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Curious about the paradigm shift coming


Swagger.1459

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I hope the new paradigm leads up to a better place, and not more of the same ol' same ol'...

From Massively OP on March 2019

https://massivelyop.com/2019/03/28/massively-overthinking-thoughts-on-the-holy-trinity-in-mmos/

“Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Fun fact: I still remember when “holy trinity” meant tank, healer, and mezzer – the DPS players were a given, the warm bodies that filled out the rest of the group, and not part of the trinity back in the early pre-WoW days of MMO group content. The fact that this shifted over time really says all you need to know about how MMO class and combat design have changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks.

As an example, I can still think of none better than City of Heroes, which offered all of the old trinity and new trinity class types (and then some) but made none of them actually mandatory to clear content. Yes, tanks and healers and CCers and buffers and debuffers and damage dealers all existed, but it was completely possible to get through the game with no healers, or all healers. With a scrapper tanking ahead of a fleet of corruptors. With a stalker and four controllers. With three bubblers and three tankers. Whatever. I don’t want to see strict trinity MMOs, but I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is cluster**** combat where nobody ever has control over the fight. It didn’t have to be that way, but modernish devs keep reinventing the wheel, convinced they can do better. Maybe someday, they will, but so far, nah.”

Note- Looking at the original post that "cluster****" comment will be a link to gw2 on MOP.

Edit- NOT asking for the devs to assigns roles to professions, like forcing a warrior into a tank role only, or a ranger a ranged damage role only... I'm talking about adding in more OPTIONAL (and better) roles through E-Specs for players to choose from... Example from this thread...

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/71738/profession-development-path-forward-proposals

“Role OPTIONS For EVERY Profession• All Professions have unique Roles to play provided through weapon designs, special Ability mechanics and Slot Skills…

• Power Damage Role• Condition Damage Role• Enemy Control Role• Team Defense Role• Non-heal Buff Support Role• Heal Support Role”

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It's like when people refuse to watch modern movies coz the good ol' black and white movies have superior storytelling, and the new stuff is trash.

But those born into the new generations take certain qualities for granted and they are sorely missing in the old. One day these new ones will grow up and act the same way. Only a minority will see through the generations and appreciate what different games has to offer. And i am telling you, the modern day mmo's were the golden days of mmo's so far in the history of the world. That doesn't mean an intelligent developer shouldn't try to bring as many of the old qualities into the new world, more to say people grow attached and accustumed.

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@"Swagger.1459" said:I hope the new paradigm leads up to a better place, and not more of the same ol' same ol'...

From Massively OP on March 2019

https://massivelyop.com/2019/03/28/massively-overthinking-thoughts-on-the-holy-trinity-in-mmos/

“Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): [..] I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is cluster**** combat where nobody ever has control over the fight

Seems to me that Bree doesn't know what she wants. I get it, but Holy Trinity is neither good nor bad.

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I don't get her resentment to the loss of "loss of class variation and combat flow" that goes with trinity MMO's. She means tanks spamming taunts, healers spamming heals and DPS facerolling DPS rotations? THAT combat flow?

Loss of class variation? Does she mean the variation where everyone plays the BEST of the choices they have within the tank/healer/DPS subclasses ... and nothing else? Or does she mean the loss of variation that results in a serious inbalance of numbers for these subclasses, resulting in teams standing around begging for someone to heal/tank for you? THAT loss?

Got to disagree with that reddit post; it's simply someone waxing nostalgia. If there is some good in the trinity structure, it's certainly outweighed by the practical limitations of it. Good riddance.

I think GW2 is on to something, but it's not quite there, they got the player side done, but the AI side for NPC's is not there; they are just dumb. The result is that it's all just DPSing. It's only mildly interesting/difficult because they sprinkle in some mechanics. To be fair though, I don't think Anet intended to perfect a non-trinity game here. It simply works. if I were to imagine the next step, assuming a little more engaging challenge, it would be enabling players to have aggro controls and to be successful, know when to take and dump between team members. Indeed, successful aggro swapping was THE way to complete content in trinity MMO's when you didn't have a healer/tank. I see elements of these things in many MMO's, but no one has brought it all together into just ONE MMO. Not yet.

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@Svarty.8019 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:I hope the new paradigm leads up to a better place, and not more of the same ol' same ol'...

From Massively OP on March 2019

“Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): [..] I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is cluster**** combat where nobody ever has control over the fight

Seems to me that Bree doesn't know what she wants. I get it, but Holy Trinity is neither good nor bad.

"Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks."

….

"Jon P: The whole game is built very offensively on purpose."

"Jon P: When we actually made the decision to not have healers"

….

The devs made this game about spamming damage, boon support light and dodging stuff. Thief blindness was considered the strongest support skill by the devs long ago. We didn't even get team health bars until 5 year into the life of the game... Brianna has some strong points.

And this has been GW2...

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/balance/PvX-Balance-Iteration-Wrongdoing

“On the various forums one can find dozens of threads, often pertaining to – and addressing and re-addressing – the same issues, over and over. This is a problem, because it leads to a community perception of paralysis, which causes:

  1. A perception of neglect
  2. Accumulation of negative PR
  3. A perception of broken promises”

“Balance and build diversity:Overall, build diversity in GW2 has been severely curtailed by the fact that entire lines of Utility skills and Traits have been underwhelming – yet balance has focused almost exclusively on the rare few “meta” builds and skills. This often comes to the detriment of multiple skills and Utilities. Arenanet’s insistence on “letting the meta settle” has resulted in patches coming every few months that iterate on balance – yet the changes within reflect an increasing disconnect of balance intention and balance result.”

“Community Frustration and perceptionThe lack of iteration has bred community frustration and resentment towards Arenanet who feel that the pace of development is glacial.”

“balance should be in such a way that more builds than those listed above can have a place in a team composition without those builds shutting out others to the point of exclusion.”

“For PVE, the so-called “Damage, Support, Control” alternative trinity so trumpeted as the innovation over the “Tank, Healer, DPS” trinity has dissipated in favour of “DPS, DPS, DPS”.”

“Slow, extremely hard hitting attacks have negated the need for Support – there is little need to support allies with healing if taking a hit means almost certain death. DPS with just enough Support through Boons has become the one true god and PvE encounters have devolved into a “stack mobs, cleave to death” DPS race over thoughtful, deliberate challenges that tax a group’s ability to co-ordinate and problem solve.”

“Finally, there also exists the issue of balancing errors, and bugs affecting balance being unaddressed for significant periods.”

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@Swagger.1459 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:I hope the new paradigm leads up to a better place, and not more of the same ol' same ol'...

From Massively OP on March 2019

“Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): [..] I’m even grumpier about the “everyone deeps” MMOs even more, especially when the end result is cluster**** combat where nobody ever has control over the fight

Seems to me that Bree doesn't know what she wants. I get it, but Holy Trinity is neither good nor bad.

"
Don’t mistake me; I no longer believe we need or must respect a trinity of either type. But
what I truly resent is the loss of class variation and combat flow that naturally accompanied the demise of the classic trinity, specifically the fact that crowd control, buffing, and debuffing classes have all but disappeared in the modern rush to make nearly everyone a damage-dealer, even the healers and tanks."

….

"Jon P: The whole game is built very offensively on purpose."

"Jon P: When we actually made the decision to not have healers"

….

The devs made this game about spamming damage, boon support light and dodging stuff. Thief blindness was considered the strongest support skill by the devs long ago. We didn't even get team health bars until 5 year into the life of the game... Brianna has some strong points.

And this has been GW2...

“On the various forums one can find dozens of threads, often pertaining to – and addressing and re-addressing – the same issues, over and over. This is a problem, because it leads to a community perception of paralysis, which causes:
  1. A perception of neglect
  2. Accumulation of negative PR
  3. A perception of broken promises”

“Balance and build diversity:Overall, build diversity in GW2 has been severely curtailed by the fact that entire lines of Utility skills and Traits have been underwhelming – yet balance has focused almost exclusively on the rare few “meta” builds and skills. This often comes to the detriment of multiple skills and Utilities. Arenanet’s insistence on “letting the meta settle” has resulted in patches coming every few months that iterate on balance – yet the changes within reflect an increasing disconnect of balance intention and balance result.”

“Community Frustration and perceptionThe lack of iteration has bred community frustration and resentment towards Arenanet who feel that the pace of development is glacial.”

“balance should be in such a way that more builds than those listed above can have a place in a team composition without those builds shutting out others to the point of exclusion.”

“For PVE, the so-called “Damage, Support, Control” alternative trinity so trumpeted as the innovation over the “Tank, Healer, DPS” trinity has dissipated in favour of “DPS, DPS, DPS”.”

“Slow, extremely hard hitting attacks have negated the need for Support – there is little need to support allies with healing if taking a hit means almost certain death. DPS with just enough Support through Boons has become the one true god and PvE encounters have devolved into a “stack mobs, cleave to death” DPS race over thoughtful, deliberate challenges that tax a group’s ability to co-ordinate and problem solve.”

“Finally, there also exists the issue of balancing errors, and bugs affecting balance being unaddressed for significant periods.”

You sure are beating around the bush with your use of perception friend, not trying to be rude but it is not perception anyone can see this is whats been going on for a while, I am not saying it is on purpose but whats done is done, and there is plenty of time and room for improvement if this keeps up.

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I dislike the trinity immensely. I guess I'm a fantasy purist. I'm into story and lore and flavor. So if you have these roles...welll, what would Lord of the Rings have been like if Boromir was the tank, Gandalf stood back and healed him and the hobbits were never in danger. To me this is the very antithesis of what I'm interested in playing.

Hi, I'm a super powerful super enemy with super powers. I will kill you.

I am taunting you. Your mother was a lobster.

I keeeeeeeeeeeeel you. And it attacks the tank. This super powerful creature is too stupid to turn his attention to the healer, because hes' been taunted. I guess I should be shaking in my boots. It's just a bad design to me.

I get that it makes creating content easier in some ways, because you have a baseline around which you can design content, but I wonder also how it limits creativity. It certainly pushes games in one direction and if you don't like that direction as I don't, then you are pretty much screwed at least in MMO space.

In Rift I wanted to play a DPS cleric. And all I heard was my guild asking me to heal, every time I'd get some decent play time, someone in the guild would say we're doing a dungeon and we're just missing a healer. I mean I'm a team player I'm never really going to say no, but the design of the system left, for me, much to be desired.

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Gw2 hardly had a trinity in any content.

Most roles are simply a mish-mash of sub roles, and letting DPS do DPS.It's more of an efficiency thing so DPS can focus purely on doing damage, while others tank/support/heal for them, sometimes all at once.

If yu go to open world, yu will find more build variation, some built to do optimal dps, some built to outlast even the toughest open world encounters, some simply built for fun and does really stupid things.

No, build variation isn't dead, it's just that certain content indirectly force players to follow a meta in order to be efficient.

If yu wanna do a Qadim run with like 10 Bunker Weavers, so be it, but it won't be efficient.

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