MMORPGs Are Really Bad At Teaching Class Roles

A thought I’ve begun to have more often is that MMORPGs are really bad at teaching class roles. When a class doesn’t fit into the normal holy trinity, or its mechanics are abnormal, the class can be difficult to learn. While some might lean more towards the contrary, I’m inclined to believe that this is more of a fault with the games than with the players.

The core of the issue is the average PvE experience. Most games design PvE battles to be soloable by any and all of the game’s classes—even if some classes may suffer a bit more than others. The problem with this is that it teaches you bad habits for your class and then reinforces them. On your average PvE quest, the only goal is to deal more damage to your opponent(s) than they deal to you. You will generally lay down all of your damage-dealing spells as you attempt to take them down. Everyone attempts to play their class in a similar manner.

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In the average free-to-play MMORPG this continues without breaks until after level 20 or 30—in some cases, as late as level 35 or 36—when you encounter your first dungeon that requires a public queue. You queue up, you enter the dungeon, you begin to fight the way you normally do, and you realize that you have no idea what you’re doing. The PvE experience up until now has been lax and you haven’t had to put much effort into it. Your team has wiped a few times, but you eventually make it through.

This is problematic. In more extreme cases players will not learn from their mistakes in dungeons, later leaving the dungeon and further reinforcing bad habits. By the time you reach the endgame you have no idea how to actually play the class and you don’t do well in raids, PvP, and other endgame content.

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I most recently had this issue with Black Desert Online. The Valkyrie class role isn’t obvious when you start playing. It’s even less obvious when playing through Black Desert’s PvE experience, hacking away at enemies as if you were playing Dynasty Warriors. When I hit 45 I ended up having to respec with the help of guides and guild members, as well as take advice on how to better play my class.The game should have found a way to make the role more apparent, perhaps by providing better group content early on so as to help facilitate learning my class’s role before taking on the wrong mentality.

When I interviewed the Saga of Lucimia developers I was curious to hear their thoughts on the matter, seeing as they are developing a title that requires groups to work together and know their roles to survive anywhere that isn’t within the vicinity of a town. And so I asked how Saga of Lucimia would teach class roles, a question that I kept off the record at the time. Two of them gave the same simple answer: death would teach players how to play the game. They believe that if you feel the sting of death in their game you will quickly start learning how to play your class better.

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For the time being, PvE experiences are far too easy. You simply don’t learn how your class works when all you have to do for the majority of the game is spam the same two or three damage-dealing skills. Because of this design paradigm, many players will not learn how to play their classes correctly before endgame. Making PvE harder won’t solve all problems surrounding players learning their classes, but it certainly could help.