Earlier today, Turbine released their latest developer diary focused on the upcoming class changes for the Helm’s Deep expansion. This diary was written by HoarseDev and attempts to answer only one question: Why are the classes changing?
HoarseDev gives several reasons for the upcoming changes. Here is a bullet list of the reasons, each followed by my commentary:
- Variety at the Cost of Potency
In essence, too many skills being acquired over the years has resulted in: a) Inability to grant newer, more powerful skills for fear that all classes would eventually be able to do all things, b) skill bars that were too full of stuff, c) redundant, boring and unused skills.
- Homogeneity of Roles
If I’m reading between the lines correctly, HoarseDev is explaining why they couldn’t simply keep adding class traits to the current trait system. Once again, continuing to grant more and more traits & slots would eventually result in all classes being able to fulfill every role, no matter which build was chosen. It’s kind of like “a)” above, except with traits instead of skills.
- Moment to Moment Play (& Additionally…)
These points are addressing the flow of combat, and seem to be openly admitting that the current combat is not fluid enough by today’s standards. Turbine intends to address this issue in a couple of ways: a) By removing less useful skills and making the skills that remain more potent b) By introducing new mechanics such as ground-targeting for crowd control and healing, and c) by incorporating “a bunch of brand-spankin’ new animations and effects”.
- The Cost of Doing Business
Again, this section deals with the problems that come with having too many skills or traits and the effects that bloat has on the future of the game, and why the devs feel that these changes are needed.
And now we’ve come to the summation. This is what we’ve been waiting to hear Turbine say since the first hints of skill trees were dropped. Here’s the deal: The devs are re-booting the game. This isn’t just another sequel. This is Turbine wiping the slate clean and giving themselves room to work on continuing to develop the game for many years to come. The amount of character ability bloat that has been perpetuated over the last 85 levels was hampering the developers’ ability to develop. This is a long-term play, and it’s going to happen. Long-term strategies sometimes come with immediate-term sacrifices.
The diary was probably more concise than I:
These are big changes. They take some getting used to. We know this. We also know that for the good of the game and its longevity, we sometimes need to make big changes.
The new trait system that comes in u12 is really just the start of a conversation about how our classes work and how we can continue to make them better.
The comments above include my interpretation of the points contained within the post. I would highly suggest reading the diary for yourself and forming your own conclusion.
Developer Diary: Trait Trees in Helm’s Deep
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