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Is the Trinity unavoidable?
ignore_me
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987
I personally hate the trinity but a friend of mine has argued somewhat convincingly that you cannot escape the trinity in MMORPGs.
Argument: In GW2 the dungeons seem to involve a lot of dying and rezzing to respawn point because there is no tank to soak all of the damage and slow things down. My friend argues that this demonstrates the need for the trinity in order to avoid the high rate of attrition and respawn in boss fights compared to other games.
Anyone agree with that idea?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Comments
so sucking as in trying to use trinity tactics in a non-trinity fight? Or do you mean just plain incompetent with class abilities/hitting buttons/timing?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Well GW2 DOES infact have a trinity, involving Support/Damage/Crowd Control. Its not as clean as a normal trinity which is why it can be messy but lacking it will make dungeons very difficult.
The trinity in some way is unavoidable both for gameplay as well as for making a game fun. It can shape its form aroundin different ways, but in the end without some form of 'trinity' your really sabataging the group makeup. Look at a game like Diablo 2 (No, Not acknowledging you know what, using it as a popular example) it doesn't directly have a trinity involved, however the way its done makes it more so a 'bash stuff and run through game'. Not having a trinity means a game has to be very simplified in order to work well. Even then, it involves some of that work as support can entail buffs you might give out to provide synergy or crowd control through slows and other things.
Taking out the trinity is just impossible without heavily detracting from the gameplay difficulty. Its that synergy the trinity provides that makes groups dynamic and really makes it so content can have difficulty rather then being more so based off 'gear/build' (aka dungeon crawlers). Even games that do neglect it do in fact have some elements involved with often times giving items of synergy to the team that really help to both promote team play and improve upon working together, even if its a rougher form of the Tank(CC)/Healer(Support)/Damage you know elsewhere.
@cold: More so their group make up then anything. Lets be honest, GW2 isn't THAT difficult of a game to play (or maybe I'm just a god at it and didn't realize it) its just based heavily on having the right group make up, or the GW2 trinity in some form based off the different classes/weapon choices.
The reason people are not doing well in these things are likely due to many different reasons. You mention two possible scenarios. But I'd say that people that try and be semi-trinity probably do overall better than those that don't.
All I know is we've had everything on lock for a long time already. We usually try and synergize with each other, but it's not really a big deal anymore. They aren't very difficult once you've had a solid amount of practice with them. But I will admit that we needed to get a lot of practice in them to get good at them. I think it's part of the reason we had so much fun in them. We have moved on to playing about 80% sPvP though.
The only beef I personally have with the dungeons is that some of the traps have an RNG aspect to them that I find annoying.
This was a good explanation, and I agree that the organizational tool of the trinity is somewhat necessary in whatever form.
I guess I am wondering if you can have a bunch of destroyers who are roughly equal in tasks, or if specialization is necessary and you have to have a battleship, a tender, and corvettes. The destroyers are individually destroyed faster, and incrementally show the demise of the group, whereas the battleship dying is usually the signal of a quick end for the rest of the fleet.
I think people have become used to the T2K aspect of having a tank, and any other solution feels like a lot of fast deaths sequentially instead of the near instant collapse when the MT dies and the rest of the group quickly folds because they dont have the mitigation, hit points, etc. It's as if they can't gauge the situation because there is no central figure to watch to see how the encounter is going.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
If you want to have groupplay you need to have roles. It is simple as that.
Besides mmoprg's were shrinked into"trinity" of tank/healer/dps recently. There were games that needed specific crowd control, buffer/debuffer, support roles.
Nowdays because of streamlining and ease of progression mmorpg combat was shrinked into that almost everything can be solved just by putting 'moar dps'. Because alot of people like it, because alot of people are competetive and want numbers to compete with others, because of gazzilions of add-ons and meters, etc
Anyway - if you want cooperation and group dynamics you need roles. Even group pvp FPS games (like BF3) have roles.
It's incredibly difficult to balance a game without the trinity.
That said, it's not impossible. Many games already do it and still present players with challenges. Just think of any multiplayer game that does not require the tank/healer setup. Console games should come to mind as well as Action RPGs and FPS RPGs. There can be characters with higher defense or healing power, but the game doesn't force you to have to have the two.
The reason you might feel so strongly against not having the trinity is because Guild Wars 2 is not yet properly balanced due to being very new. That and I don't think they spent too much time and effort designing dungeon encounters, or they're awful at it.
It is needed for PVE group play period. Otherwise you just have people playing solo in groups in which at that point wtf is group play good for? The stricter the trinity the more challenging boss fights can become. XI is my personal gold standard for PVE content. It had unbeilivably strict trinity systemm, my main job was a paladin, and it took me a month of sundays just to kill something. but you know what I loved it. Every job had to be on top of their game otherwise you will most likly wipe.
PVP is a big killer of the trinity system because you have to try to balance the classes. When the trinity system gets watered down due to balancing its not nearly as effective. Its why I wish an MMO would pick a damn crowd and make a game for them, instead of trying to please evryone in which case they faill to please anyone!
Waiting for:EQ-Next, ArcheAge (not so much anymore)
Now Playing: N/A
Worst MMO: FFXIV
Favorite MMO: FFXI
it's a myth that there is no trinity in GW2. There is no "holy" trinity and there is a aim of no forcing into fixed roles. The "holy" part is the roles of tank, dps and healer and they are fixed roles.
But there is roles- ArenaNet have suggested you call these roles control , damage and support. (and they have argued that the roles of tank , dps and healer is just very simple forms of the roles of control,damage and support, i agree on that). Some peope use the terms "new" and "old" trinity instead. But no matter what all this s lead us to the basic that there for sure is a trinity where there is coordinated group play in GW2.
it's a sure thing that the trinity is NOT unavoidble in MMO's, as you can make games with more than 3 fixed and needed roles. (old terms as debuffer and buffer is often used to point at games with more than 3 fixed roles.)
Roles on the other hand is unavoidable , unless a combat system is utterly borring, simply because any kind of system that give flexibility gives roles. But does these roles have to be fixed ?
The meaningsfull question is if GW2 have succeded in creating a game with NO FIXED ROLES, meaning that a group perform better if people don't stay all the time in one role they have specced for, but also take a turn with other roles? At any given moment there is a use of control , support and damage that is optimal for the encounter, someone have to take the right choices taking the roles, but who they are is that a given thing , based on pre defined builds based on roles?
There is no doubt that GW2 is a game where this is possible to perform alot better for a very organised group shifting roles as the situation change. This means that GW2 have created at least for the top end player a game where there is not fixed roles. But thats not the same as more causal gamers would actual perform better in a challenging situation if not trying to stick to preset roles they have specced for. Pre-difined fixed roles provide a level of organisation that is way more efficient than the chaos from 5 individual, playing each to their own. But the first involves a higher level of gameplay than the last. And people only experiencing or succeding with the last,the fixed roles, will claim that there is a fixed trinity in GW2 (and that it a hard game).
to achive the situation where regular players doesn't just get stuck in preset roles like thosse of the trinity, the game have to be challenging enough to bring groups in situations where the usual ones doing a role, is prevented doing it. and the other have to step out of their comfort zone and take a turn with the needed role.
This is mainly seen in the downed system, and the cooporative need to get players back up asap. But it is build in everywhere in the system actual form the combo field and the self heal, to the long cooldown on utilities, to most weapons coming with some kind of support, and control options besides damage and so on.
All this leads also the the counter to OP's friends argument. What we see is not the need for a reliable trinity when players go down in dungeouns, its the failure of relying on a fixed trinity, and the need to progress the groups playstyle beyound the fixed trinity.
Trinity is not mandatory. There are many games that do well without it.
Trinity simplifies combat and party dynamics, and once players don't have that they are somewhat lost.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
IMO ... Is the trinity avoidable? yes
Does it make the game better? or does it make the game more requiring in words of tactics? no
If you avoid the trinity you may end up like ... zerging, ressing, zerging again
And there is also one more aspect I read about on forums and I agree with that. Without a trinity you kinda lose the feeling that you have your own important place in group.
Just my subjective opinion
Well, there's the opposite side of the biased spectrum.
Trinity does simplify combat to a stupid degree. On top of that, it makes the enemy AI act completely stupid. "Hey, fucko! Don't attack the guy healing me!"
Tank/Heal/DPS
I agro enemies
I hurt enemies
I heal players
It is a streamlined version of combat and many people prefer it that way. Like people have said in this very thread, they prefer being told what their roles are and being dedicated to that role. "Holy" trinity combat (especially in the way it's implemented in WoW) is just a streamlined, easy to balance version of group combat. Not that it isn't fun, but it is far simpler overall.
You are oversimplifying to prove your point. You could oversimplify the non-trinity system and say everyone just does DPS until the boss dies.
The two systems are simply different ways of going about things. There are some mechanics that can only be done with the trinity system, and some mechanics that can only be done with the non-trinity system. Neither is better than the other. It simply depends on how creative the developers are at designing specific encounters for their respective system.
That said, balancing for non-trinity systems is much more difficult than balancing for trinity systems.
I agree that encounters (typically boss encounters) are what tend to make things interesting within a "holy" trinity system or an extremely loose or lack of trinity system. I think raiding in WoW was really fun when I was doing it for instance.
I still think that "holy" trinity gameplay is a sort of distilled version of combat. It ends up taking away more than it gives in the long run in my opinion and actually does oversimplify the PvE portion of most games.
Either way, after playing GW2 as much as I have (and various pnp games), I do not think the trinity is "unavoidable" at all. I was extremely skeptical about how well it would work in GW2, but after messing around with it a lot with friends it seems to work great in it's own way.
Nothing is unavoidable except death and taxes.
Really, lets think about this for a few seconds. MMO trinity showed up in the first MMO ever, Meridian 59, and it was already more or less exactly the same way it is in modern MMOs. It is really more of a holy foursome though.
Tank (and CC): The person who locks down the opponents so the others just can spamm attacks without worrying for retribution. Usually takes a lot of damage, or avoid blows but in some games they have pets for tanking or possess opponents for it.
Healer: Basically keeps the tank alive, also removes conditions and other negative buffs and dots.
DPS: usually stand still and rotate skills for maximum damage.
Support: buffs everyone, usually can heal a little if needed and can debuff the opponents.
These roles do work, no question about it. The advantage is that everyone knows what to do in all situations and you need to work together.
The disadvantage however is a few as well. The main one is really that all trinity games tend to have a rather similar combat and we played them since 1996, but annoyingly stupid and predicatable mobs, skill rotations are the worst things.
It also have lead us to the point where most dungeons and raids have a single really tough boss and maybe some trashmobs (or adds as we call them). That does not really feel that heroic to be honest, it would both make more sense and feel more heroic if the bad guys also fought in groups in a more similar way to the players. You could of course make mechanics for allowing the enemies to tank the players but people would whine to a level we never seen before on that.
As I see it is the tank the largest problem. For combat to be rejuvinated needs PvE and PvP to become closer, mobs need to act more human.
Healers work well in some games were the lore for it is fine, in other IPs like Starwars LOTR and historical games we need something else. And GW2s self healing doesnt work there either, I think we need to change the hitpoints and basic damage mechanics all MMOs have taken from D&D.
I personally would prefer a system closer to the Warhammer fantasy RPG. You do have a few hitpoints there as well but not many. You also have tougness there which soaks damage. If you get 0 HP and get more damage you get some kind of wound, depending on how severe the damage is you get a random wound, if it is really severe you could die, but usually it affects you, like a broken arm or a punctured eye.
There are other ways to solve this as well, some P&P games like Shadowrun doesnt really have HP even and that would work too in MMOs.
DPS is really bad as well. Mainly because it usually is far too easy to just stand back and rotate skills. Anyone who played athief in GW2 know how I want DPS.
Support is fine as it is, even though you probably could add more secondary roles for it.
Group dynamics is important in MMOs or we get a rather bad zerg, but suggesting that the first system ever made created by a few guys for fun in a basement should be the ultimate and only way for good groupdynamics is just preposterous.
Most pen and paper RPGs and even boardgames (like Heroquest) do have some group dynamics as well, some are simple while others are rather interesting and advanced. MMOs needs to experiement to find a better and new mechhanics because the trinity just have been overused for way too long, and if people just thought dont fix it if it work we would still be driving a Ford model T to work.
None trinity combat should not really be seen as a "system", that is like splitting up all music in "Rock" and "other".
The possibilities are almost endless.
Guild Wars 2 does it poorly, actually. The combat is solid, but the dungeons and bosses aren't designed specifically to take advantage of the system. For as well done all the other parts of the game are, the dungeons are very generic and reminiscent of those found in your mediocre Asian MMOs.
Anyway, people simply forgot that non-trinity games exist--which, essentially, are all multiplayer games that do not require you to be any specific character, class, or role. No one ever questioned it.
Players are simply questioning it now due to Guild Wars 2 having put so much emphasis on it.
I don't think you need Holy Trinity Roles in mmorpgs:
1) Tank: High Defence, Low Offence
2) DPS: Low Defence, High Offence
3) Healer: Low Defence, Low Offence, Heals 1) & 2)
==
I think GW2 adds some auxillery Roles so ppl can contribute to different 3? eg self-heal + rez. + ranged context vs melee.
But I always preferred in single-player games a mob has a chance to take you down easily just as you do. But I think in mmorpgs that combat is not welcome as you "should be" chipping away at a meter for a mob and longer meter for a bigger mob. Even a goblin should be able to ram a spear into the belly of player char if they are not careful! Instead tank has bigger meter, dps can reduce enemy mob meters faster and healer tops up meters etc. Once that route is taken it's all about chipping away at meters with plenty of chances for players to get organised into the above 3 roles to out-meter mobs or in pvp kill the opposition healer (WAR!) and then it is wipe time.
Either you should have combat such as Bruce Lee (He who strikes first, strikes last) or like Jackie Chan (skilful hanging in there combat!) I think mmorpgs need to work on Jackie Chan combat and add more Bruce Lee combat
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I do not think that the trinity system is unavoidable but rather roles should be defined. Let me take City of Villains as an example or even to a lesser degree City of Heroes. I am not saying City of Heroes was not a good example but rather people kept asking for empaths in Heroes so Villains is a better example.
See there is plenty of opportunity to practice in missions in Villians that made it possible for unconscious roles to form as a result of the way healing was so poor in Villains when it launched. Everyone had to buff people with shields and properly debuff the mobs. Because of the sheer chaotic nature of the gameplay in Heroes/Villains you are forced to step up early in missions and learn to play in group. You talk and decide what to do. I do not think a game that allows so much self sufficiency as it does in GW 2 teaches that. This is part of the reason the dungeon runs are so dismal. You are playing solo so much and managing to heal yourself and worry about yourself while playing so much of the game that by the time group tactics are needed you are sore pressed to understand how to coordinate.
Games like Villains because of missions force people to think of alternative ways to approach bosses and scores of minions in a way that side lines healing or tanking for that matter. Almost no brute could even tank we were sending pet waves to absorb the alpha blows then resummoning them. It was a method we devised that handled gameplay that had no real tank or healer as such. See it can be done what you need is more lower level dungeons that force people to learn earlier how to play as a group. Events do not teach much to be honest. No one talks or discusses just waits for the medal and karma and moves on without working as a unit. It is just zerg basically with the ocassional rezzing of fallen allies. To be honest a better example of non trinity based combat is Villains.
I just disagree when it comes to the dungeon encounters. I think they're great and varied compared to most other dungeon experiences I've had. It has many different types of events and bosses scattered throughout and the sheer variety keeps things interesting for me.
Maybe you could name some of these non-trinity games that have come out in the post-WoW era. I know that I've played a lot of EVE and it is basically non-trinity. Some FFA PvP focused games like Darkfall and Mortal have no trinity - but they also don't really have any PvE that is interesting. Maybe I'm just not thinking about them right now, but what are some PvE based MMORPGs without trinity gameplay that have come out in the last decade?
I would not say poorly, but it does not really use it full out yet, no. I think the devs themselves missed some of the potential and made most bosses pretty simple and tough.
Personally do I think that GW2s dungeons would be more interesting if the encounters were more other groups of 5 than a single tough boss and possibly some weak adds. That is typical trinity thinking.
I do think it will better a lot with time though.
But GW2 is just using one of the myriads of possibilities to solve group dynamics without trinity. It is not more the only way than trinity is.
What is important is that people should fight together instead of alone.