Building My Dream MMO Part 3 – Classes
This is part three of my "Dream MMO" series. You can find the first two parts here and here.
As for a class system, I look to three games as inspiration: World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online and the Elder Scrolls series (one of these things is not like the other, right? 
). WoW and WAR handled the class system in similar ways with different small twists. WoW just copied the same classes for each faction (once they made the paladin/shaman change). This way each faction could feel perfectly equal from the class point of view, aside from the restrictions on classes based on race. WAR decided to pit specific races against each other and give each race four classes: a tank, a melee dps, a ranged dps and a healer. While not an exact copy, each class had a mirror class on the other faction, just with a different factional flair.
The Elder Scroll games are where I draw the biggest influence for what the classes would be like in Dawn of Steam. If you have never played and Elder Scrolls game (Morrowind and Oblivion being the biggest to date), while they have preset classes, each class is just a mixture of skill specialities and you can customize and create your own character class based on the specialities you want. Instead of having a list of hard coded classes, DoS would go somewhat off the Elder Scrolls model. There would be "suggested classes" for beginners, which would consist of about 5-10 different speciality combinations, but the more advanced players would probably want to just customize their classes. Each speciality would have it's own flair based on the faction. For example in the case of a summoning specialty, Julians may summon a flying turret, Organics may summon a bird of prey, and the Synthetics may summon a flying aberration.
For a better explanation of how the system would work, I decided to write basic example of possible skills.
Each player is given 10 speciality points and 5 profession points when starting a character. The points can be spent towards:
Offensive Melee -
Daggers - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Daggers are aimed for quick decisive shots and give critical strike bonuses.
Blades - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Swords and axes. Slower than daggers but cause bleeds.
Blunt Weapons - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Maces and hammers. Slower than blades but can disorient opponents, reducing their casting and attacking efficiency.
Staves - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Staves are caster weapons and mainly stat grabs.
Hand to Hand - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Uses fist weapons for high damage combos.
Offensive Ranged -
Ranged Weapons - Cost 2 Specialty Point - The use of guns and bows. Weapons have different effects based on ammunition.
Shadow Magicks - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Shadow magicks consist of debuffs and damage over time abilities.
Elemental Magicks - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Elemental magicks is straight damage dealing abilities with fire, ice and air.
Conjuration Magicks - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Conjuring beings to fight along side you and allies.
Defensive -
Light Armor - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Light armor allows better movement. It has no penalties to casting or attacking.
Medium Armor - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Requires Light Armor - Reduces casting efficiency by 25%.
Heavy Armor - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Requires Medium Armor - Reduces casting efficiency by 50%.
Shields - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Allows use of shields. Gives ability to block attacks and threat increasing attacks.
Restorative Magicks - Costs 2 Speciality Point - Healing magicks. Can specialize in heals over time or direct heals.
Stealth - Costs 1 Speciality Point - Allows player to stealth. Cannot be done in very bright places. More effective at night. Also allows pick pocketing from NPCs and very limited pickpocketing from enemy players. Also has some special attacks that can only be executed with daggers. Cannot stealth in heavy armor.
Professions -
Alchemy - Costs 2 Profession Points - The making of potions and salves. Requires materials gathered from scavenging and herbalism.
Herbalism - Costs 1 Profession Point - The gathering of herbs and wood.
Armorsmith - Costs 2 Profession Points - The making of all types of armor. Can specialize in light, medium, or heavy.
Weaponsmith - Costs 2 Profession Points - The making of weapons. Can specialize in one type of weapon. Requires materials from mining and scavenging.
Mining - Costs 1 Profession Points - The process of gathering ore and gems.
Repairing - Costs 2 Profession Points - Repairing armor and weapons. Requires materials from mining, scavenging and a little herbalism.
Imbuing - Costs 2 Profession Points - Enchanting and dying gear. Requires materials from herbalism and scavenging.
Scavenging - Costs 1 Profession Points - Special looting options from humanoids and skinning options for beasts.
Tinkerer - Costs 2 Profession Points - The making of jewelery and other miscellaneous items. Requires materials from mining, herbalism and a little scavenging.
Now unlike the Elder Scrolls game, you do not get every skill specialty in the game with just bonuses to the ones you picked. Only the ones you picked you would get. Everyone would be allowed to where a basic cloth armor with very little stats/bonuses on it so that if they don't pick up light armor, they're not naked.
I haven't quite decided if it would be better to just have the system that as soon as you start the game you have 100% proficiency in the specialty and you just gain new types of skills for each proficiency as you progressed in the game ala World of Warcraft or make it more Elder Scrolls style where you have to build proficiency in each speciality.
The game would have a couple preset classes. For instance it could have a preset paladin style class that was comprised of: Blunt Weapons, Blades, Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, Restorative Magicks, Shields, Armorsmith, Mining, Imbuing.
Anyway, that was a large messy stream of thought. In the next post I'll explain the leveling and skill system.