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Demise of the "Holy Trinity"

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  • rungardrungard Member Posts: 1,035

    i wonder what would happen if they simply changed the trinity to:

    tank

    debuff

    crowd control

    and only allowed healing after combat. Arguably debuffs and healing achieve the same thing, but one is an agressive version and the other a defensive.

  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591

    The Trinity can go the way of the Dodo....

    And in 10-15yrs from now someone will bring it back and it will be touted as an innovation.

    Personaly I see nothing wrong with the trinity. Some like to play the big strong tank, some the stealthy rogue some the cleric and some the wizard.

     Maybe it's the way encounter's have been developed that has gotten stale.

    "Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee

  • pointchizpointchiz Member Posts: 73
    Originally posted by Gaendric

    "There's only so much you can do with that idea. The reason is because you're limited to just refilling a health bar. There is no depth to this."

    Certainly not the case in PvP. Everyone who played DAoC knows that having a skilled healer made all the difference in the world. And with skill I most certainly don't mean how good he was at watching healthbars go down and up.

    What the trinity adds is structure, which can lead to more tactical gameplay. (I agree this is questionable in many PvE implementations though)

    The downside of "no trinity" (or other structure) is that fights can become zergfests, everyone just runs in the middle and pewpews while keeping himself alive. Basically, the game must provide some other means to avoid this.

    Some sort of structure is good,. Doesn't have to be "the trinity (tm)" ofcourse.

     

    Healing in PVP is an abomination; in my opinion. It is impossible to balance. There is no skill to healing in PVP. Assuming the WoW model; the healer can heal anyone in a 40 yard radius and doesn't even have to face the target. This is probably because of the existance of the health bar. The DPS has to perform combo's, time the use of skills and coordinate strikes to bring the health bar to zero. But wait, here comes the healer with his eraser. He just erases everything that was done and all he had to do was click a box on the corner of his screen and then click a button on his keyboard. There is very little tactical gameplay in PVP when a healer is present. Assuming no healer, 1 good DPS could probably kill 2 or 3 lower skilled players. The second that you add a healer to this equation, everything goes to hell. I have seen and experienced the rampage that a Warrior + Healer combo could do. If the healer is left enchecked, those 2 alone could handle dozens of players. Then again this is just a matter of semantics since the healing per second can always be adjusted. In short, the healer is an error correction system. You don't need someone else to correct your mistakes. You don't need a dentist behind you picking up your teeth and surgically putting tham back into your jaw everytime you get punched in the face. Given the toolbox, you can avoid from getting punched in the face.

  • Ambros123Ambros123 Member Posts: 877
    Originally posted by JosephJR

    without trinity mmorpg is bored,sterile...it is not rpg it is arcade shooter ,look STO there not egsist  trinity,bored fight where all playing as dps ,no team work,  nothing what can associate on team work ,  all can be done withouth  talking inside teams cuse trinity not egsist

     

     

    And how does "Wait 3 sec of the tank to grab aggro then on into rotations", "Don't stand in the fire", "Tank is downm it's a wipe guys" advocate any sort of complexity or teamwork?  Complexity will be entirely dependent on the fight design which if there is a trinity system or not is irrelevent as it will solely be dependent upon the devs and how they design the encounter.

    Also the Holy Trinity doesn't require talking to you teammaters either FYI and doesn't advocate any more complexity ot teamworkness.

  • Ambros123Ambros123 Member Posts: 877
    Originally posted by Gaendric

    "There's only so much you can do with that idea. The reason is because you're limited to just refilling a health bar. There is no depth to this."

    Certainly not the case in PvP. Everyone who played DAoC knows that having a skilled healer made all the difference in the world. And with skill I most certainly don't mean how good he was at watching healthbars go down and up.

    What the trinity adds is structure, which can lead to more tactical gameplay. (I agree this is questionable in many PvE implementations though)

    The downside of "no trinity" (or other structure) is that fights can become zergfests, everyone just runs in the middle and pewpews while keeping himself alive. Basically, the game must provide some other means to avoid this.

    Some sort of structure is good,. Doesn't have to be "the trinity (tm)" ofcourse.

     

    People are sterotyping that a no trinity system equates to zerg fest based off the DEs of GW2, show me where a dungeon is completed by a zerg fest tactic.

  • LucioonLucioon Member UncommonPosts: 819

    Without Taunt, the Game does not have a tank, regardless of whether or not you were able to get the mob to stick on you, but without a actual Taunt that other games uses that forces the mob to come back to you. There is no trinity.

    When there is no full heal on any characters, there is no healer. You can heal as much as you want in GW2, but without the usual Super heal or constant heal that out heals the damages the mob gives out, there is no Trinity, and no healer.

    What alot of people is trying to do is to go back to the trinity, sure you can build a very tough character that can sustain damages by a Boss Mob, yet without Taunts, that character is just a very tanky Character whom is very good at getting the attentions of the Boss Mob. Its not tanking, he is just a very good player that is able to work with his teammates and have the abilities to control the situation.

    Having a water Elementalist who specializes in healing, is just a very good Elementalist whom is very good at managing their healing spells, with the help of the person that is controling the Boss Mob in avoiding damage that would put them in a bad situation.

    In a normal Trinity Game play, The tank's job is to just keep spamming Taunts , while the Healer stay far enough and just keep spamming heals. There is no control of the Situation, because if the tank fails to taunt, the healer dies, if the healer dies, everyone dies. In GW2, when the water elemetalist dies, the tank can still keep going, just have to pay alittle more attention, and others can change their weapons to suit the situation.

    Or when the tank dies, the healer can switch to the Earth Element and take over or someone else can take over with a switch of their weapon.

    The game does not end when the person tanking dies, or the Water Elemetalist dies, but in Normal Trinity, its a automatic wipe.

    Trinity needs to go for new ideas and new mechanics, smarter AI, more complex situations and more involved ideas to occur, we need to step out of the Trinity shadown and make the game more fun and exciting again.

    Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.

  • rpgalonrpgalon Member Posts: 430

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

  • KonfessKonfess Member RarePosts: 1,667

    The trinity relies on multiplayer gaming and this interferes with the online single player goodness that opponents of the trinity enjoy so much.  You can basically say that any game that doesn’t support the trinity or promotes as a design goal or feature  a departure from the trinity, is in fact a single player game with an online component and nothing more. 

    Pardon any spelling errors
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    As if it could exist, without being payed for.
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  • GaendricGaendric Member UncommonPosts: 624

    "Healing in PVP is an abomination; in my opinion. It is impossible to balance. There is no skill to healing in PVP. Assuming the WoW model; the healer can heal anyone in a 40 yard radius and doesn't even have to face the target. This is probably because of the existance of the health bar. The DPS has to perform combo's, time the use of skills and coordinate strikes to bring the health bar to zero."

    This is not a problem with healing, it is a problem with WoW being as dumbed down as it gets and most games since then trying to copy it's success.

    Games have had skillful and balanced healing long before WoW came along and catered to the lowest common denominator.

     

     

     

  • pointchizpointchiz Member Posts: 73
    Originally posted by rpgalon

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

    Believe it or not but, developers are restricted in what they can do based on the existance of the tank and healer. It's not like the developer can create an encounter where the boss is 40 yards into the air and shoots fireballs at the ground one-shotting anyone than didn't move out of the way. If they did, tanks and healers would not be necessary to succeed in this encounter.

  • OldManFunkOldManFunk Member Posts: 894

    /LFG Looking for one more! Tank or heals! PST!

     

    ELITE GUILD recruiting a tank!

     

    /reply But I wanted to play my healer, can't you DPS tonight?

     

    /ZONE Target the healers first you n00bz and get a tank to hold the flag!

     

    Ugh

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by pointchiz
    Originally posted by rpgalon

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

    Believe it or not but, developers are restricted in what they can do based on the existance of the tank and healer. It's not like the developer can create an encounter where the boss is 40 yards into the air and shoots fireballs at the ground one-shotting anyone than didn't move out of the way. If they did, tanks and healers would not be necessary to succeed in this encounter.

    hmm they did. Look at the Blood Queen enounter in WOTLK. There *is* a phase where the boss did exactly that.

  • LaromussLaromuss Member UncommonPosts: 331
    Originally posted by pointchiz
    Originally posted by rpgalon

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

    Believe it or not but, developers are restricted in what they can do based on the existance of the tank and healer. It's not like the developer can create an encounter where the boss is 40 yards into the air and shoots fireballs at the ground one-shotting anyone than didn't move out of the way. If they did, tanks and healers would not be necessary to succeed in this encounter.

    Are you guessing?  Have you worked in the industry?  Cause you statement is completely false.   Developers have all the freedom to do anything they want the only thing stopping them is time and money. I work in the industry and  I teach students how to do this on a daily basis using Unreal development kit, using its in engine programming tools.  If students can do it a developer can do much more.

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Originally posted by pointchiz

    Right. I think people would enjoy interacting with a 3D world instead of a 2D user interface. Future game design should make support roles that have the player's eyes on the action. Wether the role is reactive or proactive or a mix of both is fine. The health bar is an outdated system. Even FPS games don't use it anymore. It serves little to no purpose

     

    Well it's not like healing can't be improved.

    But it's silly to imply nobody is having fun healing currently, when that's clearly not true.  And I had plenty of reactive situations healing on my shaman, who also had a spell interrupt which was important to use to save teammates (or save myself from being CCed by a mob)

    The health bar is far from "outdated".  Early FPSes didn't have it at all, yet a few key recent FPSes like Tribes do have it.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Originally posted by pointchiz

    There's only so much you can do with that idea. The reason is because you're limited to just refilling a health bar. There is no depth to this.

    So there's no depth to DPSing because you're limited to just depleting health bars?

    Nonsense.  There can be depth to either -- it all depends on the details of the decisions players are confronted with.

     

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • AxehiltAxehilt Member RarePosts: 10,504
    Originally posted by Laross

    Are you guessing?  Have you worked in the industry?  Cause you statement is completely false.   Developers have all the freedom to do anything they want the only thing stopping them is time and money. I work in the industry and  I teach students how to do this on a daily basis using Unreal development kit, using its in engine programming tools.  If students can do it a developer can do much more.

    I work in the industry and I can tell you that nearly every single design decision creates constraints for every other design decision.

    Now I strongly disagree with his ideas, but in this particular case he's correct that certain types of fights become harder (or impossible) to implement if healers and tanks exist.

    And well...his particular example was also extremely poorly chosen because Onyxia's deep breath did one-shot people while she flew 40 yards in the air, and it's one of the most famous raids in all of MMORPGs, and healers and tanks were crucial to beating it.  In fact the fight was one of the more interesting fights to heal, due to fear and deep breath creating location-based concerns while you tried to heal the raid's incoming damage.

    "What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver

  • LaromussLaromuss Member UncommonPosts: 331
    Originally posted by Axehilt
    Originally posted by Laross

    Are you guessing?  Have you worked in the industry?  Cause you statement is completely false.   Developers have all the freedom to do anything they want the only thing stopping them is time and money. I work in the industry and  I teach students how to do this on a daily basis using Unreal development kit, using its in engine programming tools.  If students can do it a developer can do much more.

    I work in the industry and I can tell you that nearly every single design decision creates constraints for every other design decision.

    Now I strongly disagree with his ideas, but in this particular case he's correct that certain types of fights become harder (or impossible) to implement if healers and tanks exist.

    And well...his particular example was also extremely poorly chosen because Onyxia's deep breath did one-shot people while she flew 40 yards in the air, and it's one of the most famous raids in all of MMORPGs, and healers and tanks were crucial to beating it.  In fact the fight was one of the more interesting fights to heal, due to fear and deep breath creating location-based concerns while you tried to heal the raid's incoming damage.

    yup I know all about design constraints, the constraints go further than just design, its a bottom line that needs to be looked at.  Is it worth implementing something that the player may or may never experience.   Does it really add to the experience of the battle and in the end it is better off just to go with just what we have cause changing the code base would alter too many things that would not be profitable or within the deadline.   Every company that has every created a game will create a game 2.5 times over due to the changes and will eventually run out of time thus the elements that they are free to do and want to do don't get implemented.   Additionally again this is what my students and I deal with on a daily basis, on a smaller scale but boss encounter, classes, holy trinity, fight scenarios, and enemy encounters.  They've been able to do anything they can think of and the biggest reason for this is time constraint.

    But I do agree of course if you build an encounter that was only mean t for certain classes then of course the implentation is going to be very hard.  Well it doesn't mean it can't be implemented it just means the design of the encounter was not flexible enough to allow other classes to be involved.

  • LucioonLucioon Member UncommonPosts: 819
    Originally posted by Konfess

    The trinity relies on multiplayer gaming and this interferes with the online single player goodness that opponents of the trinity enjoy so much.  You can basically say that any game that doesn’t support the trinity or promotes as a design goal or feature  a departure from the trinity, is in fact a single player game with an online component and nothing more. 

    Actually, Trinity only relies on Three Player Gaming, 1 Healer, 1 Tank , 1 DPS , anyone else is just fluff

    While Those that doesn't rely on Trinity, allows Multiple Combinations that beats the Multiplayer Gaming mechanics of an traditional Trinity.

    Because you can have 10 DPS and each can become different roles, or a combinations of 100, because without set roles, each can play the way they want in combination with everyone else.

     

    Life is a Maze, so make sure you bring your GPS incase you get lost in it.

  • The aggro magnet aspects of tanking is a cop-out.

     

    A tank as an aggro magnet is just dumbed down crowd control.  Good tanks by defintion control the crowd.

     

    The whole current trinity is just a cop-out to dumb down gamelay.

     

    Back in EQ where CC was part of the trinity, tanking was still a cop-out for the devs inability to truly balance/utlize CC correctly.  You only see movement away from trinity when you see devs who believe they have a CC/support system that can be accounted for well, which is very rare.

    Trinity games almost always force you into using a tank by making bosses immune to all crowd control EXCEPT tanking.  They also neuter support in numerous ways to ensure that you must have a tank and a healer rather the large variety of other strategies that could be used instead.

  • MephsterMephster Member Posts: 1,188

    There is no problem with the holy trinity of mmos. Infact there is something like 9-10 million WoW players, not to mention players in AIon, Lotro, AOC, WAR and a few others out there enjoying the holy trinity. This talk about how the holy trinity of mmos is crippling mmos is a bunch of nonsense. People love knowing their role and sticking with it. 

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  • TrikkeTrikke Member Posts: 90

    It will kill the mmo genre forever.

  • pointchizpointchiz Member Posts: 73
    Originally posted by Laross
    Originally posted by pointchiz
    Originally posted by rpgalon

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

    Believe it or not but, developers are restricted in what they can do based on the existance of the tank and healer. It's not like the developer can create an encounter where the boss is 40 yards into the air and shoots fireballs at the ground one-shotting anyone than didn't move out of the way. If they did, tanks and healers would not be necessary to succeed in this encounter.

    Are you guessing?  Have you worked in the industry?  Cause you statement is completely false.   Developers have all the freedom to do anything they want the only thing stopping them is time and money. I work in the industry and  I teach students how to do this on a daily basis using Unreal development kit, using its in engine programming tools.  If students can do it a developer can do much more.

    You misunderstood what I meant. If you have tanks and healers the developer has to take those 2 roles into consideration when they design the encounter. Or else you'd have raid leaders that'll say things like..."The hell do we need a tank for? Let's just kite him around the room. If he switches aggro, start running and keep kiting". If all the damage is avoidable; why bring a healer?

  • LaromussLaromuss Member UncommonPosts: 331
    Originally posted by pointchiz
    Originally posted by Laross
    Originally posted by pointchiz
    Originally posted by rpgalon

    the trinity is fine... It's how the encounters are designed that matters.

    if the problem was the trinity, every encounter would be boring... but that is not the case, some encounters are boring and some are fun.

    so the problem is the effort put into these encounters by the developers.

    Believe it or not but, developers are restricted in what they can do based on the existance of the tank and healer. It's not like the developer can create an encounter where the boss is 40 yards into the air and shoots fireballs at the ground one-shotting anyone than didn't move out of the way. If they did, tanks and healers would not be necessary to succeed in this encounter.

    Are you guessing?  Have you worked in the industry?  Cause you statement is completely false.   Developers have all the freedom to do anything they want the only thing stopping them is time and money. I work in the industry and  I teach students how to do this on a daily basis using Unreal development kit, using its in engine programming tools.  If students can do it a developer can do much more.

    You misunderstood what I meant. If you have tanks and healers the developer has to take those 2 roles into consideration when they design the encounter. Or else you'd have raid leaders that'll say things like..."The hell do we need a tank for? Let's just kite him around the room. If he switches aggro, start running and keep kiting". If all the damage is avoidable; why bring a healer?

    yup agree, design is a very tricky and in some ways an art.  I find all this talk about how the holy trinity should stay or fail is not helping but rather that is just one part of a genre that needs to be improved, iterated upon.  There is something called Hollistic game design and a lot of devs, players should look into reading.   As one of the previous posters posted  every design decision creates restraints on other designs of the game, what this comes down to is looking at the bigger picture and not one element since everything is tied together. 

  • SquishydewSquishydew Member UncommonPosts: 1,107

    I really enjoy the healer role so i don't like it being gone either, doesn't mean i won't play guild wars 2 - But i enjoy being needed, gives you a reason to group up

     

    I don't want to be able to solo things, i like being dependant on others.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775
    Originally posted by pointchiz
     

    You misunderstood what I meant. If you have tanks and healers the developer has to take those 2 roles into consideration when they design the encounter. Or else you'd have raid leaders that'll say things like..."The hell do we need a tank for? Let's just kite him around the room. If he switches aggro, start running and keep kiting". If all the damage is avoidable; why bring a healer?

    You certainly are wrong, and not aware of facts.

    Case in point, faction champion encounter in WOTLK tier 9 .. no aggro table, anyone can be targetted.

    Case in point, blood queen encounter where in a phase she hovers and shoot at everyone.

    The point is that the developer is NOT constrained to have the 2 roles (tank/heal) *all* the time. As long as they are needed as tank/heal in *some* part of the encounter, it is enough.

    There are plenty of examples where tank/heal roles are not strictlly adhered to in every part of an encounter. In fact, kiting is used in many encounters (like the bird in Magistrate Terrace back in BC).

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