Hey Guys,

I am working on class design for my personal mmorpg project. I am on my last revamp for class design as it finally compliments my core gameplay. This time around, I am thinking about ability design for each class more from a technical purview.

My intention is to provide a developer all of information I can for each ability, in how it functions with user input, particle effects, projectiles etc. I was simply wondering if there are any additional technical aspects I could be missing that would be beneficial for a back end developer? All of these would go into an excel sheet for the database. Would excel work for data input? Or would a json file work better? My intention is to build the game in Unreal 5. Thanks Ashes of Creation for massive inspiration.

Here are some of the things I have already thought of. Each bullet below would be it's own column in the database.

• Ability Name
• Ability Category (Role, Support, Damage, Core)
• Ability Description (Should describe particle effect and what it does)
• Ability Type (Damage, Healing, Status Effect ect)
• Bonus Modifiers (the ability may use via RNG)
• Projectile Type: Projectile or Hitscan (I assume Hitscan is the proper term genre wide?)
• Projectile Speed: seconds per yard/meter
• Targeting Type: Self, Friendly, Enemy, Placement, Vicinity
• Starting Damage (the damage when the ability is obtained)
• Ending Damage (the damage at max level | damage scales with your level)
• Cast Time
• Interruptible? (Boolean)
• Dispellable? (Boolean)
• Reflectable? (Boolean)
• Resist Type
• Starting Mana Cost
• Ending Mana Cost
• Starting Stamina Cost
• Ending Stamina Cost
• Range
• Cooldown

If there is anything I might be missing in general I'd appreciate any additional suggestions.

Thank you.

You are very thorough, but maybe projectile size and think about putting secondary effects in its own category.

moxyio said:

You are very thorough, but maybe projectile size and think about putting secondary effects in its own category.

It's a terribly unnormalized and vague design, for example given "Ability Category (Role, Support, Damage, Core)" and “Ability Type (Damage, Healing, Status Effect ect)” the only thing we have learned is that they overlap quite completely and that almost all other fields are only relevant for a minority of the abilities.

There should be separate entity types and more preliminary design about what the options are. For example, considering ranged attacks:

• Ability “ranged attack with a projectile weapon”
• Weapon type “+2 Elbonian longbow” with stats such as weight, range, projectile type ("arrow"), ability that it can be used for (“ranged attack with a projectile weapon”, “smash over someone's head”.), skill affecting performance ("archery").
• Projectile type “Fire Arrow” with stats such as weight, range modification, projectile type ("arrow"), damage amount and type ("fire" + “blunt”)
• Skill “archery”
• In the game, instances of all of the above: a character shooting a specific arrow, with a specific bow, at a specific target, with their current archery skill