Musketeers seem to have the least depth to their class mechanics. When soloing you probably want to keep weakness and poison up as often as you can, maybe save gravity to interrupt something, then toss down the aoe heal on yourself once the enemy is in melee range. It amounts to just loading your gun as fast as you can and being done with it. Of course you can toss your turret to but that’s just one simple action.
Healing is more complicated, turret sacrificing is an interesting player choice and the cooldown on orbs can makes things tense. You won’t always be healing though and even that could use more interesting use of the orb system.
Archers have precision and the same special arrows as musket balls
Warriors have combos and blocking
Runemages have Runemages
Just seems like Musketeer has the least complexity and it leads to their gameplay boiling down to just pressing one button. I know there’s a talent system planned and I really hope it adds some complexity to musketeers. Maybe orb interaction or lowering orb cooldowns based on shot precision.
For basic soloing I could agree with this, though lately I’ve seen some Musketeers pull off some interesting stunts with teleporting and the right shot combos. I’d say all 4 classes could use a tad more depth in the end. Warriors could use a weak ranged attack to pull mobs with, Runemages could use something to put intheir off-hand as currently it’s a one handed class (at least give them a lantern or something to carry around, Musketeers could use something else to do in between Orbs shots instead of just mindlessly spamming auto shots. Archers could use…I’m actually not sure as I haven’t played them much. Charge arrow being comparable to arrow spamming?
Also, props for “Runemages have Runemages.” No details needed Runemages are just simply there.
Complexity wise rangers also suffer the same fate as Musketeers. You have just a few special arrows along with a “trap”, and the rest of the time you’re left spamming your basic attacks.
One interesting thought to take here is, is lack of depth really a problem? Compare to other MMORPG’s the standard kit for almost all classes is an auto attack plus 3-6 primary abilities and maybe 3-4 additional utility/situational abilities. Orbus is not too far from that.
I don’t think we should be comparing Orbus to other MMOs too much. It’s clear that it’s being developed with VR as it’s main genre and MMO as a modifier on that, if that makes sense. I watched an interview with the lead dev the other day and he really pushed the idea that this is totally experimental and he’s trying to see what’s possible with VR. Personally I’ve found the down time between orbs to be boring as musketeer and a lot of people I spoke to in game said the same. So improvement can be made.
I’m just going to pop some ideas off, more to communicate a theme of what I’d like to see rather than to be actual recommendations:
Briefly holding down the fire button fires a shot that knocks the enemy away and you back a bit
Loading your turret into your gun like an orb lets you shoot it. Maybe a small stun on impact but more meant to allow easier ranged use of the turret, it could also specify initial target
More orb variety, in low level play you basically have one “best” loadout that gives a bad impression of the class. Grapeshot, a crowd control shot similar (but weaker than) polymorph, maybe a lifesteal, etc. Preferably most are situational and just meant to add variety
“Blunderbuss”, shake your musket similar to the turret and it’ll shift to a slower, much shorter range but much stronger blunderbuss. Just to give that extra little choice and input to combat
A way to impact orb recovery, maybe some kind of reload hand gesture that would likely take a meaningful amount of time (something you could practice and get good at like Runemage muscle memory) or something interacting with a new mechanic. Using the poor examples from above maybe the knockback shot would reduce the cooldown on your nearest to cooling down orb by x amount of seconds.
Make the turret more interesting. Maybe have it change targets if you point at something. Maybe you can load an orb into the turret for minor added effects. The turret sacrificing is a great start, build off that.
I don’t think musketeer needs a buff, at least I’m not knowledgeable enough to say so. My intention here is to make it more interesting and fun, not more powerful.