I figured I'd give a more complete write-up on my thoughts on the Normals classes discussion:
As I said in my previous post, I don't think that fully customizable loadout system is the correct choice for a boss battles gamemode. Such a system would still have present some interesting mechanics of course, but I don't think they would be worth the downsides.
All the pros and cons of such a system (all that I can think of, anyway):
PROS:
- Normal players can play with exactly the playstyle they want
- Allows the normal players to experiment with many more strategies
- Helps keep things a little more fresh by allowing many weapon combinations
CONS:
- Allows normals to overly-optimize their loadouts, especially for hard-countering specific bosses
- Can be somewhat overwhelming for new players, who also need to spend the time familiarizing themselves with the weapons they might want (assuming they aren't familiar with all of the weapon packs out there)
- A lack of classes means that the boss doesn't know what to expect from the normals (a moderately large disadvantage imo, especially since the bosses will always have predicable characteristics)
- Much hard to balance, since a weapon might be fine on it's own or with most other weapons, but certain combinations could be very OP
- Is harder to predict the imbalances mentioned above
- Unnecessarily boosts the power and effectiveness of each normals player by allowing them to remove as many of their weaknesses as possible
And in addition to those, I personally feel that fully customizable systems are somewhat less interesting to play with, because they reduce the amount of role-based team-building that is needed, and the whole trade-off aspect that classes have is pretty much gone. And in general, people tend to come up with more clever solutions to problems when they are faced with some limitations.
(lemme know if you can think of any more pros or cons, and I'll include them. Would be nice to have a reasonably complete list of pros and cons just for future reference)
So yeah, I do think that a fully predefined class system would be the overall better choice for this sort of gamemode. Either that or semi-customizable classes (similar to TF2's or Hawken's loadout system) would be the best option for this.
I was actually thinking of using semi-customizable classes for my own boss battles server (if I ever find the time to set that up). I think that such a system would avoid most of the negatives of a fully customizable system while still giving players a little loadout freedom.
A trooper class could have different flavors of primary rifles, while still retaining it's core features and weaknesses, for example. And the boss would still roughly know what to expect from players of that class, since their weapon selection possibilities would be pretty limited still.
Also, here are some balance guidelines that I had wrote in a text file ages ago. They aren't perfect, but they will hopefully give you guys some ideas:
=====[ BL Boss Fight Server Boss Balance Guidelines ]=====
Created by ArmyUnit on 9/5/2012
====[ BL Boss Fight Server Boss Balance Guidelines ]=====
===[ BOSSES ]===
-The faster the boss, the less heath it should have
-The larger the boss, the more health it should have
-A large and fast boss should not have too much health
-A boss with regenerating health should not have much HP, depending on the regen rate
-If a boss's attack instant kills, that attack must have a fair warning before hitting (charge effects/sounds, slow projectile speed, etc)
-Instant kill attacks should not be spammable
-Bosses should not become indefinitely invisable
-Flying bosses should have less than normal health unless they are of a large size
-Melee attacks should not be instant-kill unless they have a good warning before the attack lands
-Stationary bosses should have a huge amount of health, and poison immunity
-A slow boss should probably have a ranged attack
===[ NORMAL PLAYER CLASSES ]===
-Classes should not be fast and hard to hit unless they have a very low amount of health
-knockback dealt to the boss should always be low (if any at all)
-no normal class should EVER be able to instant kill a boss
===[ ARENA ]===
-Arenas should be of a good size (but not too large)
-Arenas should not have too many places to hide/run
-There should be no healing stations for the boss or the normals (unless that healing station is part of the boss)