MMO's (In general) biggest flaw...(Tank, healer, DPS)

[fungihoujo]

OK... so x-server LFG, you want it... why? It didn't improve looking for a group in the slightest. Tanks and healers still had an easy time, and dps still waited for hours to find a group. Only, now, rather than being on your server and thus players would often behave themselves- you were with people you didn't care for and would never see again, so it was ok to ninja everything and act like a complete a-hole, or, even better, make a partial premade, then pug in someone, then boot them at the last boss so they don't get the random grouping reward with the votekick system.

 

Yeah, it was slightly easier to get dungeons- but dungeons became even more of a grind, and they lost all semblance of fun.

 

 

Furthermore, you say tanking/healing is a flaw for those who wanna dps... what about those of us who love to heal or tank? 'Oh, no, you shouldn't be able to enjoy your playstyle because some dps might be inconvenienced', yeah, good to hear you don't care about anyone but yourself.

[Kurenar]

I was honestly not trying to be insulting with the term glory hog, but I honestly couldn't think of another way of saying the same thing.

 

I didn't say there was anything wrong with that type of person. They're the one who wants to drive for the basket. The guy who wants to hit the home run.

 

That's an acceptable way of playing and that type of person probably doesn't like the strict restrictions of a trinity system.

 

I am, instead, a more assist and support type personality. I'd rather dish the rock then go for the dunk.

 

Honestly, that wasn't even meant to be passive aggressive insult or anything. If you can give me an alternate word to use that's less insulting, I will gladly use it.

 

How does not having the trinity system prevent you from doing any of that? without Tank/Heal/DPS, literally everyone becomes a support role, which I think would be nice for a change.

 

You may be healing one minute, then helping to burn a mob down fast before its big ability goes off and kills the group. In the middle of the burn down some adds come out and your buddy stops on DPS and rushes into them to hold them off long enough for the rest of the group to finish the burndown.

 

This is just one cheesy little example, but not having roles opens up so much possibility and, like most new ideas that contradict the established norm, people are resistant of them in general. Apply the little scenario to the 3 role system. DPS and Heals stand in place, either spamming their max-dps rotation or watching health bars playing the whack-a-mole minigame that is healing. The tank is the only one moving. He tanks the main mob, then picks up the adds while dps ignores anything going on except their spammy dps rotation, because after all he's the only one that wouldnt fall over dead if something were to attack him.

 

Isn't this getting old? I've seen so many new mechanics added to quell the monotony just for them to become yesterday's news within months. At this point we are mining the bottom of the barrel (MMOs in general, not just TOR) for what is shaping up to be workarounds for the problems caused by the 3 role system. It really is time for something new, and it's a shame that this game couldn't be the next step in MMO evolution. The voice acting is a great feature, but it's not really innovation, it just ups the ante for any other upcoming wow clones.

 

I think that if MMOs had started out without the 3 roles and someone tried to introduce them later, people would be up in arms about having restrictions imposed on them and not being able to choose the class they really want to play because it doesn't fulfill X role.

[Zironic]

 

Furthermore, you say tanking/healing is a flaw for those who wanna dps... what about those of us who love to heal or tank? 'Oh, no, you shouldn't be able to enjoy your playstyle because some dps might be inconvenienced', yeah, good to hear you don't care about anyone but yourself.

 

How exactly does tanking/healing get worse? I enjoy getting into whatever instance I want in 0.001 sec when I queue as tank and about 3 min when I queue as healer.

[Raice]

On the other hand, go read the city of heroes forums. Although there is a tank class in COH the game was designed to avoid the whole "holy trinity" gameplay mechanics, and still it is impossible to log on without seeing a dozen "need tank for x" or "need healzor for x" requests. And in COH referring to someone as a healer is grounds for a fight Even if the game avoids the mechanics the players will tend to slide back into the mentality that they are comfortable with.

 

Ehhh... I don't know what you're talking about to be honest. CoH was pretty good about making class roles perform specific functions. At least, back in the day it did.

 

I mean, they even named the classes as such:

 

Tanker - Tank

Controller - Mez

Scrapper - Rogue

Defender - Buffs and Heals

Blaster - Nuke

 

With CoV, they sort of blurred the lines a little, but they basically stuck to the one function-one class routine.

 

Man... just thinking about it - THAT game made Tanking fun! Tanker was THE best class to play - Invulernability/Super Strength. You really felt like a Super Hero. I remember when you would run through an entire mission, aggroing EVERY SINGLE mob in the entire dungeon (which was a lot since the standard mob size back then was like 10 individual units), and then tell your teammates, "You guys go on ahead... I got this...." You would then proceed to weed your way through them, left and right, bodies flying all over the place (PhysX). Man... good times....

[Dakkongj]

Games that have tried to remove the trinity turned into a boring zerg fest with little to no challenge. This is because the developers have to design encounters expecting groups to have little to no teamwork, and little to no group healers.

 

CO tried this, people simply would zerg everything, when they died, they would rez and then return to the zerg til the encounters were defeated. There is nothing fun about that.

[BloatedGuppy]

Games that have tried to remove the trinity turned into a boring zerg fest with little to no challenge. This is because the developers have to design encounters expecting groups to have little to no teamwork, and little to no group healers.

 

CO tried this, people simply would zerg everything, when they died, they would rez and then return to the zerg til the encounters were defeated. There is nothing fun about that.

 

Well, we tried and it didn't work.

 

The lesson here is "never try".

[Viera]

Well, we tried and it didn't work.

 

The lesson here is "never try".

 

I find the way you aggressively defend your preferred playstyle hilarious.

[Alphasgimaone]

So when your wrong what will you do?

 

I'm not going to be wrong.

[BloatedGuppy]

I find the way you aggressively defend your preferred playstyle hilarious.

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypocrite

[Viera]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypocrite

 

I never once said what my preferred playstyle was, nor have I aggressively defended it. I just said you were falsely presuming that SWTOR needs to compete with games that are not out yet. Beyond that, all I've said is Innovation =/= better and posted an article.

 

You, however, are aggressively attacking anything that disagrees with you.

[Sgt_Sapper]

Not a thing wrong with having class specific roles. It works. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

 

From a military viewpoint; I would not send out a medic to engage the enemy alone. And I would not send a combat infantryman in to clear a minefield (unless it was absolutely necessary). All soldiers should be cross trained to a point, but we all have our specialties.

 

Know your role and do the job right.

[Viera]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it

 

Meaning

 

If something is working adequately well, leave it alone.

 

Origin

 

Humans seem to have the urge to improve things. Prehistoric hand-axes were made by repeatedly chipping small flakes off pebbles of flint with other hard objects. Million-year-old examples of these have been found that give the impression of being ruined by being chipped just one time too many. That pang of regret we have probably all felt after spoiling something by adding that unnecessary final touch was first faced by Ugg in his cave.

 

A good example of innovation gone wrong, they tried to be innovative on Dragon Age II and pull away from the standard RPG system. So many people hated it. I personally liked Dragon Age and Dragon Age II, but meh.

[Kurenar]

Not a thing wrong with having class specific roles. It works. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

 

From a military viewpoint; I would not send out a medic to engage the enemy alone. And I would not send a combat infantryman in to clear a minefield (unless it was absolutely necessary). All soldiers should be cross trained to a point, but we all have our specialties.

 

Know your role and do the job right.

 

But you described non-combat roles. Roles as we know them in an MMO are all supposed to be combat roles. It should be about killing stuff in your class's unique way, supporting your group however you can within the context of active combat.

[Isende]

Not a thing wrong with having class specific roles. It works. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

 

From a military viewpoint; I would not send out a medic to engage the enemy alone. And I would not send a combat infantryman in to clear a minefield (unless it was absolutely necessary). All soldiers should be cross trained to a point, but we all have our specialties.

 

Know your role and do the job right.

 

amazing. everyone wants to scream "tear down specialization" but still be a "unique snowflake."

 

bottom line, as i stated many pages back: I LIKE healing, i LIKE tanking. and as someone else stated, several pages back? when you have a good group, with people knowing their skills/abilities and functioning at peak performance? man, what a rush.

 

i guess my career as an mmo player will end, when they decide that specialization just isn't fun anymore. *sigh*

[Isende]

But you described non-combat roles. Roles as we know them in an MMO are all supposed to be combat roles. It should be about killing stuff in your class's unique way, supporting your group however you can within the context of active combat.

 

and here, you are wrong. a healer is not a "combat" role as you've listed; the healers i've leveled in the past, for solo content, have always required either an off-spec or help, because our ability to damage ... well, it sucks.

 

again.

 

i LIKE healing. i LIKE tanking. and i LURV runnin' with a smoothly functioning team of specialized people who know, and play, their classes because it's what THEY love.

[Zhit]

I'm sure someone has pointed this out already in this long thread--but folks do realize that TOR not only has the holy trinity--but they have increased the need for tanks and healers.

 

In other games there are spots for 3 DPS. In TOR, only 2 DPS get to run with each tank and healer. Why BW decided to increase the need for tanks and healers is beyond me. Plus, I'm not even sure BW has an in-house QA team. If BW had been doing their own QA (or listened to any of the feedback from the beta testers) the UI would have been more healer friendly.

 

As the game stands now healing just isn't any fun to do. Healing 4 mans, especially if someone is using a companion is a chore. Healing 8 gets even worse. Can't imaging how bad healing 16 would be. Heck, the fact the raid health bars don't update and you have to constantly target folks to check health is a joke.

[Isende]

I'm sure someone has pointed this out already in this long thread--but folks do realize that TOR not only has the holy trinity--but they have increased the need for tanks and healers.

 

In other games there are spots for 3 DPS. In TOR, only 2 DPS get to run with each tank and healer. Why BW decided to increase the need for tanks and healers is beyond me. Plus, I'm not even sure BW has an in-house QA team. If BW had been doing their own QA (or listened to any of the feedback from the beta testers) the UI would have been more healer friendly.

 

As the game stands now healing just isn't any fun to do. Healing 4 mans, especially if someone is using a companion is a chore. Healing 8 gets even worse. Can't imaging how bad healing 16 would be. Heck, the fact the raid health bars don't update and you have to constantly target folks to check health is a joke.

 

oh, it's pretty fun, yar, i'll admit that. no, raid ui still isn't fixed. scenario:

 

tank is full, pop heals on another player

tank is full, pop shield, hot on another player

tank is full, peruse other players

tank is dead

 

me: "Were you one-hit??"

tank" "No, don't think so"

[BloatedGuppy]

I never once said what my preferred playstyle was, nor have I aggressively defended it. I just said you were falsely presuming that SWTOR needs to compete with games that are not out yet. Beyond that, all I've said is Innovation =/= better and posted an article.

 

You, however, are aggressively attacking anything that disagrees with you.

 

Yes, you did. A "false presumption" that I never actually put into words.

 

You could try responding to things I say, rather than making up arguments for me and attacking those. Or you can continue trolling. Up to you, I suppose.

[CaineDVamp]

We're talking about breaking the line between Healer/Tank/DPS.

 

But, why does that setup exist in an MMO in the first place?

 

Because you have health bars and damage dealing attacks. In order to deal with damage dealing attacks, you have to recover from them, that's healing.

 

The only way to get rid of it is have Jedi/Not and then let people pick and choose their skills and abilities at their leisure. But, until you get rid of a health bar and dealing damage, you will never get rid of healers. And therefore never get rid of "The Trinity".

 

Also, I think I speak for everyone when I say that "people that say they speak for everyone" mean that they are speaking for themselves and anyone that agrees with them, and I'm really sick and tired of people claiming that they speak for me on these forums.

 

Let me be clear. I do not want to play WoW. I do not want SWTOR to look or feel ANYTHING like WoW. If I liked how WoW worked these days, I would be playing it. Obviously, I am not.

 

In summation, your arguments are invalid.

[SnoggyMack]

The tank, healer, DPS mindset for grouping. This doesn't work in the long run. You will force certain players to play a healer or tank when they really just want to DPS.

 

It's really quite simple and has been simple for a long, long time. If you want to be DPS, be DPS. It's just the single most popular thing in these kinds of games. So you're less needed and less valuable to your social circle because your skillset is easily replaced.

 

This never matters within the framework of a strong social circle. Your close friends will continue to group with you. Your guild will continue to include you in its DPS needs at end-game.

 

It only comes into play in PUGs. And really, most mature players with standard amounts of self-esteem don't really care if PUGs need them or not.

 

I've played DPS classes through Everquest, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, LOTRO, Champions and Rift. This is always the case. DPS is just two things ...

 

1- Popular

2- Interchangable

 

It's popular because people like big numbers. They like to hit things and see a big boom.

 

It's interchangable because there's so many options.

 

But in the end it's just not that hard to be a successful DPS character in an MMO. As long as you realize your time in game is NOT justified by your value in a PUG.

 

The best end-game content killing guilds are not based on PUGs. They're based on either a tight knit group of gamers that work well together or a tight knit group of gamers that are friends.

 

In both cases, your value to the group as DPS is appreciated, so the framework for you to succeed is there.

 

The trinity is fine. PUGs are and always will be something you can take or leave.

[Kurenar]

and here, you are wrong. a healer is not a "combat" role as you've listed; the healers i've leveled in the past, for solo content, have always required either an off-spec or help, because our ability to damage ... well, it sucks.

 

again.

 

i LIKE healing. i LIKE tanking. and i LURV runnin' with a smoothly functioning team of specialized people who know, and play, their classes because it's what THEY love.

 

Never played a healer in PvP I guess?

 

Nothing wrong with enjoying roles, just as there's nothing wrong with not enjoying how restrictive they are.

[Isende]

Never played a healer in PvP I guess?

 

Nothing wrong with enjoying roles, just as there's nothing wrong with not enjoying how restrictive they are.

 

actually, lol, yeah i have. when i started my mmo career, i pvpd quite a bit -- learned early not to take my healer in, as we're usually the first to go down. and the second. and the third, and so on, lol.

 

point remains. give me a good boss fight with lots of stress, and a group of people who enjoy that stress and play well together, and i'm in heaven, whether i'm tanking, healing, or occasionally dpsing.

[Hatur]

Haven't read all the posts here so forgive me if this has all ready been mentioned:

 

There is one MMO out there that broke the trinity mold. City of heroes.

 

In that game I have completed very hard group oriented "raid" missions with a team of 8 blasters (glass cannon ranged dps), with a group of 8 tanks and with every mix you could think of.

 

And still even in that game you hear people cry "need H3alzor" (not kidding with the spelling, saw that more than once)

 

I think that the trinity is a standard that games hesitate to break out of because of it being the norm for these types of games. But I would love it if more games like CoH managed to break those rules.

[RachelAnne]

The tank, healer, DPS mindset for grouping. This doesn't work in the long run. You will force certain players to play a healer or tank when they really just want to DPS.

 

The ONLY MMO that I have seen that makes this work is World of Warcraft. Don't flame cause I said WoW, I have played just about every single MMO for the past 14 years.

 

Keywords: Cross server dungeon finder

 

 

Bioware said that they don't want dungeon queues (even per server) because they want the community to interact. Well Bioware, what happens in a few months when there barely is a community and this "cross server queue" is still demanded. You are in the same boat as you are now except minus a ton of players.

 

The amount of players who enjoy playing a DPS class outweighs the amount of tanks and healers. It makes no sense for games to expect every group to have a role not many people want to play. You need to consider the PSYCHOLOGICAL aspect. There might be 5 tanks on, but maybe all of them ONLY group with friends/guildmates. Thats perfectly fine, but what about that large chunk of playerbase that is a solo player or plays with a few friends who happen to be all DPS.

 

The entire mechanic of tank, healer, DPS makes no logical sense except for a timesink. Let's wait 2 hours to do a 1 hour dungeon.... That's 3 hours and that is assuming you complete it. Risk vs. reward.... Why waste 3 hours? I'll honestly play a different game.

 

I did play wow for 6 years and I think you glorify something that wasnt there.

 

The queue´s for DPS on wow, were always 40-50 minutes. You would always be faster if you looked on your server, instead of the LFG tool.

 

I also dont understand why people should be more intrested in playing Tank or Healer, if they can be exploided, insulted while in a LFG tool group.

 

 

The Healers and Tanks I knew, including me did stay away from the tool. We did form our groups on the server, nobody wants to play with strangers who exploid you, take your items and drop insults all the time.

Only very seldom we did use the LFG tool, so even if SWTOR would introduce it - there will not be more tanks and healers that carry you.

 

Edit:

 

A game that does not need a healer or tank, is a dead game for me. I play these roles since I did start with MMO´s, to force me to dps is something I will never ever do and it would not fit into MMO´s, RPG´s mean roles and not shooter where all dps.

Edited January 6, 2012 by RachelAnne

[Alash]

For mmos in general, i want it back the way it was in EQ. Tank, healer, CC, dps to do anything. Then to do anything well, leave out another dps for a buff class.

 

Those were the days.

 

I've doued every instance up to and including cademimu with just a tank/healer. Lvl 30 now. So far, fun as hell with nicely geared up companions and good control i'm wondering if dps even are required later in the game. lol (joking, kinda).