getting rid of the trinity doesnt mean no one has any defensive abilities and no one has any healing abilities, it means that these abilities are not tied to only one class. Take basket ball, you have a player, he can shoot pass and defend and move the ball. The trinity is the equivalent of making it so all a shooter can do effectively is shoot all a passer can do is pass and move the ball. All a defender can do is defend. this means if you dont have any one of these classes you cant play the game, even if you have 15 players. because a defender cannot pass. it is actually very unnatural. Getting rid of the trinity means, every body can pass shoot and move the ball. Some people may be more suited to certain tasks, or have comfort zone in a certain position, but they can step up and perform any role based on their own ability. this is what getting rid of the trinity means, not that there will be no defenders, but it wont fall to one person to defend, not that there is no passers, but anybody can move the ball, though some may be more suited to it than others. And no, you dont have to have everyone have only one static role to have strategy.

the only reason that you think trinity is always the best way, is because developers designed them to be the best. If all you can do is tank you probably hate some one who can tank and heal, because they make you less valuable. If all you can do is heal you hate someone who can support and heal because they make you less valuable. If you ever played ffxi, you would find that at many level ranges people prefered red mages(hybrid) to white mages (pure healer) because they could support, and heal good enough for many encounters. point is the reason why hybrids tend to suck in games is because they design the games so that hybrids suck. Also the reason why they dont make classes that can specialise on the fly, is because it tends to make pure classes mad. they just nerfed changing stances from shadow, because people disliked the fact that they could change their weakness. (never mind tree usage energy cost and gearing limited its effectiveness)

or, one guy stuns the boss when his friend gets low hp, another guy severs its leg tendons slowing movement speed, another guy uses a shout that increases all healing of everyone in the area and throws a heal, while the low hp guy runs and does his own heal. The guy who severed the artery takes over hate for awhile, and the guy who just healed up focuses on doing consistent damage. If the game is designed to be dps before kills everyone in group thats all it will be. If the game is designed so that doesnt work, then thats not all it will be.

well like i said its going to be a new learning curve, skills and strategy are going to probably decide your success more than gear scores. For pugs it will probably be hard, until people learn how not to suck badly. But all content doesnt have to be made to require that intense level, and a lot of it probably wont. Just like in wow you dont need a whole trinity to level to cap, or in this game you can do two man heroics with almost any 2 people. for the hard stuff though, people are going to have to communicate and learn to play well and with others, but isnt that the point of the harder stuff?

once again, that is only one execution of a non trinity game. heres what the trinity is 3 rigid roles required for any content tank dps healer also at least 3 classes/specs primarily focus on this. just because you arent doing that doesnt mean its all blind dps. the monster is focusing on you? you better become defensive or evasive or you die. the monster is focusing on your party member? maybe you should support them, or distract the enemy. Everybody surviving well? maybe you should focus on killing it. It doesnt have to be specifically seperated into 3 different people. each person can make meaningful combat changes that arent just dps. and it definately doesnt have to be tied to one class. The point is, if you got 4 warriors, you dont just dps down the boss, you still have to defend and support one another, maybe one of them uses a shield to reduce damage, another uses a hammer for interupts and debuffs, another uses swords which dot the boss, and control his movement so people can run when their hp is low. and the last warrior focus on doing some dps, while at the same time giving people buffs that block dmg, increase max hp, or etc. All of the warriors could do anyone of those roles, but if they try to just straight dps it, if the encounters are designed properly, they will fail. big difference? you dont sit around for an hour waiting for a healer class or a tank class. you come up with a plan, and change your skill loadout to work with that plan.

well first problem is, people are trained in trinity thinking, it will take a learning curve for people to adapt to anything new. Also people tend to follow other peoples formulas, so if one group beats something a certain way, people may assume thats the way it has to be done. Whoever goes for making a non trinity game is going to need an excellent execution, and a lot of guts, because for a time, people will rebel, and try to fit a square peg in a round hole. anyhow for this game, it is not feasible unless they went all the way back to the drawing board on current classes/trees/content. Fact is a sage cannot survive the attention of a hard mode boss no matter how many tricks he pulls out of his butt. A number of classes/trees have no way to mitigate dmg or support the party at all. In this game it would take either a reboot or a long and slow evolution and game rebalance to change the trinity, better they focus on making it a more entertaining trinity experience.

doesnt work that way, unless you got a weird bug, the skills you will lose are the ones that require points, not the ones you buy. The ones you buy are universal to the class. sometimes you may "lose" skills due to them being placed in a different bar but they are still there in your skill list. You should not have lost any skill you bought from a skill trainer.

problem is you are thinking about things in old roles, you hated being dps in the trinity system. For example lets take gw2, which will offer one type of non trinity based system. you will not simply be a healer, you will be a charachter who can do multiple things, if you enjoy support, you can choose to develop skills, and pick traits that help you support. you can give your regular attacks the ability to heal people in your area. you can sacrifice damage for defense up aoe. but your class isnt born as a healer and can only be a healer. As well, although you can take care of some support and health regeneration, you do not take the whole role on yourself solely. Other players may be expected to at times, use their own defensives skills, or pop a self heal. Likewise you will not be using your charachter to the fullest if you never attack anything at all. im not going to lie and say that you will get the same experience as you may like in GW2, or in some other possible form of a non trinity system. Im just saying its not what you think, its not like we dont need any support, and people cant help their teamates in any way besides doing damage, its more like working together, but without extreme specialisation, and specialisations only tied to one class.

uhhh fxiv didnt even close to removing the trinity. The only thing you could say was they made healers also able to damage if they chose, but generally in groups one, or multiple peoples focus was to keep people alive through heals, 1 to tank and the others to dps. Sometimes you would get offtank situations if multiple mobs happened, but thats about it. Champions online didnt remove the trinity either. I enjoyed that game, but regardless of how you created your charachter, for the big bosses, like therakiel, you basically needed a tank dps and a healer. sure you didnt need the trinity to fight 1000 weak mobs, or solo, but why would you need the trinity to solo. or some combination involving those 3. There were some super builds that could get around having all 3, but those were more a result of having incredibly better gear than everyone else, and a couple of poorly balanced abilities. Thinking that is not trinity is all the same and the only way to do something is false. Its basically like saying anything that isnt apples suck, and your example is oranges and bread. There is a much wider variety of not apples than trinity. People thinking there is only trinity and not trinity ehhhh.

youd roll and alt for different playstyles and ways of dealing with the probelms. For example, what a healer is doing is really a form of mitigating dmg over time. One class may have a big heal another class may have the ability to block a hit another class may have the ability to stun the enemy all are doing a form of reducind dmg. you play a new class to do things a different way. a group of thieves may constantly use tricks, going in and out of range, disapearing, dodging attacks and confusing and stunning the monster a group of warriors bounce hate, absorb and reduce dmg, applying buffs to each other etc a group of mages may heal each other and dps while using long range tactics. a mixed group may combine these various abilities to achieve these same effects. and with this every encounter will be different, every style will be different. One playthrough you may end up having to distract and debilitate the monster on your theif, another you may end up straight dpsing it most the time, another you may end up using your abilities to avoid damage while taking most of the bosses fire power. now im not saying they could do it here, but it is possible, and well executed it can be extremely fun.

ok, while i neither hate nor love the trinity it has real problems, and it has been done many times, im up for something more interesting. Still i know this whole entire game and class structure has been developed with the trinity in mind, you cannot remove it. I think the people who think you must have a trinity, or that without a trinity it becomes a burn down for everything arent really understanding things. Not having a the trinity simply means you dont have the same static i can only do 1 thing with each class type thing. A battle can still break down into taking damage dealing damage and support, but a class does not have to be only one thing. that would be the breaking of the trinity. it doesnt mean there will be no strategy, but rather decentralizing one role in battle toward the whole group. bouncing hate, managing group buffs, changing focuses during combat, sounds very strategic, and interesting.

at this point it is basically hard to change, they would have to redesign and rebalance every class in the game and every tree. ALso once you create content designed to have one super tough guy specialized into tanking do it, you can send people to do it who are mixed in, not to mention the people really complaining who invested time and gear into specialisation. I too dont love the trinity, and the keep everyone waiting mechanic that usually ends up developing, but to be honest it is not easy to switch, and would at the best take a long time to do properly for this game

problem is hardmodes are pretty hard on the tank, and with weaker DDS it makes the job of tank/healer harder as well. Then theres is also learning curves for the area. it really isnt easy to jump into a hard mode with 4 new 50s and succeed. design wise it isnt optimum, but its not just the op compaining, there is a steep curve gear requirement wise. Still if you find the right people, who know they are running it with some new people, it can be pretty fun. but yeah blame the developers for making gear centric progression ala the gear check as the main mechanic post 50, but rarely before 50.

while it is theoretically possible to abandon an mmo, it is not profitable. Firstly, is you have to realize these people make money via game development, its what they do, the only way they can continue to make money is by making and selling games, so if they want to make more money, they have to develop new product. However it is cheaper to make games with existing engines and worlds, basically it is easier/cheaper to develop a game, once you get the initial early development out of the way. Also for a new game they develop, a lot of money is lost on packaging distribution, marketing etc. out of every sale they probably only see at best half of it as profit in truth, probably way less. An MMO is direct money to the company minus probably some costs associated with billing. keeping servers up is not expensive, the most expensive maintenance fees they have to pay here, is probably in the form of customet service, and keeping programmers for bugs and what not, but the programmers they probably would need to pay no matter what content they make. so really its not profitable to quit after initial sales, the longer the game runs, the cheaper it is to maintain, and the easier it is to develop for. It is also a comparitively steady revenue with less risk after the initial investment. This is why people want to get into the MMO making business, because if it succeeds its profitable, the longer it goes on the more profitable it is.

you can play a good sith if you want, but much like in the story, you will still be asked to do many evil things, you can justify it if you want, but not much good to choosing to either poison a bunch of rebels instantly or poisoning them slowly. Also you will have to hide your good intentions from the people in power over you, or at least ignore them. The thing you have to understand, is they are trying and hoping that you will become evil, if you dont, they will destroy you, unless you can destroy them. As far as the non sith, they dont really know what a sith is other than basically a being of tremendous power socially and in reality. Truth is most sith at some point in their lives walk in the grey, but in order to be true sith all that we have seen have had to abandon such notions.

one thing to consider, we really dont get to see much imperial worlds, and people. we get a look at the aristocracy in dromund kaas, the rest is basically worlds they took over or attacked, or places that primarily exist for resources. But overall, the people in the empire dont really have a choice, it doesnt matter if they like it or not. From books i can say, that it is not all gravy in the empire, but then again its not all gravy in the republic either. just different types of not all gravyness

hmmm i think consular story is overall below average, jedi knight is kinda ehh, smuggler was pretty fun if you like lighter stories, and trooper hmm didnt get far enough to really comment, started kind of lame, got a lil more interesting in the middle, but nothing killer. from what played of sorc, starts strong, seems entertaining, bounty works, imperial agent starts slow but gets interesting in middle, and sith warrior seems on the path to be similar level quality to jedi knight. Overall id say sith class stories are better so far, but i kind of dont like doing the non class stories on imp side, they are almost all about being an evil bastid.

some of what you say is accurate, but ehh you have a bit of bias. the biggest difference for the average person who never meets a sith is probably the police state versus the free state, and also a general lack of mobility for most people, oh yeah and rampant racism might be a problem too.

personal opinion, some people probably love the laugh, and think having an icon would have been a cop out, or garish and annoying. Its subjective.

truth is relative gearing isnt that important, the importance is that there is something to aim for, preferably a cool something. legendary to you means only a few can ever get it. It doesnt mean that to everyone. For your understanding, the best way to execute legendary would to basically only have a specific amount of them on the server at anyone time, and people with certain standings have these items. (and can lose them when their standing is no longer the in the range) while this is an interesting concept, it should not be the carrot for the majority of players, because the majority knows they will never be the top 10 in the server, in anything. So the concept of a legendary, that is either difficult, or time consuming comes into play and is a better carrot for more people. the key to the carrot is it has to be close enough that you think you can reach it.

honestly there is nothing about grouping up that is innately more challenging than anything you do solo. It may require more communication, but it is essentially the same thing, and often even easier than doing something solo. For example, for a DD, solo, they basically have to kill every encounter before it does enough dmg to kill them, or their companion to run out of heals, however in a group, the healer has better heals, and more skills with which to do it. Its actually easier when he is in a group, his job is pure, and he has people who can save his ***. a healer and a tank have similar issues. The only thing that makes flash points more difficult? they design them to be more difficult. Think about it really, in all honesty think of the most difficult content you have faced in a game. Was it in an MMO? for me i would say no. I mean i may have had the longest fights in an MMO, or some pretty frentic fights where we may have had to adapt and communicate in unforseen circumstances, but in general, my job is just as easy, if not easier in multiplayer online games most times. the hardest part about group content is getting a group to do it with, and the fact that people will be of differing temperments and skill, with different levels of knowledge and gear.

i disagree here, i think overall, you specifically just dont care why you have to do anything, or what the context is. Overall i think this game does a pretty good job with context, which gives you a much better feeling of the environment you are in, and why things happen. If you think of all quests as kill this trash kill this boss interact with this item, sure, but if you think of it as, work your way deep into the base of some gang, find out why they are attacking soldiers, disable their weapons, and defeat the imperial Captain who was behind it all, that was actually a much more interesting sequence of events, for me, for you it was just an annoyance you did so you could get experience. Fact is anything a game does story related or context related, and lore related probably isnt something you find that interesting, which probably means you dont like the RPG aspect of this game, you probably prefer the pvp, or just a game where you can get stronger. to each his own.

uhhh im not disagreeiing with your premise of having more interesting quests, but single player rpgs in general are not really that different, almost every quest in skyrim follows the same formula that you just talked about. kill bandit leader clear out bandit hideout. find X book/instrument/object in bandit hideout specifically i remember multiple clear out bandit cave quests, and i specifically remember the find the instruments in bandit caves, so its definately in there. As far as this game, there really arent that many real quests that ask you to just kill people randomly. there is a ton of bonus quests, but thats just bonus quests, you never have to complete a bonus quest to progress, its completely optional, in reality, most quests are optional. On my stealth charachter i routinely ignore bonus quests, and only kill people i need to complete the objectives. The main dif in skyrim is there is no leveling system, and the game adapts to your level, so they had no need of giving you exp for special objectives, you basically do quests for exploration and fame, and some way to train your skills without realizing you are training your skills. they had more exploration, in that you would find cool things in weird places sometimes, like shouts, or an interesting side quest, but essentially every rpg formula is kill little things kill big things interact with objects/find objects they all just hide it differently, or may make the experience feel fun.

belsavis and illum has them when your 50. If your lower level than that, every heroic is basically a daily

for the people who say if you dont raid, what do you need raid gear for, uhh so you have a way to improve your charachter, basically what they want is not simply the gear that raids provide, but the content that would be involved with getting them. They essentially want something to do at 50, besides raid, because they dont like raiding. That said, raids in this game are pretty similar to our current incarnation of questing, other than being solo. They actually have some with stories, that even continue through more than one raid. They also balanced it so that, (i think) you can get everything from doing 8 mans and high level hard modes. 16 man is actually going to (is not right now) be easier than 8 mans. Prollem with raiding as it is, well its not to easy for a pug to hard mode something they have never done before, even if they add dungeon finders, they will probably have to add gear scores, because truth is if you dont have the gear for a hardmode, generally, you will get owned pretty bad, even if you got skillz. Anyhow, i agree that all progression shouldnt be tied to one playstyle, and all endgame content, however, i dont know what other forms of item obtaining they could do. in all honesty it should only be 4 times harder to do solo, because it only takes 4 people to get most of this stuff. Annnnd yeah there are quests which i had more trouble with solo than anything i fought as a group, of course i was underlevel, but they could simulate that, and make it take 4 times as long.