Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
General: The Daily Quest - Down with the Trinity?
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Insert exclamation point here ---> !
How would you change the Holy Trinity in MMOs? It seems to be a common problem that many developers are facing this day and age. How does one change the nature of combat in MMORPGs without alienating its user base?
Looking back at titles like Guild Wars 2, and soon Crowfall or EverQuest Next, and even classless MMOs such as The Secret World, everyone seems to be toying with the notion of parties and class roles and how they can be made better.
But is the old adage of "if it's not broken, don't fix it" still the ruling party? Or can these sort of issues be tackled in new and interesting ways?
Crowfall is leaning away from healer as a main role due mainly to the fact that they're focused on PVP and non-raid/dungeon PVE. Their idea is that the healer brings a war of attrition in PVP, and it's something they want to avoid while focusing on other group roles.
Guild Wars 2 let everyone heal themselves, but placed less of an emphasis on healing and more on resurrecting and other mechanics... the problem being that the mechanics seem too obtuse to understand so dungeons and group content become about zerging the heck out of whatever content you're facing. The Heart of Thorns expansion aims to fix this, but exactly how remains to be seen.
But what about you? Do you think we should stick to the trinity as WoW prescribed it, bring back the need for crowd control as it was present before 2004, or should we keep experimenting with the notion of party roles and how classes and players can support each other?
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
View more silliness at http://www.youtube.com/thehiveleader
Actually "trinity" is not the right system. It would be better if there were 4 roles: TANK, DPS, HEAL, CC
And we also need classes - something similar to rift class system but not similar to ArcheAge.
Look what 120 possible classes did to ArcheAge. There are running 10 classes and rest is just meh.
So my opinion:
classes where you can change your role. For example: Druid - tank(morph), CC(staff+pet). But he CAN'T take other roles.
MSI GE70 - i7-4700MQ, GeForce GT 750M, 8gb ram, 750gb 7200RPM HDD and 128gb SSD
Same goes for Tanks. They SHOULD be uber tough, but when they come up against a DPS there isn't enough mitigation to be really effective and they don't do enough damage to really hurt anyone.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
I don't think it needs to change at all. To control a series of pulls...
Someone needs to "tank", but that doesn't need to mean the conventional metal armor, taunting guy. Make 10 or 15 different types of damage, and group members would rotate the role as necessary applicable to their skills. One pull might be something of "unholy damage" from shamen type, so the priest might attract their attention with a skill and mitigate damage with applicable resistance. The next pull might have more ethereal or cosmic based damage from a caster source, and a mage type groupmate's self-shielding abilities might be more effective. Of course some damage is physical, but not all physical damage is the same. Metal armor diminishes slashing, but heavy crushing damage might cause heavier damage to the guy inside while the metal gets misshapen, crimping his style.
"Healer" isn't always healing by the numbers. Here we're talking about the health value and how to keep it from reaching 0. All manner of barriers, bubbles, resistances, cures, remove x effect count here as well. It's "batting cleanup" when the tank's mitigation isn't keeping up.
Similarly, crowd control isn't just mez. Snare, root, charm, silence, stuns or any other effect which effectively removes an attack vector is cc. Devs can be imaginative with this in many ways. How about portals, or outright teleportation of opponents. How about ground effects more "intelligent" (not like ai intelligent, but a brigand vs a wolf for example) opponents have to circumnavigate.
The old issue with "trinity" and how it was disliked didn't just stem from "division of labor doesn't work" or even that it's boring. The issue was chiefly brought up by people whose favorite toon was of a class which didn't really contribute much to any sort of tank, heal, control, but purely was strong dps, and, well, everyone dps's to some extent and if you have the "important group elements" and mobs are dying in a reasonable time period, who the hell needs a wizard? If you have a druid healing who can also snare, who the hell needs a ranger? If you didn't need feign death and you already had a fighter-type, who needs a monk? These would only be extra rolls on loot and a cut of the xp. So those people had trouble finding groups and got upset, so they started being cynical about "holy trinity".
Make more "stuff to do" in a fight. Make more variations of mitigation and support. That's all you need to do to make trinity really shine, and people will forget the word ever mattered.
edited for typos, punctuation and tense.
DPS is the best form of crowd control
LOL
Seriously though, some of the best times were back in WoW as a Hunter when my job was more about Peel Trap and Kite than it was straight up DPS. That was some fun shit.
This is a topic that brewed on my mind a bit, mainly because I played a healer in every MMO I played. I hate this trend, and right now I think its only camelot unchained and bless will have a healing role.
I find that killing the need for CC was the start of the trinity hate, instead of making more players important in dungeons, it put all weight on the tank and the healer. The future trinity need more diversity and putting weight on all players in the group, and not just on the tank and the healer
I also find that many games that still has healers, do a lousy job of making it interesting. What made me play healers was that you couldn't just spam your strongest heal or you ran out of resources, and current healing focuses on smaller heals with constant spamming. Tera was amazing fun simply because spamming heals caused you to grab aggro and quickly killed you. In the same way I hated the secret world and neverwinter because most of what you did was spamming. I also seriously dislike smart-heals because it dumbs down healing.
I find that tanks could probably be improved by giving them far more active tanking, and not the damage sponge you have in WoW. Building threat was the most boring part of being a tank, while actively making sure you stayed alive made it far more fun. Tanks shouldn't just rely on healers to stay alive.
In the same way the role of damage dealing shouldn't come down to players hitting a sequence of numbers while healers keep them alive. Sometimes they should have to tank mobs which means avoiding getting hit by forms of control or dodge, and sometimes they should be the ones that peel off mobs from the healer. Damage dealers has to be more than just dealing damage.
TLDR: Expand the trinity and make everyone actively involved in the party success instead of relying on tank and healer as a crutch, or by making everyone a damage dealer.
Totally agree with this. Bring back CC classes, this made the trinity so much better.
We need the trinity back. The original trinity. Tank, Healer, Enchanter. Fill up with DPS as needed.
Everything that came after that was boring and a pure action fest without communication and community.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
Goddangit, not this again.
The trinity is perhaps one of the most missunderstood components of MMOs (and really most RPGs). The problem is that most people seem to try and replace the trinity with another trinity. And that doesn't work. The reason why the trinity works so well, is because it makes combat about as simple as it possibly can be. And people like simple, because it requires minimal thought & effort to understand and enjoy. People see 'tank' and think 'okay, i'm supposed to tank a bunch of damage, got it'. People see 'healer' and think 'okay, so i'm going to be repairing people's health bars, got it'. People see damage and go 'i'm supposed to deal as much of this out as possible, easy enough'. The problem, as has been observed for the better part of a decade now, is that most people only find one of those roles fun. DPS. Furthermore the amount of responsibility and pressure put on the other two roles is insane.
To 'fix' the trinity, you need to not have one. Period. You need to have a more diverse class-dynamic. And preferably one where roles aren't super dependent. GW2 took this approach, and tbh it does work. The biggest reason why people don't think it does is because of how poorly designed the original mob mechanics were. Instead of fights based around interesting boss mechanics, nearly every fight turned into a situation where you'd glitch a boss into a corner somewhere, and just pound on a health bar as quickly as possible. Which is why zerker gear is so popular right now. Because there are no mechanics to punish that in the older content. However, in the newer content there are, and the difference is crystal clear (to those that have actually experienced it). You cannot beat most of those fights on zerker gear alone, it requires a more diverse group.
- Essentially, the approach needs to be more about what 'tools' people bring to a fight, and not what 'roles'. The distinction is a bit confusing, but essentially the emphasis needs to shift from what character you are, to what skills you're using. And that is the key difference. Because trinity games focus entirely on class, descrimination goes directly to your character. But when you have games where skill selection / useage is more important, than the descrimination becomes more about your build, than what class you enjoy. It's not 100% perfect, but it does fix much of the problem w/ trinity games atm.
The one downside to a non-trinity setup, is because clever skill useage is more important, it requires players to be much more aware about their characters. Meaning that accessibility can suffer as a result.
i agree here, but i don't like CC i think its unnecessary. give me a tank, healer, dps and for that final spot give me a support class.
Someone who is responsible for adding something to the equation that only they can add. Most if not all trinity games its tank holds agro and mitigates damage, healers restore HP and remove debuffs, dps debuffs as well as doing high damage and everyone has a buff.
What if healers healed, tanks tank, and dps does damage, and a support class increases mitigation/agro gains, restores mana to healers and boosts heals, buffs dps's attacks and debuffs the enemies.
You could go with the support, but I would rather see them adding support abilities into damage dealers making it a more complete role.
For me it's always been way more than just 3 roles, but support and cc classes have gone the way of the dodo.
Then again I started with ffxi, where you had a ton of classes, and back then devs weren't afraid to make a class that FULLY played one role. For instance, you will probably never ever see a Bard like ffxi's again.
I'll use ffxiv as an example because it's the logical "next-step" here but if you've played that then you know everything are hybrids, kinda. For instance, summoners are a DPS class, but they are mostly DoT and debuff focused. Same with scholars, who are healers/support/buffs.
Not arguing one way or the other whether or not this is a good thing, but them's the facts.
How would you remove the basic roles of a conflict scenario? You can't. Offense, defense, support, intel... They've been around for as long as creatures have been killing each other. It is disenchanting that anyone still argues this point or even thinks the trinity problem has anything to do with this.
How would you change the taunt-based trinity? Player character collision detection, manual blocking, and positioning in combat are the first ones that come to mind. Some examples:
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Don't forget good ol' Warhammer Online! I miss my Ironbreaker...
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
The only solution for games that try to move away from the trinity is to become what they truly want to be, and that is a single-player game. The industry has analyzed their rants and play styles. They don’t want to waste time looking for healers, they don’t want to wait for tanks, they don’t want to be dependent on player crafted gear. They want to be the DPS Power House. Those who can’t work with the trinity can’t or won't play with others, even when they do.
Those games that have attempted to minimize or do away with the trinity have left a bad taste in the mouths of MOG players. For those players who hate trinity and MOG, take away their computer and lead them to a console and let them play Uncharted, it is clear what they want to play.Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Dps isn't a role in trinity.
Yes it is, support has been long gone in trade for dps.
No. Mistaken people have given newcomers the wrong idea. Trinity as you understand it only includes dps because of reddit and discussion from people whose first mmo was WoW circa 2008. This is why you have so many mmo vets looking at you funny and there pops-up strange topics of discussion like "trinity+1, add cc!". It was always tank, heal, cc.
edit: I described why and how in my earlier post in this thread. It makes no sense for trinity to include dps, because every toon does damage.