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Making Each Class Unique
Background
There are 12 classes in my game at the moment each consisting of 28 abilities. With this amount of various skills, it's difficult to keep classes unique and provide a different playstyle for each.
Before I started solving the problem, the core mechanics were simple: there are ability points and attribute points. Ability points are spent on learning and upgrading abilities and attribute points are distributed between the player's attributes: strength, flow, intellect. These attributes modify some of the player's stats (such as HP, mana, evasion, ...) and are also used as damage coefficients for abilities.
Once the player distributed his points, he may enter the battle, where he will use the abilities from his pool to deal damage to the enemies, heal allies and place various effects on both: cripples, breaches, stuns, etc. Most of the abilities use the bullet hell mechanic to deal damage and cast buffs.
Bolt and melee abilities trigger a "bullet hell mode" for the enemy. The player should dodge the particles to avoid receiving damage. This heavily resembles the gameplay introduced in Undertale
Goal
Adjust and expand the game mechanics to make developing the unique playstyle for each class possible. Provide a description for each class about how it's different from the others. The playstyle should correspond to the element of the class (ex. Natura excels in healing, Frost has a large amount of crowd and target control, etc.).
Result
Mechanics adjusted and unique class designs developed.
Approaching the problem
1. Reworking the attributes
First of all, I needed to define which attributes modify which stats. The illustration below shows the first solution to this task.
This solution is bad because:
a. Speed turned out to be overpowered in itself;
b. Unlike HP, speed, and evasiveness, the effectiveness of the mana points hugely depends on the player's ability tree, in particular on the manacosts of his abilities. The non-intellect basic classes (Frost, Fire, Terra, Poison), who aren't expected to invest many points into the intellect should have the low-manacost spells on their trees. And while the intellect classes (Shadow, Lightning) will invest points into the intellect just to be able to fight, other class will increase some of their important stats, which puts Shadow and Lightning into a very disadvantageous position.
Considering these cons, I've come up with another solution which is shown in the illustration below.
After solving that task, I needed to address another problem. The players are free to distribute the attribute points as they want. They can deviate from the way I expect them to spend their attribute points: for example, the Lightning player may feel he's lacking a bit of HP, so he puts some points into strength. But what if the player will go a completely different way, maxing strength while playing Fire class or maxing intellect while playing Terra? While sometimes it can put him into a disadvantageous position, in some cases this distribution of the points can be imbalanced.
The solution here was quite simple: some points will be distributed automatically, according to the attribute growth values which will be unique for each of the class. To find the appropriate values, I used Microsoft Excel.
This decision was the first brick of developing unique playstyles for each of the classes.
2. Deterrent patterns
Most of the abilities launch a bunch of particles into an enemy. The more he will dodge, the less the damage he'll receive. The player is free to place the particles the way he wants, forming a pattern.
The main idea which resulted in making the gameplay of different classes truly unique was to make a second type of the pattern: the deterrent pattern. Instead of launching the particles right away, it adds them to the pattern of the next ability used on the target. I came up with this idea after playing Deltarune. Notice the ring of the particles surrounding the player's soul - while not having a direct effect, it limits the movement of the player.
Something similar exists in Deltarune
If the ability with the deterrent pattern is supposed to place a debuff, it will be placed when a certain amount of particles (usually 1 or 2) hit the target. The patterns that are not deterrent will be called aggressive. The abilities that do not launch the particles and instead just deal direct damage and place buffs/debuffs will be called unconditional.
Spells are the unconditional abilities while Bolts and Melee attacks aren't.
3. Special mechanics
The units can spawn summons - entities that provide some auras for your or the enemy team. No matter what ability was used on the summon, it will lose one hit point. Once it has no hit points left, the summoned unit dies.
One more interesting mechanic I wanted to implement is the evolution of the abilities. While being attacked, you fill up your EVO bar. Once it's full you can evolve one of your abilities. The game provides you three random evolutions that increase the chosen ability's effectiveness, some of the possible ones are: amplify the damage of the ability, vampire of the damage dealt by this ability, reduce the target's defense for one turn when this ability is used, etc.
It would be good to have one "Summoner" class and one class based on the evolve mechanic.
Class descriptions
For convenience, we'll use the arrow notation and shortened attribute names:
St = Strength
Fl = Flow
In = Intellect
↓ = below average
↑ = above average
= = average
↗ = slightly above average
↘ = slightly below average
Abilities of the Frost class use deterrent patterns to apply powerful debuffs on the enemy (mostly stuns and slows). The small growth of the attributes forces Frost players to invest points into strength and flow just to survive, so they cannot deal too much damage with their skills (which are powerful because of the disables).
Shadow players use unconditional spells to deal damage, however, most of the abilities on the Shadow tree are double-edged or require a proper setup. Shadow players manipulate enemies using nasty debuffs. For more information see the article about a Shadow tree.
Poison abilities use deterrent patterns to deal damage. The abilities with the aggressive patterns are mostly unusual disables like applying a blur effect on the enemy's screen or make the enemy unit to choose a wrong target with some chance.
The Lightning tree consists of unconditional abilities and abilities with aggressive patterns. Both of those are used to deal very big damage. Very small HP pool makes the Lightning class an ideal "glass cannon".
Terra players have unconditional abilities that deal big damage, but these abilities also have high manacosts so it's difficult for the Terra player to use it constantly because of the poor intellect growth. Instead, the Terra players use aggressive patterns that deal moderate damage. Their main task is to serve as a tank, forcing the enemy team to attack them using various means and receiving the damage while their teammates demolish the foes.
Fire players combine the aggressive and deterrent patterns to deal high damage and place damage-over-time debuffs on the enemy. This is possible just because of the high flow growth. After the Fire player spent all his mana to damage the foes, he needs some time to recuperate. Damage-over-time will do the work for him.
Radio players use aggressive patterns to place soft disables (reducing damage, increasing the chance to miss while attacking, etc.) on an enemy and deterrent patterns to deal the damage. Even without aggressive abilities that deal the damage, he can be a damage-dealer thanks to his disables which limit the enemy's soul movement.
Necro uses summoned units to deal the damage, cast the debuffs and taunt the enemy. Can morph into the powerful creatures to be a threat on his own, but while he's in his main form, his summons are the only ones to do the work. Low attribute gains are compensated with morphs.
Evolves faster than other classes due to the nature of his abilities. When the EVO bar is full can either evolve his abilities or hasten the evolution of his teammates using the special EVO-genes that only Aer players can use. Most of his abilities have aggressive patterns.
Provides shields and amplifies the souls of his teammates. Uses strong unconditional disables (like negate ALL the outgoing healing), but deals surprisingly small damage.
Unfair and devastating skills, but no survivability and damage. Almost all of the abilities are unconditional.
Has very strong healing capabilities. Doesn't have any disables. Deals minor damage. Has many abilities to save his teammates and also to counter the unfair combinations of his enemies. Isn't very effective against moderate damage.
Note: Cosmic, Mortum, and Natura cannot be played solo due to the nature of their abilities (almost no damage and no possibilities to deviate from the only way to play). They are at their best when teamed up with two Tier-1 or Tier-2 allies.