That makes no sense lol. I'm pretty sure that the old tank'n'spank holy trinity system is easier on resources then a twitchbased combat system. It think it has nothing to do with consoles, but more so with latency.
Good trinity systems have aggro, AE aggro, stun, assist function.
That's already 4 functions. That's 50% of the 8 buttons in EQNext.
Then add in all the defensive functions of a tank, you will quickly surpass 8 buttons.
Yes trinity requires more buttons. DPS is 1 button.
GW2 has has 10 buttons or something I heard. EQ has about 50 buttons.
Originally posted by Praetalus No tanks or healers sealed the deal for me.. I won't be party to another mess of combat such as gw2. I HATE the combat in that game. I'll be playing ff14.
Have fun..buh bye..
Can you believe this guy still trying to convince people there are no roles. When its clearly been stated that there are.
Exactly. I loled every time a question was asked about combat and roles. They are screwed if they don't make a drastic change to their plan in this regard.
Roundtable should give them a way out. I hope in the coming months they start seeking more player feedback on these type of things so they can appear to gracefully bow out and allow the EQ fans to have the sort of game they want, which most definitely won't have GW2 combat. I don't believe any amount "emergent AI" will keep their combat from sucking.
Not to be too critical, but it seems from watching the panels, that people were not too thrilled with a lot of it, they seems to be fishing for praise and not getting much quite often.
That makes no sense lol. I'm pretty sure that the old tank'n'spank holy trinity system is easier on resources then a twitchbased combat system. It think it has nothing to do with consoles, but more so with latency.
Good trinity systems have aggro, AE aggro, stun, assist function.
That's already 4 functions. That's 50% of the 8 buttons in EQNext.
Yes trinity requires more buttons. DPS is 1 button.
GW2 has has 10 buttons or something I heard. EQ has about 50 buttons.
What does this have to do with anything though? Didn't the original FF MMO have trinity mechanics? I also remember EQOA having them as well. You only need one button to heal or taunt.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That makes no sense lol. I'm pretty sure that the old tank'n'spank holy trinity system is easier on resources then a twitchbased combat system. It think it has nothing to do with consoles, but more so with latency.
Good trinity systems have aggro, AE aggro, stun, assist function.
That's already 4 functions. That's 50% of the 8 buttons in EQNext.
Yes trinity requires more buttons. DPS is 1 button.
GW2 has has 10 buttons or something I heard. EQ has about 50 buttons.
What does this have to do with anything though? Didn't the original FF MMO have trinity mechanics? I also remember EQOA having them as well. You only need one button to heal or taunt.
Never played FF11 b ut FFXIV combat is terrible, and it's because of their severely limited skills.
Expect to get reported and banned CalmOcean, i voiced the same insight with GW2 lack of tanks and healer and how many problems and lack of fun you get when playing contend. I was banned for saying it without an aggresive tone or trolling. But if we cant voice our concerns then i could give a rats ass about being banned again.
I have said it many times now since SOE said no tanks or healers. There is no solution for making dps classes only to tune contend harder or more difficult. It will always be chaos as you cannot controll it, who or when or why a player is attacked creates confusion, it creates zerg, it creates button mashing, it creates running away to live another day instead of playing tactical.
These issues plague GW2 also, and Arenanet aint a bad studio, they are one of the best. Wether you like the GW series or not, they have done some spectacular things. But they cant fix the nature of the beast, and SOE cant either.
They are realy making a mistake on epic proportions here, i cannot stress enough that after an hour of gameplay you get bored of the combat, no matter how cool the skills or animations look. Its just a action rpg style of play and for most mmo players this is unaceptible.
There is alot of good in EQN, fully understand their vision, but cannot think about no healers or tanks and the shit zerging that will happen that drags this game down to a simpleton you log in for fun for a hour or 2 and log out again.
No levels ? fine its a wait and see thing for me
Multi layer ? EPIC - 1 word EPIC
Public events - cool - but the whole game ? no raids ? another major mistake
8 skill action bars - hate it, will always hate it specialy with no healers or tanks. free to play - very disapointed about it, but it seems its the way it is nothing we can do about it.
Disney cartoon characters - dont like it, but i can learn to live with it.
PvP - a wait and see, havent heared anything about it yet, it makes me worry alot.
real money diablo 3 style auction house - almost a deal breaker.....
No tanks and healers - thats the deal breaker for me.
I can live with many of the wrongs they do, but making 5 good and 2 bads doesnt make it worth my time or money.
Great write up OP, but we prolly get banned, again.....
Hitting the nail on the head.
Agree on just about every point, except I think their ideas for horizontal progression may work out. If they truly give you a leveling system through gear, where it really scales that much, I want to believe potentially you could eliminate traditional level progression. Edit - just to add for example, think how powerful characters were who just hit level 60 in Kunark, and how much more powerful they were at the end of Velious. It was almost like a night and day difference, yet there was only a few new abilities during that time. It was mostly just gear progression, and it was still a lot of fun.
Stuff like combat though, it has to be changed. I'm not sure who pitched this idea in such a way that they actually believed it, but players who've actually studied the combat in games like it was their profession, as well as professionals in the industry, have learned the shortcomings of a system without dedicated tanks, dps, healers and support. Its not intelligent design.
I'd say I invite SOE to prove me wrong, but frankly I'd much rather them not waste another second building their game in the wrong direction because I love so much of what they proposed, I want to see it succeed.
Exactly. I loled every time a question was asked about combat and roles. They are screwed if they don't make a drastic change to their plan in this regard.
Roundtable should give them a way out. I hope in the coming months they start seeking more player feedback on these type of things so they can appear to gracefully bow out and allow the EQ fans to have the sort of game they want, which most definitely won't have GW2 combat. I don't believe any amount "emergent AI" will keep their combat from sucking.
Not to be too critical, but it seems from watching the panels, that people were not too thrilled with a lot of it, they seems to be fishing for praise and not getting much quite often.
Right.
The players are not convinced, and at this point I think they are already starting to feel the heat that this decision has generated. They really seemed to struggle to convince the players, and looked more like they were trying to convince themselves.
They will most likley use a advanced form of the system in DCUO.
In DCUO everyone is DPS, but then each powerset (class) have a different stance that taps in to the aux roles of tank healer and crowd control (that also work like a mana/power healer).
So in essence everyone will be DPS but then you can pick some tank skills or healer skills and the more of them you pick the better you get at said role. That way you can have a Tank-ish char with some self healing that let you juggle trash but you need someone who have more healing skills to be able to face up to big bosses, or perhaps you swap out that self heal for a armor buff or magic "bubble"
Any way the only ones who can not see the potential in such a system are the ones who are stuck in EQ1.
Not saying it is a perfect system... or one that can be abused seven ways to sunday (i played SWG... I have seen it happen) but without innovation the genre will dry up and die. So i am glad that we are seeing some new ground being broken and new systems being tested.
(not to mention all the other new ides they are trying. If they can deliver on even half of it 2015 will be a very interesting year)
Exactly. I loled every time a question was asked about combat and roles. They are screwed if they don't make a drastic change to their plan in this regard.
Roundtable should give them a way out. I hope in the coming months they start seeking more player feedback on these type of things so they can appear to gracefully bow out and allow the EQ fans to have the sort of game they want, which most definitely won't have GW2 combat. I don't believe any amount "emergent AI" will keep their combat from sucking.
This is a clear case of hearingwhatyouwanttohearitus. Where the devs have clearly .THAT YOU CAN TAKE ON DIFFERENT ROLES IN COMBAT! Yet you keep trying to claim they didn't say this.
What is so hard to understand about the concept that just because they offer the ability play a hybrid type character doesn't mean you have to. They have stated that classes have different roles they excel in. However you can mix it up some. And bring other abilities to the fight as well. However they have also stated you CAN play a purist and still do well.
I was never a fan of classic aggro systems, one reason is because it feels severely dumbed down to make it easier for old serverhardware to handle the combat.
With that magic aggro magnet taunt that makes mob AI even more stupid and make them stick to your tank, which becomes nothing but a punching bag that collects monsters This concept is downright silly in my eyes.
I want a mob AI that goes for the weakest link if it can spot it and ignores taunting tanks because it realises that one is no threat. And no hp bar staring classes please.
But, on the other hand, no stupid AOE zergs either please (GW2's outdoor dynamic events when there are a lot of players, ugh). So I get why people are reserved about the plans for EQN combat. I am sceptic too. Still, it sounds better then oldschool aggromagnet sillyness.
Originally posted by Praetalus No tanks or healers sealed the deal for me.. I won't be party to another mess of combat such as gw2. I HATE the combat in that game. I'll be playing ff14.
Have fun..buh bye..
Can you believe this guy still trying to convince people there are no roles. When its clearly been stated that there are.
Wait.. there are roles to play? I must of missed that part in the Q&A video.. So I can play the role of healer and stay back in the shadows? I can play the role of mana dump to aid casters? Wait.. Do casters even have a MANA pool in EQ Next? Can I play the role of Kiter.. I loved snaring and kiting mobs.. Can I play the role of support such as group invis, or group levitate, or group enduring breath? Wait, We don't even know if we can swim or not in the game.. So what roles are you talking about exactly?
Exactly. I loled every time a question was asked about combat and roles. They are screwed if they don't make a drastic change to their plan in this regard.
Roundtable should give them a way out. I hope in the coming months they start seeking more player feedback on these type of things so they can appear to gracefully bow out and allow the EQ fans to have the sort of game they want, which most definitely won't have GW2 combat. I don't believe any amount "emergent AI" will keep their combat from sucking.
This is a clear case of hearingwhatyouwanttohearitus. Where the devs have clearly .THAT YOU CAN TAKE ON DIFFERENT ROLES IN COMBAT! Yet you keep trying to claim they didn't say this.
What is so hard to understand about the concept that just because they offer the ability play a hybrid type character doesn't mean you have to. They have stated that classes have different roles they excel in. However you can mix it up some. And bring other abilities to the fight as well. However they have also stated you CAN play a purist and still do well.
You're trying to hard.
I heard exactly what they said. "No watching health bars", "no dedicated healer", "no dedicated tank", "no threat meters", "no aggro management", "no dedicated support". "no standing back watching the fight", "everyone fights (dps)".
Exactly. I loled every time a question was asked about combat and roles. They are screwed if they don't make a drastic change to their plan in this regard.
Roundtable should give them a way out. I hope in the coming months they start seeking more player feedback on these type of things so they can appear to gracefully bow out and allow the EQ fans to have the sort of game they want, which most definitely won't have GW2 combat. I don't believe any amount "emergent AI" will keep their combat from sucking.
.THAT YOU CAN TAKE ON DIFFERENT ROLES IN COMBAT! Yet you keep trying to claim they didn't say this.
I never heard any of the panel make that statement in the Q&A session..
Originally posted by Praetalus No tanks or healers sealed the deal for me.. I won't be party to another mess of combat such as gw2. I HATE the combat in that game. I'll be playing ff14.
Have fun..buh bye..
Can you believe this guy still trying to convince people there are no roles. When its clearly been stated that there are.
Wait.. there are roles to play? I must of missed that part in the Q&A video.. So I can play the role of healer and stay back in the shadows? I can play the role of mana dump to aid casters? Wait.. Do casters even have a MANA pool in EQ Next? Can I play the role of Kiter.. I loved snaring and kiting mobs.. Can I play the role of support such as group invis, or group levitate, or group enduring breath? Wait, We don't even know if we can swim or not in the game.. So what roles are you talking about exactly?
Sorry, those won't be an option. Better find a weapon you like, and get ready to mash some buttons.
That is what I heard too Dull.. I was starting to think my hearing was going bad.. They didn't want people watching the UI, they only wanted people to watch the fight and hack and slash (generally speaking)..
Originally posted by Rydeson That is what I heard too Dull.. I was starting to think my hearing was going bad.. They didn't want people watching the UI, they only wanted people to watch the fight and hack and slash (generally speaking)..
Mmhmm. For all the innovation, its mind boggling that they would resort to some diablo combat style.
I don't think we have to worry. Things will change because I highly doubt that SOE would spend another dollar on something ppl obviously don't want.
I agree with what ya'll said about ppl not being very excited about the features of the game when they revealed it. Trying to shake life into their audience.
I don't mind the graphics, I can live with that easily and I am very happy about the destroying things.
If we get our roles back and progression, I'm jumping on this train again but, currently, this train is heading into a brick wall, head first, at 200mph hoping it will break through with as many survivors as possible. If they change it to trinity and the right progression, the survivors will outnumber the current version easily.
In GW2 if u don't have a plate class in the group, how exactly do u do a dungeon ? Guardians are almost mandatory.
Devs are removing the trinity because it's boring, they want new challenges for players and new ways of playing the game instead of having most of the DPS waiting ages to be in a group because they are just "another DPS".
We don't know how they'll handle the combat exactly, there can be crowd control, barriers, damage prevention, massive debuffs and all, u don't always need to just have a dude who keeps aggro and soaks damage along with a heal bot sitting behind, watching TV, reading a book, eating a hot dog and pressing his macros once in a while to keep his party healed.
People who cry for trinity are just lazy, reluctant to change and don't want the MMO genre to progress.
You can always play EQ1 and WoW they are still around and EQ's free btw. U got all the complete heal u want.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
That makes no sense lol. I'm pretty sure that the old tank'n'spank holy trinity system is easier on resources then a twitchbased combat system. It think it has nothing to do with consoles, but more so with latency.
Good trinity systems have aggro, AE aggro, stun, assist function.
That's already 4 functions. That's 50% of the 8 buttons in EQNext.
Then add in all the defensive functions of a tank, you will quickly surpass 8 buttons.
Yes trinity requires more buttons. DPS is 1 button.
GW2 has has 10 buttons or something I heard. EQ has about 50 buttons.
'Good' trinity systems have loads of redundant skills that are only being used in rotations because the rest is on cooldown. Or because the rest is not specced for. There is nothing interesting about 75% of trinity skills because of the silly tauntingmagnet functionality. It just lowers the bar on being able to succesfully participate in combat. Why? Because of the silly taunting failsafes and the often crazy strong healing. To me, it is plain boring most of the time. Such a MMO must have really interesting other features for me to endure such boring combat. Which fortunately, many that I played, had.
A dps class player that doesn't pay attention to aggro in a holy trinity combat system, is the most stupid player you can get in any combat system. This is also why a dps class in a trinity system cannot be compared to dps in any other more twitch based combat system, because there won't be this aggromagnet and healer to keep him safe. This type of player will die all the time in any MMO.
Your 4 mentioned (really, 4?) functions exist in any MMO combat system. Except the taunting magnet isn't your failsafe if it isnt holy trinity. Aggroing is then more often based on position or environment,
Personally, I don't want my GUI taking up 50% of the screen.
Originally posted by itchmon shouldnt we at least see a minute or two of game play before we say the game has unresolved issues? I'm not saying people cant theorycraft (or theoryquest) but lets not bury the poor game even before we have seen actual gameplay footage.
People just like to rant, it's just the way it is.
So what if the combat is EXACTLY like GW2? So what if it doesn't have trinity and you can't just stand their doing whatever your role is for the last 15 years? So what if EQN can't be the WoW killer? The game will still be there because of those other awesome new features, even if some people think they are redundant and wish every game can just be that same old tab targeting grind fest they want, or just don't like the art style.
I want to ask the OP, they already said that they're aware of what problems will occur and they're looking to fix them... who are you and why do you think that they should tell you everything they have came up so far? Are you a major investor of SOE? Are you on the dev team? Or have you mistaken the game with some kickstarter project? Geez...
I was never a fan of classic aggro systems, one reason is because it feels severely dumbed down to make it easier for old serverhardware to handle the combat.
With that magic aggro magnet taunt that makes mob AI even more stupid and make them stick to your tank, which becomes nothing but a punching bag that collects monsters This concept is downright silly in my eyes.
I want a mob AI that goes for the weakest link if it can spot it and ignores taunting tanks because it realises that one is no threat. And no hp bar staring classes please.
But, on the other hand, no stupid AOE zergs either please (GW2's outdoor dynamic events when there are a lot of players, ugh). So I get why people are reserved about the plans for EQN combat. I am sceptic too. Still, it sounds better then oldschool aggromagnet sillyness.
But that's dumb AI and also un-fun AI.
I'll explain.
Smart AI would do one of two things (because it would act like a human); either it would attack the nearest target (because no one in their right mind would run past enemies exposing their flanks and back just to get to a softer target, a surefire way to get taken out), OR it would realize that it isn't able to take down the tanky character in front, take evasive action and escape combat hoping to reposition itself to strike at another target at another time.
That's the inherent problem with AI that would actually assess combat correctly.
Now, "un-fun" AI would do as you describe and bypass the tank to strike at the weakest link. Why is this stupid? Because it means a couple things. It means that either the mob is easy enough to kill that the weakest person can just kite it while everyone dps's it down, which basically just reverses roles and the weakest class becomes the defacto tank via kiting (notice how no one is taking damage in this scenario); OR the mob(s) always wipe every group because they're tough to kill and they take out all the squishy people first leaving ineffective tanks to stand there and die slowly.
Trinity or zerg are the options, the moment you create AI that responds to certain actions that players can exploit, then that's exactly what players will do and a new "tank" will be born. Remember in WoW when healing aggro was much higher than tank threat? Paladin healers spamming their highest threat heals . . . on themselves became more effective. As you might imagine, that got hotfixed real quick-like (can't even remember how long it was live, maybe a week or two).
Now, I do like the trinity, I love that it gives developers the ability to create encounters that require people to do various things (though some call it dancing). But I'm not down on the zerg combat like so many people are. The only reason GW2 is a bit shallow is because they failed to do what proper action games do and include more than one type of evade.
In Devil May Cry, most boss fights are done by dashing to avoid attacks, but also double jumping (it's in EQN!), aerial dashing and using certain attacks that move your character in another direction rapidly. Combat will be quite fun if we have options on how to avoid getting hit.
ok... is it just me or did the definition of action combat change? when did gw2 become action combat? I remember it being tab target... Tera and neverwinter are action combat... and I liked tanking in both those games
In GW2 if u don't have a plate class in the group, how exactly do u do a dungeon ? Guardians are almost mandatory.
Devs are removing the trinity because it's boring, they want new challenges for players and new ways of playing the game instead of having most of the DPS waiting ages to be in a group because they are just "another DPS".
We don't know how they'll handle the combat exactly, there can be crowd control, barriers, damage prevention, massive debuffs and all, u don't always need to just have a dude who keeps aggro and soaks damage along with a heal bot sitting behind, watching TV, reading a book, eating a hot dog and pressing his macros once in a while to keep his party healed.
People who cry for trinity are just lazy, reluctant to change and don't want the MMO genre to progress.
You can always play EQ1 and WoW they are still around and EQ's free btw. U got all the complete heal u want.
So says you.
The trinity or tank role is not only the foundation of rpg combat, but has existed in games since before the genre all the way back to pen and paper.
Everquest made the aggro system very enjoyable, and nothing even close to the trivial systems that exist in new MMOs or even EQ1 and EQ2 in their current state. The aggro management meta game was a very active, very challenging part of combat that required tanks to constantly fight against every other role to maintain threat. Every single fight mobs would run after enchanters, shamans, dps or healers at some point if things didn't work perfectly. With support trying to slow mobs, dps trying to kill as fast as possible, and healers having to heal as mobs ran among the squishy targets, it was only a matter of time before things went wrong. That was the nature of a good aggro system, and just because it doesn't exist as such today, doesn't mean it should be done away with. It should be brought back in full force with all the original challenging factors intact and more.
Comments
Good trinity systems have aggro, AE aggro, stun, assist function.
That's already 4 functions. That's 50% of the 8 buttons in EQNext.
Then add in all the defensive functions of a tank, you will quickly surpass 8 buttons.
Yes trinity requires more buttons. DPS is 1 button.
GW2 has has 10 buttons or something I heard. EQ has about 50 buttons.
Have fun..buh bye..
Can you believe this guy still trying to convince people there are no roles. When its clearly been stated that there are.
Not to be too critical, but it seems from watching the panels, that people were not too thrilled with a lot of it, they seems to be fishing for praise and not getting much quite often.
What does this have to do with anything though? Didn't the original FF MMO have trinity mechanics? I also remember EQOA having them as well. You only need one button to heal or taunt.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Never played FF11 b ut FFXIV combat is terrible, and it's because of their severely limited skills.
Hitting the nail on the head.
Agree on just about every point, except I think their ideas for horizontal progression may work out. If they truly give you a leveling system through gear, where it really scales that much, I want to believe potentially you could eliminate traditional level progression. Edit - just to add for example, think how powerful characters were who just hit level 60 in Kunark, and how much more powerful they were at the end of Velious. It was almost like a night and day difference, yet there was only a few new abilities during that time. It was mostly just gear progression, and it was still a lot of fun.
Stuff like combat though, it has to be changed. I'm not sure who pitched this idea in such a way that they actually believed it, but players who've actually studied the combat in games like it was their profession, as well as professionals in the industry, have learned the shortcomings of a system without dedicated tanks, dps, healers and support. Its not intelligent design.
I'd say I invite SOE to prove me wrong, but frankly I'd much rather them not waste another second building their game in the wrong direction because I love so much of what they proposed, I want to see it succeed.
Right.
The players are not convinced, and at this point I think they are already starting to feel the heat that this decision has generated. They really seemed to struggle to convince the players, and looked more like they were trying to convince themselves.
They will most likley use a advanced form of the system in DCUO.
In DCUO everyone is DPS, but then each powerset (class) have a different stance that taps in to the aux roles of tank healer and crowd control (that also work like a mana/power healer).
So in essence everyone will be DPS but then you can pick some tank skills or healer skills and the more of them you pick the better you get at said role. That way you can have a Tank-ish char with some self healing that let you juggle trash but you need someone who have more healing skills to be able to face up to big bosses, or perhaps you swap out that self heal for a armor buff or magic "bubble"
Any way the only ones who can not see the potential in such a system are the ones who are stuck in EQ1.
Not saying it is a perfect system... or one that can be abused seven ways to sunday (i played SWG... I have seen it happen) but without innovation the genre will dry up and die. So i am glad that we are seeing some new ground being broken and new systems being tested.
(not to mention all the other new ides they are trying. If they can deliver on even half of it 2015 will be a very interesting year)
This have been a good conversation
This is a clear case of hearingwhatyouwanttohearitus. Where the devs have clearly .THAT YOU CAN TAKE ON DIFFERENT ROLES IN COMBAT! Yet you keep trying to claim they didn't say this.
What is so hard to understand about the concept that just because they offer the ability play a hybrid type character doesn't mean you have to. They have stated that classes have different roles they excel in. However you can mix it up some. And bring other abilities to the fight as well. However they have also stated you CAN play a purist and still do well.
I was never a fan of classic aggro systems, one reason is because it feels severely dumbed down to make it easier for old serverhardware to handle the combat.
With that magic aggro magnet taunt that makes mob AI even more stupid and make them stick to your tank, which becomes nothing but a punching bag that collects monsters This concept is downright silly in my eyes.
I want a mob AI that goes for the weakest link if it can spot it and ignores taunting tanks because it realises that one is no threat. And no hp bar staring classes please.
But, on the other hand, no stupid AOE zergs either please (GW2's outdoor dynamic events when there are a lot of players, ugh). So I get why people are reserved about the plans for EQN combat. I am sceptic too. Still, it sounds better then oldschool aggromagnet sillyness.
Wait.. there are roles to play? I must of missed that part in the Q&A video.. So I can play the role of healer and stay back in the shadows? I can play the role of mana dump to aid casters? Wait.. Do casters even have a MANA pool in EQ Next? Can I play the role of Kiter.. I loved snaring and kiting mobs.. Can I play the role of support such as group invis, or group levitate, or group enduring breath? Wait, We don't even know if we can swim or not in the game.. So what roles are you talking about exactly?
You're trying to hard.
I heard exactly what they said. "No watching health bars", "no dedicated healer", "no dedicated tank", "no threat meters", "no aggro management", "no dedicated support". "no standing back watching the fight", "everyone fights (dps)".
What is so hard to understand about those things?
I never heard any of the panel make that statement in the Q&A session..
Sorry, those won't be an option. Better find a weapon you like, and get ready to mash some buttons.
Mmhmm. For all the innovation, its mind boggling that they would resort to some diablo combat style.
hmm, unless they bring forward and mention their solution, this game will be like all other action MMO that remove the aggro system
I don't think we have to worry. Things will change because I highly doubt that SOE would spend another dollar on something ppl obviously don't want.
I agree with what ya'll said about ppl not being very excited about the features of the game when they revealed it. Trying to shake life into their audience.
I don't mind the graphics, I can live with that easily and I am very happy about the destroying things.
If we get our roles back and progression, I'm jumping on this train again but, currently, this train is heading into a brick wall, head first, at 200mph hoping it will break through with as many survivors as possible. If they change it to trinity and the right progression, the survivors will outnumber the current version easily.
Seriously peeps are like monkeys on drugs.
In GW2 if u don't have a plate class in the group, how exactly do u do a dungeon ? Guardians are almost mandatory.
Devs are removing the trinity because it's boring, they want new challenges for players and new ways of playing the game instead of having most of the DPS waiting ages to be in a group because they are just "another DPS".
We don't know how they'll handle the combat exactly, there can be crowd control, barriers, damage prevention, massive debuffs and all, u don't always need to just have a dude who keeps aggro and soaks damage along with a heal bot sitting behind, watching TV, reading a book, eating a hot dog and pressing his macros once in a while to keep his party healed.
People who cry for trinity are just lazy, reluctant to change and don't want the MMO genre to progress.
You can always play EQ1 and WoW they are still around and EQ's free btw. U got all the complete heal u want.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
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'Good' trinity systems have loads of redundant skills that are only being used in rotations because the rest is on cooldown. Or because the rest is not specced for. There is nothing interesting about 75% of trinity skills because of the silly tauntingmagnet functionality. It just lowers the bar on being able to succesfully participate in combat. Why? Because of the silly taunting failsafes and the often crazy strong healing. To me, it is plain boring most of the time. Such a MMO must have really interesting other features for me to endure such boring combat. Which fortunately, many that I played, had.
A dps class player that doesn't pay attention to aggro in a holy trinity combat system, is the most stupid player you can get in any combat system. This is also why a dps class in a trinity system cannot be compared to dps in any other more twitch based combat system, because there won't be this aggromagnet and healer to keep him safe. This type of player will die all the time in any MMO.
Your 4 mentioned (really, 4?) functions exist in any MMO combat system. Except the taunting magnet isn't your failsafe if it isnt holy trinity. Aggroing is then more often based on position or environment,
Personally, I don't want my GUI taking up 50% of the screen.
People just like to rant, it's just the way it is.
So what if the combat is EXACTLY like GW2? So what if it doesn't have trinity and you can't just stand their doing whatever your role is for the last 15 years? So what if EQN can't be the WoW killer? The game will still be there because of those other awesome new features, even if some people think they are redundant and wish every game can just be that same old tab targeting grind fest they want, or just don't like the art style.
I want to ask the OP, they already said that they're aware of what problems will occur and they're looking to fix them... who are you and why do you think that they should tell you everything they have came up so far? Are you a major investor of SOE? Are you on the dev team? Or have you mistaken the game with some kickstarter project? Geez...
But that's dumb AI and also un-fun AI.
I'll explain.
Smart AI would do one of two things (because it would act like a human); either it would attack the nearest target (because no one in their right mind would run past enemies exposing their flanks and back just to get to a softer target, a surefire way to get taken out), OR it would realize that it isn't able to take down the tanky character in front, take evasive action and escape combat hoping to reposition itself to strike at another target at another time.
That's the inherent problem with AI that would actually assess combat correctly.
Now, "un-fun" AI would do as you describe and bypass the tank to strike at the weakest link. Why is this stupid? Because it means a couple things. It means that either the mob is easy enough to kill that the weakest person can just kite it while everyone dps's it down, which basically just reverses roles and the weakest class becomes the defacto tank via kiting (notice how no one is taking damage in this scenario); OR the mob(s) always wipe every group because they're tough to kill and they take out all the squishy people first leaving ineffective tanks to stand there and die slowly.
Trinity or zerg are the options, the moment you create AI that responds to certain actions that players can exploit, then that's exactly what players will do and a new "tank" will be born. Remember in WoW when healing aggro was much higher than tank threat? Paladin healers spamming their highest threat heals . . . on themselves became more effective. As you might imagine, that got hotfixed real quick-like (can't even remember how long it was live, maybe a week or two).
Now, I do like the trinity, I love that it gives developers the ability to create encounters that require people to do various things (though some call it dancing). But I'm not down on the zerg combat like so many people are. The only reason GW2 is a bit shallow is because they failed to do what proper action games do and include more than one type of evade.
In Devil May Cry, most boss fights are done by dashing to avoid attacks, but also double jumping (it's in EQN!), aerial dashing and using certain attacks that move your character in another direction rapidly. Combat will be quite fun if we have options on how to avoid getting hit.
So says you.
The trinity or tank role is not only the foundation of rpg combat, but has existed in games since before the genre all the way back to pen and paper.
Everquest made the aggro system very enjoyable, and nothing even close to the trivial systems that exist in new MMOs or even EQ1 and EQ2 in their current state. The aggro management meta game was a very active, very challenging part of combat that required tanks to constantly fight against every other role to maintain threat. Every single fight mobs would run after enchanters, shamans, dps or healers at some point if things didn't work perfectly. With support trying to slow mobs, dps trying to kill as fast as possible, and healers having to heal as mobs ran among the squishy targets, it was only a matter of time before things went wrong. That was the nature of a good aggro system, and just because it doesn't exist as such today, doesn't mean it should be done away with. It should be brought back in full force with all the original challenging factors intact and more.