Why bother with hero classes anymore | Forums

[Sweaty_Sock]

Funnily enough the first though i had after covid made me look back into this game was 'why are there still classes' - they were an idea from early dev that was never really realized and has been moved away from.

Standard renown gain for all should have really been put in play a long, long time ago. Why is an orochi punished for trying to hold a point for their team? There simply isn't enough to do for most the designated 'roles' compared to one such as a heavy

[Goat_of_Vermund]

Funnily enough the first though i had after covid made me look back into this game was 'why are there still classes' - they were an idea from early dev that was never really realized and has been moved away from.

Standard renown gain for all should have really been put in play a long, long time ago. Why is an orochi punished for trying to hold a point for their team? There simply isn't enough to do for most the designated 'roles' compared to one such as a heavy

Especially since it is not just Assassin disadvantage. Some heroes with certain class play completely differently than others.


Shaman is a ganker (who can be a roamer, but mostly a ganker). She is also very good at defending points if played that way, she has two different traps. Meanwhile, Nuxia is a decent mid cleaner with her unique feat, and a good team fighter with the Infection feat. Peacekeeper is a roamer, mainly good at ambushing, keeping points contested and fighting in 1v1. All three get the same renown.

Black Prior is designed to hold places, keep multiple enemies busy if necessary. Hitokiri and Jormungandr are clearly designed as team fighters. Conqueror is a mid hero. All are heavies.

[Sweaty_Sock]

Especially since it is not just Assassin disadvantage. Some heroes with certain class play completely differently than others.


Shaman is a ganker (who can be a roamer, but mostly a ganker). She is also very good at defending points if played that way, she has two different traps. Meanwhile, Nuxia is a decent mid cleaner with her unique feat, and a good team fighter with the Infection feat. Peacekeeper is a roamer, mainly good at ambushing, keeping points contested and fighting in 1v1. All three get the same renown.

Black Prior is designed to hold places, keep multiple enemies busy if necessary. Hitokiri and Jormungandr are clearly designed as team fighters. Conqueror is a mid hero. All are heavies.

And if a PK is forced to clear minions with a slow animation, do you really need to also punish the renown gain on top...

The game is far more fluid that the binary descriptions characters seem to get shoehorned into.

EDIT: i mean there are two healing points by holding... some get points for healing, others dont. If you are an asssin and u do 93% of the damage 1 v 1 then somone hits them you get almost nothing... its.... very silly to be honest.

[TrondurIGotu]

The reason most heroes attacks are similar speeds despite the class they are in is due to balancing.Too many heavy players would complain about assassins, etc. The reason they are classed is due to their feats. Heavy heroes will have the same feats (new heroes have new unique ones obviously), and so on. Hybrids will have a mix fit for their playstyle. Thats why someone like Highlander will have a mix of heavy and vanguard feats and Shaolin has a mix of assassin and vanguard ones.

[Halvtand]

The biggest problem in FH with classes is that they’re soft. By that I mean that the renown gain guidelines are bonuses to renown, instead of the way you get renown.

First: Recently FilthySpaniard released a bg document where he outlined the findings he and a team gathered in the game. The result was that the game is effectively lying to players about the automatic renown gain from holding points in Dominion. Long story short, The most effective way to gain renown is to hold and boost both bases, followed closely by holding the minion lane and actively killing the minions. No matter which class you play, this is fact.

Second: Killstreaks and bonuses. We’ve all seen it pop up at some time in the game. You kill someone for a small amount of renown, you get a bonus because you execute, then another because it was for example a 1v1, then another because it was a revenge kill, then another because you got a kill streak, and one more because a teammate killed someone at the same time, then another because something else.
These bonuses stack on top of each other, and I wish I could say it was rare for them to amount to more than 50 renown if you’re lucky and get the kill at the same time as someone else. I’ve personally seen it go up to 100 and above several times.
These bonuses are so significant in the game that a team can be down a base a large portion of the game and still come out on top because they score lots of kills.
Your class will get you an additional bonus to this depending on the situation, but everyone gets these renown bonuses, no matter which class you belong to.

So in short, everyone gets rewarded for doing everything, but some get a bonus for specific things.
Compare this to another game, Overwatch. There you have three classes: Tanks, DPS and healers. With a few exceptions they are locked into their role. A tank cannot deal damage effectively, a healer cannot DPS and a damage dealer cannot just stand there and soak up damage.
Granted, these games are very different, but the core concept applies. If you’re playing a tank or healer, your aim is not going to be to get lots of kills, that’s for the DPS.

So FH can go two directions here. The first, as suggested earlier, just let the class-specific renown bonuses go and give everyone equal renown for everything. This seems boring to me personally as I’d like to actually see a purpose in picking a heavy over a vanguard for instance instead of just being slower and doing less damage…

The second way is to make the different classes´ renown gain hard. By that I mean for example:
Everyone can still kill minions, but only Vanguards will gain renown for doing so.
Everyone can still capture and boost bases, but only Heavies gain renown for it.
Everyone can still kill enemy players, but only assassins gain renown for it.
Hybrids would gain a slightly smaller amount of renown for performing two tasks from the classes that they individually are a hybrid between (Valk being a heavy/assassin would get renown for holding bases and killing people).
(This is obviously a mockup for Dominion, this would have to be tweaked for Breach and Tribute).

This way I don’t imagine the whole single-pick debate will continue as loading up on just one class should put the team at a serious disadvantage against a balanced team.
Being successful with each class will mean playing differently.
It will add much needed clarity to the game as to what people are supposed to do.
Doing the wrong thing is still not punished, it’s just not rewarded.
Team composition will be an actual thing.
Different tactics for different teams.
Deathballing would largely mean abandoning your task for everyone but assassins and some hybrids. A team aiming for it would be spotted in the loading screen.

[Knight_Raime]

The biggest problem in FH with classes is that they’re soft. By that I mean that the renown gain guidelines are bonuses to renown, instead of the way you get renown.

First: Recently FilthySpaniard released a bg document where he outlined the findings he and a team gathered in the game. The result was that the game is effectively lying to players about the automatic renown gain from holding points in Dominion. Long story short, The most effective way to gain renown is to hold and boost both bases, followed closely by holding the minion lane and actively killing the minions. No matter which class you play, this is fact.

Second: Killstreaks and bonuses. We’ve all seen it pop up at some time in the game. You kill someone for a small amount of renown, you get a bonus because you execute, then another because it was for example a 1v1, then another because it was a revenge kill, then another because you got a kill streak, and one more because a teammate killed someone at the same time, then another because something else.
These bonuses stack on top of each other, and I wish I could say it was rare for them to amount to more than 50 renown if you’re lucky and get the kill at the same time as someone else. I’ve personally seen it go up to 100 and above several times.
These bonuses are so significant in the game that a team can be down a base a large portion of the game and still come out on top because they score lots of kills.
Your class will get you an additional bonus to this depending on the situation, but everyone gets these renown bonuses, no matter which class you belong to.

So in short, everyone gets rewarded for doing everything, but some get a bonus for specific things.
Compare this to another game, Overwatch. There you have three classes: Tanks, DPS and healers. With a few exceptions they are locked into their role. A tank cannot deal damage effectively, a healer cannot DPS and a damage dealer cannot just stand there and soak up damage.
Granted, these games are very different, but the core concept applies. If you’re playing a tank or healer, your aim is not going to be to get lots of kills, that’s for the DPS.

So FH can go two directions here. The first, as suggested earlier, just let the class-specific renown bonuses go and give everyone equal renown for everything. This seems boring to me personally as I’d like to actually see a purpose in picking a heavy over a vanguard for instance instead of just being slower and doing less damage…

The second way is to make the different classes´ renown gain hard. By that I mean for example:
Everyone can still kill minions, but only Vanguards will gain renown for doing so.
Everyone can still capture and boost bases, but only Heavies gain renown for it.
Everyone can still kill enemy players, but only assassins gain renown for it.
Hybrids would gain a slightly smaller amount of renown for performing two tasks from the classes that they individually are a hybrid between (Valk being a heavy/assassin would get renown for holding bases and killing people).
(This is obviously a mockup for Dominion, this would have to be tweaked for Breach and Tribute).

This way I don’t imagine the whole single-pick debate will continue as loading up on just one class should put the team at a serious disadvantage against a balanced team.
Being successful with each class will mean playing differently.
It will add much needed clarity to the game as to what people are supposed to do.
Doing the wrong thing is still not punished, it’s just not rewarded.
Team composition will be an actual thing.
Different tactics for different teams.
Deathballing would largely mean abandoning your task for everyone but assassins and some hybrids. A team aiming for it would be spotted in the loading screen.

I agree with your assessment of the problem and I also share the desire to have classes be meaningful in regards to picks. Where i'm not sure on is your specific examples.
This is mainly because hero design by in large (at least from my perspective) does not stick to these rigid style roles. Or another way of looking at it is that not all heros are good at the thing they are seemingly pushed towards. Or are better at things you might not initially guess them to be good at. This is in part why the idea of having specific roles shown up in the competitive info hub wasn't largely received well by the comp players.

Then you also have the issue of accessibility. Games that hard push roles are often not very friendly to a casual player. I could very easily see someone yelling at their teams orochi for not slaying out all the time. Or getting on a hybrids case for not doing both jobs well. I don't entirely disagree with your approach. But I am skeptical about it. However kudos to pointing out this style of system might discourage stacking of any kind. I didn't think of that.