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To Improve Trinity Gameplay you must redefine the Tank Role
Eronakis
Member UncommonPosts: 2,249
***This is a post that got lost in the other trinity thread and I believe this topic would warrant a new thread.***
What is the Trinity?
The original trinity was established in Everquest with Tank + Healer + Slower. These are the three roles you needed in order to survive. Secondary roles where also added to the group such as , DPS, CC, Pulling, Buffing and De-Buffing.
The Tank role is the only role that really determines the type of gameplay you will experience with the original trinity roles. The Tank role is contingent on the 'aggro' mechanic. 'Aggro' is where you pull the attention of the AI to fight this one player and the whole group focuses on 1 NPC to take down.
Guild Wars 2 attempted to redefine the trinity by omitting the healer class. Still, the game didn't feel 'group-like' and felt something was missing. Gameplay orientation went towards more of a zerg. Even with the tank class there.
I believe that the best way to improve Trinity Gameplay is to redefine the Tank Role and redefine what 'aggro" means. That comes with also redefining group dynamics as well.
Redefining the Tank Role & 'Aggro' Gameplay
The Tank Role and 'Aggro' Gameplay are closely knitted together because they must have each other in order to function. To redefine the Tank Role is to not redefine the change at the role level but at the archetype level. That means all melee classes have some form of 'aggro' retention. Instead of designing one to several melee classes that can tank, broaden the spectrum of the tanking role to all melee classes.
Tanking is viewed as a defensive and mitigation gaming element in the old tanking gameplay. Tanking should not be defined as just defensive gameplay but all types of melee classes should have some sort of 'aggro' retention. This means changing the way we view melee class roles. Don't consider them as either a tank or a melee dps class but rather what type of fighter they are and how that fighter can bring their unique skills to the group to take on other certain NPC fighters.
A new way of looking at it is the melee classes are keeping 'aggro' from other melee classes to attack the healers and caster classes. This means that every character has their own individual responsibility within the group but yet the group acts as one cohesive unit. That means 1 melee player per 1 melee npc. (Of course this is based off my current designs).
As a review, we are allotting the tanking role to all melee classes and we are changing the 'aggro' mechanic to a broader spectrum to keep other melee classes off the casters and healers. This means that every player in the group is fighting 1 NPC to simulate a mini battle. This means there are less likely to have one NPC vs. a full group
Redefining Group Dynamics
Grouping dynamics are changed because we view tanking and 'aggro' differently now. That means melee vs. melee and caster vs. caster/healer would be the naturally desired gameplay. Think of it has when your looking to build a group, you're looking for melee classes and caster classes. Players should be able to look for classes based off the archetype, via melee or caster because we have change the level of which tanking and 'aggro' is functioning on.
With the redistribution of the 'tanking role', we now have some solutions to grouping dynamics. Don't worry, group gameplay will still have a heavy impact. One solution would be that making groups would be easier because you would have more options to choose from a simplistic level. Another solution could be that you may not necessarily have a full group in order to be efficient so that would allow different grouping sizes.
New Trinity Gameplay and how to make it interesting
There 3 gameplay elements that must be affected if this new type of tanking gameplay is going to be effective.
Adaptable Combat Mechanics
- This is where it allows the melee classes to 'tank' and have 'aggro' retention from. Based of combat mechanics, not necessarily armor mitigation or damage output.
- Allow dozens of pathways to victory instead of a singular rotation.
- Allow combat mechanics to give the player ample opportunity to adapt inside of their class abilities.
- Give player variety and diversity of class skills/abilities/spells.
- All classes have the ability to adapt in their specified role.
Adaptable AI
- This must complement player adaptable combat mechanics.
- Pattern detection to negate spam/singular rotations
- Increases more strategic gameplay
- Allow different cultures of NPCs to fight and think a certain way (aggresive, passive aggressive, or conservative way of fighting) Which allows players to learn the game and understand their opponent better.
The World is Communal - Allows for grouping content
- The world is dangerous, challenging to go out alone.
- Allow NPC's to be communal and roam in groups (any sizes).
- Encourages group gameplay over solo gameplay
- Encourages any player group size - More roles you have the more effective, the less roles or players you have in group the more challenge for survival.
- Helps keep intact of the new Trinity Concept.
Comments
Well.
This is rather confusing, it might be because I'm not a native English speaker.
But you want to make all melee classes tank other melee classes... So the (in most games) light armored, low health, high dps casters can nuke each other.
or...
Remove the trinity by changing the skills by
"
I didn't go in detail on the type of combat mechanics because the thread would be a long novel.
I forgot to mention one thing. Throw out what you know about tanking. Tanking doesn't happen on the class/role level but rather on the archetype level with combat mechanics. Allow the combat mechanics to allow the 'tanking' ability. Tanking is just not one player taking aggro but rather having melee classes vs other melee classes. Each character in the group has their own specified role and responsibility but act as one cohesive unit.
You don't change anything with the trinity if you merely call a clothie a tank in one fight and a plate wearer a tank in another. In fact it has been done already in many different games. You still have someone playing a tank. You don't need to be specc'd to be a tank... anyone with aggro fills the role of a tank... it's why you can literally run an entire dungeon run with nothing but DPS. It's why non-trinity systems exist and do work. No one is any one specific role, they become said role depending on who has aggro.
I don't think you're comprehending what I am saying. I am not saying casters or healers are tanks, but the redistribution of the tanking role is now on an archetype level. Which means melee classes in general. What you have proposed is not the type of gameplay I am looking for either in the thread.
Actually the original EQ group was Tank + Healer + CC. Slow was not required, but was wanted. Same for Mana Regen.
The beauty of EQ was the way you could compensate for some roles.
No CC - as long as you got a monk who knew how to pull... no CC needed.
Bard - a good bard, could pull, buff, slow, heal, CC... I know I was one.
Necro could do everything to...
The roles that couldn't be reproduced well ... Warrior tanking. Paladin and SK could work in a pinch but on the long haul... Warrior was the beast.
I digress...
The key of the post is that CC was needed more then slow. Slow could work, but a Chanter was key to success.
I appreciate what you wrote here, but slower was more needed than a CC. CC was also needed and usually CC game with a class that can slow as well. But anyways this thread is about changing the tanking role and the gaming elements associated with that change. I just don't want people to derail this thread.
Actually the original EQ group was Tank + Healer + CC. Slow was not required, but was wanted. Same for Mana Regen.
The beauty of EQ was the way you could compensate for some roles.
No CC - as long as you got a monk who knew how to pull... no CC needed.
Bard - a good bard, could pull, buff, slow, heal, CC... I know I was one.
Necro could do everything to...
The roles that couldn't be reproduced well ... Warrior tanking. Paladin and SK could work in a pinch but on the long haul... Warrior was the beast.
I digress...
The key of the post is that CC was needed more then slow. Slow could work, but a Chanter was key to success.
And the same system was in Vanguard, Warrior, Paladin and Dark Knight could all tank.Just a suggestion... You would make far better progress and have a far clearer focus if you set out to create a specialized role-based system instead of try to have a discussion on revising/improving something that has no constant or baseline since everyone defines 'trinity' differently here.
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
You don't need to redefine the tank role...
Developers need to bring back Mez, charm, pacify, etc. The games need to slow back down and stop being the "OMG PULL ALL THE MOBS"
Tank roles work great with Mitigation spike timing, positioning, argo management, occasional interrupt.
The issue isn't tank design... it is PEOPLE are the issue. People wanted faster dungeon run... more LEWTZ. So CC died out. In addtion to PVP'ers complaining about CC.
Tanking in a "good" trinity-combat based MMO includes many facets:
1. Active/reactive damage mitigation & avoidance
2. Threat/aggro generation
3. Mob/boss positioning / directional facing
4. Add pickup / management & pulling
Pulling in and of itself used to be an art form in the heyday of WoW, for example. A bad pull would wipe a group easily. Timing and pattern recognition and memorization were key.
Threat/aggro generation was a function of both gear and optimal ability/rotational use - gearing for a tank was a required skill to master before you actually entered the battle. Then you had aggro swapping mechanics and tank rotations/pickups and all kinds of other skill a good tank had to master.
Mob/boss positioning and managing the direction in which said mob/boss was facing was a make it or break it aspect of many encounters, requiring planning, situation awareness, and skillful execution.
Above all else though the real skill required of a good tank back in the glory days of WoW was leadership. You had to lead the group or raid. The rate at which pulls happened, which means you had to be conscious of healer mana, group deaths, and your groups total damage output.
You had to be the one that pulled (unless you used Hunter Feign Death) as the initial aggro being on the tank was far more optimal than the tank having to out-threat whomever did the pull.
Tanking was also the most gear dependent - in a 25-40 person raid you'd have maybe 2-4 tanks tops, and if they weren't really well geared there was just about zero chance you wouldn't wipe.
Often a wipe or a boss kill would hinge on the tank having that one damage mitigation ability ready and using it at exactly the right time. I remember doing Sartharion with all 3 Drakes up in the beginning of WotLK - we set an order for using the 5+ minute cooldown abilities between the tank(s) and healers to deal with the huge damage spikes.
TL;DR - the real problem(s) with the tank role and gameplay in trinity based combat systems is shitty game mechanics and encounter design - not the trinity or tank role. When done right, it requires truly skillful play, and anyone who says otherwise is either a) really good at it already and just trying to sound macho or b) completely full of shit
I've been waiting for a thread like this. Thanks, Eronakis.
As I read the OP i had images of Vikings in my head. That clip shows access containment and some other things I'd love to see in an MMO.
Aggro is a method for players to use their own knowledge and character skills to control a mob. If we avoid this whole aggro/threat situation this control can be accomplished through a variety of means, physical, psychological, or magical.
In real life, people don't have aggro or threat tables; therefore, physical methods of control are used. Perhaps this redefined 'tank' role would be more like a grappler (and i don't mean WWF wrastlin' bullshit). Instead of a taunt, maybe this role uses joint locks, clinch holds, or punishes the mob if it takes its attention from the 'tank' (a kidney shot in the case of striker type of character like a rouge or something).
Of course, in the real world we also don't have magic. So we need to get creative, perhaps a magical means of controlling mobs would be creating different illusions or distractions, or something like Bigby's Crushing Hand.
The point here is to vary up gameplay decisions and change the way we think about group encounters in an MMO that involves controlling the dynamics of the fight. Now, I understand there are those players who prefer zero control, where you do your own thing and if the mob targets you then you just take care of yourself, GW2 style. This is not a discussion about whether the trinity is good or bad or superior or terrible, but rather a discussion about how to improve the trinity type group encounter.
Bad Spock gets it.
Tanks aren't the problem. Games Design and listening to the "public voice" that screams instant gratification.
Exactly.
Vanilla / TBC / early WotLK was exactly as you describe, and then they made heroic dungeons into super easy speed run AoE everything lolz fests and Trial of the Crusader was a garbage raid with zero trash.
Icecrown raid was really good, probably the last really good one, but heroic dungeons had already been fucked into an easy-mode pulp by then.
What's funny is they tried to bring back "hard' heroics at the beginning of Cataclysm, and they were awesome, but the bitching from whiny terrible players and PvP scrubs farming marks and rep brought it back to easy-scrub mode real fast.
Instead of offering an alternate path of advancement for players who couldn't hack it, something easier but with slower gains, they just nerfed everything to stupidity.
This is not realistically true. People do have threat levels.... it is called inducing rage into your victim. You get you victim so crazed over hurting you they forget their surrounding, other people, etc. Trained fighters know how to not fall into this pit trap.
Also trickery is another tactic, a feint, or overact, can make you seem vunerable and bring up a over inflated sense of pride of victim.
The point, threat management is a good mechanic... people are the problem.
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
Which is all fine and good when you have species-level differentiation in result/reaction. As it stands now, casting a Level 3 NeenerNeener spell on a creeping slime, a Drow, a fish and a grizzly has pretty much the same effect in most MMOs.
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
OP let me point out also.
GW2 did away with the tank and healer role. It basically said EVER man for yourself. While you can gear a Guardian for suvivability, it is no where near "tanking".
A gear and spec'ed ELE can heal a group pretty well, but not in the tradition sense.
However, even ANET see's a problem with this... and in the expansion HOT will give people a TAUNT.
This proves that agro management is a vital part of group combat.
LFG also pretty much helped kill off "good" tanking all together.
Before LFG, in order to clear decently hard content you had to have good tanks above everything else, decent healers helped, but there were very few situations where losing 1 or 2 DPS really crippled you in any way.
Which was good, because most of the lol pvp n lootz woot pull faster! kids play DPS.
So good tanks got a reputation, and were in demand; we were pretty much rock stars.
Then with LFG, first off you had an easy way for the 95% of the players who played DPS to want to queue up and get into dungeon runs and raids - so you needed more tanks.
Because of that you had all kinds of people who never learned how to tank (or heal) "doing" it to get faster queue times, so in order to make it so that 9/10 runs didn't fail miserably, they nerfed the shit out of everything and made CC, threat.. anything requiring skill no longer required.
Dungeons got shorter and shorter.
It became about efficiency and ease for the sake of "accessability" and in some ways it was a good thing - more people got to see more content, instead of 1-5% of your playerbase experiencing content that took the developers months and months to make.
So they tried to "fix" it by making hard modes and heroics and stuff like that.
Which kind of worked too - except it was obviously faster to gear up and you got better gear doing the harder modes - so the bad players whined and complained that they were getting locked out of progressing further (even though it was their fault for sucking).
So now, well the hardest stuff is still for the top 1-5%, 90% of the scrub playerbase lolz and wtfpwns and facerolls through "easy mode" expecting to get the phat lootz, and the players stuck in the middle are at a weird spot where they can't really use the LFG/LFD systems because the playerbase there is god awful, and they don't have the time and/or dedication to be in the top 1-5% anymore.
So most of our friends have burned out or moved on, and it's very very difficult to find a guild with good players that aren't complete asshats that will kick you out of the guild if you miss one raid night because your wife is in labor.
Real life threat and rage are not the same as a programed table of numbers. What I am talking about is much closer to what you described as inducing someone to forget their surroundings and rage out, that would fall under the psychological method of control. You said people do have threat levels and then you said that trained fighters know how to avoid that trap.
What I am going for is a gameplay situation that is much more involved, more decisions, move and counter move, feints, intimidation. Things like trickery exactly like you described. Threat management can be a good mechanic, but i think it would be much better without the classical threat table involved. By threat table i mean specifically, the numbers assigned to each player that determines who the mob will attack.
Taunt is just a name for a skill. Another control skill.
Its not trinity like "taunt".
I think you're misunderstanding my approach. Re-read the thread. I would agree that aggro management is an important role to play for group combat. I never said I wanted to omit aggro. However, like I said I am redefining what aggro is. Aggro is not on a class level it's on an archetype level. That means aggro comes from the combat mechanics associated with the melee classes. That means all melee classes have some form of aggro retention.
Like in the example I said before, melee classes vs. melee classes would be a natural aggro management in this new design.
I suppose the confusion is that I didn't even explain how combat mechanics would complement this type of gameplay. I did leave the thread very vague and on the surface not considering that there would be confusion. There is away for this to work. I think you and everyone else will have a challenging time seeing what I am trying to explain without the explanation of adaptable combat mechanics. The adaptable combat mechanics make more sense to distribute the aggro mechanic to all melee classes because of the nature of the adaptable combat mechanics. I have designs to make this all make sense.
GW2: Taunt is an effect that will force the taunted player to run at their target with their skill bar locked, minus stunbreakers, and only use their autoattack skill to attack
Trinity like taunt does just that... makes you focus on the player for a defined amount of time.
The real difference lies in the threat table...
Snap Agro has always been about getting attention on demand... it is what occurs after that that defines it. If your snap agro puts you at the top, and keeps you there... then tanking becomes nothing more then push X button on cooldown.
If snap agro is a temp buff, and your DPS doesn;t adjust, then when the "time period" stops, you may not be at the top.. and lose agro again. This is how Agro management should be, this not only seperates good tanks from bad, but also good dps from bad DPS.
Oh shoot, yes, thats the defining element of trinity "taunt"
Its no different (i would say its even worse) than fear, knockdown, stun and paralyze in GW2.
The problem is that the trinity system exists because of the classic / most basic AI that comes with your standard threat mechanics. It is because of this that such threat (aggro) defines such a system.
By changing the way threat works, you are essentially creating a 'non-trinity' game, whether you realize this or not. For example, this is exactly what GW2 has done. GW2 has all standard roles that are present in trinity games, but it's the lack of dedicated roles and more importantly, the lack of dedicated threat that makes the combat system so much different.
To better understand this, you need to look back at how the trinity came to be. While the threat mechanics for most of these games have remained mostly unchanged for the past 20-30years, how we define the roles within this same system has. The trinity wasn't a thing during the conception of Everquest. It became a thing, from players figuring out the most efficient composition to tackle the content at the time.
The devs created a bunch of classes based off D&D, with a multitude of different options and choices. Then the playerbase took those options, and narrowed them down into the most beneficial and went w/ those.
Subsequent games saw this, and emulated it. Many games have tried to offer more choice within the trinity system, but it always comes down to 'what's the best tank, the best healer, the best DPS'. Some games do a better job of adding some variance into this equation, but many more fail.
The way around this is not to reinvent the same archaic system. It's to try and make new systems that allow for more complex gameplay, that aren't based around speed farming, and more about problem solving. The trinity doesn't really allow for that, it's goal is to simplify combat into the most basic components, to allow for the most accessible (easy to understand) gameplay.
He said it right, the defining element of the trinity is the threat table, not taunt.
GW2 has much more dynamic threat than trinity games, which it seems more chaotic to people who are used to the standard trinity. In trinity games threat is a linear function. Everything builds X threat, and the person w/ the highest number 'wins'.
In GW2, for example, threat is weighted off a set of actions. Each player has a number of criteria that gets measured, and each criteria counts for a certain amount of 'threat'. Things like ressing, current HP, armor, damage output, distance to the enemy, etc. all factor into this. By understanding how this works, better players actually know how to manipulate the threat, not unlike how good DPSers know how to drop their threat lvls if the tank is struggling. The big difference is that, unlike trinity games, this role can be played by anyone.
- Don't understimate the taunt mechanic either. It's correct that it is quite a bit different from the standard trinity, however such a mechanic exists in most MOBAs currently, and it is strong. Depending on the implementation of it, it's usually more than just 'snap aggro' as you'd see in say, world of warcraft. Taunt, when used as CC, is also often a repositioning tool.
It's one thing to say 'you're forced to target me' (standard trinity taunt), it's an entirely different thing to have a skill that means 'you're forced to target me AND move towards me'. Such abilities are some of the most deadly in games of skill. Not only do they disable, but they can force your target to be out of position, which a competent player can translate into an easy kill.