Game Classes, Should there be many? Options

[markchapman10]

In many games there is a job system, or multiple class's for the player to choose from. I would like some opinions on this.

also I can only have one party member in my party.

In my game at the moment, I have a few characters, they have there OWN class, and if the player wants to be a certain class they have to find the character in the game and play there SHORT story(more of a side quest).

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I may change it to where the player may choose at the beginning of the game what character he wants and he can then do his characters story(side quest).

I was thinking that maybe it would be better if I have one character and you choose a class at the beginning of the game and later when you get to a city you can talk to the combat trainer to change class's if you would like.

I'm in a state where I need to get this sorted before I move on, but I wanted some other opinions about this before I proceed so that I can get a feel about the players opinion on class's in games.

[Shaddow]

I actually am using a class system in my game as well. One thing I found is that you, not only, need to worry about what classes and how to make them unique, but a fun way to get them. Something you need to consider is fun side quests for each of these, make sure the quest is worth it, not just the class itself.

something I did in mine to make things unique, even though I have four characters who can be any of 10 classes, plus their unique default class. Is use subclasses, so you can mix and match skills and weapon uses. The main class can use anything from the class, weapons, armor, stats and skills, while the sub class gets the skills and weapon proficiencies only.

Another thing I did, is make it so skills are purchased with JP, this allows the player to improve the class how they feel, not when I think they should get it. It allows them to use strategy in class training. They can only learn JP for the primary class they are, not the sub class. But they can switch at any time outside of battle, to mix and match on the fly and allow them to adjust to any situation.

While the players can eventually have access to every class with all four characters it is not easy to find. There are 4 books for each class, one per player to teach them, and they are spread through-out the world in quests and sometimes chests for the player to find. This allows for a large party dynamic and a lot of in battle strategy.

Sorry, it feels like I just talked about my game, but I'm hoping this gives you some ideas on how you can do this in your own game too.