The Adventurer's Guide to Thievery
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 895
Synergy is not a new idea, but it's well executed in 4E. Rogues like to position themselves around enemies, and Warlords and other classes like to move allies around. Multiple classes (Warlord, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin) have multiple powers that directly aid and abet their allies.
Many class powers react to states that other classes are good at creating. Already, people are not only posting character builds on the forums, but also posting team builds, utilizing synergies from multiple characters working together.
One key concept that 4E uses to make this work is setting up most team abilities so that they do more than just help others. Players like to do things. Helping others works better as a side effect of an attack than its own action. I enjoy playing a healer in an MMO, and spending all my time concentrating on the micro-spreadsheet of allies' health, but I'm the exception rather than the rule.
Adapting this rule from a turn-based pen-and-paper game to a real-time electronic game requires some simplification -- picking an ally to target in the middle of an attack isn't exactly streamlined. But that's may have a simple fix -- target the nearest ally or build the game around a limited number of wingmen, for example.
And don't forget to carefully parcel out the abilities so that each class provides something that the other classes can't get by themselves. If the Rogue could position himself perfectly by himself, he wouldn't need the Warlord's help.
Hold off on some good abilities to make allies really matter. Single-player games get less benefit from this, but even single-player games often include support NPCs. And for MMOs or cooperative gameplay, anything that encourages players to support each other is critical.
