Hellgate: London Development Diary #3

Pro-G is hosting a third Hellgate: London development diary, this time offering discussion of the game’s character classes.

Until about a year ago, we thought that we were going to have only 3 character classes: Hunter, Templar, and Cabalist. We tried keeping it simple with just three ways to play, but as with many things at Flagship Studios, our creativity broadened the scope of our game. So, we experimented with skill trees with branches that required that you commit to one branch over another. You could make your Templar Offensive or Defensive. Your Cabalist could be about Pets or Blasting. Your Hunter could focus on having Robots that helped you or more powerful Shooting abilities. This felt good on paper. It really fell apart in practice. In order to prevent things like a high-damage Cabalist who also has a powerful pet, we were forced to weaken all of the beginning skills. After a few months of trying to get this to work well we arrived at our final system of having Classes within each Faction.