Please Remove Tank, DPS and Heal

[TheBBP]

I'd say if anything they need to add more roles in this game, not remove them

 

I agree. It would be cool to get a pure crowd control class and a debuffing class.

[bbare]

Methinks the OP doesn't understand the RPG element of an MMORPG. Role-Playing Games are designed for each person to play a role. Although I agree that it would be great if the trinity isn't as straight-forward as it is, giving everyone virtually the same role would destroy the point of the game.

 

I agree. It would be cool to get a pure crowd control class and a debuffing class.

 

I think a debuffing class would be an awesome idea. However, a pure CC class would not fit into the pve aspect of the game currently, because there is more than enough CC from other classes. New operations would have to be designed to fit the strengths of a CC class to make them viable in pve. One of the ideas I thought of was to make an additional two mastery classes for each advanced class, one specializing in the use of buffs, debuffs, pets, and the other specializing in pure damage, healing, or tanking.

Edited January 31, 2013 by bbare

[kijthae]

Its,..2013 and I think we all can agree something needs to change. I am talking about the old, worn out and tired system of Tank, DPS, and Heal. It really is obsolete in this day and age,...everyone...EVERYONE no matter what class you are ....wants to beat on the bad guy,..they want to slay,..ok.....they don't want to follow rules in fights...they just want to beat on stuff and watch stuff die

 

This notion that you have to have dps, heal and tank in fights is old school...it's past its time

 

Ask anyone...ANYONE...and they will tell you...they just want to Tank n Spank and get hell outta there and collect the commendations. In and Out..simple..fast and done

 

As it is now,...what do people do in flashpoints? Lol...they skip trash and go directly to Boss and kill for the phat lewt. Spacebar commandos and don't you dare listen to the story...rush to the Boss...get your objective and done

 

Dps fights stuff that the tank isn't even fighting ROFL...healer is healing the dps'rs instead of the tank ROFL...tank is has no clue what aggro is ROFL.....i mean it is total chaos in mmo gaming now days. It is rare to find a coordinated group in traditional tank, heal and dps roles working like a swiss watch

 

Recommendation:

1. Give everyone a natural heal buff over time duration

2. Give everyone heavy armor

3. Give everyone an equal amount of dps

4. Get rid of need and pass and make all loot drop particular to your class and automatically go into your inventory

 

If you disagree with this post....see the thread titled....Don't Get Discouraged by Jerks in Pug's, FP's and Op's. I am offering a solution to eliminate jerks in mmo's,..well no way to totally eliminate jerks but you get the idea

 

Brilliant analysis.Harvard graduate?

[Rafaman]

Guild Wars 2 removed the Triad from their game. Now every fight is a endless zerg. Yipee...

 

^^This is exactly what it turns into. It is not a new and creative approach. It turns into a spam of abilities with little or no organization. It's a zerg fest because no one is controlling the mobs to any great extent. But it gets worse. You tend over heal and consequently under heal. Some one gets low on health, peeps over heal him and... yup, the next person that needs a heal may not get it.

 

The only way to succeed is to clearly delineate before the fight who is going to do what and when. As such... it turns into the trinity. Nothing is gained.

 

Oh.. yea que times are better... until you get into the Zerg. Sure. Lol!

 

Might work for PvP I guess... but as RPG/PvE, nope. What else you got?

[Elementlord]

You realize you're asking them to completely up and change the entire foundation of the gameplay, right? It's just not going to happen.

[Heezdedjim]

But I agree that there needs to be a MMORPG where tanking, healing & DPSing no longer exist. Where every role plays the same but different. Where class is determined by organic and fluid matrices instead of rigid and defined skill trees.

The Secret World. Anyone can be anything, at any time. You can even switch loadouts (talent trees / abilities / and gear) on the fly, instantly, in the middle of a fight.

 

And yet, all the builds people actually use wind up being optimized for one of the same three roles; Tank, Heal, and DPS. There are "all rounder" or "soloing" builds, most of which focus on tanking through self-heals. But for group play, people play the same three roles, because those roles work.

 

The underlying reason for this is the basic, underlying, unchangeable limit of all NPCs in all games: They're all dreadfully stupid. Mobs are stupid, so they have lots of HP and ridiculous armor ratings, so they can stay alive longer. Mobs are stupid, so they do unbelievable amounts of damage, so that they can kill you faster. Mobs are stupid, so the game puts lots and lots of them everywhere, hoping that some of them might survive long enough to kill you.

 

This is complicated by the fact that all online games feel compelled to include some form of PvP, even if the developers have no idea how to do PvP well or not.

 

Because mobs have high HP and huge armor ratings, you need massive DPS to kill them quickly. That means you need some classes that do ridiculous amounts of damage. But those classes can't have high HP or huge armor ratings, or the ability to self heal, because then they would be unstoppable in PvP.

 

Because the DPS classes wear tissue paper armor and don't have much HP, you need a healing class to keep them alive long enough to do their jobs. But healers can't do much damage or have heavy armor, because then THEY would be unstoppable in PvP. Also, healing has to draw massive attention from mobs, because . . . mobs are stupid, and otherwise they would just keep wacking on whatever is wacking on them, without standing any chance of killing that thing ever.

 

Because there are lots and lots of mobs around, and the healers and DPS will die instantly in they get zerged by a big pack, you need a tank class to hold everyone's attention and get wailed on, long enough for DPS to do their jobs, and in order to keep the healers from getting squished. But tanks can't do much damage or self-heal, because then they'd either be unstoppable or unkillable in PvP.

 

Poof. The trinity system. If it's not in the game by design, it evolves because it works, and its needed to fight the only kind of NPC opponents that any game ever has (stupid ones), in the setups that every game throws at you (long fights with tons and tons of mobs).

 

If you want to see a system where there is no trinity, look at PvP. All (well, at least some) of the enemies are smart, they work in cooperative groups, using complex tactics, and they have split-second timing and actual reflexes. Everyone has (relatively) little HP, so everyone dies instantly if focused by a group of enemies. Fights are over in seconds, and nobody has time to use more than a couple of abilities in most cases. It's a giant zerg fest from start to stop. Whoever comes quicker, in greater numbers, with better timing and tactics, will win instantly in each engagement.

 

In PvP, everyone plays a hybrid, because that's what works. Healers heal, but the ones that matter also do damage and crowd control. Nobody can stand around and just heal, because they get focused and killed in seconds. Tanks are a little tougher than other classes, but they also have to DPS and bring utility, or they're useless. DPS do damage, but they also have to spec for survivability, otherwise they don't live long enough to get off more than one shot.

 

In PvP, role balance becomes a function of team utility (mainly stuns, in most games), and who can bring the most stupidiculously overpowered burst damage talents to the field, because that's what wins. That's what a system with no trinity looks like.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Heezdedjim

[slafko]

The game is too revolutionary for those close-minded players.

Since when is mobbing (zerg, to put it terms WoW players will understand) considered "too revolutionary"?

 

GW2 has pretty much hundreds of different, almost equally effective and creative ways to win fights,

Now you're just blatantly telling lies or plain trolling.

[pan_sObak]

Recommendation:

1. Give everyone a natural heal buff over time duration

2. Give everyone heavy armor

3. Give everyone an equal amount of dps

 

and give everyone a button "doflashpointgetmemyblackholecommsandskipalltrashanddialoguesbytheway!"

and one more button "Killthemall"

 

4. Get rid of need and pass and make all loot drop particular to your class and automatically go into your inventory

 

that makes all flashpoints onetimerun. that's bad.

do you have any sound ideas at all?

[FreePrometheus]

I would think that PvE would require more defined roles that PvP?

 

Perhaps, I dont do those things much. My point was that the current system does indeed provide defined roles. And that i can see that even from my, albeit, limited viewpoint (Due to my lack of PVP and, as you say, PVE experience)

[Galbatorrix]

Its,..2013 and I think we all can agree something needs to change. I am talking about the old, worn out and tired system of Tank, DPS, and Heal. It really is obsolete in this day and age,...everyone...EVERYONE no matter what class you are ....wants to beat on the bad guy,..they want to slay,..ok.....they don't want to follow rules in fights...they just want to beat on stuff and watch stuff die

 

This notion that you have to have dps, heal and tank in fights is old school...it's past its time

 

Ask anyone...ANYONE...and they will tell you...they just want to Tank n Spank and get hell outta there and collect the commendations. In and Out..simple..fast and done

 

As it is now,...what do people do in flashpoints? Lol...they skip trash and go directly to Boss and kill for the phat lewt. Spacebar commandos and don't you dare listen to the story...rush to the Boss...get your objective and done

 

Dps fights stuff that the tank isn't even fighting ROFL...healer is healing the dps'rs instead of the tank ROFL...tank is has no clue what aggro is ROFL.....i mean it is total chaos in mmo gaming now days. It is rare to find a coordinated group in traditional tank, heal and dps roles working like a swiss watch

 

Recommendation:

1. Give everyone a natural heal buff over time duration

2. Give everyone heavy armor

3. Give everyone an equal amount of dps

4. Get rid of need and pass and make all loot drop particular to your class and automatically go into your inventory

 

If you disagree with this post....see the thread titled....Don't Get Discouraged by Jerks in Pug's, FP's and Op's. I am offering a solution to eliminate jerks in mmo's,..well no way to totally eliminate jerks but you get the idea

 

 

That sounds extremely boring. Everyone just face smashing their keyboard until stuff dies? I mean, really? That's what you want? As is, the tank has to use strategy to set up mobs, hold aggro and use his defensive cool downs and taunts. The healer has to be quick and know the best heal for every situation. The DPS have to know when to burn and when to avoid damage/drop threat, etc. You'd really replace that for a group of people mindlessly attacking without any actual group functionality at all? What's the point in even being in a group?

[Hawkwalker]

All I read was "whaa, I had a bad FP. Change the game to how I want it"

Also, I love to tank. I find it way more fun than DPS. So I guess not ANYONE wants to just beat on the boss. It's quite unwise to speak for others.

[TheBBP]

I think a debuffing class would be an awesome idea. However, a pure CC class would not fit into the pve aspect of the game currently, because there is more than enough CC from other classes. New operations would have to be designed to fit the strengths of a CC class to make them viable in pve. One of the ideas I thought of was to make an additional two mastery classes for each advanced class, one specializing in the use of buffs, debuffs, pets, and the other specializing in pure damage, healing, or tanking.

 

I dig that idea.

[CaptainBlackjack]

Its,..2013 and I think we all can agree something needs to change. I am talking about the old, worn out and tired system of Tank, DPS, and Heal. It really is obsolete in this day and age,...everyone...EVERYONE no matter what class you are ....wants to beat on the bad guy,..they want to slay,..ok.....they don't want to follow rules in fights...they just want to beat on stuff and watch stuff die

 

This notion that you have to have dps, heal and tank in fights is old school...it's past its time

 

Ask anyone...ANYONE...and they will tell you...they just want to Tank n Spank and get hell outta there and collect the commendations. In and Out..simple..fast and done

 

As it is now,...what do people do in flashpoints? Lol...they skip trash and go directly to Boss and kill for the phat lewt. Spacebar commandos and don't you dare listen to the story...rush to the Boss...get your objective and done

 

Dps fights stuff that the tank isn't even fighting ROFL...healer is healing the dps'rs instead of the tank ROFL...tank is has no clue what aggro is ROFL.....i mean it is total chaos in mmo gaming now days. It is rare to find a coordinated group in traditional tank, heal and dps roles working like a swiss watch

 

Recommendation:

1. Give everyone a natural heal buff over time duration

2. Give everyone heavy armor

3. Give everyone an equal amount of dps

4. Get rid of need and pass and make all loot drop particular to your class and automatically go into your inventory

 

If you disagree with this post....see the thread titled....Don't Get Discouraged by Jerks in Pug's, FP's and Op's. I am offering a solution to eliminate jerks in mmo's,..well no way to totally eliminate jerks but you get the idea

 

No way would this be any fun at all

I like to cc and heal and tank challenging boss fights and hard trash groups so please devs pay no attention to this post. Also the loot is not the reason for the fight it is just part of the proggression, its the difficulty of the fight and a groups ability to overcome the challenge that makes this game worth my time

[Choffware]

You are talking about apples vs bananas... Would you walk up to a bunch of bananas and tell them to start acting like apples? No! Your idea has been implemented in other very popular games. You should try them out. This game uses the trinity model. Don't like it... then don't play it. Not saying one model is better than the other, but you can't change one into the other with out some serious altering of time and space. You would basically have to start over.

[Dimvou]

I got another - even greater idea-.

Rename the group finder to Loot finder ,queue and your time comes,just be rewarded with the loot!

 

Seriously though,the removal of tank,dps,heal seems highly unlikely for any MMO.

What they can do though,is to design some fights differently,for example defend an NPC (one of your factions leaders) or heal him,fight besides him,actually supporting him or even make a "last stand" kind of fight where all of your companions join the fight to defend something(your ship for example).Maybe your other legacy chars could join the fight(A.I controlled or no).

The game has so much potential but i feel everything EA does is copying mechanics(i'm tired of avoiding red circles on the ground,it's getting really old)copying subscription prices and never try to innovate anything.

Sometimes you have to take a risk.

Sometimes you must lead rather than follow.

Edited January 31, 2013 by Dimvou

[Aluc]

BioWare I don't want to have to think while raiding please fix this.

[MaliksKid]

If this game needs a change it's to composition of groups rather than the trinity. Bioware by now probably have decent metrics on how many of each role are queued for group finder at any given time. So why not alter the ops and flashpoints accordingly. Say something like 6man FP, 12 & 24 man ops. Still need the same amount of tanks and healers but you can then take more dps per tank than you could before.

[Hardwear]

Its,..2013 and I think we all can agree something needs to change. I am talking about the old, worn out and tired system of Tank, DPS, and Heal. It really is obsolete in this day and age,...everyone...EVERYONE no matter what class you are ....wants to beat on the bad guy,..they want to slay,..ok.....they don't want to follow rules in fights...they just want to beat on stuff and watch stuff die

 

This notion that you have to have dps, heal and tank in fights is old school...it's past its time

 

 

No we all don't agree.

[Jrpm]

Having read the 9 pages, as I write this, of the thread, I did not see the necessary touch of reality.

 

Leaving aside the cliché that as a role playing game you need roles, consider the evolution of war since the American revolution. Tactical combat has gone from armies to squads/teams. Squad members may have two 'specialties', but will only use one in a given fight. The trinity is now a set of rules/roles in the real world and so should be in an role playing game.

 

I actually think two more roles may be needed in the swtor Republic, at least. An old style Ranger--low DPS, relative to the warrior class but who doesn't get that close to the scrum. (Possible new tactic, ranger runs drawing the opposition away long enough to allow a healer time to work on the rest of the team without resetting the scenario.)

 

I also somewhat favor a crowd control role that stuns/debuffs/debilitates the opposition--real world is the one with the tear gas guns or flashbang grenades.

 

Bioware did this kind of setup, I feel, in DAO so it is doable. But I have not heard of it in MMO. (The comments I saw in this thread were more no specialties oriented.)

 

I am just not interested in being a psychopathic killer, whether as a solo or in a group.

[Jasbro]

Well after reading almost every post i can see not 1 single replyer has agreed to your suggestion so your on your own there OP.

 

People like to have roles in these kinda games, hence the name "Roleplaying game" and those roles are tanking/healing/dpsing.

This isnt a mmozeg (massive multiplayer online zerg everything game), its a mmorpg.

[CosmicKat]

Well after reading almost every post i can see not 1 single replyer has agreed to your suggestion so your on your own there OP.

 

People like to have roles in these kinda games, hence the name "Roleplaying game" and those roles are tanking/healing/dpsing.

This isnt a mmozeg (massive multiplayer online zerg everything game), its a mmorpg.

 

Actually, for almost the entire PvE levelling path, it is a zerg-fest. Follow the quest path and you are always over-levelled for the content. I've done much of it with dps, tank, and healer and it is a danger-free zergathon for 95% of it. Tank with healer companion is as simple as any game you are ever likely to find.

 

The only real difference I have seen with any difficulty is that DPS classes sometimes need to use medkits. Tank and healer classes are pretty much indestructible as long as you aren't asleep at the keyboard.

[Daxy]

@op

 

nice hyperbole

 

over the heads of many but still...

[CrazyOldMystic]

Op over my dead corpse. They tried this stunt with wow and it turned every class into a generic boring stupid class. I watched as my plate wearing dps warrior turned into a squashy healing piece of crap. Sorry I do not want that to happen to my troopers. You got a problem with the old system then leave, but don't screw it up for the rest of us.

[anstalt]

I actually think two more roles may be needed in the swtor Republic, at least. An old style Ranger--low DPS, relative to the warrior class but who doesn't get that close to the scrum. (Possible new tactic, ranger runs drawing the opposition away long enough to allow a healer time to work on the rest of the team without resetting the scenario.)

 

I also somewhat favor a crowd control role that stuns/debuffs/debilitates the opposition--real world is the one with the tear gas guns or flashbang grenades.

 

Bioware did this kind of setup, I feel, in DAO so it is doable. But I have not heard of it in MMO. (The comments I saw in this thread were more no specialties oriented.).

 

I have often said that this game is too simplistic in terms of its roles.

 

I didn't realise it in the past, but I am a massive fan of support classes! I came from LOTRO where I played a Captain. The captain class may be described as the buffer class, but it was a jack-of-all-master-of-none type class. Our uniqueness came from our group buffs but the play style involved off-healing, off-tanking and dpsing on top of the buffing.

 

LOTRO actually had two other support classes too, the Loremaster (debuffs + pet class) and the Burglar (debuffs + dps). In the end, the classes in LOTRO looked like so:

 

Guardian (TANK - heavy armour style)

Warden (TANK - medium armour focused on avoidance)

 

Hunter (Ranged DPS)

Champion (Melee DPS)

 

Minstrel (Healer - direct + AoE)

Runekeeper (Healer - DoTs or DPS - Ranged DoTs)

 

Captain (BUFFS)

Loremaster (DEBUFFS + CC + Pet)

Burglar (DEBUFFS + DPS)

 

What this meant was that 1/3 of the classes were support classes. Both debuffer classes were also good with CC (if specced) so what this meant is that the devs could implement much more complex mechanics in to the game. You ended up with some interesting group setups, from the straight forward tank, dps and heals to the more unusual groups which would have 5 support classes and a healer. Turbine (developers of lotro) never once added an enrage timer to the game (in my experience) because they just weren't needed, the mechanics were often complex enough to weed out the poor players and you just had to be good with tactics.

 

Additionally, their resource mechanic (power) meant you had to be a lot more tactical with your skill usage. For example, my captain had something like 12k hp and 3k power when I quit. It would take me maybe 90seconds of my standard rotation before I ran out of power, and power regened soooo slowly that you couldn't afford to do that, so a large part of combat / mechanics was finding interesting ways to manage your power, either through fellowship manuvers (combos that the entire team entered), power pots (potions) or class skills (loremasters could drain enemies of power and hand it to allies).

 

 

I seriously think that I, personally, would have enjoyed TOR tons more had the combat been more complex and involved support classes. However, I do feel it is too late to add support classes in to the game. Every single boss in game is built around enrage timers and bringing a support class would make it too hard to reach those timers. On the other hand, removing enrage timers entirely would kill the game because the boss mechanics here, combined with simplistic resource mechanics, would trivialise everything.

[Furiel]

I think a debuffing class would be an awesome idea. However, a pure CC class would not fit into the pve aspect of the game currently, because there is more than enough CC from other classes. New operations would have to be designed to fit the strengths of a CC class to make them viable in pve. One of the ideas I thought of was to make an additional two mastery classes for each advanced class, one specializing in the use of buffs, debuffs, pets, and the other specializing in pure damage, healing, or tanking.

 

They had alot of these niche roles in EQ2 and those brought in their own issues. I actually played the debuffing class in EQ2, the Brigand, and while it made me desirable for raiding there were alot of drawbacks as well. Give a class a bunch of debuff utility that means you have to take something from them, usually that's going to be their DPS. Early on in EQ2 I actually got kicked from raids quite a bit because my DPS "wasn't enough" because people didn't understand that while my DPS was mediocre at best, I made everyone else 10% better, which more than made up for me putting up only 75% of the DPS compared to the pure DPS classes. However those were usually 24 person raids. So adding 10% to 20 people was a substantive bonus. Do that here and it's much less effective. Like a 4 person FP group, if 1 person is making the tank and healer 10% better, but they are 25% less than the other DPS then you lose performance. Spin that into raids, it's more of a bonus in 16 than 8 person ops. but you'd still see the benefit there. But that leads to the second issue...pigeonholing.

 

Right now as things stand you can clear all content generally speaking without being speciific outside of their trinity roles of Tank, DPS and heals. If you start adding niche roles like debuffer, etc, suddenly you start seeing those roles become "mandatory" in some people's eyes for certain content. Just for arguement's sake lets say they make Tactic's VGs a debuffing class. Do you really want to see people standing around on fleet spamming this "LF 2 DPS, 1 Heal, 1 Tcts VG for HM TFB"? Because that is what will happen inevitably. Niche roles become mandatory in some players eyes, and slowly the developers start to feel the same, so content gets balanced with the expectation that the niche will be filled and it becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy of niche roles that are supposed to be optional are now mandatory due to the content being designed/balanced around their presence. And it gets worse and worse until you have only a handful of configurations that will work for given content and while that works for most HC ops guilds, it cripples casual raiding who are the majority of your raiding player base. And alienating large chunks of your player base is never a good idea...