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CC should be part of the Trinity! But How? How should this be done? What other Roles should be in th
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
I was reading this thread
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?192864-Steps-in-the-WRONG-Direction
Seems people bring up different views and opinions on the role of CC in the Trinity.
Do you feel that CC should be a major part of the Trinity style PvE?
If so, how you believe it should be handled?
another question:
What Other Roles should be Added to the Trinity? And How should they be done?
The Trinity for those that do not know, is the concept for PvE designed around some form of (Tanking/Support/Damaging)
these parent roles can be split into Sub-Roles.
Tank
*Off Tank
*Main Tank
Support
*Healer
*Buffer
Damaging
*Debuffer
*CC
but in some cases, these subroles arent used or are neglected all together. Why this is,,,, I dont know. You tell me.....
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
I think it'd be a much harder "trinity" if you had classes whose sole role was to CC. That would make some dps classes much harder to play.
Tank/Control, Healer/Support, DPS/Other is a fine trinity. Just like GW2.
I think dividing the 3 roles into subroles goes too far. Same player with same spec should be able to do both off tanking and main tanking, or some dps be capable of off tanking. CC and buffs should be distributed between all players to give them more to do.
There's a place for CC focused characters in turn-based game, but I think in real-time games they aren't needed.
Who says it has to be a trinity? Why three?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Honestly, I would love to see the DPS role be made harder to play. Right now it is the default tunnel vision catagory for those who really don't want to have to worry about any responsibility or thought. The tank must constantly think about where agro is, managing damage mitigation abilities, keeping himself alive as much as the rest of the group. He knows, if he falls, the group falls. The tank is a huge responsibility. The healer, no class group has ever been so unsung and abused as the healers. The least glory and the most crap thrown at them by self-centered DPS monkies or... clueless bad tanks that think they can forget any of the above.
DPS could use a little more depth than focus on target, focus on next target, next, next. Anytime I hear anyone in agroup ask, "ne1 has a dps meter/" I want to punch them in the face because those types, that is all they care about. I have played all the members of the trinity over the years and something I learned way back during my days in EQ was, it is the job of the DPS as much as any other class to manage agro. I believe if more depth was added to the DPS classes we would have better players over all.
As for CC, this is a huge issue with MMOs right now. A few creative mechanics aside, tank and spank has become the mainstream medium for all MMO combat. Games like FFXI and EQ where, if you got more than maybe 2 mobs you knew the group was in trouble are gone. Now it is, pull the entire WING to one spot and we will AoE DPS them all down while the tank yawns. Games need to be made more difficult before CC will ever find its rightful place among the trinity gods.
See Dark Age of Camelot, especially when launched and there were many pure classes, such as full tank, full healer, and full crowd controller.
An Albion Sorcerer was largely focused on Crowd control, but did a fair share of DD and could tame a pet if he wanted to. Very challenging and fun class to play and devestating in PVP where a good Sorcerer could turn the tide of battle.
Interestingly enough, they didn't have the same class for the other two realms. On the Hib side Crowd control was given to the Bard who was also a 2ndary healer and on the Midgard side they had I think a primary healer who also did primary crowd control. (but abolutely no damage.
There were also hybrid crowd controllers with lesser abiliies such as Mintrels and chanters, each with their own style, and you are right, it made things very challenging.
And much more fun IMO.
The trinity is wrong, I prefer more like 5 variants (DAOC had a speed class, with primariy speed buffer and 2ndary)
Also, buffing and debuffing played a huge part of winning in PVP, he who buffed/debuffed best had a great advantage (as long as their CC person was top notch)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have never yet played a PVE based mmo where you need cc. High damage output is all that you will ever need except for a few bosses etc.
cc is for PVP.
Wasn't DAoC an epicly brilliant game that died before its time?
It's funny you say that since PvP is the first place CC was pulled out of games because the players constantly cried that they did not want to have a time when they lost control of their character. This has become something you hear all too often as an excuse from developers to leave it out or make alternate systems between PvE and PvP.
Sure, there are some terrible players out there and I do agree it would be better if dps classes had more to do. But removing CC from them totally doesn't help, nor does giving them a bunch more cc. If you give them more CC, they either only spend time doing that, or their dps must go down to compensate. It's fine to have a class built around CC, but that would make dps monkeys bigger dps monkeys.
Hi I would like to get people's view point on something.
Lets say I have a MMO called (X-MMO) made up name.
Well X-mmo is a fantasy mmo with Trinity that has group set up that needs at least 1 tank and 1 healer, but can have anything else in between. (another tank, another healer, DPS, buffer, debuffer, whatever)
the group cap is 5 members.
How should this be balanced to be fun for any group combo of Trinity roles while still retaining equal Difficulty?
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Why do we need a trinity at all.
I'm all for having a role to play in the combat. But to define it so much is pretty damaging. Just look at how many people play DPS-based classes, versus healing or tank classes, or even specialized niche roles (such as buffing and CC) (which always seem to be in short supply/high demand).
You end up waiting around in a group for that specific XX niche class because there aren't many of them, not many people enjoy playing them, or they are too specialized that they only see challenging play in specific cases. In many cases, older games were designed like this in the first place (take WoW, or EQ), and many of the specialized niche roles had their special niche abilities redistributed to other classes so that groups and raids wouldn't be held up waiting on XX class anymore, they could get by with a combination of two or three other classes (and further marginalizing the role of that original niche class in the first place).
I think the concept of "Trinity" needs to just go away. Take a look at games like Vindictus or DCUO: sure there are classes, but none of them are locked into any specific combat role. You don't "Need" any particular class for events or raids, and the game is designed around that. Each class brings some strengths to the table, but no class is reliant on any other class. It's based on the player and their reaction to the events around them, not class design and the way event is designed to require specific abilities. Sure, these games may have flaws in other areas, but class/mechanics design, and elimination of the holy trinity, they have done fairly well, and at least to me, prove that it's an outdated concept that doesn't need to be present in MMOs any longer.
City of Heroes did a great job of expanding the "holy trinity" while still keeping that overarching system intact. The game has an archetype whose primary role is in fact CC.
What I mean by expanding the trinity while keeping the overall system intact is that you still want a tank, probably want some kind of heals, and need damage dealers... but there's a lot of different builds for all these roles for several different archetypes, and lots of combinations of them. You can even get by without a healer or a tank in most of the content, if you have some good buffers along. Especially if you have a good controller (CC archetype). But it's all very well balanced for PvE. Every archetype is useful and wanted. And since your standard group includes 8 people, you can have two of anything and still do great. In fact, two of anything is very useful, whether it's a second tank, second healer, second CC, or whatever you can think of.
Of course, one of the things they had to sacrifice to accomplish this is PvP balance. Frankly, there really isn't any. It would be impossible, because there's far too many different builds you can do. This isn't a problem because PvP is optional in every aspect. There's no gear or repuation or currency or anything important gained by doing PvP. PvP happens only in certain specific easily-avoided zones and arenas. And leveling a character is quick enough that if you do decide you want to do PvP, you go build a character specifically for that.
Well, that's how CoX used to be anyway. Of late, it sounds like they're making some sweeping changes that kind of undermine what made it great. I haven't played myself in over a year, and now I doubt I'll ever play again because of those changes. Nevertheless, the game proves it can be done, and done well.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
The reason its called the Trinity is because you need 3 classes in MMOs 2 of which are a must currently. Tank = control and Healer = heals (obviously) and the 3rd could be any class.. Thats why its called the holy trinity.
If you have a good tank you have no need for a Crowd Control Class.
You never played DAOC back in the day the, CC was very important in PVE group encounters, some camps had 20 or more strong npc's in them and if the CC didn't manage to keep some of them back until the tanks/dpsers could kill them the party died.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Back in the old days of EQ "support" would support the bars of other players. The regen on mana and HP was so pathetic that if you did anything without support you payed by regen time. Due to this time of sitting around regening you gave the game more time screw you on repop timers. So you kind of got in this death spiral where the game would slowly sap overall health and mana from the players till you died. These days with newer games, you recover so fast that having CC doesn't really matter, unless its a complete over pull, but then you're probably dead anyway.
You used to try to pull a limited group of maybe 3 enemies. Now without support you could probably kill them but you had a 5min regen time after that pull, for tank hp/cleric mp to come back. Add in something that can CC and you can be more effecient with tank hp, you can stall the other mobs and keep them under control so they don't beat on neadless party members, or pull to the healer and kill him.
It seems like a good idea to me, but on the flip side, soloing is pretty rough and you can see who won that argument with the types of games that have been released.
Could not be said better!
This is the problem with MMOs. This is why newer MMOs are boring.
You are absolutely right about the solo friendly part. CC specific classes simply can't make it in this regard which is why we will likely never see them in a true sense.
CC should be part of most group-based PVE styles whatsoever. To me, a run without CC turns quickly into a boring no-brainer.
I'm not saying every pulls in every dungeons / group quests should require a smart strategy with CC and delicate pulls; some pulls, or even some dungeons should be made available for training purpose. But it's really boring when a dungeon consists of runs of AOE and occasional rebuffs.
Precicely, and a lot blame can be placed as well on lazy design. Giving a tank a hundred AoE taunt abilities makes it very easy to keep everything on one target. That, coupled with rediculous damage mitigation. In the early games monsters did a lot more damage per hit making more than a couple on any one target more than the tank and their healer could keep up with. In addition, back then taunting was a much more involved micro game with a single taunt on a decent timer so it was used only when needed to regain control or to establish initial agro. When you only have one taunt and you get a 4 mob pull you had better have CC or three of them are going to eat your healer and DPS for lunch. Designers have gotten really lazy and with that made lazy players. AoE taunt, cleave, spin, whatever, just sit there and run your hotkey macro while the DPS alpha nukes to their heart's content. Less agro control from tanks will mean more managment, more focus, more interest and involvement from all parties. But, I am sure the button mashers will just run to the forums and cry until it is removed anyway.
lmao, you mean i need cc for 1 or 2 groups, then pls notice how i put etc in my sentence. You adjust your builds to the area you play, not really rocket science is it.
For the 'i take everything people say to their exact point crowd' i now change my view to 'You only need cc in PVE for 1% of your play time'.
Because four roles would be a quaternary or, more specifically, a quaternity. Most people, including the OP apparently, wouldn't know what that means.
ER, back in the day, once you got up past level 15 or 20 you pretty much grouped all the time, especially if you were one of the "pure" classes such as a healer or tank, because they had no cross skills so people naturally grouped up pretty much from level 20-50 (especially at levels 40-50, the grind was horrific at times otherwise)
And all of those groups relied on Crowd control.
Edit: Don't base all game experience post WOW, MMORPG's were considerably different before it came out, and not just DAOC.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Its more then just the support classes that couldn't solo in EQ... everybody pretty much sucked except necros,druids, but they were kinda the exception. Also bards had so much utility that they could do things, but you might've broken your wrist. I'd consider quad kiting an exploit to the original designed system, so if you take that case out everybody's progression rate was in the toilet as solo.
Everybody else, could kill things but it was real touch and go most of the time.
I believe he was asking, "Why not make it a Quaternity instead of a trinity?"