Mirroring classes? Is this good or bad in your opinion?

Querynautus

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.

Saltz

Mirrors are amazing, not only are they content everyone wants to check out, but also they are incredible foundation for any balancing attempt.

Tetchta

I was a little skeptical of Mirrors when they were first hinted at, but then I thought about it for five minutes and it makes a ton of sense to me. For one thing, Aetolia has a tooooooooooooon of unique classes as a base, and, in retrospect, it's borderline ridiculous that they ever tried to balance the game for its bazillions of years of running without mirroring.

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.

Querynautus

I like both these posts.

Thanks for sharing.

Endran

I'm pretty new to Aetolia but the mirror classes seem pretty well done and look like they add a lot to the game setting rather than being just reskinned copies plunked in for the sake of balance. It is also exciting to think about how many options this will add to trying new classes in the future rather than being limited to just what is linked to one tether.

Aeryx

I was in the minority of people who didn't like the idea, because I think there's something to be said for each side having its own unique things. In practice, it's been kind of fun, I suppose. The flavor is different enough to where it doesn't feel as samey as I imagined it would. But then again, I haven't played any of the mirrors personally yet. Still holding out for either Spirit Teradrim or Spirit Praenomen.

Querynautus

Aeryx said:

I was in the minority of people who didn't like the idea, because I think there's something to be said for each side having its own unique things. In practice, it's been kind of fun, I suppose. The flavor is different enough to where it doesn't feel as samey as I imagined it would. But then again, I haven't played any of the mirrors personally yet. Still holding out for either Spirit Teradrim or Spirit Praenomen.

See, that would just turn me off to the game. The entire draw of Aetolia for me has always been the whole... VAMPIRES! shtick. You can't have that on Spirit imo.

Bulrok

They won't be vampires. Earthcaller and Luminary a good examples of how the mechanics will be the same, but the classes flavor won't be alike. Dirges and Rites are the only thing even really remotely similar. The messages and flavor of everything is just *wildly* different. They share mechanics, but they are not the same class. If anyone ever tried to compare the two ICly I think we might all die of awkwardness, because *nothing* links them in flavor. So long as Skill A does X type of damage and delivers Y affliction at Z balance/equilibrium time, the flavor message can read as anything.

Tetchta

Since almost the flavor comes from text, it's really easy to make things divergent as hell. Mirror Frenzy could just as easily be "He opens his mouth and a bunch of tiny flies zip out of his throat and slap you in the face."

Razmael

Tetchta said:

Since almost the flavor comes from text, it's really easy to make things divergent as hell. Mirror Frenzy could just as easily be "He opens his mouth and a bunch of tiny flies zip out of his throat and slap you in the face."

I see this misconception a lot and I want to take the time to clear it up, because I think it sets up unrealistic expectations for mirrors.

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.

Seurimas

I shall forever mourn the loss of Aetolia's asymmetrical nature, but the positives outweigh the negatives by a big margin. Everyone gets new toys for cheap (in terms of admin/volunteer effort, compared to a full new class or system). There'll be less griping about tether balance (not none, never none, we can be honest here). Guilds are getting breaths of fresh air (in the form of whole new RP/lore to explore).

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.