The argument of "waiting for a group " to happen because of needing a healer is a poor excuse to remove healing.That is just a crappy game design,at least the part of grouping.
There's an important difference between removing dedicated healer classes and removing healing entirely.
The fundamental problem is that if groups require exact proportions of various classes (e.g., FFXIV's one healer, one tank, two DPS), the classes players play are not going to perfectly match those proportions everywhere. Make healers more fun to play so that too many people want to be a healer and then healers end up waiting on groups and you have basically the same problem as before. Trying to get the balance right is like trying to flip a coin and have it land on its edge--and repeating that every single time.
If you're going to have dedicated healer or tank classes, I don't see how to get around the problem of required group compositions. What you need is to be able to grab enough random people to fill a group and usually have their set of classes work for a group, rather than sitting and waiting for the missing role. If you don't have that, then grouping in your game simply doesn't work and you've created a solo game whether you intended to or not.
You say "THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM" as if it is a real problem. You want one size fits all and everyone is replaceable style of gaming. That doesn't make your way the one true way it only makes it different. So don't call it THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM. Own it by saying your problem. That is my problem with your post.
I want for my time spent grouping to mostly be doing stuff in a group, not searching for a group. Do you think it's not a problem at all if finding a group is sufficiently hard that most of the playerbase won't bother, so that the grouping content is almost universally ignored, making a game a de facto solo game?
You would have to make up for that with other potent support systems (like damage prevention akin to a GW1 protection monk).
I'm not interested in a support-free MMO, and I'd imagine most would share that opinion. DPS is great and all, but a game needs more than just dps to function.
Didnt Guild Wars 2's developers ANET demonize the Healer role when they were first hyping up the game. That didnt turn out well as many of the people bought into that hype, soon realized. Everything turned into a zerg dps fest. Some bosses in the world had to be nerfed, because of the way Tech work today, isnt as reliable when it comes to combat like that. They eventually tried to add healing back in slowly. But for a while they had a useless +Healing stat, and a few support classes that were pretty much useless and not going to get a group invite. Making their "Freedom of Build" philosophy obsolete.
All around bad idea. Action Combat is cool and all, but removal of vital combat roles such as defensive tanks and group support, or nerfing them down to being useless, just hasnt been shown to workout.
Combat worked better in Guild Wars 2 than in any strictly trinity combat game I've seen.
You must be joking right? Maybe if you solo all of the time, but not if you are talking about group mechanics and interesting boss fights.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
The argument of "waiting for a group " to happen because of needing a healer is a poor excuse to remove healing.That is just a crappy game design,at least the part of grouping.
There's an important difference between removing dedicated healer classes and removing healing entirely.
The fundamental problem is that if groups require exact proportions of various classes (e.g., FFXIV's one healer, one tank, two DPS), the classes players play are not going to perfectly match those proportions everywhere. Make healers more fun to play so that too many people want to be a healer and then healers end up waiting on groups and you have basically the same problem as before. Trying to get the balance right is like trying to flip a coin and have it land on its edge--and repeating that every single time.
If you're going to have dedicated healer or tank classes, I don't see how to get around the problem of required group compositions. What you need is to be able to grab enough random people to fill a group and usually have their set of classes work for a group, rather than sitting and waiting for the missing role. If you don't have that, then grouping in your game simply doesn't work and you've created a solo game whether you intended to or not.
You say "THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM" as if it is a real problem. You want one size fits all and everyone is replaceable style of gaming. That doesn't make your way the one true way it only makes it different. So don't call it THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM. Own it by saying your problem. That is my problem with your post.
I want for my time spent grouping to mostly be doing stuff in a group, not searching for a group. Do you think it's not a problem at all if finding a group is sufficiently hard that most of the playerbase won't bother, so that the grouping content is almost universally ignored, making a game a de facto solo game?
I would rather wait for a bit and have quality game play...
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
You would have to make up for that with other potent support systems (like damage prevention akin to a GW1 protection monk).
I'm not interested in a support-free MMO, and I'd imagine most would share that opinion. DPS is great and all, but a game needs more than just dps to function.
Didnt Guild Wars 2's developers ANET demonize the Healer role when they were first hyping up the game. That didnt turn out well as many of the people bought into that hype, soon realized. Everything turned into a zerg dps fest. Some bosses in the world had to be nerfed, because of the way Tech work today, isnt as reliable when it comes to combat like that. They eventually tried to add healing back in slowly. But for a while they had a useless +Healing stat, and a few support classes that were pretty much useless and not going to get a group invite. Making their "Freedom of Build" philosophy obsolete.
All around bad idea. Action Combat is cool and all, but removal of vital combat roles such as defensive tanks and group support, or nerfing them down to being useless, just hasnt been shown to workout.
Combat worked better in Guild Wars 2 than in any strictly trinity combat game I've seen.
Naw, DAOC in its day was the best I've ever seen, but that's just me
I'm not claiming that Guild Wars 2's combat is exceptionally good. But I've never seen a game with trinity combat that was any good. WoW probably has the best trinity combat I've seen, and that was mediocre. FFXIV combat was likewise mediocre. Combat in EverQuest II and WildStar was awful, though at least in part for reasons unrelated to trinity.
It's possible that there could be games with good trinity combat that I haven't played. But I'm not aware of any that seem promising. I never played DAOC.
If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
The problem with pure healing classes is that not very many people want to be pure healers. That means a lot of groups have to sit and wait around until a healer comes. If half of your "grouping" time is spent waiting for a healer (or tank), that's just not fun for a large chunk of the playerbase. That's a major factor in MMORPGs moving toward more soloing over the course of the past decade.
There are some people who do want to be healers, and they're very well catered to. If a lot of MMORPGs had no healer classes, so that a lot of the people who don't want to be healers weren't playing games that rely on healers, that might soften the imbalance substantially. Though in games that do have dedicated healers, it could also mean substantial movement away from healing by people who didn't really want to be a healer but got sick of spending half their time waiting for groups.
If there are going to be games that don't have dedicated healers, games have to make that work somehow. Some have, such as the Guild Wars 2 approach of everyone having some healing capability, or the Spiral Knights approach of there being very limited healing so you better not get hit much. Healing in Elsword is almost entirely healing yourself, and often from consumables, though Elesis does get substantial self-healing skills. All of those games notably have to do away with traditional MMORPG tanking, as without heavy healing from other players, a player who absorbs a ton of damage is going to end up dead and quickly.
There isn't--and shouldn't be--one single model of "all MMORPGs must do healing this way". There's plenty of room to innovate here, and "no healing in combat" could be part of a good solution, though other mechanics would really need to be designed around it.
The thing is Healers and Tanks, are like Leaders in real life. There are Few Leaders per Followers. Group encounters in combat need to have a functional group role or you just get an all out kill fest like CoD. Games like CoD appeal to those kind of gamers, because it really has no team responsibility. Its all Solo gameplay in a forced team design.
Trinity Combat is all about Team Efforts with Team Roles. In older games, yes the wait was long. But thats why tools were created to help speed that up. Guild Wars 2 and Rift, both for many years refused to add Grouping Tools, because the general assumption back then when WoW first added grouping tools, was that it ruined the game. But both GW2 and Rift suffered from the problem of finding groups. Rift had a Trinity, and Guild Wars 2, did not. So that myth that its the Healer/Tank thats making it hard to find a group, is just straight out proven wrong.
Even before Guild Wars 2 officially added grouping tools, you could assemble groups elsewhere about an order of magnitude faster than assembling groups in Vanilla WoW. And about an order of magnitude faster than in FFXIV with grouping tools if you're DPS.
City of Heroes was quick for forming groups and that was pre-wow
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If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
If you want different group members to have different roles, that's fine. But don't make it required that a group must have this exact ratio of these exact roles or assembling groups just isn't going to work. If players can fill multiple roles or have a single character freely switch between multiple rules while being effective at all fo them, that can fix the group assembling problem.
While you're having roles, it would also be good to make them interesting roles. One of the problems with trinity combat in particular is that it tries to shoehorn people into three possible roles, none of which are interesting.
Tree of Savior handles it by having a bunch of different classes that have a bunch of different roles. To judge by the group recruiting messages, linker is arguably the most desired role. What a linker can do is to link together the mobs so that damage to any of them is shared by all of them. Then there's another linker skill to yank the mobs together so you can blast them all at once. The party can then quickly destroy the bunched mobs with whatever skills they have. Now, those skills have substantial cooldowns, so the linker can't just spam them. But the player who is a linker is also going to be some other classes, so he fills this role in addition to doing other things while in a group.
The problem with pure healing classes is that not very many people want to be pure healers. That means a lot of groups have to sit and wait around until a healer comes. If half of your "grouping" time is spent waiting for a healer (or tank), that's just not fun for a large chunk of the playerbase. That's a major factor in MMORPGs moving toward more soloing over the course of the past decade.
There are some people who do want to be healers, and they're very well catered to. If a lot of MMORPGs had no healer classes, so that a lot of the people who don't want to be healers weren't playing games that rely on healers, that might soften the imbalance substantially. Though in games that do have dedicated healers, it could also mean substantial movement away from healing by people who didn't really want to be a healer but got sick of spending half their time waiting for groups.
If there are going to be games that don't have dedicated healers, games have to make that work somehow. Some have, such as the Guild Wars 2 approach of everyone having some healing capability, or the Spiral Knights approach of there being very limited healing so you better not get hit much. Healing in Elsword is almost entirely healing yourself, and often from consumables, though Elesis does get substantial self-healing skills. All of those games notably have to do away with traditional MMORPG tanking, as without heavy healing from other players, a player who absorbs a ton of damage is going to end up dead and quickly.
There isn't--and shouldn't be--one single model of "all MMORPGs must do healing this way". There's plenty of room to innovate here, and "no healing in combat" could be part of a good solution, though other mechanics would really need to be designed around it.
The thing is Healers and Tanks, are like Leaders in real life. There are Few Leaders per Followers. Group encounters in combat need to have a functional group role or you just get an all out kill fest like CoD. Games like CoD appeal to those kind of gamers, because it really has no team responsibility. Its all Solo gameplay in a forced team design.
Trinity Combat is all about Team Efforts with Team Roles. In older games, yes the wait was long. But thats why tools were created to help speed that up. Guild Wars 2 and Rift, both for many years refused to add Grouping Tools, because the general assumption back then when WoW first added grouping tools, was that it ruined the game. But both GW2 and Rift suffered from the problem of finding groups. Rift had a Trinity, and Guild Wars 2, did not. So that myth that its the Healer/Tank thats making it hard to find a group, is just straight out proven wrong.
Even before Guild Wars 2 officially added grouping tools, you could assemble groups elsewhere about an order of magnitude faster than assembling groups in Vanilla WoW. And about an order of magnitude faster than in FFXIV with grouping tools if you're DPS.
City of Heroes was quick for forming groups and that was pre-wow
City of Heroes didn't force groups to be exactly one healer, one tank, and three damage dealers. Flexibility in forming groups is essential.
If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
If you want different group members to have different roles, that's fine. But don't make it required that a group must have this exact ratio of these exact roles or assembling groups just isn't going to work. If players can fill multiple roles or have a single character freely switch between multiple rules while being effective at all fo them, that can fix the group assembling problem.
While you're having roles, it would also be good to make them interesting roles. One of the problems with trinity combat in particular is that it tries to shoehorn people into three possible roles, none of which are interesting.
LotRO got round this issue by having support roles in 3 flavours:
Captain - Buffer / Jack of all Trades Loremaster - CC / Pet / Debuffer Burglar - Debuffer / CC / DPS
At launch, there were 7 classes, 3 of which were support roles. It opened up a whole wealth of interesting gameplay. Groups were made of 6 people, usually 1 tank, 1 healer and 4 others. That was a slightly better ration to begin with, but the support roles also meant it was possible to ditch either tank or healer.
For example, rather than bring a healer, could could bring a captain for extra healing, a loremaster to CC tons of stuff and keep everything bebuffed, as well as a burgler for extra cc/debuffs but they could also start fellowship maneuvers (6player combined attacks with variety of effects).
It would be harder without tank or healer, but certainly doable and usually more fun. I played a captain and I managed to main-heal just about every 6man dungeon in the game. Some of my favourite experiences were trying to do group content without any tanks or healers - just weird hybrid setups relying on crazy damage or intricate tactics
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You would have to make up for that with other potent support systems (like damage prevention akin to a GW1 protection monk).
I'm not interested in a support-free MMO, and I'd imagine most would share that opinion. DPS is great and all, but a game needs more than just dps to function.
Didnt Guild Wars 2's developers ANET demonize the Healer role when they were first hyping up the game. That didnt turn out well as many of the people bought into that hype, soon realized. Everything turned into a zerg dps fest. Some bosses in the world had to be nerfed, because of the way Tech work today, isnt as reliable when it comes to combat like that. They eventually tried to add healing back in slowly. But for a while they had a useless +Healing stat, and a few support classes that were pretty much useless and not going to get a group invite. Making their "Freedom of Build" philosophy obsolete.
All around bad idea. Action Combat is cool and all, but removal of vital combat roles such as defensive tanks and group support, or nerfing them down to being useless, just hasnt been shown to workout.
Combat worked better in Guild Wars 2 than in any strictly trinity combat game I've seen.
Naw, DAOC in its day was the best I've ever seen, but that's just me
I'm not claiming that Guild Wars 2's combat is exceptionally good. But I've never seen a game with trinity combat that was any good. WoW probably has the best trinity combat I've seen, and that was mediocre. FFXIV combat was likewise mediocre. Combat in EverQuest II and WildStar was awful, though at least in part for reasons unrelated to trinity.
It's possible that there could be games with good trinity combat that I haven't played. But I'm not aware of any that seem promising. I never played DAOC.
In all fairness DAOC was far less limiting than modern "trinity" titles.
One reason was 8 man group size along with significant class specialization and variation.
Genereally groups started with a tank, pure healer and crowd controller, but the other 5 slots could be most anything depending on the situation.
I could go on, but no matter, that's mostly been relegated to bittersweet memories and days gone by. It's a brave new world we live in.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
If you want different group members to have different roles, that's fine. But don't make it required that a group must have this exact ratio of these exact roles or assembling groups just isn't going to work. If players can fill multiple roles or have a single character freely switch between multiple rules while being effective at all fo them, that can fix the group assembling problem.
While you're having roles, it would also be good to make them interesting roles. One of the problems with trinity combat in particular is that it tries to shoehorn people into three possible roles, none of which are interesting.
LotRO got round this issue by having support roles in 3 flavours:
Captain - Buffer / Jack of all Trades Loremaster - CC / Pet / Debuffer Burglar - Debuffer / CC / DPS
At launch, there were 7 classes, 3 of which were support roles. It opened up a whole wealth of interesting gameplay. Groups were made of 6 people, usually 1 tank, 1 healer and 4 others. That was a slightly better ration to begin with, but the support roles also meant it was possible to ditch either tank or healer.
For example, rather than bring a healer, could could bring a captain for extra healing, a loremaster to CC tons of stuff and keep everything bebuffed, as well as a burgler for extra cc/debuffs but they could also start fellowship maneuvers (6player combined attacks with variety of effects).
It would be harder without tank or healer, but certainly doable and usually more fun. I played a captain and I managed to main-heal just about every 6man dungeon in the game. Some of my favourite experiences were trying to do group content without any tanks or healers - just weird hybrid setups relying on crazy damage or intricate tactics
LOTRO was pretty cool in that it broke from the trinity model pretty darn well for a WoW clone. I played the Loremaster. Specced for Debuff/CC and power steal/transfer. Poor DPS, poor healing, poor survivability. Still a great party member. Sucking the mana from opposing healers and giving it back to your own was almost worth it in itself.
If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
The reason I am such a holy trinity fan is that it seems to only be replaced by nothing. The Zerg group is the default "replacement" which is really just what happens when you remove grouping mechanics. If you really shake things up there is the PS2 style of "group", but for small scale groups 4 to 10 players, so little has been done to try something new.
If you want different group members to have different roles, that's fine. But don't make it required that a group must have this exact ratio of these exact roles or assembling groups just isn't going to work. If players can fill multiple roles or have a single character freely switch between multiple rules while being effective at all fo them, that can fix the group assembling problem.
While you're having roles, it would also be good to make them interesting roles. One of the problems with trinity combat in particular is that it tries to shoehorn people into three possible roles, none of which are interesting.
Tree of Savior handles it by having a bunch of different classes that have a bunch of different roles. To judge by the group recruiting messages, linker is arguably the most desired role. What a linker can do is to link together the mobs so that damage to any of them is shared by all of them. Then there's another linker skill to yank the mobs together so you can blast them all at once. The party can then quickly destroy the bunched mobs with whatever skills they have. Now, those skills have substantial cooldowns, so the linker can't just spam them. But the player who is a linker is also going to be some other classes, so he fills this role in addition to doing other things while in a group.
Agreed, you can even have people switch between them during combat.
The important thing is that it is fun, that the players need to think and that you reward co-operation.
There is nothing more boring then standing still and rotating skills.
If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
The reason I am such a holy trinity fan is that it seems to only be replaced by nothing. The Zerg group is the default "replacement" which is really just what happens when you remove grouping mechanics. If you really shake things up there is the PS2 style of "group", but for small scale groups 4 to 10 players, so little has been done to try something new.
Whilst your observation is true for most games that ditch the trinity, there are some that extend it rather than ditch it.
Trinity is 3 roles - tank, healer, dps
Combat is thus designed around those three roles. It tends not to matter what tank you bring, or what healer, just as long as the role is filled.
LotRO went with 4 roles - tank, healer, dps, support
99% of the content was designed around those 4 roles. The final 1 % divided the support role into 3 separate roles - buffer, debuffer, cc. So, my captain was buffer/support. It was optional for most content but there would be the occasional boss / dungeon where my specific role was needed. Likewise, some fights required CC to win, so you had to bring either loremaster or burglar in CC spec to complete.
I haven't played other MMOs with more roles but I believe they used to exist. Main-tank, off-tank, puller, cc, buffer, debuffer, melee dps, ranged dps, aoe dps etc. The importance of these roles is really determined by the content.
So, in LotRO, you had the hunter (ranged dps) and champion (melee dps), the only 2 dps classes at launch, but content wasn't designed to require either melee or ranged dps, any dps would do. So, dps was the only role available, implemented in two different ways.
That seems to be the way with modern trinity games. Some classes can spec for cc / buffs / debuffs etc and thus fulfil that role, but the content tends not to be designed for those roles specifically and so those roles become meaningless.
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Trinity in Everquest was tank, healer, crowd control not DPS and that is where the expression first originated if I'm not mistaken. It was Warrior,Cleric and Enchanter because you could not do harder content without these three roles and it was lovingly mocked as the Holy Trinity on the Everquest forums.
If it is to create a different gameplay dynamic great. If it is to make the game even more solo than the MMOs of today which are already made for Hans Solo, then no.
That is a great point.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
The reason I am such a holy trinity fan is that it seems to only be replaced by nothing. The Zerg group is the default "replacement" which is really just what happens when you remove grouping mechanics. If you really shake things up there is the PS2 style of "group", but for small scale groups 4 to 10 players, so little has been done to try something new.
Whilst your observation is true for most games that ditch the trinity, there are some that extend it rather than ditch it.
Trinity is 3 roles - tank, healer, dps
Combat is thus designed around those three roles. It tends not to matter what tank you bring, or what healer, just as long as the role is filled.
LotRO went with 4 roles - tank, healer, dps, support
99% of the content was designed around those 4 roles. The final 1 % divided the support role into 3 separate roles - buffer, debuffer, cc. So, my captain was buffer/support. It was optional for most content but there would be the occasional boss / dungeon where my specific role was needed. Likewise, some fights required CC to win, so you had to bring either loremaster or burglar in CC spec to complete.
I haven't played other MMOs with more roles but I believe they used to exist. Main-tank, off-tank, puller, cc, buffer, debuffer, melee dps, ranged dps, aoe dps etc. The importance of these roles is really determined by the content.
So, in LotRO, you had the hunter (ranged dps) and champion (melee dps), the only 2 dps classes at launch, but content wasn't designed to require either melee or ranged dps, any dps would do. So, dps was the only role available, implemented in two different ways.
That seems to be the way with modern trinity games. Some classes can spec for cc / buffs / debuffs etc and thus fulfil that role, but the content tends not to be designed for those roles specifically and so those roles become meaningless.
Lotro showed what could be done, taking elements of the new and combining them with the old. I regarded it as our last great hope in fact. It showed you did not have make a MMO on a WoW template with even more easymode play in a tiny world. But it availed nought, the genre moved on to where it is now.
My avatar on here is Faramir, which rather shows my bias for Lotro
So your example is one of the greatest attempts to do something different and they did it really well. My experience of MMOs since Lotro is the direction of travel is too remove every gameplay mechanic they can. Some roles you mention virtually not seen now: off-tank, puller, cc, healer and buffer/debuffer. Grouping has become a set dps classes doing dps. For many if not most MMOs that's what it already is.
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It's possible that there could be games with good trinity combat that I haven't played. But I'm not aware of any that seem promising. I never played DAOC.
Group dynamics is very important in MMOs, a MMO should have players constantly working together during combat.
Offensive and defensive parts does not have to have in combat healing, defense could be more about setting traps, fortifying positions, body blocking and similar. If you use dedicated players for that or changes as it fits best at the moment really doesn't matter but offense and defense need to coordinate eachother or we just get chaos.
I doubt most of us want a game where everybody just DPS, a MMO like that are only playable in soloing and there isn't any point to make a MMO with just soloing, you can as well have a singleplayer game for far less cash and same experience (you could have a region based market added if you enjoy playing the market but just soloing). A focused singleplayer game will always make a better soloing experience then a MMORPG anyways.
I am all for replacing the holy trinity combat that feels rather tired by now but you can't replace it with nothing. If you remove healing you will need to add other defensive options to the game instead. Of course in a modern game that is easy, a trenched down machine gun will offer the ultimate defense but in fantasy it takes some thinking and testing to get it right.
City of Heroes was quick for forming groups and that was pre-wow
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While you're having roles, it would also be good to make them interesting roles. One of the problems with trinity combat in particular is that it tries to shoehorn people into three possible roles, none of which are interesting.
Tree of Savior handles it by having a bunch of different classes that have a bunch of different roles. To judge by the group recruiting messages, linker is arguably the most desired role. What a linker can do is to link together the mobs so that damage to any of them is shared by all of them. Then there's another linker skill to yank the mobs together so you can blast them all at once. The party can then quickly destroy the bunched mobs with whatever skills they have. Now, those skills have substantial cooldowns, so the linker can't just spam them. But the player who is a linker is also going to be some other classes, so he fills this role in addition to doing other things while in a group.
Captain - Buffer / Jack of all Trades
Loremaster - CC / Pet / Debuffer
Burglar - Debuffer / CC / DPS
At launch, there were 7 classes, 3 of which were support roles. It opened up a whole wealth of interesting gameplay. Groups were made of 6 people, usually 1 tank, 1 healer and 4 others. That was a slightly better ration to begin with, but the support roles also meant it was possible to ditch either tank or healer.
For example, rather than bring a healer, could could bring a captain for extra healing, a loremaster to CC tons of stuff and keep everything bebuffed, as well as a burgler for extra cc/debuffs but they could also start fellowship maneuvers (6player combined attacks with variety of effects).
It would be harder without tank or healer, but certainly doable and usually more fun. I played a captain and I managed to main-heal just about every 6man dungeon in the game. Some of my favourite experiences were trying to do group content without any tanks or healers - just weird hybrid setups relying on crazy damage or intricate tactics
One reason was 8 man group size along with significant class specialization and variation.
Genereally groups started with a tank, pure healer and crowd controller, but the other 5 slots could be most anything depending on the situation.
I could go on, but no matter, that's mostly been relegated to bittersweet memories and days gone by. It's a brave new world we live in.
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The reason I am such a holy trinity fan is that it seems to only be replaced by nothing. The Zerg group is the default "replacement" which is really just what happens when you remove grouping mechanics. If you really shake things up there is the PS2 style of "group", but for small scale groups 4 to 10 players, so little has been done to try something new.
The important thing is that it is fun, that the players need to think and that you reward co-operation.
There is nothing more boring then standing still and rotating skills.
Trinity is 3 roles - tank, healer, dps
Combat is thus designed around those three roles. It tends not to matter what tank you bring, or what healer, just as long as the role is filled.
LotRO went with 4 roles - tank, healer, dps, support
99% of the content was designed around those 4 roles. The final 1 % divided the support role into 3 separate roles - buffer, debuffer, cc. So, my captain was buffer/support. It was optional for most content but there would be the occasional boss / dungeon where my specific role was needed. Likewise, some fights required CC to win, so you had to bring either loremaster or burglar in CC spec to complete.
I haven't played other MMOs with more roles but I believe they used to exist. Main-tank, off-tank, puller, cc, buffer, debuffer, melee dps, ranged dps, aoe dps etc. The importance of these roles is really determined by the content.
So, in LotRO, you had the hunter (ranged dps) and champion (melee dps), the only 2 dps classes at launch, but content wasn't designed to require either melee or ranged dps, any dps would do. So, dps was the only role available, implemented in two different ways.
That seems to be the way with modern trinity games. Some classes can spec for cc / buffs / debuffs etc and thus fulfil that role, but the content tends not to be designed for those roles specifically and so those roles become meaningless.
Lotro showed what could be done, taking elements of the new and combining them with the old. I regarded it as our last great hope in fact. It showed you did not have make a MMO on a WoW template with even more easymode play in a tiny world. But it availed nought, the genre moved on to where it is now.
My avatar on here is Faramir, which rather shows my bias for Lotro
So your example is one of the greatest attempts to do something different and they did it really well. My experience of MMOs since Lotro is the direction of travel is too remove every gameplay mechanic they can. Some roles you mention virtually not seen now: off-tank, puller, cc, healer and buffer/debuffer. Grouping has become a set dps classes doing dps. For many if not most MMOs that's what it already is.