as physical.
These aren't hard rules, and we most definitely haven't followed them for every single mirrored ability, but we try to keep it in mind to save ourselves future headaches later on down the road.
To pull apart the mirror Frenzy idea (I know it wasn't a real suggestion, but it serves for illustration purposes), this wouldn't work for a couple of reasons.
(1) It's vaguely magical in nature, while Frenzy is a brute-sourced attack (drawing from your STR stat). Also makes it harder for us to introduce new things that might counter it in the future, if there's a balancing reason to do so. For a kind of bad example, Frenzy might be too strong and we decide to introduce a noodle_arms affliction that reduces its damage, which again isn't going to make sense.
(2) The handtohand_damage artifact affects Frenzy.
(3) Along the same thought, a broken arm stops Frenzy so mouth flies won't make sense there.
It's hard to look at all the positives and call mirror classes "bad". The worst that could happen would be mirror class newbies feeling like they were screwed out of a real class by picking a poorly done mirror. Mirrors so far have been pretty expertly done, though.
Experience Gained: 47720 (Special) [total: 2933660]
Needed for LVL: 122.00775356245