Could There Ever Be a Fourth Core Character Class?

This is a new direction for my content, so please let me know if you liked the video! Fighting Game videos aren’t going anywhere, don’t worry, but I thought it might be fun to branch out a bit :) P.S. I kinda sorta forgot to put Jimbulus in so don’t waste your time 😓

Support feels way too broad for there to might ever be a 4th class

If you look further back in gaming history, you find that originally (especially in RPGs) the three classes were actually four. That fourth class was known as the Mezzer. The tank, damage dealer and healer roles were far more specialized than they are today and that fourth class was a control and party efficiency class. Basically the Mezzer was a class that was responsible for controlling enemies and kiting them, and providing buffs, debuffs, positional advantage and exploitation of weaknesses. What happened over time is the Mezzer's role was distributed across the other three roles, which was a far more efficient model. It was found that you could play the games without the Mezzer in a slightly less optimal manner but it still worked. It also made the way of playing the other three roles far more varied and fun. This is why the sub-branches exist now, as you mentioned, because you can effectively reweight how much "Mezzer" abilities are in one of the three roles but still have it fulfill that role effectively and thus support varies playstyles in those roles. From that perspective reintroducing the 4th role may actually be a regression.

Here are my two cents: Attack and Defense both interact with the opponent, and they're both mirrors of each other, one deals damage to the enemy, the other prevents the enemy from dealing damage to the team. Then there's Support, which interacts with the team instead, providing them with an advantage over the enemy team. So the fourth class should be a mirror of support: The Interference/Hinderance/Disruption/Sabotage class, which causes debuffs to the enemy team, giving them a disadvantage that their team can exploit. A few examples: -AOE projectiles that temporarily reduce enemy movement speed. -Projectiles that temporarily prevent enemies from using Ults or other abilities. -Reduce enemy visibility temporarily, either through an attack or a passive AOE produced by the sabotage character. There could be many more examples, especially ones specific to each game.

In dnd I tend to split healers and support because there’s a social aspect to the game, healers tend to heal and do some buffing and support tends to be social and utility focused also with some team buffs. Some classes sit between classes like paladin where you can effectively combine dps or tanking with support or healing.

fourth core class is Sol Badguy

The problem is probably that support has become so broad a category. If you were willing to divide support into healing, buffing, and disrupting then you could have multiple classes right there. Back in earlier World of Warcraft days you would build your team around tank, support, hard CRowd control, interrupts, and raw damage. There could be some overlap, but usually you needed a mix

if you think about it there's an argument to be made that there's actually room for LESS classes, rolling Defense into just a subtype of Support

In actual military terms the classes are something like: -Striker: Burst dps with little staying power (air to ground strike aircraft (including drones), gunship helicopters) -Artillery: Sustained long range dps and suppression with limited mobility -Tank: Main battle tanks that can take some enemy fire -Interceptor: Dps unit with high mobility and some staying power. Used to prevent flanks. Usually only a dedicated unit in air forces. -Dragoon: Light armored cavalry that can recon, find and strike weak points, and maintain contact with a retreating enemy (Light tanks,IFVs,APCs) -Capable: Basically infantry, whether regulars or special forces. They can fight in the most complex environments and do a hundred other functions involved in seizing and holding objectives. They aren't very powerful on their own but are surprisingly durable and absolutely necessary to win. -Terrain: Engineering units that open paths for other units and maintain them. -Sustain: Logistics, medical, and maintenance units. They provide the goods and services needed to keep fighting. -Control: Command and communication units like AWACS. They deal with the fog of war and decision making at the big scale. -Debuff: PsyOps, sappers, and saboteurs. They weaken enemy morale, organization, defense, and supply So yeah there's a lot more than 3 classes, but this depends on engagements happening in large areas, over long periods of time, and with serious resource constraints. Many games don't include those factors for various reasons.

In roleplaying games, there are often charisma-based classes who specialize in non-combat interactions with NPCs, or stealth ones for avoiding combat.

The fourth core character class is the loveable goofball that causes your teams demise.

I recall playing Rush on Battlefield 4's Naval Assault DLC. I had to get so many MAV spots in a life, a flying drone that allows you to destroy enemy equipment and doubles as a camera. The issue with the MAV is that it's very loud, so people will usually see it and shoot it. I, needing to spot a set amount of enemies with it, just flew it to the top of the map. All I did was keep spotting enemy players, pointing them out to my team and making them appear on their local minimaps. We absolutely ROLLED that match after I started doing that, having constant information made it far easier to push our advantage.

In model based on health and damage size we logically cannot add anything more than taking health from your enemies, regenerating health in your team and protecting your team from damage. We cannot add more classes to tank/dps/healer model if it's based only on health and damage size. We need new system which is based on something different than these two factors :) Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

What about The Disrupter? The class that makes it harder for the enemy to do their job. Ability lockouts, vision obscuring, slowdowns, fake info, displacement, and so on...

I feel like gimmick characters are a good 4th character type. They don’t necessarily do good damage, take good damage, or support others, but they can do something unique to them very well. This is a character like the Spy from TF2 that sucks when revealed but is incredible in the right situations.

Love this video. one big issue i have is if you are going to drop "movement" as a core class for being too support like, I think it would be logically consistent to also drop "recon" as a core class for the same reason. especially when a lot of recon mechanics rely on movement (movement defined as, the ability to reposition yourself or allies effectively) such as sombra and tf2 spy

Me and a friend were trying to design a team-based shooter a while back (it’s currently postponed, as neither of us has the game dev experience to make the game really work yet), but a concept i came up with was the “objective/interaction” class. Basically the idea was that the class focused on either interacting with the environment or creating alternate objectives for your team to work towards, or for the enemy team to work against. A character concept we came up with that would fit this bill included a hacker character who could set up pylons that, if completed, would give the team a permanent buff. Another was a miner type character who could harvest resources from the map to craft items. The map could also have features specifically for certain characters to perform certain mechanics. Maybe theres a character who could close or seal doors around the map, or another who could activate turrets or railways. The entire idea of these characters is to make the environment and map itself a factor in how the game would go

I think the main problem with adding in a Fourth Core Class lies in the Support Class. The Support Class is basically where you throw everything that doesn't fit in Offense or Defense, so if you want to create a new Core Class you'll often run into the problem of "That sounds like a Support thing." because yeah, you usually find it in Support! So in creating a new Class you're almost always going to be pulling something out that's usually linked to one the other classes and setting it in its own category.

An information class role can actually go both ways. For example, TF2's spy can make call outs while invisible, but also poison the opponents' information space by disguising as allies/enemies and acting, fake dying (deadringer), or leading them into traps.

I argue that Stealth is a 4th class because we have characters like the Spy in TF2 that usually work as offensive characters. But also stray away from that category through their use of disguise, knowledge, movement, and obviously stealth, requiring all the players to not just focus on fighting skill, but also strategy, and sometimes even mental skill. (This role could also be filled by things like power-ups, and/or support buffs. But could also just be merged with the Recon role.)