Poll: Does anyone actually like being the "warrior"?

[Naeo]

I find myself tending towards warrior (rather then stealth/mage/ranged/etc) even when it's fairly well balanced. I'll go stealth just as often, and when I do, I'll more often use a bow and arrow/crossbow than other attack styles, when available.

To me, I'll almost always go primarily melee and mix a good helping of mage (see Oblivion, where most of my mage spells I used were either self or touch range). I just prefer the accuracy of melee, since ranged/mage attacks seem too easy to miss with in a lot of games I play.

 

[Akytalusia]

If the warrior is done right, then yes. If its like most mmo's "a dumb piece of turd brick" that does nothing but get punched in the face while dishing out ridiculously small amounts of damage ,no.

you're refering to a tank, and i think he's refering to a melee dps. they're not the same thing. either way though...

OT: no, i don't play dps or tank classes. i'm a healer.

 

[Toriver]

In DnD I'm usually the mage, and in my group at home was the "mage specialist", because it was just the role I was best at in the group, evidenced by my survival rate as a mage compared to other roles, especially the warrior/tank, in my friends' ridiculously hard campaigns.

Though I did have a couple warriors I enjoyed and played pretty well. One was a barbarian that actually managed to be the only character to survive the entire campaign start to finish. The other was a rather unique (for our play-style) take on the mage-fighter hybrid: I fought with my sword and used my magic for defense, utility and distraction. The concept had potential and seemed to work well, but our DM was very stingy with the XP so the character only ended the campaign at CL 3, preventing me from really seeing what I could do with it.

 

[ACman]

Not in CRPGs. Tabletop allows for a certain amount of dynamism but on computer warrior/fighter are usually little more than tanks.

 

[MegaDarkLucario]

I usually play as a mage whenever possible. Why would I want to kill something with a sword when I can send a thousand shards of ice through its brain, before finishing it off with lightning?

 

[CrazyMedic]

I think it depends on the warriors combat, in vanilla oblivion I wouldn't touch a warrior class but with fun combat like in ultra violence II I love my warrior samurai.

 

[Alade]

I play warrior all the time. This is mostly because I love playing as a tank. In my opinion the tank is usually the character with the most control in the group. In DA2 however they screwed up bigtime, tanking wasn't really an option on nightmare mode.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

In fantasy I'm always the warrior. So yeah.

 

[MikeCrick]

I'd say no but I'm always a Paladin...even if there isn't any option for one I still play like one regardless of game or setting.

Those unfamiliar with Paladins (from a 3.5 D&D perspective anyway) Essentially they are good at two things: Talking/Negotiating and taking a lot of hits. I don't mind doing poor damage but I can't stand being squishy like a mage or rogue and falling apart after one hit.

I also find magic quite boring and cheap, it requires less effort. Not that it's easy or less fun because clearly it is, but I just enjoy a long drawn out battle and not destroying everything easily all the time. Provides a challenge I guess.

 

[Lyri]

I feel like I've noticed a trend among class options for games (although it's not exactly a new or hidden phenomenon): that although they're always front and center in the promotions or box art for video games, no one likes playing a warrior/soldier character. It seems a large majority of people, including myself, prefer magic, ranged, and stealth elements to pure brawn. This is apparent in every game from Dragon Age to Dues Ex to the Bethesda RPGs.

It's not hard to see why though. Magic gives people lots of variety and visual spectacle, not to mention the nerd appeal. Stealth makes people feel clever and makes things more suspenseful and intense. Warriors just kind of stand there attacking till someone falls over, and they're basically the "high school jocks" of gaming...

What do you guys think? Do you like playing as a warrior? Is this even a noticeable trend? What have and should designers do to make warriors more appealing?

I've gone from playing mages to nothing but melee fighters in my MMOs.
It's always a class I've noticed that has been more reliable and generally more impressive than I thought it would be.

Across the time I played I've always dabbled in other classes but I always found myself excelling more and more when I picked melee.
When I played WoW my starting toon was a Warlock, my progressive raiding character was a Warrior.

 

[Geno DCLXVI]

There's something strangely satisfying about wading through a swath of enemies, hacking down everything in your way, and emerging victorious. Unfortunately, most RPGs don't work like Dynasty Warriors.

In my opinion the warrior class is best suited to action RPGs/MMOs where there are fewer limits on what one can do. Warriors in current, traditional MMOs are sorely limited by dice rolls and random number generators with regards to dodge chances and damage, particularly in large groups.

In action MMOs, if you jump out of the way of an arrow you've dodged it, it's not "locked" to you like it is in, say, World of Warcraft. While mages and rogues have alternative ways to work around their problems, the warrior can only rely on cold steel. I'm not saying that warriors require more general skill than other classes, though. I'm saying that a lot of current MMOs and RPGs simply aren't "built" for interesting warrior gameplay by sheer virtue of their architecture.

 

[Jedoro]

I like rushing into the fray, kicking the shit out of everything that moves, and being the last one standing, so warrior's my class of choice.

 

[mexicola]

I pretty much always start off an RPG game as warrior and then go other classes on the 2nd playthrough. Warriors serve as something of a benchmark for me so yeah I voted for the 2nd option.

 

[Smertnik]

Almost never, I find it very boring to just bash at things. Mages, rogues and the like offer a much more satisfying gameplay to me due to more varied combat skills. Besides, the warrior class is usually more limited in terms of other gameplay options, like talking (persuading) or mobility (lock picking, hacking, etc).

 

[Zyquux]

If the other things are done right I think they are better, Take The fable games for example.. If you did ranged or magic, you were doing it wrong. Melee was the most powerful and easest to use, a few ranged things here and there and a few magic but you spec melee. Its easy to make and easy to use therefore normally OP as shit

What? I've only played Fable 1 (I'M SO POOR) but I played a Ranged Mage character. Jack of Blades was laughably easy. Multi Arrow with a properly augmented Ebony Bow and I killed his second stage in about a minute. I beat him and said, "That's it?" It was a rather anti-climatic end to the game, for me.



OT: I'll avoid it when possible. I usually go for a mage/rogue hybrid with an emphasis on utility and/or support. i.e. A mage with utility skills like lockpick, persuasion, etc.

Example:
In Fallout 3, I started with Small Guns as my main damage source, but later switched to Energy Weapons. I maxed out Speech, Lockpick, and Computer Use first to get as much loot as possible.

In the KOTOR games, I took the Scoundrel(I)/Sentinel(II) first, then prestiged as a Consular(I)/Sith Lord(II) on my first playthrough.

In Mass Effect, my first Shepard was an Engineer in ME1 and a Sentinel in ME2
My second Shepard was a Sentinel in 1, and will probably make her an Infiltrator in 2, when I get around to starting that again.

Even in FPSs, I tend to go the more support classes like Medics or Engineers (specifically Battlefield 1942). The only exception is that I prefer MOAR DAKKA over sniper rifles in FPSs, so in TF2, I usually play Heavy, Pyro, or Medic.

 

[Strazdas]

I do. in all games that allow it, i play the warrior first time around. i love being able to carry a lot and have huge HP. i playo ther classes too, yes, but i love warrior/knight

 

[PurePareidolia]

I always go for rogue/mage. Usually rogue in things like Oblivion, where stealth is a viable option or Mage when it isn't. Lately though I pretty much always go mage, just for the versatility. I've never been interested in playing a direct damage class, except in TF2 where I play heavy quite a bit. Except I usually play the heavy like a rogue and ambush people.

I sometimes of wonder if basic RPG classes should be:

Warrior/Thief/Archer -> Magic/Technology user

So then you focus on tanking, stealth or ranged combat, and you can play using gadgets or magic, but not both. So Warriors would get all the heavy armour, and then either big swords, or close range AOE spells. Thieves would get knives and gadgets, or cloaking and debuffs. Archers would then get bows and/or guns, high mobility and low damage, high rate of fire spells. That way you have three different playstyles, they all have a magic option.

 

[Schwenkdawg]

I love playing warrior/melee dps beefy characters. there are few things more exhilarating than being the one standing toe-to-toe with the enemy instead of uttering some silly words and raining magic down on him or running away, stealthing, and stabbing him in the back. to be honest, those kinds of things strike me as downright cowardly (not a judge of the player, merely of the class and its chosen method of combat). so, yes, i love playing the class that either tanks a ton of damage (WoW warriors) or dishes out massive physical melee damage (LoL melee carries). Swinging a gigantic two-handed axe in the thick of the melee is the best for me

 

[Cowabungaa]

Sometimes I do yeah. They're just something primeval about rushing in the fray armed with a big axe/mace/sword and murdering everything in sight, or slowly advancing all clad in heavy armor, while your enemies' attacks fail without hope and you just march on, knowing you'll crush them.

Of course, only when the mechanics in the game make it feel gratifying. In Oblivion for example I cared little for it, it didn't have much "oomph" in it's melee combat. In Age of Conan on the other hand it felt a lot better.

The idea of being clad in 2,5 tons of metal and shrugging at a massive attack greatly appeals to me.

That's why I liked Warhammer Online; you could play a proper tank in PvP, thanks to collision detection. Leading the defensive force in a choke point, standing there pushing them back is the epitome of the tanking idea.

Just look at that ************!

 

[Gunner 51]

I don't mind being a warrior in RPGs, though I have to admit I'm generally a squishy witch. (If I'm going to look at someone's rear end for hour after hour, it may as well be a nice one.)

But in all seriousness, I always tend to start out as a warrior to get the feel for the game. If he proves to be fun, I continue with him. If not, it's squishy female mage for me.

Games will often let a mage give his / her enemies a satisfying incindiary death, but often a bloodless death for the warrior. Dark Souls remedied this magnificently, playing as a warrior was brutal and satisfying.