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Whats the main argument against holy trinity?
Luxthor
Member Posts: 171
What I have read from this forums, in majority of posts, main reason against holy trinity is LFG?! IMHO this is not argument at all, it's pure convenience. Majority of players hate to take group responsibility to heal or are scared to take lead and tank, to learn every dungeon and encounter, what they really want is easy run without any responsibility and secure shiny loot.
I'm not against trinity, also not against any other system as long as such provides diversity and distinctive role/profession, but I’m really confused when some players hate trinity and don’t have any real argument aside subjective ones.
After mass popularization of MMO-s, every new game tends to minimize those roles, it's the natural process if you want to reach mass mediocrity population, at the end of this process, mainstream MMO-s will only have jack of all trades and master of none type of role/professions. Something when you have left only pawns and than pretend to play chess, with only two options: move and capture. 
So tell me your reason against holy trinity, real reason pls?
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"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Comments
My argument against it is pure boredom. As long as we continue sticking with the same game mechanics, nothing is going to evolve. I'm glad to see companies like Funcom and ANet trying different things.
I personally don't like the problems it causes with grouping for instances too. Most people choose some DPS class because it's fun, and there is always a shortage of Tanks and Healers because a lot of people don't care for those roles. That causes lots of people to be passed over for groups, and for groups to take forever to put together. It may be a non-argument for you, but clearly others don't agree.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Why I don't like the "Holy Trinity" anymore?
I couldn't even tell you what 2/3rds of the raid/dungeon bosses in WoW LOOK like, because I spent so much time tanking all I have ever seen is their crotch.
True story.
No in all seriousness I want to play the character I want to play and I want to play with my friends / guildies without being concerned over what type of character they play.
TOR showed me just how out dated the whole "Holy Trinity" concept is.
Once I hit 50 on my Consular, I had to respec to a Healer to find groups and 1/2 the time we simply could not find a tank. Period.
I personally like the trinity as I like having a specific role. That being said.. I also like a game that lets you change the way you play on one character. Games like FF14 (The idea, not the product..lol) TSW and from what little I know, GW2, lets you take one character and play how you want when you want.
Haven't played enough of gw2, and I'm sure it will be different, but typically, I enjoy playing a tank. I like the role and the feeling of protecting the group. So bascially, I dig the trinity, but I am willing to try something different.
For me the holy trinity just leads to a limited number of combat options.. especially when mobs lose agro and reset.. Tank agro's mob, DPS kill mob, Healer keep Tank alive.. borning boring and more boring.. I feel like McDonalds when playing "Billions and Billions served".. lol Personally I like having a variety of roles to play, that can lead to some very imaginative ways of killing mobs by solo players or groups..
I really do not understand the hate for it either. There was a thread like this a week or so ago, 70% of the people commenting were defending trinity, most who didn't were the well known GW2 fans you see on here.
I'm guessing people are up in arms against it because GW2 is the big thing right now. I guess they want change, who can blame them. MMOs have become stale and in my opinion developers which are trying to innovate are changing the wrong aspects. Removing trinity breaks the game for me.
I myself won't play a themepark MMO without being able to play a tank.
For me its because with a trinity set up we move out of the realm of fantasy and into the realm of the rediculous. Why?
The mobs are SO stupid they ignore all the guys shooting them full of arrows, stabbing them in the back and flinging fireballs at them and carry on hitting the shield being held up in front of them by the big, butch, heavily armoured warrior dude. The one they can't seem to kill, no matter how hard they try, because of the other dude in the dress who keeps healing him.
Yeah, great idea that.
How oftern do you see "LF2M need tank and healer then g2g". Remove trinity and we ajust "G2G!!".
worst part of it is so many games lock you into it. Me personally hate only having a single role for any character. You get bored of healing all the time or tanking all the time or even dps all the time and would rather not have to start a new character every time I want to mix it up. Also when you have set roles you almost ALWAYS have a severe shortage of either tanks or healers. Rift I feel did the trinity well allowing you set up multiple roles and swapping them out anytime outside combat and they added in the 4th support role to mix things up a bit.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
Some of my most interesting boss fights were in Champions Onlime, with a group using wolfpack tactics. Some of my most boring were as a healer in WoW. I don't care if games feature Tank/Healer/DPS play, so long as the developers don't expect me to pay to play them. I stopped payying for boring.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
For this is responsible bad design, not trinity. For instance, when you compare vanilla wow with wrath exp. ( just for the comparison reason, not that I’m saying trinity was perfect there).
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"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
I don't have a problem with the trinity, but I do have beef with developers not balancing it correctly. IMHO, every character regardless of class should be able to tweak their build enough to do any of the three, but not be as proficient if it isn't their normal role.
I hate depending on some asshat to heal me and a lot of time times you gotta play with "THAT GUY" because he is a tank or healer. But mainly, trinity just adds an unnecessary amount of time to playing an MMO. In other mmos, I remember spending an upwards of 2 hours trying to find 1 single class. The problem with the trinity is that it force developers to design encounters around specific type of classes to make them useful.
Basically, given how technology has progressed there is no real reason to have a trinity in a game. The trinity doesn't offer any real benefit except wasting my time and making me more likely to sub next month because I can only run an instance a very few times due to the lack of a specific class.
Nope it's due to waiting in line, if we wanted a true themepark experience we would go to disney, seriously. Not having a single requirement to join a group and pop into a dungeon makes the game all that much better and the lines disappear. It's simple logic really.
Waiting for tank and healer is why I don't like the trinity system. If you roll tank or healer, and the group fails, you are an instant p.o.s. and are slammed over, and over, until you are a brown newb gravy. It just isn't fun anymore.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Holy Trinity = min/maxing numbers.
Dedicated healer, dedicated tank, dedicated dps = Max survival/threat, max healing, max damage output.
GearScore, Recount, KTM, etc. etc.
Game becomes about efficiency and speed. You either have it "right" or you have the wrong set up.
WoW, Rift, TSW... already people complaining about TSW group elitism.
"LFG for X."
Response - what's your GearScore / DPS / "link your spec" "hold on let me /inspect you" etc. etc.
"But I want to play a support role, some healing some damage some control?!? That's fun for me to be a jack-of-all-trades."
"Too bad, not in a Holy Trinity game because the game is balanced so you have to have X healing output and Y effective health and Z damage or you cannot beat the encounter."
I prefer creativity and dynamic interaction to cookie-cutter builds and min/max stat progressions.
I spent around 8 years on/off doing "high end" content like raids/heroics in games like WoW, Rift, TOR.
I, like many others here, am simply tired of it. Give me something new!
I think having roles in the group is a natural thing. I also think that having set roles is necessary to the design of good scripts for PvE encounters.
Whether it's Healer/ Tank / DPS (holy trinity) or Debuffer / Puller / Mezzer (3 random roles), i think it's important that the roles are there. I love the flexibility that games like EVE, TSW and Rift offer you in terms of being able to assume different roles depending on the situation, but i do think that the roles are necessary.
If you don't have well-defined roles, you end up with encounters that are nothing more than massive zergfests where nothing you do really matters. Best example of this is GW2 - the classes are interesting and tons of fun to play on an individual basis, but because the raid encounters are designed around "anyone doing anything", they end up pretty terrible and instead of cooperationg you just get massive zergs where tons of players are basically playing with themselves.
It may be possible to create a game without combat roles that still has complex PvE encounters. When someone does, I'll be thrilled to play it. So far no one has managed to create one, so I assume it's because it just isn't possible or is too complex to attempt.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
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The main arguments I see are it makes it harder to form groups / forces people to play a certain way to group with friends and that it makes combat boring because everyone is only doing one thing.
In response to the first, I think RIFT had the right idea of giving every class the ability to switch their role any time they aren't in combat, and having a huge array of roles for each class to choose from. Unfortunately, my experience playing RIFT showed that many players are unwilling to learn to play more than one role.
For the second, that's not always the case. In fact, using the original definition, "holy trinity" did not mean "tank, heal, DPS". It mean "tank, heal, CC", or more specifically, the Warrior, Cleric, and Enchanter classes in Everquest. Despite an ancient combat engine, Everquest had far more involved combat than modern MMOs in my opinion where everyone is either just a tank, healer, or DPS. There were multiple roles you would want to fill in order to have a successful group, and most classes filled many roles:
Tank - Warrior, SK, Paladin
Healer - Cleric, Shaman, Druid
CC - Enchanter, Bard
Puller - Bard, Monk, SK
Slower / Support - Shaman, Enchanter, Bard
Snares - Druid, Necro, SK, Ranger, Wizard
DPS - Pretty much everybody
Of course, only allowing three classes to heal out of about 15 or so meant there was always a huge shortage of healers, which gets back to the first problem people have. Something combining RIFT's flexibility with the larget variety of roles found in EQ1 would be perfect for me.
The roles and coordination just happen in a different way.
The really big encounters in GW2 work by having multiple objectives at a time.
Some people have to kill the big adds that spawn, some need to kill the little ones.
Some need to help load cannons or protect workers.
Some need to clear traps and break down walls.
Some need to rez fallen NPC's and players.
Some need to DPS the boss.
etc. etc.
It's still roles, it's still coordination, if everyone only did the same thing the encounter would fail and everyone would lose.
The BIG difference is that no one player is always tied into a specifc role.
Yes, you can spec your toon to be better at a specific role but doing so doesn't keep you from doing the other action as well or instead.
But yes, the early game encounters are a bit zergy because the events are not as large and complex as they are later in the game.
Just like how in a Holy Trinity game the early level dungeons are primarily tank and spank.
So basically, what you're saying is, you want encounters to follow a script, a set path. Predictable, routine, boring, Deadly Boss Mod worthy encounters.
No thanks! I'd rather have unpredictable, variable, dynamic encounters that don't always play out the same way and keep you on your toes, keep the adrenelin going and don't get old after the first few times it takes everyone to learn the fight and put that boss on farm mode.
A good argument against it that isn't subjective? I highly doubt you'll find one that will satisfy you. There is nothing technically wrong with it. It has worked in one form or another for many, many years. Of course what argument would you give for it? What makes the holy trinity "right?" I have mostly played Healers and Tanks since EQ back in '99. I am now 13 years older and would much prefer a game that did not use outdated mechanics to appeal to a mass player base. In your op, you spoke of the need to "reach mass mediocrity population." Well, for anyone who played EQ 13 years ago, with very little change, they could pick up a holy trinity MMO today and already know what it is they would have to do based on their character selection. They would fall into the norm of needing certain gear, having certain skills maxed leveled, and ignoring everything else. If your ok doing things the same way for an extending period of time, then there is nothing wrong with the trinity (as long as you spec and play like every other tank/healer/dps.) Once you have the thought while standing in a raid and spamming heals, that you could train a monkey to do the same damn thing, MMO's lose their appeal.
I'm sorry but the only one saying anything about the second coming is you. Fans of a game accept its flaws and strengths.
my biggest gripe with it is Class > Skillset. In UO anyone could be a tank/dps/healer because you had a CHOICE of what skills you wanted..then EQ came out not long after and gave us Classes with specific skills and thus roles and so gave us the Trinity.
Holy Trinity - Lack of freedom of choice
How can you make complex encounter without diversity of roles, we as a players are all different, some of us have better situational awareness, some better reflexes, better control, sense for environment, navigation in large dungeons, better memory and so on.
If you entirely take out holy trinity and replace with something else with same diversity strength of professions and complex encounters in rich and tricky environment you will have same problem as holy trinity, maybe then you will LFG good 'control' or 'support' person.
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"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Why does anyone have to be "against" it? Not every mmorpg has to have it though.
My theme song.
I completely understand what you're saying and I do agree. And I'm not asking to be a dick, I'm asking for real, will this ever happen with Gw2? I haven't played enough to know, but it seems like eventually, every game falls into the LF X - a certain build of something... Is there any game immune?
I'll be playing Gw2 upon release as I was impressed by the beta, but I just haven't played enough to know.
Well put sir.