How versatile do you like your characters?

by **TheHidden01** Tue Aug 16, 2011 1:11 pm

"Everyday we take the Massive daily posts and bring them to Dragoon discussions. We would like to thank Massively for their original content."

Breadth of utility is one of those concepts that rarely gets brought up in MMO discussions, but we still think about it. In some games, such as City of Heroes, most of the individual character archetypes are pretty one-note -- for all the customization you can give him, your Blaster is still fundamentally capable of only one task (dealing mostly ranged damage). But we also have games such as Champions Online, in which you can build one character to do almost everything at the cost of pretty much taking the same powers as everyone else.

Some players want to go with the Final Fantasy XI approach, creating one character who can learn to do pretty much everything in the game, given enough time. Others prefer a more focused approach a la World of Warcraft, a game in which a character does one thing and specializes in it heavily. What do you feel? How diverse do you want each individual character's ability pool to be, and are you willing to give up some flexibility if it means more unique skills for your particular focus?

TH