You want a tough death penalty? Anyone remember Baldur's gate? Critical hit with a few hit points left, NPC jibbed and removed from the game. Now just make THAT for a Player Character, in PvE or PvP, and see tears for death at level umpty ump! ;-) Whole new respect for Assasins, eh!
Seriously, I like the idea of scrapping the Trinity. I've been playing these games since Gruds in Space and there's not much new that's come out, other than ways to make us part with our money.
I'm comfortable sticking up for Anet in these regards, because unlike some people who claim that the 'community' of GW isn't on the par of what they are used to, I can promise you that it is the only game as a player that I know if I had a complaint or problem, I had the name of the Community Liason, and knew if there was a gameplay issue, that the devs were going to hear about it.
As far as the community of players, to me I see no difference between them and any other, most are helpful, some are mean, others rude. Oh yeah, thankfully due to instancing, they couldn't grief you or PK you. But those days of safety are over once this game releases, so hopefully, let the fun begin!
Those of you complaining about a lack of healers or concerned that some classes will be forced into being defacto healers, the developers have already said that while some classes will have the option of healing others, everyone's inherent heal skill will be a far more effective heal to themselves than what other players will be able to heal you with. This means that people will have to be more self sufficient when it comes to healing. What other players/classes will bring to the table is more in the way of protection abilities for the party which will still be an incentive to group up for. Think of it in terms of Diablo 2.
How is this better than having defined roles like 'healer'? I don't find it a very strong game design argument to counter the practice of people being 'forced' into roles as healers with the defense that instead everyone will be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient is great for single player games (without an NPC party), but in anything cooperative I've found it problematic. First off, the general public playing the game doesn't learn to work together, because they really won't have to, and it's easier to just go after easier content than work together to defeat harder stuff. And secondly, those groups/guilds that are working together won't be challenged unless the devs resort to the WoW model where the game is easy-breezy leveling up then suddenly there are raids and people get pissed.
I want challenging group play that thrives on groups... and that's one of the things I'm worried about with GW2.
But sure, maybe the game isn't for me and it's probably true that more people want to solo or zerg-group their way through content for the 'fun' of it... to me it's a waste to have online cooperative gameplay as such, and if I want that I'll just go play Diablo 2, lol. I don't personally want my mmo[rpg] to be at all comparable to Diablo 2. Don't get me wrong, Diablo 2 was a great game, but not at all what I want from a mmo[rpg].
I think what he was referring to with the Diablo 2 mention was when did you ever have to rely on any form of dedicated healer to get through tough battles? You didn't need them, but there was still plenty of working as a group while keeping yourself alive instead.
As to the rest of the post, you seem to either be forgetting about or havent read up on things like the Dynamic Event System as well as the scaling in PvE. The more people in the area the tougher and more numerous the mobs will get so people will still need to work together to accomplish things rather than just soloing their way through when others are around. As for the zerg effect... again, scaling content so bigger zerg = tougher battles.
The thing people don't understand is that a "healer" is not the only form of support, and as was mentioned about Diablo 2, people made use of Paladin Auras for protection to prevent / lower damage in the first place, rather than its healing aspects, and GW is using a somewhat similar formula. Its all about PREVENTING damage, not sitting there staring at health bars to keep them full. It will require a more active role in combat from the support classes and allow them to sway the battle by using the proper defenses and tactics for every situation rather than spamming a heal or 2 over and over and over again.
Those of you complaining about a lack of healers or concerned that some classes will be forced into being defacto healers, the developers have already said that while some classes will have the option of healing others, everyone's inherent heal skill will be a far more effective heal to themselves than what other players will be able to heal you with. This means that people will have to be more self sufficient when it comes to healing. What other players/classes will bring to the table is more in the way of protection abilities for the party which will still be an incentive to group up for. Think of it in terms of Diablo 2.
How is this better than having defined roles like 'healer'? I don't find it a very strong game design argument to counter the practice of people being 'forced' into roles as healers with the defense that instead everyone will be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient is great for single player games (without an NPC party), but in anything cooperative I've found it problematic. First off, the general public playing the game doesn't learn to work together, because they really won't have to, and it's easier to just go after easier content than work together to defeat harder stuff. And secondly, those groups/guilds that are working together won't be challenged unless the devs resort to the WoW model where the game is easy-breezy leveling up then suddenly there are raids and people get pissed.
I want challenging group play that thrives on groups... and that's one of the things I'm worried about with GW2.
But sure, maybe the game isn't for me and it's probably true that more people want to solo or zerg-group their way through content for the 'fun' of it... to me it's a waste to have online cooperative gameplay as such, and if I want that I'll just go play Diablo 2, lol. I don't personally want my mmo[rpg] to be at all comparable to Diablo 2. Don't get me wrong, Diablo 2 was a great game, but not at all what I want from a mmo[rpg].
I think you need to just reed how they plan on doing with playing with differrent people; here is one of the things they have talked about.
It's very important that professions in an MMO have interesting ways to interact with each other. In the past this has mostly been limited to healing and buffing teammates and managing agro in combat. We wanted to expand considerably upon the types of teamwork available to our players. With this in mind, we've implemented a system of cross-profession combinations.
A warrior and an elementalist playing together could combine their abilities in several different ways. The elementalist could drop down Static Field, which is an area-targeted lightning effect. A warrior who fires a rifle bullet through the static field would cause his shot to be charged up with electricity, inflicting additional damage. If that didn't suit their style, then the elementalist might drop a Wall of Fire in front of a group of enemies. The warrior could enter the firewall and use Cyclone Axe, an attack which causes him to spin rapidly, sending the firewall outward and hitting his foes. There are literally hundreds of combinations for players to discover.
And here is their answer to why they got rid of a dedicated healer.
Q: Many people enjoyed playing a healer/support class in Guild Wars. Many people who played Monks are really disappointed by the news that there will be no healing or protection class in Guild Wars 2. In what way will Guild Wars 2 fulfill a former Monk’s desire to have those same roles in the sequel?
A: We think that monk and healer players don’t really care about the exact mechanics of their profession, but rather care about how that profession feels. Is it more important that the monk sit in the backline and watch health bars go up and down? Or is it more important that they feel like they are supporting their teammates and can occasionally save the day through judicious application of their skills and abilities? We wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a more active game, and therefore we made the support characters in the game a lot more active as well. This really goes beyond healers. Everyone in Guild Wars 2 takes a more active role in combat, and this goes a long way towards providing memorable combat experiences to everyone, as often as we can. Tactics are determined by choices you make in combat, not choices you make at character creation.
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How is this better than having defined roles like 'healer'? I don't find it a very strong game design argument to counter the practice of people being 'forced' into roles as healers with the defense that instead everyone will be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient is great for single player games (without an NPC party), but in anything cooperative I've found it problematic. First off, the general public playing the game doesn't learn to work together, because they really won't have to, and it's easier to just go after easier content than work together to defeat harder stuff. And secondly, those groups/guilds that are working together won't be challenged unless the devs resort to the WoW model where the game is easy-breezy leveling up then suddenly there are raids and people get pissed.
Your post is based on a misunderstanding: the healer role has vanished in that every class has some heal skills, but there'll be all kinds of other roles in the team dynamics, like Protection/Support that can be considered as the healer role replacement, and Control ionstead of just tanking.
GW has shown that there can be a wide variety in different successful team setups beyonf the trinity setup.
GW2 only takes this further with the team combo dynamics (elementalist creates firewall, ranger shoots arrows through the firewall that makes fire arrows of them with added damage effect).
No, I understand what they're trying to do. Every class will be able to heal themselves. Everyone will be self-sufficient to an extent. Sure, you might want an elementalist to create a firewall, but is it going to be necessary? Probably not 'necessary,' which means in most average groups why bother? People by nature, especially in pickup groups, will take the path of least resistance. If content is too 'hard' then people complain certain elements are 'necessary' to succeed. And if the game isn't providing an avenue for that necessity, then imo that means the game by and large won't be challenging (or more likely will offer the opportunity for players to not challenge themselves).
Sure, on paper the idea of not needing to sit around looking for a healer before the 'fun' can start is a good idea, but in practice it often just waters down the game and makes it pew pew zerg, and then when someone dies there's nobody to blame but the person that didn't heal themselves. Path of least resistance. In games with the 'necessary' elements players were forced to step their game up, in a sense, and sure it might now seem as fun when you're sitting around discussing it on message boards, but the actual outcome of such systems are more rewarding and keep players more engaged, which translates into more people playing for longer.
It's like the arguments people make that they want games to be more casual, so they can log in for a few hours and have some fun then log off. Sure, great on paper, but terrible for a game as that means people can also NOT log in just as easily. Same with this idea of doing away with traditional roles and their necessity. Great on paper, but in practice I think they'll find the game plagued with fact that if it's easy to get a group together and just have fun, then it's also just as easy to leave the group, and it's just as easy to not log in anymore.
I know, it makes no sense in a way. But psychology 101 (or a great book The Art of Seduction) quickly shows people don't keep coming back for more if they're always given what they want. They get bored, and whether the know it or admit it, leave and go try to find something more challenging. But, maybe it won't matter... maybe they'll just make a fun game that people can enjoy for a spell before moving on. There's nothing wrong with that, though many gamers are getting sick of that sort of 'depth' in a mmorpg and are hoping for something that sinks the hooks in a bit deeper, something worthy of time and effort trying to master. Minority, I'm sure, but there's an argument for having a dedicated minority rather than a fleeting majority.
I think you need to just reed how they plan on doing with playing with differrent people; here is one of the things they have talked about.
I understand.
I've also played enough games, and wasted enough brain-power thinking about things that are pointless like group dynamics in online games and player pschology.
I get it. One player can start a fire and others can shoot through it for flaming bullets. The operative word is CAN. This doesn't HAVE to happen for success, and I bet well oiled groups that do manage all the extras will only find a benefit of killing a little faster. Is it going to be needed? Nah, probably not. Which means I'll stake my life on the fact that the content won't require such interdependancy. If it did we'd be in a situation where instead of looking for a healer all night, groups would sit around looking for elementalists who can start fires, and the game devs would just be a bunch of hypocrites.
What's that mean? Imo it means content is going to be bland and unchallenging, able to be done by average groups of self-sufficient individuals teamed up for 'fun' for a few hours. This isn't bad, I suppose, but it's not the kind of game most people I know are looking for, and is the kind of game that keeps failing over and over.
Yeah, resistance and challenge isn't popular when one asks the players. But you know what, that's why most psychologists don't reveal their methods to their patient. That's why most great bosses don't let the employees decide policy. Why? Because people want it easy, and most people aren't capable of realizing that 'easy' isn't at all what people truly want deep down. People may say they want a fun, few-hours-a-night heal-yourself sort of game, but that's not what keeps people coming back.
This is why so many people are in bad relationships. Give someone an easy relationship where they don't have to struggle and they get bored. Human nature, unfortunately. And those who understand human nature the most realize you never, ever let the lay-person dictate their own rules. And I fear that's what GW2 will end up being. Like so many other games recently they'll bow to the public demands... but if the general gamers knew wtf they were talking about, THEY'D be dev-gods.... It's like letting the patients dictate their own doses of meds... sure, you want want want, but you don't really have a clue, and meanwhile devs caving under the pressure keeps produce shit-tastic games that nobody wants to play... and then we all sit around and wonder why.
This is all just one aspect, though. I'm hope the GW2 devs are smart enough to provide SOME challenge and resistance somewhere, even if it's the artificial endless-gear-hampster-wheel like WoW. I hope it will be something more enlightened, but we'll see.
Those of you complaining about a lack of healers or concerned that some classes will be forced into being defacto healers, the developers have already said that while some classes will have the option of healing others, everyone's inherent heal skill will be a far more effective heal to themselves than what other players will be able to heal you with. This means that people will have to be more self sufficient when it comes to healing. What other players/classes will bring to the table is more in the way of protection abilities for the party which will still be an incentive to group up for. Think of it in terms of Diablo 2.
How is this better than having defined roles like 'healer'? I don't find it a very strong game design argument to counter the practice of people being 'forced' into roles as healers with the defense that instead everyone will be self-sufficient. Self-sufficient is great for single player games (without an NPC party), but in anything cooperative I've found it problematic. First off, the general public playing the game doesn't learn to work together, because they really won't have to, and it's easier to just go after easier content than work together to defeat harder stuff. And secondly, those groups/guilds that are working together won't be challenged unless the devs resort to the WoW model where the game is easy-breezy leveling up then suddenly there are raids and people get pissed.
I want challenging group play that thrives on groups... and that's one of the things I'm worried about with GW2.
But sure, maybe the game isn't for me and it's probably true that more people want to solo or zerg-group their way through content for the 'fun' of it... to me it's a waste to have online cooperative gameplay as such, and if I want that I'll just go play Diablo 2, lol. I don't personally want my mmo[rpg] to be at all comparable to Diablo 2. Don't get me wrong, Diablo 2 was a great game, but not at all what I want from a mmo[rpg].
You seem to be operating under this assumption that Arenanet's only choice will be to make things too easy ultimatly. I have to ask, why? One of there design philosophy's from back in the original GW was that the game progression of a player would be based on there skill, not lvl. They were attempting to make a game that if you quite simply couldnt get past more challenging content, you flat out wouldnt until you got better as a player. I played GW for at least 3 yrs and i still never got passed everything the game had to offer. There was just too much content and some of it may have in fact been above my skill. That being said i was quite proud of how far through the game i did manage to achieve. I never felt flat out discouraged as i felt that the game was making me a better player all the time.
In GW2 why wouldnt the scaling difficulty reach a point where in order to win you would have to take full advantage of comboing skills (ala chrono trigger)? With the way the scaling works, zerging may in fact make the difficulty alot harder after a certain number of players enter the fray. Sure we can use combo attacks which seem to give us a huge advantage, but whats to say the enemies wont be able to do the same? Its not as though the AI in GW1 was anywhere near as retarded as the AI in every other mmo. Hardly seems that enemy AI in GW2 couldnt be sufficiently advanced to be challenging.
I was only using D2 for illustration's sake. Its pretty obvious that GW2 isnt D2. But since i made the mistake of using chrono trigger in my previous paragraph to illustrate an example of cross class combination attacks, your probably going to now start assuming that GW2 is going to be Chrono Trigger. If you dont want your MMO to be anything like D2, than may i suggest not playing any game with lvl based progresssion, or skill trees, or classes, or loot, or mobs, or bosses, etc. Point is, almost all MMO's are like D2 already. For alot of people D2 was the gateway to MMO's.
Not sure what to think about this feature... the bleed out thing sounds a lot like L4D I hope it's more...
Thing is a lot of people including me, like the tank/heal/dps thing (for me add /CC/buffsupport ), because they/ me actually enjoy tanking or healing or being a supporter.... yeah yeah they said something about support capabilities and I'm interested to see how it turns out but I'm still not too psyced about this...
no heal/tank classes always kind of sounds like healthpotion guzzling hack'n'slasher games... and that's not what I'm looking for... with all the spammable AoE abilities it does in fact look more and more like Diablo... not sure if that's the MMO revolution we need... after all there is already an entire genre that focuses on hack'n'slay..... hackn'n'slay
also, their Monk class was pretty frakkin awesome as far as healer classes go... and combined with a caster class it was pretty damn rich and fun to play.... really don't get the whole "healing is boring" talk....
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But i will not judge it before i playtested it, i have learned that lesson well, playtestig/hands on is the only way to get a good opinion of a game. I can only advise everyone to not jump to conclusions about weather the game will fail or succeed, some things are so much different then any other MMO (Even GW 1) thats allmost impossible to have an opinion on that without playtesting it.
I have high hopes tough this might be the game we all/many of us where waiting for, tough i also see that Arena nets PR is almost to perfect to be true. while i have seen some hyping, never was it this good. Its sometimes almost like they can see inside my head what i want and then write that down in blogs and articles...
There are so many things tough we do not yet know, nothing knowing about the crafting system is one of them. Not knowing how many skills each class will have... if classes have like 50 skills to choose from it will be an awesome lot for a game at release, espescially combined with the 100+ traits. There is nothing known about the influence from armor on the PvE part of the game... i think it might hold the middle between the orriginal game and Vanilla WoW, How will dungeons play. So many questions left. How are they planning to expand the game after release.
its fun to see people say nay to the game based on one or two aspects of the game without knowing how other parts of the game will influence these (for them seen as) negatives of the game.
So when i playtest a game i try not to compare it to any other game (which is extremely hard) but i try to judge it on my ingame experiences and the whole package... Your experience after 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours, 3 days 1 week, 1 month 6 months may be different from time to time... and if only one of those moments feels negative people will be tempted to leave the game without giving it much tought.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Damage is the currency of combat in MMORPG's (and plenty of other games, of course). We all know other games have been slammed for handling this fact by having healing classes that do nothing but heal, and are required to heal a lot. It's dangerous to claim a game has done away with the tedium of waiting around for 'needed' classes like healers. Either the game has reduced the 'cost' of challenging content by simply making content generally not as challenging, thus requiring less healing. Or they've spread the cost around.
It sounds like their idea is to want to spread the cost around, but imo that doesn't mean what they've claimed that they did away with the tedium of looking for a healer for hours before the fun starts. That's just PR, people. That's exactly what many players want to be told, but that doesn't mean they've eliminated the aw-shucks-we-can't-do-that-content-until-soandso-logs-in. Whether it's a specific class, or someone's skill (or a combo of both, preferably), the fact is content will either be unchallenging or there will be some level of waiting around for 'needed' whatever before getting started. And guess what, just about every holy-trinity game ever still had the option of doing other things until the 'needed' whomever finally logged in.
Content scaling to how many people are in the zone is another idea that players look to and say 'finally, the revolution has come.' It's another area that sounds great, but we should probably wait for how it plays out in practice before declaring GW2 the next saviour. I mean, what happens when content is then hard enough people start being 'required' to play certain ways, or use certain skills... then suddenly the claims GW2 will be doing away with that un-fun stuff sorta looks bad. Or what happens when guilds are in a zone/area doing something, and another guild comes in to up the player count to make content harder as a form of griefing. Or simply on a smaller scale one group asks another group they perceive as not helping enough to leave the area since they're making encounters harder than they are helping.
keep in mind, before more assertions come in, I'm speaking hypothetically in general. I'm not making any claims of doom, just like others shouldn't yet make claims of glory. The simple fact is we have a lot of ideas on paper, and before I buy a game I'm going to think through whether those ideas and systems are going to work and how. Sorry if this ruins anyone's day.
I personally believe damage is the currency of combat in MMORPGs, and the best way to deal with that IS by having classes that can heal a lot. Because if an encounter doesn't require a lot of healing, it typiclly isn't very challenging since damage is the way things die in these games, ya know? And just because a class is a healer, doesn't mean it has to be boring (like EQretro) or forced into only certain specs players may not enjoy (like WoW). Vanguard, sadly, is the perfect example. Every healing class could hold their own to varying degrees in various situations, and do so a variety of ways. All while having plenty of 'other' things to do in combat. I dunno, but when a game ends up having less vision and innovation than Vanguard, the steaming pile it was at release, then I worry.
I mean, what are they going to do to make the game not require a lot of healing, turn it into a puzzle game? The mobs do little damage, but if you don't activate the right combos in a certain order they don't die? Heh, sounds almost fun on paper, until you're sitting around for hours waiting for one person in a combo puzzle to get online. I know, I know, there will be other ways to mitigate the healing... which imo will again lead to unchallenging content or the same must-wait-for-soandso situation they're claiming to do away with.
That's my main concern. Want to do things a new way? Then just do it.... but instead they're playing right into everyone's hopes and expectations by declaring the negative things about the 'old way' to be dead. Spinning the PR that they're doing things DIFFERENTLY. Psht, right.
Either the game has reduced the 'cost' of challenging content by simply making content generally not as challenging, thus requiring less healing. Or they've spread the cost around.
Actually, Ithe devs have stated that tactical positioning is going to be alot more important, in PvE, than in other MMO's. In this manner I can see possible setups, where a strict healer would be out of range of some of the party. (thinking rangers snaring from the sides of a rushing mob, so more damage can be done down the throat of the battle area, rangers could be out of range of healer. Can see how this would be a problem)
the fact is content will either be unchallenging or there will be some level of waiting around for 'needed' whatever before getting started. And guess what, just about every holy-trinity game ever still had the option of doing other things until the 'needed' whomever finally logged in.
This I can agree with. I'm not sure about the puzzle idea, but there could be waiting around for a better player to show up to help with a particular quest, etc., but you're not waiting for a particular class to be able to play at all.
Content scaling to how many people are in the zone is another idea that players look to and say 'finally, the revolution has come.' It's another area that sounds great, but we should probably wait for how it plays out in practice before declaring GW2 the next saviour. I mean, what happens when content is then hard enough people start being 'required' to play certain ways, or use certain skills... then suddenly the claims GW2 will be doing away with that un-fun stuff sorta looks bad.
In GW1 this was never a problem, I'd be surprised if Anet dropped the ball on this.
Or what happens when guilds are in a zone/area doing something, and another guild comes in to up the player count to make content harder as a form of griefing. Or simply on a smaller scale one group asks another group they perceive as not helping enough to leave the area since they're making encounters harder than they are helping.
Good point! Definitely can see a problem with this.
keep in mind, before more assertions come in, I'm speaking hypothetically in general. I'm not making any claims of doom, just like others shouldn't yet make claims of glory. The simple fact is we have a lot of ideas on paper, and before I buy a game I'm going to think through whether those ideas and systems are going to work and how. Sorry if this ruins anyone's day.
I personally believe damage is the currency of combat in MMORPGs, and the best way to deal with that IS by having classes that can heal a lot. Because if an encounter doesn't require a lot of healing, it typiclly isn't very challenging since damage is the way things die in these games, ya know?
Under the current trinity paradigm, this is true. However, if you can change the battlefield dynamics, again with positional tactics, then healers are marginalized, as the battle area is expanded by the space involved.
Finally, in an MMO, how does a character walk around the world without dieing? You can't have a healing class in your pocket, right? Do you have to wait for a monk class to walk across the map? Seems like a decent idea to me!
Damage is the currency of combat in MMORPG's (and plenty of other games, of course). We all know other games have been slammed for handling this fact by having healing classes that do nothing but heal, and are required to heal a lot. It's dangerous to claim a game has done away with the tedium of waiting around for 'needed' classes like healers. Either the game has reduced the 'cost' of challenging content by simply making content generally not as challenging, thus requiring less healing. Or they've spread the cost around.
It sounds like their idea is to want to spread the cost around, but imo that doesn't mean what they've claimed that they did away with the tedium of looking for a healer for hours before the fun starts. That's just PR, people. That's exactly what many players want to be told, but that doesn't mean they've eliminated the aw-shucks-we-can't-do-that-content-until-soandso-logs-in. Whether it's a specific class, or someone's skill (or a combo of both, preferably), the fact is content will either be unchallenging or there will be some level of waiting around for 'needed' whatever before getting started. And guess what, just about every holy-trinity game ever still had the option of doing other things until the 'needed' whomever finally logged in.
Content scaling to how many people are in the zone is another idea that players look to and say 'finally, the revolution has come.' It's another area that sounds great, but we should probably wait for how it plays out in practice before declaring GW2 the next saviour. I mean, what happens when content is then hard enough people start being 'required' to play certain ways, or use certain skills... then suddenly the claims GW2 will be doing away with that un-fun stuff sorta looks bad. Or what happens when guilds are in a zone/area doing something, and another guild comes in to up the player count to make content harder as a form of griefing. Or simply on a smaller scale one group asks another group they perceive as not helping enough to leave the area since they're making encounters harder than they are helping.
keep in mind, before more assertions come in, I'm speaking hypothetically in general. I'm not making any claims of doom, just like others shouldn't yet make claims of glory. The simple fact is we have a lot of ideas on paper, and before I buy a game I'm going to think through whether those ideas and systems are going to work and how. Sorry if this ruins anyone's day.
I personally believe damage is the currency of combat in MMORPGs, and the best way to deal with that IS by having classes that can heal a lot. Because if an encounter doesn't require a lot of healing, it typiclly isn't very challenging since damage is the way things die in these games, ya know? And just because a class is a healer, doesn't mean it has to be boring (like EQretro) or forced into only certain specs players may not enjoy (like WoW). Vanguard, sadly, is the perfect example. Every healing class could hold their own to varying degrees in various situations, and do so a variety of ways. All while having plenty of 'other' things to do in combat. I dunno, but when a game ends up having less vision and innovation than Vanguard, the steaming pile it was at release, then I worry.
I mean, what are they going to do to make the game not require a lot of healing, turn it into a puzzle game? The mobs do little damage, but if you don't activate the right combos in a certain order they don't die? Heh, sounds almost fun on paper, until you're sitting around for hours waiting for one person in a combo puzzle to get online. I know, I know, there will be other ways to mitigate the healing... which imo will again lead to unchallenging content or the same must-wait-for-soandso situation they're claiming to do away with.
That's my main concern. Want to do things a new way? Then just do it.... but instead they're playing right into everyone's hopes and expectations by declaring the negative things about the 'old way' to be dead. Spinning the PR that they're doing things DIFFERENTLY. Psht, right.
Talk about pessimism...
I have to agree with you that damage is pretty much currency in combat because that's really the whole point of combat. But I have to disagree with the part about "needing" a healer class. Personally, in most games that involve a dedicated healer I really have no fun. I always have to have a healer with me, whether I like it or not, sometimes I kind of want to take care of myself instead of somebody doing it for me. I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy being self-sufficient, I know I would. Now take ummm, say runescape for example. Yes a lot of people hate the game and I do too but that's not the point, the point is that game has no dedicated healer, actually I don't think there is a healing other mechanic anyway. But what I'm trying to get at is that the characters are self-sufficient and can take care of themselves and keep themselves alive instead of stressing out their teammates if they do a bad job healing or they constantly die because they couldn't get a healer. I'm sorry but it's not fun for the people that don't play as dedicated healers because they can't do things themselves and you have to be with someone, even if you don't want to be with someone. To me there seems to be a lot more cons to dedicated healers as opposed to letting everyone heal themselves. I mean really, if everyone can take care of themselves then we can all fight together and do more "damage" because we don't have a spot wasted for someone to heal us.
Now to give an obvious anwser to the question you had about what they are going to do instead of a healer, and if you read you would notice they replaced healer with supporter. So instead of having your health bar go up and down and up again, making you stress out whether you might die or not, someone will be protecting you so your healthbar would stay at a more constant level and relieve the stress about dieing.
Now onto the subject of greifing, heh, how many time has it been said on their interviews and their blogs and on the website itself that if they find someway to grief a dynamic event or manipulate it or make it unfair they remove it? All the time. I mean they aren't retarded, they know that if people ruin the fun of it people will complain that the company did a bad job and they'd get bad reviews and probably not sell many copies of the game, therefore they wouldn't make any profit and it would all go downhill from there.
The thing about content being too hard isn't going to be a problem, because it doesn't matter! If you alone or a group of people lose an event, your still getting rewarded, it's not going to be like, "You Lost! Now go back home and try again!". If you have read the articles then you would know that the quests aren't in the old fashioned sense and your not going to have to go around and get a group of people to do some dynamic events. Besides, people will just come and join you if they want to do the event to, you don't even have to group together! And there would be no kill stealing because everyone gets loot and xp evenly so you can't argue that. Also it wouldn't matter if you died anyway, because you would be in a downed mode and could come right back to life by killing a monster or someone reviving you. And even if you have to go back to a waypoint, I'm sure they're pretty close and you only lose a couple coins.
Now I'm sorry, this is kind of mean, but I had to laugh at your last paragraph, you totally controdicted yourself. You say they should do things in a new way like they want to do, but not to do new things? I don't know if that's what you meant by it or not but that's what I got out of it. But seriously, they just said outloud, to the world, what a lot of people were already thinking. They pointed out the negatives of healing, death, static worlds, and they're trying to take those negatives out of their game and test out new ways of doing things, and from what I've heard, it works great.
So really dude, if you don't like what their doing, don't say, hey if I don't like it no one should, and try making it so everyone has to feel mad about the no healing thing. A lot of a lot of people like where the game is going and a few people complaining there isn't a healer isn't going to make Anet alter all their years of work to add in a healing profession. If you don't like it maybe Guild Wars 2 just isn't going to be for you.
To me there seems to be a lot more cons to dedicated healers as opposed to letting everyone heal themselves. I mean really, if everyone can take care of themselves then we can all fight together and do more "damage" because we don't have a spot wasted for someone to heal us.
But if everyone can take care of themselves in a degree that makes them self sufficient in pretty much every situation, then, where's the challenge?
that's what i meant about not wanting to play Diablo 2... there, if you get damaged you guzzle down some major rejuvs and you're good.... your worst enemy is lag... not the mobs...
Dedicated Healer means more intricate team play. period. you have a bunch of people, all with different jobs (tanking, healing, DPS, CC, mana upkeep, etc) and if one person fails, the group fails to some degree... that is a challenging team experience. compare it to any other team activity... say football (the real kind... not the american kind): imagine instead of having a mixed team of Strikers, Keepers, Defence and so on you just had 11 Striker/Keepers who could all do the same stuff.... sure it might be more fun for the individual but it ruins the team experience.... question is what do you value more? PWNz0rizing or teamplay? this is my biggest concern now after giving it some thought.... more "pwnz0r" wannabes running around -.-
It's like an all Meleeheal Warrior Priest Scenario Team in WAR, or an all Paladin Battleground Team in WoW... it's fun for about 3-4 instances because you just frakkin steamroll everything without them having the slightest chance of dropping you.... but then it gets really boring because you realise there's no challenge...
the more i think about this implied system, the more i dislike it...
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To me there seems to be a lot more cons to dedicated healers as opposed to letting everyone heal themselves. I mean really, if everyone can take care of themselves then we can all fight together and do more "damage" because we don't have a spot wasted for someone to heal us.
But if everyone can take care of themselves in a degree that makes them self sufficient in pretty much every situation, then, where's the challenge?
that's what i meant about not wanting to play Diablo 2... there, if you get damaged you guzzle down some major rejuvs and you're good.... your worst enemy is lag... not the mobs...
Dedicated Healer means more intricate team play. period. you have a bunch of people, all with different jobs (tanking, healing, DPS, CC, mana upkeep, etc) and if one person fails, the group fails to some degree... that is a challenging team experience. compare it to any other team activity... say football (the real kind... not the american kind): imagine instead of having a mixed team of Strikers, Keepers, Defence and so on you just had 11 Striker/Keepers who could all do the same stuff.... sure it might be more fun for the individual but it ruins the team experience.... question is what do you value more? PWNz0rizing or teamplay? this is my biggest concern now after giving it some thought.... more "pwnz0r" wannabes running around -.-
It's like an all Meleeheal Warrior Priest Scenario Team in WAR, or an all Paladin Battleground Team in WoW... it's fun for about 3-4 instances because you just frakkin steamroll everything without them having the slightest chance of dropping you.... but then it gets really boring because you realise there's no challenge...
the more i think about this implied system, the more i dislike it...
I get what your trying to say, but your not putting everything into account. First there are levels. Of course higher levels are going to beat a bunch of low levels so there is one challenge. Second, for dynamic events, the more people there are, monsters are buffed up and there are more of them, therefore creating a challenge. It's not like everyone is going to be able to heal themselves to full health instantly. You could have your spell interupted or disabled, it may not even heal you enough. The challenge all comes from what you are fighting. I mean, if your fighting a bunch of low levels on a high level character then yeah that would get boring, but you have to notice that the creatures are made to create a challenge, not to make it easy to blow through. And I see your concern about everybody being "Pwnz0rz" except it's not entirely that way. There will still be like tanks and dps, but there is going to be supporters as well which make up for no healer. So it does make team play. But like I said in my previous post, the pros outweigh the cons, of course you can never get completely rid of cons but you can decrease them.
Some of the misconceptions here are so damn amusing.
1: Stop translating "lack of a DEDICATED healer class" into "there is no place for healing / healers at all". They have already confirmed some classes will be more suited to being specced as a healer if people wish to do so, it is just that no class itself will automatically = healer (eg: priest = healer and nothing else). Also it will not result in "guzzling health potions", as everyone has their own form of healing skills, not reliance on potions.
2: The whole self sufficient thing is being way over dramatized. Nothing they have said alludes to everyone will be able to just run around roflstomping every enemy and there will be no need for grouping. All this means is that everyone will have SOME survivability, not that they will somehow become nearly invincible. Ill use WAR as an example... with the Bright Wizard / Sorc, yeah you can melt faces with ease, but you have practically no survivability in most situations and are nearly useless without having a dedicated healer along with you constantly refilling your HP. The way Arenanet is doing things allows people to focus on their classes intended role (such as dps) while still offering slightly improved survivability in SOME situations, but it will certainly have its limits. For any of you who have actually played the first GW, most, if not all, of the classes already do have some form of self healing but it certainly does not make the game extremely easy. Perhaps a system like this would be absolutely horrible in a game like say WoW or one of its many clones, but the combat mechanics and challenge of mob AI in GW is a whole different animal.
3: Healing is NOT the only form of support. They are focusing more on protection rather than healing (practically the same thing just in a different form). Do you really need to see that HP bar moving up and down constantly to feel useful as a support class? Rather than moving the bar up and down constantly, the protection focus will result more in preventing the HP bar from moving to begin with. You will still be able to combine heals with your protection stuff, but rather than measuring how many HP you restored to know you did a good job, you will be looking at it as "Hey, i stopped everyones HP from dropping below x% by using the right barriers" or "I stopped X number of attacks from even hitting my party"
4: While theyre trying to eliminate the "need" to have certain classes to do things it certainly doesnt mean it wont make things much easier. Think about it, say we get a group together of purely warrior and rangers to run a dungeon or take on a boss. It may be possible to get the job done if the team works pretty well together, but you will likely have some very challenging moments. Now replace one of those warriors or rangers with a class which is focused on protection (or healing if you choose to spec for it) and it will certainly help some of those challenging areas go much more smoothly.
YES! I will so sub this game now. If only Bioware would go this way with SW:TOR, once again I'd have TWO MMO subs at once. Been a long time since that happened....
YES! I will so sub this game now. If only Bioware would go this way with SW:TOR, once again I'd have TWO MMO subs at once. Been a long time since that happened....
There's no subscription for this game, it's buy the game once and play without any monthly fee's.
Some of the misconceptions here are so damn amusing.
1: Stop translating "lack of a DEDICATED healer class" into "there is no place for healing / healers at all". They have already confirmed some classes will be more suited to being specced as a healer if people wish to do so, it is just that no class itself will automatically = healer (eg: priest = healer and nothing else). ....
4: While theyre trying to eliminate the "need" to have certain classes to do things it certainly doesnt mean it wont make things much easier. Think about it, say we get a group together of purely warrior and rangers to run a dungeon or take on a boss. It may be possible to get the job done if the team works pretty well together, but you will likely have some very challenging moments. Now replace one of those warriors or rangers with a class which is focused on protection (or healing if you choose to spec for it) and it will certainly help some of those challenging areas go much more smoothly.
Meaning the game will end up like all the others promising to do away with the holy trinity and let players choose to build/spec their characters however they like, as the game trumpets in PR releases, but meanwhile the players will see the advantage and it will quickly become a need.
I mean, you don't 'need' to be healing specced in WoW to play a priest, right? Sure, you don't, good luck getting in on tough content though.
And I appreciate your fighting hyperbole with hyperbole, but you're acting like GW2 is going to be the first game ever where healing classes could do anything but heal. Umm, newsflash, even the the most rigid, limiting game, the grandaddy that started all this holy-trinity you-must-heal-and-only-heal madness of EQretro, you could still do a lot of extra stuff as a cleric and weren't forced into only healing. I knew clerics that tanked, pulled, CC, and even soloed pretty well. If you wanted, you could flip the script and weren't forced to just stand there healing. The thing is, when a class can do something better than others, especially healing, players expect heals, and tough content (almost always) demands healing, meaning there is then very much an expectation boarding on 'need' from the players for a healer to be a healer.
So, we won't see a 'full group ready to go waiting on a healer' and instead 'full group ready to go waiting on someone whose specced for healing but may not necessarily be a 'healer' per se since GW2 just revolutionized the genre' or worse 'full group of people who could heal but won't waiting on someone just as capable in healing but whose actully willing to.'
I prefer to just keep the roles mostly defined by the devs and game, if nothing else then people don't get confused as to what they should and shouldn't be doing in a group. :P
So again, I don't get the point in them pimping the fact they're killing the holy trinity. It sounds like a bunch of PR to me, because they aren't killing it. They're just using the fact they've spread around 'support' roles as a reason to pretend they've reinvented the wheel. Meanwhile, why can't devs just make FUN archtypes that people enjoy playing and avoid all the spin? Talk up revolutionizing the wheel and people are going to be disappointed when they see it's still just using the same old tried and true circle technology.
I don't blame them, though. It's a great angle to get to talk their game up, and as we see people are already filling their eyes with caramel covered dreams of a game like no other... do we really think it'll be THAT different, though?
Sure, on paper the idea of not needing to sit around looking for a healer before the 'fun' can start is a good idea, but in practice it often just waters down the game and makes it pew pew zerg, and then when someone dies there's nobody to blame but the person that didn't heal themselves. Path of least resistance. In games with the 'necessary' elements players were forced to step their game up, in a sense, and sure it might now seem as fun when you're sitting around discussing it on message boards, but the actual outcome of such systems are more rewarding and keep players more engaged, which translates into more people playing for longer.
I don't know how it'll exactly be in GW2, but I can tell you that it was not the case for GW: there were a lot of different and deep team setups besides trinity, and teams that managed to work together effectively could meet challenges that non-thinking pug's could not.
You forget the most basic thing: challenge in combat is something that can be determined and finetuned by the designers, and if they do it well, then people have to get their act together and step up to overcome the challenge, no matter if their team setup is trinity or something else. In GW ANet did a good thing in balancing the challenge in fights.
I go even farther and say that GW had the most complex (yet easy to step into), tactical and thus deep team combat possibilities that I've seen in any MMO, and it beat the other Trinity-based team combat of other MMO's as easy as pie. You had much more different - working and successful - team configurations than you'll ever see in any other MMO where trinity based combat is the core.
Team combat in GW, PvE and definitely PvP, was a thinking man's game.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
4: While theyre trying to eliminate the "need" to have certain classes to do things it certainly doesnt mean it wont make things much easier. Think about it, say we get a group together of purely warrior and rangers to run a dungeon or take on a boss. It may be possible to get the job done if the team works pretty well together, but you will likely have some very challenging moments. Now replace one of those warriors or rangers with a class which is focused on protection (or healing if you choose to spec for it) and it will certainly help some of those challenging areas go much more smoothly.
This is honestly one of the reasons I am so interested in this game. In every other MMO I have played, you needed certain classes to complete an activity (eg. Instance). There is no way in WoW that you could run a dungeon with just warriors and hunters.
Sure it is going to be much easier in GW2 to bring a support specced class but the fact is that we won't NEED to. This provides so much flexibility. If people want a challenge they can go with whatever is at hand. Friends can play together without having to worry about someone HAVING to be support specced whether that is their preferred playsyle or not.
Sure some people will call you an idiot if you decide to do an instance without a support specced class. But MMOs are about choice, about playing how you like and having fun in your own way. My most memorable moments in any MMO have come from those extremely challenging moments, not all of which we triumphed in. If GW2 can provide players with challenge, if they choose it, then I can see it being an extremely popular game, especially with that part of the MMO populace that has been alienated by the devolution of games to lower the skill level to the easiest mode possible.
I have no idea whether Arenanet will pull this off. I certainly hope they do because this alone will guarantee my purchase of the game.
I personally believe damage is the currency of combat in MMORPGs, and the best way to deal with that IS by having classes that can heal a lot. Because if an encounter doesn't require a lot of healing, it typiclly isn't very challenging since damage is the way things die in these games, ya know? And just because a class is a healer, doesn't mean it has to be boring (like EQretro) or forced into only certain specs players may not enjoy (like WoW).
I mean, what are they going to do to make the game not require a lot of healing, turn it into a puzzle game? The mobs do little damage, but if you don't activate the right combos in a certain order they don't die? Heh, sounds almost fun on paper, until you're sitting around for hours waiting for one person in a combo puzzle to get online. I know, I know, there will be other ways to mitigate the healing... which imo will again lead to unchallenging content or the same must-wait-for-soandso situation they're claiming to do away with.
That's my main concern. Want to do things a new way? Then just do it.... but instead they're playing right into everyone's hopes and expectations by declaring the negative things about the 'old way' to be dead. Spinning the PR that they're doing things DIFFERENTLY. Psht, right.
You're being unimaginative. The fact that you can't see a way how team combat can be engaging and challenging without a healer role doesn't mean that other people like the ANet designers haven't thought of ways. Isn't it a bit arrogant to think that the things that you can think of are the limit of what is possible in MMO's?
In fact, in some ways ANet already has done away with healers and trinity team combat: everyone who has played Guild Wars extensively, also in the arenas, has seen the very different team setups that were possible and successful. Trinity team configuration was only 1 in dozens and dozens of team configurations that you could encounter.
That's why when I read the article about getting rid of the healer role and putting the focus on proactive support instead reactive support as healing is, I knew immediately what they meant: because in some ways I've already seen it in GW, in the works of earth elementalists and protection monks, where damage protection and deflection plays a far larger role.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
They are not suggesting that there will be all dps classes (ie the monk will now be dps or there will be no monk) or that every class will be good at every aspect, as some have stated. People referencing other games where priests have pretty lame dps abilities that aren't viable specs/builds this is not comparable to what they are saying either. Reading between the lines and being a long time GW1 player, what they are getting at is replacing healing with protting. If you haven't played GW1 there is really no other game that has replicated this experience as perfectly. Protting in GW1 is way more fun than healing in that game or any other. You are still going to need a class to complete missions, etc. as others have said a team of all rangers and warriors will probably still struggle. This is just a different spin on healing most likely. Personally I'm cool with that, as I said before protting is a blast. I play healers in every game and all they ever do is cast heals, buff, remove curses/ailments, do terrible dps, and that gets boring. Protting in GW1 fashion is quite different. On the pve side a prot monk in GW1 could solo almost every boss in the game with a 55 hp build (this may not be viable now I haven't played in a while). At the same time a prot monk could be invaluable in pvp. Certainly, there are people that won't agree with me and will argue just for arguments sake. GW2 is not going to reinvent the wheel and is not claiming to do so. They are just providing a fresh spin on an old mechanic (holy trinity). Classes will still probably need certain specs to heal - think of the Elementalists "healing rain" - they are most likely going to have to spec water in order to cast that spell and have it be worthwhile.
So don't get on the hype train and believe they are demolishing the holy trinity all together. On the other hand don't hop on the hater train and decide this will just be exactly the same or that it will be a system of every class is good at everything. Both sides are reading too much into the statements made.
In fact, in some ways ANet already has done away with healers and trinity team combat: everyone who has played Guild Wars extensively, also in the arenas, has seen the very different team setups that were possible and successful. Trinity team configuration was only 1 in dozens and dozens of team configurations that you could encounter.
That's why when I read the article about getting rid of the healer role and putting the focus on proactive support instead reactive support as healing is, I knew immediately what they meant: because in some ways I've already seen it in GW, in the works of earth elementalists and protection monks, where damage protection and deflection plays a far larger role.
Sadly I have never played GW but from my time in WoW I felt like I gained an understanding of what they were talking about. Not in PvE obviously, but in PvP definitely. I played a Prot Warrior for 4 years and towards the end of my time they gave a Prot Warrior self heals. I specced and geared my guy out for solo survivability in PvP and surprised a hell of a lot of opponents with my staying power. My spec was unusual and unsuited to certain styles of play but in solo PvP (where I most often found myself) it allowed me to be victorious when I probably should not have been, mostly due to my opponents not reacting correctly, having not experienced what I was doing before. That ability to choose to be different was an important factor in me playing, it provided so much fun. With GW2 it seems like every class will be able to experience this kind of fun, what's not to love about that.
I envision GW2 to be close to this playstyle, where survivability and mitigating or avoiding damage is at the core of the combat rather than the bouncing health bar style of current MMOs. Proactive play is always better than reactive. Playing a Disc priest in WoW was a hell of a lot more fun than holy, simply because mitigating with shields and other skills was a big part of that style - it was proactive and it made you feel like you had the control.
In fact, in some ways ANet already has done away with healers and trinity team combat: everyone who has played Guild Wars extensively, also in the arenas, has seen the very different team setups that were possible and successful. Trinity team configuration was only 1 in dozens and dozens of team configurations that you could encounter.
That's why when I read the article about getting rid of the healer role and putting the focus on proactive support instead reactive support as healing is, I knew immediately what they meant: because in some ways I've already seen it in GW, in the works of earth elementalists and protection monks, where damage protection and deflection plays a far larger role.
Sadly I have never played GW but from my time in WoW I felt like I gained an understanding of what they were talking about. Not in PvE obviously, but in PvP definitely. I played a Prot Warrior for 4 years and towards the end of my time they gave a Prot Warrior self heals. I specced and geared my guy out for solo survivability in PvP and surprised a hell of a lot of opponents with my staying power. My spec was unusual and unsuited to certain styles of play but in solo PvP (where I most often found myself) it allowed me to be victorious when I probably should not have been, mostly due to my opponents not reacting correctly, having not experienced what I was doing before. That ability to choose to be different was an important factor in me playing, it provided so much fun. With GW2 it seems like every class will be able to experience this kind of fun, what's not to love about that.
I envision GW2 to be close to this playstyle, where survivability and mitigating or avoiding damage is at the core of the combat rather than the bouncing health bar style of current MMOs. Proactive play is always better than reactive. Playing a Disc priest in WoW was a hell of a lot more fun than holy, simply because mitigating with shields and other skills was a big part of that style - it was proactive and it made you feel like you had the control.
100% agree with you on a bunch of this. The game is allowing you to use various builds and playstyles without limiting you (at least not as much) to the NEED to play a particular way or perform a certain role. We will actually be able to play around with and have some fun with our classes and all of our options, and create some unique and surprising builds which dont rely on the standard trinity setup.
This is going to be a huge factor for me in enjoying PvP. Sort of like in WAR, with WPs and DoKs, I had options. I could spec for healing, for dps, or a hybrid/lifetap build. All of those were very useful in various ways without making the others useless.
Isn't it a bit arrogant to think that the things that you can think of are the limit of what is possible in MMO's?[/quote]
Every professions have one a skill slot for healing. If you try to make an elementalist or other professions a healer, I think that healer will be very inefficient. The heal will be too little and too long recharge. They want the players to be more aware of the damage from enemies to yourself and teammates. Just as it is now in GW1 GvG.
Comments
You want a tough death penalty? Anyone remember Baldur's gate? Critical hit with a few hit points left, NPC jibbed and removed from the game. Now just make THAT for a Player Character, in PvE or PvP, and see tears for death at level umpty ump! ;-) Whole new respect for Assasins, eh!
Seriously, I like the idea of scrapping the Trinity. I've been playing these games since Gruds in Space and there's not much new that's come out, other than ways to make us part with our money.
I'm comfortable sticking up for Anet in these regards, because unlike some people who claim that the 'community' of GW isn't on the par of what they are used to, I can promise you that it is the only game as a player that I know if I had a complaint or problem, I had the name of the Community Liason, and knew if there was a gameplay issue, that the devs were going to hear about it.
As far as the community of players, to me I see no difference between them and any other, most are helpful, some are mean, others rude. Oh yeah, thankfully due to instancing, they couldn't grief you or PK you. But those days of safety are over once this game releases, so hopefully, let the fun begin!
I think what he was referring to with the Diablo 2 mention was when did you ever have to rely on any form of dedicated healer to get through tough battles? You didn't need them, but there was still plenty of working as a group while keeping yourself alive instead.
As to the rest of the post, you seem to either be forgetting about or havent read up on things like the Dynamic Event System as well as the scaling in PvE. The more people in the area the tougher and more numerous the mobs will get so people will still need to work together to accomplish things rather than just soloing their way through when others are around. As for the zerg effect... again, scaling content so bigger zerg = tougher battles.
The thing people don't understand is that a "healer" is not the only form of support, and as was mentioned about Diablo 2, people made use of Paladin Auras for protection to prevent / lower damage in the first place, rather than its healing aspects, and GW is using a somewhat similar formula. Its all about PREVENTING damage, not sitting there staring at health bars to keep them full. It will require a more active role in combat from the support classes and allow them to sway the battle by using the proper defenses and tactics for every situation rather than spamming a heal or 2 over and over and over again.
I think you need to just reed how they plan on doing with playing with differrent people; here is one of the things they have talked about.
It's very important that professions in an MMO have interesting ways to interact with each other. In the past this has mostly been limited to healing and buffing teammates and managing agro in combat. We wanted to expand considerably upon the types of teamwork available to our players. With this in mind, we've implemented a system of cross-profession combinations.
A warrior and an elementalist playing together could combine their abilities in several different ways. The elementalist could drop down Static Field, which is an area-targeted lightning effect. A warrior who fires a rifle bullet through the static field would cause his shot to be charged up with electricity, inflicting additional damage. If that didn't suit their style, then the elementalist might drop a Wall of Fire in front of a group of enemies. The warrior could enter the firewall and use Cyclone Axe, an attack which causes him to spin rapidly, sending the firewall outward and hitting his foes. There are literally hundreds of combinations for players to discover.
And here is their answer to why they got rid of a dedicated healer.
Q: Many people enjoyed playing a healer/support class in Guild Wars. Many people who played Monks are really disappointed by the news that there will be no healing or protection class in Guild Wars 2. In what way will Guild Wars 2 fulfill a former Monk’s desire to have those same roles in the sequel?
A: We think that monk and healer players don’t really care about the exact mechanics of their profession, but rather care about how that profession feels. Is it more important that the monk sit in the backline and watch health bars go up and down? Or is it more important that they feel like they are supporting their teammates and can occasionally save the day through judicious application of their skills and abilities? We wanted Guild Wars 2 to be a more active game, and therefore we made the support characters in the game a lot more active as well. This really goes beyond healers. Everyone in Guild Wars 2 takes a more active role in combat, and this goes a long way towards providing memorable combat experiences to everyone, as often as we can. Tactics are determined by choices you make in combat, not choices you make at character creation.
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"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
No, I understand what they're trying to do. Every class will be able to heal themselves. Everyone will be self-sufficient to an extent. Sure, you might want an elementalist to create a firewall, but is it going to be necessary? Probably not 'necessary,' which means in most average groups why bother? People by nature, especially in pickup groups, will take the path of least resistance. If content is too 'hard' then people complain certain elements are 'necessary' to succeed. And if the game isn't providing an avenue for that necessity, then imo that means the game by and large won't be challenging (or more likely will offer the opportunity for players to not challenge themselves).
Sure, on paper the idea of not needing to sit around looking for a healer before the 'fun' can start is a good idea, but in practice it often just waters down the game and makes it pew pew zerg, and then when someone dies there's nobody to blame but the person that didn't heal themselves. Path of least resistance. In games with the 'necessary' elements players were forced to step their game up, in a sense, and sure it might now seem as fun when you're sitting around discussing it on message boards, but the actual outcome of such systems are more rewarding and keep players more engaged, which translates into more people playing for longer.
It's like the arguments people make that they want games to be more casual, so they can log in for a few hours and have some fun then log off. Sure, great on paper, but terrible for a game as that means people can also NOT log in just as easily. Same with this idea of doing away with traditional roles and their necessity. Great on paper, but in practice I think they'll find the game plagued with fact that if it's easy to get a group together and just have fun, then it's also just as easy to leave the group, and it's just as easy to not log in anymore.
I know, it makes no sense in a way. But psychology 101 (or a great book The Art of Seduction) quickly shows people don't keep coming back for more if they're always given what they want. They get bored, and whether the know it or admit it, leave and go try to find something more challenging. But, maybe it won't matter... maybe they'll just make a fun game that people can enjoy for a spell before moving on. There's nothing wrong with that, though many gamers are getting sick of that sort of 'depth' in a mmorpg and are hoping for something that sinks the hooks in a bit deeper, something worthy of time and effort trying to master. Minority, I'm sure, but there's an argument for having a dedicated minority rather than a fleeting majority.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
I understand.
I've also played enough games, and wasted enough brain-power thinking about things that are pointless like group dynamics in online games and player pschology.
I get it. One player can start a fire and others can shoot through it for flaming bullets. The operative word is CAN. This doesn't HAVE to happen for success, and I bet well oiled groups that do manage all the extras will only find a benefit of killing a little faster. Is it going to be needed? Nah, probably not. Which means I'll stake my life on the fact that the content won't require such interdependancy. If it did we'd be in a situation where instead of looking for a healer all night, groups would sit around looking for elementalists who can start fires, and the game devs would just be a bunch of hypocrites.
What's that mean? Imo it means content is going to be bland and unchallenging, able to be done by average groups of self-sufficient individuals teamed up for 'fun' for a few hours. This isn't bad, I suppose, but it's not the kind of game most people I know are looking for, and is the kind of game that keeps failing over and over.
Yeah, resistance and challenge isn't popular when one asks the players. But you know what, that's why most psychologists don't reveal their methods to their patient. That's why most great bosses don't let the employees decide policy. Why? Because people want it easy, and most people aren't capable of realizing that 'easy' isn't at all what people truly want deep down. People may say they want a fun, few-hours-a-night heal-yourself sort of game, but that's not what keeps people coming back.
This is why so many people are in bad relationships. Give someone an easy relationship where they don't have to struggle and they get bored. Human nature, unfortunately. And those who understand human nature the most realize you never, ever let the lay-person dictate their own rules. And I fear that's what GW2 will end up being. Like so many other games recently they'll bow to the public demands... but if the general gamers knew wtf they were talking about, THEY'D be dev-gods.... It's like letting the patients dictate their own doses of meds... sure, you want want want, but you don't really have a clue, and meanwhile devs caving under the pressure keeps produce shit-tastic games that nobody wants to play... and then we all sit around and wonder why.
This is all just one aspect, though. I'm hope the GW2 devs are smart enough to provide SOME challenge and resistance somewhere, even if it's the artificial endless-gear-hampster-wheel like WoW. I hope it will be something more enlightened, but we'll see.
In conclusion..... naarrrffff
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
You seem to be operating under this assumption that Arenanet's only choice will be to make things too easy ultimatly. I have to ask, why? One of there design philosophy's from back in the original GW was that the game progression of a player would be based on there skill, not lvl. They were attempting to make a game that if you quite simply couldnt get past more challenging content, you flat out wouldnt until you got better as a player. I played GW for at least 3 yrs and i still never got passed everything the game had to offer. There was just too much content and some of it may have in fact been above my skill. That being said i was quite proud of how far through the game i did manage to achieve. I never felt flat out discouraged as i felt that the game was making me a better player all the time.
In GW2 why wouldnt the scaling difficulty reach a point where in order to win you would have to take full advantage of comboing skills (ala chrono trigger)? With the way the scaling works, zerging may in fact make the difficulty alot harder after a certain number of players enter the fray. Sure we can use combo attacks which seem to give us a huge advantage, but whats to say the enemies wont be able to do the same? Its not as though the AI in GW1 was anywhere near as retarded as the AI in every other mmo. Hardly seems that enemy AI in GW2 couldnt be sufficiently advanced to be challenging.
I was only using D2 for illustration's sake. Its pretty obvious that GW2 isnt D2. But since i made the mistake of using chrono trigger in my previous paragraph to illustrate an example of cross class combination attacks, your probably going to now start assuming that GW2 is going to be Chrono Trigger. If you dont want your MMO to be anything like D2, than may i suggest not playing any game with lvl based progresssion, or skill trees, or classes, or loot, or mobs, or bosses, etc. Point is, almost all MMO's are like D2 already. For alot of people D2 was the gateway to MMO's.
Not sure what to think about this feature... the bleed out thing sounds a lot like L4D
I hope it's more...
Thing is a lot of people including me, like the tank/heal/dps thing (for me add /CC/buffsupport ), because they/ me actually enjoy tanking or healing or being a supporter.... yeah yeah they said something about support capabilities and I'm interested to see how it turns out but I'm still not too psyced about this...
no heal/tank classes always kind of sounds like healthpotion guzzling hack'n'slasher games... and that's not what I'm looking for... with all the spammable AoE abilities it does in fact look more and more like Diablo... not sure if that's the MMO revolution we need... after all there is already an entire genre that focuses on hack'n'slay..... hackn'n'slay
also, their Monk class was pretty frakkin awesome as far as healer classes go... and combined with a caster class it was pretty damn rich and fun to play.... really don't get the whole "healing is boring" talk....
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H>
An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots!
www.stealth-industries.de
Repeat after me, WOW killer! WOW killer !! WOW killer !!!
On paper the game looks almost to perfect...
But i will not judge it before i playtested it, i have learned that lesson well, playtestig/hands on is the only way to get a good opinion of a game. I can only advise everyone to not jump to conclusions about weather the game will fail or succeed, some things are so much different then any other MMO (Even GW 1) thats allmost impossible to have an opinion on that without playtesting it.
I have high hopes tough this might be the game we all/many of us where waiting for, tough i also see that Arena nets PR is almost to perfect to be true. while i have seen some hyping, never was it this good. Its sometimes almost like they can see inside my head what i want and then write that down in blogs and articles...
There are so many things tough we do not yet know, nothing knowing about the crafting system is one of them. Not knowing how many skills each class will have... if classes have like 50 skills to choose from it will be an awesome lot for a game at release, espescially combined with the 100+ traits. There is nothing known about the influence from armor on the PvE part of the game... i think it might hold the middle between the orriginal game and Vanilla WoW, How will dungeons play. So many questions left. How are they planning to expand the game after release.
its fun to see people say nay to the game based on one or two aspects of the game without knowing how other parts of the game will influence these (for them seen as) negatives of the game.
So when i playtest a game i try not to compare it to any other game (which is extremely hard) but i try to judge it on my ingame experiences and the whole package... Your experience after 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours, 3 days 1 week, 1 month 6 months may be different from time to time... and if only one of those moments feels negative people will be tempted to leave the game without giving it much tought.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Damage is the currency of combat in MMORPG's (and plenty of other games, of course). We all know other games have been slammed for handling this fact by having healing classes that do nothing but heal, and are required to heal a lot. It's dangerous to claim a game has done away with the tedium of waiting around for 'needed' classes like healers. Either the game has reduced the 'cost' of challenging content by simply making content generally not as challenging, thus requiring less healing. Or they've spread the cost around.
It sounds like their idea is to want to spread the cost around, but imo that doesn't mean what they've claimed that they did away with the tedium of looking for a healer for hours before the fun starts. That's just PR, people. That's exactly what many players want to be told, but that doesn't mean they've eliminated the aw-shucks-we-can't-do-that-content-until-soandso-logs-in. Whether it's a specific class, or someone's skill (or a combo of both, preferably), the fact is content will either be unchallenging or there will be some level of waiting around for 'needed' whatever before getting started. And guess what, just about every holy-trinity game ever still had the option of doing other things until the 'needed' whomever finally logged in.
Content scaling to how many people are in the zone is another idea that players look to and say 'finally, the revolution has come.' It's another area that sounds great, but we should probably wait for how it plays out in practice before declaring GW2 the next saviour. I mean, what happens when content is then hard enough people start being 'required' to play certain ways, or use certain skills... then suddenly the claims GW2 will be doing away with that un-fun stuff sorta looks bad. Or what happens when guilds are in a zone/area doing something, and another guild comes in to up the player count to make content harder as a form of griefing. Or simply on a smaller scale one group asks another group they perceive as not helping enough to leave the area since they're making encounters harder than they are helping.
keep in mind, before more assertions come in, I'm speaking hypothetically in general. I'm not making any claims of doom, just like others shouldn't yet make claims of glory. The simple fact is we have a lot of ideas on paper, and before I buy a game I'm going to think through whether those ideas and systems are going to work and how. Sorry if this ruins anyone's day.
I personally believe damage is the currency of combat in MMORPGs, and the best way to deal with that IS by having classes that can heal a lot. Because if an encounter doesn't require a lot of healing, it typiclly isn't very challenging since damage is the way things die in these games, ya know? And just because a class is a healer, doesn't mean it has to be boring (like EQretro) or forced into only certain specs players may not enjoy (like WoW). Vanguard, sadly, is the perfect example. Every healing class could hold their own to varying degrees in various situations, and do so a variety of ways. All while having plenty of 'other' things to do in combat. I dunno, but when a game ends up having less vision and innovation than Vanguard, the steaming pile it was at release, then I worry.
I mean, what are they going to do to make the game not require a lot of healing, turn it into a puzzle game? The mobs do little damage, but if you don't activate the right combos in a certain order they don't die? Heh, sounds almost fun on paper, until you're sitting around for hours waiting for one person in a combo puzzle to get online. I know, I know, there will be other ways to mitigate the healing... which imo will again lead to unchallenging content or the same must-wait-for-soandso situation they're claiming to do away with.
That's my main concern. Want to do things a new way? Then just do it.... but instead they're playing right into everyone's hopes and expectations by declaring the negative things about the 'old way' to be dead. Spinning the PR that they're doing things DIFFERENTLY. Psht, right.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Talk about pessimism...
I have to agree with you that damage is pretty much currency in combat because that's really the whole point of combat. But I have to disagree with the part about "needing" a healer class. Personally, in most games that involve a dedicated healer I really have no fun. I always have to have a healer with me, whether I like it or not, sometimes I kind of want to take care of myself instead of somebody doing it for me. I'm sure a lot of people would enjoy being self-sufficient, I know I would. Now take ummm, say runescape for example. Yes a lot of people hate the game and I do too but that's not the point, the point is that game has no dedicated healer, actually I don't think there is a healing other mechanic anyway. But what I'm trying to get at is that the characters are self-sufficient and can take care of themselves and keep themselves alive instead of stressing out their teammates if they do a bad job healing or they constantly die because they couldn't get a healer. I'm sorry but it's not fun for the people that don't play as dedicated healers because they can't do things themselves and you have to be with someone, even if you don't want to be with someone. To me there seems to be a lot more cons to dedicated healers as opposed to letting everyone heal themselves. I mean really, if everyone can take care of themselves then we can all fight together and do more "damage" because we don't have a spot wasted for someone to heal us.
Now to give an obvious anwser to the question you had about what they are going to do instead of a healer, and if you read you would notice they replaced healer with supporter. So instead of having your health bar go up and down and up again, making you stress out whether you might die or not, someone will be protecting you so your healthbar would stay at a more constant level and relieve the stress about dieing.
Now onto the subject of greifing, heh, how many time has it been said on their interviews and their blogs and on the website itself that if they find someway to grief a dynamic event or manipulate it or make it unfair they remove it? All the time. I mean they aren't retarded, they know that if people ruin the fun of it people will complain that the company did a bad job and they'd get bad reviews and probably not sell many copies of the game, therefore they wouldn't make any profit and it would all go downhill from there.
The thing about content being too hard isn't going to be a problem, because it doesn't matter! If you alone or a group of people lose an event, your still getting rewarded, it's not going to be like, "You Lost! Now go back home and try again!". If you have read the articles then you would know that the quests aren't in the old fashioned sense and your not going to have to go around and get a group of people to do some dynamic events. Besides, people will just come and join you if they want to do the event to, you don't even have to group together! And there would be no kill stealing because everyone gets loot and xp evenly so you can't argue that. Also it wouldn't matter if you died anyway, because you would be in a downed mode and could come right back to life by killing a monster or someone reviving you. And even if you have to go back to a waypoint, I'm sure they're pretty close and you only lose a couple coins.
Now I'm sorry, this is kind of mean, but I had to laugh at your last paragraph, you totally controdicted yourself. You say they should do things in a new way like they want to do, but not to do new things? I don't know if that's what you meant by it or not but that's what I got out of it. But seriously, they just said outloud, to the world, what a lot of people were already thinking. They pointed out the negatives of healing, death, static worlds, and they're trying to take those negatives out of their game and test out new ways of doing things, and from what I've heard, it works great.
So really dude, if you don't like what their doing, don't say, hey if I don't like it no one should, and try making it so everyone has to feel mad about the no healing thing. A lot of a lot of people like where the game is going and a few people complaining there isn't a healer isn't going to make Anet alter all their years of work to add in a healing profession. If you don't like it maybe Guild Wars 2 just isn't going to be for you.
But if everyone can take care of themselves in a degree that makes them self sufficient in pretty much every situation, then, where's the challenge?
that's what i meant about not wanting to play Diablo 2... there, if you get damaged you guzzle down some major rejuvs and you're good.... your worst enemy is lag... not the mobs...
Dedicated Healer means more intricate team play. period. you have a bunch of people, all with different jobs (tanking, healing, DPS, CC, mana upkeep, etc) and if one person fails, the group fails to some degree... that is a challenging team experience. compare it to any other team activity... say football (the real kind... not the american kind): imagine instead of having a mixed team of Strikers, Keepers, Defence and so on you just had 11 Striker/Keepers who could all do the same stuff.... sure it might be more fun for the individual but it ruins the team experience.... question is what do you value more? PWNz0rizing or teamplay? this is my biggest concern now after giving it some thought.... more "pwnz0r" wannabes running around -.-
It's like an all Meleeheal Warrior Priest Scenario Team in WAR, or an all Paladin Battleground Team in WoW... it's fun for about 3-4 instances because you just frakkin steamroll everything without them having the slightest chance of dropping you.... but then it gets really boring because you realise there's no challenge...
the more i think about this implied system, the more i dislike it...
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H>
An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots!
www.stealth-industries.de
I get what your trying to say, but your not putting everything into account. First there are levels. Of course higher levels are going to beat a bunch of low levels so there is one challenge. Second, for dynamic events, the more people there are, monsters are buffed up and there are more of them, therefore creating a challenge. It's not like everyone is going to be able to heal themselves to full health instantly. You could have your spell interupted or disabled, it may not even heal you enough. The challenge all comes from what you are fighting. I mean, if your fighting a bunch of low levels on a high level character then yeah that would get boring, but you have to notice that the creatures are made to create a challenge, not to make it easy to blow through. And I see your concern about everybody being "Pwnz0rz" except it's not entirely that way. There will still be like tanks and dps, but there is going to be supporters as well which make up for no healer. So it does make team play. But like I said in my previous post, the pros outweigh the cons, of course you can never get completely rid of cons but you can decrease them.
Some of the misconceptions here are so damn amusing.
1: Stop translating "lack of a DEDICATED healer class" into "there is no place for healing / healers at all". They have already confirmed some classes will be more suited to being specced as a healer if people wish to do so, it is just that no class itself will automatically = healer (eg: priest = healer and nothing else). Also it will not result in "guzzling health potions", as everyone has their own form of healing skills, not reliance on potions.
2: The whole self sufficient thing is being way over dramatized. Nothing they have said alludes to everyone will be able to just run around roflstomping every enemy and there will be no need for grouping. All this means is that everyone will have SOME survivability, not that they will somehow become nearly invincible. Ill use WAR as an example... with the Bright Wizard / Sorc, yeah you can melt faces with ease, but you have practically no survivability in most situations and are nearly useless without having a dedicated healer along with you constantly refilling your HP. The way Arenanet is doing things allows people to focus on their classes intended role (such as dps) while still offering slightly improved survivability in SOME situations, but it will certainly have its limits. For any of you who have actually played the first GW, most, if not all, of the classes already do have some form of self healing but it certainly does not make the game extremely easy. Perhaps a system like this would be absolutely horrible in a game like say WoW or one of its many clones, but the combat mechanics and challenge of mob AI in GW is a whole different animal.
3: Healing is NOT the only form of support. They are focusing more on protection rather than healing (practically the same thing just in a different form). Do you really need to see that HP bar moving up and down constantly to feel useful as a support class? Rather than moving the bar up and down constantly, the protection focus will result more in preventing the HP bar from moving to begin with. You will still be able to combine heals with your protection stuff, but rather than measuring how many HP you restored to know you did a good job, you will be looking at it as "Hey, i stopped everyones HP from dropping below x% by using the right barriers" or "I stopped X number of attacks from even hitting my party"
4: While theyre trying to eliminate the "need" to have certain classes to do things it certainly doesnt mean it wont make things much easier. Think about it, say we get a group together of purely warrior and rangers to run a dungeon or take on a boss. It may be possible to get the job done if the team works pretty well together, but you will likely have some very challenging moments. Now replace one of those warriors or rangers with a class which is focused on protection (or healing if you choose to spec for it) and it will certainly help some of those challenging areas go much more smoothly.
YES! I will so sub this game now. If only Bioware would go this way with SW:TOR, once again I'd have TWO MMO subs at once. Been a long time since that happened....
There's no subscription for this game, it's buy the game once and play without any monthly fee's.
Meaning the game will end up like all the others promising to do away with the holy trinity and let players choose to build/spec their characters however they like, as the game trumpets in PR releases, but meanwhile the players will see the advantage and it will quickly become a need.
I mean, you don't 'need' to be healing specced in WoW to play a priest, right? Sure, you don't, good luck getting in on tough content though.
And I appreciate your fighting hyperbole with hyperbole, but you're acting like GW2 is going to be the first game ever where healing classes could do anything but heal. Umm, newsflash, even the the most rigid, limiting game, the grandaddy that started all this holy-trinity you-must-heal-and-only-heal madness of EQretro, you could still do a lot of extra stuff as a cleric and weren't forced into only healing. I knew clerics that tanked, pulled, CC, and even soloed pretty well. If you wanted, you could flip the script and weren't forced to just stand there healing. The thing is, when a class can do something better than others, especially healing, players expect heals, and tough content (almost always) demands healing, meaning there is then very much an expectation boarding on 'need' from the players for a healer to be a healer.
So, we won't see a 'full group ready to go waiting on a healer' and instead 'full group ready to go waiting on someone whose specced for healing but may not necessarily be a 'healer' per se since GW2 just revolutionized the genre' or worse 'full group of people who could heal but won't waiting on someone just as capable in healing but whose actully willing to.'
I prefer to just keep the roles mostly defined by the devs and game, if nothing else then people don't get confused as to what they should and shouldn't be doing in a group. :P
So again, I don't get the point in them pimping the fact they're killing the holy trinity. It sounds like a bunch of PR to me, because they aren't killing it. They're just using the fact they've spread around 'support' roles as a reason to pretend they've reinvented the wheel. Meanwhile, why can't devs just make FUN archtypes that people enjoy playing and avoid all the spin? Talk up revolutionizing the wheel and people are going to be disappointed when they see it's still just using the same old tried and true circle technology.
I don't blame them, though. It's a great angle to get to talk their game up, and as we see people are already filling their eyes with caramel covered dreams of a game like no other... do we really think it'll be THAT different, though?
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
I don't know how it'll exactly be in GW2, but I can tell you that it was not the case for GW: there were a lot of different and deep team setups besides trinity, and teams that managed to work together effectively could meet challenges that non-thinking pug's could not.
You forget the most basic thing: challenge in combat is something that can be determined and finetuned by the designers, and if they do it well, then people have to get their act together and step up to overcome the challenge, no matter if their team setup is trinity or something else. In GW ANet did a good thing in balancing the challenge in fights.
I go even farther and say that GW had the most complex (yet easy to step into), tactical and thus deep team combat possibilities that I've seen in any MMO, and it beat the other Trinity-based team combat of other MMO's as easy as pie. You had much more different - working and successful - team configurations than you'll ever see in any other MMO where trinity based combat is the core.
Team combat in GW, PvE and definitely PvP, was a thinking man's game.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
This is honestly one of the reasons I am so interested in this game. In every other MMO I have played, you needed certain classes to complete an activity (eg. Instance). There is no way in WoW that you could run a dungeon with just warriors and hunters.
Sure it is going to be much easier in GW2 to bring a support specced class but the fact is that we won't NEED to. This provides so much flexibility. If people want a challenge they can go with whatever is at hand. Friends can play together without having to worry about someone HAVING to be support specced whether that is their preferred playsyle or not.
Sure some people will call you an idiot if you decide to do an instance without a support specced class. But MMOs are about choice, about playing how you like and having fun in your own way. My most memorable moments in any MMO have come from those extremely challenging moments, not all of which we triumphed in. If GW2 can provide players with challenge, if they choose it, then I can see it being an extremely popular game, especially with that part of the MMO populace that has been alienated by the devolution of games to lower the skill level to the easiest mode possible.
I have no idea whether Arenanet will pull this off. I certainly hope they do because this alone will guarantee my purchase of the game.
You're being unimaginative. The fact that you can't see a way how team combat can be engaging and challenging without a healer role doesn't mean that other people like the ANet designers haven't thought of ways. Isn't it a bit arrogant to think that the things that you can think of are the limit of what is possible in MMO's?
In fact, in some ways ANet already has done away with healers and trinity team combat: everyone who has played Guild Wars extensively, also in the arenas, has seen the very different team setups that were possible and successful. Trinity team configuration was only 1 in dozens and dozens of team configurations that you could encounter.
That's why when I read the article about getting rid of the healer role and putting the focus on proactive support instead reactive support as healing is, I knew immediately what they meant: because in some ways I've already seen it in GW, in the works of earth elementalists and protection monks, where damage protection and deflection plays a far larger role.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
....
They are not suggesting that there will be all dps classes (ie the monk will now be dps or there will be no monk) or that every class will be good at every aspect, as some have stated. People referencing other games where priests have pretty lame dps abilities that aren't viable specs/builds this is not comparable to what they are saying either. Reading between the lines and being a long time GW1 player, what they are getting at is replacing healing with protting. If you haven't played GW1 there is really no other game that has replicated this experience as perfectly. Protting in GW1 is way more fun than healing in that game or any other. You are still going to need a class to complete missions, etc. as others have said a team of all rangers and warriors will probably still struggle. This is just a different spin on healing most likely. Personally I'm cool with that, as I said before protting is a blast. I play healers in every game and all they ever do is cast heals, buff, remove curses/ailments, do terrible dps, and that gets boring. Protting in GW1 fashion is quite different. On the pve side a prot monk in GW1 could solo almost every boss in the game with a 55 hp build (this may not be viable now I haven't played in a while). At the same time a prot monk could be invaluable in pvp. Certainly, there are people that won't agree with me and will argue just for arguments sake. GW2 is not going to reinvent the wheel and is not claiming to do so. They are just providing a fresh spin on an old mechanic (holy trinity). Classes will still probably need certain specs to heal - think of the Elementalists "healing rain" - they are most likely going to have to spec water in order to cast that spell and have it be worthwhile.
So don't get on the hype train and believe they are demolishing the holy trinity all together. On the other hand don't hop on the hater train and decide this will just be exactly the same or that it will be a system of every class is good at everything. Both sides are reading too much into the statements made.
Steam: Neph
Sadly I have never played GW but from my time in WoW I felt like I gained an understanding of what they were talking about. Not in PvE obviously, but in PvP definitely. I played a Prot Warrior for 4 years and towards the end of my time they gave a Prot Warrior self heals. I specced and geared my guy out for solo survivability in PvP and surprised a hell of a lot of opponents with my staying power. My spec was unusual and unsuited to certain styles of play but in solo PvP (where I most often found myself) it allowed me to be victorious when I probably should not have been, mostly due to my opponents not reacting correctly, having not experienced what I was doing before. That ability to choose to be different was an important factor in me playing, it provided so much fun. With GW2 it seems like every class will be able to experience this kind of fun, what's not to love about that.
I envision GW2 to be close to this playstyle, where survivability and mitigating or avoiding damage is at the core of the combat rather than the bouncing health bar style of current MMOs. Proactive play is always better than reactive. Playing a Disc priest in WoW was a hell of a lot more fun than holy, simply because mitigating with shields and other skills was a big part of that style - it was proactive and it made you feel like you had the control.
100% agree with you on a bunch of this. The game is allowing you to use various builds and playstyles without limiting you (at least not as much) to the NEED to play a particular way or perform a certain role. We will actually be able to play around with and have some fun with our classes and all of our options, and create some unique and surprising builds which dont rely on the standard trinity setup.
This is going to be a huge factor for me in enjoying PvP. Sort of like in WAR, with WPs and DoKs, I had options. I could spec for healing, for dps, or a hybrid/lifetap build. All of those were very useful in various ways without making the others useless.
[quote] Originally posted by cyphers
Isn't it a bit arrogant to think that the things that you can think of are the limit of what is possible in MMO's?[/quote]
Every professions have one a skill slot for healing. If you try to make an elementalist or other professions a healer, I think that healer will be very inefficient. The heal will be too little and too long recharge. They want the players to be more aware of the damage from enemies to yourself and teammates. Just as it is now in GW1 GvG.