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The original EQ trinity is not the trinity of today
Raroic
Member Posts: 16
The point I am trying to make is while everyone bashes the trinity of today it is not the trinity of old. Some could even make a case that the original EQ trinity was not a trinity at all. It was a 4 square system of tank/healer/dps/CC or support classes. The combat systems of old are not what they are today. In todays games the aspect of support/crowd control classes are non existent. There has been a slow erosion of group mechanics as more and more games come out. Back in the days of 6 person groups you could mix and match group composition to achieve goals they were not just cookie cutter tank/heals/dps. Yes you needed a tank and a healer. But then you needed perhaps an off tank, or monks for splitting pulls, chanters and bards for mez and other various buffs. Shamans for slows, pet classes for off tanks and the list goes on.
Its almost unfair to label the old EQ style as the trinity of today. As games have progressed developers have tried to move away from brining a "class" and in return bring the "player". When you look back I would say that EQ was more bring the players because of the wide range of classes. Sure the 4 archetypes were there but more freedom was there to mix as match. With the groups sizes getting smaller and smaller these days from groups 5 in WoW to now 4 in other games. With these decisions it has more or less forced the trinity of today that so many game companies say they want to do away with. If they really want to do away with cookie cutter groups go back to the way it started with 6 person groups and 15 or so classes that can fill various roles. Sadly we probably wont see this again in an mmo because as time goes on companies are trying to appeal to more and more people so the casual solo player bases while it sucks to say this is a lot larger then the group based player base. So with the mentality of a bigger pay check from one player base the other suffers.
With the news that EQN is going with a non role based group combat it is natural for players to be skeptical. I have come to grips with the fact that games that will be made from here on out will be of the more solo mined player sprinkled with group stuff. The hard pill to swallow is the loss of playing certain roles. I think it is possible for a combat system to be made where there is group dependency but will be very difficult to pull off in a balanced way. I have fears like many others that group content will just become free for all stuff where people just look out for themselves and takes the group dynamic away so why even have it. Anyway I was just pondering this stuff this morning thought I would toss it out here.
Comments
They didn't say roles are gone. They said they would not be conventional. That you wouldn't have a 'tank' like you would usually have in other games. But you can still wear heavy armor and take lots of hits when necessary. Certain content will be aimed toward that gameplay style, other content will not.
Also, why do you feel that content designed for 6 people will be manageable by 1 person? They said directly that they want players to rely on each other. They said that they liked having people responsible for certain tasks.
We as players will need to outsmart our foes rather than out DPS them, which I like.
I don't know, the original EQ trinity for grouping was a trinity - it was Tank/Healer/Slower (or CC or puller).
DPS was an afterthought, as even with just a party of those 3 you could keep up with static spawns in a camp (respawn rates started out really slow, like 20-27 minutes), and you were always limited by healer mana (especially before KEI came around). DPS let you pull farther and faster, but it wasn't essential until you hit raid fights that started to stretch mana pools.
I can never remember an EQ1 group asking for a DPS role to fill a group. It was always Healer/Tank/Slower - you never really spoke about DPS at all, you just filled the group up with whatever past those 3 spots.
There wasn't much in EQ that you couldn't beat by just outlasting it - with Slow as powerful as it was, you could heal against any single mob pretty much indefinitely with an appropriately geared and leveled tank, whereas WoW (or EQ ranger tanking, to be honest) really shifted the emphasis to burning it down before it burns you down.
I haven't heard if they will actually have group sizes of 6. That would be great but I have a hunch they will be reducing the group size for various reasons. My question would be if conventional roles are gone what other types of roles are there? A role of someone who can click and orb at the right time? If everyone is responsible for self healing, avoiding dmg and doing their own dmg. What other roles can possibly exist aside from just making sure you click stuff/kill stuff in the right order and put out as much dps as possible with out death.
They only option that would make sense would be they are bringing back crowd control that has been avoided for many games. And if that is true then that would mean that every class will have crowd control abilities because if they didn't then you would be right back where you started with shoot we cant go because we don't have a tank or healer. So then every class is the same perhaps just slightly varied play styles. And in my experience with AI and game creation if all classes are so similar the balance of the game becomes blan because you limited with what you can create based on what classes are capable of. Or it its tuned to tightly then it ends up being let say well the necros are the best at everything so just bring groups of necros to win.
Just curious what other roles exist if not conventional?
You make solid points. At least in my experience it wasn't just fill the last three spots. If you had a tank/healer/slower or CC you would fill the rest of your group with dps. You wouldn't just bring in let say more shaman's if you had one as a slower. We would get the rogues/wiz/ranger or other classes to round out the group. You are correct though you could get by with just filling it out with what ever if you wanted to have some low key xp session with friends. But even in early wow they had and emphasis on CC in group dungeons that are pretty much non existent in todays dungeons.
The original EQ Holy Trinity was Warrior/Cleric/Enchanter.
Nothing more, nothing less. Calling anything else in EQ a Holy Trinity is just being silly.
And in reality, there isn't really a Holy Trinity in the current game. The reason that War/Clr/Enc was a Holy Trinity is because groups had a very hard time getting along without those set classes. Not only have the anemic classes been buffed, but Everquest still supports one of the widest varieties of gameplay of any current MMORPG. Pet tank groups, agro dot kiting, swarm kiting, root/rot, most can get along in group content in a pinch.
You do not have to default to getting a tank and healer and a bunch of DPS to get the job done. As such.. that trinity is *not* Holy in EQ as it is in WoW. There are many varied ways to kill things in Norrath depending on your class.. and most are quite effective and fun.
I think there are a lot more options than just Tank, Heal, CC, and slow. They mentioned that combat will be unlike anything we've seen before. While its true that the 4 "player abilities" can be taken from any class you want, that doesn't mean everything can accomplished easily with just those. I suspect there will be a myriad of roles and ways of tackling encounters that expand far beyond the tank n' spank norm of WoW. Besides, the AI is supposed to be quite good so tank n' spank probably won't even be an option for most stuff.
I think if we are trying to compare the flow of combat, it will probably be more like PVP. PVP definitely has roles, though its not so clear-cut and combat is way more dynamic (think WoW arena). Good AI where groups of mobs use changing tactics, along with mobs on the same scale as players (unlike EQ), is going to lead to some widely varying combat.
They have had 70+ people (many of which have dedicated their careers to MMOs) working on this project for years. They are thinking outside the box here and combat will probably be very different from most other MMOs. I just can't wait to see what they release about combat, which is supposed to be soon.
I, for one, am really excited to see how all of these new elements come together. My biggest fear is that it's going to end up being too much like Diablo 3 and not enough like EQ.
MMORPG back then has way more variation and flexibility on how to play your class regardless whether it is a sandbox or a themepark, hell imo even Early WoW has more variation than later MMO like Warhammer or SWTOR in terms of class flexibility.
For example in Shadowbane despite having the "trinity" there were a lot of tweaking can be done to personalize the character, EQ and Vanguard are great example on how to having fun and interesting classes system in a themepark, unlike WARHAMMER which feel like everyone is picking their class from a template, everyone eventually end up being the samey...
Good points and I have thought about these possibilies myself contimplating the issue I keep running into is why were they so vague if this is the case why cant they lay it out like this. Also looking at the limited class skills of 4 and multiclassing, I just cant figure out how they can actually accomplish this in a meaningful way(http://t.co/CJXO4fSijL). I am still optimistically waiting for more information on character customization and progression there just has to be some system not yet shown that adds depth that we are missing and of course clarification on what they mean by no trinity, no threat, no taunt.
The most important thing to me is that developers continue to really engage the community and get to the bottem of why we are saying the things we say. I think when it comes down to it both sides of the trinity argument want what they want for the same reasons that can be satisfied by a conservative/new hybrid approach, as well as other issues like art etc..
For example some of my previous rants about trinity some of the mechanics I described would not be labeled as trinity to most so the language is a big part of the mess. The impotant part of the trinity for me was that players needed to combine different roles to become greater than their sum rather than just mindlessy zerg easy content down. As others have pointed out nature has computed similar solutions and it seems to show a pattern that supports the roles greater than sum of parts argument.