"A system that rewards effort and innovation" can't be buzzwords for imbalance-get

[Peregrine]

Battle Regimens had the promise of encouraging balanced parties, because of the requirement to use weaponskills from different classes in order to get damage boost (weaponskills from same classes simply removed cross-class affinity penalties).

However, the clunkiness of the battle regimens, together with the still-high affinity of cross-class skills has rendered Battle Regimens less useful then they could have been.

However a system like this, that rewards diversity, without REQUIRING particular classes is the best of both worlds. You don't need any particular class to increase overall damage, but you can't bring 8 of the same class, or your BR will be weak.

Another example, already mentioned, is to give enemies skills that can be used reactively. For example, an enemy could have slashing, piercing, projectile, magic, and elemental defense buffs, but only ONE can be active at a time. The enemy uses the buff corresponding to the biggest damage source. Another way to encourage party diversity.

One thing I DON'T want to see is a simply reversal of the situation, where melee is king, lolARC becomes a byword, with CON and THM relegated to basic healbots. I've seen this situation in other MMOs as well, and it's just as ugly as OPed ARC / THM / CON.

Regimens and skillchains are proof that the population will quit any semblance of tactics and teamwork if mindless zerging is easier and competitive. The whole problem with class whoring is the fact that the players who do it over and over in MMOs are weaker than the devs are giving them credit for. They can't handle complexity when simplicity is competitive. They can't even win the fights as-designed for the general demographic.

They take archerx6 to fights because they're not good players, not because they ARE good players. The game difficulty is set to medium. They reset it to easy because they can't play on medium because it's frustrating to them. They have a high golf handicap. And instead of being made fun of because of it, they're encouraged to brag about how weak they are and how imbalanced their setups have to be for them to succeed in the game.

Don't even let that kind of player think they're a success. Kill their imbalance-getting and make them be good players for once in their MMO careers.

Like I said, you can already tell who has spent their entire MMO careers abusing imbalance in this thread. They're the people who balk at someone who laughs at their ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger ranger "innovation." They think they're great, when honestly they're not. That's why they need these lame tactics.

Take them from them. Maybe they'll get better and step up their game.

My guess is, though, that if you take certain players' access to imbalance as a means to progress and achieve in MMOs...they'll fall off the curve because they were never good to begin with without that developer subsidy.