Explorer Class

uttaus

A small but significant portion of MMO players like to explore the game worlds they in habit and are less concerned about combat.

Why not make a non combat explorer class.

They would have skills and abilities to assist in exploring the world and avoiding combat.

Think skills or talents that allow the explorer aproach monsters and NPC with less or no aggro. 

They would gain experience by by exploring the world, approaching mobs and mob camps without getting atttacked, exploring  instances or dungeons without getting killed.

There could be exploration quests, and achievements.

The class would have almost no combat skill and be entirely focused on skills that would help exploration and survival.

I know it is just a wish list type thing but I don't think it would be to hard to do.

I could see something like:

Negotiation skill:  reduces aggro from Humanoid Mobs

Cautious Approach: skill reduces aggro from Monster mobs

Runner skill: increased run speed when you have aggro

Hide scent skill:

Lose chasers skill/talent: one or more mobs aggro clear and return home.

etc etc

 

I know wish in one hand crap in the other see which one gets full first.

I just think and explorer class wouldnt be that hard to make or integrate into MMOs

 

Korhindi

Originally posted by left4shaman


because game worlds are not huge and explorable as they once were, mmos follow one direct very linear path of questing and leveling. Explorer class would really be a waste of a class slot and development time.

 

This raises a very good point:  What is the point of an explorer based class if the world isn't worth exploring?

I think that one of the largest failings in today's MMO's is not the classes per se, but the lack luster settings they are put in.

It's not just linearity or themepark zones, it's a general lack of imagination on the part of Devs when it comes to creating an interactive world.

What do I mean?  Well, take virtually any current MMO and look at their terrain.  Some of it is awesome, like Aion, or the canyons in Perfect World.  But what is all this for?  Nothing more than a staging area for wandering mobs.  Until these games feature lands that are more than a shooting gallery of critters, exploration will not be all that rewarding.

I think the OP has a good idea in a class, but Left4shaman has hit it on the head that today's crop of MMO's would make such a class pretty much useless and not very fun.

DevilXaphan

There is only one MMO that even comes close to an exploration class and that is EVE. Other than that no MMO even comes that close or is that large enough to allow that yet. Would be nice to explore a world without walls that limit you to an area or zone. So far exploration is not a big thing for developers to expand upon in MMO's in general, maybe one day it will.

uttaus

My thoughts on the explorer class is that it would be for soloers or grouping with only other explorers. Most of the skills  and talents would be better or modified versions of skills and talents to avoid or control aggro that already exist in the game system in question.

The actual game play would be for these players to enter hostile areas without dieing. This means that any mob camp is potential exp,  a wondering mob is potential xp, way points like resources spots would be potential xp.

The act of going into instances, including raid instances which would open up tons of content that only a small percentage of player see.

These things are what exploers like me want, and it would not take a huge investment to produce.

Take WOW for example I know a lot of you hate WOW just using it as an example.

The amount of instance an raid content made available to the explorer class  would likely be almost half or quarter of a continent when all those raid instance become open to explores. This also allows a group of people largely shut out of beautiful content to explore and experince part of the game reserved for elite gear farmers and large guilds. 

The effort to make the class would be low as no pvp and little pve balancing would be needed. It would extend the life of the game for people who solo or group little. It also allow developer content to be viewed by more than the limited percentage of players that now sees it.

Providing a Explorer class with actuall mechanics would give people who want to explorer an actual set of goals that could keep them playing untill they have seen every piece of content in the game. That would provide deveoplers with money through extended subs as it would take time for exploeres to level up for exploring raid instances. 

I know its a wish for something that only  asmall segment of MMO players but it something that players like me would really like and really apreciate.

As some have pointed out some game worlds are lifeless and featureless and an exporer class would not work in those worlds

but most worlds even small interesting ones might benefit from a explorer like class.

 

 

 

 

nariusseldon

The issue is development resource.

Zones in WOW looks good and can be interesting but it won't take long to explore them all (in fact, just look at how many people rake up the exploring achievements).

If you randomly generate zones, it won't be very interesting and feel generic.

There is really no way around this problem.

Eve solves it by generating space automatically but that is much easier to do it for space/stars than a fantasy landscape. Hand design >>> randomly generated.

Chealar

This is a good conception for a single-player game, as an alternative to the fighter or mage archetypes. For a MMO, it's much more difficult, imo, to make that explorable.

dspeed12

kind of reminds me of a treasure hunter in UO, but that wasn't even close to avoiding combat