I spent some more time thinking about potential advantages to a player leveling multiple disciplines on a single character. While I do realize it would be a difficult task to keep the game balanced, I feel that giving certain perks to players who choose to level more than more discipline substantially would increase the desire to do so and increase the general player base’s knowledge about how each discipline functions. I admit it would be also be tough to truly differentiate a system such as this from other games that have used it, so my apologies as this idea might sound more than a little familiar. I was thinking, what about equipment or attack based perks on large CDs taken from other jobs if you had them to a specific level? The idea is to choose an ability or gear that would then be adapted to your current job’s playstyle.
What if as a Warrior, you could gain the ability to equip the poison DoT to an attack if you had ranger leveled? As a Ranger, perhaps you could pull out a dagger when mobs got too close that would increase your attack but lower your defense if you had your Warrior leveled. Maybe you could gain the ability to use a Musketeer’s orb of your choosing, or use their turret for a short duration. How about being able to equip a single spell from a Runemage? Any and all of these suggestions are things that could be used with any discipline, just a matter of how you want to roll your character at any given time, provided you put in the effort to level the jobs and obtained the ability to do so via a special quest or something similar.
I wouldn’t want it to be easy to obtain the ability or the skills themselves unlocked at an early level, and I think all of them should be on a large CD. If it was on a short CD I worry jobs could become OP very easily and you’d see a lot of “you have to abide by this meta” type thinking. Which isn’t bad necessarily, there’s always going to be a “best” way to play any job in any game. But keeping it from reaching the point of “if you don’t use X ability on Y job then you can get out of here”, is the point of a large CD and being difficult to unlock. Also in order to try and keep it from getting out of hand, you could make what you choose to bring with on another job something you can only select outside of battle, something only changeable by a specific NPC that you would need to visit, or only changeable at your player housing. Just any little hindrance to keep people from going nuts all the time and being one man armies at the drop of a hat is what I’m basically suggesting.
I didn’t get a lot of time in game this weekend and the closed beta was my first foray into the game as I was out of town during the last open alpha, so I don’t know all the jobs very well. I’m sure there’s much better ideas of things that can be adapted than the examples I gave here. That said, this is just a starting point hoping to invoke some thought on how a system like this could be better used. And if the more experienced Orbus veterans feel this is a terrible idea, that feedback is welcome too of course. Being so fresh to the game perhaps I shouldn’t keep going on like this in my posts, but these ideas are ones I think might be neat and would like to hear opinions from others who do know the game much better than I do. Thanks!