Ops and the Holy Trinity

[Kulyok]

I think what we need is a real story mode, like in Mass Effect. Maybe for classic flashpoints and certainly for story-mode ops. Currently 8 156-geared people - heck, 168-geared people - can only beat the Dread Masters on story if they're very, very good at their rotations and familiar with the mechanics.

 

So that's a "really hard" mode for a casual player who only wants to see this op once and be done with it. I think they really should introduce an "easy" mode for ops/storymode flashpoints - something easy and doable for everyone. And, yes, without a trinity, because tanks and healers are hard to find and too long to wait for. Can an average 55 hope to do a KP op without any gear or experience? Ha, no.

 

The solution is simple: create tactical-mode ops in easy mode. Don't give out great gear or any good comms, just let the players see the story, close the quest and move on to create their nth alt.

 

Maybe they'll even become interested in normal raiding afterwards.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Kulyok

[Darth_Wicked]

I think what we need is a real story mode, like in Mass Effect. (...)

 

Something akin to this would be more accurate.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Darth_Wicked

[Raansu]

I think what we need is a real story mode, like in Mass Effect. Maybe for classic flashpoints and certainly for story-mode ops. Currently 8 156-geared people - heck, 168-geared people - can only beat the Dread Masters on story if they're very, very good at their rotations and familiar with the mechanics.

 

So that's a "really hard" mode for a casual player who only wants to see this op once and be done with it. I think they really should introduce an "easy" mode for ops/storymode flashpoints - something easy and doable for everyone. And, yes, without a trinity, because tanks and healers are hard to find and too long to wait for. Can an average 55 hope to do a KP op without any gear or experience? Ha, no.

 

The solution is simple: create tactical-mode ops in easy mode. Don't give out great gear or any good comms, just let the players see the story, close the quest and move on to create their nth alt.

 

Maybe they'll even become interested in normal raiding afterwards.

 

Ya lets dumb down the game even more because people refuse to accept the fact that this game is an mmo and refuse to join guilds or just simply refuse to put any effort into getting better to do the more difficult content.

[branmakmuffin]

The "Holy Trinity" is a religious term and shouldn't be used here.

So if Robin from the '60s Batman TV show uttered, upon meeting Trinity from the Matrix movies, "Holy Trinity!" that would be a religious expression?

 

I don't think so.

 

On topic, less specialization, more good. Specialization leads to cookie builds. More fun to play around with different skills, specs, etc.

Edited September 9, 2014 by branmakmuffin

[JediMasterSLC]

I think what we need is a real story mode, like in Mass Effect. Maybe for classic flashpoints and certainly for story-mode ops. Currently 8 156-geared people - heck, 168-geared people - can only beat the Dread Masters on story if they're very, very good at their rotations and familiar with the mechanics.

 

So that's a "really hard" mode for a casual player who only wants to see this op once and be done with it. I think they really should introduce an "easy" mode for ops/storymode flashpoints - something easy and doable for everyone. And, yes, without a trinity, because tanks and healers are hard to find and too long to wait for. Can an average 55 hope to do a KP op without any gear or experience? Ha, no.

 

The solution is simple: create tactical-mode ops in easy mode. Don't give out great gear or any good comms, just let the players see the story, close the quest and move on to create their nth alt.

 

Maybe they'll even become interested in normal raiding afterwards.

 

You're right this game is way too hardcore.

[PlayLoud]

I think what we need is a real story mode, like in Mass Effect. Maybe for classic flashpoints and certainly for story-mode ops. Currently 8 156-geared people - heck, 168-geared people - can only beat the Dread Masters on story if they're very, very good at their rotations and familiar with the mechanics.

 

So that's a "really hard" mode for a casual player who only wants to see this op once and be done with it. I think they really should introduce an "easy" mode for ops/storymode flashpoints - something easy and doable for everyone. And, yes, without a trinity, because tanks and healers are hard to find and too long to wait for. Can an average 55 hope to do a KP op without any gear or experience? Ha, no.

 

The solution is simple: create tactical-mode ops in easy mode. Don't give out great gear or any good comms, just let the players see the story, close the quest and move on to create their nth alt.

 

Maybe they'll even become interested in normal raiding afterwards.

I would have to disagree. SM Ops are very easy for even casual players. It's very easy to get full 162 gear from FPs. At that gear rating, you should have no trouble with SM DP if you learn the fights. I actually just ran SM DP (via the GF) last night for the second time (I ran it once months ago, and didn't remember much of it at all). As a tank, I have a lot to do. With somebody guiding me through via Mumble, it was no problem. I imagine it would be even easier for a DPS or healer. Story mode IS easy mode, and really perfect for casual players.

[branmakmuffin]

I would have to disagree. SM Ops are very easy for even casual players. It's very easy to get full 162 gear from FPs. At that gear rating, you should have no trouble with SM DP if you learn the fights. I actually just ran SM DP (via the GF) last night for the second time (I ran it once months ago, and didn't remember much of it at all). As a tank, I have a lot to do. With somebody guiding me through via Mumble, it was no problem. I imagine it would be even easier for a DPS or healer. Story mode IS easy mode, and really perfect for casual players.

Yeah, being guided and spoiled through Story Mode is what Story Mode is all about.

[MillionsKNives]

No doubt, taking a fight that is mechanically hard and putting a heal check on top of it (which is basically all the trinity system adds to mechanics) will make it technically harder.

 

I'd really like to hear an explanation on that one.

 

Also, firstly you misread as I specifically pointed out that the easy fight would become even easier without trinity. There can be mechanically hard fights which require the trinity and there can be mechanically hard fights that don't require the trinity. Your post alluded to the fact that the trinity only leads to tank and spank. Which is just wrong.

 

But the point is that you can have an interesting and fun fight without the trinity system. You can also compensate by the lack of a heal check by adding more to the DPS check, adding in something for those players to do when they would normally be healing, etc. Couple that with the fact that different people find different things difficult, as evidenced by what I already said, and the fights don't necessarily become easier for the group.

 

So instead of having a healer you have "that guy that heals, sometimes", big improvement. So by removing mechanics from a fight to make it possible to be done without the trinity you've not made the fight easier? That makes sense...

 

I healed all through this last round of NiM content and found every fight to be mind-numbingly easy to heal, to the point that I was so bored with it that I convinced my team to put me on DPS. So maybe that's why I'm looking for fights to have more to do than rely on healers to heal people. If they did, then to me, the fights would automatically be more challenging, even if it made the healing a non-issue.

 

Sounds like you just don't find healing very fun. That doesn't mean they need to remove the healing slot just for you.

 

Doesn't change the fact that the two games Raansu mentioned as non-trinity MMOs (ESO and GW2) seem to be doing just fine, despite his claims otherwise.

 

ESO is very much a trinity MMO, not sure who told you otherwise. Their groupfinder even requires that you set your role as tank, healer, or DPS, and will match a group accordingly. And GW2 fights became a cluster without the trinity, much so that from what I've heard many groups began forcing a trinity anyway.

[PlayLoud]

Yeah, being guided and spoiled through Story Mode is what Story Mode is all about.

The story isn't spoiled by being guided in fight mechanics.

[eartharioch]

The story isn't spoiled by being guided in fight mechanics.

 

In swtor context, "being guided" usually means watching videos, reading detailed guides, and being told exactly what to do by the ops leader. Given that many people complain about people not skipping cut scenes, how much "story" is left for people to experience unspoiled?

[MillionsKNives]

In swtor context, "being guided" usually means watching videos, reading detailed guides, and being told exactly what to do by the ops leader. Given that many people complain about people not skipping cut scenes, how much "story" is left for people to experience unspoiled?

 

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that being told what to do for a fight is having the experience "spoiled". I also have never heard anyone complain for someone to spacebar in an operation, probably due to the inherent differences between an operation cutscene and a flashpoint cutscene.

 

Most of the real story for operations happens before and after, during the one time quest. And that part is done on your own.

[Kryand]

I'd really like to hear an explanation on that one.

Name one mechanic that you think requires the trinity, and I will tell you how it can be done without it while still requiring just as much coordination, other than a dedicated healer to counter incoming damage.

 

Also, firstly you misread as I specifically pointed out that the easy fight would become even easier without trinity. There can be mechanically hard fights which require the trinity and there can be mechanically hard fights that don't require the trinity. Your post alluded to the fact that the trinity only leads to tank and spank. Which is just wrong.

Seems to me like you're really focused on current SWTOR fights, which never actually had anything to do with my point. I was only using a couple SWTOR fights as an example, because we're all already familiar with them. Existing easy trinity fights have no relevance to this discussion whatsoever. I never implied anything about what the trinity leads to, but it is true that if you have the trinity, you don't need anything else to have a fight that requires teamwork. So as a result, many don't.

 

So instead of having a healer you have "that guy that heals, sometimes", big improvement. So by removing mechanics from a fight to make it possible to be done without the trinity you've not made the fight easier? That makes sense...

Yeah, if, as I clearly said, you add in additional mechanics to make up for it.

 

Sounds like you just don't find healing very fun. That doesn't mean they need to remove the healing slot just for you.

There are a lot of raiders who agree with me that healing is the easiest part of any trinity fight. Ether way, this aspect is just a matter of opinion, just like it's your opinion that puzzle fights are annoying. No game can please everyone, and nowhere did I suggest that the SWTOR devs change their design philosophy just to fit the preferences of the people who agree with me.

 

ESO is very much a trinity MMO, not sure who told you otherwise. Their groupfinder even requires that you set your role as tank, healer, or DPS, and will match a group accordingly. And GW2 fights became a cluster without the trinity, much so that from what I've heard many groups began forcing a trinity anyway.

MMO's without the trinity or try to do something differently with it never work. Queue ESO and GW2.

[Khevar]

I healed all through this last round of NiM content and found every fight to be mind-numbingly easy to heal, to the point that I was so bored with it that I convinced my team to put me on DPS.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say this was due to the fact that your other 7 teammates were exceptionally good players, reducing your load as a healer.

 

There are plenty of really good healers in NM ops that found that content challenging before the nightmare buff was removed.

 

I also find the above quoted statement a really poor foundation for disliking role specialization in combat.

 

What I personally like about running operations fights, is that fact that in addition to complex mechanics, everyone has to be play their role extremely well. A great example was the Dread Guard fight. There were 7 guilds that managed that fight before it was nerfed. It required not only a perfect execution of mechanics, but every possible last bit of dps, massive healing, and really smart mitigation and aggro management on the part of the tanks.

 

My guild wasn't able to pull it off in time. But I did enjoy trying it and progressing on it. The better each raid member played their role, the closer we got to actually beating it.

 

I find those sorts of fights JUST AS FUN as a purely puzzle boss.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Khevar

[Orizuru]

Speaking for myself only here, but I don't care for MMOs that try and break away from the Trinity. Without the trinity I feel like I might as well just be playing an action game instead. Its one of the features that MMOs have that I feel sets them apart from games like Diablo and Halo.

[MillionsKNives]

Name one mechanic that you think requires the trinity, and I will tell you how it can be done without it while still requiring just as much coordination, other than a dedicated healer to counter incoming damage.

 

To get rid of the entire trinity you would need to get rid of tanks as well, not just healers. If you get rid of tanks there goes pretty much any mechanic where you have to control the boss or swap the boss. Because if the boss stays on any particular player for a fight then you're just playing semantics, because that's still a tank.

 

To get rid of the healer you would have to make all damage avoidable in every circumstance. And with no healers, if they screw up they can not recover from it. So it just ends up being a "whose health runs out first" circumstance. Also, without healers there go mechanics which require keeping someone else alive under pressure. And if you say something to the effect of replacing a healer with an object which heals, or a button you press, or a place you stand to keep them alive, then you're just moving the healer role from the player to the environment and still requiring someone to do the healer role, but not calling them the healer.

 

I never implied anything about what the trinity leads to, but it is true that if you have the trinity, you don't need anything else to have a fight that requires teamwork. So as a result, many don't.

 

You didn't?

 

So on one hand we have pure trinity fights with basic mechanics like nearly every single one I didn't mention, which are easily completed by pug groups of sub-par players. On the other, the fights I did mention, which are more focused on complicated mechanics and less on the trinity system, which most pug groups either refuse to do or fail at repeatedly.

 

You said right here that non-puzzle fights that are based more on the trinity are simple and easy, but the ones that are more puzzle based are complicated and hard. Completely ignoring the fights with mechanics based around the trinity that are also complicated and hard.

 

No doubt, taking a fight that is mechanically hard and putting a heal check on top of it (which is basically all the trinity system adds to mechanics) will make it technically harder.

 

Yeah, because that's the only things that the trinity brings to the table

 

Yeah, if, as I clearly said, you add in additional mechanics to make up for it.

 

You can add in additional mechanics to any fight, but to replace the trinity you'd need to either scrap existing mechanics or replace them with something that can be done without the trinity. So far your suggestions for that include interrupting the boss to take no damage, or puzzles. That seems a lot less interesting than having an actual tank and healer.

[branmakmuffin]

The story isn't spoiled by being guided in fight mechanics.

Get real. That's not the only thing impatient hand-holders do.

[Kryand]

To get rid of the entire trinity you would need to get rid of tanks as well, not just healers. If you get rid of tanks there goes pretty much any mechanic where you have to control the boss or swap the boss. Because if the boss stays on any particular player for a fight then you're just playing semantics, because that's still a tank.

By that logic, Tacticals are still 100% trinity, as someone always has aggro, and someone presses the heal object. If your definition of a trinity fight is that broad, then literally any fight where health meters can go up or a boss looks at any player on the team is a trinity fight, despite the fact that there is no actual tank and no actual healer. Seems more useful to say that a trinity fight is one where there are people who always have the boss's attention (tanks) and people who are solely responsible for team health (healers). Not just one, and not letting one of those responsibilities fall to any random raid member who feels like it at the time. However, if you want to take the extreme definition, I can give an extreme example: imagine an MMO where a raid consists of people responsible for managing a base, and people responsible for micromanaging armies to attack the target. An MMORTS if you will. No tank, no healer, no possible implementation of trinity even if you wanted to. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

 

Either way, swaps and boss control are both trivial to accomplish with no dedicated tank. Threat management can result in bosses switching targets, and any person on the team can handle controlling the boss. See Bonethrasher. Not technically a trinity fight because tanking him isn't a thing, but players still need to make sure the boss isn't faced at the rest of the group.

 

To get rid of the healer you would have to make all damage avoidable in every circumstance. And with no healers, if they screw up they can not recover from it. So it just ends up being a "whose health runs out first" circumstance. Also, without healers there go mechanics which require keeping someone else alive under pressure. And if you say something to the effect of replacing a healer with an object which heals, or a button you press, or a place you stand to keep them alive, then you're just moving the healer role from the player to the environment and still requiring someone to do the healer role, but not calling them the healer.

All avoidable damage sounds fine to me. You could even add in a role whose job it is to help people avoid damage, and nothing else. Not a healer, but keeps the same complexity. Either way, I already admitted that this is an aspect that would disappear from a trinity fight and not be easily replaceable. Which is why I always suggested adding in different mechanics in other areas to make up for the loss of the heal mechanic.

 

You said right here that non-puzzle fights that are based more on the trinity are simple and easy, but the ones that are more puzzle based are complicated and hard. Completely ignoring the fights with mechanics based around the trinity that are also complicated and hard.

First of all, that quote was in response to someone being extremely thick-headed, and was not meant as some solid part of the discussion, and as such I was intentionally vague so as not to feed a troll more than necessary. Second, I did indeed ignore the fights that are both trinity-based and complicated, because they are irrelevant, and were especially irrelevant to what I was trying to say in that post, which was directed solely at one person, not the whole discussion. In summary, I was saying that the idea that removing the trinity system from certain fights turns them into boring jokes was idiotic, given the fact that the trinity mechanics are not what are causing people to fail those fights in the first place.

 

Yeah, because that's the only things that the trinity brings to the table

We've been over this. Start naming things.

 

You can add in additional mechanics to any fight, but to replace the trinity you'd need to either scrap existing mechanics or replace them with something that can be done without the trinity. So far your suggestions for that include interrupting the boss to take no damage, or puzzles. That seems a lot less interesting than having an actual tank and healer.

More opinions, which aren't worth arguing.

[tindin]

Name one mechanic that you think requires the trinity, and I will tell you how it can be done without it while still requiring just as much coordination, other than a dedicated healer to counter incoming damage.

 

 

you pretty much say how right there.....the person doing the most damage turns in to the tank for the healer to heal.....

Edited September 9, 2014 by tindin

[Vodamin]

One huge shift in MMOs in general is moving away from the Holy Trinity where you run pretty much as a healer, tank or DPS.

Huge shift? Where is it? I dont see it.

 

Oh you mean Guild Wars 2? This now irrelevant game, that was supposed to kill all the "generic" MMOs?

 

Mhm.

[Khevar]

imagine an MMO where a raid consists of people responsible for managing a base, and people responsible for micromanaging armies to attack the target. An MMORTS if you will. No tank, no healer, no possible implementation of trinity even if you wanted to. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

For what it's worth, that does sound fun to me.

 

But that would involve a game that didn't HAVE a healer or a tank or a support specialization. As in, there weren't classes like that in the game. As a developer, you would then be able to structure the challenges around what players bring to the encounters.

 

Such a thing could work in this game, but only by actually removing the tank and healing classes as an available option to play. Leave those classes in and you're going to get weird balancing problems.

 

Bring a group of 4 dps. You either need no healing required, completely avoidable healing, or a mechanic based healing. So, to make that remotely challenging you would need to require the players you output a certain amount of dps in a certain amount of time. But the next time you bring 4 tanks, and they cannot do enough damage in time and fail the encounter.

 

Or, you remove combat as a challenge completely. Every fight everywhere is 100% mechanic based, and actual fighting is irrelevant.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Khevar

[Kryand]

For what it's worth, that does sound fun to me.

 

But that would involve a game that didn't HAVE a healer or a tank or a support specialization. As in, there weren't classes like that in the game. As a developer, you would then be able to structure the challenges around what players bring to the encounters.

 

Such a thing could work in this game, but only by actually removing the tank and healing classes as an available option to play. Leave those classes in and you're going to get weird balancing problems.

 

Bring a group of 4 dps. You either need no healing required, completely avoidable healing, or a mechanic based healing. So, to make that remotely challenging you would need to require the players you output a certain amount of dps in a certain amount of time. But the next time you bring 4 tanks, and they cannot do enough damage in time and fail the encounter.

 

Or, you remove combat as a challenge completely. Every fight everywhere is 100% mechanic based, and actual fighting is irrelevant.

 

That was all sorta my point. I was never suggesting that this or any other MMO be changed into something without the trinity system. Every post I have made in this thread beyond the first has been in defense of one single assertion: that it is possible to design an MMO that is fun without using the trinity system. Whether that means designing an MMO similar to SWTOR that is focused completely on mechanics that don't need a tank or healer, or something totally different like the hypothetical MMORTS, whatever. A creative enough game developer could pull it off. That is all I have ever been trying to say, despite some people nitpicking minor points for multiple pages.

[eartharioch]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain that being told what to do for a fight is having the experience "spoiled". I also have never heard anyone complain for someone to spacebar in an operation, probably due to the inherent differences between an operation cutscene and a flashpoint cutscene.

 

Most of the real story for operations happens before and after, during the one time quest. And that part is done on your own.

 

First of all, I wasn't complaining. Second of all, that was my point -- all you can usually avoid having spoiled is a few paltry cut scenes. You seem to see that as a plus, I see it as a minus.

 

And yes, op groups are *usually* less [obviously] bad about space barring through stuff, but when it's your first time and your trying to watch a cut scene in the middle of the op and everybody else has spacebarred through it and are discussing who's going to do what, the pressure to spacebar through so you can start paying attention to fight discussion is just as palpable as somebody repeating "spacebar".

 

In any case, there's no much to do about the "spoiler" affect for group content other than acknowledge it. The encounters are scripted, so unless you actually find a group of people who have never done a given op, one or more people will already know something about the fight. And while I'd tell a person trying to tell me about a single-player game fight not to say anything so I don't get spoiled, I'm not going to ask other people to pretend they don't know about a fight just so that I could get an "unspoiled" experience (at their repair bill cost).

[Khevar]

A creative enough game developer could pull it off. That is all I have ever been trying to say, despite some people nitpicking minor points for multiple pages.

Ah. Well, I do agree with this.

[MillionsKNives]

By that logic, Tacticals are still 100% trinity, as someone always has aggro, and someone presses the heal object. If your definition of a trinity fight is that broad, then literally any fight where health meters can go up or a boss looks at any player on the team is a trinity fight, despite the fact that there is no actual tank and no actual healer.

 

That's kind of my point. Even if you don't have a "tank" or a "healer", those roles still exist, they just won't be called "tanks" or "healers". The reason that tactical flashpoints work without a real tank or healer is that they've been made so easy that even a DPS can act as a tank, or a healer.

 

Seems more useful to say that a trinity fight is one where there are people who always have the boss's attention (tanks) and people who are solely responsible for team health (healers). Not just one, and not letting one of those responsibilities fall to any random raid member who feels like it at the time.

 

That doesn't seem all that different, you're just diffusing the same role across more people and making it simple enough that any of them can act in that role. In just about any scenario where anyone can end up being the tank and anyone can end up being the healer, a dedicated tank or healer would be significantly better at the role.

 

The "trinity" as you know it is an extreme representation of the three roles that encompass it, where everyone only has one role. There's the person taking the brunt of the attack (tank), the person doing damage (dps), and the person keeping everyone alive (healer). My question to you is this: when you say that you want to move away from the trinity are you saying that you want to get rid of roles altogether, or do you just want to move away from players having dedicated roles?

 

If you want to remove the healing role altogether (removing the tanking role completely is conceptually much more difficult and means that no one person could have a boss's attention) then the answer to your question about what mechanics are removed is the mechanics that require you to outheal the incoming damage. You specified that you wanted examples other than that, but that's what the healer's job is. So if you want to remove the healer's job then you also remove the things that the healer does.

 

If you just want to get rid of players having dedicated roles then obviously there are no mechanical differences, because all of the jobs are still there, just spread across all the players. While this can be appealing to some, I think it fails in that you just have a collection of jacks-of-all-trades-masters-of-none.

[MillionsKNives]

First of all, I wasn't complaining. Second of all, that was my point -- all you can usually avoid having spoiled is a few paltry cut scenes. You seem to see that as a plus, I see it as a minus.

 

And yes, op groups are *usually* less [obviously] bad about space barring through stuff, but when it's your first time and your trying to watch a cut scene in the middle of the op and everybody else has spacebarred through it and are discussing who's going to do what, the pressure to spacebar through so you can start paying attention to fight discussion is just as palpable as somebody repeating "spacebar".

 

In any case, there's no much to do about the "spoiler" affect for group content other than acknowledge it. The encounters are scripted, so unless you actually find a group of people who have never done a given op, one or more people will already know something about the fight. And while I'd tell a person trying to tell me about a single-player game fight not to say anything so I don't get spoiled, I'm not going to ask other people to pretend they don't know about a fight just so that I could get an "unspoiled" experience (at their repair bill cost).

 

When I said that I hadn't heard anyone complain about it before I didn't mean to say that you were complaining about it. And while I don't particularly agree that being told the mechanics is spoiling it, I think you make good points.