Hello all, I've been secretly developing a new work for a little while. Slowly but surely. Ahh... the whole use of the word secretly probably has a few of you thrown off. "Who is this Aegiris guy?" you might ask. A handful of you might actually know my old key, but that's all besides the point.

I've been tinkering with isometrics lately and love the addition. It wasn't around back in my day (then again, Byond wasn't even called Byond when I stumbled upon it). Originally it had inspired me to work on something similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. So I set to work. I got the basics set up, started working on a HUD display and began to change my mind. I've already scratched the whole war strategy battle system. I've got some ideas put in place for combat already though. I've got another issue, and that's where you come in.

This is more of an opinion-based question. I'm open to any and all ideas you might have about the setups that I've come up with to implement.
I just don't know which one I want to use, if any at all.

The issue comes down to whether or not I want to implement classes in the game. You know, warriors, thieves, wizards. You get the picture. The upside to using classes is that 1) I already have a large array of classes I have designed from a certain text-based arena that used to be quite popular (and eventually turned into a rip) and 2) it's much easier to balance and fit players into a specific role, thus avoiding the dreaded "flavor of the month" characters. What it really boils down to is just one simple thing: originality.

Do I choose the cookie-cutter route and give people what they're used to, or challenge them (and myself) by designing something that's a bit new for online RPGs?
If I choose the road less traveled, I have some choices to make...

Item Based
The idea here is that a player's skills are bound by the equipment they are wearing. Items have their own levels, and as you use them in battle they grow stronger unlocking their full potential and abilities. It would allow players to still specialize into a specific role, but ultimately it would make a game that is incredibly gear dependent.

Gem Based
Think along the lines of the materia system from Final Fantasy VII. Items have slots... gems go in slots.. slots give you skills. Pretty simple, and allows for much greater customization versus the purely limited item based setup mentioned above. The problem I see with this is that once someone develops the "best" strategy, it will turn into a game full of a bunch of carbon copies fighting with (or against) each other. It would require a very delicate balance of power between skills, and maybe even limiting different types of skills to specific weapon types.

Master Based
Completely classless, and items have no impact on what skills you have available (unless for some reason they require a specific weapon to be used). Rather than just magically learning a skill because you killed 12 boars, you have to apprentice under an NPC Master who will teach you skills as you grow stronger or complete tasks. Obviously not all of them will teach the same types of moves, and they will have specialties and maybe even affect your stats as you train with them. The idea is pretty similar to the system they used in Breath of Fire III now that I think about it. I'd be taking it a bit further though, since your characters abilities are entirely reliant on who you studied under. Again this could result in players attempting to copy each other and would require a lot of balancing.

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So, what's your poison? Maybe you don't even like my ideas and have one of your own.
Hit me with your best shot.