DevLog 3: Reworking the Class System

Its been a while! Hope everyone had a great holiday and you're kicking the new year off right!

I've been working hard tweaking a couple times over now the class and skill systems. Originally, thematically, I wanted classes to be non traditional in name and foundation. The types of classes would heavily impact the type of skills characters (Actors) in my game would learn. 

Over time though I found myself wanting to focus more heavily on the weapons used by each class and therein identified a few issues:

1. RPG Maker MZ(RMMZ) doesn't have a native Weapon Proficiency feature
2. RMMZ's class system is very Event driven and as such requires a lot of manual labor to assign classes to actors through the story
3. The equipment system, while probably the most flexible of the systems, still leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to customizing the play experience (ie: not having the project feel like a copy and paste game). 

Keeping this in mind, I went into high gear scouring the forums and itch to find plugins that I could Frankenstein together to build a unique class system. And I think I've gotten closer to my desired outcome.


Taking heavy inspiration from Final Fantasy Tactics and XIV, Actors in my project will be reliant on a Weapon Class System that informs what Subclasses become available. What does this look  like?

Every Actor will have access to (be able to equip) all 8 base weapons in the game by default. Each time an Actor changes weapons, their primary class becomes that Weapon type. 

Ex: Lucien equips Short Sword; Lucien's Primary Class automatically changes to Blade.  

Driven by Jeremy Cannady's WeaponClassChange plugin interacting with Class Change System VisuStella MZ to create a leveling system for weapons that can be referenced. The Actors utilizing weapons truly have to win battles with the weapon type they want to be proficient in. Class Change system allows each class to maintain their own Exp progress.

The second half of the class system rework was figuring out how subclasses should work. "Subclass" in the Class Change System will be based on a specific armor type, currently referred to as a "Badge". The Badge serves a similar role to Soul Crystals in Final Fantasy XIV. And like FFXIV, there will be prerequisites to equipping Badges and changing subclasses. 

Each Subclass will specialize in a specific form of Pishogue(the name for the magic styling in my project).  Actors will only be able to equip a single subclass at a time.



If I am able to garner how to check the current levels of other classes within the Class Change System I have some big plans involving a Primary and Off-hand class being separated out.  This will allow for an even more complex (and even more reminiscent of XIV: A Realm Reborn style) job progression as I will be able to check the levels of 2 different weapon classes to inform the unlocking of a 3rd Linked Subclass. 

But until then let's try to keep it simple.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this. Feel free to offer any feedback, advice, suggestions of plugins that would help, etc! 

After I wrap the Weapon Class system I'll be hard at work finishing the second prologue chapter: The Student. I do still have to go back to the original demo events and update them to make sure the class changes I've made don't hinder progress. Then its on to "The Twins" before I converge their storylines.

Until next time!

Puppet_Knight