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The Rebirth of Trinity in MMO's
Lucioon
Member UncommonPosts: 819
I have only played a handful of MMO's , but in these handful of MMO's I have started to see a evolution of the Trinity.
FFXI - Made Grouping, Trinity a Must, made all creatures requiring the trinity to take down.
WOW - Made Trinity Specific and Understandable. A tank is a tank, a Healer is a healer, A Dps is a Dps. One role and made it simple to understand.
Rift - Trinity still exists, but now each class can do one or the other within the Trinity roles. You can be a Mage dps, or mage healer. You can be a tank, or a dps. Trinity is there, you are given more options.
TERA - Trinity is still there, but with a different take, now in order for you to heal anyone, you need to aim your magic toward the person. There is no more tab Targeting. But there is still a tank that taunts, healer that out heals damage.
GW2 - Trinity is blurred, Tanks no longer taunts, Healers can no longer out heal damage taken, and everyone can dps with a simple switch of a weapon set.
What do you think the next stage of Trinity will consist of.
GW2 opened the door, if it succeeds the Trinity will be reborn as something entirely new and innovative for the future of MMO's.
What else can be changed to revitalize the imagination of developers so that we can see something entirely new and different.
Because now we know that Healers and Tanks aren't needed anymore in an MMO, what would be the next step in its evolution?
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Comments
There's room for roles to exist in games and still be engrossing, but not as they currently are implemented. If they create a static atmosphere where you do the same thing every time you fight as every other character in your role, then your game's combat system is broken.
Whenever I think of the way combat and roles in a MMO "should be" I always think back and reference the scene in the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring where they are in the dwarf place and fighting all the orcs/goblins and then the cave troll.
Combat is fluid, it's involved, but there are no clear cut roles but each character has a unique contribution to the battle.
The next trinity that will be useful in games is this one:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Trinity-Piledriver-VCE-Demo,15009.html
Coming May 15.
Actually, come to think of it, that's probably the first trinity that will be useful in games. Because the whole tank/healer/damage dealer one isn't.
This is entirely the wrong way to look at what GW2 is doing with group combat.
What GW2 is doing is saying that there are essentially 3 different things a skill can do in the game. It can deal damage, it can support themselves or others, or it can control the enemy in some manner (stopping movement, stopping abilities, weakening enemies, and so on). A skill or weapon may focus on one of these 3 things more than the others, but anyone can do any of these at any time if they are using a skill that allows them to do so.
In combat, this new "trinity" doesn't define your role, so much as determine how you should perform your role or which role you would be best at. Roles in GW2 are more along the lines of a plan of attack, such as fighting the little monsters and throwing out support skills to help everyone else out (buffs, minor heals, removing debuffs...in general, support is what you do to help keep others alive) while another guy (or 2 or 3 or whatever) deals with the boss by kiting and debuffing and throwing out CC effects, and then other people do more damage than support or control (but they still do what they can to help). Basically not everyone is focused on doing the same thing and different people will perform different roles in different situations, depending on what skills and abilities each player in a group has.
In the end, though, this isn't really an evolition of the trinity. Rather, it is a system that is balanced around damage avoidance, as opposed to healing done vs. damage taken. With that in mind, the next step would be something like the rethinking of the health system that is pretty much standard in every game. Some table top games have different health systems, games could also do something to change things up.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I for one aren't surprised, the trinity is basically the same in TOR as in Meridian 59 (1996).
Either the trinity needs to change or be removed, it makes combat rather predictable and worse, it makes the combat of any new game feel like Wow/EQ (even if neither of them invented it).
There is no trinity in pen and paper RPGs (except D&D 4th edition which completely blows), those games are instead a lot about placement and tactics. I think MMOs need to add more strategy and less tank, spank & heal.
I am in fact pretty sure that you don't actually need in combat healing, in many P&P games it is instead about conserving your HP until the battle is over. In fact some good P&P doesn't even have hitpoints at all, like Shadowrun and I think a translating of SRs mechanics would make a very interesting MMO.
I wish AAA MMO devs had half the imagination that AAA P&P devs have (except the 10 boring years of the D20 system late 90s to late 00s).
3 man groups instead of the usual 5-6. So yes.. the rebirth of a "trinity"
the reasoning is simple. In a group of 5 or 6 the mob has to be tuned to resist an onslaught of 5-6 people, thus for any one person, that is far to much in relation to their characters strength.
bust it down to 3 man...and you bring the encounter more in line with the player, and you dont have a total mess of people swarming around.
3 man is also more strategic overall since "pile ons" are less likely to be the dominant form of gameplay. This also works in pvp.
three is optimal in every situation in terms of player involvement, content for smaller groups ( say 2 or 1 players) and overall there will be a better overall experience per player.
Bodyblocking - Cannot pass through characters
Blocking projectiles - No shooting arrows through enemies or friends
Friendly fire - Careful with those fireballs
Improved AI - No more taunting
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I think guild wars 2 has all but number three.
number three would add some strategy for sure.. deck everyone out in fire gear and release the wizards!
The Trinity is great, I love it and don't see a problem with it, as a healer GW2 just looks shit.
WoW got the Trinity right as every class has 3 possible rolls and lots of them are great at tanking,healing or DPS.
mmorpg without trinity should not caled self mmoRPG,it is important part of rolle play
I dont like this "trinity" people speak of.
Why? Because there used to be more to MMOs than just tanking, healing, and damage.
Seems like no one remembers the support or crowd control roles at all since they were cannibalized by the aforementioned three. Now those three are beginning to eat away at each other as well. I really think its kind of sad.
Someone who thinks like this clearly hasn't played much PnP RPGs. No - trinity is not an important part of role play.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
The next step in the evolution of MMO would be like what others has mentioned, the revamping of the Health Bar
And instead, they should introduce the Damage Threshold. The sword can block 20 damage before it breaks, the armor can block 5 damage before it breaks, and shield blocks 30 damage. And your health never exceed 1 HP. Range players would not have any armor to protect them.
Magic Shield blocks 30 ......etc
Once your Sword breaks, shield breaks, and armor breaks, the next hit you receive you are knocked out, then if no one is near to block the next attack, you die.
Then after the battles, you repair all damaged weapons and rests.
Magic users, needs to use mana replenishments the same as weapon repair kits, usable only after combat.
Profession skills increases your chances of avoiding damage and inflicting damage without damaging your weapons.
Rangers would have a limit on Arrows available, until they need to get in close for the final kills.
This would totally be a avoiding damage situation, where there are no heals and no taunts and the amount of damage you can avoid never increases. It would be more tactical and more dangerous.
I wonder if it would be too different and too confusing to the modern MMO players?? especially when one mistake means your death.
Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.
Are you serious?
This made mo go...huh? Every class has 3 roles? What 3 roles does a mage have? As far as I can tell their only role is dps. Same for rogue. They have 3 different talent trees to do the same role. Pallies and Druids have 3 different roles, but those are the only 2 classes released that have 3 different roles.
You need to go back to the early days of FFXI [not the present game] and you have what this genre needs badly and that is team work group play.I don't mean forming a group and each player acts as an invidual in that group i mean team work involving combo attacks.
This would allow players of the exact same class to play differently but be equally effective.You would have had to play FFXI's extensive combat design/structure to understand the possibilities.Example two sword players be it a tank and a warrior [doesn't matter] pull off a duo combo aka Renkai from FFXi,that results in lowering a mobs melee or elemental defense.
Then perhaps another tank type or warrior type use a different combination of weapon properties [example a fire based sword attack with a water based spear attack that results in stunning the mob for 5 seconds.Both types of combos have an effective reason use so it makes different builds important and not superficial.
It does not work with constant spam type hotbar keys like in most every game including Wow/Eq ect ect.You need something more complex and similiar to FFXI that utilized slower game play building up Tactical point [TP] bars that allowed you to utilize combo attacks.
Then you add in different types of mobs example fire based or water based ect ect,you make stats a very complex design so players/classes are not all the same.Example an accuracy build or a spike damage build or an elemental property build ect ect ,it is endless IF and only IF the developer puts the complex effort into the game design.
Any cheap developer can throw together solo content,like solo combos or spamming hotbar keys that say 200 fire damage or 200 earth damage,none of it really has any meaning if the game doesn't have the complex design.If mobs are all just basically the same then really who cares if you are doing fire damage or earth damage .If all mobs react the same to elemental and melee then really again who cares what typ of damage you are doing and then it really doesn't matter what class you are because the whole game becomes meaningless level grinding.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I love that they tried to introduce the trinity to tabletop games and RPGers rejected it so wholeheartedly that 5 years later Hasbro lost half their market share and had to remake hte game.
Yes, I don't like what FF is but back in the old days it was team play. I don't remember a tank or healer or dps, we just all did what we had to do. Sure we needed a healer in every game, but it was open enough where my white mage galkin could stand up front with my big mace and smash away when it was needed.
If it has 4, it pretty much negates a lot of the functionality of 1. Taunting is a logical RPG feature, but it is a ridiculouslt contrived mechanic that has a negative impact on a lot of the current attempts to put more action and tactical gameplay into the MMO combat experience.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
1 Role: Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Rogue (all dps)
2 Roles: Warrior (tank,dps), Death Knight (tank,dps), Shamman (heal,dps), Priest (heal,dps)
3 Roles: Paladin, Druid (all dps,heal,tank)
The Trinity has unfortunately become the standard for mmorpgs. If anything good comes from GW2 let it be that it causes other companies (Blizzard, Trion, Bioware, EA) to begin looking beyond the Trinity.
I always laugh at these Trinity threads for the simple reason that todays "trinity" is actually wrong. The term holy trinity started in EQ and it wasn't role specific, it was class specific, and they were Warrior, Cleric and Enchanter.
That was the original Holy Trinity. Best Tank, Best Healer and Best CC.
The fact that it was adopted and corrupted to tank, healer dps in all subsequent MMO's doesn't make it right. As Loke already pointed out, the P&P games that MMO's were founded on had no Trinity, in fact they had very few heals during combat. When you get right down to it all those P&P games are based on Tolkein and you never see anyone wiggling their fingers and topping off someones health in those stories. Or any other fantasy story I can think of.
<Rant>
Healing needs to be removed from MMO's during combat, period. This idea that more levels = more health, get rid of it. You start with 100hp, you finish with 100hp at max level. You should be avoiding and mitigating damage more as you progress through skills or levels, which ever system you adopt. Lets see MMO's evolve to have more realistic combat. If you get hit IT HURTS! So don't get hit. Dodge it, parry it, block it, avoid it. Wear better armour to absorb it but PLEASE for the love of GOD drop this stupid idea that someone in a frock can stand at the back topping off your health, closing wounds, stopping you bleeding as you fight. IT'S STUPID!
I feel better now
</Rant>
Flame on!
There are many roads to success, not just one.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
personally I find the trinity of Tank / Healer / DPS boring
in early EQ1 there was trinity of Tank / Crowd Control / Healer as being essential to a high end group, also flawed
Support classes like bards and enchanters of EQ have no role in the trinity that label them as "damage"
EQ2 fan sites
but in Return of the King, Eowyn 'taunts' the witchking off of theoden, while Merry (dps) backstabs, allowing her to use Execute on the weakened foe.
the thing is a trinity system used to somewaht exist in real battle, heavily armed troops up front protecting archers in the rear ranks, wounded being carried off (afterwards). so the idea of heavy armor protecting light armor is not completed unfounded.
kidding aside i agree, comabt should be fluid, as long as different styles can be equally effective. if its always just -throw damage, CC, run away, heal up, throw damage, CC....etc - well even that could get tiresome.
I really hate it when people use this "trinity" explanation for every single MMO. It's simply not the case. Yes people can be classified as "tank" "healer" and "dps" but that's not really their role.
Blizzard designed fights in such a way that a DPS might have to crowd control, they might have to interrupt, they might have to control a pet, they might have to kite bosses.
A healer might have to dps, they might have to crowd control, they might have to interrupt, they might have to control a pet... they might have to kite bosses.
A tank might have to dps, might have to crowd... you get the idea.
Just because the Blizzard system designates a class "healer/dps/tank" does not mean that is all they do... or that they'll even do that on that boss fight. This is why raids ask for very specific things when they are looking for people.
A lot of MMOs also have "support" this fourth tier in which you have someone who supplies help to other classes but doesn't do the job of the other class.
Game designers don't create roles because they have to or because they don't know any other way, they create roles for people because people find that fun. People like having a well defined job class and actually enjoy having a specific task assigned to them. The role system neatly organizes people so that when raid night comes along you know who the tanks are, you know who the dps are and you know who the healers are. Other special instructions are given out before the fight.
There are tones of MMORPGs and RPGs out there without classes in them. What Guild Wars 2 is not new, it's just not a very popular concept.
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