Should SW:TOR start de-emphasizing the trinity?

[KennethHoover]

I don't think it would benefit BioWare to ditch the trinity because that would require a tremendous overhaul of the game, wouldn't it?

 

But I do think it's high time someone innovated a new model other than the trinity for an MMO. It feels stale to me and seems as if it hasn't evolved beyond the traditional structure?

 

I don't know. I would like to see something different. What do you guys still think?

[Joetwoshots]

Whilst it doesn't get rid of the trinity system I don't see why there can't be more variety in class roles; e.g. support, hybrid (actual hybrid not just "oh it can DPS and has a heal"), off tanks, debuffers/afflictors, mezzers, AoE specialists etc... I don't doubt that a creative designer could create something unique and interesting whilst even a mediocre designer could draw from what already exists.

 

The problem I have is that splitting all classes into tanks, healers and DPS is over done and boring as hell. I miss the days of the early WoW where my Shaman was actually a support class who was always welcomed to groups because melee classes wanted Windfury and casters wanted the extra mana regen. Other games like AoC experimented to a degree with interesting class roles; e.g. the Necromancer who was a pet class that swamped enemies with 8 pets, or the Dark Templar who was a leech tank/debuffer.

 

Then you have the classic example of Everquests Bard for the support role. Point is that you don't need to remove tanks, healers and DPS because there's plenty of scope for making what already exists interesting. Star Wars trouble is that it's not interesting in any way shape or form with regards to classes and instead relies on "oh look a lightsaber."

 

I completely agreed to this. If there were more, original classes, more interesting choices to do... would make game more complicated, but deffo more fun.

I feel like i need to point out some additional interesting ideas, which rift created: classes like bards, while so-so at healing, they were mastering many strong buffs. And there were chloromancers, an idea of healing-thru-dpsing. Thats just few of many ideas from mmo games, which could inspire something new.

I just feel like creators wanted to make as simplistic game as it can be, so it could reach as many players as possible, as much those who played mmos, and those who didnt.

Cant say i like this approach.

My 2 cents.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Joetwoshots

[Tothjowii]

The only other game I can think of that was built to not have the Holy Trinity was also SWG (RIP SWG) before Sony nerfed it and then there was Hundreds of options class wise and thats what I miss about that game for it was fun to make your own class. But I see the need for the holy trinity for its easier to make but does that make it right? Of course not.

 

However what there doing in G2 is a step in the right direction just like SWTOR has been making you pick what YOU the player wants to say and picking the light side or the dark side and not just read off a page and then kill a person or a group of people afterwards which from what I understand G2 is somewhat taking to another level still the merits go to SWTOR for putting this stone out there. Now granted I haven't gotten into an op yet I can see how there impossible to do without a good geared tank. This happened in WoW a bunch when was there 3 years ago. Which I thank to god is on the down curve.

 

Now I don't know if I will be playing G2 or not thats still in the air but the topic of the holy trinity is needing to go to the trash bin for we are in a new year and new ideas away from the norm is needed to get more gamers into the games like G2 and SWTOR where we the player get to pick what we want to say and hell maybe one day our own voices can speak what we what to say?

[DigitalDreamz]

You guys have to realize who you're talking about. This dev team has botched high res textures, Ilum, their engine and the GCD.

 

You want them to move away from the trinity?

 

May as well ask a mechanic to fix your teeth while you're at it.

Edited February 20, 2012 by DigitalDreamz

[Ansultares]

You can design a boss enounter without needing a tank. This is not complicated. You can desgin NPC damage to be avoidable thus removing the need for a healer. This is not complicated. You can retool the class tool box with different skills and reblanace them.

 

The only thing you really need are different people with new ideas. Copying and pasting systems that already exist from other games is getting old.

So, we're all ranged DPS?

 

Sounds like a FPS to me.

[Chromiie]

It would take a massive overhaul of everything in this game to remove the trinity. It's too late for that.

 

Too late? Maybe but well Final Fantasy 14 is still being overhauled only reason I don't see this happening to TOR is because of EA.

 

So, we're all ranged DPS?

 

Sounds like a FPS to me.

 

 

Or sounds like Guild Wars 2 to an extent.

Edited February 20, 2012 by Chromiie

[Drewser]

It would take a massive overhaul of everything in this game to remove the trinity. It's too late for that.

 

Not really. One good example is the council fight in EV even the pylons in an 8 man are done without a designated tank on one side.

 

Designers just need to be more creative.

[Tiaa]

There is far more wrong with the class system other than the trinity.

 

This is just the trinity done in an insane fashion. Basically, it's nothing but trinity.

 

And by that I mean there are no real "hybrid" or "support" .

 

Just healers, tanks and DPS. Flat out.

 

What makes it worse is the advanced class system is just a useless gimmick implemented to pretend there was a class "choice" in this game. But as soon as you pick one: Healer, DPS or Tank.

 

By far, this is the most linear, lazy way I have seen it done.

 

If this game is a "theme park" then I think the rides almost over.

 

For me at least.

[Sabarok]

Have any tangible ideas on what to replace the holy trinity with? Battles are all about damage. You are doing damage to the boss, while the boss is doing damage to the team. The goal is to kill the boss before the boss kills you. Even if you take away all classes and give players full freedom of choice, they will still choose on their own to split into specialties.

 

Since the goal is to kill the boss, some players will specialize in that to help their team to kill the boss faster.

 

Since the challenge is that the boss is also trying to kill the team, some players will specialize in being the one to take the damage to do it as effectively as possible.

 

Since fights are also an endurance, players will also want their chances to be greatly increased by removing the damage that a boss does through heals.

 

Does Damage; Gets Damaged; Heals Damage;

 

That's the holy trinity of DPS, Tank, and Healer. I can't think of any way of removing those 3 roles from combat without also taking out damage. You can add more support classes, but that only adds additional variety to the holy trinity, which is a good thing. Each AC should have more unique things to bring than they already do.

 

Even if you take away the classes, players will still try to fill the roles. We don't have tank/dps/heal roles in classes because Bioware wants us to fill those roles; We have those roles in classes because that's the roles players have decided are the most efficient for tough encounters.

 

Do we keep the holy trinity because it allows players to specialize to their playstyle and work together in the same way we've been doing for over a decade, or do we turn the fights into a rhythm game where victory is only about standing at the right spot at the right time with the right attack?

 

I have played MMOs with a wide variety of boss fights, and there are many boss fights out there that don't depend on the holy trinity, but those fights are the exception to give players a bit of variety in their holy trinity based games.

 

AO had one boss fight where players worked out that the most efficient method was for only pet classes to participate and to all stand in 1 spot and let the pets do all the fighting. For everyone else, it was a rhythm game. It was a fun break from the usual tank & spank, though AO's golden years involved 100-person raids on bosses (aka the zerg raid).

 

LOTRO has been doing quite a number of different things in the last few years. I did a raid there today where the boss fight involved everyone playing ring-around-the-rosie jumping in a circle every few minutes to avoid taking damage in an acid flood. It's still holy trinity, but with added layers on top. If all you do is try and tank & spank, you'll fail. One 3-man raid requires running to adds and doing the emote /slap.

 

Both of these MMOs required years of evolution to reach the point where they could have a lot of flexibility in boss fights. Both the players & Bioware are still learning the full capabilities of what PCs can do, and new patches are sure to add new abilities to our arsenal which will require new bosses to be taken advantage of with them.

 

My only question: If you are going to replace holy trinity, what would you replace it with? Would your system still have players manually choosing on their own the roles of tank/dps/heal simply because it's a highly successful combination, or do you have an innovative design that renders the entire concept of tank/dps/heal obsolete?

[fungihoujo]

Yes, games will be more complex if you take away healing and tanking and only have dps, also, people who like a variety of things will be more likely to want to play the game if you have less variety of roles.

[Torquist]

Is there any non-trinity MMO's that are out now? I have no idea whether I would like or hate it, because I have never played a mainstream MMO without it.

[JustTed]

Not really.

 

All you need is different designers with different ideas. The trinity model isn't hard coded into the game.

 

No, it's just hard coded into the design of the game. They could change it, but it would be a massive undertaking. It's way, way too late.

[Jett-Rinn]

It's too late and Bioware made a good stab at making the Trinity not so rigid; but I never liked it. It segregates the community and fosters a lord of the flies mentality. The sad thing is that it's so ingrained into the genre even when you have games that has Gascanned the Trinity folks still play it that way....guild wars 2 comes to mind.

 

During pax the biggest reason groups wiped during the demo was because they kept trying to assign Tank/healer/dps.

 

I don't think there is any easy answers to fix it in any MMO.

[oakamp]

Is there any non-trinity MMO's that are out now? I have no idea whether I would like or hate it, because I have never played a mainstream MMO without it.

 

try UO.

 

u dont have to play EQ style games.

Edited February 20, 2012 by oakamp

[Dire-Wolf]

I'm not a fan of the trinity system but I think it's a little too late for BioWare to doing anything about that in TOR. The way I see it a game that uses TOR's combat system, the same sort of system used by games like WoW or EQ, has to have the trinity system to function properly. For TOR to either start de-emphasizing the trinity system or even get rid of it completely BioWare would have to do a complete combat overhaul and make it more like an action game, like DCUO (which does have a trinity system but it's heavily de-emphasized outside of raids), or like GW2, which as I understand it basically uses the same combat system as EQ, WoW, TOR etc but only lets you have four or so abilities hotkeyed at once, has a lot more cone and aoe spells you have to aim and gives everyone a heal.

 

We can only hope that when BioWare puts out their Mass Effect mmo in 2020 (fingers crossed) it will be a third person shooter like the single player rpgs and the trinity system wont exist.

[Caith]

No. And you will understand why when Guild Wars 2 comes out.

[edgalor]

I once dreamt about playing a mmo without waiting 39 minutes for a tank to join my raid..... Then gw2 shows up.....

 

 

On the serious note, most pre wow mmos doesnt use the trinity system. Games like ragnarok online, lineage, uo, legend of mir, lineage 2, etcetc never force players to find a healer or tank until they can start playing the endgame....

[GalacticKegger]

Helluva thread OP, hope it doesn't get craphammered by moles & trolls. Oops ... too late.

 

I'm not sure combat, exploration and progression can be avoided in an MMO. Remove combat and encounters become docile. (Think Second Life.) Remove exploration and the game evolves one dimensionally. (Think Guild Wars.) Remove progression and there's nothing but status quo to lean on. (Can't think of one.) Anything outside that triangle would require too much storage, too much back-end bandwidth and WAY too much fuzzy logic to pull off.

 

And I think fuzzy logic is where the next generation MMO would have to come from. A ubiquitous world builder engine that plays creator in a purely pervasive environment where every character's actions and choices affect every other character's actions and choices throughout the entire game. End game starts the moment a player first logs in. Plots would build themselves, stories and lore would write themselves, and player characters would in essence be a part of every other player character's questlines - all on the fly. Won't ever happen.

 

However I could see a limited variation of that someday in an instanced multiplayer environment with maybe 4 players where decision and reaction skills alone - and not character level or equipment - would be the balance. But not on an MMO scale with millions of players residing in a one room galaxy.

 

Until that or some haptic-based alpha wave triggered virtual brain world that paints from and directly reacts to a player's thoughts comes along, the trinity (either in part or in whole) is probably it for MMOs.

 

I don't think SWTOR should (or even can) de-emphasize the Trinity. Just continue improving what they have until it can expand beyond instanced spacedocks into the Star Wars universe we saw in the movies.

Edited February 20, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Madprophetus]

The trinity paradigm will fade away, but not in this game (or in wow, for that matter). I would think Titan will probably be the game to finally kill the precedent set by DikuMUD way back in the day.

 

I could see this playing out in SWTOR, but as another poster said it's already too late in the game for that to happen. Having different "modes" available to each character to deal with having threat vs. supporting the group vs. dealing damage that could be easily switched based on that moment in the fight does sound like fun, but I don't think Mythic has the IQ to pull it off in a way that's fun & rewarding to the player.

[GalacticKegger]

The trinity paradigm will fade away, but not in this game (or in wow, for that matter). I would think Titan will probably be the game to finally kill the precedent set by DikuMUD way back in the day.

 

I could see this playing out in SWTOR, but as another poster said it's already too late in the game for that to happen. Having different "modes" available to each character to deal with having threat vs. supporting the group vs. dealing damage that could be easily switched based on that moment in the fight does sound like fun, but I don't think Mythic has the IQ to pull it off in a way that's fun & rewarding to the player.

The trinity paradigm will fade away into what? What replaces it? Edited February 20, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[MarcosAguila]

Have any tangible ideas on what to replace the holy trinity with? Battles are all about damage. You are doing damage to the boss, while the boss is doing damage to the team. The goal is to kill the boss before the boss kills you. Even if you take away all classes and give players full freedom of choice, they will still choose on their own to split into specialties.

 

My only question: If you are going to replace holy trinity, what would you replace it with? Would your system still have players manually choosing on their own the roles of tank/dps/heal simply because it's a highly successful combination, or do you have an innovative design that renders the entire concept of tank/dps/heal obsolete?

 

Concept? never gonna happen? easy peezy, people do that in their sleep.

 

Skill loadouts.

I wouldnt replace the trinity, id just open all the skills up within the classes, let people pick and choose, then put the roles into switchable loadouts.

 

So you have tank abilities in loadout slot 1

Healing abilities in loadout slot 2

DPS in loadout slot 3

Debuff, buff ect on loadout slot 4.

 

Everyone has 4 loadouts that they can swap on click before a battle and a 5th set which is basically your sandbox loadout. That pretty much serves a multipurpose sort of play . It opens up a wide range of skills and still allows players to gather for groups, choose their roles, get after it and go back to their solo play and chosen skillset after no?

 

So imagine playing a sandbox sort of skill set solo, thats your primary skill loadout of chosen abilities, then for groups you switch up do the deed, switch back, go about your business. assume your role on a click.

Healer dies? np click, im healer now, tank dies i got it. throw af ew symbols above heads to show role for less confusion and so on. Bamm, you please everyone.

[Reico]

No. And you will understand why when Guild Wars 2 comes out.

 

Zerg Wars where everyone can do everything. Where you don't need any strats just zerg em down.

[MrOrionQuest]

Concept? never gonna happen? easy peezy, people do that in their sleep.

 

Skill loadouts.

I wouldnt replace the trinity, id just open all the skills up within the classes, let people pick and choose, then put the roles into switchable loadouts.

 

So you have tank abilities in loadout slot 1

Healing abilities in loadout slot 2

DPS in loadout slot 3

Debuff, buff ect on loadout slot 4.

 

Everyone has 4 loadouts that they can swap on click before a battle and a 5th set which is basically your sandbox loadout. That pretty much serves a multipurpose sort of play . It opens up a wide range of skills and still allows players to gather for groups, choose their roles, get after it and go back to their solo play and chosen skillset after no?

 

So imagine playing a sandbox sort of skill set solo, thats your primary skill loadout of chosen abilities, then for groups you switch up do the deed, switch back, go about your business. assume your role on a click.

Healer dies? np click, im healer now, tank dies i got it. throw af ew symbols above heads to show role for less confusion and so on. Bamm, you please everyone.

 

Guild Wars did that already, it didn't go over very well. They're trying again with a new system, but honestly, it's not going to go over so well either. Once people start playing their PC game with XBoX Live console players, there goes any chance of even trying to get a trinity worked out anyways.

 

Vindicuts doesn't have a trinity, Tera doesn't look to have one either, but both of those are action based MMOs, which doesn't really need a trinity. What I could see games evolving (at least a niche of them) to would be either your traditional style that uses a trinity, or an action based style that forgoes the trinity in favor of being responsible for your own mitigation and dodging of boss attacks. Put simply, one system would use a dice/roll system to depend on, the other would be more about learning patterns and finding/exploiting openings in a boss' attacks. Having a mix of the two, while it could be possible, probably wouldn't be favorable to a player's eyes and senses.

[subrosian]

The trinity paradigm will fade away into what? What replaces it?

Nothing.

 

These are the people who believe that "change" should happen for its own sake. Then when the "new" stuff comes, from automatic raids (which cost WoW 2m subscribers, hooray?) to easy-mode leveling, they complain that there's nothing to do.

 

Prior to the "oh yeah, we're going console" GW2 announcement, they were all touting the "death of the holy trinity". Why? Because the people who couldn't figure out how to balance healing in PVP (hi monks...) in GW1 and ran it into the ground said so?

 

-

 

The trinity isn't going anywhere because it effectively captures the different "player personalities" that enjoy MMOs - the leader (Tank), the min-maxers (DPS), the support players (Healers). It works, it's crude, but it's effective. There has always been an "issue" of more players wanting to play DPS roles than Healer / Tank, but that's not something you want to try and fix necessarily, because whenever you do, you create a hack-n-slash game that falls apart in a week.

 

-

 

It's okay for DPS to sit and wait for a bit. The fact that they want to play the game so badly that they're waiting in line for it is a sign that things are *going well*, not a sign that we need to panic. Look, Disney has lines that are hours long that people *pay to stand in* because they enjoy the rides.

 

Bioware needs to continue to focus on making the rides enjoyable, not the crap decision that GW2 made of trying to take away the line... because often times we find that the ride itself is garbage.

[complexxLT]

I hope they stick with the trinity and if change anything let it be strengthening of the role differences. No trinity no mmorpg for me. I want to fill a role.