Is 64 classes still a good idea?

There is only 8 "classes". Don't believe the "augments will drastically change abilities" until you see it happen on at least a single archetype.

Ashes is a game with 8 classes and parties of 8 people. It's a perfect fit.

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This is already the case pretty much. All abilities will be based on your archetype, which is why I say that there's only 8 classes.

We'll need some build variety though, which is where the augments come in. Balancing an mmo is an impossible task, so I think expecting that is kinda pointless. But having a good variety of options on your abilities is something that would make the game better.

We've yet to see any proper augments, so it's hard to say how long they'd take to develop. But my main point - no additional archetypes. 8 for 8 is the best way to go, otherwise you're facing a much bigger balancing problem of "how da fuck do we balance our archetypes in such a way where some of them don't just get fucked over and never get invited to parties?".

And that will happen if you have over 8 archetypes in a game with only 8 party slots.

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Again, this is already the case. They'll work on all the basic abilities. Everything we've seen is basic archetype abilities.

Steven keeps saying that augments will somehow bring big changes to abilities, but I'll believe that when I see it. But even if they will - that's gonna be happening waaaay later in A2.

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Yes, that possibility is true, but that is a choice of players, while having 9 archetypes but 8 slots is a dev-forced choice, because you physically can't fit 1 of each into a party.

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Again, your abilities don't change. Their core functionality doesn't change. Obviously some groups will be looking for very specific builds, but that will always be the case, and that is also why repseccing your class is possible.