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.