I distinctly remember them saying something along the lines of "waiting around for a healer to do dungeons is boring" (read: WHERE is my instant gratification you silly game!! how dare you require effort!) and "it's just heal heal heal heal, keep the green bars full, whack a mole... and it's not enjoyable"
Seriously, this sarcastic remark is totally out of place. How can you call it effort. Searching for players to do a dungeon for half an hour because you do not have the required party has nothing to do with effort. This is just bad game design. Why? Because you could have had a group ready, yet you needed specific classes and specs to do it so you denied those willing to join without the required class/spec. A dungeon should be done when you have 5 friends willing to do it. It is retarded that out of those 5 players nobody had a healer class and therefore the group of friends has to kick 1 one of them to invite some random healer. THAT is the problem. This has nothing to do with GIEF ME FUN NOW!. It is a serious problem that certain dungeons can not be played, not because there is too less people willing to do so, but because on class is specifically required to play it and it is not always available.
to clarify what I meant... I read it as that... because in all my years of quite hardcore (i do not have the need for mere work ) MMO gaming we ALWAYS had at least a handful of people in the guild who worked really hard (whatever makes them happy i guess) but then came online like twice a week going "I just got home from work, I have 3 hours to play! I shall be entertained now! Why is there no group ready for me???"
well... tough luck I guess... I put a lot of time into whatever game I'm playing so my needs are different from those of others maybe but I'm sure I am still allowed to have an opinion, right?
Now to your post.... Well the thing is if you have 5 friends ready for a dungeon regularly and such... the question is - why didn't any of you play a healer right away?`;) Is it the Sport's fault if you can't play footy because none of your other 10 mates wanted to play as a keeper? How is it bad game design if the game is designed FOR group efforts which require a healer, a tank, a bard, or a pine-apple juggling monkey.... it's not bad game design, it's how team effort based MMOs, team sports, team based FPS (not talking about Counterstrike...), Pen&Paper RPGs work and have worked for a loooooooong time...
But I'm not saying I don't get your point... I think the biggest problem is that healers have been lagging behind a bit in terms of coolness... what happened to plate wearing, evil smiting, undead turning, Chaotic Good Clerics f.e.?? When I played my first session of D&D back in the day Clerics were the coolest sounding frakkers in the book... nowadays they wear robes and go holy pew pew.... ech....
basically what I'm saying is instead of just dropping the idea of healers (which is the easy way around the problem) the devs could just try to make them more compelling and fun...
P.S.: still haven't found that video.... still looking though... but you can check the Manifesto one, too... "we just don't want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys it and no one finds it fun..." huh.... weird... because I do remember seeing a few Asian Grinders waaayyyyy up there in terms of subs//players...
<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
<smiles> in this game there will be 5 main things to win a fight....
- DPS
-Buffing
-Debuffing
-Crowd controll
-Healing
Now in an oldfashioned MMO it would be simple with 5 man groups everyone could ake care of 1 main taks and the game could rock....
In GW2 the team is responsible for performing all these tasks at the right moment, with everyone having atleast 1 heal skills everyone has some responsibillity in the healing department.
Just beleive me that those groups where people share responsibillity will outperform others by miles and even more. If most people only concentrate on doing just DPS without concentrating on the party or the surroundings he might wake up to see all mobs comming for him and 4 death groupmates laying on the ground in death and despair... now he says how could this happen?
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
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)
in this game there will be 5 main things to win a fight....
- DPS
-Buffing
-Debuffing
-Crowd controll
-Healing
Now in an oldfashioned MMO it would be simple with 5 man groups everyone could ake care of 1 main taks and the game could rock....
In GW2 the team is responsible for performing all these tasks at the right moment, with everyone having atleast 1 heal skills everyone has some responsibillity in the healing department.
Just beleive me that those groups where people share responsibillity will outperform others by miles and even more. If most people only concentrate on doing just DPS without concentrating on the party or the surroundings he might wake up to see all mobs comming for him and 4 death groupmates laying on the ground in death and despair... now he says how could this happen?
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
That's preety much it.
No tank or healer means more skill needed on the all team and not only 1 or 2 elements.
there seems to be a lot of contradiction going on here.
ok so the whole thread is based on there being no healing class. the first poster says "No "dedicated healer class" does NOT mean you can't have a dedicated healing templeted character." so there's no dedicated healer class, but there is? doesn't that kind of throw the whole "no healer class" thing way off? instead everybody has the ability to heal and that's a good thing? then i go on to read that there's no tank class either. what are you gunno tell me next, you can make a dedicated tank class lol?
so now what? everybody's a DPS? we have to DPS, hold aggro, and heal ourselves and allies? that'll be a mess. it's hard enough finding someone good at one roll, but now all three?
in the end it's nothing new at all. there's no healer class, but you can make one if you want. no tank, but i'm guessing you can also make one if you want. now nobody is forced to play the healer roll, instead we can run around like idiots trying to play all three.
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
in this game there will be 5 main things to win a fight....
- DPS
-Buffing
-Debuffing
-Crowd controll
-Healing
Now in an oldfashioned MMO it would be simple with 5 man groups everyone could ake care of 1 main taks and the game could rock....
In GW2 the team is responsible for performing all these tasks at the right moment, with everyone having atleast 1 heal skills everyone has some responsibillity in the healing department.
Just beleive me that those groups where people share responsibillity will outperform others by miles and even more. If most people only concentrate on doing just DPS without concentrating on the party or the surroundings he might wake up to see all mobs comming for him and 4 death groupmates laying on the ground in death and despair... now he says how could this happen?
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
That's preety much it.
No tank or healer means more skill needed on the all team and not only 1 or 2 elements.
There is that, but without someone dedicated to healing others there is also the risk of needing to constantly revive everyone too. Spending the majority of my time continually bending over to revive everyone (since anyone can do it, people won't care about staying alive as much) every few seconds is probably my worst and only fear with this game lol.
there seems to be a lot of contradiction going on here.
ok so the whole thread is based on there being no healing class. the first poster says "No "dedicated healer class" does NOT mean you can't have a dedicated healing templeted character." so there's no dedicated healer class, but there is? doesn't that kind of throw the whole "no healer class" thing way off? instead everybody has the ability to heal and that's a good thing? then i go on to read that there's no tank class either. what are you gunno tell me next, you can make a dedicated tank class lol?
so now what? everybody's a DPS? we have to DPS, hold aggro, and heal ourselves and allies? that'll be a mess. it's hard enough finding someone good at one roll, but now all three?
in the end it's nothing new at all. there's no healer class, but you can make one if you want. no tank, but i'm guessing you can also make one if you want. now nobody is forced to play the healer roll, instead we can run around like idiots trying to play all three.
You, and many others, are very fixated on the old aggro-mechanics and trinity combat. Infact Guild Wars 1 didn't have traditional tanks because there was no traditional aggro system. In the way you understand it: They held aggro by body-blocking and control skills like knockdowns, cripples etc. which gave softer classes opportunity to evade incoming monsters.
You can make a "tank" I'm sure, but you will be a useless tank if you don't have nothing to harrass or damage the mobs, you wont get aggro, since the AI will not attack someone who isn't a threat. At best there will be a hard target role in PvP whose job is to "engage first" or "go in first" just like in DotA, LoL or other similar PvP games where there isn't any tanks or very rarely any healers.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
There are many players who will refuse to heal, rez, or support, and that worries me. I plan to do my best to heal and support my team, but at the same time, I don't appreciate pulling other players' weight around. Hopefully I can find a good group of players who give a shit about other players besides themselves.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I think that no dedicated healer means that you will have to look more to find some heals to form a group ...
Exemple: your trying to form a group :
oki what are you? .. im a healer hunter,
and you?, ho im a healer assassin...
ho well im a healer warrior...
who has the most skills?
hunter: we i got 2 spells,
assasin: i got 3 spells ,
hunter again: yeah but mine are better...
hell in sight...
I don't see why you use healer-class typology.
Every class got healing spells and revive spell, at this point only the elementalist has got some augmented spells through the water attunement.
Kicking out dedicated healer, tank (and in a way dps) makes the gameplay much more interesting.
It used to be tank = spam taunt, healer = spam heals; dps = spam dps (ok with some variations but you know what I mean).
Now you have to be in your toes, coz tha tank is not gonna keep agro, so when that dragon lashes out, you have to dodge (yes we have dodge abilities now, kinda same as in AOC = double tap). And when the dragon targets one player, other players can heal or revive downed players if necessary, while other dps, etc.
Hell warriors can even do ranged attacks with their bows, and no it is not only for pulling, they do real damage.
Evrybody is helping each other in every way they can.
It gives for a much more moving/active gameplay.
Agree with a lot of this. All the best teaming experiences I've had were in games where classes or lack of classes allowed felxible roles in a team. In GW1, FE, CO, EVE, and CoH, it was typical to start a PUG, ask what were people's specialties? and then quickly formulate some attack plans. This was compared to Aion, WoW, or AoC (to a lesser extent) where everyone supposedly knew what everyone was supposed to do on the team. It was much easier to learn the latter, but to me...ROLE playing means that you have some ability to make up a role, playing predefined roles is just a slightly more complex Simon Says.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Anyone who have ever played GW1 thru and thru knows that dedicated healers are overrated, whether in PvE or PvP. Even monk are building towards damage and control and maybe 1-2 healing spells, or simply letting their Primary Attribute do the healing. Most of the time, you'll see other professions doing the healing other the typical monk or ritualist. This is why I am not wholly surprise when they expanded this idea in GW2.
If you give your DPS a couple of self heals, you don't need a dedicated healer. A dedicated healer only needed when a game do not allow other class have any decent healing skill. Take WoW for example, all non-healer class has crappy or no healing capability. This insure that in any given group, you will NEED a dedicated healer. If the non-healer class has their own decent healing skills, who needs a dedicated healer?
While this idea is good and teamwork and enforcing it are good. I've seen quite a few people who have done healing and are not good at it. If you spread this out more your more likely to hit someone who just doesn't do a good job healing, so this could possibly be a double edged sword
On one side you have team work and everyone getting involved in the healing which makes for more dynamic gameplay
but on the reverse theres more chance that when you need that healing the person up for the healing that can, won't heal or won't heal correctly.
But that can be all worked out i suppose by weeding out those that don't heal well. I still think people will try to put other people into the holy trinity slots. If you do more DPS your a dps, if you have decent healing spells your a healer, so on and so forth.
Final Note: it's good they are trying something different, i just hope it's handled well, cause ditching the holy trinity can be done, but is tricky to do well.
The beauty of the system is that you can switch the healing focus to someone else on the fly. No need to kick and find someone else, you simply adjust your tactics and move on.
so guildwars is breaking from the holy trinity. and can it work.
yes it can. dont know why they made their own control, damage and support speach.
this was done back in 2000 on an online role playing game called phantasy star online for the dreamcast.
only 3 classes, and 3 races, one race the casts couldnt even use magic. it was your lobby , get 3 more people and do doungens on and on. but every clase/ race combo there was coul heal, use support and debuff skills and dps.
there was NO tank and NO dedicated healers. heck 4 casts with no magic and with healing items could clear a dungeon on the hardest difficutly setting didnt matter what combo of classes you all could progress. healing was there but no need for someone to be dedicated. and people cooperated on heals buffs and debuffing the mobs.
it worked. yeah you could have died of 3 to 4 hits from the big mobs , heck some could one shot you if you were careless to walk into one of their deady spells like megid. the game play was addicting, you had full control of your char. hundreds of weps to choose from and lots of loot to fight for.
what the devs have been talking about their control , damage and support. it does show that support plays key, buffing armor, debuffing movbs, controlling them to then do dps is more the way to win than have some one stand in one place and 5 people hit heal spells to keep going. after all this game is action you move your attacks can miss as mobs can miss you.
some people just need to let go of the trinity. it sucks after so many years. same ol bull crap. good to see somthing thats not used much be used.
You guys do know that one of the proffessions will be a dedicated support proffessions right? not because it is required, but surprise some people actually like playing support classes. A-net is just straying away from healing and more into buffs that stop incoming damage. Developer confirmed it, read this post. It is really selfish of Dps classes to think that there should be no support classes in the game when people obviously enjoy the play style. all A-net is doing is making it so all the proffessions can cover any roll by changing their builds in some limited way.
in this game there will be 5 main things to win a fight....
- DPS
-Buffing
-Debuffing
-Crowd controll
-Healing
Now in an oldfashioned MMO it would be simple with 5 man groups everyone could ake care of 1 main taks and the game could rock....
In GW2 the team is responsible for performing all these tasks at the right moment, with everyone having atleast 1 heal skills everyone has some responsibillity in the healing department.
Just beleive me that those groups where people share responsibillity will outperform others by miles and even more. If most people only concentrate on doing just DPS without concentrating on the party or the surroundings he might wake up to see all mobs comming for him and 4 death groupmates laying on the ground in death and despair... now he says how could this happen?
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
<patronizingly lays hand on your shoulder and positively glows with cheerful merriness>
if that really were the case, as in every class being capable of performing every task equally and being required to do so, I might actually be inclined to agree.
problem is: the videos say otherwise... just watch that 50 minute thing linked in another thread on these boards... there was not one point in ANY of those over glorified public quests aka "dynamic ninja turtle events!! (pow pow)" where coordination was required.... not even for that big dragon thing... everybody was just dodging as good as they could healing themselves and doing as much DPS as possible to grab the fattest loot.... and while it's of course completely fine for players to play the game like that, it's certainly not engaging content...
of course now you could say "well it's not max lvl content, there's higher stuff than that, certainly more challenging"... sure... but why not in those encounters as well?
that is exactly my point btw... removing the healers and splitting all the support stuff amongst all classes basically requires the content to be easier....
sure the fight with that dragon might look flashy but ... well... I couldn't care less... I didn't spend night after night trying to down pre nerf apocalypse (DAoC) or pre nerf C'Thun (WoW) because they looked flashy... I did it because it was hard as hell, challenging and an ACTUAL achievement (as opposed to that crap where you farm 150 mounts to get a SPECIAL MOUNT) when you succeeded.
Which brings me back to the instant gratification point...
I'm not saying Guild Wars is generally bad... it's not. certainly has it's target groups... I'm just trying to get rid of that argument that "if everybody has to do supporty stuff and this and that it makes the game more challenging" it doesn't.... Diablo2 wasn't challenging, L4D wasn't challenging and if the stuff we've seen so far is any indication then GW2 won't be challenging either
<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
There are many players who will refuse to heal, rez, or support, and that worries me. I plan to do my best to heal and support my team, but at the same time, I don't appreciate pulling other players' weight around. Hopefully I can find a good group of players who give a shit about other players besides themselves.
Then those players should be prepared to learn or choose to die a lot in PvP
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)
It allways surprises me how many people can't think outside of their box....
They keep comparing this game to all previous MMO's and then totally make the wrong conclusions out of the footage they have seen...
The trinity gameplay is so ingrained into peoples heads that they can't conceive of any other way. It'll take time for them to adjust or they simply won't play.
It allways surprises me how many people can't think outside of their box....
They keep comparing this game to all previous MMO's and then totally make the wrong conclusions out of the footage they have seen...
The trinity gameplay is so ingrained into peoples heads that they can't conceive of any other way. It'll take time for them to adjust or they simply won't play.
It's really not just in games. In real world, there are soldiers who specializes in combat (marines), recon (army rangers), healing (medic) etc. It's just how specialization or profession is widely understood.
But in GW2, every professions is like pulling a Rambo, doing their own surgery and bandaging while continuing kicking donkeys.
It allways surprises me how many people can't think outside of their box....
They keep comparing this game to all previous MMO's and then totally make the wrong conclusions out of the footage they have seen...
The trinity gameplay is so ingrained into peoples heads that they can't conceive of any other way. It'll take time for them to adjust or they simply won't play.
It's really not just in games. In real world, there are soldiers who specializes in combat (marines), recon (army rangers), healing (medic) etc. It's just how specialization or profession is widely understood.
But in GW2, every professions is like pulling a Rambo, doing their own surgery and bandaging while continuing kicking donkeys.
The difference is that our soldiers cant survive to tank shoots.
Our recon dont vanishs into thin air
And our medics cant instant heal you to 100%
Not a good comparison ^^
But yeah, the trinity is so deeply rooted into people mind that they cant think of to something different than that.
"It has potential" -Second most used phrase on existence "It sucks" -Most used phrase on existence
I like the change. I was getting tired of the typical cookie cutter who's tank, who's healer set up in just about every mmo i've ever played. Now when i'm on my character in GW2, i'll be able to tell people i'm perkisizing!
Every class got healing spells and revive spell, at this point only the elementalist has got some augmented spells through the water attunement.
Kicking out dedicated healer, tank (and in a way dps) makes the gameplay much more interesting.
It used to be tank = spam taunt, healer = spam heals; dps = spam dps (ok with some variations but you know what I mean).
Now you have to be in your toes, coz tha tank is not gonna keep agro, so when that dragon lashes out, you have to dodge (yes we have dodge abilities now, kinda same as in AOC = double tap). And when the dragon targets one player, other players can heal or revive downed players if necessary, while other dps, etc.
Hell warriors can even do ranged attacks with their bows, and no it is not only for pulling, they do real damage.
Evrybody is helping each other in every way they can.
In the real world, in books, in films, there is no aggro table, there are no instant healers, it's a much more dynamic style, you look after yourself and your team, with good positioning, crowd control, debuffs/buffs.
In reality would you rather take a non-lethal but still damaging attack, or dodge out of the way, would you rather take that sword to the chest, or throw sand in their eyes to disorient them and gain an advantage? Would you attempt to get everyone to attack you by running into the open, or would you run back into a killzone your comrades had set up with archers/guns?
Avoidance, Crowd control, Positioning - this is what guild wars was always about, and it's being improved upon in the sequel.
Other games of note include the amazing afformentioned Phantasy Star Online, heals were available but it was down to skill to avoid attacks most of the time the enemy would 1shot you.
Age of Conan, terrible launch, but some good ideas, the healing in that was very much the groups responsibility, the hots were not strong enough to tank any serious amount of damage, so the team had to stun and control mobs, run out of aoe, the healers had to help nuke adds (nukes even buffed your heals if specced).
It's very much in the book adventurer style, the trinity is a really dumb concept as soon as you take it out of gaming. I admit it can be very fun, but it comes at the price of dynamism.
People saying there will be bad supporters, yes there will be bad PLAYERS, but this always happens, you'll just have to up your game to compensate. They will most likely get bad participation scores until they improve.
To the people complaining about how easy the demo looked, it was artificially nerfed due to players only getting 45 mins with the game.
I'd wager the real shatterer fight could easily wipe a group that wasn't careful. In the videos the player often ended up on 5% life. and many died.
In the first fight with the earth elemental at level 1-2, without dodging the player would most likely have died.
Is it really so bad to have a quality combat system such as those present in action-rpgs, in an mmo?
I'm sick of mmos being so easy nobody even bothers to learn their class at all, because they don't need to.
Comments
to clarify what I meant... I read it as that... because in all my years of quite hardcore (i do not have the need for mere work
) MMO gaming we ALWAYS had at least a handful of people in the guild who worked really hard (whatever makes them happy i guess) but then came online like twice a week going "I just got home from work, I have 3 hours to play! I shall be entertained now! Why is there no group ready for me???"
well... tough luck I guess... I put a lot of time into whatever game I'm playing so my needs are different from those of others maybe but I'm sure I am still allowed to have an opinion, right?
Now to your post.... Well the thing is if you have 5 friends ready for a dungeon regularly and such... the question is - why didn't any of you play a healer right away?`;) Is it the Sport's fault if you can't play footy because none of your other 10 mates wanted to play as a keeper? How is it bad game design if the game is designed FOR group efforts which require a healer, a tank, a bard, or a pine-apple juggling monkey.... it's not bad game design, it's how team effort based MMOs, team sports, team based FPS (not talking about Counterstrike...), Pen&Paper RPGs work and have worked for a loooooooong time...
But I'm not saying I don't get your point... I think the biggest problem is that healers have been lagging behind a bit in terms of coolness... what happened to plate wearing, evil smiting, undead turning, Chaotic Good Clerics f.e.?? When I played my first session of D&D back in the day Clerics were the coolest sounding frakkers in the book... nowadays they wear robes and go holy pew pew.... ech....
basically what I'm saying is instead of just dropping the idea of healers (which is the easy way around the problem) the devs could just try to make them more compelling and fun...
P.S.: still haven't found that video.... still looking though... but you can check the Manifesto one, too... "we just don't want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys it and no one finds it fun..." huh.... weird... because I do remember seeing a few Asian Grinders waaayyyyy up there in terms of subs//players...
<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
<smiles> in this game there will be 5 main things to win a fight....
- DPS
-Buffing
-Debuffing
-Crowd controll
-Healing
Now in an oldfashioned MMO it would be simple with 5 man groups everyone could ake care of 1 main taks and the game could rock....
In GW2 the team is responsible for performing all these tasks at the right moment, with everyone having atleast 1 heal skills everyone has some responsibillity in the healing department.
Just beleive me that those groups where people share responsibillity will outperform others by miles and even more. If most people only concentrate on doing just DPS without concentrating on the party or the surroundings he might wake up to see all mobs comming for him and 4 death groupmates laying on the ground in death and despair... now he says how could this happen?
Therefor i beleive that this game will be exactly the opposite of zerging....all and everyone has to be focussed on the things around them both friendly as hostile. Just zerging without communication will end up in defeat. People need to learn to play again.... its different then anything they know from their previous MMO's
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)
That's preety much it.No tank or healer means more skill needed on the all team and not only 1 or 2 elements.
there seems to be a lot of contradiction going on here.
ok so the whole thread is based on there being no healing class. the first poster says "No "dedicated healer class" does NOT mean you can't have a dedicated healing templeted character." so there's no dedicated healer class, but there is? doesn't that kind of throw the whole "no healer class" thing way off? instead everybody has the ability to heal and that's a good thing? then i go on to read that there's no tank class either. what are you gunno tell me next, you can make a dedicated tank class lol?
so now what? everybody's a DPS? we have to DPS, hold aggro, and heal ourselves and allies? that'll be a mess. it's hard enough finding someone good at one roll, but now all three?
in the end it's nothing new at all. there's no healer class, but you can make one if you want. no tank, but i'm guessing you can also make one if you want. now nobody is forced to play the healer roll, instead we can run around like idiots trying to play all three.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
There is that, but without someone dedicated to healing others there is also the risk of needing to constantly revive everyone too. Spending the majority of my time continually bending over to revive everyone (since anyone can do it, people won't care about staying alive as much) every few seconds is probably my worst and only fear with this game lol.
You, and many others, are very fixated on the old aggro-mechanics and trinity combat. Infact Guild Wars 1 didn't have traditional tanks because there was no traditional aggro system. In the way you understand it: They held aggro by body-blocking and control skills like knockdowns, cripples etc. which gave softer classes opportunity to evade incoming monsters.
You can make a "tank" I'm sure, but you will be a useless tank if you don't have nothing to harrass or damage the mobs, you wont get aggro, since the AI will not attack someone who isn't a threat. At best there will be a hard target role in PvP whose job is to "engage first" or "go in first" just like in DotA, LoL or other similar PvP games where there isn't any tanks or very rarely any healers.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
There are many players who will refuse to heal, rez, or support, and that worries me. I plan to do my best to heal and support my team, but at the same time, I don't appreciate pulling other players' weight around. Hopefully I can find a good group of players who give a shit about other players besides themselves.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Agree with a lot of this. All the best teaming experiences I've had were in games where classes or lack of classes allowed felxible roles in a team. In GW1, FE, CO, EVE, and CoH, it was typical to start a PUG, ask what were people's specialties? and then quickly formulate some attack plans. This was compared to Aion, WoW, or AoC (to a lesser extent) where everyone supposedly knew what everyone was supposed to do on the team. It was much easier to learn the latter, but to me...ROLE playing means that you have some ability to make up a role, playing predefined roles is just a slightly more complex Simon Says.
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Anyone who have ever played GW1 thru and thru knows that dedicated healers are overrated, whether in PvE or PvP. Even monk are building towards damage and control and maybe 1-2 healing spells, or simply letting their Primary Attribute do the healing. Most of the time, you'll see other professions doing the healing other the typical monk or ritualist. This is why I am not wholly surprise when they expanded this idea in GW2.
If you give your DPS a couple of self heals, you don't need a dedicated healer. A dedicated healer only needed when a game do not allow other class have any decent healing skill. Take WoW for example, all non-healer class has crappy or no healing capability. This insure that in any given group, you will NEED a dedicated healer. If the non-healer class has their own decent healing skills, who needs a dedicated healer?
Ready for GW2!!!
The beauty of the system is that you can switch the healing focus to someone else on the fly. No need to kick and find someone else, you simply adjust your tactics and move on.
so guildwars is breaking from the holy trinity. and can it work.
yes it can. dont know why they made their own control, damage and support speach.
this was done back in 2000 on an online role playing game called phantasy star online for the dreamcast.
only 3 classes, and 3 races, one race the casts couldnt even use magic. it was your lobby , get 3 more people and do doungens on and on. but every clase/ race combo there was coul heal, use support and debuff skills and dps.
there was NO tank and NO dedicated healers. heck 4 casts with no magic and with healing items could clear a dungeon on the hardest difficutly setting didnt matter what combo of classes you all could progress. healing was there but no need for someone to be dedicated. and people cooperated on heals buffs and debuffing the mobs.
it worked. yeah you could have died of 3 to 4 hits from the big mobs , heck some could one shot you if you were careless to walk into one of their deady spells like megid. the game play was addicting, you had full control of your char. hundreds of weps to choose from and lots of loot to fight for.
what the devs have been talking about their control , damage and support. it does show that support plays key, buffing armor, debuffing movbs, controlling them to then do dps is more the way to win than have some one stand in one place and 5 people hit heal spells to keep going. after all this game is action you move your attacks can miss as mobs can miss you.
some people just need to let go of the trinity. it sucks after so many years. same ol bull crap. good to see somthing thats not used much be used.
I think it will be more along the lines of:
Party Leader: LF5th for __________!
Random Class: I'll go!
*adds random class to party*
Party Leader: Anyone want to focus heal?
Random Party Member: I'll do it.
Party Leader: Cool, let's boogie...
This would be opposed to:
Party Leader: LF Heals for _____________!
... 15 minutes later ....
Party Leader: LF Heals for _____________!
... 10 minutes later ....
Party Leader: LF Heals, DPS for _____________!
... 10 minutes later ....
Party Leader: LF Heals, Tank for _____________!
... 15 minutes later ....
Party Leader: LFG _____________!
I don't think there'll be any LFG. I think it will be more like;
You: "Cool you guys are fighting the Bandit Boss!!!"
<throw some healing spells to top off players already engaged, join in the fray>
Ready for GW2!!!
You guys do know that one of the proffessions will be a dedicated support proffessions right? not because it is required, but surprise some people actually like playing support classes. A-net is just straying away from healing and more into buffs that stop incoming damage. Developer confirmed it, read this post. It is really selfish of Dps classes to think that there should be no support classes in the game when people obviously enjoy the play style. all A-net is doing is making it so all the proffessions can cover any roll by changing their builds in some limited way.
<patronizingly lays hand on your shoulder and positively glows with cheerful merriness>
if that really were the case, as in every class being capable of performing every task equally and being required to do so, I might actually be inclined to agree.
problem is: the videos say otherwise... just watch that 50 minute thing linked in another thread on these boards... there was not one point in ANY of those over glorified public quests aka "dynamic ninja turtle events!! (pow pow)" where coordination was required.... not even for that big dragon thing... everybody was just dodging as good as they could healing themselves and doing as much DPS as possible to grab the fattest loot.... and while it's of course completely fine for players to play the game like that, it's certainly not engaging content...
of course now you could say "well it's not max lvl content, there's higher stuff than that, certainly more challenging"... sure... but why not in those encounters as well?
that is exactly my point btw... removing the healers and splitting all the support stuff amongst all classes basically requires the content to be easier....
sure the fight with that dragon might look flashy but ... well... I couldn't care less... I didn't spend night after night trying to down pre nerf apocalypse (DAoC) or pre nerf C'Thun (WoW) because they looked flashy... I did it because it was hard as hell, challenging and an ACTUAL achievement (as opposed to that crap where you farm 150 mounts to get a SPECIAL MOUNT) when you succeeded.
Which brings me back to the instant gratification point...
I'm not saying Guild Wars is generally bad... it's not. certainly has it's target groups... I'm just trying to get rid of that argument that "if everybody has to do supporty stuff and this and that it makes the game more challenging" it doesn't.... Diablo2 wasn't challenging, L4D wasn't challenging and if the stuff we've seen so far is any indication then GW2 won't be challenging either
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Someone needs to get out of his WOWistheendallbeallofgames box.
Roles == Trinity , Strategy == Trinity , Improvisation can't be even put in Trinity systems...
Someone needs to be less paternazing and start to see that there's more to anything then the little box he lives on.
Then those players should be prepared to learn or choose to die a lot in PvP
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)
It allways surprises me how many people can't think outside of their box....
They keep comparing this game to all previous MMO's and then totally make the wrong conclusions out of the footage they have seen...
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)
The trinity gameplay is so ingrained into peoples heads that they can't conceive of any other way. It'll take time for them to adjust or they simply won't play.
It's really not just in games. In real world, there are soldiers who specializes in combat (marines), recon (army rangers), healing (medic) etc. It's just how specialization or profession is widely understood.
But in GW2, every professions is like pulling a Rambo, doing their own surgery and bandaging while continuing kicking donkeys.
Ready for GW2!!!
The difference is that our soldiers cant survive to tank shoots.
Our recon dont vanishs into thin air
And our medics cant instant heal you to 100%
Not a good comparison ^^
But yeah, the trinity is so deeply rooted into people mind that they cant think of to something different than that.
"It has potential"
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"It sucks"
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I like the change. I was getting tired of the typical cookie cutter who's tank, who's healer set up in just about every mmo i've ever played. Now when i'm on my character in GW2, i'll be able to tell people i'm perkisizing!
Guild Wars 1, Jade Dynasty, King of Kings III
Good posts, agree 100%.
In the real world, in books, in films, there is no aggro table, there are no instant healers, it's a much more dynamic style, you look after yourself and your team, with good positioning, crowd control, debuffs/buffs.
In reality would you rather take a non-lethal but still damaging attack, or dodge out of the way, would you rather take that sword to the chest, or throw sand in their eyes to disorient them and gain an advantage? Would you attempt to get everyone to attack you by running into the open, or would you run back into a killzone your comrades had set up with archers/guns?
Avoidance, Crowd control, Positioning - this is what guild wars was always about, and it's being improved upon in the sequel.
Other games of note include the amazing afformentioned Phantasy Star Online, heals were available but it was down to skill to avoid attacks most of the time the enemy would 1shot you.
Age of Conan, terrible launch, but some good ideas, the healing in that was very much the groups responsibility, the hots were not strong enough to tank any serious amount of damage, so the team had to stun and control mobs, run out of aoe, the healers had to help nuke adds (nukes even buffed your heals if specced).
It's very much in the book adventurer style, the trinity is a really dumb concept as soon as you take it out of gaming. I admit it can be very fun, but it comes at the price of dynamism.
People saying there will be bad supporters, yes there will be bad PLAYERS, but this always happens, you'll just have to up your game to compensate. They will most likely get bad participation scores until they improve.
To the people complaining about how easy the demo looked, it was artificially nerfed due to players only getting 45 mins with the game.
I'd wager the real shatterer fight could easily wipe a group that wasn't careful. In the videos the player often ended up on 5% life. and many died.
In the first fight with the earth elemental at level 1-2, without dodging the player would most likely have died.
Is it really so bad to have a quality combat system such as those present in action-rpgs, in an mmo?
I'm sick of mmos being so easy nobody even bothers to learn their class at all, because they don't need to.
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