combat-role
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Lucent Heart asks: What's your sign?
Lucent Heart, the free-to-play anime-flavored MMO by BeanFun, takes a different approach to its combat-role system. Although you do find the classic trinity of tank, support, and DPS buried in the system somewhere, the roles are broken into the 12 signs of the zodiac. Each of the four base classes and all of the eight advanced classes can take on any of these roles. The Zodiac System adds enhanced flavor and strategy to the game. When Lucent Heart asks you, "What's your sign?" it's not trying to ask you out on a date. The developers of Lucent Heart gave Massively an exclusive break-down of each of the zodiac roles. For instance, those born under Sagittarius take on the classic DPS role. They hit hard and keep the damage coming. Sagittarius has its own special armor to help differentiate it from the other classes. Hop past the break to see the zodiac system exactly as the developers gave it to us. Then be sure to jump to the BeanFun forums for more information on how you can join beta testing.
Exploring advanced class concepts with SWTOR lead systems designer
One of the great things about MMOs is their ability to cater to a lot of different preferences. Each player likes to be able to build a character that is her own unique design. This includes the character's look, clothing, armor, and especially combat role. Star Wars: The Old Republic has a unique challenge of building a BioWare-level of story for each character class and at the same time allowing the player to have enough variety in combat builds to satisfy different play styles. In a developer blog just released on the official website, Principal Lead Systems Designer Georg Zoeller discussed the process around designing the advanced classes for SWTOR. "[W]e wanted to ensure that we had the flexibility to support several play-styles within each of these eight classes. So we built Advanced Classes into the game from the ground up to provide us with the ability to create and support different gameplay and roles inside each class," he explained in the blog. Although you will be forced to choose one of two advanced for each primary class, each advanced class has two possible pools of skill-sets to pull from as well as a shared pool between the advanced classes (illustrated in the header). Zoeller said this will allow for very unique combinations of skills. He gave the example of a stealthy healer for the smuggler scoundrel class. For the full story, be sure to check out the full blog on the official website.
