Why are character-classes used in game design?

Making sense of the world

Part of the reason for this is about world-building and storytelling, which may not seem relevant in the genre or type of game you are writing but if you aren't giving your users any kind of story or world hooks, they will be creating their own to make sense of what they are playing.

If you look at it in that respect, then a character-class system represents the development of an individual in a set of skills. Let us imagine that we had a game in which you could be a musician, a high jumper or a barista. If we just listed all their skills in one place, you might have something like:

• jumping quite high
• making an americano
• playing a C major scale
• jumping higher than average
• making a good latte
• playing the melody from 'Ode To Joy'
• jumping hella high
• being able to carry six mochas
• playing 'Moonlight Sonata'

Now that set of skills falls naturally into three categories and it would make sense to someone playing it that you need to progress through jumping quite high and jumping higher than average to master jumping hella high. If you were to progress from playing a C major scale through making a good latte to jumping hella high that doesn't really make sense and your players would probably find it a little weird.

In this respect character classes map to the real world fact that you get better at what you practice, so higher level skills are available to you as you master their predecessors. That helps the world of the game feel sensible.

This type of increasing specialisation is treated in a lot of games as a skill tree rather than a character class and this makes sense but is basically the same thing.

If you have a skill tree that goes through playing a C major scale to playing Moonlight Sonata that is no different than levelling up in the Musician class really. Of course there is the option to learn other base skills, so you could learn to jump quite high and make an americano and become a high-jumping barista but in many class based systems - particularly "proper" RPGs - this available through multi-classing.

The other way that skills and powers are often represented is through equipment- do you need to have a character class at all if you just let the user choose equipment that gives them the skills they want?

Again I would argue that if you have the best Wizard Hat and the best Wizard Staff to gain all the Wizard skills, you're effectively playing a Wizard class. The terminology changes but the theoretical mechanic is broadly similar.

Classes enable progression and specialisation

Now the big advantage of a class/skill-tree progression system is that you can make the pinnacle of any given class much more awesome because a player has to specialise to get there. A game where everyone is an average generalist is typically a lot less compelling than one where they are diverse and can do a selection of awesome things. Rather than favouring micro-optimisations, this can lend itself to more interesting play and open the door to having different strategies for different situations. If you watch people playing one of the DOTA family of games, the diversity of strategies needed for different heroes is what makes it interesting and keeps people coming back.

If I am playing a game I would rather be able to do a few powerful and awesome things and have to think about how and when to use them. If the game is team based it allows strategy to take place on the level of the whole team rather than just individual players, which is often a lot more compelling.

The sense of advancement and growing in power is easier to conceptualise in a class/skills-tree type framework and that is part of what makes games that offer this type of progression work and part of the reason that it is such a common pattern.

I agree with your points however I would like to expand them a little further:

1. Classes gives player identity. He can talk and think about himself as a rogue for example.
2. Classes can give player feeling of belonging somewhere/membership. Expanded previous point - if he is a paladin, he belongs to some order of NPC paladins and also other players (often with similar personality and values) this goes as far as creating community around a class.
3. Classes makes game balance much easier. Effectively your first point but from other point of veiw.
4. Classes are part RPG tradition and help players get used to your game. Effectively your 3rd point but again, other perspective - it can help you get more players as they will feel like "at home".
5. Classes can help skillful play. If somebody charges at you with no-class system you have no idea what is his skillset and what to expect, in classes system you can sooner identify threats if you memorize other classes skillsets and thus know how to counter it.
6. Classes doesnt prevent you from creating shared skill pool. It just does not work the other way around - if you dont have class system you can hardly introduce new class while if you do have class system, you can introduce skills potentially available to everyone.

From what you read, the mixed system could be the best way to go...but there is always a downfall. Mixed systems are currently modern but also there is not a great(=legendary) game with such system yet ...as far as I know(correct me if I am wrong). There might be some hidden difficulties with semi-open systems.

You can balance a classless system, but your players probably can't.

In addition to the other answers above, I'd suggest that giving people classes is a way to ensure that players don't sabotage themselves with a poor build.

Common things people do that produces a sub-optimal build include:

• Choosing non-synergistic abilities. People who do this may be competent in their chosen abilities, but lack the "whole is greater than the sum of the parts" that other builds exhibit.
• Dabbling in everything. People who do this often end up underpowered in the end game because they miss out on the ultimate abilities.
• Choosing abilities for the short term. People who do this pick the most powerful ability in their current situation. This gives them a temporary bump in power, but causes them to fail in the long run because they don't have the final build in mind.

If a person has a build they feel they like, but it ends up being underpowered in your game, it can make them feel like the game is unfair or too hard.

Ways to avoid these problems include adding a "retraining" feature or something like that. With this feature, players are free to experiment with builds and don't get trapped in a poor build.

Before I get into "why they are used in games at all", I'm going to mention "why they're useful now". Character classes are iconic, which helps with continuity and innate understanding. If I know that I like playing a mage in other games, when I pick up yours I can just say "I'm playing a mage", and I'll already understand that I'll be using different spells, and that there will be some form of limited magic resource I will use for my spells. Because I already know these things implicitly, I can more easily just pick up your game and play it.

In the olden days of game design, classes encouraged players to have unique experiences with gameplay, since I am limited in what my choices are, and frequently have my starting parameters change. If my character starts out with lots of HP and defense, I'll be more likely to hop into the middle of battle and destroy your enemies, while if I only have a small amount of HP but higher magic, I'll be more likely to stand at a distance and tactically pick off your enemies. Similarly, having multiple classes can lead players to explore avenues of gameplay they might not have considered before. Having played the game before, they might have only thought they could bash enemies with weapons until they died. However, playing with the rogue, they might realize they can sneak around enemies, or other such possibilities. Each class encourages a different way of interacting with game mechanics, and because of that tends to offer more replay value.

As you noted, this can similarly be accomplished without character classes. However, when you limit them to specific classes, you challenge them to succeed within those limitations, instead of simply allowing them to create something that is "best for them" and have them get bored because the game isn't tailored to challenge their particular build.

Actually the character classes usually play many roles in the game design and the game itself.

To begin with the class system will make the character attributes (as in everything from skill, durability...) much easier to design, you can make up a class background, a story which is usually a base concept for all ideas. So from the development point of view it is easier to create a class system then classless.

As from the player perspective the classes again give some simplicity to the game as the player usually has very little choice in putting some points to modify its attributes. Another very usual thing is that when playing online with other players you can easily see what class did your opponent choose and you simply know how to act against it.

Now just considering this two points you should ask yourself what kind of users are you targeting, the truly committed ones or those hit-and-run users...

So about the classless system.. There is no reason to think that making such system will increase the chance of having an ultimate win combination. I can think of no "pure class" game where certain classes werent overpowerd. In each scenario there is always a way to exploit some ability(s) which lead to an overabuse and destroy the game balance you so much struggled to maintain. The classless games it would seem are extremely rear and adding a PvP filter to that list we can be pretty close to number of zero. You might not agree with this but actually ANY character progression that limits some ability is pretty much the same, even creating a large skill tree where you would need to choose a skill in order to get to a new skill will limit you in getting all the skills you qualify for since you have no more "skill points". This system is far from limited to the RPG, even strategies in PvP where you select a race present the same limitations as selecting a character class. So somewhat most interesting classless games to talk about would be Morrowind, Fallout 1 and 2: These are all non PvP and in each of them pretty much every combination is a winning combination. Mostly if you have any experience with any of these games you would know that you will restart the game with many characters taking "better" paths. To look at somewhat different game you can look at Eve online which has an extremely complex gameplay of waring with spaceships. Even if the game does not include classes it does limit you to fly a single ship. This single ship has specific capabilities, limits and benefits which again presents the same system as having a class, the only difference is you have an "undo" button as you can dock and switch the ship you are piloting.

So my point is this "classes" thing is just one of the many ways where you fragment the player progression into some subsystems and many of such exist. Why this is very important (even more in online games) is so you as developer can easily maintain the ballance over time after the game has been published. There is no way you can expect to create a game which was perfect ballance between different character paths. And if you create some classes and see that a specific class is underpowered at some stage you can simply modify few attributes to make it stronger and ballance is restored and more importantly it is restored without effecting any other characters. On the other hand if for instance you had just one large skill tree and you change a certain skill to help one kind of players it will also affect (some) other players.

I am not saying that classless system is impossible or even wrong, it is simply hard to maintain. And more people play the game, more talking on the web, more exploits will come to life. If you wish to be able to correct those exploits you best be ready for it, one way or another. Some do it with classes, some with ships, the items... still the reason is all the same.

For the same reason that you can buy a jar of curry sauce.

There are some who make a meal from scratch. They know the exact ratios of spices they like and adjust them and choose meat/vegetables that they like and that combine well with their sauce.

Some people don't have time for that. They know that they want to cook a satay, so they buy a jar of sauce, add meat/vegetables, and then maybe tinker with 1 or two small ingredients? Add some more salt, chili and garlic as desired.

Some people don't even have time for that. They buy microwave meals and click 'go'.

None of these people are wrong in their attitude to curry. Why would they be wrong in their attitude to games?

You like to make your characters from the raw ingredients, others like to take prebuilt bases and customise, and still others just want to get into it straight away.

Identity

When you have a class based system the player can quickly identify a protayal of a character type.

This is done through conscious/unconscious memory of earlier experiences in games this would make the player able to make a better decision.

They all enable different play styles, and gamers do identify themselves with their play styles as well as their way of playing their games.

Progression of character

The progression of character is limited to their skillset. This is done because a "true" class-less system could also well be skill-less, telling or making the player need to explore different areas within the game.

A good example of this is GTA which progresses base skills like Driving, Shooting, and Flying based upon the progression of these skills, and the individual players willing to explore diversity in the gameplay.

Template not a cookie cutter

What is good to remember when creating a class based system, is to remember that a class is not a straightforward path, you can allow the gameplay and the traits of the class to contribute to the gameplay.

Even making the game unbalanced can increase the player retention - and the interest value of your game

From the players point of view classes can help with establishing a play-style and simplicity in resource management.

Imagine all the skills from World of Warcraft were available to all players. The skills in many classes use resources that collect in different ways (Mana, Rage, Concentration, Runes, Combo Points.) Providing all those resources to every player would be overwhelming - yet each resource style introduces a unique playstyle.

Maybe you can provide a single resource that combines all these features - but I think that'd be non-trivial - and easy to get broken and unbalanced.

Why are character-classes used in game design?

They are a realistic representation of peoples' skill sets.

The classic example is Dungeons and Dragons, which came originally from a medieval table top combat game by Dave Arneson called Blackmoor. Blackmoor came from a wargaming background and so was intended to be a (perhaps loose) simulation of medieval combat. And it would be unrealistic to have infantry performing the same as knights, for instance.

I am fan of classless systems [...] if you have the freedom to combine different skills you can actually create your own class[.]

True, and players are likely going to build a set of skills that suit their purposes best.

If you want to be a strong combat player and rush right in to things, you will pick skills that allow you to do this (a "fighter" or "tank" class perhaps?). If you are someone who wants to primarily kill opponents from a distance and sneak around, you will pick skills that allow you to do this (an "assassin" class perhaps?). That the game designer picks the groups or the player does hardly matters if the game designer does it in an interesting and logical way.

Do you agree with the above points? Yes or no, why do you think like that?

• "Classes are there to prevent "best build" scenario[s] where everyone plays with optimal [characters]"

  Anyone who designs games will want to limit a player's ability to steamroll the game environment or other players. Everyone likes winning, but reasonable players won't mind reasonable limitations. Reasonable limitations are the job of the game designer, and are independent of classes (though not having an indestructible tank that can fell opponents in one strike, throw fireballs that kill everything and dodge/hide perfectly could be consideration -- which might happen if you design poorly and allow players to "roll their own").

• "Classes create variety by offering different style of play"

  True, but more importantly they can provide alternate combinations of skills that the players may not have considered.

• Classes make choosing style of play easier to players. Most of the times players play the same time of character in different games.

  Yes and no. Some people have a preferred method of play, and classes certainly can make this play choice easier, but I would say that assuming that this is why designers include classes isn't true.

For me [easy play style choice] makes most sense [of] all the arguments [...] above, but why force people to only part of the skills when you could offer them as templates[?]

I think templates are the best solution, but there are other things in game design to take in to consideration. The specifics are too numerous to list, but if game designers limit players to some specific skill sets, it is (should be) beneficial to game play overall.

Arguably the biggest reason to use classes is for multiplayer games where player's interact in groups. Not only does it simplify game design in certain critical aspects, it helps encourage rational groupings of abilities so that hopefully players aren't at a disadvantage because they picked all the same "cool" abilities and bypassed the "lame" (but from a game design point, still extremely necessary) skills.

Although there are some very good explanations about the actual usefulness of character classes from a game design point of view, I wanted to act the actual historical original of character classes.

Character classes were invented by role-playing games... as a mean to play roles.

On this Wikipedia article we can see how D&D is referenced as the first game to introduce character classes. On the D&D page we get further detail.

Many Dungeons & Dragons elements appear in hobbies of the mid-to-late 20th century. For example, character-based role playing can be seen in improvisational theatre.

So not only character classes are a great design device to, for instance, make sure that different players in a game session fulfill complementary roles (something hard to achieve if players were completely free to choose their abilities), but it is also itself in the very root of the concept of "role playing" a game.

In addition to the points made above, there's also the fact that nearly all RPGs take place in societies that have experienced the Agricultural Revolution. This might not seem important, but one of the effects of the Agricultural Revolution was specialization of labor. For this reason, specialization forms a major part of settings and of how characters interact with the world regardless of how the system is set up.

In Skyrim, for example, I did each of the specializations separately, having different careers as a mage, a thief, and an Imperial agent, devoting myself to each campaign for a while before moving on to the next. Even though Skyrim has a classless system, it still ended up having class-specific campaigns, because Mage, Thief, and Fighter are more than just classes, they're also careers.

Skyrim felt a little unnatural, though, because people in one campaign had no conception of the progress I'd made in other campaigns, which led to numerous NPCs accidentally mouthing off to the Archmage and then being turned into bunnies for their impertinence. The game could have adjusted for this by creating variables like $progress_in_mage_campaign, and maybe another variable to track overall progress, like $badass_quotient, but these would be essentially the same as a very basic class system.

Classes create variety by offering different style of play (I agree with this but if you have the freedom to combine different skills you can actually create your own class)

If you are free to choose your own skills then people will optimize a single attack combo and do nothing else. Why have 3 different attacks that do 5 damage each when I can have one attack that do 6 damage and use it over and over? That makes for very boring combat scenarios. In a class based system we can give the players a large variety of abilities with different properties, in a skill based system such builds would gimp the character. Thus the restriction that comes with having classes usually increase the amount of viable options a player has. The fix for that is to group abilities into a single skill or force prerequisites, like a "martial arts" skill gives you kicks, punches, grapples etc. But then we basically reinvented classes.

I do love skill based systems for survival games with permanent death though. There you try to build a character that don't die instead of a character that is the best at one thing. Another good case is in open world single player games with unrestricted amount of skills (Think Elder Scrolls:Oblivion). But in arcadey games where you never die I prefer classes all the way. In those games a skill based system almost always means that the rest of the game is very stale and boring. Sure it is fun to think of builds, but why play the game when the best part is optimizing spreadsheets?

The #1 reason I think of why you might choose to use multiple classes instead of a classless system is so that you can give the player the choice between multiple incompatible types of play. This is not possible with a classless system.

For example, in Diablo 3, mages use mana which steadily regenerates over time, and barbarians use fury which builds as they do damage and depletes over time. Obviously these two mechanics are completely incompatible, and apply for the entire duration of the game, and so players would have to be asked to choose between them before playing regardless. This choice is presented as a class choice.

As for other reasons why you might choose classes or class-less, it is really influenced by your design decisions, what makes sense based on the design decisions you've already made, what makes sense to your players, and what feels right for the game you are making. For the most part, there isn't a right or wrong in the classes versus class-less debate.