There's a reason why the trinity works in group play - because it's a damn good format that companies have tried to change for change sake - and ended up with something that only serves to show how good the trinity system is for groups.
I've argued in the past that the trinity should not be designed against because it a consequence of the math underlying these games. Hit points and damage are a good way to keep score of who is winning. Once you have just those two and nothing else any variance results in a tank (one who can soak up more damage) and DPS (one who can dish out more damage). Add healing into the mix along with variance in that axis and you have healers. With just those three stats and nothing else you have the holy trinity.
To rid the genre of the trinity you need to change the underlying structure of the game. You have to develop a system which does not have hit points or damage (and thus healing). But note that I said that once there is variance the roles emerge our of the math. The other way to get rid of the trinity is to keep the system but lose the variance.
GW2 took the later route as in their "challenging" content it boils down to "Yeah, you're one hit, g'luck with those dodges!" They removed hit points and healing from the the equation (largely) but left damage in there; so the meta sifted to making the engagement as short as possible so as to lower the chance of a mistake resulting in that one hit. Thus the DPS only meta in GW2 was born.
Greyed has it right above. GW2 did some really phenomenal things, but it was overshadowed by the negatives of the combat system. If you added a basic WoW trinity to this game at launch, I think we're not even having this conversation.
Colin probably lost his job due to issues with the expansion, but I've personally always felt it was an issue with Jon Peters who designed the combat system. ANet has been scrambling since launch to "right the ship" that was really only overturned due to the poor combat mechanics.
The stack and boonshare technique was really only good for WvW, but WvW wasn't the original focus of the game. However, when ANet saw how popular WvW had become (since the poorly designed skill system and non-trinity team mechanic wasn't good for PvE) they had to scramble and reprioritize. They couldn't fix WvW issues fast enough though and were left with unhappy PvEers and WvWers. This put ANet in an uphill battle right from the start.
The dodging mechanic was the exception. It was and is an awesome mechanic and added a level of engagement that still keeps me from going back to WoW. However, as far as combat is concerned, dodging was not just the brightest star in the sky but the only light in an otherwise bleak system.
DoT's act like direct damage. Boonsharing is really just might sharing and splashing water. The encounters themselves felt bland and like spam fests. This game either needed a trinity or better encounter design to take advantage of the skills it did have.
In WoW if I feared a mob in a dungeon at just the right time I could save my whole party. There were no mechanics that felt like that in GW2. NCSoft brought in Wildstar's dungeon designer, and the encounters have seemed better, but the lack of role based (trinity) combat is still quite noticeable.
I think from GW2's combat though we did better identify the problem with the trinity. It's not the trinity itself, but the idea that players are forced to wait too long for specific roles to show up before running group content. Also that players could be forced into playing classes that aren't fun just to finish said content. GW2's experiment helped us better define that problem, and so for that I'm grateful.
Wildstar and FFXIV had better solutions to that problem though. Instead of removing the trinity altogether, the solution is to allow a single character to be able to swap into one of those roles as needed.
My hope for GW2 is a swift and painless end. It was a joy to play, but was crippled by a core mechanic that was maybe as much a fault of the custom Hero engine via the folks of Hero's Journey (a long time ago now) as the combat designers themselves. As the author points out, I look forward to GW3. I really do. I hope ANet has the gumption to see it through. I know I'll play it if it ever arrives.
There's a reason why the trinity works in group play - because it's a damn good format that companies have tried to change for change sake - and ended up with something that only serves to show how good the trinity system is for groups.
I've argued in the past that the trinity should not be designed against because it a consequence of the math underlying these games. Hit points and damage are a good way to keep score of who is winning. Once you have just those two and nothing else any variance results in a tank (one who can soak up more damage) and DPS (one who can dish out more damage). Add healing into the mix along with variance in that axis and you have healers. With just those three stats and nothing else you have the holy trinity.
To rid the genre of the trinity you need to change the underlying structure of the game. You have to develop a system which does not have hit points or damage (and thus healing). But note that I said that once there is variance the roles emerge our of the math. The other way to get rid of the trinity is to keep the system but lose the variance.
GW2 took the later route as in their "challenging" content it boils down to "Yeah, you're one hit, g'luck with those dodges!" They removed hit points and healing from the the equation (largely) but left damage in there; so the meta sifted to making the engagement as short as possible so as to lower the chance of a mistake resulting in that one hit. Thus the DPS only meta in GW2 was born.
It is possible that the trinity should not be designed "against," but I would argue that it should be expanded upon. It should be made deeper, more complex, and more dynamic with more roles.
From a casual player who really loved and spent a lot of time in vanilla GW2, HoT overall sucked for the following reasons:
Raiding (no thanks not interested, where is my other content?) Non-stop combat in zones Zones need lots of other players to be fun No more solo relaxing exploration
That's how it felt to me. I still have not completed any masteries or explored all the zones. I just don't feel like even logging in for the dailies any more, though I really used to enjoy the spvp.
I enjoyed it when it first came out, but like others have said, I miss playing a role in group content beyond zergfest DPS. Maybe they can make GW3 with the 3 being some kind of trinity symbol that has a double meaning......
Lineage 2 is running much longer time than aion and GW2 and you post here your 37,368 mkw. from 2009 when game lost many players, I would like to see data from 2003 to 2007 when game was second best subscription based mmo...... Well GW2 doing still much after 4 years, but L2 with almost 13 years running and with revue 19,00+- mkw, it's perfect and we know thats much oled Lineage 1 doing around 80-90 mkw, mates Lineage series is still very popular and we will see what will make Lineage eternal which is comeing soon (maybe new record?).
*Thx all who read this post
and sorry for my english (from Czech Republic)
have a nice day
It's probably the payment model. Or player expectations. Or they just need to make it grindier. Or cash-grabbier. It couldn't possibly be that the grindy, greedy, grabby approach doesn't work, because clearly they are genius-level experts in MMO design. Stupid players! Can we have more money now?
Comments
I've argued in the past that the trinity should not be designed against because it a consequence of the math underlying these games. Hit points and damage are a good way to keep score of who is winning. Once you have just those two and nothing else any variance results in a tank (one who can soak up more damage) and DPS (one who can dish out more damage). Add healing into the mix along with variance in that axis and you have healers. With just those three stats and nothing else you have the holy trinity.
To rid the genre of the trinity you need to change the underlying structure of the game. You have to develop a system which does not have hit points or damage (and thus healing). But note that I said that once there is variance the roles emerge our of the math. The other way to get rid of the trinity is to keep the system but lose the variance.
GW2 took the later route as in their "challenging" content it boils down to "Yeah, you're one hit, g'luck with those dodges!" They removed hit points and healing from the the equation (largely) but left damage in there; so the meta sifted to making the engagement as short as possible so as to lower the chance of a mistake resulting in that one hit. Thus the DPS only meta in GW2 was born.
Not just another pretty color.
Colin probably lost his job due to issues with the expansion, but I've personally always felt it was an issue with Jon Peters who designed the combat system. ANet has been scrambling since launch to "right the ship" that was really only overturned due to the poor combat mechanics.
The stack and boonshare technique was really only good for WvW, but WvW wasn't the original focus of the game. However, when ANet saw how popular WvW had become (since the poorly designed skill system and non-trinity team mechanic wasn't good for PvE) they had to scramble and reprioritize. They couldn't fix WvW issues fast enough though and were left with unhappy PvEers and WvWers. This put ANet in an uphill battle right from the start.
The dodging mechanic was the exception. It was and is an awesome mechanic and added a level of engagement that still keeps me from going back to WoW. However, as far as combat is concerned, dodging was not just the brightest star in the sky but the only light in an otherwise bleak system.
DoT's act like direct damage. Boonsharing is really just might sharing and splashing water. The encounters themselves felt bland and like spam fests. This game either needed a trinity or better encounter design to take advantage of the skills it did have.
In WoW if I feared a mob in a dungeon at just the right time I could save my whole party. There were no mechanics that felt like that in GW2. NCSoft brought in Wildstar's dungeon designer, and the encounters have seemed better, but the lack of role based (trinity) combat is still quite noticeable.
I think from GW2's combat though we did better identify the problem with the trinity. It's not the trinity itself, but the idea that players are forced to wait too long for specific roles to show up before running group content. Also that players could be forced into playing classes that aren't fun just to finish said content. GW2's experiment helped us better define that problem, and so for that I'm grateful.
Wildstar and FFXIV had better solutions to that problem though. Instead of removing the trinity altogether, the solution is to allow a single character to be able to swap into one of those roles as needed.
My hope for GW2 is a swift and painless end. It was a joy to play, but was crippled by a core mechanic that was maybe as much a fault of the custom Hero engine via the folks of Hero's Journey (a long time ago now) as the combat designers themselves. As the author points out, I look forward to GW3. I really do. I hope ANet has the gumption to see it through. I know I'll play it if it ever arrives.
Raiding (no thanks not interested, where is my other content?)
Non-stop combat in zones
Zones need lots of other players to be fun
No more solo relaxing exploration
That's how it felt to me. I still have not completed any masteries or explored all the zones. I just don't feel like even logging in for the dailies any more, though I really used to enjoy the spvp.
*Thx all who read this post
and sorry for my english (from Czech Republic)
have a nice day
So much grind to have BiS gear, for a no grind game.