Quote
death_claw
If they are overpowered with certain combos those combos should be downgraded. If they are underpowered with certain combos those combos need to be upgraded. If too many people play them, they should increase the XP penalty, limit race choices, etc.

But once you've rolled the character you shouldn't roll a die to see whether or not you randomly get screwed by your class. There are better ways to do it that don't result in people deleting and feeling like they wasted their time. Things like restricting races/increasing XP penalty, downgrading combo, etc. front load the choice so you know up front what you're getting. Giving someone a random form that might turn out to be terrible or awesome is pretty lame.

I'm not talking about "overpowered" combos.
I can't say whether or not there is an "overpowered" combo for shifters or whether shifters are "overpowered" compared to other classes.

What I am talking about is not being able to design the character to your "powergamed" desires for the "perfect" mix of forms and skills. That makes shifters less desirable to play than they otherwise would be.

Drawback.

That's a major drawback to playing a shifter for me. In fact, I cannot think of a worse drawback to playing shifters. That's a major reason why I don't play shifters. If that drawback were removed, I would definitely roll up a shifter because they have many advantages over other classes. In fact, I'd probably play shifters over all fighting classes except assassins. Increased XP? Who cares? Decreased race selection? Who cares? These aren't going to stop people from playing a customizable, non-gear-dependent class with strong inherent offense/defense/utility.

There are other classes with comparable (to me) drawbacks: for example, empowerment classes. If empowerment were removed, I would probably play exclusively shamans. You can call comparing "empowerment" to "random forms" retarded, but they're both inherent class drawbacks that, if removed, would make the class extremely desirable to play over other classes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2008 11:20AM by balrahd.