To me the trinity is a good thing. I love to heal. I like to tank. I have more fun as the dedicated tank or healer then i do as dps. I can imagine a game with no tanks no healers.
Its hard enough to get people to do there job right in instances now without giving everyoen the option to do whatever they want to do at any given moment.
Yea no tirnity everyoen tnaks and heals. Would be great in theory m aybe. I can see it now utter chaos. Where a guy decides u know what i dont wanna heal anyone anymore and stops healing and decides only wants to top damage meter so wont tank and everyone is expecting them to do tank or healing at that moment ends up dead.
Its bad enough in wow that druids and pallies will que as healer or tank to get quicker que and try to force people to change what they are doign so they can dps when the other person who can ds into multi roles is forced to change from dps role he spend 30 mins waiting for group to do into a role he didnt signe up for.
Get rid of the trinity and its utter chaos and a mess. I think gw 2 will find that out. Some people just dont have the awarness to heal themselves either when playing so no dedicated healer in gw2 may hurt in the long run.
Overall, I wasn't really really that happy with this direction. For myself, I want classes to really mean something. When every class can heal or tank, to me it lessens the impact that class choice itself has on gameplay. To me, it makes sense that a Jedi would heal his companions, but not a Sith. Now I understand that there has to be balance between the two factions, so there has to be at least SOME healing on the Empire side, so I don't mind a few of these types of things done in the name of balance. And I am mostly taking a wait-and-see approach. If they do a good enough job designing the Advanced Classes, I will still be happy overall. But if healing as Jedi and healing as a Scoudrel and Healing as a Bounty Hunter all feel pretty much the same, then I think this is a bad way to go. There has to be some way of differentiating between classes. They can't all feel the same. I feel like if all classes can fulfill all roles, then what really is the difference? But if BioWare does a good job making every class's experience feel unique and different then I feel this could work.
So instead of heal/tank/dps, you want Support/Control/DPS?
lol wat?
You can pretend and "label" it not the HOLY TRINITY, but you will still have roles. People will still pick rolls and they will do those rolls.
You can call those rolls whatever you like. But it doesn't make sense for a robe wearing (IE below light armor) class to be able to be hit more then once or twice by a big bad boss. Now if said boss was a caster himself, that's something else.
Why have different sets of armor with different armor values? Why not just let anyone wear any clothing they like if you are using a "no roll system"?
"In the end this is a game, and one hit kills are not fun."
I disafree. One hit kills ARE Star Wars. Living in the Star Wars universe is tough - ask Greedo. I just can't see the Canteena scene with Han and Greedo shooting and hitting each other for 5 minutes while their health bar slowly ebbs being fun. We wouldn't be interested in a Star Wars game at all had it played out that way on screen.
"The holy trinity is a fine system that works. It wouldn't still be here if it wasn't."
It's a crutch that was used back in the late 1980's for MUDs. Developers continue to use it thinking they can out-WoW WoW. They refuse to create a new system that would actually be more epic and cinematic for a game like Star Wars where the universe just doesn't fit the model.
"Why have different sets of armor with different armor values? Why not just let anyone wear any clothing they like if you are using a "no roll system"?"
Back to playing dress up. You'll have to ask George Lucas why StormTrooper armor doesn't seem to mean much since most troopers that die onscreen seem to only take one hit. It's just the Star Wars way. Making the armor have some type of defense against blaster or light saber hits would change the universe.
Personally, I don't want to play dress up. The clothes shouldn't make the character. Luke didn't need a light saber of a thousand paper cuts to defeat anyone. He didn't seek the Jedi Robe of many colors either.
The problem with all of this multi classing is that back in EQ / Vanilla wow, if you were at end game, you knew your class pretty well, and if you were at endgame and geared for raids, especially as you got to T2 and 3 raids, you were probably really good at your class. Now a days we have people who are just not good at tanking "filling in, in a pinch" which loosly translates to "wiping the group a fewl 1000 times"
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
"In the end this is a game, and one hit kills are not fun."
I disafree. One hit kills ARE Star Wars. Living in the Star Wars universe is tough - ask Greedo. I just can't see the Canteena scene with Han and Greedo shooting and hitting each other for 5 minutes while their health bar slowly ebbs being fun. We wouldn't be interested in a Star Wars game at all had it played out that way on screen.
That is a movie, this is a game. Again, you pick up a sword and go whack someone with it, I promise you, they will not stand there and take it for 5 minutes. Most games are blow for blow, especially in MMOs.
Most people won't play a game with 1 hit kills, most people don't play games with full loot, hell, most people don't even play FFA games. I'd be interested to know what games you know of that are so true to life that you're currently playing or looking forward to, but, usually you don't heal in a few minutes from gunshots like in FPS games, and you can't fix vehicles or turrets in a matter of seconds either. These are games, so, naturally, you want people to play and have a chance to compete without frustration.
The only thing that makes a bit upset with this game, is the fact that I'm forced to use two one-handed lightsaber if I want to be a Jedi DPS dealer... which is awfully lame, I only want to use one lightsaber.
The only thing that makes a bit upset with this game, is the fact that I'm forced to use two one-handed lightsaber if I want to be a Jedi DPS dealer... which is awfully lame, I only want to use one lightsaber.
They stated in the last update that they are working on a single handed DPS lightsaber spec.
For a Sci-Fi based game a quick example of a different way to break down roles would be:
Ground:
- Recon/Sniper
- Close Assault
- Fire Support/Heavy Weapons
- Engineer/Demolitions
- Commander
- Ground Vehicle Crew
Space:
Pilot
Gunner
Engineer
Sensors/Electronic Warfare
That's just dealing with combat roles...not even non-combat. Again you still have people filling specific roles and teamwork being required to be successfull....but it's not Tank/Healer/DPS.
An example of how this could play out would be say an assault on a heavly defended imperial/rebel base.
Recon is needed to go out and scout the base defenses, determine the best approach. Commander calls in smoke/orbital barrage to give the engineers cover to clear the automated defenses (mines, turrets) on the initial approach to the base. Fire Support then moves in to lay down suppression fire against the human defenders of the base while the assault troops move in to engage from close range for the kill.
If anything I think the "success" and popularity of RIFT and their soul system has really shown some light on something that those among us with brains have known for a long time-
Variety is the spice of life.
Or simply put, players love choice.
Yes, there is a fine line between having too many choices and thus making the choices themselves less meaningful, and of course with more roles per character balance becomes exponentially more complex...
Guess we'll have to wait and see how it all works out.
To change the trinty in dynamic way in which "mobs" react to aggro would have to be done different. If BW removed taunt then companions would not be able to tank for solo questers. if a boss's hate table is changed even for a random attack sequence on players, he would run amock and one shot players with armor lower then plate.
Maybe mob/boss mechanics need to be changed so that the boss chooses who to tank, then the rest of the group falls in to help heal and dps. The boss picking a player sounds much better and the group can't blame anyone for a wipe if the poor slob got picked and they got owned. All they could say is dam I hope he picks a different person to tank this time around.
maybe for mobs just let a mob taunt work on mobs. I still like that the boss picks his victim. would make it interesting.
Just a silly idea but I would love to see scripted encounters have a better AI then just we tank we spank lets get loot repeat.
"In the end this is a game, and one hit kills are not fun."
I disafree. One hit kills ARE Star Wars. Living in the Star Wars universe is tough - ask Greedo. I just can't see the Canteena scene with Han and Greedo shooting and hitting each other for 5 minutes while their health bar slowly ebbs being fun. We wouldn't be interested in a Star Wars game at all had it played out that way on screen.
That is a movie, this is a game. Again, you pick up a sword and go whack someone with it, I promise you, they will not stand there and take it for 5 minutes. Most games are blow for blow, especially in MMOs.
Most people won't play a game with 1 hit kills, most people don't play games with full loot, hell, most people don't even play FFA games. I'd be interested to know what games you know of that are so true to life that you're currently playing or looking forward to, but, usually you don't heal in a few minutes from gunshots like in FPS games, and you can't fix vehicles or turrets in a matter of seconds either. These are games, so, naturally, you want people to play and have a chance to compete without frustration.
True enough people don't like being killed in one hit. All you had to do was read the forums on camelot VN to know that. So yes Dark Age of Camelot had tons of 1 hit kills. I had a 50 bow spec Ranger before they changed the archery system. It still makes me laugh to think about. I don't even remember the name of the ability but it extended your range by 50% and penetrated bubble (caster shield). I remember being on top of a level 10 tower and 1 shotting a caster that was on top of the inner keep... not fun for him but funny as hell to me.
Ahem. Anyway yes I'd agree if you don't want your forums to be a screaming mess and many presses of "cancel" you'll likely not have one hit kills. At least not if the person is properly geared etc
Do away with predefined classes and roles and let the players themselves decide how they wanna play.
A grabbag of skills we can freely choose from to build our characters and let's define our current role by the equipment we put on.
There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to play a healer today and a sniper tomorrow with a single character. Just make sure that we can't switch equipment and roles mid-combat and it'll be fine.
Instead of max-level for a character with predefined roles, let's have a maximum of skillpoints to invest into the skills we want. Either you heavily specialize into one single direction or you train into diferent directions being mediocre in multiple roles.
Death to predefined roles and classes and death to character-levels!
The concept of letting players fill a wider range of roles is a positive.. BUT... the simple fact that they stick to a system where players HAVE to fit pre-determined group roles is not good.
Let's move past the holy trinity concept. It provided a good starting point for game design a decade ago, but we need to start moving on to newer and better concepts. I don't want to hear anymore about group roles and archetypes....
Ok., there are two dudes with each a health bar. You can knock the health bar of the opponent down: DPS. You can make your health stay where it is: Tank. Or you can fill the health bar up again: Healer. You can then do this on different ranges and with a different radius and differentiated by single-target and multi-target (AOEs, splash etc). Last not least, you can prevent someone else from doing his job, or make your friend perform better: Supporter. In a nutshell: that's it with any somewhat static "classic" MMORPG combat system.
You can remove aggro, then stuff like tanking will be diminished or push the game more towards twitch (where then other factors may be more important). If you wanted to make it really different, you would have to remove the concept of a health bar entirely (or any functionally similar bar)—then work from there. Where you probably end up with a very different kind of game.
Anyhow, it allows to come up with different playstyles that play quite differently and diffetrent roles in a party, which is good for the multiplayer part (which isn't trivial). Sometimes removing or changing something will cause many other things to also break.
I think it's good. Playig Rift showed me it is a cool thing to can switch between functions. Both for the fun of trying something different and for the different needs in different groups or situations.
Good move IMO.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Faction restricted classes still sucks if you ask me. My Guild are all keen to Roll Republic but I really want to play a bounty hunter (and lets face it bounty hunters are factionless by profession really working for or with whoever can pay so locking them to one Faction just seems stupid) so it means I probably have to Roll a jedi with my guild and play a bounty hunter alt somewhere else.
So instead of heal/tank/dps, you want Support/Control/DPS?
lol wat?
You can pretend and "label" it not the HOLY TRINITY, but you will still have roles. People will still pick rolls and they will do those rolls.
You can call those rolls whatever you like. But it doesn't make sense for a robe wearing (IE below light armor) class to be able to be hit more then once or twice by a big bad boss. Now if said boss was a caster himself, that's something else.
Why have different sets of armor with different armor values? Why not just let anyone wear any clothing they like if you are using a "no roll system"?
You are wrong on this, only minmaxers will follow the strict pattern of roles! If you want an example of this, in Guild Wars the high end dungeons in hard mode are what we can look at. MinMaxers go with role setup when they select their 7 teammates, while people that are not MinMaxers like me would take pretty much anyone to do a dungeon. In fact I have run Slaver’s exile in hard mode with nothing but casters.
So eliminating tanking and healing, makes it so the people that are not minmaxers, do whatever they can to help the group be successful. Only MinMaxers will still pick roles!
If you want a more elaborate explanation look at the following posts: post1post2
but any who my questions its whats the point of a class system if each class can fill in every roll? i still think its cool idea but fear that it may break certain aspects of gameplay.
but any who my questions its whats the point of a class system if each class can fill in every roll? i still think its cool idea but fear that it may break certain aspects of gameplay.
This is what I wrote about that earlier:
"If they are smart there will be a lot of difference in viability of the overlapping roles between encounters: for instance it looks like there will be three kinds of tanking: 'ranged', 'evasion / force' and 'melee / close range'. I can very much imagine one of those being much better against boss A while another kind of tank is preferable against boss B. Same goes for healing types and ranged or melee dps.
It all depends on how encounters are implemented and how class balance turns out in pvp but my guess is they will want to avoid "one class for everything" characters ..."
^ As they stated that they are looking for a lot of replayability by people rerolling other classes: having "one class for everything" options would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Next to that there are ways to add unique functionality to classes with support skills like disabling abilities, buffs, AoE, etc.
Comments
To me the trinity is a good thing. I love to heal. I like to tank. I have more fun as the dedicated tank or healer then i do as dps. I can imagine a game with no tanks no healers.
Its hard enough to get people to do there job right in instances now without giving everyoen the option to do whatever they want to do at any given moment.
Yea no tirnity everyoen tnaks and heals. Would be great in theory m aybe. I can see it now utter chaos. Where a guy decides u know what i dont wanna heal anyone anymore and stops healing and decides only wants to top damage meter so wont tank and everyone is expecting them to do tank or healing at that moment ends up dead.
Its bad enough in wow that druids and pallies will que as healer or tank to get quicker que and try to force people to change what they are doign so they can dps when the other person who can ds into multi roles is forced to change from dps role he spend 30 mins waiting for group to do into a role he didnt signe up for.
Get rid of the trinity and its utter chaos and a mess. I think gw 2 will find that out. Some people just dont have the awarness to heal themselves either when playing so no dedicated healer in gw2 may hurt in the long run.
I like this expanision of roles for each class. So looking forward to playing around with the Sith Sorcerer.
Retired: EVE, SWG, STO, EQ2, Ryzom, AO, LotRO, FFXI
Currently Awaiting: SWTOR, TSW, ArcheAge
Overall, I wasn't really really that happy with this direction. For myself, I want classes to really mean something. When every class can heal or tank, to me it lessens the impact that class choice itself has on gameplay. To me, it makes sense that a Jedi would heal his companions, but not a Sith. Now I understand that there has to be balance between the two factions, so there has to be at least SOME healing on the Empire side, so I don't mind a few of these types of things done in the name of balance. And I am mostly taking a wait-and-see approach. If they do a good enough job designing the Advanced Classes, I will still be happy overall. But if healing as Jedi and healing as a Scoudrel and Healing as a Bounty Hunter all feel pretty much the same, then I think this is a bad way to go. There has to be some way of differentiating between classes. They can't all feel the same. I feel like if all classes can fulfill all roles, then what really is the difference? But if BioWare does a good job making every class's experience feel unique and different then I feel this could work.
So instead of heal/tank/dps, you want Support/Control/DPS?
lol wat?
You can pretend and "label" it not the HOLY TRINITY, but you will still have roles. People will still pick rolls and they will do those rolls.
You can call those rolls whatever you like. But it doesn't make sense for a robe wearing (IE below light armor) class to be able to be hit more then once or twice by a big bad boss. Now if said boss was a caster himself, that's something else.
Why have different sets of armor with different armor values? Why not just let anyone wear any clothing they like if you are using a "no roll system"?
"In the end this is a game, and one hit kills are not fun."
I disafree. One hit kills ARE Star Wars. Living in the Star Wars universe is tough - ask Greedo. I just can't see the Canteena scene with Han and Greedo shooting and hitting each other for 5 minutes while their health bar slowly ebbs being fun. We wouldn't be interested in a Star Wars game at all had it played out that way on screen.
"The holy trinity is a fine system that works. It wouldn't still be here if it wasn't."
It's a crutch that was used back in the late 1980's for MUDs. Developers continue to use it thinking they can out-WoW WoW. They refuse to create a new system that would actually be more epic and cinematic for a game like Star Wars where the universe just doesn't fit the model.
"Why have different sets of armor with different armor values? Why not just let anyone wear any clothing they like if you are using a "no roll system"?"
Back to playing dress up. You'll have to ask George Lucas why StormTrooper armor doesn't seem to mean much since most troopers that die onscreen seem to only take one hit. It's just the Star Wars way. Making the armor have some type of defense against blaster or light saber hits would change the universe.
Personally, I don't want to play dress up. The clothes shouldn't make the character. Luke didn't need a light saber of a thousand paper cuts to defeat anyone. He didn't seek the Jedi Robe of many colors either.
The problem with all of this multi classing is that back in EQ / Vanilla wow, if you were at end game, you knew your class pretty well, and if you were at endgame and geared for raids, especially as you got to T2 and 3 raids, you were probably really good at your class. Now a days we have people who are just not good at tanking "filling in, in a pinch" which loosly translates to "wiping the group a fewl 1000 times"
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
The Roles are still here folks.
They are just in the form of different classes.
Class does not equal role. Your set up does.
Kudos to Bioware.
That is a movie, this is a game. Again, you pick up a sword and go whack someone with it, I promise you, they will not stand there and take it for 5 minutes. Most games are blow for blow, especially in MMOs.
Most people won't play a game with 1 hit kills, most people don't play games with full loot, hell, most people don't even play FFA games. I'd be interested to know what games you know of that are so true to life that you're currently playing or looking forward to, but, usually you don't heal in a few minutes from gunshots like in FPS games, and you can't fix vehicles or turrets in a matter of seconds either. These are games, so, naturally, you want people to play and have a chance to compete without frustration.
The only thing that makes a bit upset with this game, is the fact that I'm forced to use two one-handed lightsaber if I want to be a Jedi DPS dealer... which is awfully lame, I only want to use one lightsaber.
They stated in the last update that they are working on a single handed DPS lightsaber spec.
For a Sci-Fi based game a quick example of a different way to break down roles would be:
Ground:
- Recon/Sniper
- Close Assault
- Fire Support/Heavy Weapons
- Engineer/Demolitions
- Commander
- Ground Vehicle Crew
Space:
Pilot
Gunner
Engineer
Sensors/Electronic Warfare
That's just dealing with combat roles...not even non-combat. Again you still have people filling specific roles and teamwork being required to be successfull....but it's not Tank/Healer/DPS.
An example of how this could play out would be say an assault on a heavly defended imperial/rebel base.
Recon is needed to go out and scout the base defenses, determine the best approach. Commander calls in smoke/orbital barrage to give the engineers cover to clear the automated defenses (mines, turrets) on the initial approach to the base. Fire Support then moves in to lay down suppression fire against the human defenders of the base while the assault troops move in to engage from close range for the kill.
If anything I think the "success" and popularity of RIFT and their soul system has really shown some light on something that those among us with brains have known for a long time-
Variety is the spice of life.
Or simply put, players love choice.
Yes, there is a fine line between having too many choices and thus making the choices themselves less meaningful, and of course with more roles per character balance becomes exponentially more complex...
Guess we'll have to wait and see how it all works out.
My money is on Bioware though.
They have always been on a drug called "winning."
To change the trinty in dynamic way in which "mobs" react to aggro would have to be done different. If BW removed taunt then companions would not be able to tank for solo questers. if a boss's hate table is changed even for a random attack sequence on players, he would run amock and one shot players with armor lower then plate.
Maybe mob/boss mechanics need to be changed so that the boss chooses who to tank, then the rest of the group falls in to help heal and dps. The boss picking a player sounds much better and the group can't blame anyone for a wipe if the poor slob got picked and they got owned. All they could say is dam I hope he picks a different person to tank this time around.
maybe for mobs just let a mob taunt work on mobs. I still like that the boss picks his victim. would make it interesting.
Just a silly idea but I would love to see scripted encounters have a better AI then just we tank we spank lets get loot repeat.
True enough people don't like being killed in one hit. All you had to do was read the forums on camelot VN to know that. So yes Dark Age of Camelot had tons of 1 hit kills. I had a 50 bow spec Ranger before they changed the archery system. It still makes me laugh to think about. I don't even remember the name of the ability but it extended your range by 50% and penetrated bubble (caster shield). I remember being on top of a level 10 tower and 1 shotting a caster that was on top of the inner keep... not fun for him but funny as hell to me.
Ahem. Anyway yes I'd agree if you don't want your forums to be a screaming mess and many presses of "cancel" you'll likely not have one hit kills. At least not if the person is properly geared etc
Do away with predefined classes and roles and let the players themselves decide how they wanna play.
A grabbag of skills we can freely choose from to build our characters and let's define our current role by the equipment we put on.
There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to play a healer today and a sniper tomorrow with a single character. Just make sure that we can't switch equipment and roles mid-combat and it'll be fine.
Instead of max-level for a character with predefined roles, let's have a maximum of skillpoints to invest into the skills we want. Either you heavily specialize into one single direction or you train into diferent directions being mediocre in multiple roles.
Death to predefined roles and classes and death to character-levels!
Ok., there are two dudes with each a health bar. You can knock the health bar of the opponent down: DPS. You can make your health stay where it is: Tank. Or you can fill the health bar up again: Healer. You can then do this on different ranges and with a different radius and differentiated by single-target and multi-target (AOEs, splash etc). Last not least, you can prevent someone else from doing his job, or make your friend perform better: Supporter. In a nutshell: that's it with any somewhat static "classic" MMORPG combat system.
You can remove aggro, then stuff like tanking will be diminished or push the game more towards twitch (where then other factors may be more important). If you wanted to make it really different, you would have to remove the concept of a health bar entirely (or any functionally similar bar)—then work from there. Where you probably end up with a very different kind of game.
Anyhow, it allows to come up with different playstyles that play quite differently and diffetrent roles in a party, which is good for the multiplayer part (which isn't trivial). Sometimes removing or changing something will cause many other things to also break.
I like the idea, I like pretty much all of their idea's, now let's get on with the release already lol
I think it's good. Playig Rift showed me it is a cool thing to can switch between functions. Both for the fun of trying something different and for the different needs in different groups or situations.
Good move IMO.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Freedom in games=WIN
Let the player free!
Faction restricted classes still sucks if you ask me. My Guild are all keen to Roll Republic but I really want to play a bounty hunter (and lets face it bounty hunters are factionless by profession really working for or with whoever can pay so locking them to one Faction just seems stupid) so it means I probably have to Roll a jedi with my guild and play a bounty hunter alt somewhere else.
OR
Find a new guild which I dont really want to do.
You are wrong on this, only minmaxers will follow the strict pattern of roles! If you want an example of this, in Guild Wars the high end dungeons in hard mode are what we can look at. MinMaxers go with role setup when they select their 7 teammates, while people that are not MinMaxers like me would take pretty much anyone to do a dungeon. In fact I have run Slaver’s exile in hard mode with nothing but casters.
So eliminating tanking and healing, makes it so the people that are not minmaxers, do whatever they can to help the group be successful. Only MinMaxers will still pick roles!
If you want a more elaborate explanation look at the following posts: post1 post2
AAAAAH! walls of reply text!!!
but any who my questions its whats the point of a class system if each class can fill in every roll? i still think its cool idea but fear that it may break certain aspects of gameplay.
This is what I wrote about that earlier:
"If they are smart there will be a lot of difference in viability of the overlapping roles between encounters: for instance it looks like there will be three kinds of tanking: 'ranged', 'evasion / force' and 'melee / close range'. I can very much imagine one of those being much better against boss A while another kind of tank is preferable against boss B. Same goes for healing types and ranged or melee dps.
It all depends on how encounters are implemented and how class balance turns out in pvp but my guess is they will want to avoid "one class for everything" characters ..."
^ As they stated that they are looking for a lot of replayability by people rerolling other classes: having "one class for everything" options would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Next to that there are ways to add unique functionality to classes with support skills like disabling abilities, buffs, AoE, etc.
My brand new bloggity blog.
Orrr.. you could just quit whining, and give it a chance when it comes out?