Megaphys
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Posts posted by Megaphys
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rotate aggro, kiting, use x/y/z are also tactics that can be used by trinity teams. Everything a non-trinity team can do, a trinity team can do better. That's why so many people go with that type of team, and because it's so effective, devs build their raids around trinity teams. If they built a raid to be handled by any random 4 players, a trinity team will destroy it.
LOTRO has bosses which require rotating aggro. Raids bring along 2 tanks to handle the aggro rotations. When a tactic calls for kiting, it's one of the tank classes that handles the actual kiting. Tanks are simply DPS who have traded some damage for defense.
I have seen many ideas of replacing the manner in which players fill the classic trinity roles, but the only idea I saw in this thread on replacing the actual trinity system was by giving players access to all 3 roles simultaneously. This takes away the variety and personalization that players like in MMOs.
Trinity system: Players who are best able to handle incoming damage take on the role of tank. Their job is to be the primary target. Players who have abilities for the survival of their team (such as heals & CC) take on the role of support. Everyone else focuses on doing damage. This is refined down to the bare minimum of tank, DPS, healer.
There are lots of different tactics for taking on encounters, and many of them will work just fine, but the trinity tactic works best; it works better every time than any other team composition, and its the easiest. Even if your boss encounter calls for kiting or rotating aggro, the encounter will still work better with tanks handling the kiting/rotating backed up by healers repairing the damage than if you had nothing but DPS. You could still do it with nothing but DPS, but not as easily as the trinity team.
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)
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That is pretty much ALL it can devolve into. Your instinct is exactly correct here.
You have 2 viable strategies for defeating bosses in non trinity games.
1. Dps the boss as fast as you can before it kills everybody in the group.
2. Dps the boss as fast as you can before it kills everybody in the group.
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.
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Nice idea, when playing with friends and guildies.
In a pug enviroment.....not so much.
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?
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No.
No.
Again...no.
The trinity system is a lot like democracy. Is it the best system available? Maybe not but it beats the Hell out of all the other choices.
Ever played a group game that doesn't use it? It's just a bunch of dps unloading on everything as hard as they can and that's the extent of it.
It's not fun. It's not engaging. It's not challenging.
I find it puzzling that this is one of the features GW2 fans are touting as "revolutionary" or "breakthrough" when it has been done before in other games and it totally sucked. It's not original to GW2 and once those that seem to think that this idea is fresh and new get a taste of it, we will hear them whistling a very different tune.
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.
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while that does sound nice on paper I don't know if it would work out that well in game
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.
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Have to say this is pretty crazy... I went to respec to change a few talent points and lost one of my main abilites that is now going to cost me 10K credits to retrain.
Dual specing is needed ASAP, or no one is ever going to respec to help anyone out in flashpoints or opperations.
Have to say, I wish there was some kind of warning that abilities I already paid once to train would have to be repaid in a respec.
Not cool design.
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.
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I play as a tank and healer and i can't stand being a Dps so without the trinity your basicly ruining the game for me
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.
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FFXIV removed the trinity entirely and look where it got them.
It's a case of "If it isn't broke don't fix it"
Basically if you want to get rid of the trinity you will have to do away with the entire class system and have everyone be DPS with medipacks.
I think Battlefield 3 is that way ======>
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.
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How? More than likely, at some point, either the Tanks going to have to taunt or the healer is going to have to heal regardless. And if not, the encounter basically becomes a DPS zerg fest where you're trying to kill the boss before it kills you. The only way around this would be if everyone had taunts/defensive skills and healing abilities. And if they did, why would you ever reroll an alt? You'd see all the game has to offer, gameplay wise in one play through. The trinity adds variety and encourages multiply play throughs. There's no way Bioware would take away something that both works as a gameplay variety function and also a time sink. They'd honestly be crazy to. I agree that they could make some encounters rely less on it (which is already the case anyway... only tank and spank encounters rely solely on the trinity system), but the trinity system is the best method available currently.
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Well, I've been shot down defending the sith, with nothing but resonding "no's" and it's been said that a light sided sith is an abomination and the result of bad writers, so as such, my light sided sith that seeks a better empire is a failed and lost cause, and I wash my hands of this discussion.
Have fun all, I will RP my sith the way I want to in game and to hell with your lore, lol
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.
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Nah, they don't.
As long as you're obedient and don't do things the Sith dislike, you're cool. And it's really not that hard not to break any imperial laws.
In fact, citizens there seem rather happy, like the devs said in one of the interviews. They don't sit around wishing for democracy.
(maybe they just don't know any better, but still)
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
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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.
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All of this is true.
It's important to realize that while some Sith are utterly bonkers, the vast majority of Imperial citizens will never meet a Sith, much less interact with one. And most Sith do not in fact randomly murder Imperial citizens for the giggles - they can, and there's a quest on Dromund Kaas involving some Sith doing just that - but most don't.
The Empire treats its citizens quite well. Their national mindset is of security over freedom, and most Imperial citizens have no problems living in an efficient, orderly police state, especially in comparison to the Republic. There is little crime in the Empire, little corruption, no organized crime, and all in all the Empire is a very orderly, peaceful place to live for the most part.
As for planets? The Republic is just as bad if not worse. They have plenty of planet-destroying superweapons and aren't shy about using them.
Moreover, a substantial number of Imperial citizens are descendants of the survivors of the attempted Jedi/Republic genocide of the original Sith people at the end of the Great Hyperspace War. They want the Empire to reclaim its old territories that are rightfully theirs, and want revenge against the sanctimonious, hypocritical Jedi Order and Galactic Republic that commits genocide and all manner of other atrocities (hi, Belsavis) on one hand while preaching about justice and righteousness on the other.
So no, the Empire is actually a pretty nice place to live. There is a small risk of being tortured and killed by your capricious Sith overlords, but a far smaller risk of getting mugged and killed by criminals, corrupt soldiers, or all the other risks of life in the Republic. Go spend thirty minutes on Coruscant (away from the Senate district) and thirty in Kaas City if you want examples of what life in the center of each nation is like.
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.
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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.
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Do people just not see the problem with this here? How is it legendary if everyone can do it over time?
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.
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what else is as challenging as raiding? (discounting pvp, as that has it's own gear system).
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.
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I agree with OP post, the quests yes theyhave voice acted npcs but they all have you killing 3-4 mobs to get to the quest goal. No variety at all. Very disapointed with the quests tbh. Actually disapointed with the game as a whole. Should have less voice acting and better stories. Class quest is good but it feels very linear, just a way of getting you to go to eqch planet as such and parts of it seem very pointless.
Comparing to WOW. Yes wow has same repetitive kill x amount of this and x amount of that but at least u get to fly planes, drive tanks, escorting npcs, more interesting stories, blowup huge amaounts of mobs at once, theres more reward for questing in wow. The harrison jones questline was just simply epic, we need more stuff like that in swtor. Sooo much more character in the npcs even though they arnt voice acted.
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.
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I am fan of rpg games and have played pretty much all rpg games out there,including jrpgs on consoles.I never was fun of MMORPGs for one simple reason-I found them more boring and repetitive then single player games. I tried playing wow quit about lv40 when I realized all sidequest involved doing same stuff over and over.
I am big fan of bioware and loved both kotor 1 and 2. So I just had to buy this game eventhrough it was mmorpg. I hoped bioware might avoid some of the pitfalls those kind of game usually have. Boy was I dissapointed after only couple of hours of gameplay.
This game pretty much has 3 quests and thats it. They are just repeated hundred of times,with different dialogue.Quests are :
1) Kill random number of enemies
2) Press random number of switches,or other objects in the world.
3) Kill random number of enemies and then loot them to find random number of random things.
Whats worse even main class quests involve these 3 quests with addiotion of freeing somebody or killing some boss.
Now problem I have with this is that single player rpg are not this much repetitive. Not even close. Take Skyrim for example.
I just logged in to Skyrim and checked my quest log. I have about 20 quests there. NOT EVEN ONE quest involved killing random number of enemies or collectiong random number of crap nobody cares about. NOT ONE !
Whats saddens me is that bioware has made games which are not this boring or repetitive. Not one of their singeplayer games has side quests which consists only of those 3 templates I mentioned. Not dragon age,not mass effect none.
Dont get me wrong,of course you have to kill enemies,its just in another games its not so blatantly in your face repetitive. In singleplayer games,you kill enemies to survive,to achieve some other objectives instead of killing enemies. There is no any counter which counts how many enemies you killed.
Now I am not bashing just this game. I realize all MMORPGS I like this. I already mentioned WOW has same problem.
What MMORPG genre needs to do is clear : They need to make sidequests on the level of singleplayer game. If single player games have managed to add variety to sidequesting,to make sidequest interesteing not just because of dialogue,but because of the stuff you actually do,I dont see why MMORPGs cant do the same things. What the problem exactly ?
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.
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belsavis and illum has them when your 50. If your lower level than that, every heroic is basically a daily
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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.
Should SW:TOR start de-emphasizing the trinity?
in General Discussion
Posted
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.