@Disdena -- trust me, if I could I would write 3000 word walls of text where I can expand on every aspect of whatever it is I'm looking at. I've done it on my personal blog many times.
Here, however, I'm limited to ~1000 words or people would run screaming for the hills. I think for this site it's probably a pretty good rule, especially for wordy-tendency people like me.
Left for dead.................sure that is not a 10 man raid size game but it still works. Nobody needs to tank anything in real life, you avoid damage and use the terrain.
"It’s a concept as old as pen’n’paper games themselves and there’s a sound basis for it."
This is not true. There are no pen and paper games that use the Holy Trinity. At best HT is an extreme exaggeration of pen and paper fantasy.
Take D&D. Fighters can dish out a ton of damage, unlike tanks. They are frontline warriors, but the game simply doesn't have the sort of aggro capabilities that you see in HT. They have high defenses and health because that's necessary for a front line warrior to survive. Clerics can heal, but they also have pretty high health and do good melee damage...and they are completely incapable of spamming heals (and it would be a bad idea for them to sit back and just heal). Mages don't just DPS, but use crowd control, defend themselves, etc. Everyone is a hybrid in D&D and there's a lot less healing overall, especially during combat.
In fact, as best I know, there is no PnP RPG on the market that allows for HT. You simply can't spam heals, get all monsters to attack one guy (let alone have a guy who can handle every enemy attacking him at once), and then have glass cannons get ignored. This is purely an MMO convention, and a decidedly stupid one at that. It requires that enemies act like complete idiots and dumbs down the importance of combat tactics in favor of giving each fight a stupid gimmick.
Pen&paper had the holy trinity with the tank/healer/dps? We didn't played the same pen and paper then. Those roles are new to the mmo, this is totally false, the trinity never existed before EQ.
In pen&paper you had warrior for sure and mage but you didn't had dps/healer/tank for sure, you need to call apple apple, and stop calling them orange. You just can't mix everything in this stupid trinity for god sake. Some people seam to think it have to be in everything, but no. The trinity exist in themepark mmo, EQ was the founder of it, period
You really need to name me a single pen&paper with the tank sucking the damage and taking all the attention (agro) from the mobs when the mage was healing, and the rest dpsing? Don't be ridiculous, this is a mmo stuff. The concept of agro don't even exist in pen&paper, it have no need to exist. Monster will atack the player that the GM decided in a pen&paper.
This kind of stuff would have been ridiculous in a pen&paer, is ridiculous in mmo. But at the time it came out, you know mmo was suposed to be social, you need cohesion in group, forced cohesion blabla. It was a reaction against Uo and the anti-social pking blabal. Thank god this crap is over now, trinity should have no room in mmo anymore. But its such an easy system a lot seam to like it, bha... let them have it if they want. But its still a ridiculous system, and non trinity combat is so much better you should try it guys. Its simply a much better simulation of combat, much closer to the pen&paper for sure.
And the guys that seam to think nothing can even exist outside of trinity you are just plain sad guys. You never played a pen&paper, a mud, a single player game with group, an arcade rpg game, did you ever played any games other than WOW? So please stop being ridiculous and claim it doesn't exist, because they are like all over for god sake.
Pen&paper had the holy trinity with the tank/healer/dps? We didn't played the same pen and paper then. Those roles are new to the mmo, this is totally false, the trinity never existed before EQ.
In pen&paper you had warrior for sure and mage but you didn't had dps/healer/tank for sure, you need to call apple apple, and stop calling them orange. You just can't mix everything in this stupid trinity for god sake. Some people seam to think it have to be in everything, but no. The trinity exist in themepark mmo, EQ was the founder of it, period
You really need to name me a single pen&paper with the tank sucking the damage and taking all the attention (agro) from the mobs when the mage was healing, and the rest dpsing? Don't be ridiculous, this is a mmo stuff. The concept of agro don't even exist in pen&paper, it have no need to exist. Monster will atack the player that the GM decided in a pen&paper.
This kind of stuff would have been ridiculous in a pen&paer, is ridiculous in mmo. But at the time it came out, you know mmo was suposed to be social, you need cohesion in group, forced cohesion blabla. It was a reaction against Uo and the anti-social pking blabal. Thank god this crap is over now, trinity should have no room in mmo anymore. But its such an easy system a lot seam to like it, bha... let them have it if they want. But its still a ridiculous system, and non trinity combat is so much better you should try it guys. Its simply a much better simulation of combat, much closer to the pen&paper for sure.
And the guys that seam to think nothing can even exist outside of trinity you are just plain sad guys. You never played a pen&paper, a mud, a single player game with group, an arcade rpg game, did you ever played any games other than WOW? So please stop being ridiculous and claim it doesn't exist, because they are like all over for god sake.
In PnP D&D you still wanted the low AC high HP characters up in the front keeping a buffer from your squishy caster/s, and keeping them occupied while your rogue/s setup their backstabs. All the while druids and clerics would throw heals and state clears as needed.
So yeah... there were still group roles. Of course not every party was the same. Every group was different, and not all of them had a high HP low AC character, or a class that could do combat healing, but the difference is that the DM can adjust the encounters for the party to take party makup into consideration. Not so easy to do that in an MMO that's simply running off of scripted encounters.
Good post. Some replies though, remind me of the guy who only ever owned a harley but states that they're the best bikes ever made.
I've been playing Vindictus since beta (summer 2k10) which doesn't use the trinity system. It's a 5 man dungeon 6-8 man raid action based mmo. 3 classes, a dual sword, mage and sword and board all dps classes. Nobody is dependent on aggro or heals and it works extremely well. Everybody just contributes to taking down mobs and bosses nobody to blame but yourself for dying. Personally after playing the crap out mmo's since 2k3 to current it's a refreshing change. You que up wih any group combo which also switches things up. No need to wait for a tank or healer you just have fun. Hell it's all fun and alot less player griefing to. The games not totaly perfect and unfinished but the basic system is solid and polished.
The "Holy trinity" is not the end all do all just a popular type at the moment. Honestly do you really want to keep paying and playing for the same thing for the next 10 years. Open your mind and maybe a little less narrow minded and welcome change!
I've found the most enjoyable role dynamics happen within 4th edition DnD, in part because the tank is not expected to soak every drop of damage. Its shared round a fair bit. This means that everyone is kept on the bounce. Everyone has to move with the flow of combat. Likewise healing is not usually limited to the one player, and even a dedicated healer spends a lot of time hitting or shooting things.
This is what is being expected of Guild Wars 2. I suspect it only works in a game where enough work has gone into designing monster attacks and movements to shift the shape of the playfield, so that everyone is expected to change roles on a moment-to-moment basis rather than locking themselves into a one-trick role for an entire encounter. Here's hoping anyway.
I remember the shaman and druid as they were originally designed in WoW were expected to play as such, but the shape of it now shows just how far that vision strayed and failed, limiting those classes to pick but a single role for any given encounter. What a waste.
I like the "Holy Trinity" because it forces people to group. I've played games where everybody could have a bit of everything in thier build & inevitably it resulted in a lot of solo players. to me, that's boring, I have single player games for that
Anyone saying UO had anything close to the holy trinity is smoking something illegal! It had nothing even resembling it.
First off the holy trinity requires dedicated healers, tanks, and dps. There was nothing close to that in UO nor in Eve. Sure there was some healing capabilities, but they can and do other things. AC1 was the exact same way.
Let's not stretch the truth to the breaking point huh.
Everytime I hear "holy trinity" I die a little inside. It is simply baffling that people complain about this core system of the mmorpg. But like everything else, the genre is getting destroyed by newcomers who want the genre to be what they want it to be. Whether it is injecting fps qualities or single player rps qualities, outside influences have been chippin away at the genre. There is nothing wrong with the holy trinity and defined group roles. In fact, both lie at the core of the mmorpg system. Yet, what we have today is a community of people who want their toons to be able to do everything and yet somehow still dominate every other "god" opponent they come across. Why do you need a group if you can tank, heal and dps? Hell, why do you even need to be online with other people? It just blows my mind that people even talk about things like this. I guess its just a matter of accepting that the mmorpg genre doesn't exist anymore. At best, the mmorpg genre today is a piecemeal collection of all the other genres with no defining trait.
There is a reason that since the beginning of time, militaries have been divided into units with specific strengths and weaknesses. No succesful military force has ever been comprised of a "all role" unit. And yes, I am quite aware that games are not real life, but I am also aware that roles define everything we do; and for good reason.
In PnP D&D you still wanted the low AC high HP characters up in the front keeping a buffer from your squishy caster/s, and keeping them occupied while your rogue/s setup their backstabs. All the while druids and clerics would throw heals and state clears as needed.
So yeah... there were still group roles. Of course not every party was the same. Every group was different, and not all of them had a high HP low AC character, or a class that could do combat healing, but the difference is that the DM can adjust the encounters for the party to take party makup into consideration. Not so easy to do that in an MMO that's simply running off of scripted encounters.
"Group roles" and "Holy Trinity" are NOT synonymous, so don't act like they are. Yeah, in D&D people have different specialties. These specialties are much softer than Holy Trinity specialties AND they are also focused on different things.
For instance, the Fighter isn't specialized in soaking damage, he's specialized in frontline combat. Yes, that also requires a certain degree of toughness, but it also requires being able to churn out lots of damage. Contrast that with a Tank, who is maybe 10 times or more tougher than anyone else, but has the killing power of a wet noodle. The Holy Trinity has far, far higher toughness and damage dealing disparities than any PnP RPG (and more than pretty much any CRPG that isn't HT). Also Fighter in D&D simply doesn't have the capability to survive being attacked by all enemies; he wouldn't want to use a HT strategy even if it was an option.
Similarly, the Cleric or Druid in D&D doesn't stand back and just heal or toss out "status clears" (in fact, very, very rarely does one cast the latter spells in actual combat in D&D, most of it is done outside of combat). They are either churning out damage with spells or with physical attacks and are 2nd only to the Fighter in toughness. Most healing is done outside of combat, beyond the most emergency of combat healing. Like the fighter, the Cleric also can't fulfill an HT role; churning out constant heals simply isn't possible (and like I said, it isn't very efficient either).
Rogue in some ways were the weakest class in combat. They didn't do the damage of warriors, nor were they as tough. They could do the occasional backstab, but it wasn't trivial to do (even sneak attacks in 3rd can't always be set up, and some creatures are immune to them). Even doing that would still result in damage less than that of the warrior. They made up for this in a group by being able to handle traps, locked doors, etc. Naturally 3rd Edition sought to give them a power boost so that they weren't as lacking in combat, but they still aren't a class that churns out tons of DPS compared to others. They do fulfill a role as agile and sneaker warriors who bring a lot of non-combat skills to the table.
I could go on, but the fact is that thinking that D&D is anything like the Holy Trinity is just flat out wrong. Equally wrong is thinking that any sort of group combat system with combat roles means it is a holy trinity game. In fact most games (and anything in in real life) with combat roles are not holy trinity. They have other roles that tend to make a heck of a lot more sense and don't require enemies to behave like morons.
The worse thing about Holy Trinity combat is just how completely and utterly sterile it is. Each person has one and only one job to do. That results in some of the most uninteresting combat you can imagine. Devs try to spice it up by giving every fight a gimmick, but you just have to look at how often WoW recycles those gimmicks to see that it doesn't get you far. Worse, once you learn the gimmick such fights quickly become just as sterile as ones without it. The best such games can manage as far as difficulty goes seems to be visciously punishing players for making mistakes. It's no wonder that most people don't raid (even in WoW after all the changes). There are better ways to have difficulty and depth than "memorize and learn a boss fight or you cause everyone to wipe"...unfortunately the Holy Trinity is very ill-suited for anything like that.
HT is just used because it is super-easy. The problem is that it results in pretty boring play (for most people). That's not a good trade-off. End-result is that devs have to make fights easier since people don't like "do it right or everyone wipes", and people who like such things get upset at the challenge being gone. No one wins in the long run there.
here is nothing wrong with the holy trinity and defined group roles. In fact, both lie at the core of the mmorpg system.
Group roles and specializations do not inherently require a system that results in enemies being idiots. The Holy Trinity "solution" does require this, however. That's certainly something wrong with it. You can immediately see its failings when you consider than even in HT games it is impossible to have HT work in PvP unless the devs actively force other players to behave like idiots too. HT is immersion-breaking and results in stale gameplay.
While columnists always say this, Tank/DPS/Healing did not really exist in P&P games. It's a MMORPG thing.
Sure, there were fighters and healers and such. But healing was generally very limited and done after an encounter, not during, and almost every class could deal out a decent amount of damage.
The article could have gone into a little more detail about why the trinity—and roles in general—exist in the first place. Isabelle mentioned in the opening that if everyone could do the same thing as everyone else, we would get very bored. But it's a little more than that. Even a little bit of specialization goes a long way. If there is anything that you can do even a little bit better than anyone else in the group, the optimal strategy is for you to do just that one thing and nothing else. If everyone can deal damage but you can deal a little more, why would you ever heal? If you took a little less damage, why would you let anyone else take a hit?
Seperating group members into dedicated roles is an optimal strategy. The trinity has persisted for so long because it's a moderately difficult puzzle to solve with a solution that is fun, exciting, and familiar. When I say that tank-and-spank is a moderately difficult puzzle, I'm not trolling. By virtue of the fact that you're reading the comments on an article about MMORPGs, you are already in the top 10 percentile of MMO skill. Trust me on this: there are a huge number of people who are way below your level for whom the basics of group strategy are not trivial. Figuring out how to manage aggro or heal efficiently is a challenge, even when the game spells it out for you at every occasion.
The notion that better mob AI is a "solution" to the trinity is foundationless. All fights against a computer-controlled opponent are going to get solved. An optimal solution will be found. Having a tankable AI ensures that the solution (trinity) will be exciting and rewarding and will require teamwork with each person playing a role. Having an AI that actually tries to win the combat or survive is a virtual guarantee that the combat will have a simple and boring solution. Especially AI that runs away. This is terrible. Never suggest it again.
I definitely agree with most of what you posted, but not quite everything.
"The notion that better mob AI is a "solution" to the trinity is foundationless. All fights against a computer-controlled opponent are going to get solved. An optimal solution will be found. Having a tankable AI ensures that the solution (trinity) will be exciting and rewarding and will require teamwork with each person playing a role. Having an AI that actually tries to win the combat or survive is a virtual guarantee that the combat will have a simple and boring solution. Especially AI that runs away. This is terrible. Never suggest it again."
I highly disagree with that part. Guild Wars AI is far different from typical MMO AI, and it keeps the fight a lot more interesting. Guild Wars still used a rough facsimile of the "holy trinity", as in you did need dedicated healers and you generally wanted a couple "tank" types to try to body-block the enemies from your less tough team-members. But the fact of the matter was, everyone was going to get attacked eventually no matter how good your "tanks" were, simply because Guild Wars has no actual threat table, at least not like any other MMO. The AI determines which enemy is weakest and/or the greatest threat, and prioritizes accordingly. The end result is combat that is a lot more engaging and far less sterile than your general tank-n-spank setup like in WoW. I could say a lot more, but the bottom line is the combat in GW was always far more fun than the combat in WoW. And a lot of it had to do with smarter AI.
I do have to agree though on having AI run away. That's just annoying and unnecessary.
here is nothing wrong with the holy trinity and defined group roles. In fact, both lie at the core of the mmorpg system.
Group roles and specializations do not inherently require a system that results in enemies being idiots. The Holy Trinity "solution" does require this, however. That's certainly something wrong with it. You can immediately see its failings when you consider than even in HT games it is impossible to have HT work in PvP unless the devs actively force other players to behave like idiots too. HT is immersion-breaking and results in stale gameplay.
Clearly, because games like DAoC and WAR never had tanks that could either protect others or force you to deal with them in pvp. It has nothing to do with forcing other players to act like idiots, it has everything to do with design. If all your attacks against a healer or caster are being intercepted/guarded/blocked etc. by the tank, or if you have collision detection where a tank can literally block you from getting around them, it kinda makes the tank quite relevant in pvp. There is a reason for cliche sayings like "hold the line" and "stand your ground". If you can impede your attackers by putting heavily armored units in front of them, you already have the upper hand. And even more basic, taunting has a role to play in pvp as well. You may think it is idiotic, but history is full of examples where a particular warrior or officer could draw the attention of all those around him and encourage them to battle him, and for good reason. Whether it is something as simple as a momentary distraction, a taunt skill has a place in pvp. Now, if you want to argue that tanking in most games is too easy and you shouldn't be able to just press a button to hold agro, that's one thing. But there is nothing intrinsically idiotic or wrong with the holy trinity, just how it may be implimented in some games. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like you have played any group based pvp games. If the game is not built around group pvp, then you really cannot expect the holy trinity to perform well.
As for it being immersion breaking, that really makes no sense.
In PnP D&D you still wanted the low AC high HP characters up in the front keeping a buffer from your squishy caster/s, and keeping them occupied while your rogue/s setup their backstabs. All the while druids and clerics would throw heals and state clears as needed.
So yeah... there were still group roles. Of course not every party was the same. Every group was different, and not all of them had a high HP low AC character, or a class that could do combat healing, but the difference is that the DM can adjust the encounters for the party to take party makup into consideration. Not so easy to do that in an MMO that's simply running off of scripted encounters.
"Group roles" and "Holy Trinity" are NOT synonymous, so don't act like they are. Yeah, in D&D people have different specialties. These specialties are much softer than Holy Trinity specialties AND they are also focused on different things.
For instance, the Fighter isn't specialized in soaking damage, he's specialized in frontline combat. Yes, that also requires a certain degree of toughness, but it also requires being able to churn out lots of damage. Contrast that with a Tank, who is maybe 10 times or more tougher than anyone else, but has the killing power of a wet noodle. The Holy Trinity has far, far higher toughness and damage dealing disparities than any PnP RPG (and more than pretty much any CRPG that isn't HT). Also Fighter in D&D simply doesn't have the capability to survive being attacked by all enemies; he wouldn't want to use a HT strategy even if it was an option.
Similarly, the Cleric or Druid in D&D doesn't stand back and just heal or toss out "status clears" (in fact, very, very rarely does one cast the latter spells in actual combat in D&D, most of it is done outside of combat). They are either churning out damage with spells or with physical attacks and are 2nd only to the Fighter in toughness. Most healing is done outside of combat, beyond the most emergency of combat healing. Like the fighter, the Cleric also can't fulfill an HT role; churning out constant heals simply isn't possible (and like I said, it isn't very efficient either).
Rogue in some ways were the weakest class in combat. They didn't do the damage of warriors, nor were they as tough. They could do the occasional backstab, but it wasn't trivial to do (even sneak attacks in 3rd can't always be set up, and some creatures are immune to them). Even doing that would still result in damage less than that of the warrior. They made up for this in a group by being able to handle traps, locked doors, etc. Naturally 3rd Edition sought to give them a power boost so that they weren't as lacking in combat, but they still aren't a class that churns out tons of DPS compared to others. They do fulfill a role as agile and sneaker warriors who bring a lot of non-combat skills to the table.
I could go on, but the fact is that thinking that D&D is anything like the Holy Trinity is just flat out wrong. Equally wrong is thinking that any sort of group combat system with combat roles means it is a holy trinity game. In fact most games (and anything in in real life) with combat roles are not holy trinity. They have other roles that tend to make a heck of a lot more sense and don't require enemies to behave like morons.
The worse thing about Holy Trinity combat is just how completely and utterly sterile it is. Each person has one and only one job to do. That results in some of the most uninteresting combat you can imagine. Devs try to spice it up by giving every fight a gimmick, but you just have to look at how often WoW recycles those gimmicks to see that it doesn't get you far. Worse, once you learn the gimmick such fights quickly become just as sterile as ones without it. The best such games can manage as far as difficulty goes seems to be visciously punishing players for making mistakes. It's no wonder that most people don't raid (even in WoW after all the changes). There are better ways to have difficulty and depth than "memorize and learn a boss fight or you cause everyone to wipe"...unfortunately the Holy Trinity is very ill-suited for anything like that.
HT is just used because it is super-easy. The problem is that it results in pretty boring play (for most people). That's not a good trade-off. End-result is that devs have to make fights easier since people don't like "do it right or everyone wipes", and people who like such things get upset at the challenge being gone. No one wins in the long run there.
I never implied that the holy trinity and group roles were synonymous.
I did in a previous post however, state that the trinity exists because of the need to create group roles. This is particularly true when group content needs to be tuned to offer consistent challenges.
There in lies the issue, designing challening group content. If you develop content with a specific group composition with specific roles to be filled in mind, you can much more reasonably tune the difficulty of content where it will be hard enough that you require the group composition you're designing for, while presenting challening gameplay.
If you're designing for any composition, then designing challenging content becomes extremely difficult. On one hand content might be far too easy for certain group makeups, but the exact same encounter could be a brick wall of difficulty. Of course, if you give every class the tools to soak damage, deal damage, and heal you can mitigate this issue... but then you're pretty much making everyone in the group able to fill every role, which kills the group dynamic and makes things very bland in my opinion.
I'm not saying it's impossible to deviate from the trinity, simply that there are decent reasons why so many games use the trinity concept to design around.
If GW2 can pull of their 'trinity-less' system, great, I'd love to see it. Personally though, I have my reservations as to how well it's going to work when everyone can do everything, because it sounds rather boring to me when everyone is doing the exact same thing and is no different from everyone else.
I remain skeptical, and will be waiting to see how GW2 turns out before declaring the trinity is dead.
We've already sort of had a preview of what happens when you start homginizing roles, MMO's in the days of yore really weren't trinity based, they usually had a buffer/debuffing class as well as a crowd control class.
Recently these pure roles have been largely done away with, and their abilities shared between the remaining 3 corners of the trinity , and I feel MMO's are poorer for it.
So in this next step, everyone will do everything equally, tank a little, dps a little, heal a little, crowd control a little.
I know this seems fun for many people, just not me so much.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I still say someone should try to work some derivative of the SPECIAL system into an MMO (the basis for the Fallout titles), that kind of makes it impossible to have clear roles. The closest approximation to it is Fallen Earth, except FE uses core stats as more of a barrier to skill progression, instead of a flat bonus to the base skill's effectiveness.
I do have to agree though on having AI run away. That's just annoying and unnecessary.
On the surface, yes, but I remember enjoying the heck out of the mob AI in Chronicles of Spellborn - mobs would run away... and bring back friends. That was a nice spin. It was a very good example of clever AI (not just the running away & bringing back reinforcements, but the ways in which human mobs attacked were different too, depending on the situation). I remember my time in that game fondly for the fact that their mob AI was leagues ahead of most.
One of the main problems with a game giving players freedom is that a lot of players will (out of habit, or preference) still try to come up with approximations of Trinity roles. If enough of them do that then you end up with a de facto Trinity system anyway.
twodayslate above mentions Fallen Earth as a non-trinity game, and it's true that it's less so than most, but go fight El Cadejo and you'll see people focusing on traditional roles: melee tank, DPS pumping out damage while minding their aggro, someone healing. It could be that old habits die hard from the player side, but it's more likely that people do whatever works, and an approximation of the Trinity works best there. Also, it's true that stats are used to cap skills / mutations, but they also contribute to base stats (str & end directly affect base HP for example, in the system currently on the PTS).
So, while I'd like to see a system that backs away from the Trinity, I'm not entirely sure that players won't push it right back towards it again.
So, while I'd like to see a system that backs away from the Trinity, I'm not entirely sure that players won't push it right back towards it again.
Well, two games that allow full customization have been used as examples of this already.
Eve: hard to thing of an MMO that has less to do with the Holy Trinity setup. Still, for some encounters, players like brining one tanking ship, one repairing ship and other ships to DPS.
Champions Online: despite freeform players beeing able to build their toon however they want, many players build their toons as pure tanks or pure healers, becouse it's the easiest way to beat certain encounters.
Good post. Some replies though, remind me of the guy who only ever owned a harley but states that they're the best bikes ever made.
I've been playing Vindictus since beta (summer 2k10) which doesn't use the trinity system. It's a 5 man dungeon 6-8 man raid action based mmo. 3 classes, a dual sword, mage and sword and board all dps classes. Nobody is dependent on aggro or heals and it works extremely well. Everybody just contributes to taking down mobs and bosses nobody to blame but yourself for dying. Personally after playing the crap out mmo's since 2k3 to current it's a refreshing change. You que up wih any group combo which also switches things up. No need to wait for a tank or healer you just have fun. Hell it's all fun and alot less player griefing to. The games not totaly perfect and unfinished but the basic system is solid and polished.
The "Holy trinity" is not the end all do all just a popular type at the moment. Honestly do you really want to keep paying and playing for the same thing for the next 10 years. Open your mind and maybe a little less narrow minded and welcome change!
They are a ton of game that play without the trinity even in the mmo world and they play very well indeed.
The thing people doesn't seam to be able to understand and totally ignore (i suspect on purpose) is the fact the trinity was invented by the EQ dev or whoever behind it to promote grouping and colaboration in mmos. In fact it was a bit more than promote, so they invented the trinity system, the boss fight that turned into raid later on (before the strongest monster weren't meant either for group or solo, they where just the strongest), they create those party system that didn't exist before, grouping was made on the fly and so on. They totally turned up side down the meaning of rpg to fit their obsession at that moment which was learn kid something social, since Uo was for them the evil incarnated. Which is now, we all know it, totally ridiculous. They even banned totally pvp from their mmo for that reason. Ye pvp came back to themepark with Wow as an after though because it was so demanded they really had to do something about it. Only korean mmo never loose their link with pvp. But let be honest, Wow pvp features is a bit skinny compared to all the mmo that refused to go into the themepark domination.
So when people come here to say nothing exist apart from the trinity it is almost an insult to me at least. This all trend we need to force grouping and colaboration is totally wrong. And yes the tank/heal/dps is exactly that forcing you colaboration, not to talk about the fact the best rewards are in raids, so you are once more forced to play them to access the best reward, it is just a pyramid of obligation. Those that did that are just the kind of awfull parent that kick their kids all day long to have them do what they want and only what they want. I also have kids, and sorry guys, the way you make your games is just wrong all over. Now people claiming that it is the only way to make those games is just over the top, go fucking buy you a brain already. This is just insane really and piss me off.
In PnP D&D you still wanted the low AC high HP characters up in the front keeping a buffer from your squishy caster/s, and keeping them occupied while your rogue/s setup their backstabs. All the while druids and clerics would throw heals and state clears as needed.
So yeah... there were still group roles. Of course not every party was the same. Every group was different, and not all of them had a high HP low AC character, or a class that could do combat healing, but the difference is that the DM can adjust the encounters for the party to take party makup into consideration. Not so easy to do that in an MMO that's simply running off of scripted encounters.
Don't mix up everything please, sure you will always take dmage it doesn't mean you are a tank and pull agro because a monster attack you, it have no corelation. Same with healer, and buffer, sure you had to heal your group, and make damage. But the structure of the trinity that need the tank to be in front and have the other support hiom doesn't exist at all. As i said a GM will have its monster swap with inteligence, and he will try to have them behave as their lore ask them to behave. Orcs will be in groups, dragon will fly away and throw their fire. It don't even have relation to hte way mobs are build in mmo. Furtemore mobs and the all agro building stuff as i said exist only in trinity game. In other mmo building agro doesn't exist, in fact they will avoid it, mobs will go for the weaker or whatever it was coded for. They are ways to code mob behavior, the trinty is just one way amongs many.
I don't see what's wrong with the holy trinity. The only reasonable argument, imo, is having to wait for a tank/healer.
But that's because 99% of the people want to play a dps class. They want to pew pew. So the solution is? Remove healers and tanks altogether as Guild Wars 2 is doing.... There are people who can't even comprehend how someone can enjoy to play a healer /facepalm
Look at Diablo 2. There were no real healers and tanks (well maybe barbs but not really tanks were they). The solution to the holy trinity is quite simple. Make all classes dps and balance around this. This way you can cater to dps loving peeps.
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@Disdena -- trust me, if I could I would write 3000 word walls of text where I can expand on every aspect of whatever it is I'm looking at. I've done it on my personal blog many times.
Here, however, I'm limited to ~1000 words or people would run screaming for the hills. I think for this site it's probably a pretty good rule, especially for wordy-tendency people like me.
Left for dead.................sure that is not a 10 man raid size game but it still works. Nobody needs to tank anything in real life, you avoid damage and use the terrain.
"It’s a concept as old as pen’n’paper games themselves and there’s a sound basis for it."
This is not true. There are no pen and paper games that use the Holy Trinity. At best HT is an extreme exaggeration of pen and paper fantasy.
Take D&D. Fighters can dish out a ton of damage, unlike tanks. They are frontline warriors, but the game simply doesn't have the sort of aggro capabilities that you see in HT. They have high defenses and health because that's necessary for a front line warrior to survive. Clerics can heal, but they also have pretty high health and do good melee damage...and they are completely incapable of spamming heals (and it would be a bad idea for them to sit back and just heal). Mages don't just DPS, but use crowd control, defend themselves, etc. Everyone is a hybrid in D&D and there's a lot less healing overall, especially during combat.
In fact, as best I know, there is no PnP RPG on the market that allows for HT. You simply can't spam heals, get all monsters to attack one guy (let alone have a guy who can handle every enemy attacking him at once), and then have glass cannons get ignored. This is purely an MMO convention, and a decidedly stupid one at that. It requires that enemies act like complete idiots and dumbs down the importance of combat tactics in favor of giving each fight a stupid gimmick.
Pen&paper had the holy trinity with the tank/healer/dps? We didn't played the same pen and paper then. Those roles are new to the mmo, this is totally false, the trinity never existed before EQ.
In pen&paper you had warrior for sure and mage but you didn't had dps/healer/tank for sure, you need to call apple apple, and stop calling them orange. You just can't mix everything in this stupid trinity for god sake. Some people seam to think it have to be in everything, but no. The trinity exist in themepark mmo, EQ was the founder of it, period
You really need to name me a single pen&paper with the tank sucking the damage and taking all the attention (agro) from the mobs when the mage was healing, and the rest dpsing? Don't be ridiculous, this is a mmo stuff. The concept of agro don't even exist in pen&paper, it have no need to exist. Monster will atack the player that the GM decided in a pen&paper.
This kind of stuff would have been ridiculous in a pen&paer, is ridiculous in mmo. But at the time it came out, you know mmo was suposed to be social, you need cohesion in group, forced cohesion blabla. It was a reaction against Uo and the anti-social pking blabal. Thank god this crap is over now, trinity should have no room in mmo anymore. But its such an easy system a lot seam to like it, bha... let them have it if they want. But its still a ridiculous system, and non trinity combat is so much better you should try it guys. Its simply a much better simulation of combat, much closer to the pen&paper for sure.
And the guys that seam to think nothing can even exist outside of trinity you are just plain sad guys. You never played a pen&paper, a mud, a single player game with group, an arcade rpg game, did you ever played any games other than WOW? So please stop being ridiculous and claim it doesn't exist, because they are like all over for god sake.
In PnP D&D you still wanted the low AC high HP characters up in the front keeping a buffer from your squishy caster/s, and keeping them occupied while your rogue/s setup their backstabs. All the while druids and clerics would throw heals and state clears as needed.
So yeah... there were still group roles. Of course not every party was the same. Every group was different, and not all of them had a high HP low AC character, or a class that could do combat healing, but the difference is that the DM can adjust the encounters for the party to take party makup into consideration. Not so easy to do that in an MMO that's simply running off of scripted encounters.
Good post. Some replies though, remind me of the guy who only ever owned a harley but states that they're the best bikes ever made.
I've been playing Vindictus since beta (summer 2k10) which doesn't use the trinity system. It's a 5 man dungeon 6-8 man raid action based mmo. 3 classes, a dual sword, mage and sword and board all dps classes. Nobody is dependent on aggro or heals and it works extremely well. Everybody just contributes to taking down mobs and bosses nobody to blame but yourself for dying. Personally after playing the crap out mmo's since 2k3 to current it's a refreshing change. You que up wih any group combo which also switches things up. No need to wait for a tank or healer you just have fun. Hell it's all fun and alot less player griefing to. The games not totaly perfect and unfinished but the basic system is solid and polished.
The "Holy trinity" is not the end all do all just a popular type at the moment. Honestly do you really want to keep paying and playing for the same thing for the next 10 years. Open your mind and maybe a little less narrow minded and welcome change!
I've found the most enjoyable role dynamics happen within 4th edition DnD, in part because the tank is not expected to soak every drop of damage. Its shared round a fair bit. This means that everyone is kept on the bounce. Everyone has to move with the flow of combat. Likewise healing is not usually limited to the one player, and even a dedicated healer spends a lot of time hitting or shooting things.
This is what is being expected of Guild Wars 2. I suspect it only works in a game where enough work has gone into designing monster attacks and movements to shift the shape of the playfield, so that everyone is expected to change roles on a moment-to-moment basis rather than locking themselves into a one-trick role for an entire encounter. Here's hoping anyway.
I remember the shaman and druid as they were originally designed in WoW were expected to play as such, but the shape of it now shows just how far that vision strayed and failed, limiting those classes to pick but a single role for any given encounter. What a waste.
I like the "Holy Trinity" because it forces people to group. I've played games where everybody could have a bit of everything in thier build & inevitably it resulted in a lot of solo players. to me, that's boring, I have single player games for that
Anyone saying UO had anything close to the holy trinity is smoking something illegal! It had nothing even resembling it.
First off the holy trinity requires dedicated healers, tanks, and dps. There was nothing close to that in UO nor in Eve. Sure there was some healing capabilities, but they can and do other things. AC1 was the exact same way.
Let's not stretch the truth to the breaking point huh.
Everytime I hear "holy trinity" I die a little inside. It is simply baffling that people complain about this core system of the mmorpg. But like everything else, the genre is getting destroyed by newcomers who want the genre to be what they want it to be. Whether it is injecting fps qualities or single player rps qualities, outside influences have been chippin away at the genre. There is nothing wrong with the holy trinity and defined group roles. In fact, both lie at the core of the mmorpg system. Yet, what we have today is a community of people who want their toons to be able to do everything and yet somehow still dominate every other "god" opponent they come across. Why do you need a group if you can tank, heal and dps? Hell, why do you even need to be online with other people? It just blows my mind that people even talk about things like this. I guess its just a matter of accepting that the mmorpg genre doesn't exist anymore. At best, the mmorpg genre today is a piecemeal collection of all the other genres with no defining trait.
There is a reason that since the beginning of time, militaries have been divided into units with specific strengths and weaknesses. No succesful military force has ever been comprised of a "all role" unit. And yes, I am quite aware that games are not real life, but I am also aware that roles define everything we do; and for good reason.
Looking forward to the end of the trinity. It will be such a relief when GW2 comes out.
Archlinux ftw
"Group roles" and "Holy Trinity" are NOT synonymous, so don't act like they are. Yeah, in D&D people have different specialties. These specialties are much softer than Holy Trinity specialties AND they are also focused on different things.
For instance, the Fighter isn't specialized in soaking damage, he's specialized in frontline combat. Yes, that also requires a certain degree of toughness, but it also requires being able to churn out lots of damage. Contrast that with a Tank, who is maybe 10 times or more tougher than anyone else, but has the killing power of a wet noodle. The Holy Trinity has far, far higher toughness and damage dealing disparities than any PnP RPG (and more than pretty much any CRPG that isn't HT). Also Fighter in D&D simply doesn't have the capability to survive being attacked by all enemies; he wouldn't want to use a HT strategy even if it was an option.
Similarly, the Cleric or Druid in D&D doesn't stand back and just heal or toss out "status clears" (in fact, very, very rarely does one cast the latter spells in actual combat in D&D, most of it is done outside of combat). They are either churning out damage with spells or with physical attacks and are 2nd only to the Fighter in toughness. Most healing is done outside of combat, beyond the most emergency of combat healing. Like the fighter, the Cleric also can't fulfill an HT role; churning out constant heals simply isn't possible (and like I said, it isn't very efficient either).
Rogue in some ways were the weakest class in combat. They didn't do the damage of warriors, nor were they as tough. They could do the occasional backstab, but it wasn't trivial to do (even sneak attacks in 3rd can't always be set up, and some creatures are immune to them). Even doing that would still result in damage less than that of the warrior. They made up for this in a group by being able to handle traps, locked doors, etc. Naturally 3rd Edition sought to give them a power boost so that they weren't as lacking in combat, but they still aren't a class that churns out tons of DPS compared to others. They do fulfill a role as agile and sneaker warriors who bring a lot of non-combat skills to the table.
I could go on, but the fact is that thinking that D&D is anything like the Holy Trinity is just flat out wrong. Equally wrong is thinking that any sort of group combat system with combat roles means it is a holy trinity game. In fact most games (and anything in in real life) with combat roles are not holy trinity. They have other roles that tend to make a heck of a lot more sense and don't require enemies to behave like morons.
The worse thing about Holy Trinity combat is just how completely and utterly sterile it is. Each person has one and only one job to do. That results in some of the most uninteresting combat you can imagine. Devs try to spice it up by giving every fight a gimmick, but you just have to look at how often WoW recycles those gimmicks to see that it doesn't get you far. Worse, once you learn the gimmick such fights quickly become just as sterile as ones without it. The best such games can manage as far as difficulty goes seems to be visciously punishing players for making mistakes. It's no wonder that most people don't raid (even in WoW after all the changes). There are better ways to have difficulty and depth than "memorize and learn a boss fight or you cause everyone to wipe"...unfortunately the Holy Trinity is very ill-suited for anything like that.
HT is just used because it is super-easy. The problem is that it results in pretty boring play (for most people). That's not a good trade-off. End-result is that devs have to make fights easier since people don't like "do it right or everyone wipes", and people who like such things get upset at the challenge being gone. No one wins in the long run there.
Group roles and specializations do not inherently require a system that results in enemies being idiots. The Holy Trinity "solution" does require this, however. That's certainly something wrong with it. You can immediately see its failings when you consider than even in HT games it is impossible to have HT work in PvP unless the devs actively force other players to behave like idiots too. HT is immersion-breaking and results in stale gameplay.
While columnists always say this, Tank/DPS/Healing did not really exist in P&P games. It's a MMORPG thing.
Sure, there were fighters and healers and such. But healing was generally very limited and done after an encounter, not during, and almost every class could deal out a decent amount of damage.
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I definitely agree with most of what you posted, but not quite everything.
"The notion that better mob AI is a "solution" to the trinity is foundationless. All fights against a computer-controlled opponent are going to get solved. An optimal solution will be found. Having a tankable AI ensures that the solution (trinity) will be exciting and rewarding and will require teamwork with each person playing a role. Having an AI that actually tries to win the combat or survive is a virtual guarantee that the combat will have a simple and boring solution. Especially AI that runs away. This is terrible. Never suggest it again."
I highly disagree with that part. Guild Wars AI is far different from typical MMO AI, and it keeps the fight a lot more interesting. Guild Wars still used a rough facsimile of the "holy trinity", as in you did need dedicated healers and you generally wanted a couple "tank" types to try to body-block the enemies from your less tough team-members. But the fact of the matter was, everyone was going to get attacked eventually no matter how good your "tanks" were, simply because Guild Wars has no actual threat table, at least not like any other MMO. The AI determines which enemy is weakest and/or the greatest threat, and prioritizes accordingly. The end result is combat that is a lot more engaging and far less sterile than your general tank-n-spank setup like in WoW. I could say a lot more, but the bottom line is the combat in GW was always far more fun than the combat in WoW. And a lot of it had to do with smarter AI.
I do have to agree though on having AI run away. That's just annoying and unnecessary.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Clearly, because games like DAoC and WAR never had tanks that could either protect others or force you to deal with them in pvp. It has nothing to do with forcing other players to act like idiots, it has everything to do with design. If all your attacks against a healer or caster are being intercepted/guarded/blocked etc. by the tank, or if you have collision detection where a tank can literally block you from getting around them, it kinda makes the tank quite relevant in pvp. There is a reason for cliche sayings like "hold the line" and "stand your ground". If you can impede your attackers by putting heavily armored units in front of them, you already have the upper hand. And even more basic, taunting has a role to play in pvp as well. You may think it is idiotic, but history is full of examples where a particular warrior or officer could draw the attention of all those around him and encourage them to battle him, and for good reason. Whether it is something as simple as a momentary distraction, a taunt skill has a place in pvp. Now, if you want to argue that tanking in most games is too easy and you shouldn't be able to just press a button to hold agro, that's one thing. But there is nothing intrinsically idiotic or wrong with the holy trinity, just how it may be implimented in some games. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like you have played any group based pvp games. If the game is not built around group pvp, then you really cannot expect the holy trinity to perform well.
As for it being immersion breaking, that really makes no sense.
I never implied that the holy trinity and group roles were synonymous.
I did in a previous post however, state that the trinity exists because of the need to create group roles. This is particularly true when group content needs to be tuned to offer consistent challenges.
There in lies the issue, designing challening group content. If you develop content with a specific group composition with specific roles to be filled in mind, you can much more reasonably tune the difficulty of content where it will be hard enough that you require the group composition you're designing for, while presenting challening gameplay.
If you're designing for any composition, then designing challenging content becomes extremely difficult. On one hand content might be far too easy for certain group makeups, but the exact same encounter could be a brick wall of difficulty. Of course, if you give every class the tools to soak damage, deal damage, and heal you can mitigate this issue... but then you're pretty much making everyone in the group able to fill every role, which kills the group dynamic and makes things very bland in my opinion.
I'm not saying it's impossible to deviate from the trinity, simply that there are decent reasons why so many games use the trinity concept to design around.
If GW2 can pull of their 'trinity-less' system, great, I'd love to see it. Personally though, I have my reservations as to how well it's going to work when everyone can do everything, because it sounds rather boring to me when everyone is doing the exact same thing and is no different from everyone else.
I remain skeptical, and will be waiting to see how GW2 turns out before declaring the trinity is dead.
We've already sort of had a preview of what happens when you start homginizing roles, MMO's in the days of yore really weren't trinity based, they usually had a buffer/debuffing class as well as a crowd control class.
Recently these pure roles have been largely done away with, and their abilities shared between the remaining 3 corners of the trinity , and I feel MMO's are poorer for it.
So in this next step, everyone will do everything equally, tank a little, dps a little, heal a little, crowd control a little.
I know this seems fun for many people, just not me so much.
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I still say someone should try to work some derivative of the SPECIAL system into an MMO (the basis for the Fallout titles), that kind of makes it impossible to have clear roles. The closest approximation to it is Fallen Earth, except FE uses core stats as more of a barrier to skill progression, instead of a flat bonus to the base skill's effectiveness.
On the surface, yes, but I remember enjoying the heck out of the mob AI in Chronicles of Spellborn - mobs would run away... and bring back friends. That was a nice spin. It was a very good example of clever AI (not just the running away & bringing back reinforcements, but the ways in which human mobs attacked were different too, depending on the situation). I remember my time in that game fondly for the fact that their mob AI was leagues ahead of most.
One of the main problems with a game giving players freedom is that a lot of players will (out of habit, or preference) still try to come up with approximations of Trinity roles. If enough of them do that then you end up with a de facto Trinity system anyway.
twodayslate above mentions Fallen Earth as a non-trinity game, and it's true that it's less so than most, but go fight El Cadejo and you'll see people focusing on traditional roles: melee tank, DPS pumping out damage while minding their aggro, someone healing. It could be that old habits die hard from the player side, but it's more likely that people do whatever works, and an approximation of the Trinity works best there. Also, it's true that stats are used to cap skills / mutations, but they also contribute to base stats (str & end directly affect base HP for example, in the system currently on the PTS).
So, while I'd like to see a system that backs away from the Trinity, I'm not entirely sure that players won't push it right back towards it again.
Well, two games that allow full customization have been used as examples of this already.
Eve: hard to thing of an MMO that has less to do with the Holy Trinity setup. Still, for some encounters, players like brining one tanking ship, one repairing ship and other ships to DPS.
Champions Online: despite freeform players beeing able to build their toon however they want, many players build their toons as pure tanks or pure healers, becouse it's the easiest way to beat certain encounters.
They are a ton of game that play without the trinity even in the mmo world and they play very well indeed.
The thing people doesn't seam to be able to understand and totally ignore (i suspect on purpose) is the fact the trinity was invented by the EQ dev or whoever behind it to promote grouping and colaboration in mmos. In fact it was a bit more than promote, so they invented the trinity system, the boss fight that turned into raid later on (before the strongest monster weren't meant either for group or solo, they where just the strongest), they create those party system that didn't exist before, grouping was made on the fly and so on. They totally turned up side down the meaning of rpg to fit their obsession at that moment which was learn kid something social, since Uo was for them the evil incarnated. Which is now, we all know it, totally ridiculous. They even banned totally pvp from their mmo for that reason. Ye pvp came back to themepark with Wow as an after though because it was so demanded they really had to do something about it. Only korean mmo never loose their link with pvp. But let be honest, Wow pvp features is a bit skinny compared to all the mmo that refused to go into the themepark domination.
So when people come here to say nothing exist apart from the trinity it is almost an insult to me at least. This all trend we need to force grouping and colaboration is totally wrong. And yes the tank/heal/dps is exactly that forcing you colaboration, not to talk about the fact the best rewards are in raids, so you are once more forced to play them to access the best reward, it is just a pyramid of obligation. Those that did that are just the kind of awfull parent that kick their kids all day long to have them do what they want and only what they want. I also have kids, and sorry guys, the way you make your games is just wrong all over. Now people claiming that it is the only way to make those games is just over the top, go fucking buy you a brain already. This is just insane really and piss me off.
Don't mix up everything please, sure you will always take dmage it doesn't mean you are a tank and pull agro because a monster attack you, it have no corelation. Same with healer, and buffer, sure you had to heal your group, and make damage. But the structure of the trinity that need the tank to be in front and have the other support hiom doesn't exist at all. As i said a GM will have its monster swap with inteligence, and he will try to have them behave as their lore ask them to behave. Orcs will be in groups, dragon will fly away and throw their fire. It don't even have relation to hte way mobs are build in mmo. Furtemore mobs and the all agro building stuff as i said exist only in trinity game. In other mmo building agro doesn't exist, in fact they will avoid it, mobs will go for the weaker or whatever it was coded for. They are ways to code mob behavior, the trinty is just one way amongs many.
Some misleading information. Not even a single GW2 reference!
Recicle bin.
I don't see what's wrong with the holy trinity. The only reasonable argument, imo, is having to wait for a tank/healer.
But that's because 99% of the people want to play a dps class. They want to pew pew. So the solution is? Remove healers and tanks altogether as Guild Wars 2 is doing.... There are people who can't even comprehend how someone can enjoy to play a healer /facepalm
Look at Diablo 2. There were no real healers and tanks (well maybe barbs but not really tanks were they). The solution to the holy trinity is quite simple. Make all classes dps and balance around this. This way you can cater to dps loving peeps.
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