A Discussion of Classes and Expectations

There's a lot of useful information compiled in this thread by @SirChancelot with additional digging into the information given, and obviously lots of discussion emerged then, and as 'promised' in that thread, I'm linking it from now on in these topics.

Not to say that you should revive that thread, nor am I saying 'we don't need to have another discussion about it', but reviewing it might give some idea of what to expect if you continue down this path (imagine that I said that really ominously).

As for your questions.

1) My thoughts are many.
2) I can see ways that they could.
3) I don't believe in roles in high-skill games being rigid enough for this to be definable, but by most standards my answer is either 'yes' or 'depends on how the designers defined roles'.

We have not received permission from keyframe to share the quoted post.

I don't see the issue with only Clerics healing or only Tanks tanking in tough situations, assuming that the Secondary Archetype and skill choices change the way you can do that, enough to feel interesting or good.

I believe that 'all players who want to Tank will probably be okay playing Tank', for example, though some might play Fighter/Tank or Summoner/Tank (in my mind, these work, maybe they don't).

I believe this will be true if the augments you get from any other Archetype, combined with the choices a player makes in their skill tree, lead to very different methods. If all Tanks 'have mostly defensive abilities and do damage in the same ways and wear similar armor', I'd consider there to be 'problems that would arise'.

I just believe that Intrepid's design (from the little I've seen and played) doesn't need to lead to this outcome, so I continue to trust that it won't. I expect their design to lead to a situation where anyone who wants to function as a healer (that doesn't just heal themselves) will end up playing Cleric, Summoner, or MAYBE Bard I guess, and any Ranger/Cleric for example will choose /Cleric because they want to sustain or help out, not 'be a healer if things go wrong'. (I use this example because Cleric/Ranger is probably among the hardest things to 'make feel like it can still do Ranger things).

We have not received permission from keyframe to share the quoted post.

We've actually had a different discussion about how 'waiting until level 25 to get your secondary Archetype might be too long to wait for certain classes', yes.

As for me, yes I enjoy discussing the potential of the augment system quite a lot .